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 sr ^ «MMU SCHOOL 
 
 Los A "gele s 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 
 
 font (ftljiutar ta %t\u\^a\i 
 
 By HENRY REED. 
 
 SIXTH EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 CLAXTON, REMSEN & HAFFELFINGER, 
 
 1878. ,
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by 
 WILLIAM 1!. REED, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern 
 District of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Sclhcimer & Moore. Printers. 
 I Chestnut Street.
 
 R s s- 
 
 to 
 
 S SSitototi Stota, 
 
 WHO, FOR THE SAKE OP THE LIVING, HAS NOBLY BORNE HER SORROW 
 
 FOR THE DEAD, 
 
 utbis memorial wolunu 
 
 (9 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
 
 w. b. a.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Introductory Notice Page xv 
 
 LECTURE I.— INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OP LITERATURE. 
 
 Object, to assist and guide students — Necessity of systematic study 
 — Judicious criticism — True aims and principles of literature — 
 Choice of books — Its difficulties — Aim of this course of lectures 
 to remove them — All books not literature — Accurate definition 
 of literature — Its universality — Izaak Walton — Addison — 
 Charles Lamb — Lord Bacon — Clarendon — Arnold — Spenser and 
 Shakspeare — Southey and Wordsworth — Belles-lettres not li- 
 terature — LiteraturenoFan easy, patrician pleasure — Its danger 
 as to practical life — Its influence on character — De Quincey's 
 definition — Knowledge and power — Influence on female charac- 
 ter — True position of woman — Tennyson's Princess — Novel- 
 reading — Taste, an incorrect term — Henry Taylor — Cowper — 
 Miss Wordsworth — Coleridge's philosophy 25 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 APPLICATION OP LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Narrow and exclusive lines of reading to be avoided — Catholicity 
 of taste — Charles Lamb's idea of books — Ruskin — Habits of 
 reading comprehensive — Ancient Literature— Foreign Lan- 
 guages — Different eras of letters — English essay-writing — 
 Macaulay — Southey — Scott and Washington Irving — Archdea- 
 con Haro — Lord Bacon's Essays — Poetic taste — Influence of
 
 ! CONTENTS. 
 
 individual pursuits — Friends in Council — Serious and gny books 
 —English humour — Southey's ballad — Necessity of intellectual 
 discipline — Disadvantage of courses of reading — Books not 
 insulated things — Authors who guide — Southey's Doctor — Elia 
 —Coleridge— Divisions of Prose and Poetry— Henry Taylor's 
 Notes from Books — Poetry not a mere luxury of the mind — 
 Arnold's habits of study and taste — The practical and poetical 
 element of Anglo-Saxon character — The Bible — Mosaic Poetry 
 — Ljadequacy~of language — Lockhart's character of Scott — Ar- 
 nold's character of Scipio— Tragic poetry — Poetry for children 
 — Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights — Wordsworth's Odo 
 .o Duty — Character of Washington Page 54 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 Medium of ideas often forgotten — Witchery of English words — 
 .analysis of good style difficult — The power of words — Our duty 
 to the English language — Lord Bacon's idea of Latin — Milton — 
 Hume's expostulation with Gibbon — Daniel's Lament — Exteb 
 sion of English language — French dominion in America — Lan- 
 dor's Penn and Peterborough — Duty of protecting and guarding 
 language — Degeneracy of language and morals — Age of Charles 
 II. — Language part of character — Arnold's Lectures on Modern 
 History — Use of disproportionate words — Origin of the English 
 language in the North — Classical and romantio languages — 
 Saxon element of our language — Its superiority — The Bible 
 idiom — Structure of sentences — Prepositions at the end of most 
 vigorous sentences — Composite sentences, and the Latin element 
 — Alliteration — Grandeur of sentences in old writers — Modern 
 short sentences — Junius — Macaulay — No peculiar pootic diction 
 — Doctor Franklin's rules — Shakspeare's matchless words — 
 Wordsworth's sonnet — Byron — Landor — Coleridge's Christaoel 
 —"The Song in the Mind"— Hood— The Bridge of Sighs S5 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH^ LITERATURE. 
 
 Early English proso and poetry — Sir John Mandcvillc — Sir Tho- 
 mas More's Life of Edward the Fifth— Chaucer's Tales— At-
 
 CONTENTS. *i 
 
 tempted paraphrases — Chaucer Modernized — Conflict of Nor- 
 man and Saxon elements — Gower — Reign of Edward the Third — 
 Continental wars — Petrarch — Boccacio — Froissart — The church 
 — Wyclif — Arts and Architecture — Statutes in English — Chau- 
 cer resumed — His humour and pathos — Sense of natural beauty 
 — The Temple of Fame — Chaucer and Mr. Babbage — The flower 
 and the leaf — Canterbury Tales — Chaucer's high moral tone — 
 Wordsworth's stanza — Poet's corner and Chaucer's tomb — The 
 death of a Language — English minstrelsy — Percy's Reliques 
 — Sir Walter Scott — Wilson — Christian hymns and chaunts — 
 Conversion of King Edwin — Martial ballads — Lockhart — 
 Spanish ballads — Ticknor's great work — Edom of Gordon — 
 Dramatic power of the ballad — The Two Brothers — Contrast of 
 early and late English poetry Page 127 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTDRY. 
 
 Pawn of letters a false illustration — Intellectual gloom from Ed- 
 ward III. to Henry VIII. — Chaucer to Spenser — Caxton and 
 the art of printing — Civil wars — Wyatt and Surrey — The son- 
 net naturalized in English poetry — Blank verse — Henry VIII. 
 — Edward VI. — Landor's Sonnet — Sternhold and Hopkins — 
 Bishop Latimer — Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple — 
 "Bloody Mary" — Sackville — "The Mirror of Magistrates" — 
 His career — Age of Elizabeth — Contrasts of her life — The 
 Church as an independent English power — Shakspeare — His 
 journey to London — Final formation of the English language 
 —"The well of English undefiled"— The Reformation— Sir 
 Philip Sydney — The Bishop's Bible — Richard Hooker — Spen- 
 ser and Shakspeare — Wilson's Criticism — Sir Walter Raleigh 
 — Shakspeare's Prose 155 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 LITERATURE OP THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, WITH INCIDENTAL 
 SUGGESTIONS ON SUNDAY READING. . 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity— Progress of English literature — 
 Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World — Bacon's Essays-- 
 Milton— Comus — Hymn on the Nativity — Suggestions as to
 
 ill CONTENTS. 
 
 Sunday reading — Sacred books — Forms of Christian faith — 
 Evidences of Religion— Butler's Analogy — Charles Lamb's Re- 
 marks on Stackhouse — History of the Bible — Jeremy Taylor — 
 Holy Living and Dying — Life of Christ — Pulpit-oratory — Sou- 
 they's Book of the Church — Thomas Fuller — Wordsworth's 
 Ecclesiastical Sonnets — Izaak Walton's Lives — Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress — The Old Man's Home — George Herbert — Henry Vaughan 
 — Milton resumed — Paradise Lost — Criticism on it as a purely 
 sacred poem — Shakspeare's mode of treating sacred subjects — 
 Spenser — The Faery Queen — John Wesley — Keble's Christian 
 Yoar — George Wither — Aubrey De Vere — Trench's Sonnet. Page 184 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 LITERATURE OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. 
 
 Milton's old age — Donne's Sermons — No great school of poetry 
 without love of nature — Blank in this respect between Paradise 
 Lost and Thomson's Seasons — Court of Charles the Second — 
 Samson Agonistes — Milton's Sonnets — Clarendon's History of 
 the Rebellion — Pilgrim's Progress — Dryden's Odes — Absalom 
 and Aehitophel — Rhyming tragedies — Age of Queen Anne — 
 British Statesmen — Essayists — Tatler — Spectator — Sir Roger 
 De Coverley — Pope — Lord Bolingbroke — English Infidels — 
 Johnson's Dictionary — Gray — Collins — Cowper — Goldsmith — 
 Tho Vicar of Wakefield — Cowper — Elizabeth Browning 215 
 
 LECTURE VIIL 
 
 LITERATURE OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Literature of our own times — Influence of political and social re- 
 lations — The historic relations of literature — The French Revo- 
 lution, and its effects — Infidelity — Thirty years' Peace — Scien- 
 tific progress coincident with letters — History — Its altered tono 
 — Arnold — Prescott — Niebuhr — Gibbon — Hume — Robertson — 
 Religious element in historical style — Lord Mahon — Macaulay's 
 History — Historical romance — Waverley Novels — The pulpit — 
 Sydney Smith — Manning — Poetry of the early part of the con- 
 tury — Bowles and Rogers — Campbell — Coleridge's Christabol — 
 Lay of tho Last Minstrel — Scott's poetry 248
 
 CONTENTS. xiH 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 
 
 Lord Byron — His popularity and its decline — His power of sim- 
 ple, vigorous language — Childe Harold — The Dying Gladiator 
 — The Isles of Greece — Contrast of Byron's and Shakspeare's 
 creations — Miss Barrett — Miss Kemble's sonnet — Byron as a 
 poet of nature — His antagonism to Divine truth — The Dream, 
 the most faultless of his poems — Don Juan — Shelley — Leigh 
 Hunt's remarks on — Carlyle — His earnestness — South ey — 
 His historical works — Thalaba — Wordsworth — His character- 
 istics — Female authors — Joanna Baillie — Miss Edgeworth — 
 Mrs. Kemble — Mrs. Norton — Miss Barrett — Cry of the Chil- 
 dren, &c Page 272 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 TRAGIC AND ELEGIAC POETRY. 
 
 Contrast of subjects, serious and gay — Tragic poetry — Hlustrated in 
 history — Death of the first-born — Clarendon's raising the stand- 
 ard at Nottingham — Moral use of tragic poetry — Allston's cri- 
 ticism — Elegiac poetry — Its power not mere sentimentalism — 
 Gray's Elegy, an universal poem — Philip Van Artevelde — Caro- 
 line Bowles — "Pauper's Death Bed" — Wordsworth's Elegies — 
 Milton's Lycidas — Adonais — In Memoriam — Shelley's Poem on 
 Death of Keats — Tennyson — In Memoriam reviewed 309 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 Bubtilty of these emotions — Sydney Smith and Leigh Hunt — 
 Dullness of jest-books — Hudibras a tedious book — Sydney 
 Smith's idea of the study of wit — Charles Lamb — Incapacity 
 for a jest — German note on Knickerbocker — Stoicism and Pu- 
 ritanism — Guesses at Truth — Cheerful literature needed for 
 thoughtful minds — Recreative power of books — Different modo3 
 of mental relaxation — Napoleon — Shelley — Cowper — Southey's 
 merriness — Doctor Arnold — Shakspeare and Scott's humour — 
 The Antiquary — Burke — Barrow's definition of wit — Hobbos —
 
 xiT CONTENTS. 
 
 Forms of Ilumour — Doctor Johnson's grotesque definitions — 
 Collins the landscape painter — Examples of grotesque style — 
 Irish Bulls — Rip Van Winkle — Sydney Smith and Doctor Parr 
 — Humour in old tragedies — Lear and the fool — Hamlet, and 
 the grave-digger — Irony — Macbeth and the doctor — Anne Bo- 
 leyn — Bishop Latimer — Fuller — Dean Swift and Arbuthnot — 
 Gulliver — Sir Roger De Coverley — Charles Lamb — Swift and 
 Byron's humour — Prostitution of wi£— Sir Robert Walpole — 
 Lord Melbourne — Hogarth — Danger of power of humour illus- 
 trated — Ruskin's criticism ., Page 337 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF LETTER- WRITING. 
 
 Characteristics of a true letter — Historical and familiar letters — 
 Lord Bacon — Dr. Arnold's remarks — Despatches of Marlbo- 
 rough — Nelson — Franklin — John Adams — Reception by George 
 III. — Washington's correspondence — Bishop White's anecdote 
 of Washington — American diplomatic correspondence — Lord 
 Chatham's Letters — Duke of Wellington's — Archdeacon Hare's 
 remarks on — General Taylor's official letters — Familiar letters 
 — Cowley — Impropriety of publishing private correspondence 
 — Arbuthnotand Johnson's remarks on — Burns's Letters — Ten- 
 nyson — Howell's Letters — The Paston Letters — Lady Russell's 
 — Pope's — Hartley Coleridge's remark — Chesterfield — Horace 
 Walpole — Swift and Gray's — Cowper's — Scott's — Byrou's — 
 Southey's, and Lamb's Letters of Dedication — Lamb's, to his 
 sister 376
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 My duty in editing this volume is a very simple one : — to , 
 state, with frankness and precision, the circumstances of its 
 publication, and, if need be, to disarm criticism by the 
 absence of any thing like pretension on the part of nim 
 whose posthumous work is now given to the reading world 
 of his own countrymen. Immediately on my brother's 
 death in the autumn of last year, or as soon (and with me 
 it was very soon) as all hope of possible rescue had faded 
 away, my attention was turned to his manuscript lectures, 
 delivered in different courses at the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania. I knew that, as popular lectures, or rather essays at 
 lectures, they had been very successful, and I hoped and 
 believed they would bear the severer test of being printed. 
 This, I was well aware, is not always the case ; and I , 
 examined these manuscripts with the idea of possible inap- 
 titude clearly in my mind. The result, however, was a con- 
 viction that the Lectures, or a portion of them, ought to be 
 published. They contain, aside from their value as works 
 of criticism, developments of the pure taste and gentle feel- 
 ing of the author, which will interest, at least his friends, 
 and be appreciated by all who value them exactly for what 
 they were designed — not profound disquisitions, but popular
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 lectures. In saying this, I must be understood as speaking 
 with precision, and not in words either of real or affected 
 disparagement. I wish to describe them* as He would do, 
 were he alive to speak of his own modest work. There will 
 be found on these pages, if I mistake not, hints and sugges- 
 tions of philosophic criticism floating on the surface (or 
 hidden not far beneath) of a most graceful and attractive 
 current of thought and language. 
 
 It will be farther borne in mind that these Lectures are 
 printed exactly as written, with scarcely a verbal altera- 
 tion, and no change or modification of opinion. He wrote 
 from a full mind, often with great rapidity, and without the 
 opportunity or the necessity of revision. Knowing this to 
 be his habit of composition, and that he never prepared 
 himself specially for any one lecture, I have been much 
 struck with the proof they afford of his long and habitual 
 studiousness and rich and accomplished scholarship. His 
 citations of authorities, or rather quotations, are purely 
 incidental; and one of my duties has been to trace his 
 studies to their sources, and, as far as possible, verify, by 
 exact reference, the citations he has made. In this — for 
 in y own occupations have forced my ordinary reading into 
 other channels — I have been aided by the only survivor 
 (one still nearer to him than myself) to whom, before 
 delivery and as he wrote them, he read these Lectures; and 
 also by his and my friends, — to whom I am glad thus to 
 make my acknowledgments, — Mr. George "W. Hunter, Mr. 
 Ellis Yarnall, and Mr. William Arthur Jackson. 
 
 Id selecting this course of Lectures, I was guided by twe
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xvii 
 
 considerations, — one that it was a more complete and con- 
 tinuous course than others ; another, that it was among the 
 last delivered by him. The dates will be found noted in 
 each lecture. 
 
 I have ventured not only to put, in the form of notes, some 
 unconnected remarks by the author himself and marked 
 with his initials, but to add a few of my own. These are 
 very few, and are meant to be illustrative. Perhaps, in the 
 analysis of my feelings, there may be another pardonable 
 motive, in an affectionate desire, not diminishing, but grow- 
 ing with every hour of desolate separation, of connecting 
 some work of mine with his. Now that it is done, I feel as 
 if a mournful pleasure were over, and I was parting anew 
 from him. 
 
 Should this volume be received with interest and favour, 
 it is my wish to complete the series by two other courses 
 on kindred subjects: 
 
 1. Lectures on Modern History down to the Period of the 
 Reformation; and 
 
 2. Lectures on the History of England, as illustrated by 
 Shakspeare's Historical Dramas. 
 
 If, then, (for I am dealing very candidly with the public,) 
 sufficient interest be felt in the intellectual and moral 
 developments of these volumes to justify such a tribute to 
 his memory, I may venture — at least, this now is my pur- 
 pose — to prepare a Memoir of my brother's gentle and tran- 
 quil life, and very interesting correspondence on both sides 
 of the Atlantic. The life of a secluded American scholar 
 
 may not be without interest to those near and at a distance. 
 
 2*
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 With this hope clearly before me, and dreading, from 
 observation in other cases, the effect of a preliminary 
 memoir which affection so naturally exaggerates, I shall 
 now simply note a few dates and incidents, by way of ex- 
 planatory introduction, of his quiet life. 
 
 Henry Reed was born in Philadelphia on the 11th of 
 July, 1808. He was christened by the name of Henry 
 Hope, though the middle name was afterwards dropped. 
 His early education was at the classical school, of high 
 repute in its day, of Mr. James Ross. Here began a friend- 
 ship, which lasted through life and survived in earnest 
 sorrow for his premature death, with Mr. Horace Binney, 
 (the younger,) whose name I venture to refer to in simple 
 justice to the living and the dead, to us who grieve and 
 to him for whom we mourn. This friendship was faithful 
 and affectionate to the end. 
 
 Mr. Reed entered the Sophomore class at the University 
 of Pennsylvania in September, 1822, and was graduated as 
 Bachelor of Arts in 1825. He began the study of the law 
 under the general guidance of Mr. Sergeant, then a 4- the 
 hgighth of his professional fame, and was admitted to 
 practice in the District Court of the City and County of 
 Philadelphia in 1829. 
 
 In September, 1831, he relinquished the practice of his 
 profession, and was elected Assistant Professor of English 
 Literature in the University. In November of the same 
 year, he was chosen Assistant Professor of Moral Philoso- 
 phy. In the service of the College he continued for twenty- 
 do so years, faithful, I am sure I may say, to his duties.
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xtx 
 
 however irksome; and never in all that period, until his 
 visit to Europe, absent for any length of time from his post, 
 except when compelled by sickness. In 1835, he was 
 elected Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. 
 
 Mr. Reed was married, in 1834, to Elizabeth White Bron- 
 eon, who, with three children, now survives him. 
 
 It had long been his wish to visit Europe, but his profes- 
 sional duties and other claims had always prevented it. In 
 the spring of 1854, the Professorship of Moral Philosophy, 
 which he had once filled as Assistant Professor, being 
 vacant, Mr. Reed became a candidate for the chair, but was 
 not elected. Although no personal disparagement was 
 intended, so earnest and so reasonable was his ambition 
 for what he considered* a high academical distinction, that 
 his disappointment was most keen and depressing. His 
 secluded mode of life, exempt from the world's rough com- 
 petitions; his modest wishes; his consciousness of services 
 rendered and duties performed; his natural pride in the 
 affection of his students ; and, above all, his conviction that 
 moral science, in its highest and holiest sense, as elevated 
 by religious truth, was a department of education which he 
 was peculiarly competent to take charge of, combined to 
 render the disappointment very poignant. His friends and 
 family never saw him more depressed. I certainly never 
 saw him so deeply wounded. He asked for leave of absence, 
 which was granted by the Trustees; and early in May, 
 1854, accompanied by his sister-in-law, Miss Bronson, he 
 Bailed for Europe. 
 
 No American, visiting the Old World as a private citizen,
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 over received, a kinder or more discriminating welcome. 
 The last months of his life were pure sunshine. Before 
 he landed in England, his friends, the family of Dr. Arnold, 
 whom he had only known by correspondence, came on 
 board the ship to receive him; and his earliest and latest 
 hours of European sojourn were passed under the roof of 
 the great Poet whose memory he most revered, and whoso 
 writings had interwoven themselves with his intellectual 
 and moral being. " I do not know," he said in one of 
 his letters to his family, " what I have ever done to deserve 
 all this kindness." And so it was throughout. In England 
 he was at home in every sense ; and scenes, which to the 
 eye were strange, seemed familiar by association and study. 
 His letters to America were expressions of grateful delight 
 at what he saw and heard in the land of his forefathers, and 
 at the respectful kindness with which he was everywhere 
 greeted ; and yet of earnest and loyal yearning to the land 
 of his birth — his home and family and friends. It is no 
 violation of good taste here to enumerate some of the friends 
 for whose kind welcome Mr. Reed was so much indebted ; I 
 may mention the Wordsworths, Southeys, Coleridges, and 
 Arnolds, Lord Mahon, Mr. Baring, Mr. Aubrey De Vere, 
 Mr. Babbage, Mr. Henry Taylor, and Mr. Thackeray — 
 names, one and all, associated with the highest literary 
 or political distinction. 
 
 Ho visited the Continent, and Avent, by the ordinary route, 
 through France and Switzerland, as far south as Milan and 
 "Venice, returning by the Tyrol to Inspruck and Munich, 
 ana thence down the Rhino to Holland. But his last
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 associations were with the cloisters of Canterbury, (that spot, 
 to my eye, of matchless beauty,) the garden vales of Devon- 
 shire, the valley of the Wye, and the glades of Rydal. His 
 latest memory of this earth was of beautiful England in her 
 summer garb of verdure. The last words he ever wrote 
 were in a letter of the 20th September to his venerable 
 friend, Mrs. Wordsworth, thanking her and his English 
 friends generally for all she and they had done for him. 
 
 The rest is soon told. 
 
 On the 20th of September, 1854, Mr. Reed, with his sister 
 embarked at Liverpool for New York, in the United States 
 steam-ship Arctic. Seven days afterward, at noon, on the 
 27th, when almost in sight of his native land, a fatal 
 collision occurred, and before sun-down, every human 
 being left upon the ship had sunk under the waves of the 
 ocean. The only survivor who was personally acquainted 
 with my brother, saw him about two o'clock p.m.; after the 
 collision, and not very long before the ship sank, sitting, 
 with his sister, in the small passage aft of the dining 
 saloon. " They were tranquil and silent, though their 
 faces wore the look of painful anxiety." They probably 
 afterwards left this position, and repaired to the prome- 
 nade deck. For a selfish struggle for life, with a helpless 
 companion dependent upon him, with a physical frame 
 unsuited for such a strife, and, above all, with a sentiment 
 of religious resignation which taught him in that hour of 
 agony, even with the memory of his wife and children 
 thronging in his mind, to bow his head in submission to the 
 will of God, — for such a struggle 'he was wholly unsuited;
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
 
 and his is the praise, that he perished with the women and 
 children. 
 
 Nor can I conclude this brief narrative without the utter- 
 ance of an opinion, expressed in no asperity, and not, I 
 hope, improperly intruded here — my opinion, as an American 
 citizen, that, in all the history of wanton and unnecessary 
 Bhipwreck, no greater scandal to the science of navigation, or 
 to the system of marine discipline, ever occurred than the 
 loss of the Arctic and her three hundred passengers. There 
 is but one thing worse, and that is the absence of all laws 
 of the United States either to prevent the recurrence of 
 such a catastrophe; to bring to justice those, if there are 
 any such, who are responsible; or, at least, to secure a 
 judicial investigation of the actual facts. 
 
 The news of Mr. Reed's death was received with deep and 
 intense feeling in the city of his birth, his education, and 
 active life. Philadelphia mourned sincerely for her son; 
 and no tribute to his memory, no graceful expression or act 
 of sympathy to his family, was withheld. For them all 
 there are no adequate words of gratitude. 
 
 Returning with renewed health and refreshed spirits, 
 with a capacity not only for intellectual enjoyment, but 
 professional usefulness, enlarged by observation of other 
 institutions and intercourse with the wise and good (if the 
 Mother country, especially those who had made education 
 in its highest branches the study and business of their 
 lives, Professor Reed, we may well believe, would have 
 resumed his American duties with new zeal and efficiency. 
 Not that I for one moment imagine he had become in-
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. xxiii 
 
 fected with the folly of fancying that a system of foreign 
 University education, in any of its forms, could or ought 
 to be transplanted here; but, I have no doubt, that obser- 
 vation of thorough training and accurate scholarship, the 
 combination of moral and intellectual discipline such as 
 is seen abroad, and especially in Great Britain, would 
 have raised still higher in his mind the aims at which 
 American students and American institutions of learning 
 should be directed. 
 
 By his early death — for he was but forty-six years of age 
 — all these hopes were doomed to disappointment. The 
 most that can now be done is to give to the world these 
 fragmentary memorials of his studious life; and for them I 
 beg an indulgent and candid criticism. 
 
 Wimjam H. Keet> 
 
 Philadelphia, February 1st, 1855.
 
 Jmrg 
 
 2j]uctr. 
 
 For many days our eyes have seaward wander'd, 
 As if to search the Ocean o'er and o'er, 
 
 The while our hearts have sorrowfully ponder' d, 
 "Shall we behold his gentle face no more ?" 
 
 The silent Sea no glad response returning, 
 
 We cry, " Sun ! that lightest nature's face, 
 Dost thou not shine upon some favour'd place 
 
 Where he is tost for whom our souls are yearning?" 
 No answering voice allays our trembling fears, 
 And long anxiety gives way to tears. 
 
 Beneath the waves o'er which great ships go flitting, 
 He waits the day when Ocean yields her dead; 
 And loving sighs and bitter drops are shed 
 
 By 4esolato ones around his hearthstone sitting ; 
 
 And, while they mourn the gifted and the good, 
 The general grief shows holy brotherhood. 
 
 Tnos. MacKkiiau.
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 LECTURE I.-^LNTRODUCTORY.* 
 
 |)rirctipks of literature. 
 
 Object, to assist and guide students — Necessity of systematic study- 
 Judicious criticism — True aims and principles of literature — Choice 
 of booki — Its difficulties — Aim of this course of lectures to remove 
 them- -All books not literature — Accurate definition of literature — 
 Its universality — Izaak Walton — Addison — Charles Lamb — Lord 
 Bacon — Clarendon — Arnold — Spenser and Shakspeare — Southey 
 and Wordsworth — Belles-lettres not literature — Literature not an 
 easy, patrician pleasure — Its danger as to practical life — Its influ- 
 ence on character — De Quincey's definition — Knowledge and Power 
 — Influence on female character — True position of woman — Tenny- 
 son's Princess — Novel-reading — Taste, an incorrect term — Henry 
 Taylor — Cowper — Miss Wordsworth — Coleridge's philosophy. 
 
 This course of lectures is prepared in the hope of doing 
 some service in connection with the abundant and pre- 
 cious literature which lies about us in our English speech. 
 The plan has been, in some measure, prompted to my 
 thoughts by applications not unfrequently made to me for 
 advice and guidance in English reading. There is a stage 
 
 * Delivered in the Chapol Hall of the University, January .?, 1850. 
 
 3 25
 
 26 LECTUKE FIRST. 
 
 in mental culture when counsel seems to be intended to 
 take the place of exact tuition, and when, looking alto- 
 gether beyond the period and the province of what is 
 usually called " education," hints and suggestions, criticism, 
 literary sympathies, and even literary antagonism, become 
 the more expanded and freer discipline, which lasts through 
 life. We cannot tell how much of good we may thus 
 do to one another. We cannot measure the value of 
 unstudied and almost casual influences. A random word 
 of genuine admiration may prove a guide into some re- 
 gion of literature where the mind shall dwell with satis- 
 faction and delight for years to come. But there is a 
 demand for something more systematic than such chance 
 culture as I have alluded to ; and the mind that craves 
 such knowledge of the literature of his own language as 
 will make it part of his thoughts and feelings, has a 
 claim for guidance and counsel upon those whose duty it 
 is to fit themselves to bestow it. It is a claim that well 
 may win a quick and kindly response, for the sense of de- 
 light is deepened the wider it is spread, or when it opens 
 the souls of others to share in its own enjoyment. 
 
 There is perhaps no one, to whom the intercourse with 
 books has grown to be happy and habitual, who cannot 
 recall the time when, needing other counsel than his own 
 mind could give, he felt some guidance that was strength 
 , to him. One can recall, in after years, how it was, that an 
 interest was first awakened in some book — how sympathy 
 with an author's mind was earliest stirred — how senti- 
 ments of admiration and of love had their first motion in 
 our souls toward the souls of the great poets. We may 
 perhaps remember, too, how the chastening influence of 
 wise and genial criticism may have won our spirits away
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 
 
 from some malignant fascination .that fastened on the 
 unripe intellect only to abuse it. But these kindly and 
 healthful agencies exist not alone in the memory — grate- 
 fully retained as benefits received in the period of in- 
 tellectual immaturity and inexperience. Even the stu- 
 dent of literature whose range of reading is most com- 
 prehensive — whose habit of reading is most confirmed 
 — whose culture is most complete — will tell you that 
 it is still in his daily experience to find his choice of 
 books not an arbitrary and lawless choosing, but a process 
 open to the influences of sound and congenial criticism ; 
 he will tell how, by such influences, the activity of his 
 thoughts is quickened — how his judgment of books is 
 often the joint product of his own reflections, and the 
 contact of the wisdom and experience of others. To him 
 who wanders at will through the vast spaces of literature, 
 with the sorry guidance of good intentions and inexpe- 
 rience, most needful are the helping hand and the pointing 
 finger; to him who has travelled long in that same do- 
 main, pursuing his way with purposes better defined, and 
 who has gained a wider prospect and farther-reaching 
 views — even by him, guidance, if not so needful, still may 
 be welcomed from some fellow-traveller. We marvel 
 often at finding how, under the light of wise criticism, 
 new powers and new beauties are made visible to our 
 minds in books the most familiar. 
 
 I have thus alluded, at the outset, to the importance 
 of the guidance' which we may receive in our intercourse 
 with the world of books, assuming at the same time that 
 there is no call upon me to dwell upon the value of that 
 intercourse itself. I take for granted that there is no 
 one, even among those least conversant with books, win
 
 28 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 could deny the value, of an intelligent habit of reading 
 I need not occupy a moment of either your time or mine 
 in discussing any such question as that. It is, however 
 proper to consider, by way of introduction, some of those 
 aims and principles of literature which, though least 
 generally appreciated, give it its highest value — noticing, 
 in the first place, some of the difficulties which present, 
 themselves to a mind willing, at least, if not zealous, for 
 such culture. 
 
 The first inquiry that presents itself is, " What books 
 does it behoove me to know V The docile question is, 
 " What am I to read ?" A world of volumes is before 
 us. Poetry, science, history, biography, fiction, the mul- 
 tiform divisions of miscellaneous literature, each and all 
 rise up in their vast proportions to assert their claims. 
 Secular literature, in its various departments, and sacred 
 literature, casting its lights into the life beyond, both are 
 at hand with the boundless exuberance of their stores. 
 There is the great multitude of books in our own Eng- 
 lish words ; there is the host as large, which, in the kin- 
 dred dialects of the North, the mind of Germany has 
 given to mankind. The literature of France and of 
 Italy, of Spain, the South of Europe, have their re- 
 spective claims and attractions. Besides the modern 
 mind, there is all that, venerable with the age of thou- 
 sands of years, has come down to us from Greece, and 
 Rome, and Palestine. Then, too, in the whole extent 
 of modern literature, there is the daily addition of the 
 illimitable issues from the press in our day : so that 
 when the student's thoughts turn to the accumulation 
 of the printed thoughts of pa.st ages, and to the never- 
 ending and superadded accumulation which is poured
 
 PRINCI1LES OF LITERATURE. 29 
 
 forth from day to day, and from year to year ; and when 
 these vast stores are seen to have been made part of the 
 scholarship of men and become a portion of their intel- 
 lectual and moral nature, one is appalled at the first ap- 
 proach, and may shrink from all effort, in despondency or 
 hopelessness. It is a bewildering thing to stand in the 
 presence of a vast concourse of books — in the midst of 
 them, but feeble, or uncertain, or helpless in the using of 
 them. It is sad to know that in each one of these vo- 
 lumes there is a spiritual power which might stir some 
 kindred power in our own souls, which might guide, and 
 inform, and elevate ; and yet that it should be a power 
 all hidden from us. It is oppressive to conceive what a 
 world of human thought and human passion is dwelling 
 on -the silent and senseless paper, how much of wisdom 
 is ready to make its entrance into the mind that is pre- 
 pared to give it welcome. It is mournful to think that 
 the multitudinous oracles should be dumb to us. 
 
 Furthermore, there is this difficulty, that, in the 
 multitude, mingled in the indiscriminate throng, are 
 evil books; or, if not evil, negative and worthless 
 books. Thus the companionship is not only difficult, 
 but it may be dangerous ; the difficulty of making wise 
 and happy choice, and the perilous presence of what is 
 vicious in the guise of books. 
 
 Such are some of the difficulties which beset us, when 
 we would bring the influence of books into the culture 
 of our spiritual nature. These lectures are intended to 
 present some thoughts and suggestions with a view U 
 the surmounting of these difficulties, and to guidance 
 into the department of English literature. I propose 
 now to consider the general principles of literature, and 
 
 3*
 
 SO LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 in the nest lecture to trace some of the applications 
 of these principles in the formation of our habits of 
 reading. 
 
 The discouraging effect which *is produced by the pre- 
 sent and perpetually increasing multitude of books is, in 
 some degree, lessened by the thought that all are not 
 literature. A vast deal of paper is printed and folded 
 and shaped into the outward fasbion of a book, that never 
 enters into the literature of the language. What (it may 
 be asked) is Literature ? This is a question not enough 
 thought of; the answer to it is important, but by no 
 means, I think, difficult, when once we see the necessity 
 of making the discrimination. Books that are technical, 
 that are professional, that are sectarian, are not litera- 
 ture in the proper sense of the term. The great charac- 
 teristic of literature, its essential principle, is that it is 
 addressed to man as man ; it speaks to our common hu- 
 man nature ; it deals with every element in our being 
 that makes fellowship between man and man through all 
 ages of man's history and through all the habitable re- 
 gions of this planet. According to this view, literature 
 excludes from its appropriate province whatever is ad- 
 dressed to men as they are parted into trades, and profes- 
 sions, and sects — parted, it may be, in the division for 
 mutual good; or, it may be, by vicious and unchristian 
 alienation. It is the relation to universal humanity 
 which constitutes literature; it matters not how elevated, 
 whether it be history, philosophy, or poetry, in its highest 
 aspirations; or how humble, it may be the simplest 
 rhyme or story that is level to the unquestioning faith 
 and untutored intellect of childhood : let it but be ad- 
 dressed to our common human nature, it is literature in
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. SJ 
 
 the true sense of the term. No man can put it aside and 
 say, "It concerns not me :" no woman can put it aside and 
 say, " It concerns not me." The books which do not enter 
 into the literature of a language are limited in their uses, for 
 they hold their intercourse with something narrower than 
 human nature, while that which is literature has an au- 
 dience-chamber capacious as the soul of man — enduring 
 as his immortality. It has a voice whose rhythm is in 
 harmony with the pulses of the human heart. It is this, 
 and this alone — this universality — which places a book in 
 a Nation's literature. It matters not what the subject, or 
 what the mode of treating — be there but one touch of 
 nature to make the whole world kin — it is enough to lift 
 it into the region of literature. A London linen-draper 
 writes a treatise on Angling, with no other thought, per- 
 haps, than to teach an angler's subtle craft, but infusing 
 into his art so much of Christian meekness, so deep a 
 feeling for the beauties of earth and sky, such rational 
 loyalty to womanhood, and such simple, child-like love of 
 song, the songs of bird, of milk-maid, and of minstrel, that 
 this little book on fishing has earned its life of two hundred 
 years already, outliving many a more ambitious book, and 
 Izaak Walton has a place of honour amid British authors, 
 and has the love even of those who have learned the 
 poet-moralist's truer wisdom, 
 
 L 
 
 "Never to blend our pleasure or our [ride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."* 
 
 I speak of this instance to show how a subject which is 
 indifferent to many, and even repulsive to not a few, may 
 be redeemed and animated by the author's true human- 
 
 * Wordsworth's Poems, Hart Leap Well. Collective edition, p. 152.
 
 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 beartedness. How much deeper then mu^t be tbe inte- 
 rest of all the subjects, in tbe vast variety, with which 
 tbere is universal sympathy ! How much mightier must 
 be the agency of literature as it passes beyond and above 
 that which is local and limited, temporary or conventional, 
 into the region of the spiritual and the eternal, when it 
 enters into the very soul of man, admonishing it of its 
 weakness, and of its strength, and of its immortality ! 
 
 Now, whether we look at the simpler and humbler aims 
 of literature — healthful, innocent recreation — the recupe- 
 rative influences which blend so happily with the severer 
 functions of life, or whether we contemplate its elevating 
 and chastening power on the minds of men, we cannot 
 mistake that its just and great attribute is its univer- 
 sality. It speaks to every ear that is not deaf to it. It 
 asks admission into every heart. The books that are not 
 literature have the professional, the technical, but not 
 the human stamp : some, the law-books for instance, put 
 on an outward garb of their own, as if to warn all but 
 one class of readers away from them. But observe the 
 books which are Literature, how they speak to a peo- 
 ple — to a whole nation — to scattered nations over the 
 earth linked together by community of speech, above all 
 such glorious community as our English speech ; nay, 
 more, so far as the Babel barriers which make the parti- 
 tions of the earth are overleaped, a literature addresses 
 itself to all mankind. This is true of even the light and 
 more perishable literature, recreating and gladdening the 
 hearts of men, if but for a season ; and it is more last- 
 ingly true of the higher literature — for instance, our 
 abundant and varied English essay-literature, philosophy, 
 Listory with all its kindred themes, and poetry. Is it
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 33 
 
 not for svery fellow-being speaking the English tongue, 
 that h Idison and Charles Lamb, the " Spectator" and 
 " Elir 7 " have written ? Is it not for every one who is 
 willing to be lifted up to the high places of philosophy, 
 that Bacon's words of wisdom were recorded ? It is for 
 all, that Clarendon's pictured page displays its great gal- 
 lery of historic portraits : it is for all, that Arnold, in our 
 own day, has shown how a mighty historian can throw a 
 sacred light over profane history, by tracing God's provi- 
 dence in the annals of a pagan people. It is every 
 man and every woman whom Spenser leads into the 
 sunny and the shadowy spaces of his marvellous allegory ; 
 and Shakspeare into that more wondrous region, the soul 
 of man, with its depths of goodness and of evil, brighter 
 and darker than aught in the region of romance. In our 
 own times, it was 'for all his race that Byron gave utter- 
 ance to his passionate poetry : it was for all Christian 
 readers that Southey, in his "Eastern Epics/' inter- 
 wove, with the heathen fable, bright threads of the glory 
 of Christian faith ; and it is for every one who takes 
 thought of the deep things of his nature, the mysteries 
 of his being, memories of early innocence and yearnings 
 for eternity, that Wordsworth struck his lofty lyric, the 
 most sublime ode in this and, perhaps, any language, on 
 the birth — the life — the undying destiny of the soul of 
 man. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this prime quality of literature, its 
 universality, because, simple as it is, it is practically lost 
 sight of, in the propensity to identify all things in the shape 
 )f books with literature. Whatever is meant to minis- 
 ■jer to our universal human nature, either in the nature 
 jf the subject or the handling of it, takes its place, in
 
 34 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 V. 
 
 some range or other of literature : and nothing else ia 
 so entitled. And here let me step aside for a moment to 
 notice an unworthy and very inadequate term, which, in 
 its day has had some currency as a substitute for the term 
 " literature." I refer to that vapid, half-naturalized term 
 '■ belles-lettres," which was more in vogue formerly than 
 now, getting currency, I suppose, during a period of 
 shallow criticism not very remote from our day, when 
 Doctor Blair and Lord Karnes were great authorities. I 
 have never met with anybody who could tell me what 
 precise meaning it is meant to convey. The term had an 
 appropriateness for much in the literature of France, but 
 translate the words and transfer them to English literature, 
 and how inane is such a title, so applied ! Doctor Johnson 
 has given it a place in the English vocabulary, and tells 
 us it means "polite literature," which does not help the 
 matter much. I should not have thought it worth while 
 to stop to comment on this term, if I did not believe it to 
 be not only vague and inadequate, but also mischievous; 
 and it is well known what power of mischief there may be 
 in a word. " Belles-lettres" — fine letters — polite litera- 
 ture — what thought do these terms convey but of luxuries 
 of the mind, a refined amusement, but no more than 
 amusement, confectionaries (as it were) of the mind, 
 rather than needful, solid, healthy, life-sustaining food. 
 If the term "belles-lettres" excludes the weighty and 
 sublime productions of the mind, then is it a miserable 
 substitute for what should be comprehended in such a 
 term as "literature:" if it includes them, then is it a piti- 
 fully inapposite title. Now the mischief is just here : this 
 dainty, feeble term leads people to suppose that literature 
 easy, indolenl cultivation, a sort of passive, patrician
 
 PRINCIPLES OP LITERATURE. 35 
 
 pleasure, instead of demanding dutiful and studious and 
 strenuous energy. It lowers the great works of genius, as 
 if they could be approached indolently, thoughtlessly, and 
 without preparatory discipline. When the term was most 
 in use, it was meant for that which is essential literature, 
 and yet how meanly inadequate and injurious is it now in 
 the department of poetry, if applied to the Fairy Queen, 
 Paradise Lost, The Excursion! We might call the 
 fanciful things in The Rape of the Lock, creations; but 
 who will so speak of Milton's ruined Archangel, or Lear, 
 or Hamlet ? It is to be noticed that as the term " belles- 
 lettres" was introduced in a feeble age of the British 
 mind, so it has been in a great measure cast out by the 
 deeper philosophy of .criticism which has arisen in this 
 century. 
 
 I have* adverted to this subject, because the term de- 
 tracts from that which is the prime characteristic 'of lite- 
 rature — its universality — its appeal to man as man. In 
 this simple, elementary principle, we may unfold some of 
 the manifold powers and uses of a literature : it would not 
 thus address itself to all human beings, whose minds can 
 be open to it, unless it had some great purpose — some 
 worthier end than pastime. It is one of the countless and 
 varied influences under which man's spiritual being passes 
 through this mortal life. It is one agency amid many, 
 only one among many, for we must not exaggerate its 
 importance. We are dwelling amid the things of sight 
 and sound in this inanimate world; and that has its in- 
 fluences on the soul of man : we are dwelling in the social 
 world of kindred human beings, giving and receiving from 
 one another impressions to last, it maybe, through eternity • 
 we are living amid the spiritual agencies which are vouch-
 
 86 ' LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 sated to redeemed man : and our life is also in the world 
 
 of books. 
 
 And books, we know, 
 Are a substantial world, both pure and good: 
 Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and bipod, 
 Our pastime and our happiness will grow.* 
 
 I have spoken of literature as only one of the powers 
 from which the mind of man is to receive culture and 
 discipline, for although the common danger lies in another 
 direction, it may encroach upon other powers to our 
 \ grievous spiritual injury. It may win us too much away 
 from the discipline of actual life into an intellectual luxuri- 
 ousness : it may withdraw us too much from all of earth 
 and sky that for wise purposes is sensible to us, and we 
 may thus lose that contemplative spirit, which can " find 
 tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in 
 stones, and good in every thing." We must not be un- 
 mindful how exquisitely the individual man and the ex- 
 ternal world are fitted to each other, so that it is scarce a 
 poetic exaggeration, that 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 
 Than all the sagos can.f 
 
 My present purpose is to consider this one agency — lite- 
 rature — as a means of culture of character, manly and 
 womanly ; but, at the same time, let it be borne in mind 
 that nothing conduces more to the well-being and strength 
 of the soul than to keep it open to all the healthful in- 
 fluences which are provided for it, and to hold them all 
 
 * Wordsworth. Sonnet, "Personal Talk," p. 1S6. 
 f Wordsworth. " Tho Tables Turned," p. 337.
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 37 
 
 in true adjustment. There is a time for the eye to dwell 
 
 on the printed page, but there is also a time to gaze "on 
 
 earth, air, ocean, and the starry sky;" there is a time to 
 
 look into the faces of our fellow-beings, the bright and 
 
 laughing <ace, or the sad and sorrowing one ; there is a 
 
 time too for silent, solitary, spiritual looking inward into 
 
 the soul itself; and thus by no one function, but by many, 
 
 does man build up his moral being. Such is education,' 
 
 in its large and true significancy. Looking to literature 
 
 as our present subject, and having ascertained that its ' 
 
 prime quality is its power of addressing itself to man as 
 
 man, let us now see for what purpose it so deals with our 
 
 common humanity, that we may have a principle to 
 
 guide us in our choice of books. One of the nfost acute 
 
 and logical minds of our time, that of him who has coupled 
 
 his name with a morbid and ill-omened title — I refer to 
 
 Mr. De Quincey, the English opium-eater — has drawn a 
 
 distinction between two species of literature. " There is," 
 
 he says, "first, the literature of knowledge, and, secondly, the 
 
 literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; 
 
 the function of the second is to move. . . . The very 
 
 highest work that has ever existed in the literature of 
 
 knowledge is but a provisional work ; a book upon trial 
 
 and sufferance. Let its teaching be even partially revised, 
 
 let it be but expanded, nay, even let its teaching be but 
 
 placed in a better order, and instantly it is superseded. 
 
 Whereas the feeblest work in the literature of power, 
 
 surviving at all, survives as finished and unalterable among 
 
 men. For instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton 
 
 was a book militant on earth from the first. In all stages 
 
 of its progress it would have to fight for its existence : first 
 
 as regards absolute truth ; secondly, when that combat, is 
 C *
 
 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. 
 And as soon as a La Place or anybody else builds highei 
 upon the foundations laid by this book, effectually he 
 throws it out of the sunshine into decay and darkness ; by 
 weapons even from this book he superannuates and de- 
 stroys it, so that soon the name of Newton remains as a 
 mere nominis umbra, but his book, as a living power, haa 
 transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the contrary, 
 the Iliad, the Prometheus of iEschylus, the Othello or 
 King Lear, the Hamlet or Macbeth, and the Paradise 
 Lost are not militant, but triumphant power as long as the 
 languages exist in which they speak or can be taught to 
 speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. 
 . . . All the literature of knowledge builds only ground- 
 nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by the 
 plough ; but the literature of power builds nesta in aerial 
 altitudes, of temples sacred from violation, or of forests in- 
 accessible to fraud. This is a great prerogative of the 
 po?rer-literature. . . . The 7cnoicle(7ge-\\terature, like the 
 fashion of this world, passeth away. . . . But all litera- 
 ture, properly so called, ... for the very same reason that 
 it is so much more durable than the literature of know- 
 ledge is . . . more intense and electrically searching in 
 its impressions. The directions in which the tragedy of 
 this planet has trained our human feelings to play, and 
 the combinations into which the power of this planet has 
 thrown our human passions of love and hatred, of ad- 
 miration and contempt, exercises a power bad or good 
 over human life that cannot be contemplated when seen 
 stretching through many generations, without a sentiment 
 allied to awe. And of this let every one be assured, that 
 he owes to the impassioned books which he has read many
 
 PRINCIPLES OP LITERATURE. 8S 
 
 a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace 
 back to them. Dim by their origination, these emotions 
 yet arise in him, and mould him through life l&e the for- 
 / gotten incidents of childhood."* 
 
 The distinction thus drawn between the literature of 
 knowledge and the literature of power is, however, of un- 
 certain application to many books in which, while the chief 
 object is to impart information of some kind, power is 
 given also ; but this is certain that in all literature of a 
 high order — a nation's purest literature, it is power that is 
 given, and not knowledge. But what, it may be asked, is 
 this Power which literature creates in the spirits of men ? 
 what is this soul-engendered energy ? The knowledge- 
 
 r literature is measurable, and we can judge of the utility 
 of this or that branch of it, its aptness to this or that 
 man, this or that woman : but the power-literature is im- 
 measurable, because it partakes of the infinite, and pass- 
 ing through and beyond the mere intellect, it dwells in the 
 deep places of the soul. The common products of educa- 
 tion are tangible and temporal, but there is a higher edu- 
 cation that lifts you into the region of things eternal, 
 " Truths that wake to perish never." There is an educa- 
 tion which deals with acquirements, accomplishments^ 
 learning it may be, and, in all this, there may be vast variety 
 and a huge profit, but there will be a transitoriness and 
 withal weariness and vexation of spirit in it. There is a 
 higher education, which is akin to religion, for it is a 
 ministry of the soul, and deals not so much with what we 
 know as with what we are, what we can do and whaj we can 
 suffer, and what we may become here and hereafter. 
 
 * Essay on Pope, pp. 149, 152. American edition.
 
 «0 T.KCTURE FIRST. 
 
 Thus it is that there are books of knowledge, and of 
 power — books that make us more knowing, and books' 
 lhat make us wiser, and, in that wisdom, better. 
 
 This great distinctive principle gives good guidance 
 to us, and it may be made most practical if a little 
 thoughtful discrimination be bestowed in our inter- 
 course with books; instead of apathy on the one hand, 
 or on the other the voracious appetite that takes no 
 heed of the various uses of books. A book may be read 
 merely to talk about, and that is perhaps the meanest 
 thing to read it for : it may be read for amusement, and 
 that may be seasonable and salutary; but it also may be 
 read for happiness, rather than for mere pleasure, for a 
 perpetual rather than a passing joy : it may give health of 
 mind, vigour, and vision : the heart may beat all the truer 
 for it ; the mind's eye may see all the clearer for it. As 
 you close a book, ask yourself what it has done for you ; and 
 better, perhaps, than criticism or any outer counsel, shall 
 the silent communings of your heart tell you whether the 
 oracle was a good or an evil one. 
 
 I have thus sought to show how, amid the hundreds of 
 1 thousands of books which are accumulating in the world, 
 we may select as " literature " those which are character- 
 ized by the universality of being addressed to man as man; 
 and how, in the next place, we may contract it to a more 
 essential literature, in the books which strengthen rather 
 than store the mind — giving it power rather than apparel; 
 and then, how we may raise it to a purer and higher lite- 
 rature, in the books which, by calling forth the good ele- 
 ments in our being and by chastening the evil ones, give 
 spiritual health, and innocence, and moral power. Let 
 these principles be taken to heart, and let there be some
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 41 
 
 thoughtful and genial intercourse with books, and there 
 comes Dy degrees what seems almost an instinct to guide 
 us in our companionship with them — leading to the good 
 and truthful, and turning us away from the foolish, the 
 false, and the pernicious. Even moderate experience, let 
 it only be docile, thoughtful, and affectionate, will win for 
 you an almost intuitive sense in judging what books you 
 may take to your heart as friends, and friends for life : 
 it will give also that confidence, most valuable in the days 
 of multitudinous publications, the confidence in deter- 
 mining what books, and they are very many, it is good 
 to be immutably ignorant of. 
 
 Reflecting on what a book can do and ought to do 
 for you — how it may act on your mind, and your mind 
 react on it — and thus holding communion, you can 
 travel through a wilderness of volumes onward, onward 
 through time, wisely and happily, and with perfect 
 vision of your way, as the woodman sees a path in the 
 forest — a path to his home, while the wanderer, whether 
 standing or staggering, is lost in blind and blank 
 bewilderment. 
 
 Literature, according to this conception of it, is to be 
 employed for culture of character — manly character and 
 womanly character. I speak of them separately, not be- 
 cause it is necessary so to do with reference to that which 
 is essentia] literature, but because attention has lately 
 been drawn to the subject of the social position of woman 
 and there is heard at least a sound of conflicting opinions 
 and opposing theories. It is a discussion into which 1 
 mean not to enter, but only to touch upon in its connection 
 with my present subject. Let me say, in the first place, 
 
 that I question whether it is proper, or even practicable, 
 
 4*
 
 42 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 so to detach womanhood from our common human nature 
 as to make it a topic of distinct disquisition; it seems to 
 me a little too much like a naturalist's study of some sub- 
 ject in zoology — the form and habits of some other species 
 of created things. Again, as to all controversies respect- 
 ing the equality of the sexes, or relative superiority or 
 inferiority, I have only to say, that to me they are simply 
 odious, — wrong, I believe, — in faith, in philosophy, and 
 in feeling. Why should our minds be perplexed with 
 modern speculations on this subject, when we have in- 
 spired teaching, which, in a few words, if we will but 
 look at them, will show us the whole truth : '.'And the 
 Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be 
 alone; I will make him an helpmeet for him." "God 
 doth not say," observes an old English divine, "it is not 
 good for man to be alone," " he doth not say it is not 
 good for this or that particular man to be alone; but it is 
 not good in the general, for the whole frame of the world, 
 that man should be alone."* Thus we find the creation 
 of woman, and that providential law which preserves the 
 equal numbers of the sexes, resting on the divinely- 
 instituted principle of companionship, not alone of mar- 
 riage, not alone of mother and child, but the manifold 
 companionship of woman, single or married, companion- 
 ship involving, of necessity, reciprocal dependeuce, but 
 having nothing to do with equality or superiority or in- 
 feriority on one side or the other. There is a law of 
 companionship far deeper than that of uniformity, or 
 equality, or similarity, the law which reconciles simili- 
 tude ana dissimilitude, the harmony of contrast, in which 
 
 * Donne, vol. iv. p. 19.
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 43 
 
 what is wanting on the one side finds its complement on 
 the other, for, 
 
 Heart with heart and mind with mind, 
 Where the main fibres are entwined, 
 
 Through Nature's skill, 
 May even by contraries be joined 
 
 More closely stilL* 
 
 Such was the exquisite companionship of the sexes aa 
 they were represented in our first parents, and so, how- 
 ever since disturbed, it remains as the ideal for all the 
 generations of men and women. There was adduced another 
 law, when the words were pronounced to the woman. 
 " Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule 
 over thee ;" and thus dominion was mingled with com- 
 panionship—dominion of one sex over the other, which 
 no sophistry can evade, for it is divine and to endure 
 with the earth and the race. Having its origin in evil, it 
 grows with evil, and the woman sinks down into the 
 slave, and the man into her more imbruted tyrant; but 
 goodness can still find the beauty of the primeval law of 
 companionship undefaced by the element of dominion ; 
 for the penalty of dominion may, like the curse of labour, 
 be converted into a blessing. As willing, dutiful labour 
 brings gladness more than sorrow with it, so shall the 
 fulfilment of the law of obedience win a glory of its own. 
 brighter than any achievement of power. It is not by 
 clamouring for rights, it is not by restless discontent, 
 but it is by tranquil working out of the heaven-imposed 
 law of obedience, that woman's weakness is transmuted 
 into strength — a moral, spiritual power which man shall 
 do homage to. Ambition, pride, wilfulness, or anv 
 
 * Wordsworth. The Grave of Burns.
 
 U LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 earthly passion will but distort her being; she struggle 
 all in vain against a divine appointment, and sinks into 
 more woful servitude, and the primeval curse weighs a 
 thousand fold upon her, and the primeval companionship 
 perishes. But bowing beneath that law which sounded 
 through the darkening Paradise, she wins for her dower 
 the only freedom that is worthy of woman — the moral 
 liberty which God bestows upon the faithful and obedient 
 spirit. It is from the soil of meekness that the true strength 
 of womanhood grows, and it is because it has its root in 
 such a soil that it has a growth so majestic, showering 
 its blossoms and its fruits upon the world. Her influence 
 follows man from the cradle to the grave, and the sphere 
 of it is the whole region "of humanity. We marvel at the 
 might of it, because its tranquil triumphs are so placid 
 and so noiseless, and penetrating into the deep places of 
 our nature. It was the sun and the wind that in the 
 fable strove for the mastery, and the strife was for a 
 traveller's cloak; the quiet moon had naught to do with 
 such fierce rivalry of the burning or the blast, but as in 
 her tranquil orbit she journeys round the earth, silently 
 sways the tides of the ocean. 
 
 There probably can be found no better test of civiliza- 
 tion than the prevailing tone of feeling and opinion with 
 regard to womanhood, and the recognition of woman's 
 influences and social position. There may be the rudo 
 use of woman in barbaric life, or the frivolous uses of an 
 over-civilized sociejy. There may be the high-wrought 
 adulation of an age of chivalry, which, so far as it is 
 a sentiment of idolatry, is at once false and pernicious ; 
 or there may be that wise and well-adjusted sense of 
 affectionate reverence of womanhood, which is thoughtful
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 45 
 
 of the vast variety of human companionship — matronly, 
 maidenly, sisterly, daughterly. In woman, there may be 
 a true sense of sex, its duties and its claims, meekness 
 with its hidden heroism ; or there may be the unfeminine 
 temper, fit to be rebuked by the Desdemona model.* 
 Such a rebuke may be apposite where female character 
 disfigures itself by obtrusiveness and self-sufficiency and 
 pedantry. But, as far as my observation goes, that is not 
 the state of society here ; on the contrary, there is needed 
 an effort much more difficult than repressing the fro ward ; 
 and that is, to lift modest, intelligent, sensitive woman- 
 hood above the dread of the ridicule of pedantry. Manly 
 culture would gain by it as well as womanly. I heard 
 lately from a woman's lips one of the finest pieces of 
 Shakspeare criticism I ever met with ; admirable in 
 imagination and in the true philosophy of criticism, and 
 yet uttered in conversation in the easy, natural inter- 
 course of society. f Such should be the culture of woman, 
 and such the tone of society, that these fine processes of 
 womanly thought and feeling may mingle naturally with 
 men's judgments. 
 
 There may be a social condition in which womanly 
 
 * With regard to the Desdemona model, it must also be remem- 
 bered that it is not the only model of womanly character which the 
 poet has left to the world ; on the contrary, he has given others of 
 equal worth and beauty, varied to the infinite variety of womanly 
 duty. Indeed, what a woman ought to do often depends upon what 
 man does, and very often, too, on what he leaves undone : so that, 
 while it may be her duty to bow "like the gentle lady married to the 
 Moor," man's wrongs or his omissions may call her to other duties- - 
 going forth, like Imogen, for womanly well-doing in the open and 
 rude places of the earth. H. 11. 
 
 f Mrs. Komblo.
 
 49 LECTURE FIRST 
 
 culture is in advance of the manly, and then the woman 
 is placed in the sad dilemma of either lowering the tone of 
 her own thoughts, or of raising the minds of men and 
 their habits of thought — a task that demands all of wo- 
 manly sagacity and gentleness, and is a trial to womanly 
 modesty. The companionship of the sexes is important in 
 the culture of each, and by such communion the marvel- 
 lous Harmony of diverse qualities is made more perfect for 
 the strength and beauty of their common humanity. One 
 of the latest strains of English poetry has well proclaimed 
 
 " The woman's cause is man's : they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarfd or godlike, bond or free : 
 * * * * * 
 
 (She must) "Live, and learn, and be 
 All that not harms distinctive womanhood, 
 For woman is not undevelopt man, 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man, 
 Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this 
 Not like to thee, but like in difference : 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow, 
 The man be more of woman, she of man ; 
 He gain in sweetness and iu moral height, 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care; 
 More as the double-natured poet each : 
 Till at the last she set herself to man 
 Like perfect music unto noblo words ; 
 And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 Sit side by side, full summ'd in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest ; 
 
 Self-reverent each, and revoroncing each. 
 Distinct in individualtics ; 
 But like each other, even as those who love : 
 Then comes the statelier Eden back to men."* 
 
 * I quote from that late poem of Mr. Tennyson's, " The Princess," 
 Which has made a deep impression en the thoughtful criticism of his
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. it 
 
 I have been tempted further into this subject than I 
 meant to be, but what I have said respecting the com- 
 panionship of the sexes can have no better illustration 
 than in the study of literature. All that is essential lite- 
 rature belongs alike to mind of woman and of man ; it 
 demands the same kind of culture from each, and most 
 salutary may the companionship of mind be found, giving 
 reciprocal help by the diversity of their power. Let us 
 see how this will be. In the first place, a good habit of 
 reading, whether in man or woman, may be described as 
 the combination of passive recipiency from the book and 
 the mind's reaction upon it : this equipoise is true culture. 
 But, in a great deal of reading, the passiveness of im- 
 pression is well nigh all, for it is luxurious indolence, and 
 the reactive process is neglected. With the habitual 
 
 countrymen, and which has been described as having for its leading 
 purpose the exhibiting the true idea and dignity of womanhood. I 
 will not part from it without citing that other fine tribute to womanly 
 influence — a manly acknowledgment full of deep thought and of true 
 feeling, when he speaks of 
 
 "One 
 
 Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
 
 Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants ; 
 
 No angel, but a dearer being all dipt 
 
 In angel instincts, breathing paradise, 
 
 Interpreter between the gods and men, 
 
 Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
 
 On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere 
 
 Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforco 
 
 Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved ; 
 
 And girdled her with music. Happy he 
 
 With such a mother ! faith in womankind 
 
 Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
 
 Comes easy to him, and, though he trip and fall, 
 
 lie shall not blind his soul with clay." H. R.
 
 48 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 novel-reader, for instance, the luxury of reading becomes 
 a perpetual stimulant, with no demand on the mind's own 
 energy, and slowly wearing it away. The true enjoyment 
 of books is when there is a co-operating power in the 
 reader's mind — an active sympathy with the book ; and 
 those are the best books which demand that of you. 
 And here let me notice how unfortunate and, indeed, mis- 
 chievous a term is the word " taste" as applied in inter- 
 course with literature or art; a metaphor taken from a 
 passive sense, it fosters that lamentable error, that litera- 
 ture, which requires the strenuous exertion of action and 
 sympathy, may be left to mere passive impressions. The 
 temptation to receive an author's mind unreflectingly and 
 passively is common to us all, but greater, I believe, for 
 women, who gain, however, the advantages of a readier 
 sympathy and a more unquestioning faith. The man's 
 mind reacts more on the book, sets himself more in 
 judgment upon it, and trusts less to his feelings; but, in 
 all this, he is in more danger of bringing his faculties 
 separately into action : he is more apt to be misled by our 
 imperfect systems of metaphysics, which give us none 
 but the most meagre theories of the human mind, and 
 which are destined, I believe, to be swept away, if ever a 
 great philosopher should devote himself to the work of 
 analyzing the processes of thought. That pervading error 
 of drawing a broad line of demarcation between our mora] 
 and intellectual nature, instead of recognising the inti- 
 mate interdependence of thought and feeling, is a fallacy 
 that scarce affects the workings of a woman's spirit. If 
 a gifted and cultivated woman take a thoughtful interest 
 in a book ; she brings her whole being to bear on it, and 
 hence there will often be a better assurance of truth in
 
 l'S.fNCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 49 
 
 her conclusions than in man's more logical deductions, 
 just as, by a similar process, she often shows finer and 
 quicker tact in the discrimination of character. It 
 has been justly remarked, that, with regard "to women 
 of the highest intellectual endowments, we feel that we do 
 them the utmost injustice in designating them by such 
 terms as ' clever/ ' able/ ' learned/ ' intellectual :' they 
 never present themselves to our minds as such. There is 
 a sweetness, or a truth, or a kindness — some grace, some 
 charm, some distinguishing moral characteristic which 
 keeps' the intellect in due subordination, and brings them 
 to our thoughts, temper, mind, affections, one harmo- 
 nious whole." 
 
 A woman's mind receiving true culture and preserving 
 its fidelity to all womanly instincts, makes her, in our 
 intercourse with literature, not only a companion, but a 
 counsellor and a helpmate, fulfilling in this sphere the 
 purposes of her creation. It is in letters as in life, and 
 there (as has been well said) the woman "who praises and 
 blames, persuades and resists, warns or exhorts upon 
 occasion given, and carries -her love through all with a 
 strong heart, and not a weak fondness — she is the true 
 helpmate."* 
 
 Cowper, speaking of one of his female friends, writes, 
 " She is a critic by nature and not by rule, and has a 
 perception of what is good or bad in composition, that I 
 never knew deceive her ; insomuch that when two sorts 
 of expressions have pleaded equally for the precedence in 
 my own esteem, and I have referred, as in such cases I 
 
 * The Statesman, by Henry Taylor, p. 70. 
 5
 
 50 LECTURE FIHST. 
 
 always did, the decision of the point to her, I never 
 knew her at a loss for a just one."* 
 
 His best biographer, Southey, alluding to himself, and 
 to the influence exerted on Wordsworth's mind by the 
 genius of the poet's sister, adds the comment, " Were I to 
 say that a poet finds Lis best advisers among his female 
 friends, it would be speaking from my own experience, 
 and the greatest poet of the age would confirm it by his. 
 But never was any poet more indebted to such friends 
 than Cowper. Had it not been for Mrs. Unwin, he would 
 probably never have appeared in his own person as an 
 author ; had it not been for Lady Austen, he never would 
 have been a popular one." 
 
 The same principles which cause the .influences thus 
 salutary to authorship, will carry it into reading and 
 study, so that by virtue of this companionship the ldgical 
 processes in the man's mind shall be tempered with more 
 of affection, subdued to less of wilfulness, and to a truer 
 power of sympathy ; and the woman's spirit shall lose 
 none of its earnest, confiding apprehensiveness in gaining 
 more of reasoning and reflection; and so, by reciprocal 
 influences, that vicious divorcement of our moral and 
 intellectual natures shall be done away with, and the 
 powers of thought and the powers of affection be brought 
 into that harmony which is wisdom. The woman's mind 
 must rise to a wiser activity, the man's to a wiser 
 passiveness; each true to its nature, they may consort in 
 such just companionship that strength of mind shall pass 
 from each to each ; and thus chastened and invigorated, 
 he common humanity of the sexes rises higher than it 
 
 Southoy's Cowper, vol. ii. p. 35.
 
 PRINCIPLE? OP LITERATURE. 51 
 
 could be carried by either the powers peculiar to man or 
 the powers peculiar to woman. 
 
 Now in proof of this, if we were to analyze the philo- 
 sophy which Coleridge employed in his judgment on 
 books, and by which he may be said to have made criti- 
 cism a precious department of literature — raising it into 
 & higher and purer region than was ever approached by 
 the contracted and shallow dogmatism of the earlier 
 schools of critics — it would, I think, be proved that he 
 differed from them in nothing more than this, that he 
 cast aside the wilfulness and self-assurance of the mere 
 reasoning faculties; his marvellous powers were wedded 
 to a child-like humility and a womanly confitlingness, 
 and thus his spirit found an avenue, closed to feeble and 
 less docile intellects, into the deep places of the souls of 
 mighty poets : his genius as a critic rose to its majestic 
 height, not only by its inborn manly strength, but because, 
 with woman-like faith, it first bowed beneath the law of 
 obedience and love. 
 
 •It is a beautiful example of the companionship of the 
 manly and womanly mind, that this great critic of whom 
 I have been speaking proclaimed, by both principle and 
 practice, that the sophistications which are apt to gather 
 round the intellects of men, clouding their vision, are 
 best cleared away by that spiritual condition more conge- 
 nial to the soul of woman, the interpenetrating the 
 reasoning powers with the affections. 
 
 Coleridge taught his daughter that there is a spirit of 
 love to which the truth is not obscured ; that there are 
 natural partialities, moral sympathies, which clear rather 
 than cloud the vision of the mind ; that in our commu- 
 nion with books, as with mankind, it is not true that
 
 52 LECTURE fflRST. 
 
 " love is blind." The daughter has preserved the lesson 
 in lines worthy of herself, her sire, and the precious 
 truth embodied in them : 
 
 " Passion is blind, not love ; her wondrous might 
 Informs with three-fold power man's inward sight; 
 To her deep glance the soul, at large displayed, 
 Shows all its mingled mass of light and shade : 
 Men call her blind when she but turns her head, 
 Nor scans the fault for which her tears are shed. 
 Can dull Indifference or Hate's troubled gaze 
 See through the secret heart's mysterious maze ? 
 Can Scorn and Envy pierce that " dread abode" 
 Where true faults rest beneath tho eye of God? 
 Not theirs, 'mid inward darkness, to discern 
 The spiritual splendours, how they shino and burn. 
 All bright endowments of a noble mind 
 They, who with joy behold them, soonest find; 
 « And better none its stains of frailty know 
 
 Thau they who fain would see it white as snow."* 
 
 I have in this introductory lecture attempted nothing 
 beyond the exposition of a few broad and simple princi- 
 ples of literature, the importance of which will perhaps 
 best be seen in tbe practical application of them to the 
 guidance and formation of our habits of reading. It 
 
 * Biographia Literaria, of S. T. C. Vol. i. Part. 1. p. clxxxiv. 
 Ed. 1847. This daughter was Mrs. Sara Coleridge, who died in 1852. 
 I do not know where I can more appositely note the fact, that, when 
 after years of constant literary correspondence with different mem- 
 bers of the Coleridge family, Mr. Heed visited England in 1854, the 
 welcome he received from them was most cordial and affectionate. 
 Be was greeted as an old friend and taken home to their very hearts. 
 Pmco his death, no more earnest and affectionate tributes to his 
 memory, no more accurate appreciation of bis character, have been 
 paid than by this circle of his kind English friends. Especially I 
 will venturo to refer to Mr. Justice Coleridge and his kinsman, the 
 Rev. Derwcnt Coleridge of St, Mark's College, Chelsea. W. 15. R
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE. 59 
 
 was my intention to have worked those principles out 
 co their application, but I have already consumed more 
 of your time than I desire to do during one evening. 
 It seemed necessary to show, in the first place, that 
 I appreciated the difficulties which are caused by the 
 multiplicity of books; and then to set forth these es- 
 sential principles of literature, as distinguished from 
 mere books, that it is addressed to our universal human 
 nature, and that it gives power not to the intellect alone, 
 but to our whole spiritual being; and that if it be true 
 to its high purpose, it gives power of wisdom and happi- 
 ness. I felt it to be important also, with a view to some 
 applications to be made in subsequent lectures — to con- 
 sider the reciprocal relations of the manly and womanly 
 mind. 
 
 I propose in the next lecture to consider the applica- 
 tion of these principles to habits and courses of reading; 
 reserving for the third lecture the subject of the English 
 language, to which I am anxious to devote an entire 
 lecture. 
 
 1>
 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Application of J?itcrarj| |)riiuiplcs.* . 
 
 Narrow and exclusive lines of reading to be avoided — Catholicity of 
 taste — Charles Lamb's idea of books — Ruskin — Habits of reading 
 comprehensive — Ancient Literature — Foreign languages — Differ- 
 ent eras of letters — English essay-writing — Macaulay — Southey — 
 Scott and Washington Irving — Archdeacon Hare — Lord Bacon's 
 Essays — Poetic taste — Influence of individual pursuits — Friends in 
 Council — Serious and gay books — English humour — Southey's bal- 
 lad — Necessity of intellectual discipline — Disadvantage of courses 
 of reading — Books not insulated things — Authors who guide — ■ 
 Southey's Doctor — Elia — Coleridge — Divisions of Prose and Poetry 
 — Henry Taylor's Notes from Books — Poetry not a mero luxury of 
 the mind — Arnold's habits of study and taste — The practical and 
 poetical element of Anglo-Saxon character — The Bible — Mosaic 
 Poetry— Inadequacy of languago — Lockhart's character of Scott — 
 Arnold's charaeter of Scipio — Tragic Poetry — Poetry for childron — 
 Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights — Wordsworth's Odo to 
 Duty — Character of Washington. 
 
 In my last lecture I sought to show how, amid the multi- 
 tude of books, we must in the first place seek guidance for 
 our choice by laying down in our minds certain general 
 principles respecting the essential properties and uses of 
 literature. I endeavoured to show that nothing but what 
 is addressed to man as man is literature, and that that is 
 more appropriately and eminently literature which gives 
 power rather than knowledge, and that that is worthy 
 literature which gives power for good, healthful strength 
 
 * January 10,1850. 
 64
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 55 
 
 of mind, wisdom, and happiness. Now let us see how wo 
 can follow the principles out to practical uses. It might 
 be thought that such a definition of literature was too 
 narrow a one ; that it was too high and serious a view of 
 the subject; and that it would exclude much inoffensive 
 and agreeable reading. When I speak of a book giving 
 moral power and health, or even if I should use words of 
 graver import, spiritual strength and health, I employ 
 these expressions in their largest sense, as comprehending 
 the whole range of our inner life, from the lonely and 
 loftiest meditations down to casual, colloquial cheerfulness, 
 so that literature, in its large compass, shall furnish sym- 
 pathy and an answer to every human emotion, and to all 
 moods of thought and feeling. It is important, in the first 
 
 /place, having settled in one's mind an idea of the general 
 properties of literature, to give to it a large and liberal ap- 
 plication : in other words, to avoid narrow and exclusive 
 lines in reading, to cultivate a true catholicity of taste. 
 In so doing, you enlarge your capacities of enjoyment ; 
 you expand the discipline as well as the delights of the 
 mind. It is with books as with nature, travel widely, and 
 while at one time, you may behold the glories of the 
 mountains, or the sublimities of the sea, you shall at 
 another take delight as genial in the valley and the brook. 
 We must needs be watchful of our habits of reading- in 
 this respect, for favourite lines of reading may come to be 
 too exclusive. A favourite author may have too large an 
 
 \ occupation. Women should remember that in all that is 
 essentially literature, they have a right in common with 
 men, because the very essence of it is, that it addresses 
 itself to no distinctive property of sex, but to human 
 nature. Thej wrong themselves in shrinking from any
 
 56 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 portion of the literature of their race, and they wrong man 
 by not fulfilling in this respect the duty of companionship. 
 For man and woman, alike, liberal communion with hooka 
 is needed. I have known a person acquire late in life a 
 hearty and healthful enjoyment of books, by this simple 
 principle of opening the mind to docile and varied inter- 
 course with them. I have known, on the other hand, that 
 power of enjoyment lost, after years of intelligent and 
 habitual reading, by giving way to a narrow bigotry in the 
 choice of books. Daintiness, let it be always rememberod, 
 is disease, and fastidiousness is weakness. The healthy 
 appetite of mind or body is strength for all healthful food. 
 There was wisdom under the humour when Charles Lamb 
 said, " I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too 
 genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read 
 anything which I call a book."* And a living writer, who 
 has, with high power and eloquence, treated man's sense 
 of enjoyment of nature and art, remarks : " Our purity 
 of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only 
 admire this thing or that, we may be sure that our cause 
 for likiug is of a finite and false nature. But if we can 
 perceive beauty in every thing of God's doing, we may 
 agree that we have reached the true perception of its uni- 
 \___vcrsal laws. Hence false taste may be known by its fas- 
 tidiousness, by its demands of pomp, splendour, and 
 unusual combination, by its enjoyment only of particular 
 styles and modes of things, and by its pride also, for it is 
 forever meddling, mending, accumulating, and self-exult- 
 ing ; its eye is always upon itself, and it tests all things 
 
 * Lamb's Proso Works, vol. 3, p. 45. " Detached Thoughts on 
 Books and Reading,"
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 57 
 
 around it by the way they fit it. But true taste is forever 
 growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand 
 upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoea 
 from off its feet because it finds all ground holy, lament- 
 ing over itself, and testing itself by the way it fits things."* 
 This finely-conceived contrast between the catholicity of 
 true taste, and the narrowness of a false taste, is equally 
 true as applied to literature. Indeed, it is matter of the 
 ( highest moment in the guidance of our habits of reading 
 to make them large and comprehensive ; it is essential to 
 a just judgment of books, and also to a full enjoyment of 
 them. We form a truer estimate of things, when we rise 
 to a high point, and get a larger field of vision. A know- 
 ledge of ancient literature, gives a deeper insight into the 
 modern ; if we see to what point, and in what manner, the 
 pagan mind struggled, we can the better comprehend the 
 higher destiny of the Christian mind. Acquaintance with 
 foreign literature may help to a better estimate of our 
 own. I shall have occasion hereafter, more than once, to 
 trace the influences of the continental literature of Europe 
 upon English literature. Let me here remark, that while 
 the study of foreign languages and literature, along with 
 many other advantages, may help us the better to under- 
 stand and feel our own, it never can be made a substitute 
 >_ without great detriment. I make this remark, because in 
 the education of the day, and especially in the education 
 of women, there is a tendency to give to the mind a direc- 
 tion too much away from the literature of our own speech. 
 This arises partly, perhaps, from one of the misdirected 
 aims of education, looking to the showiness of accomplish- 
 
 * Ruskin's Modern Painters, vol. 1, p. 23.
 
 68 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 nients, rather than to more substantial and all-pervading 
 good. If a man or a woman be ambitious of applause, 
 and great or small celebrity, one's native literature is a 
 much less effective weapon than a foreign literature; and 
 the more remote that is, the more effective it is for osten- 
 tation. But if there be a better purpose than feeding 
 vanity, then, for all the best and most salutary influences, 
 nothing can take the place of the vernacular — the litera- 
 ture identified with the mother-tongue, with which 
 alone our thoughts and feelings have their life and 
 being. 
 
 Further, an expanded habit of reading is most im- 
 portant, as giving familiarity with different eras of our 
 own literature. I hope to show in this course that the 
 succession of those eras has a relation to each other much 
 more life-like than a mere sequence of time. There is a 
 continuity in a nation's literary as well as political life ; 
 and no generation can cast off the accumulated influences 
 of previous ages without grievous detriment to itself. 
 There are many readers who dwell altogether in their 
 own times, busy with what one day produces after 
 another. This is a great error; and they are the less 
 able to gain a rational knowledge of that very litera- 
 ture, because exclusive familiarity with it gives no vision 
 beyond, and, conscfpuently, no capacity of comparison. 
 
 Now just in proportion as one enlarges his reading 
 into different periods, does his taste grow more en- 
 lightened and wiser, and his judgment more assured. 
 Let us take a practical example; and I turn for the 
 purpose to the department of English Essay- Writing^ 
 in which the mind of our race has found utterance in 
 «w>vera] centuries. During the last few years there has
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 59 
 
 been a large multitude of readers for Mr. Macaulay's 
 Essays — brilliant, showy, attractive reading. But what 
 assurance can any one of that multitude, who is unac- 
 quainted with other productions in the same class of 
 books, have, in his admiration of these essays ? How can 
 he be assured that they are going to endure in our litera- 
 ture, and that their attractions are rightful attractions? 
 I myself believe that they will prove perishable, because 
 the pungency of a period, and the dazzling effects of 
 declamation arc, to Mr. Macaulay, dearer at least than 
 faith and charity. The admirer of his Essays may think 
 otherwise, but whether he be right or wrong, he is not 
 entitled to form a judgment unless he has disciplined his 
 power of judging by the reading of other works of a 
 kindred nature — kindred, I mean, in form, not in spirit. 
 Let him, therefore, turn to the other Essay-writing of our 
 own times, (and it has been a large outlet for the con- 
 temporary mind,) the essays of Southey, of Scott, of 
 Washington Irving, the inimitable " Elia" of Charles 
 Lamb, or that thoughtful and thought-producing miscel- 
 lany, the " Guesses at Truth." Then going back into 
 other periods, and making choice of some of Dr. John- 
 son's Essays in the latter part of the eighteenth century, 
 and of Addison's or Steele's in the "Spectator" and the 
 u Tatler," in the early part of it, he will find his judg- 
 ment enlarged by seeing how those generations dealt with 
 this same branch of letters. Travelling back a century 
 earlier, let him take the single volume of Lord Bacon's 
 Essays, in which thoughts and suggestions of thought 
 move in such solid phalanx that every line is a study 
 This is a simple rule for reading, and it may readily 
 be practised : then bringing his acquaintance with the
 
 60 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 English essays of the last two hundred years, and the 
 power of judgment he has at the same time been uncon- 
 sciously gaining, back to the Macaulay Essays, and he 
 will perceive that they are not what they used to be to 
 him — that the brilliant essayist " 'gins to pale his ineffec- 
 tual fire." A sense of enjoyment will indeed have passed 
 away, but it will be because the reader has discovered 
 elsewhere a deeper wisdom, a more tranquil beauty of 
 thought and feeling, and of expression, a fuller beat of 
 the human heart. The flashing of the will-o'-the-wisp shall 
 no longer mislead him, who turns his looks to the steady 
 cottage candle-light quietly shining out into the darkness, 
 or to the still safer guidance of the slow-moving stars. 
 
 The principle which I have thus endeavoured to ex- 
 emplify, is important in all the divisions of literature. 
 It is needful to lift us out of the influences which environ 
 us, to raise us above prejudices and narrow judgments 
 which are engendered by confinement to contemporaneous 
 habits of opinion. I hope to show at another part of the 
 course how we may enlarge and elevate our Sunday occu- 
 pations, and fortify our judgment of the sermons we read 
 and hear, by acquaintance with the earlier sacred and 
 devotional literature, especially that of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 In nothing is familiarity with the literature of various 
 periods more important than in the culture of poetic taste, 
 our judgments and feelings for the poets. One meets 
 perpetually with a confident partiality for some poet of 
 the day, or a confident antipathy to another ; and, all the 
 while, such confidence may be entirely unequal to that 
 which is the simplest tost — the capacity to comprehend and 
 enjoy the poetry of other ages. The merits of the living
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 61 
 
 poets must be more or less in dispute ; and he alone has 
 any claim to venture on a prediction, as to which shall 
 be immortal and which ephemeral, who has cultivated hia 
 imagination by thoughtful communion with the great 
 poets of former centuries. Let him, who is quick to con- 
 demn, or slow to admire, ask whether the fault may not 
 be in himself: — it may be the caprice or the apathy of 
 uncultivated taste : he, and he alone, whose capacity 
 of admiration has grown by culture ample enough to 
 know and to feel the power of the poetry of the past, is 
 qualified to speak in judgment of the poetry of the pre- 
 sent. That this or that poem pleases him, who knows 
 the present only, proves nothing : but he, whose imagina- 
 tion responds to the Chaucer of the fourteenth century, 
 the Spenser and Shakespeare of the sixteenth, and the 
 Milton of the seventeenth century, can see truly the poets 
 of the nineteenth century, foreknowing which light shall 
 pass away like- a conflagration or a meteor, and which is 
 beginning a perpetual planetary motion with the great 
 lights of all ages. 
 
 I have spoken of the value of acquaintance with the 
 literature of different eras, and the influence is reci- 
 procal — the earlier upon the later, and the later upon 
 the earlier. But with regard to the elder literature, 
 there is an agency for good in the added sentiment of 
 reverence. The mind bows, or ought to bow to it, as to 
 age with its crown of glory. It is as salutary as for the 
 youthful to withdraw for a season from the companion- 
 ship of their peers, and to sit at the feet of the old, 
 listening in reverential silence. In the elder literature, 
 the perishable has passed away, and that is left which 
 has nut on its immortality.
 
 52 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 A true catholicity of taste in our intercourse with 
 books is in danger of being counteracted not only by the 
 incessant and clamorous demand which the current lite- 
 rature makes upon us, but also by the impulses which 
 we may be exposed to in consequence of our individual 
 pursuits and personal positions. This point has been 
 wisely touched in a passage, which I would commend to 
 the reflection of every one, in the recent volume of that 
 thoughtful book, "Friends in Council" — an admirable 
 specimen of the essay-writing of our day. " There is," 
 itris remarked, "a very refined use which reading is put 
 to; namely, to counteract the particular evils and tempta- 
 tions of our callings, the original imperfections of our 
 characters, the tendencies of our age, or of our owo time 
 of life. Those, for instance, who are versed in dull, 
 crabbed work all day, of a kind which is always exer- 
 cising the logical, faculty and demanding minute, not to 
 say, vexatious criticism, would, during their leisure, do 
 wisely to expatiate in writings of a large and imaginative 
 nature. These, however, are often the persons who parti- 
 cularly avoid poetry and works of imagination, whereas 
 they ought to cultivate them most. For it should be one 
 of the frequent objects of every man who cares for the 
 culture of his whole being, to give some exercise to those 
 faculties which are not demanded by his daily occupations 
 and not encouraged by his disposition."* 
 
 In order to guard our habits of reading from the nar- 
 rowing influences, which arise either from outward or 
 inward temptations, it is necessary to cultivate in our 
 choice of books a large variety, remembering, however, 
 
 * Arthur Helps : " Friends in Council." Part II., p. 15.
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 63 
 
 that the variety must be a healthful variety, and not 
 that mere Jove of change, which, owning no law, is capri- 
 cious, restless and morbid — at once a symptom and a 
 cause of weakness, and not of health. To the mind that^ 
 cultivates a thoughtful and well-regulated variety in its 
 reading, this reward will come, that, where before, things 
 seemed separate and insulated, beautiful affinities will 
 reveal themselves ; you will feel the brotherhood, as it 
 were, that exists among all true books, and a deeper 
 sense of the unity of all real literature, with its infinite 
 variety. 
 
 In adjusting a diversified course of reading, we must 
 keep in mind that it is not alone the serious literature 
 which gives us power and wisdom, for Truth is often 
 earnest in its joyousness as in its gravity : and it is a 
 beautiful characteristic of our English literature, that it 
 has never been wanting in the happy compound of 
 pathos and playfulness, which we style by that untrans- 
 lateable term "Humour" — that kindly perception of 
 the ridiculous which is fall of gentleness and sympathy. 
 It Js a healthful element : it chastens the dangerous 
 faculty of Wit, turning its envenomed shafts into 
 instruments of healing : it comes from the full heart, 
 and it dwells with charity and love of the pure and 
 the lofty : it holds no fellowship with sarcasm or 
 scoffing or ribaldry, which are issues from the hollow or 
 the sickly heart, and are fatal to the sense of reverence 
 and of many of the humanizing affections. A sound 
 humourous literature may be found throughout English 
 language, in prose and verse, from its earliest periods 
 down to our own times, — from Chaucer to Southey and 
 Charles Lamb; and it behooves us to blend it with graver
 
 M lECruitE SECOND. 
 
 reading, to bring it, like the innocent and happy face 
 of childhood, in the presence of hard-thinking, self-occu- 
 pied, care-worn, sullen men, a pensive cheerfulness to 
 recreate despondency and dejection. It is, therefore, 
 not only variety, but a cheerful variety, that should be 
 cultivated. " No heart," it has been well said, " would 
 have been strong enough to hold the woe of Lear and 
 Othello, except that which had the unquenchable elasti- 
 city of Falstaff and the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' "* 
 As in the author, so in the reader — it is the large culture 
 which gives the more equal command of our faculties, 
 whereas if we close up any of the natural resources to 
 the mind, there follows feebleness or disproportioned 
 power, or moodiness and fantastic melancholy, and, in 
 extreme cases, the crazed brain. It the statistics be 
 accurate, it is an appalling fact that in that region of the 
 United States in which the intellect has been stimulated 
 to most activity, insanity prevails to an extent double 
 that in sections of the country less favourably situated. 
 It would seem that the activity of the intellect had been 
 too much tended, and its health too little. It is a com- 
 mon peril of humanity, with all its grades of danger, from 
 the fitfulness of an ill-regulated mind up to the frenzy of 
 the manihef 
 
 * Hare's Guesses at Truth. Part I., p. 319. 
 
 j This theory was no doubt founded <>n tho assumption that the 
 eensna statistics of insanity were correct; but my friend, and my 
 brother's friend, Doctor Thomas J. Kirkbride, the superintendent of 
 the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, to whom I showed thi3 
 |i i ige, -ays, in a letter now before me : 
 
 "It has been shown conclusively that there can be no dependenco 
 placed on the census returns, and, except Massachusetts, I know of no 
 oi;it«' that lias instituted iuauiries for the special purpose of asccr-
 
 APTLICATTON OF LITERARY PKINCIPLES. f.S 
 
 There is a short poem of Southey's, which, in this con- 
 nection, has a sad interest. Having written one of those 
 humourous ballads drawn from his acquaintance with 
 Spanish legendary history, he added an epilogue telling 
 of its impressions on his household audience, especially 
 the wondering and delighted faces of his children : he 
 
 turns to his wife, 
 
 * 
 
 But when I looked at my mistress' face 
 
 It was all too grave the while ; 
 And when I ceased, methought there was more 
 
 Of reproof than of praise in her smile. 
 
 That smile I read aright, for thus 
 
 Reprovingly said she, 
 " Such tales are meet for youthful ears, 
 
 But give little content to me. 
 
 " From thee far rather would I hear 
 
 Some sober, sadder lay 
 Such as I oft have heard, well pleased, 
 
 Before those locks were gray." 
 
 " Nay, mistress mine," I made reply, 
 
 " The autumn hath its flowers, 
 Nor ever is the sky more gay 
 
 Thau in its evening hours. 
 * * * 
 
 taining how many insane are to be found within her limits. Your 
 
 brother's views correspond with those of most persons who have paid 
 
 attention to the subject, and are probably correct; but it must also be 
 
 remembered that there is apparently, at least, most insanity where tho 
 
 largest provision is made for the treatment ; for large numbers of cases 
 
 then come before the public notice which previously had been kept 
 
 out of observation. New England being a pioneer in providing State 
 
 Hospitals, the number of insane is bettor known than in those states 
 
 which have just commencod the erection of institutions of that 
 
 character." W. B. R. 
 
 6*
 
 «« LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 "That senso which held me back in youth 
 
 From all intemperate gladness, 
 That same good instinct bids me shun 
 
 Unprofitable sadness. 
 
 " Nor marvel you if I prefer 
 
 Of playful themes to sing: 
 The October grove hath brighter tints 
 
 Than summer or than spring; 
 
 " For o'er the leaves before they fall 
 
 Such hues hath nature thrown, 
 That the woods wear in sunless days 
 
 A sunshine of their own. 
 
 " Why should I seek to call forth tears ? 
 
 The source from whence we woep 
 Too near the surface lies in youth, 
 
 In age it lies too doep. 
 
 '• Enough of foresight sad, too much 
 
 Of retrospect have I : 
 And well for me that I somotimcs 
 
 Ceu) put those feelings by; 
 
 " From public ills, and thoughts that else 
 
 Might weigh mo down to earth, 
 That I can gain some intervals 
 
 For healthful, hopeful mirth."* 
 
 This is a poet's wise pleading, and there is warning in 
 the fact that this wife's shrinking from her husband's 
 healthful, hopeful mirth, was the precursor of insanity : and 
 it is sad to know that the poet's own lofty and richly stored 
 mind sank, not, as has been supposed, from the exhaus- 
 tion of an over-tasked brain, but under the wasting watch- 
 ings over the wanderings of the crazed mind of the wife. 
 This deepens the pensive humour of the lesson he has left 
 
 * Southey's Poetical Works vol. vi. p. 282.
 
 APPLICATION OF LITKP.AUY PRINCIPLES. 67 
 
 us — to find joyous, or at least cheerful companionship, as 
 well as serious, in books. 
 
 Assuming that this catholicity of taste, the value of 
 which I have endeavoured to present, is acquired, it then 
 becomes a matter of much moment to have some princi- 
 ples to guide one through the large spaces of which the 
 mind has vision. The capacity for extended and various 
 reading may lose much of its value, if undisciplined and 
 desultory. Indeed, if a large and varied power of reading 
 be indulged in a desultory and chance way, it is likely to 
 be lost : there is no genuine and permanent catholicity of 
 taste for books but what is guarded by principles, and has 
 a discipline of its own. That discipline is twofold : it is 
 guidance we get from other minds, and that which we get 
 from our own ; and as these are well and wisely combined, 
 we may secure ample independence for our own thinking, 
 and ample respect for the wisdom of others. 
 
 It is not unfrequently thought that the true guidance 
 / for habits of reading is to be looked for in prescribed 
 courses of reading, pointing out the books to be read, and 
 the order of proceeding with them. Now, while this ex- 
 ternal guidance may to a certain extent be useful, I do 
 believe that an elaborately prescribed course of reading 
 would be found neither desirable nor practicable. It does 
 not leave freedom enough to the movements of the reader's 
 own mind ; it does not give free enough scope to choice. 
 Our communion with books, to be intelligent, must be more 
 or less spontaneous. It is not possible to anticipate how 
 or when an interest may be awakened in some particular 
 subject or author, and it would be far better to break away 
 from the prescribed list of books, in order to follow out 
 that interest while it is a thoughtful impulse. It would
 
 r-S LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 bo a sorry tamcness of intellect that would not, sooner or 
 later, work its way out of the track of the best of any such 
 prescribed courses. This is the reason, no doubt, why 
 they are so seldom attempted, and why, when attempted, 
 they are apt to fail. 
 
 It may be asked, however, whether every thing is to be 
 left to chance or caprice, wbether one is to read what acci- 
 dent puts in the way — what happens to be reviewed or 
 talked about. No ! far from it : there would in this be no 
 more exercise of rational will than in the other process ; 
 in truth, the slavery to chance is a worse evil than slavery 
 to authority. So far as the origin of a taste for reading 
 can be traced in the growth of the mind, it will be found, 
 I think, mostly in the mind's own prompting; and the 
 power thus engendered is, like all other powers in our 
 being, to be looked to as something to be cultivated and 
 chastened, and then its disciplined freedom will prove 
 more and more its own safest guide. It will provide 
 itself with more of philosophy than it is aware of in its 
 choice of books, and will the better understand their rela- 
 tive virtues. On the other hand, I apprehend that often 
 a taste for reading is quenched by rigid and injudicious 
 prescription of books in which the mind takes no interest, 
 can assimilate nothing to itself, and recognises no progress 
 but what the eye takes count of in the reckoning of pages 
 it has travelled over. It lies on the mind, unpalateable, 
 heavy, undigested food. But reverse the process : observe 
 or engender the interest as best you may, in the young 
 mind, and then work with that — expanding, cultivating, 
 chastening it. 
 
 It matters little from what point, or with what book a 
 young reader begins his career, provided he brings along
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 
 
 that thoughtful spirit of inquiry in which activity and 
 docility are justly balanced. No good book is an insulated 
 thing; you can always, if you will but look for them, dis- 
 cover leadings on to something else — other books on the 
 same or kindred subjects — or other books by the same 
 author. You acquire an affection for an author, and that 
 may be made to embrace the books of his affection. I 
 know of no more practical or safer principle in the gui- 
 dance of one's reading, than thus to follow an author in 
 whom you feel that your confidence is well placed. There 
 are what may, in this respect, be called guiding authors, 
 whose genial love of letters was not only a light to their 
 own lives, but still shines, a lamp to show the path to 
 others. You feel that what they loved may fitly be loved 
 by you ; that what stirred their spirits may have a power 
 over yours. And so shall we find perpetual guidance, fol- 
 lowing it with freedom and loyalty, and extending our 
 acquaintance with books just in the way in which we do 
 with our acquaintance with living men and women. We 
 use books for instruction or amusement, but hardly enough 
 for guidance. Let me rapidly exemplify this principle, 
 the value of which is, perhaps, in danger of being over- 
 looked only from its simplicity. Take such a book as 
 Southey's Life of Cowper, and you shall perceive the mind 
 of Cowper and of his biographer so touching in various 
 ways upon other authors, as to attract you to a large and 
 admirable variety of the best literature in the language. 
 Taking that remarkable work " The Doctor," ir? which 
 Southey poured forth the vast abundance of his fine 
 scholarship, or the Elia Essays, you will find guidance 
 into many of the beautiful and secluded spots in English 
 
 literature Oi again, what countless suggestions for life- 
 E
 
 70 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 long reading, and what wfsc guidance to profitable studios 
 may not be found in the several works of Coleridge ! I 
 mention these as eminently " guiding authors," and it would 
 be easy to add to the list others of the same class in their 
 degree. This is a use of books which combines healthful 
 independence of judgment with healthful reverence for 
 authority, giving safety from the two extremes — careless- 
 ness and servility of opinion. 
 
 It affords a communion of thought which is, in some 
 respects, better than mere formal criticism. It is free 
 from some of the temptations of such criticism, which we 
 must be careful not to use too much of, in these times of 
 many reviews and magazines, and when we turn to them 
 for guidance, we must shun as a pestilence, all heartless 
 criticism, all uncongenial criticism, such especially as un- 
 imaginative handling of subjects of imagination, and all 
 malignant criticism. The criticism, which may .well be 
 followed and commenced with is that of which it has 
 been said, " It may almost be called a religious criticism, 
 for it holds out its warnings when multitudes are mad ; 
 and there is a criticism founded upon patient research 
 and studious deliberation, which, even if it be given 
 somewhat rudely and harshly, cannot but be useful. 
 A.nd there is the loving criticism, which explains, 
 elicits, illumines; showing the force and beauty of some 
 great word or deed, which, but for the kind care of the 
 critic, might remain a dead letter or an inert fact ; teach- 
 ing the people to understand and to admire what is ad- 
 mirable." 
 
 In following out the general principle presented in the 
 last lecture, that literature — that which is essentially lite- 
 rature in the highest sense of the term — is meant to give
 
 APPLICATION OP LITEI1ARY PRINCIPLES. 71 
 
 power rather than information, and in cherishing a catho- 
 licity of taste for books, it is a good practical rule to 
 keep one's reading well proportioned in the two great 
 di -visions, prose and poetry. This is very apt to be neg- 
 lected, and the consequence is a great loss of power, 
 moral and intellectual, and a loss of some of the highest 
 enjoyments of literature. It sometimes happens that 
 some readers devote themselves too much to poetry : this 
 is a great mistake, and betrays an ignorance of the true 
 uses of poetical studies. When this happens, it is generally 
 with those whose reading lies chiefly in the lower and 
 merely sentimental region of poetry, for it is hardly pos- 
 sible for the imagination to enter truly into the spirit of 
 the great poets, without having the various faculties of 
 the mind so awakened and invigorated, as to make a 
 knowledge of the great prose writers also a necessity of 
 one's nature. 
 
 The disproportion/usually lies in the other direction — 
 prose reading to the exclusion of poetry. This is owing 
 chiefly to the want of proper culture, for although there 
 is certainly a great disparity of imaginative endowment- 
 still the imagination is part of the universal mind of 
 man, and it is a work of education to bring it into action 
 in minds even the least imaginative. It is chiefly to the 
 wilfully unimaginative mind that poetry, with all its 
 wisdom and all its glory, is a sealed book. It sometimes 
 happens, however, that a mind, well gifted with imagina- 
 tive power, loses the capacity to relish poetry simply by 
 the neglect of reading metrical literature. This is a sad 
 mistake, inasmuch as the mere reader of prose cuts himself 
 off from the very highest literary enjoyments; for if the 
 giving of power to the mind be a characteristic, the most
 
 VJ. LKCTUKE SECOND. 
 
 essential literature is to be found in poetry, especia/ly 
 if it be such as English poetry is, the embodiment 
 of the very highest wisdom and the deepest feeling 
 of our English race. I hope to show in my next 
 lecture, in treating the subject of our language, how 
 rich a source of enjoyment the study of English verse, 
 considered simply as an organ of expression and har- 
 mony, maybe made; but to readers who confine them- 
 selves to prose, the metrical form becomes repulsive 
 instead of attractive. It has been well observed by 
 a living writer, who has exercised his powers alike in 
 prose and verse, that there are readers " to whom the 
 poetical form merely and of itself acts as a sort of veil 
 to every meaning, which is not habitually met with under 
 that form, and who are puzzled by a passage occurring in 
 a poem, which would be at once plain to them if divested 
 of its cadence and rhythm ; not because it is thereby put 
 into language in any degree more perspicuous, but because 
 prose is the vehicle they are accustomed to for this par- 
 ticular hind of matter, and they will apply their minds 
 to it in prose, and they will refuse their minds to it in 
 
 verse."* 
 
 The neglect of poetical reading is increased by the very 
 mistaken notion that poetry is a mere luxury of the- mind, 
 ilien from the demands of practical life — a light and ef- 
 fortless amusement. This is the prejudice and error of 
 ignorance. For look at many of the strong and largely 
 cultivated minds which we know by biography and their 
 own works, and note how large and precious an element of 
 'strength is their studious love of poetry. Where could 
 
 ites from Books, p. 215.
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. H 
 
 we find a man of more earnest, energetic, practical aast 
 of character than Arnold ? — eminent as an historian, 
 and in other the gravest departments of thought and 
 learning, active in the cause of education, zealous in 
 matters of ecclesiastical, political, or social reform; right 
 or wrong, always intensely practical and single-hearted in 
 his honest zeal ; a champion for truth, whether in the his- 
 tory of ancient politics or present questions of modern 
 society ; and, with all, never suffering the love of poetry 
 to he extinguished in his heart, or to be crowded out of 
 it, but turning it perpetually to wise uses, bringing the 
 poetic truths of Shakspeare and of Wordsworth to the 
 help of the cause of truth ; his enthusiasm for the poets 
 breaking forth, when he exclaims, " What a treat it would 
 be to teach Shakspeare to a good class of young Greeks 
 in regenerate Athens ; to dwell upon him line by line 
 and word by word, and so to get all his pictures and 
 thoughts leisurely into one's mind, till I verily think one 
 would, after a time, almost give out light in the dark, 
 after having been steeped, as it were, in such an atmo- 
 sphere of brilliance !"* 
 
 This was the constitution not of one man alone, but of 
 the greatest minds of the race; for if our Anglo-Saxon 
 character could be analyzed, a leading characteristic 
 would be found to be the admirable combination of the 
 practical and the poetical in it. This is reflected in all 
 the best English literature, blending the ideal and the 
 actual, never severing its highest spirituality from a 
 steady basis of sober, good sense — philosophy and poetry 
 
 * Arnold's Life, p. 28 1, (American Edition,) in a letter to Mr. Jus- 
 tico Coleridge. 
 
 7
 
 LECTURK SECOND. 
 
 forever disclosing affinities with each other. It was no 
 false boast when it was said that " Our great poets have 
 been our best political philosophers;"* nor would it be, 
 to add that they have been our best moralists. The 
 reader, then, who, on the one hand, gives himself wholly 
 to visionary poetic dreamings is false to his Saxon blood ; 
 and equally false is he who divorces himself from com- 
 munion with the poets. There is no great philosopher in 
 our language in whose genius imagination is not an 
 active element : there is no great poet into whose charac- 
 ter the philosophic element does not largely enter. This 
 should teach us a lesson in our studies of English lite- 
 rature. 
 
 For the combination of prose and poetic reading, a 
 higher authority is to be found than the predominant 
 characteristic of the Saxon intellect as displayed in our 
 literature. In the One Book, which, given for the good 
 of all mankind, is supernaturally fitted for all phases of 
 humanity and all conditions of civilization, observe that 
 the large components of it are history and poetry. How 
 little else is there in the Bible ! In the Old Testament 
 all is chronicle and song, and the high-wrought poetry of 
 prophecy. In the New Testament are the same elements, 
 with this difference, that the actual and the imaginative 
 are more interpenetrated — narrative and parable, fact and 
 poetry blended in matchless harmony ; and even in the 
 most argumentative portion of holy "Writ, the poetic ele- 
 ment is still present, to be followed by the vision and 
 ;ery of the Apocalypse. 
 
 Such is the unquestioned combination of poetry and 
 
 * Preface to Henry Taylor's Nolos on Hooks.
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 75 
 
 prose in sacred Writ — the best means, we mist believe, 
 for the universal and perpetual good of man ; and if lite- 
 rature have, as I have endeavoured to prove in the pre- 
 vious lecture, a kindred character, of an agency to build 
 up our incorporeal being, then does it follow that we 
 should take this silent warning from the pages of Reve- 
 lation, and combine in our literary culture the same ele- 
 ments of the actual and the ideal or imaginative. 
 
 But, as it is the. poetic culture which is most fre- 
 quently discarded, let me follow out this high authority 
 in that direction. You will recall how, when it was the 
 divine purpose to imprint upon the memory of the chosen 
 race what should endure from generation to generation, 
 the minister of the divine will was inspired to speak, not 
 in the language of argument or law, but in the impas- 
 sioned strains of the imagination. The last tones of that 
 voice which had roused his countrymen from slavery and 
 sensuality in Egypt, and cheered, and threatened, and 
 rebuked them during their wanderings, which had an- 
 nounced the statutes of Jehovah, had proclaimed victory 
 to the obedient and judgment on the rebellious — the last 
 tones, which were to go on sounding and sounding into 
 distant ages, were the tones of poetry. The last inspira- 
 tion which came down into the soul of Moses burst forth 
 in that sublime ode which was his death-song. And why 
 was this ? " It shall come to pass," are the words, 
 " when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that 
 this song shall testify against them as a witness, for it 
 sball not be forgotten out of the mouth of their seed." 
 Well may we conceive how, in after times, when Israel 
 was hunted by the hand of Midian into caves and dens — 
 when, smitten by the Philistine, the ark of God was
 
 76 LECTtTRE SECOND. 
 
 snatched away — when, after Jerusalem had known its 
 highest glory, the sword of the King of the Chaldees 
 smote their young men in the sanctuary, and spared 
 neither young man nor maiden, old man nor him that 
 stooped for age, or when the dark-browed Israelite was 
 wandering in the streets of Nineveh or Babylon, an 
 exile and a slave, — how must there have arisen on his sad 
 spirit the memory of that song, with its sublime images 
 of God's protection, now forfeited, "as an eagle stirreth 
 up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad 
 her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was 
 no strange god with him !" 
 
 I know that there is a way in which some people turn a 
 deaf ear to this, saying that it is Oriental imagery, an 
 Asiatic fashion of speech. Yes, but none the less, in the 
 all-foreseeing purposes of Him who inspired it, was it 
 meant for all after time and all after generations of men — 
 in the West no less than in the East. The ancient and the 
 Hebrew song had a modern and a larger destiny ; it was to 
 pass into a body of English words, and so come unto us. 
 
 This proof of the value of poetic culture is fortified 
 when you reflect how that which may be reverenced as 
 the very ideal of poetry — I mean that which flowed from 
 direct divine inspiration — has always proved its adaptation 
 to the hearts of men in all ages, in the Christian as well 
 as in the Jewish church, in all their conditions of joy 
 and of woe. The Holy City was given over to the fear- 
 ful fulfilment of prophecy by the bloody sword of the 
 Chaldean and the Roman — its temple and tWii razed to 
 the ground, to be for a weary length of centuries trodden 
 on by the infidel foot of the Saracen ; and yet the sounds 
 that issued from the harp of Jerusalem's king, silenced in
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 
 
 the desecrated city, have never been hushed elsewhere, 
 but to this day are heard, and their never-ending echoes 
 will rise up to heaven from every side of the round earth 
 as long as this planet of ours shall roll glittering in the 
 sunlight through the boundless spaces of the sky. And 
 thus it is that in all true worship there is incorporated 
 forever the large influence of imagination. 
 
 Now, I have spoken of the combination of the practical 
 and the poetical as a character of our English race, of the 
 greatest English minds, and above all, as observable in 
 Holy Writ; and such authority might be all-sufficient; 
 but let us further seek a reason why this combination 
 should be cherished, and prose and poetry studied in well- 
 adjusted proportion. I speak of them as distinct, but let 
 it be remembered that they are not contra-distinguished, 
 for the best prose and the best poetry are but varied forms 
 of uttered wisdom. The perfection of a literature is in the 
 true combination of its poetry and prose, which bear to 
 each other a relation which has been imaged with equal 
 truth and fancy in these simple stanzas : 
 
 I looked upon a plain of green 
 
 That some one called the land of prose, 
 
 Where many living things were seen 
 In movement or repose. 
 
 I looked upon a stately hill, 
 
 That well was named the mount, of song, 
 
 Where golden shadows dwolt at will, 
 The woods and streams among. 
 
 But most this fact my wonder bred, 
 
 Though known by all the nobly wise — 
 
 It was the mountain streams that fed 
 The fair green plain's amenities.* 
 
 * Anonymous. — "Poetry, Past and Present," p. 194.
 
 78 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 The prose literature leads us along into the region of 
 actual truth, that which has manifested itself in action, in 
 deeds, in historic events, in biographic incidents. It 
 tells us what men have done, and said, and suffered, or it 
 reasons on the capacity for action and for passion, and so 
 it gives power to the mind, in making us the better know 
 ourselves and our fellow-beings. But most inadequate are 
 his conceptions of truth, who thinks it has no range beyond 
 the facts and outward things which observation and re- 
 search and argument ascertain. Beneath all the visible 
 and audible and tangible things of the world's history, 
 there lies the deeper region of silent, unseen, spiritual 
 truth — that which was shadowed forth in action, and yet 
 the action, which to some minds seems every thing, is but 
 the shadow, and the spirit is the reality. The experience 
 of any one's own mind may teach the inadequacy of mere 
 actual truth : has not every one felt, at the time when any 
 deep emotion stirred him, or any lofty thought animated 
 him, what imperfect exponents of such emotion or thought, 
 his words or actions are ? Nay, the more profound and sacred 
 the affection, how it shrinks from any outward shape, as 
 too narrow and superficial for it ! Is it not in your daily 
 consciousness to recognise the presence of emotions, 
 yearnings, aspirations of your spiritual nature, which 
 baffle expression, even if you wished to bring them forth 
 from the recess of silence — motions of the soul, which word 
 nor deed do justice to? Do you not know that there are 
 sympathies, affinities with our fellow-beings, and with the 
 external world of sight and sound, which pass beyond the 
 reach of argument or common speech? So true is it, that 
 there are powers,
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 76 
 
 " That touch each other to the quick — in modes 
 Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, 
 No soul to dream of."* 
 
 This whole range of subjects, of deepest moment in the 
 science of humanity, belongs to the imaginative portion 
 of literature, toward which the prose literature is always 
 tending, whenever it approaches the deep and spiritual 
 and mysterious parts of human nature. When Mr. Lock- 
 hart, at the conclusion of his admirable biography of 
 Sir Walter Scott, devotes a chapter to a delineation of 
 Scott's character, with all his familiarity with his subject 
 and his powers as an author, he prefaces his attempt with 
 this remark : " Many of the feelings common to our 
 nature can only be expressed adequately, and some of the 
 finest can only be expressed at all, in the language of art, 
 and more especially in the language of poetry. ""j" When 
 Arnold, in his History of Rome, portrays the character of 
 Scipio, and especially that deep religious spirit in it 
 which baffled the ancient historians — feeling the inade- 
 quacy of his effort in dealing with character, which, like 
 Scipio's and the Protector Cromwell's, " are the wonders of 
 history," he adds, " the genius which conceived the in- 
 comprehensible character of Hamlet would alone be able 
 to describe with intuitive truth the character of Scipio, or 
 of Cromwell."^ Now observe how two authors, of the 
 finest powers in these two high departments — biography 
 and history — after carrying those powers to the farthest 5 
 profess their sense of how much remains unaccomplished ; 
 and, moreover, their conviction that all of higher or deepei 
 ■achievement which lies beyond is left to poetry, or left to 
 
 * Wordsworth's "Address to Kilchum Castle," collective ed. p. 212. 
 t Lockhart's Scott, vol. x. p. 22. J History of Home, vol. iii. p. 3S5.
 
 80 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 silence; not that it is less true or less real, but because 
 there is truth which prose can never reach to — truth to 
 which a form can be given only by imagination and art, 
 whether using the instrument of words, the pencil, or the 
 chisel — the hand of poet, of painter, or of sculptor. We 
 ou?ht to remember, then, that when we let imaginative 
 studies drop out of our habits of reading, we neglect a 
 whole region of truth and reality which the highest prose 
 authority acknowledges itself unecpial to. 
 
 The propensity to partial prose reading is attended with 
 further loss, inasmuch as it not only separates us from 
 much of the highest truth human nature can hold com- 
 munion with, but it makes one lose the finest and deepest- 
 reaching discipline our spiritual being is capable of. Twq 
 thousand years ago, the great philosopher of criticism gave 
 his well-known theory of tragic poetry, that it purifies our 
 feelings through terror and pity. But in the large com- 
 pass of its power, poetry employs also other and kindlier 
 agencies of good. It deals with us in the spirit of tho 
 most sagacious morality : it does not single out this or that 
 faculty, and tutor the one till it grows weary or stubborn, 
 or stupid under the narrow teaching and the dull itera- 
 tion, but it addresses good sense, (which true poetry is 
 never heedless of,) the intellect, the affections, and what 
 has been well called "the great central power of imagina- 
 tion, which brings all the other faculties into harmonious 
 action."* Instead of ministering to the mind diseased or 
 the mind enfeebled one drug, or hard, unvaried food, it 
 carries poor suffering humanity to the seaside, or up to 
 mountain-tops, for the la ■■ . lation which 
 
 erary Sketches and Letters, being the Final Me- 
 morial., of Charles Lamb, |>. 255.
 
 APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES. 8i 
 
 leads to infinity, and for the health and strength and life 
 of sublinier and purer thoughts and feelings. Were it 
 possible to fathom the mystery which dwells in the serious 
 eyes of infancy, we should learn, I believe, that nature 
 leads the young spirit on to its sense of truth through 
 wonderment and faith ; and we do know how the imagina- 
 tion of childhood puts forth its powers into the region of 
 the marvellous, the distant, the shadowy, and the infinite, 
 — Robinson Crusoe's lonely island, the Arabian wonders, 
 fairy fictions, fables without the "morals," which are 
 skipped with better wisdom than they were put there, or 
 travels in far-off lands. These things wear away as the 
 work of life comes on, and, unhappily, the loving, faithful, 
 imaginative spirit wears away too. The imagination is 
 suffered to grow torpid, instead of being cultivated into a 
 wiser activity, and our souls become materialized and so- 
 phisticated. There is enough in life to make us practical, 
 but what we more need is to study how to be wisely vision- 
 ary, to carry the freshness and feelings of childhood (and 
 this has been said to be a characteristic of genius) into 
 the mature reason, for 
 
 We live by admiration, hope, and love ; 
 And, even as these are well and widely fixed, 
 In dignity of being, we ascend. 
 
 Excursion, collective cd. — 581. 
 
 This is the poetic process of our spiritual growth, and when 
 the poet teaches or chastens, he, at the same time, elevates 
 and brings forth into life and light all of great and good 
 that lies hidden in our nature. " Wouldst thou," says 
 that earnest but rigid writer, Carlyle, " plant for eternity, 
 then plant into the deep, infinite faculties of man his 
 fantasy and heart ; wouldst thou plant for year and day, 
 then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-
 
 82 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 love, and arithmetical understanding."* The poet's planting 
 is the deep planting, and his teaching becomes a ministry 
 within our inmost being, so that the oracle without and the 
 response within are in marvellous unity. It is not like the 
 lessons which, remaining outward to us and unrecognised 
 by our deep sympathies, are easily intercepted by chance 
 or blown away from us, but it is made part of our very 
 life and taste, to give perpetual strength or welcome warn- 
 ing I would rather a child of mine should know and 
 feel the high, imaginative teachings of Wordsworth's 
 " Ode to Duty," than any piece of uninspired prose 
 morality in the language, because the heart that will 
 truly take that lofty lesson unto itself, however it may 
 falter with frailty or fall short in the fulfilment, will fain 
 not cast it out ; it is teaching, that tempers the pride and 
 wilfulness of manhood, showing how much more of 
 moral beauty and strength and happiness there is in the 
 spirit of willing obedience than in that of power or of 
 liberty ; nay, that the only genuine liberty is that which 
 is in harmony with law and self-control; it is teaching 
 fitted to give to womanhood a star-like life and motion, 
 obedient to her orbit, and kindling the firmament of hu- 
 manity with bright and benignant influences, radiant from 
 that orbit alone ; for the poet, better than the prose 
 moralist, by throwing the consecration of his art around 
 the sense of duty, discloses its hidden power tor suffering 
 or for action, so. that, if need be, the woman will bow, 
 like " the gentle lady married to the Moor," beneath the 
 doom of some dark tragedy of home, or, if man's wrongs 
 
 * Sartor Resartus, p. 22S. Am. EJ.
 
 APPLICATION OP LITERARY PRINCIPLKS. 83 
 
 or his omissions should call her to other duties — for what a 
 woman ought to do often depends on what man does or 
 leaves undone — she will go forth, like Imogen, for wo- 
 manly well-doing in the rude places of the open and 
 unroofed world. 
 
 When that accomplished lady, whose genius, with no 
 ther instruments than the poet's text and her own voice, 
 so finely illustrated the genius of Shakspeare, read in a 
 neighbouring city, to an audience of teachers, some selec- 
 tions of English literature, she gave that eloquent tribute 
 to the character of Washington, which occurs in the his- 
 torical lectures of Professor Smyth, of the English Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge,* and also Wordsworth's Ode to 
 Duty, to which I have made allusion. I was struck with 
 I will not say the felicity of the choice, but with the 
 wisdom of it — the one selection portraying the might and 
 glory of duty as actualized in the life of the moral hero 
 of modern times; the other showing them idealized by 
 the imagination of the poet. I refer to this as an admi- 
 rable combination of the deep teachings of prose and 
 poetry. 
 
 In order to receive the true benefit of the discipline 
 of poetry, and also the full enjoyment of it, there must 
 be given to it much more of thought, of strenuous 
 activity of the reader's own imagination, more caution 
 of mind, than most people think it worthy of. It must 
 be studied, and not merely read. There are some books 
 which I wish to commend to you with a view to the 
 proper culture and discipline of the imagination. I will 
 
 * Smyth's Lectures, vol. ii. p. 486.
 
 M LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 take occasion to give an opportunity to those who desire 
 to do so to take a note of them, on the next evening, 
 before I proceed to the lecture for that evening; — the 
 subject of which will be "The Study of the English 
 Language, considered as a source of enjoyment from it? 
 powers in prose and verse."
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Sfjje ©nglisjj JTangriagf.* 
 
 Medium of ideas often forgotten — Witchery of English words —Analy- 
 sis of good style difficult — The power of words — Our duty to tho Eng- 
 lish language — Lord Bacon's idea of Latin — -Milton — Hume's ex- 
 postulation with Gibbon — Daniel's Lament — Extension of English 
 language — French dominion in America-#-Lan dor's Penn and Peter- 
 borough — Duty of protecting and guarding language — Degeneracy 
 of language and morals — Age of Charles II. — Language part of cha- 
 
 - raeter — Arnold's Lectures on Modern History — Use of disproportion- 
 ate words — Origin of the English language fn the North — Classical 
 and romantic languages — Saxon element of our language — Its su- 
 periority — The Bible idiom — Structure of sentences — Prepositions 
 at the end of most vigorous sentences — Composite sentences, and 
 the Latin element — Alliteration — Grandeur of sentences in old 
 writers — Modern short sentences — Junius — Macaulay — No peculiar 
 poetic diction — Doctor Franklin's rules — Shakspeare's matchless 
 words — Wordsworth's sonnet — Byron — Landor — Coleridge's Chris- 
 tabel— " The Song in the Mind"— Hood— The Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 The subject which I propose for this evening's lecture 
 is the study of the powers of the English language in 
 prose and verse. My desire to say something on this sub- 
 ject has been prompted by the conviction that some atten- 
 tion to it will increase our enjoyment of books, and will in 
 fact give the reader a superadded pleasure. In our reading, 
 we are very apt to content ourselves with the reception of 
 such thoughts and feelings as pass into our minds from 
 the silent page, unheeding the medium through which 
 
 * January 17,1850. 
 
 8 8 *
 
 86 LECTURE THIKb. 
 
 they reach us; indeed, often, the purer and more excellent, 
 the style, the less conscious are we of its merits, so trans- 
 parently does it let the writer's thoughts and emotions 
 pass through it. We think of what is said or written, 
 and feel it, but not how it is said or written : while the 
 power which an author's meaning has upon our minds is 
 intimately blended with the power his language exercises 
 over us, of the latter we scarce have a conscious recog- 
 nition. Does not every one know how differently the same 
 thing said in different ways afFects us ? We welcome it, per- 
 haps, in one case, an|J we repel it in the other. There 
 shall be in one man's language an air of truth, of earnest- 
 ness, and reality, which will gain assent to what he tells 
 us, while the sama thing told in other words will sound 
 vain and unreal. There is wondrous agency of power and 
 beauty in language, a winning witchery in words — grandly 
 and beautifully so in our English speech. I desire tc 
 consider some of the elements of this, regarded as a 
 source of intellectual enjoyment. In all intercourse with 
 the best writers, whether in prose or verse, our minds have, 
 no doubt, an unconscious perception of the goodness of the 
 style, just as we have unconscious freedom of breath in a 
 pure atmosphere ; but if the perception of style be made 
 reflective, it may come to have too much of consciousness 
 in it : we may come to think too much of the instrument, 
 and too little of the music; to be too critical of our own 
 emotions of delight. I have, therefore, some apprehen- 
 sions that in attempting any thing like an analytical expo- 
 sition of the enjoyment of language, considered simply as 
 an organ of expression, it may prove a little too much like 
 ■parsing our pleasure. The happy, healthful-breathing 
 nsks for no analysis of the air; the mountain-spring is
 
 T II E E N G L I S II L A N G U A G E. 87 
 
 quaffed without thought of what science can tell of its 
 components. In treating the powers of the English lan- 
 guage in prose and verse, I should like, without vexing it 
 with comment, or criticism, or analysis, but simply sound- 
 ing it, to show what an instrument it has been in the 
 hands of its great masters. 
 
 I wish, however, to accomplish something more. At 
 the same time, on an occasion like this, and within the 
 limits of one lecture, it would not be practicable to enter 
 into technical details of either the history or the philology 
 of our language. I propose, therefore, to give a didactic 
 character to this lecture, rather by making it suggestive 
 of the interest which is to be found in the study of the 
 language, by noticing some of its characteristics, and the 
 applications of the philosophy of language which it serves 
 to illustrate. Avoiding technical and recondite points of 
 philology, I aim at treating the subject according to the 
 universality* of the interest it has, so as to show how 
 the culture of it comes home to everybody, and how it is 
 in the power of each one of us to awaken it into more 
 action. 
 
 The history of the language, its origin and progress, the 
 principles of English philology, and the laws of English 
 metre, are subjects of deep interest and demand careful 
 study, and a different kind of attention from what I have 
 any right to ask from you. I propose, therefore, rather 
 to notice and exemplify some of the leading characteristics 
 of the language, so as to awaken into more active and in- 
 telligent consciousness our enjoyment of it, so as to form 
 this, among our other habits of reading; to have an eye 
 and a feeling for the fitness of the words, their power, 
 their beauty, their simplicity, and truthfulness; to fin^
 
 1.E0TUKF. Tiur. n. 
 
 ourselves, in reading a wise and good book, often pausing, 
 in silent thankfulness and delight, as we think and feel 
 what glorious apparel the author's wise thought or good 
 feeling hath arrayed itself in — with what majesty or loveli- 
 ness of speech or song the mind makes music for itself in 
 the words in which it is embodied — so that the thought 
 and the words receive strength and beauty from each 
 other. Of that connection which exists between our 
 thoughts and feelings, and the words we clothe them in, 
 of their mutual relation and reaction, I cannot now speak 
 further, than to say that the more we reflect on our own 
 inner nature, and on the wondrous powers of words, the 
 better we shall feel and understand that relation, perceiv- 
 ing how words seem to dwell midway between the corpo- 
 real and incorporeal — a connection between our spiritual 
 and material being. 
 
 The simple suggestion of this deep significancy of lan- 
 guage, and its relation to man's spiritual natufc, may per- 
 haps, in some measure, correct, or, at least, startle that 
 error of looking upon this whole subject as a more mat- 
 ter of rhetoric and grammar, a superficial study of style, 
 and therefore having claim upon the rhetorician rather 
 than on the man — on art rather than on humanity, not 
 reflecting on the divine origin of language ; that speech, 
 even more than reason, distinguishes man from the brute; 
 and that the two powers, in their mysterious union, lift 
 him out of barbarism. Whatovcr it may be, whether the 
 rude and imperfect speech of the savage, articulate words 
 with no help of written language, or whether it be the 
 copious and refined language of civilized nations, there is. 
 •ill the earth over, the duty of loyalty, thoughtful loyalty 
 if possili!", to the mother-tongue.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 89 
 
 The universal duty rests on us, and let us see what 
 special obligations are due to our English speech. That 
 speech runs the career of the race that uses it, and the 
 speed and the spread of that career have, perhaps, had 
 more help from the speech than philosophy has dreamed 
 of. Little more than two hundred years ago, Lord 
 Bacon, speaking of his Essays, said, " I do conceive that 
 the Latin volumes of them, being in the universal Ian 
 guage, may last as long as books last." He seems to 
 have had no such assurance for his insular English lan- 
 guage. Somewhat later, it needed Milton's filial and 
 loyal affection for his mother-tongue to give it a share 
 with the Latin in his prose-writings.* A poet, a conteni- 
 
 * As recently as the middle of the last century, Hume expostu- 
 lated with Gibbon on his use of the French, instead of the Eng- 
 lish language: "Why," said he to him, "why do you compose in 
 French, and carry fagots to the wood, as Horace says with regard to 
 thosfe Romans- who wrote in Greek? I grant that you have a like 
 motive to those Romans, and adopt a language more generally dif- 
 fused than your own native tongue; but have you not remarked the 
 fate of those two ancient languages in following ages? The Latin, 
 though then less celebrated and confined to more narrow limits, has, 
 in some measure, outlived the Greek, and is now become generally 
 understood by men of letters. Let the French, therefore, triumph in 
 the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing esta- 
 blishments in America, where we need less dread the inundation of bar- 
 barians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English 
 language." — Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. p. 411. II. R. 
 
 Yet Hume, in the socond edition of his " History of the Stuarts," 
 3xpungod the following passage. Speaking of America, ho had said 
 " The seeds of many a noblo state have been sown in climates kept 
 desolate by the wild manners of its ancient inhabitants, and an 
 asylum (is) secured in that solitary world for liberty and science, 
 if ever the spreading of unlimited empire or the inroad of barbarous 
 nations should again extinguish them in this turbulent and resiles.' 
 hemisphere." — Id. vol. ii. p. 74. W. T$. 11
 
 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 porary and friend of Shakspeare, feelingly lamented the 
 limits of the English language : 
 
 " Oh that the Ocean did not bound our style 
 Within these strict and narrow limits so, 
 But that the melody of our sweet isle 
 Might now be heard to Tiber, Arne, and Po, 
 That they may know how far Thames doth outgo 
 The music of declined Itah ! " : 
 
 Such was the lament of him, the purity and simplicity 
 of whose style won for him the title of the " well-lan- 
 guaged Daniel." In one mood, he speaks of England as 
 
 " This little point, this scarce-discovered isle, 
 Thrust from the world, with whom our speech unknown 
 Made never traffic of our style." 
 
 Again, however, with truer and more hopeful vision, he 
 exclaims, 
 
 Who knows whither we may vent 
 
 The treasure of our tongue ? To what strange shores 
 
 This gain of our best glory will be sent 
 
 T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores? 
 
 What worlds iu the yet unformed Occident 
 
 Way come rofined with th' accents that are ours?" 
 
 This was the poet's vision, larger than even the imagina- 
 tive reason of the philosopher Bacon counted on. Tins 
 was not three centuries ago, and now the Island-lan- 
 guage girdles the earth. Soon after the poet's heart. 
 gave forth its hope, English words began to find a 
 home in the West, close begirt, however, with the fierce 
 discords of the Indian-tongues : for years and years 
 their home was hemmed in within a narrow strip al 
 the Atlantic, the English and the French languages hav- 
 
 1 De ol Cleopatra to the Countess of Pembroke.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 91 
 
 ing a divided sway, when the Bourbon was strong enough 
 to hold the Canadas, and proud enough to adventure 
 that magnificent scheme of colonial dominion which was 
 to stretch from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio and the 
 Mississippi, leaving the Briton his scant foothold between 
 the mountains and the sea. The might of the race broke 
 this circumscription; and, in our own day, we have seen 
 this language of ours span the continent, and now it 
 gives a greeting on the shores of the Pacific as well as 
 of the Atlantic. An earnest English author does not 
 fear to predict that the time will come when the language 
 will occupy the far South on each side the Andes ; Bio, 
 and Valparaiso, holding rivalry in the purity of the Eng- 
 lish speech.* But, without venturing into the uncertain- 
 ties of the future, see how our language has an abode, 
 far and wide, in the islands of the earth, and how, in 
 India, it has travelled northward till it has struck the 
 ancient but abandoned path of another European lan- 
 guage — one of the, great languages of the world's history 
 — the path of conquest along which Alexander carried 
 Greek words into the regions of the Indus. 
 
 * In Landor's Imaginary Conversations, written some twenty 
 years ago, William Penn is made to say, " Whenever I see a child 
 before me in America, I fancy I see a fresh opening in the wilder- 
 ness, and in the opening, a servant of God, appointed to comfort and 
 guide mo, ready to sit beside me when my eyes grow dim, and able 
 to sustain me when my feet are weary. Look forward, and behold 
 the children of that child. Few generations are requisite to throw 
 upon their hinges the heavily-barred portals of the vast continent. . . 
 Who knows but a century or two hence we may look down together 
 on those who are journeying in this newly-traced road toward (he cities 
 and marts of California, and who are delayed upon it by meetinar 
 !li" Spaniards driven in troops from Mexico ?" 11 K
 
 92 LKCTUHE TH HID 
 
 Our language at this day has a larger extent of influ- 
 ence than the Greek, the Latin, or the Arabic ever had, 
 and its dominion is expanding. 
 
 When we contemplate the spread of the language, we 
 may conceive the vast power which is coupled with it and 
 we should remember that, commensurate with the power 
 is the responsibility, the duty of cultivating and guarding 
 it as a possession and inheritance, and a trust. Reflect, too, 
 upon this, that along with national or individual degrada- 
 tion, there is sure to come corruption of the language — 
 an accompaniment more than a mere consequence of that 
 degradation. The language was vitiated — worse then than 
 ever — when the court of Charles the Second scattered the 
 poison of its licentionsness and ribaldry. The wicked 
 and debased, who are banded together in the fellowship 
 of crime, disown the common language of their fellow- 
 men, and delight in a strange vocabulary of their own ; 
 for when they break bond with the moral elements that 
 link them to society, they cast off the language as one of 
 the links. Words which serve the wise and good become 
 to the silly and the sensual a burden, because they are 
 associated with wdse and good uses, such as couple our 
 English speech with so much good sense, lofty imagin- 
 ings, deep philosophy, ministrant in the cause of free- 
 dom, of duty, and of truth. Hence it has been well 
 said that "A man should love and venerate; his native 
 language as the first of his benefactors, as the awakener 
 and stirrer of all his thoughts, the frame and mould and 
 rule of hie spiritual being; as the great bond and medium 
 of intercourse with his fellows; as the mirror in which he 
 sees his own nature, and without which he could not even 
 oommune with himself: as the image in which the wisdom
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 93 
 
 of God lias chosen to reveal itself to him."* And it is. 
 a deep feeling of the perpetual power of the associations 
 of our language, which prompts the poet's words 
 
 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 That Shakspeare spake. 
 
 ■ Now how is the language to be guarded and cultivated ? 
 By the thoughtful and conscientious use of it by every 
 one who speaks it. It is not by authors alone, but by each. 
 man and woman to whom it is the mother-tongue, that 
 the language is to be preserved in its purity and power ; 
 by each one in his sphere and according to his opportu- 
 nities. This is a duty, and the fulfilment of it is of 
 deeper moment than many are aware of. It is not enough 
 thought of, that " accuracy of style is near akin to vera- 
 city and truthful habits of mind," and to sincerity and 
 earnestness of character.f " Language," observes a great 
 master of it — " Language is part of man's character. "J 
 You may, I believe, easily prove the truth of this by 
 familiar observation, discovering the physiognomy that is 
 in speech as well as in the face. You will find one man's 
 words are earnest of sincerity, straightforwardness of 
 character, fair dealing, genuine and deep feeling, true 
 manliness, true womanliness, symbolized in the words 
 You will perceive in another man's speech signs of 
 a confused habit of thought, of vagueness and indi- 
 rectness of purpose. What before was a beautiful ana 
 transparent atmosphere, through which earthly objects 
 
 * Guesses at Truth, Part i. p. 296. 
 f Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 241. 
 
 \ Landor's Imaginary Conversations. First Series. DemOMlienaa 
 and EiiHiilides, vol. i. p. 232.
 
 04 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 could be distinctly seen, or the stars were brightly shibing, 
 is turned into murkiness and mist. Again, there are men 
 whose words, volubly uttered and with ample rotundity 
 of sound, come to us like sounds, and nothing more, sug 
 gesting the unreality and hollowness of the speaker's 
 character ; and sometimes, too, to the thoughtful observer, 
 the falsity of character will betray itself in the fashion 
 of the speech. Dr. Arnold, in his Lectures introductory 
 to Modern History, (the best guide-book in our language 
 to historical reading generally,*) has shown how we must 
 judge of an historian's character by his style. " If it is 
 very heavy and cumbrous, it indicates either a dull man 
 or a pompous man, or at least a slow and awkward man ; 
 if it be tawdry and full of commonplaces enunciated with 
 great solemnity, the writer is most likely a silly man ; if 
 it be highly antithetical and full of unusual expressions, 
 or artificial ways of stating a plain thing, the writer is 
 clearly an, affected man. If it be plain and simple, always 
 clear, hut, never eloquent, the writer may be a very sensi- 
 ble man, but is too hard and dry to be a very great man. 
 If on the other hand, it is always eloquent, rich in illus- 
 trations, and without the relief of simple and great pass- 
 ages, we must admire the writer's genius in a very high 
 degree, but we may fear that he is too continually excited 
 to have attained to the highest wisdom, for that is ne- 
 cessarily calm. In this manner the mere language of an 
 
 * Air Reed's edition of Arnold's Lectures, with notes, appeared Vu 
 America in 1845; and for the memory of that remarkable man lio 
 fell and expressed — as will be often seen in the o Lwtures an almost 
 filial respect. Some of the happiest hours of th ~ :| """illis ( >, e ftf r# 
 Heed's life were passed at Poxhow, in the society uF rs ' Arnold- ° her 
 Iron, and grandchildren. \V. I; i:
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 95 
 
 historian will furnish, us with something of a key to his 
 mind, and will tell us, or at least give us cause to pre- 
 sume, in what his main strength lies, and in what he is 
 deficient." The same method of observation, let me add, 
 will not unfrequently furnish us with a key to the cha- 
 racters of other authors beside the historians, and also 
 of men and women who are not authors, but our ordinary 
 companions in life. 
 
 According to this view of the subject, the first study 
 of style begins not with the words, as the tongue articu- 
 lates them or the hand, writes them, but it begins here, 
 at the heart, and works upward and outward from that. 
 The philosophy and art of language come afterward. 
 Supposing the moral qualifications to exist — I mean sin- 
 cerity, truthfulness, freedom from affectation or vanity, 
 earnestness — then in the next place it is important to 
 
 ociate a certain conscientiousness in the use of speech, 
 so that it shall correspond to something within us. I do 
 not in an that we are to sacrifice the naturalness of speech 
 to a perpetual pedantry ; that we should be ambitious of 
 being such rigid purists as to break the liberty and spirit 
 of a living language by the weight of too much authority; 
 chat we should fetter the easy grace of colloquial speech 
 with sad formality, as Charles Lamb complains of in the 
 conversation of the Scotch, when he said, " Their affirma- 
 tions have the sanctity of an oath." But there may be 
 somewhat more of heed in our use of language than we 
 do pay to it, without running into any thing so odious as 
 pedantry; and indeed cultivated conversation not unfre 
 quently turns to these topics of language, and in a casual 
 and familiar w r will treat them most agreeably and intelli- 
 gently, s<> that we may correct an inaccuracy of diction <\*
 
 96 LECTURE THIRL. 
 
 of pronunciation, which we might have remained uncon- 
 scious of, but for an interchange of views in such com- 
 panionship. In this, way, we may do much for one another 
 by a fellowship of loyalty to the language. 
 
 Besides the vice of using words without thoughts or 
 feelings to correspond to them, there is another fault which 
 would be chastened by a little more conscientiousness in 
 our expressions; I mean a propensity very common — some- 
 what more so, perhaps, to one sex (I will not say which J 
 than the other — to employ words of force disproportionate 
 to the occasion, especially in the expression of feelings 
 either agreeable or the reverse. Something which is 
 simply pleasing is described as " delightful" or " charm- 
 ing;" or that which is disagreeable or unsightly or dis- 
 cordant, is spoken of as "dreadful," "terrible," "horri- 
 ble," or " awful."* This, no doubt, is often merely the 
 exaggeration of innocent exuberance of spirits, and the 
 words are received, therefore, with large allowances. It 
 in some measure comes of poverty or carelessness of 
 speech, or both, somewhat in the way that oaths are 
 uttered sometimes, (we may charitably believe,) not as a 
 purposed profanity, but for lack of words that are strong 
 without the stain of wickedness upon them. But besides 
 being alien from accuracy and a truthful habit of mind, 
 the habitual use of disproportioned language Is attended 
 with this disadvantage, our strong words are all wasted 
 before thej are wanted; if, for instance there comes an 
 ision calling for deep and hearty hatred, and also for 
 
 I n another relation, one sees tho constant misuse of this word, in 
 
 rict employment by Barrow, whei I " a devout affection 
 
 of lieo-t, an m of mind." Barrow, vol. v. p. 605. XV. B. K
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 97 
 
 an earnest expression of it, our vocabulary is exhausted ; 
 our armory is despoiled by our own extravagance; we 
 have been shooting our arrows in the air, and when we 
 truly need them, our quiver is empty.* 
 
 Let us now look at some of the characteristics of the 
 English language as an instrument of expression for 
 those who recognise the duty of the thoughtful use of it. 
 He will the better understand and use it who keeps in 
 mind that it belongs to the family of the Northern lan- 
 guages. Our English speech is to be traced beyond 
 England into the forests of Germany and to the shores 
 of the Northern Ocean ; the dialect, that was in time to 
 grow into our English language, was carried fourteen hun- 
 dred years ago to the island from the Teutonic region of the 
 continent, f Our speech holds not its genealogy from the 
 cultivated languages of the South; they had done their ap- 
 pointed work — the languages of Greece and Rome— and 
 the English language, for the fulfilment of its destiny, had 
 another birth, and was long kept aloof from them It was 
 to have a fresher and purer spring than in the languages 
 
 * There is an opposite fault, which we have caught from England, 
 but which an English writer, mindful of the language, has con- 
 demned "as that stupid modern vulgarism, by which we use the word 
 ' nice' to denote almost every mode of approbation for almost every 
 variety of quality, . . . from sheer poverty of thought," or fear of 
 " saying any thing definite." Julius Charles Hare, Philological Mu- 
 seum. H. R. 
 
 ■f It was a slow and various transmission which carried the lan- 
 guage which was to. grow into modern English over from the conti- 
 nent to the island ; for there are reckoned six several migrations of 
 different divisions of the Saxon race, extending through almost ex- 
 actly a century, bearing with them their various dialects for future 
 formation into ono great language. II. R.
 
 98 LECTUKK TIllliD 
 
 which were identified with the degeneracy of the nations 
 that spoke them. It was to become the voice of another 
 form of national character, and of a different and deepei 
 spirituality, than that which belonged to the sunny re 
 gions of the south. The contrast between what has been 
 called the "classical mind" and the "romantic mind," is 
 traceable in the respective languages, and has been beau- 
 tifully illustrated by the names of "good omen," which 
 the Greeks delighted in, and the names of " dark mys- 
 tery," which were congenial to those who dwelt in the 
 gloom of the North. ^ 
 
 Tho sunny wisdom of the Greeks 
 
 All o'er the earth is strewed : 
 On every dark and awful place, 
 
 Rude hill and haunted wood, 
 Tho beautiful, bright people left 
 
 A name of omen good. 
 
 They would not have an evil word 
 
 Weigh heavy on the breeze; 
 They would not darken mountain side 
 
 Nor stain tho shining seas, 
 With names of some disastrous past ; 
 
 Tho unwise witnesses. 
 
 Unlike the children of romance, 
 
 From out whose spirit deep 
 The touch of gloom hath passed on gloOi 
 
 And mountain hike and steep; 
 On Devil's Bridge and Raven's Tower 
 
 And Lovelorn Maiden's Leap. 
 
 Who sought in cavern, wood, and dolU 
 Where'er they could lay bare
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. <» 
 
 The path of ill, and localized 
 
 Terrific legends there; 
 Leaving a hoarse and pondrous name 
 
 To haunt the very air. 
 
 Not so the radiant-hearted Greeks, 
 
 Who hesitated still 
 To offend the blessel Presences 
 
 Which earth and ocean fill ; 
 Whose tongues, e'.sewhere so eloquent, 
 
 Stammered at words of ill. 
 
 All places, where their presence was 
 
 Upon the fruitful earth, 
 By kindly law were clasped within 
 
 The circlo of their mirth, 
 And in their spirits had a new 
 
 And consecrated birth. 
 
 bless them for it, traveller ! 
 
 The fair-tongued ancients bless ! 
 Who thus from land and sea trod out 
 
 All footmarks of distress; 
 Illuminating earth with their 
 • Own inward cheerfulnoss.* 
 
 In other ways it might also be shown that the genius 
 of the Northern character gave utterance to itself differ- 
 ently from the races of the South. The beginning of a 
 just knowledge of the English language is an accurate 
 sense of its Northern origin. The date of that origin can- 
 not be fixed; but certainly the language is a growth out 
 of the Anglo-Saxon speech, however important may be 
 the additions it has received elsewhere. Of the 38,000 
 words, of which it is reckoned the English language con- 
 sists, 23,000 are of Saxon origin — near five-eighths of it ; 
 
 * Faber's Styrian Lake and Other Poems, p. 318.
 
 100 LECTURE TIITTU) 
 
 a proportion which must needs control, to a great extent, 
 the grammatical laws of the language; that is, along with 
 the multitude of Northern words, there must be much of 
 Northern method, and in that method, baffling, as it often 
 does, the technical systems of grammar, we are to look for 
 the idioms. It is a remark of one of the most nervous 
 authors of our day, Walter Savage Landor : " Every good 
 writer has much idiom ; it is the life and spirit of language ; 
 and none ever entertained a fear or apprehension that 
 strength and sublimity were to be lowered and weakened 
 by it. . . . Nations in a state of decay lose their idiom, 
 which loss is always precursory to that of freedom."* And 
 Coleridge exclaimed, "If men would only say what they 
 have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent 
 would they be!" But it is the simple Saxon-English 
 words, and the Saxon way of putting them together, that 
 people will not be content with. There is forever a push- 
 ing away from the purest English, and from the genuine 
 idioms ; and, what is noticeable, it is the half-educated 
 who are always most ambitious of long words and high- 
 sounding combinations of them. There is not pomp 
 enough for them in our short, often one-syllable Saxon 
 speech. Observe what a propensity there is to substitute 
 the word "individual," (and unfitly too) for such a clear, 
 simple, short word as "man." It seems to be employed 
 as a sort of midway expression between "man" and 
 "gentleman," between "woman" and "lady," as if there 
 was not quite courtesy enough in the words "man" and 
 and a little more than was wanted in the other 
 
 ♦Imaginary Conversations, First Scries. Convorsation*xiv., vol. i 
 p. 211.
 
 TUE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 101 
 
 words. It is in this way that there may be a false refine- 
 ment, a mistaken delicacy, that is fatal to the primitive 
 simplicity and nervousness of language. From being too 
 dainty in our choice of words, we come at last to forfeit 
 the use of some of the best of them. Again, I do verily 
 believe, that the good word "begin," is in danger of 
 becoming obsolete, so that, after a while, it will sound 
 quaint and antiquated; and yet it is both as old as 
 the language, and as fresh as to-day's talk, known in all 
 the eras of the language, sanctioned by all possible autho- 
 rity, grave and formal as well as familiar and homely, and 
 expressive of all that is needed. Keally some people seem 
 to shun it as much as if it were indelicate, or, at the least, 
 a vulgarism. Listen almost where you will, and now-a- 
 days nobody hardly te heard of as "beginning," for every- 
 thing is " commenced." But what a shock would our 
 instinct of language and some of our best associations 
 receive, if this change could creep on to the pages 
 of our English version of the Bible, instead of reading 
 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
 earth" — " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis- 
 dom" — "In the beginning was the Word." Truly did 
 Coleridge say, that " Intense study of the Bible will keep 
 any writer from being vulgar in point of style."* And an 
 elocment living divine has asked, "Who can estimate the 
 grandeur, the depth, the expansive power, which our lan- 
 guage and the German have derived from the national 
 liturgical offices, as well as from the national translation 
 of the Scriptures ?" Let those who crave a statelier 
 word than "begin," learn that even Milton, with all his 
 
 * Table Talk, vol. i. p. 177. 
 9*
 
 102 LKCTURE THIRD. 
 
 erudite diction, never, throughout all his pocins, I believe, 
 uses the words "commence" or " commencement;" and let 
 them observe how Shakspeare perpetually makes his 
 beautiful uses of the simple English word, and is even 
 content to make it shorter and simpler yet, as in the 
 touching line that tells so much of the guilt-wasted soul 
 \>f Macbeth— 
 
 "I 'gin to grow a-weary of the sun." 
 Let me exemplify this tendency away from the native 
 character of the language in the structure of sentences as 
 well as in the choice of words. I refer to the frequent 
 abandonment of that peculiarly characteristic arrange- 
 ment which puts a preposition at the end of a sen- 
 tence. This is eminently an English idiom, and nothing 
 but prejudice arising from misapplied analogy with the 
 Southern languages, and the propensity to make style 
 more formal and less idiomatic, could ever have led any 
 one to suppose this construction to be wrong. The false 
 fastidiousness which shuns a short particle at the end of a 
 sentence, is fatal often to a force which belongs to the 
 language with its primal character. The superiority of the 
 idiom I am referring to, could be proved beyond question 
 by examples of the best writing in all the eras of the lan- 
 guage. As the error is pretty wide spread, let me cite a 
 few of these. Lord Bacon says, " Houses are built to live 
 in, and not to look on ;" and again, " Revenge is a kind 
 of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, 
 the more ought law to weed it out." Any attempt to 
 transpose these separable prepositions would destroy the 
 strength and the terseness of the sentences. Even a 
 stronger example occurs in a passage in one of the great 
 English divines, a contemporary of Bacon's: "Hath God
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 103 
 
 a name to swear by ? . . . Hath G od a name to curse by ? 
 Hath God a name to blaspheme by ? and hath God no 
 name to pray by ?"* The opening sentence of one of Mr. 
 Burke's most celebrated speeches is — "The times we live 
 in have been distinguished by extraordinary events;" 
 Dr. Franklin's phrase, with its twenty-five Saxon and four 
 Latin words : ". . . William Coleman, then a merchant's 
 clerk about my age, who had the coolest, clearest head, 
 the best heart, and the exactest morals of any man 
 I ever met with." And observe such a sentence as this 
 of Arnold's, " Knowledge must be worked for, studied 
 for, thought for; and, more than all, it must be prayed 
 for.""}" I really think that people, in writing and speak- 
 ing,, might get over their fear of finding a preposition at 
 the end of their sentences. 
 
 But it is not only the Saxon side of the language that is 
 to be prized and cultured : its glory is, in fact, its wonder- 
 fully composite character, the Anglo-Norman element, as 
 well as the Anglo-Saxon, contributing to its copiousness and 
 power; and there is no more pleasing study in language, 
 than to observe how, in all the best writers, these elements 
 are harmoniously combined. One of the boldest instances 
 of this has been noticed in these lines in Macbeth, In 
 which two very long words are blended with short ones 
 with singular effect : 
 
 "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
 
 Clean from my hand ? No ! this, my hand will rather 
 
 The multitudinous sea incarnardine, 
 
 Making the green — one red. "J 
 
 * Donne's Sermon on the Penitential Psalms, vol. vi. p. 380. 
 f Arnold's Miscellaneous Works, p. 234. On the Education of the 
 Middle Classes. Also, Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. iv. 535. 
 t A less familiar line occurs to me where, at the end of a sories of
 
 104 LECTURE TIIIKD. 
 
 A well-known line in the same tragedy reminds me of 
 another antique quality which has been curiously retained, 
 long after the formal practice of it has been disused, and 
 now prevails peculiarly in all vigorous English prose, as 
 well as poetry : I refer to the use of alliteration, as de- 
 rived from some of the forms of early poetry in England. 
 If you will take the pains to observe it, you will probably 
 be surprised to find to what an extent it is employed in 
 English literature, both now and formerly. It is a 
 curious study of the language to trace the power that lies 
 in the repetition of a letter in a succession of words ; as 
 when Macbeth says, 
 
 " Ay, now, I see, 'tis true : 
 For the blood-boltered Banquo smiles upon me, 
 And points at them for his.* 
 
 In the versions attached to Retsch's Outlines in French, 
 Italian, Spanish, and German, no one of the languages at- 
 tempts this tremendous alliteration. I cannot pause upon 
 this quality of style further than to remark, that he who 
 studies the language, will find an interest in observing how 
 beautiful and striking, and, indeed, how natural, this ap- 
 parently artificial process becomes in the hands of a master 
 
 Saxon words, a Latin word is brought in with singular power. In 
 the second part of Henry VI., Suffolk says to Queen Margaret, 
 
 " For where thou art, there is the world itself 
 With every several pleasure in the world ; 
 And whore thou art not, desolation." W. B. R 
 
 * Or in the incantation, 
 
 "the salt-sea shark; 
 Root of hemlock digg'd ; i' the dark, 
 Finger of birth-strangled babe, 
 Ditch-dclivored by a drab." W. B. R.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 105 
 
 of the language. The mere affinity of initial letters is also 
 one of the mental associations which not unfrequently 
 gives the fittest word to be found.* 
 
 In describing the English language as a composite lan- 
 guage, we get, perhaps, a wrong notion of its being 
 made up by the union of two dialects, the Saxon and 
 the Norman. The truth rather seems to be, that the 
 Anglo-Saxon language has displayed the same powers of 
 acquisition as have distinguished the race, and has thus 
 enlarged the domain by conquest, and appropriation, and 
 annexation, retaining, however, withal, its essentially Teu- 
 tonic character. Its early acquisitions from abroad were 
 words of French or Southern birth, which became part 
 of the natural spoken language, the copiousness and 
 power of which were thus admirably increased. A single 
 specimen will show that this is a copiousness giving not 
 
 * " The Northern languages," remarks Mr. Henry Taylor, (Notes 
 on Books, p. 132,) "have often been reproached for their excess in 
 consonants, guttural, sibilant, or mute, and it has been concluded, as a 
 matter of course, that languages in which vowels and liquids predomi- 
 nate must be better adapted to poetry, and that the most mellifluous 
 language must be also the most melodious. . . This is but a rash and 
 ill-considered condemnation of our native tongue. . . In dramatic verse, 
 more particularly, our English combinations of consonants are in- 
 valuablo, not only for the purpose of reflecting grace and softness by 
 contrast, or accelerating the verse by a momentary detention, but also 
 in giving expression to the harsher passions, and in imparting keen- 
 ness and significancy to the language of discrimination, and especially 
 to that of scorn. In Shakspeare for instance, what a blast of sarcasm 
 whistles through that word, " Thrift, thrift, Horatio !" with its one 
 vowel and five consonants, and then how the verse runs on with a low, 
 confidential smoothness, as if to give effect to the outbreak by the sub- 
 sequent suppression, 
 
 "the funeral-baked meats 
 
 Did coldly furnish forth the marriago tables." II. It.
 
 100 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 merely duplicate words, but distinct expressions for deli- 
 cate shades of meaning. The words " apt" and " Jit" 
 might be thought to differ only in this, that the former is 
 of Latin derivation; but "apt" has an active sense, and 
 " Jit" a passive sense — a distinction clearly shown by 
 Shakspeare, when the poisoner in the play in Hamlet 
 says, " hands apt, drugs Jit," and by Wordsworth 
 
 " Our hearts more apt to sympathize 
 With heaven, our souls more fit for future glory."* 
 
 While the early additions to the language were fairly 
 absorbed into it, and have proved so valuable, the later 
 introductions of words of Latin or French formation have 
 never, in like manner, become natural and national ; and 
 their presence has, therefore, been often injurious as an 
 element not divested of its foreign tone. 
 
 In our reading of English prose, it is well worth while 
 to study what has become almost a lost art. I mean 
 what may be called the architecture, as it were, of a long 
 and elaborate sentence, with its continuous and well-sus- 
 tained flow of thought and feeling, and, however inter- 
 woven, orderly and clear. This is to be sought chiefly # in 
 the great prose-writers of former centuries. " Head that 
 
 * The composite character of tho language thus provides us with a 
 largo class of words not strictly synonymous, but serving to express 
 the most delicato shades of meaning: we have, for instance, the 
 words "feelings" and "sentiments," ;it first sight apparently mere du- 
 plicnU' word.-: hut it lias lici'n ohsi-rved that (horn is a certain idea of 
 passivene ted with the feelings, which contrasts with the idea 
 
 of activity in the word "sentiments," and that the former came down 
 to us from tho ruder and simpler Saxon, and the latter from the more 
 refined and cultivated Norman. 11. R.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 107 
 
 page," said Coleridge, pointing to one of them ; "you can- 
 not alter one conjunction without .spoiling the sense. It 
 is a linked strain throughout. In your modern books, 
 for the most part, the sentences in a page have the same 
 connection with each other that marbles have in a bag : 
 they touch without adhering."* Junius, waging his 
 fierce, factious war, fought with these short, pointed sen- 
 tences, piercing his foes with them ; and it has been said 
 that nothing but Home Tooke and a long sentence were 
 an overmatch for him ; and in our day, Macaulay, waging 
 his larger and more indiscriminate war, deals so exclu- 
 sively with the same fashion of speech, that if you un- 
 dertake to read his history aloud your voice will crave a 
 good old-fashioned, long sentence, as much as your heart 
 may crave more of the repose and moderation of a deeper 
 philosophy of history. This fashion of short sentences 
 is mischievous, not only as a temptation to an indolent 
 habit of reading, (for it asks a much less sustained atten- 
 tion,) but it is fatal to the fine rhythm which English 
 prose is capable of. As I cannot pause to consider espe- 
 cially the nature of our prose rhythm, I, will give what 
 
 * Coleridge's Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 185. 
 
 One of the grandest long sentences in our modern English is the 
 opening passage of Mr. Brougham's speech in defence of Queen 
 Caroline. It extends through twenty-seven lines. If I were asked 
 to select a sentence of perfect English formation, I should take the 
 following from Miss Sewell's History of Greece. It dwells in my 
 mind like music: 
 
 " There is little now to be seen in the plains of Olympia but a few 
 ruins of brick. Tho mountains stand as they did in the old times. 
 and trees flourish upon them year after year, and the rivers flow in 
 the same track ; but all the great buildings and statues have crum- 
 bled to dust, and the valley is silont and deserted." W. B. R.
 
 108 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 is better, a sentence from the pen of a living divine, 
 which is an example of true prose rhythm, and all pure 
 English words : 
 
 " The land that is very far off — it can be no other than 
 the heavenly country, for love of which God's elect have 
 lived as strangers in the earth — a land far away, over a 
 long path of many years, up weary mountains, and through 
 deep broken ways, full of perils and of pit-falls; through 
 sicknesses and weariness, sorrows and burdens, and the 
 valley of the shadow of death ; world-worn and foot-sore, 
 they have been faring forth, one by one, since the world 
 began, 'going and weeping.'"* 
 
 There is no appearance of art in this sentence; but 
 the highest art could not more truly make choice and 
 combination of its words. 
 
 I must hasten to the powers of the language in verse ; 
 and, in the first place, let me say that it is a happy trait 
 in our literature that it has no peculiar poetic diction. 
 Words that are used in good prose are not excluded from 
 poetry, and words which the poets employ belong also to 
 our prose uses, of speech and writing ; and hence the 
 poets are the better enabled to exert a perpetual influence 
 in the fulfilment of their high function of conservators 
 of the purity of the language. Our prosody, taking ac- 
 cent rather than quantity for its principle, seldom if ever, 
 disqualifies words on account of their sound, whereas in the 
 Latin, as has been ascertained, one word out of every 
 eight is excluded from its chief metres by the rules of its 
 prosody. An analysis of a passage from Cicero, the ele- 
 vated prose of the language, for this purpose, has proved 
 
 * Manning's Sermons, vol. iii. p. 432.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 109 
 
 tbat, in fifty lines, thirty words are impossible words for 
 the most usual forms of Latin verse. 
 
 The study of English poetry, being in closer affinity 
 with the prose, admits of an important use in the forma- 
 tion of a good prose style. A mind as earnestly practi- 
 cal as Dr. Franklin's observed this, and he recommended 
 the study of poetry and the writing of verse for this very 
 purpose: it was one of the sources of his own excellent 
 English. It is a species of early training for prose- 
 writing which he recommended, having recognised it in 
 his own case as having given a genuine copiousness and 
 command of language. This certainly is worth reflection, 
 too, that all the great English poets, Chaucer, Spenser, 
 Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Cowper, Byron, Southey, and 
 Wordsworth, have displayed high power as prose-writers. 
 
 It is sometimes supposed that the laws of metrical lan- 
 guage must, of necessity, produce a style more or less 
 artificial, and therefore alien from prose uses ; but the 
 very opposite is the fact. The true poet is always a true 
 artist, and words are the instruments of his art. The 
 laws of metre are no bondage to him, but genial self-con- 
 trol ; he asks less license of language than any one, and 
 the constraint of rhyme will often increase and not lessen 
 the precision and clearness of expression. It is, in truth, 
 one of the cases which prove the great moral truth, that 
 willing obedience gains for itself unwonted power : sub- 
 mitting to the control of his art, bowing to its laws with 
 happy loyalty, the poet's reward is the endowment of an 
 ampler command of expression and of the music of the 
 language. Verse and metre are wings, and not fetters, to 
 
 the true poet. 
 
 10
 
 110 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 Observe the matchless English everywhere in Shaks 
 peare — how free it is with all the art that is to be disco- 
 vered in it; how true it is, and full of beautiful and al- 
 most familiar simplicity ! If, in the recollection of any 
 passage, a word shall escape your memory, you may hunt 
 through the thirty-eight thousand words in the language, 
 and no word shall fit the vacant place but the one that 
 the poet put there. Take that exquisite lament of the 
 banished Norfolk over his native English : the words are 
 all simple, homely words, such as anybody might use, 
 (for Shakspeare never made his language " too bright or 
 good for human nature's daily food.") Notice, too, 
 if you can do so without impairing the general effect, 
 that there are in the passage no fewer than eight alli- 
 terations : 
 
 "A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, 
 And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth ; 
 A dearer merit, not so deep a maim 
 As to be cast forth in the common air, 
 Hare I deserved at your highness' hand. 
 The language I have learn'd these forty years, 
 My native English, now I must forego : 
 And now my tonguo's use is to me no more 
 Than an unstringed viol or a harp ; 
 Or liko a cunning instrument cas'd up, 
 Or, being open, put into his hands, ' 
 That knows no touch to tune tho harmony. 
 I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, 
 Too far in years to be a pupil now." 
 
 Or turns to those beautiful sentences in Coriolanus, where 
 the Rcuan hero, returning with wounds and victory, 
 is met )y his exulting mother and his silent, weeping 
 wife :
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Ill 
 
 "My gracious silence, hail! 
 Would'st thou have laugh'd, had I come eoffin'd home,' 
 That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear, 
 Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, 
 And mothers that lack sons." 
 
 Or, to take what is not so much used by Shakspeare, the 
 rhymed poetry in Love's Labour's Lost ; 
 
 " These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, 
 That give a name to every fixed star, 
 Have no more profit of their shining nights 
 
 Than those that walk, and viot not what they are." 
 
 How true is it what Coleridge said, " that you might 
 as well think of pushing a brick out of a wall with your 
 forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of any of the 
 finished passages of Shakspeare."* 
 
 To show the wonderful power of expression that belongs 
 to poetry, under even the most severe laws of verse, what 
 mere prose-writer or reader would suppose it possible, 
 within the narrow limit of fourteen lines, and with all the 
 complex structure and redoubled rhymes of the sonnet, 
 for a poet to speak of no fewer than seven of the illus- 
 trious poets of modern Europe, and to touch upon their 
 characters and the story of their lives ; and yet this has 
 been achieved, apparently without effort — so natural is 
 the flow of the language — in that well-known sonnet of 
 Wordsworth, wherein he at once defends and illustrates 
 that form of composition : — 
 
 " Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, 
 Mindless of its just honours ; with this key 
 Shakspeare unlock'd his heart; the melody 
 Of this small lute gave ease to Potrarch's wound ; 
 
 * Table Talk, vol. ii., p. 2 LI.
 
 H2 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 
 
 With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief; 
 
 The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle-leaf 
 Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 
 
 His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp, 
 It cheer'd mild Spenser, called from Faery-land 
 
 To struggle through dark ways, and when a damp 
 Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 
 The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew 
 
 Soul-animating strains — alas, too few !" 
 
 It is the poets who have best revealed the hidden har- 
 mony that lies in our short Saxon-English words — the 
 monosyllabic music of our language. This was one of 
 the secrets of the charm and the popularity of Lord 
 Byron's poetry — his eminently English choice of words. 
 Two short passages of Mr. Landor's Poems will serve to show 
 the metrical effect of simple words of one syllable. In 
 che sentence I am about to quote, out of thirty such 
 words, there is but one long latinized word — the rest are 
 nearly all monosyllables, the last line wholly so: 
 
 " She was sent forth 
 To bring that light which nover wintry blast 
 Blows out, nor rain, nor snow extinguishes — 
 The light that shines from loving eyes upon 
 Eyes that love back, till they can see no more."* 
 
 The next will better exemplify the harmonious combina- 
 tion of the simple English and the classical or Southern 
 words. 
 
 "Crush thy own heart, Man ! but fear to wound 
 The gentler, that relies on thee alone, 
 By thee created, weak or strong by thee ; 
 
 * Landor's Works, vol. ii. p. 480. Hellenics viii.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 113 
 
 Touch it not but for worship; watch before 
 Its sanctuary ; nor leave it till are closed 
 The temple-doors, and the last lamp is spent." 
 
 The combination of the various elements of the language 
 will be found most abundantly illustrated in the poems of 
 Milton, but from such a theme, too large for me to venture 
 on now, let me pass to a few other illustrations more 
 readily to be disposed of. 
 
 The poetry of our own times has done high service to 
 the language by expanding its metrical discipline, opening 
 a larger freedom and variety, and yet keeping aloof from 
 mere license. Observe, for instance, in these lines, the 
 effect produced at the close by a change in the structure 
 of the stanza and the single long line with which, at the 
 end, the imagination travels forth ; 
 
 " ! that our lives, which flee so fast, 
 In purity were such, 
 That not an image of the past 
 Should fear that pencil's touch ! 
 
 Retirement then might hourly look, 
 
 Upon a soothing scene ; 
 Age steal to his allotted nook, 
 
 Contented and serene; 
 
 With heart as calm as lakes that sleep 
 
 In frosty moonlight glistening; 
 Or mountain rivers, where they creep 
 Along a channel smooth and deep 
 
 To their own far-off murmurs listening."* 
 
 One of the most exquisite studies of the beautiful 
 freedom of English verse is to be found in that poem, the 
 music of which so fascinated the spirit of Sir Walter Scott 
 and of Lord Byron, as to prompt them both to some of 
 
 * Wordsworth. 
 10*
 
 Ill LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 their own finest effusions; I refer to Coleridge's Christa- 
 bel, in which a variety of line and rhyme, and even blank 
 verse is wrought into a marvellous unity — nowhere more 
 than in that passage picturing Christabel in the forest, 
 when she hears the moaning of the witch. 
 
 "Is the night chilly and dark! 
 The night is chilly, but not dark. 
 The thin gray cloud is spread on high, 
 It covers but not hides the sky. 
 The moon is behind, and at the full, 
 And yet she looks both small and dull. 
 Tho night is chilly, the cloud is gray, 
 'Tis a month before the month of May, 
 And the Spring comes slowly up this way. 
 The lovely lady Christabel, 
 Whom her father loves so well, 
 What makes her in the woods so late, 
 A furlong from the castle-gate? 
 She had dreams all yesternight 
 Of her own betrothed knight: 
 And she in the midnight wood will pray 
 For the weal of her lover that's far away. 
 
 She stole along, she nothing spoke, 
 
 The sighs she heavM were soft and low; 
 
 And naught was green upon the oak 
 But moss and rarest mistletoe; 
 
 She kneels beneath the huge oak-tree, 
 
 And in silence praycth she. 
 
 Tho lady sprang up suddenly, 
 
 The lovely lady, Christabel! 
 It moan'd as near as near can be, 
 
 But what it is, she cannot tell; 
 On the other side, it seems to be 
 Of the huge, broad-breasted old oak-tree. 
 
 The night is chill, the fores! bare : 
 
 Is il the wind that moaneth bleak.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. IU 
 
 There is not wind enough in the air 
 
 To move away the ringlet curl 
 From the lovely lady's cheek; 
 
 There is not wind enough to twirl 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
 That dances as often as dance it can, 
 Hanging so light, and hanging so high 
 On the topmost twig that looks up to the sky. 
 Hush, beating heart of Christabel !" 
 
 There is one more principle in the study of language in 
 poetic literature which I wish to notice, and that is the 
 beauty of the adaptation in all true poetry of the metrical 
 form to the subject and feeling of the poem. " Every 
 true poet," it has been well said, " has a song in his mind, 
 the notes of which, little as they precede his thoughts — so 
 little as to seem simultaneous with them — do precede, sug- 
 gest and inspire many of these, modify and beautify 
 them."* How this connection exists between the poet's 
 thought and passion, and their apt tune in language, is 
 more, perhaps, than philosophy can discover; but there is 
 an interest in observing the fact ; and this also is to be 
 thought of, that the true poet awakens this spiritual song 
 in the mind of his reader. 
 
 Even the same form of verse is very different in the 
 hands of different poets, and has great and characteristic 
 variety of excellence — the blank verse of Milton, of Cow- 
 per, and of Wordsworth, having each a beautiful melody 
 of its own. It adds to our knowledge of our language 
 and its powers, and also greatly to the cultivated enjoy- 
 ment of poetical reading, if we take the pains to obsei v t o 
 and appreciate the harmonious relation of the measure and 
 
 * Darley's Introduction to Beaumont and Fletcher, as quoted \n 
 " Chaucer Modernized," p. 48.
 
 11B LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 the subject. I will give an illustration of this relation, 
 by quoting two pieces by the same poet, and then will de- 
 tain you but a few minutes longer. The contrast between 
 the pieces is a refined one, because in each there is an 
 adaptation to deep pathos, but exquisitely varied to diffe- 
 rent forms of pathos, the emotion at the aspect of death 
 in its gentleness, and of death in its terrible tragedy. 
 
 "We watched her breathing through the night, 
 Her breathing soft and low, 
 As in her breast the wave of life 
 Kept heaving to and fro. 
 
 So silently wo seemed to speak, 
 
 So slowly moved about, 
 As we had lent her half our powers 
 
 To eke her living out. 
 
 Our very hopes belied our fears, 
 
 Our fears our hopes belied; 
 We thought her dying when she slept, 
 
 And sleeping when she died. 
 
 For when the morn came dim and sad 
 
 And chill with early showers, 
 Her quiet eyelids closed — she had 
 
 Another morn than ours."* 
 
 What perfect tranquillity and sense of resignation there 
 Is in these purely simple English words and their gentle 
 flow. Turn from them to that other poem of the same 
 author, " The Bridge of Siyhs," — a poet's feeling rebuke 
 of the vice and inhumanity of a great metropolis, and of 
 sympathy with its poor, degraded victims, driven to sui- 
 cide in the midnight waters of the city's river. The 
 tranquil, soul-subduing music of the former piece is 
 
 * Collect* Edition of Hood's Poems, vol. ii., p. OS, and vol. i., p. 264.
 
 THE ENOLTSH LANfiDAfiE. 117 
 
 changed to a short and abrupt measure, in which the 
 passions of pity, bitter anger, and grief are stirring for 
 utterance.* 
 
 It is thus in a nation's poetry (that is, of course, 
 when it is really poetry of a high and worthy kind) that 
 the language will be found in its highest perfection, in 
 its truest cultivation- for a poet can never suffer his style 
 to fall short of a well-sustained purity. It is, therefore, 
 in the poetry that a language may best be studied, even 
 for prose uses ; that is, when any one would know to 
 what state of excellence the language -may be carried, he 
 must look to that chiefly, but, of course, not exclusively, 
 in the poetical literature. 
 
 We are living at a period when the language has at- 
 tained a high degree of excellence, both in prose and 
 verse, — when it has developed largely, for all the uses 
 of language, its power and its beauty. It is one of the 
 noblest languages that the earth has ever sounded with ; 
 it is our endowment, our inheritance, our trust. It asso- 
 ciates us with the wise and good of olden times, and it 
 couples us with the kindred peoples /of many distant 
 regions. It is our duty, therefore, to cultivate, to cherish, 
 and to keep it from corruption. Especially is this a duty 
 for us, who are spreading that language over such vast 
 territory ; and not only that, but having such growing 
 facilities of intercommunication, that the language is per- 
 petually speeding from one portion of the land to another 
 
 * I have not thought it worth while to reprint at length a poem so 
 familiar as the " Bridge of Sighs ;" but those who heard this lecture 
 will not easily forget the beautifu.' and tearful manner — his own gentle 
 nature agitated by uncontrollable sympathy — in which he recited its 
 beautiful stanzas. W. B. R. 
 H
 
 118 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 with wondrous rapidity, equally favourable to the diffu 
 sion of either purity or corruption of speech, but, cer- 
 tainly, calculated to break down narrow and false provin- 
 cialisms of speech. 
 
 In the culture and preservation of a language, there 
 are two principles, deep-seated in the philosophy of lan- 
 guage, which should be borne in mind. One is, that 
 every living language has a power of growth, of expan- 
 sion, of development ; in other words, its life — that which 
 makes it a living language, having within itself a power 
 to supply the growing wants and improvements of a 
 living people that uses it. If by any system of rules 
 restraint is put on this genuine and healthful freedom, 
 on this genial movement, the native vigour of the lan- 
 guage is weakened. 
 
 It may be asked whether, by this principle of the life 
 of a language, it is meant that the language has no law. 
 Very far from it. The other principle (and with which 
 the first is in perfect harmony) is, that every language, 
 living or dead, has its laws. Indeed it has been wisely 
 said that, "whatever be the object of our study, be it 
 language, or history, or whatsoever province of the mate- 
 rial or spiritual world, we ought, in the first instance, to 
 be strongly impressed with the conviction that every 
 thing in it is subject to the operation of certain princi- 
 ples, to the dominion of certain laws; that there is 
 nothing lawless in it, nothing unprincipled, nothing insu- 
 lated or capricious, though, from the fragmentary nature 
 of our knowledge, many things may possibly appear so." 
 
 Now this willing, dutiful belief in the existence of the 
 iaws of a language, however concealed they may bo 
 under apparent anomalies, will not unfrecpiently evolve
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 119 
 
 some beautiful principle of speech, some admirable adap- 
 tation of words to the thoughts and feelings, in what 
 otherwise is, too often, carelessly and ignorantly dis- 
 missed as an irregularity. Permit me to illustrate briefly 
 my meaning, by an example. In expression of the future. 
 time, there is employed that curious mixture of the two 
 verbs "shall" and "will," which is so perplexing to 
 foreigners, and inexplicable, though familiar, to many who 
 are to the language born. Upon this subject it has been 
 observed, there is in human nature generally an inclina- 
 tion to avoid speaking presumptuously of the future, 
 in consequence of its awful, irrepressible, and almost 
 instinctive uncertainty, and of our own powerlessuess 
 over it, which, in all cultivated languages, has si- 
 lently and imperceptibly modified the modes of expres- 
 sion with regard to it. Further, there is an instinct of 
 good breeding which leads a man to veil the manifesta- 
 tion of his own will, so as to express himself with be- 
 coming modesty. Hence, in the use of those words, 
 "shall" and "will," (the former associated with compul- 
 sion, the latter with free volition,) we apply, not law- 
 lessly or at random, but so as to speak submissively in 
 the first person, and courteously when we speak to or of 
 another. This has been a development, but not without 
 a principle in it ; for, in our older writers, for instance, 
 in our version of the Bible, "shall" is applied to all 
 three persons. We had not then reached that stage of 
 politeness which shrinks from even the appearance of 
 speaking compulsorily of another. On the other hand, 
 the Scotch, it is said, use "will" in the first person; that 
 is, as a nation, they have not acquired that particular
 
 120 LKCTURE T II I K D. 
 
 shade of good-breeding which, shrinks from thrusting 
 itself forward. 
 
 I have cited this theory of the English future tenses, to 
 show how that which is often dismissed as a caprice — a 
 freak in language — may have a law, a philosophy, a truth 
 of its own, if we will but thoughtfully and dutifully look 
 for it. 
 
 In conclusion, let me say that he will gain the best 
 knowledge of our language who shall seek it, not so much 
 in mere systems of grammar, as in communion with the 
 great masters of the language, in prose and verse. He 
 will best appreciate and admire this English language of 
 ours — our mother-speech — who learns that the genius 
 of it is as far removed from mere lawlessness, on the one 
 hand, as from any narrow set of rules which would cramp 
 it to what has been called "grammar-monger's language." 
 In the variety of our idioms, the free movement of the 
 language, there is, as in the race that speaks it, Saxon 
 freedom — freedom that is not license, but law.
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 dBarlg (Brtgltslj ^iterate*.* 
 
 Early English prose and poetry — Sir John Mandevillc — Sir Thomas 
 More's Life of Edward the Fifth — Chaucer's Tales — Attempted pa- 
 raphrases — Chaucer Modernized — Conflict of Norman and Saxon 
 elements — Gower — Reign of Edward the Third — Continental wars 
 — Petrarch — Boccacio — Froissart — The church — Wyclif — Arts and 
 Architecture — Statutes in English — Chaucer resumed — His humour 
 and pathos — Sense of natural beauty — The Temple of Fame — 
 Chaucer and Mr. Babhage — The flower and the leaf — Canterbury 
 Tales — Chaucer's high moral, tone — Wordsworth's stanza — Poet's 
 corner and Chaucer's tv/mb — The death of a Language — English 
 minstrelsy — Percy's Reliques — Sir Walter Scott — Wilson — Chris- 
 tian hymns and chaunts — Conversion of King Edwin — MartioJ bal- 
 lads — Lockhart — Spanish ballads — Ticknor's great work — Er'-om of 
 Gordon — Dramatic power of the ballad — The Two Brothers — Con- 
 trast of early and late English poetry. 
 
 I proceed now to some general considerations of the 
 chief eras into which my subject may be, w'thout 
 difficulty, divided. The whole period of our literature 
 may be determined with more precision than mi^ht at 
 first be expected, considering the gradual development 
 of the language out of its Anglo-Saxon original. I* is a 
 literature covering the last five hundred years ; for, ^hile 
 
 * Thursday, Jan. 24, 1850. Prefixed to this lecture, in manu- 
 script, are some desultory hints as to authorities to be consulted by 
 students of English literature. As they were but hints, though very 
 interesting as illustrative of Mr. Reed's views on this subject, and 
 formed no part of the regular course, I may print them in an ap- 
 pendix. W. B. R. 
 
 11 1?l
 
 122 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 Sir John Mandeville, whose book of travels has gained for 
 bim the reputation of the first English prose-writer, flou- 
 rished in the first part of the fourteenth century, the first 
 great English poet died in the year 1400. The early 
 English prose possesses, however, little, if any, purely 
 literary interest; its value is antiquarian, and chiefly a* 
 showing the formation of the language. It is worthy of 
 remark, that the prose powers of a language, and, conse- 
 quently, that division of literature, are more slowly and 
 laboriously disclosed than the poetic resources. Though 
 the history of English prose begins about 1350, with 
 what is considered the first English book — Sir John 
 Mandeville'^ Travels — a century and a half more was 
 required to achieve any thing like the excellence of later 
 English prose. It is not until about 1509, that Mr. Hal- 
 lam finds in Sir Thomas More's Life of Edward V. what 
 he pronounces " the first example of good English lan- 
 guage ; pure and perspicuous, well chosen, without 
 vulgarisms or pedantry."* There is, therefore, a pe- 
 riod, and that of considerable length, during which, for 
 all that makes up the essential and high value of lite- 
 rature, the prose of the period has very little claim 
 upon us. It is not' so, however, with the poetry of early 
 English literature; for, as Mr. De Quincy has remarked, 
 "At this hour, five hundred years since their creation, 
 the tales of Chaucer, never, equalled on this earth for 
 tenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read fa- 
 miliarly by many in the charming language of their natal 
 day."f And Coleridge said : "I take increasing delight in 
 
 Eallam's Literature of Europe, vol. i. p. 232. 
 i Essay on Popo, p. 154.
 
 -EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 123 
 
 Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious 
 to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and 
 yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly 
 melancholy or morbid drooping ! The sympathy of the 
 poet with the subjects of his poetry, is particularly re- 
 markable in Shakspeare and Chaucer ; but what the first 
 effects by a strong act of imagination and mental meta- 
 morphosis, the last does without any effort, merely by the 
 inborn kindly joyousness of his nature."* 
 
 The present poet-laureate of England has said, " So 
 great is my admiration of Chaucer's genius, and so pro- 
 found my reverence for him as an instrument in the 
 hands of Providence for spreading the light of literature 
 through his native land, that I am glad of the effort for 
 making many acquainted with his poetry who would 
 otherwise be ignorant of every thing about him but his 
 name"")" Another eminent living man of letters has ex- 
 pressed his admiration of the old poet, by saying that he 
 rather objected to any attempts to remove the difficulties 
 of the antique text, inasmuch as he wished " to keep 
 Chaucer for himself and a few friends." 
 
 Unfortunately, the obsolete dialect in which Chaucer 
 wrote is such an obstacle, that it is far easier to keep him 
 for oneself than to recover for him now the hearing of 
 his fellow-men, which he once commanded, and which 
 can never cease to be the due of his genius. I know of 
 nothing in literary history like the fate of Chaucer in this 
 
 * Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 297. 
 
 f This is an extract from a letter from Wordsworth to Mr. Reed, 
 dated January 13, 1841, sending a copy of a little volume published 
 in London, called " The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernized " 
 The work ie by different hands. W. B. R.
 
 124 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 respect. His poems are not in a dead language; they 
 cannot be said to be in a living language. They are not 
 in a foreign tongue, and yet they are hardly in our own. 
 There is much that is the English still in use, and there 
 is much that is very different. A reader not accustomed 
 to English so antiquated, opens a volume of Chaucer, and 
 he meets words that are familiar and words that are un- 
 couth to him. In this, there is something repulsive to 
 the eye and the ear, especially in finding words strangely 
 syllabled and accented. He is not prepared to apply him- 
 self to it as he might to a poem in a foreign or dead lan- 
 guage* to be toilsomely translated; and yet he cannot ap- 
 proach it as the literature of his own living speech. 
 The use of glossaries and explanatory vocabularies can- 
 not be dispensed with ; but, to most readers, this 4s a 
 wearisome process, for there is something thwarting and 
 vexatious in finding ourselves at fault in dealing with our 
 own mother-tongue. It seems like encountering the curse 
 of Babel in our own homes, on our. own hearths ; and 
 that is a misery. In forming acquaintance with ancient 
 or foreign literature, the student knows that a well-de- 
 fined exertion is needed, and this he makes in working 
 his way through ancient or foreign words and idioms; 
 and thus he conies to know the literature of Greece and 
 Rome, of France, or Italy, or Germany. But the anti- 
 quated dialect of his own language is a mingled mass 
 of sunshine and shadow, with sharp and sudden changes 
 from one to the other, so that the mind is distracted in 
 the uncertainty how long the clearness will last, and how 
 soon the obscurity will come again, going along, like 
 Christabcl, c< now in glimmer and now in gloom." This 
 proves a greater obstacle than the total separation of Ian-
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. VIS 
 
 guage which enforces the task of translation, and it has 
 been remarked with truth that, " if Chaucer's poems had 
 been written in Greek or Hebrew, they would have been 
 a thousand times better known. They would have been 
 translated."* 
 
 A process akin to translation has been attempted, the 
 most noted of the paraphrases of Chaucer's poems being 
 those by Dryden and Pope. Those versions are, however, 
 of little avail for what should have been their chief pur- 
 pose ; for, while they serve to give the reader a notion 
 of Dryden and Pope, the genius of Chaucer, with ail 
 its natural simplicity and power, is lost by being trans- 
 muted into the elaborate polish of the verse of the times 
 of Charles the Second and of Quefcn Anne. 
 
 The only successful attempt to make the approach to 
 the poetry of Chaucer more easy, by modifying his diction 
 and metre, has been made within the last few years, in 
 a small work entitled " Chaucer Modernized." It may 
 be recommended as a safe introduction to a knowledge of 
 Chaucer's poetry, for the versions are from the pens of 
 several distinguished living poets, combining in this service 
 of filial reverence to the memory of the Father of English 
 Poetry ; and the versions are composed strictly on this 
 principle, that the paraphrase is limited to such changes 
 as are absolutely necessary to render the meaning and 
 metre of the original intelligible; and thus the reader in 
 the nineteenth century is placed in the same relative posi- 
 tion as the reader of the fourteenth, communing with the 
 imagination of the Poet, through verse which is readily 
 and naturally familiar. 
 
 * Introduction to "Chaucer Modernized," p. 5. 
 11*
 
 126 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 Now, 3onsidering these difficulties of language, it is re- 
 markable that the few readers of Chaucer's poetry should 
 have had authority, from generation to generation, to sus- 
 tain his traditionary fame ; for if he is not known and felt 
 to be the earliest of the great English poets, he is at least 
 always named as such. 
 
 "That noble Chaucer, in those former times, 
 Who first enriched our English with his rhymes, 
 And was the first of ours that ever broke . 
 Into the Muse's treasures, and first spoke 
 In mighty numbers; delving in the mine 
 Of perfect knowledge, which he could refine 
 And coin for current, and as much as then 
 The English language could express for men, 
 He made it do."* 
 
 Usually, in the history of a nation's literature, it may be 
 observed that the language and the literature move forward 
 together — the rude dialect being adequate to express the 
 motives of the rude mind; so that what is handed down 
 in an unformed language is commonly nothing more than 
 the imperfect products of the early intellect or fancy. 
 But the peculiarity of Chaucer's position in literary 
 history is just this, that in the era of an unshaped lan- 
 guage, we have an author of the very highest rank of 
 poetic genius. 
 
 That Chaucer took the language of his own time, and 
 in its best estate, (for language always makes gift of its 
 best wealth to a great poet,) need not be doubted ; but it is 
 difficult to conceive the condition of the language dur- 
 ing his time, in the fifty years' reign of Edward the 
 Third. For the scholastic uses of the learned, and fur 
 
 * Drayton's Elegy, " To my dearly-loved friend, Henry Reynolds, 
 Esq., " Of Poets and Poesy." Anderson's Poets, vol. iii. p. 348.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 127 
 
 ecclesiastical purposes, the Latin was still a living lan- 
 guage. The French was the speech of the court, and in 
 private correspondence had superseded the Latin. But 
 with the great body of the people there was the great body 
 of Anglo-Saxon words and forms of speech, with a living 
 power in them which no foreign or ancient dialects could 
 quench; and to that, the English language, imperfect, 
 unformed, and changing as it was, this great poet gave his 
 heart ; showing, like his most illustrious successors, that 
 the great poet is ever a true patriot also. "Let, then," 
 said Chaucer, "clerkes enditen in Latin, for they have the 
 propertie of science, and the knowing of that facultie; and 
 lette Frenchmen in their French also enditen their queint 
 termes, for it is kindly to their moutbes ; and let us show 
 our fantasies in such wordes as we learnden of our Dame's 
 tongue." And when he wrote for the teaching of his 
 little son, he used English, because, said he, " curious 
 enditying and harde sentences are full hevy at once for 
 such a childe to lerne," and bids the boy think of it as the 
 King's English.* 
 
 It needed the large soul of a great poet to make choice 
 of the People's speech rather than the dialects of the 
 learned or the nobles. Chaucer's contemporary and 
 senior brother-poet, honoured by him as the "moral 
 Cower/' ventured upon no such confidence in the language 
 of the land. The legacy of his song was committed to 
 Latin and to French words ; and yet what might he not 
 have achieved, had he oftener trusted the rude mother- 
 tongue, as in that passage in which he pictures Medea 
 
 * Prologue to Testament of Love. Ed. 1542, cited in Pieker ! ng'» 
 Edition of Chancer, vol. i. p. 202.
 
 128 LECTURE FOURTH 
 
 cooing forth at midnight to gather herbs for the incantations 
 of her witchcraft? I give you without a change, the words 
 and the metre, five hundred years old, of the poet Grower : 
 
 " Thus it befell upon a night, 
 Whann there was naught but storre light, 
 She was vanishod right as hir list, 
 That no wight but hirselfe wist : 
 And that was at midnight-tide ; 
 The world was still on every side. 
 With open head, and foote all bare 
 His heare to spread ; she gan to fare : 
 Upon the clothes gyrte she was, 
 And speccheles, upon the gras 
 She glode forth, as an adder doth." 
 
 If Chaucer was unfortunate in the period of his country's 
 language, he was happy in the era of his country's history. 
 The Saxon and the Norman, the conqueror and con- 
 quered, had grown together into one people. It was Chau- 
 cer's fortune to be an eye-witness of that vast ambition 
 which fired his sovereign in grasping at the diadem of 
 France, to make the two great monarchies of Europe one; 
 and how could the fire in a great poet's heart sleep, when 
 lie beheld his king and his prince, those proud Plantaga- 
 nets, the third Edward and his heroic son, going forth 
 like royal knights-errant in quest of majestic adventures. 
 The reign was one of high monarchal pride, displayed, 
 however, so as to animate a high national pride by lifting 
 up the sense of the nation's dignity, and power, and mag- 
 nificence. Kings were suppliant to England's princes for 
 help — kings were captive in England's capital; and that 
 ambitious noble, "old John of Gaunt," Chaucer's patron 
 and Kinsman, not content with his English dukedom, was 
 proclaimed King of Castile. It was a period o\' high- 
 wmugn. martial enthusiasm, and the early modes of war-
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 129 
 
 fare passed not away without fierce employment, as if the 
 arrow could not cease to be a weapon of death without 
 drinking its last deep draught of blood, when the air was 
 darkened over the plains of Crecy and Poictiers, by the 
 shafts from the hosts of English archers. With all the 
 animating movements of the reign, Chaucer was in close 
 and active sympathy ; he was a courtier and a soldier, as 
 well as a student. No poet has ever held such large and 
 free communion with the world and his fellow-men. He 
 stood in the presence of kings and nobles ; and became 
 versed in the lore of chivalry, its principles and its 
 fashions : he went forth from the pomp of the court to do 
 a soldier's service, and in the season of peace to muse in 
 the fields, to look with loving eyes upon the flowers, to 
 sympathize with the simple hearts of children and of pea- 
 sants, to honour womanhood alike in humble or in high 
 estate, and to commune with the faithful and the zealous 
 of the priesthood. He travelled into foreign lands, an 
 envoy or an exile, (so varied was his career,) happy, if 
 the conjecture be not unfounded, in listening to words 
 falling from the living lips of Italy's great poet, then the 
 aged Petrarch, possibly meeting Boccacio and Froissart. 
 When, near three hundred years later, the youthful Milton 
 visited the shores- of Italy, amid all the classical associa- 
 tions that were thronging into his heart, he found room 
 for the proud memory that the father of English poetry 
 had stood on the same soil.* 
 
 * In the Epistle to Manso, the friend of Tasso, a production which 
 Mr. Hillard, in his charming book on Italy, calls " the most Virgiliaa 
 of all compositions not written by Virgil," Milton says: 
 Ergo ego te, Clius et magni nomine Phopbi, 
 Manse pater, juboo longum salvore per aevum.
 
 130 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 The times in which Chaucer lived were momentous 
 also as a period in which were first seen the forecast 
 shadows of mighty changes in the Christian church; and 
 we can well believe that his heart must have leaped up 
 when he beheld the bold British hand of John Wyclif, 
 a hundred years and more before the days of Luther, 
 strike the first blow at ecclesiastical tyranny — the same 
 hand which was an instrument of Providence in taking the 
 seal from off the Bible, and spreading it in living English 
 words throughout the land. 
 
 The last half of the fourteenth century, which was the pe- 
 riod of Chaucer's manhood, (for he died, let it be remem- 
 bered, an aged man, in the year 1400,) was an era in which 
 the English mind was touched by many of its finest and 
 most quickening influences. The impulse it received was 
 manifest in various departments of human thought. The 
 arts were cultivated, civic architecture especially, and chiefly 
 that sacred form of it which has been the wonder of after 
 ages. Painting was cultivated, and the more glorious 
 sister art of poetry was taught by two poets more eminent 
 than England had yet produced, John Gower and Geoffry 
 Chaucer. It was fitting that in such an age the Parlia 
 ruent of England should decree that the statutes of the 
 
 Missus Hyperboreo juvenis peregrinus ab axo. 
 Nee tu longinquam bonus aspernabere uiusam, 
 Quae nuper golida vix enutrita sub Arcto, 
 Iinprudens Italas ausa est volitaro per urbes. 
 Nos otiaui in nost.ro modulantes flumino cygnos 
 Credimus obscuras noctis sensisse per umbras, 
 Qua Tbamesis late puris nrgonteus urn is 
 , Oeeani glaucos perfundit gurgite crines 
 
 Quin et in bas quondam pervenit Tityrua oras." 
 Xitford'a Milt,,,,, vol. 3, p. 317. W. I!. It.
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 131 
 
 realm were no longer to be enrolled in a foreign dialect, 
 but that the voice of British legislation should speak in 
 the nation's own language. 
 
 The student of literature, who will take the pains to 
 master the difficulties of Chaucer's antiquated poems — 
 and they will quickly diminish before him — will find an 
 abundant reward. His poems are as varied as they are 
 voluminous, rich in original materials and in that which, 
 drawn from foreign sources — the Latin,. French, and 
 Italian literature — bears in the transmutation the glory 
 of a great poet's invention. What most distinguishes 
 the genius of Chaucer is the comprehensiveness and 
 variety of his powers. You look at him in his gay mood, 
 and it is so genial that that seems to be his very nature, 
 an overflowing comic power, or, rather, that power touched 
 with thoughtfulness and tenderness — "humour" in its 
 finest estate. And then you turn to another phase of 
 his genius, and with something of wonder, and more of 
 delight, you find it shining with a light as true and natu- 
 ral and beautiful into the deeper places of the human 
 soul — its woes, its anguish, and its strength of suffering 
 and of heroism. In this, the harmonious union of true 
 tragic and comic powers, Chaucer and Shakspeare stand 
 alone in our literature : it places these two above all the 
 other great poets of our language, for such combination 
 is the highest endowment of poetic genius. 
 
 The genius of Chaucer is manifest also in that other 
 characteristic of the poetic spirit, wise and genial com- 
 munion with the spiritual influences of the material world, 
 " Earth, air, ocean, and the starry sky." All nature i& 
 with him alive with a fresh and. active life-blood. Ilia 
 green leaves, it has been well said, are the greenest that
 
 132 LECTURE FOURTIT. 
 
 were ever seen. His grass is the gladdest green; the 
 cool and fragrant breezes he sings of seem to fan the 
 reader's cheek ; his birds pour forth notes the most thrill- 
 ing, the most soothing, that ever touched mortal ear — 
 
 " There was many and many a lovely note, 
 Some singing loud, as if they had complained ; 
 Some with their notes another manner feigned ; 
 And some did sing all out with the full throat." 
 
 The earth and sky — his earth and sky — are steeped in 
 brightest sunshine, and " all things else about him drawn 
 from May-time and the cheerful dawn."* 
 
 * Introduction to Chaucer Modernized, p. xcvi., and Words- 
 worth's Version of the Cuckoo and the Nightingale, p. 41. I am 
 tempted in this connection to make an extract from a most grace- 
 ful tribute to my brother's memory in a private letter from Lady 
 Richardson, the wife of Sir John Richardson of Arctic celebrity, 
 and a lady of high intelligence and accomplishments. It is descrip- 
 tive of the first impression of a bright May morning, with its gentle 
 companionship of singing birds and flowers, among the English lakes 
 and amid Wordsworth's haunts : " It must have been," writes Lady 
 Richardson, " about the middle of May that we heard of Mr. Reed's 
 arrival at Rydal Mount; on the next day he called. The day was 
 so beautiful, that, fearing ho might not see the valley of the Easedale 
 again on so fine a day, I took him to Wordsworth's Wall and round 
 the Terrace Walk for a first view. We had little time for ffloro than 
 to walk quickly round, I pointing out where "tho Prelude" was com- 
 posed, and where so many summer hours were passed. Ho did not 
 say much; but the expression of his face showed mo the deep delight 
 ho felt, both in tho present beauty and in tho associations tho place 
 recalled. As wo returned, tho " Wandering Voice" was peculiarly 
 blythe and near to us on that May morning, and I remember he told 
 mo he had hoard the cuckoo for the first time at Rydal Mount. He 
 remarked on tho beauty of the holly, which he did not seem to know 
 before. He spoke of Southey's lines on the holly-tree, the loss of its 
 thorns, and it* smooth loaves as it grows high, compared to what old 
 hould be. We pausod to talk and sit and quoto some of our favourite
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. IM 
 
 A favourite form of imaginative composition of those 
 times was the romantic allegory, and Chaucer, taking up 
 the fashion, has perpetuated it, especially in two poems, 
 which the life-giving power of genius yet preserves. One 
 of these, the " House of Fame," is known to modern readers 
 chiefly through Pope's paraphrase, bearing the statelier 
 title — a characteristic alteration — of the " Temple of Fame." 
 This poem is not one on which I need stop for criticism, 
 and I am about to mention it for quite a different purpose. 
 It contains a passage which has struck me as in curious 
 anticipation of a scientific hypothesis suggested in our 
 own days; poetic imagination foreshadowing the results 
 of scientific reasoning. In the ninth Bridgewater Treatise, 
 from the pen of Mr. Babbage, he propounded a theory 
 respecting the permanent impressions of our words — spoken 
 words — a theory startling enough almost to close a man's 
 lips in perpetual silence : " That flhe pulsations of the 
 air, once set in motion by the human voice, cease not to 
 exist with the sounds to which they give rise ; that the 
 waves of the air thus raised perambulate the earth and 
 
 lines; and all that he said impressed me with the feeling of his being 
 of that genial, elevated, and kindly stamp which Wordsworth most de- 
 lighted in. On coming to a walk at the foot of some rocks which my 
 husband had engineered during his last visit, Mr. Reed said, 'How 
 pleasant ^t is, that one whose heroic character and sufferings interosted 
 me so much, as a boy, in America, can now be associated with this 
 lovely scene !' We parted with a promise that they would come and 
 see me in the South. This they were unfortunately prevented doing, 
 and we never met again." — 3IS. Letter. I hope I violate no pro- 
 priety in using a letter which never was intended for the public eye; 
 but the temptation to give this glimpse of the last bright hours, the 
 simple, natural tastes and pure imaginings, associated, like his great 
 poetic models, with all that was beautiful in nature, of one whom it 
 
 is now no flattery to praise, has been irresistible. W. B. R. 
 1 12
 
 134 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 ocean's surface; and soon every atom of its atmosphere 
 takes up the altered movement, due to the infinitesimal 
 portion of the primitive motion which has been conveyed 
 to it through countless channels, and which must continue 
 to influence its paths throughout its future existence. 
 Every atom," adds the philosopher, " impressed with good 
 and with ill, retains at once the motions which philoso- 
 phers and sages have imparted to it, mixed and combined, 
 in ten thousand ways, with all that is worthless and base. 
 . . . The atmosphere we breathe is the ever-living wit- 
 ness of the sentiments we have uttered, .... and (in 
 another state of heing) the offender may hear still vibrat- 
 ing in his ear the very words, uttered perhaps thousands 
 of centuries before, which at once caused and registered 
 his own condemnation." 
 
 Now I have no thought of intimating, in the most 
 remote degree, that in this remarkahle train of thought 
 Mr. Babbage was under obligations to Chaucer. The 
 passage has an air of absolute originality; and, besides, the 
 writer of it is too strong-minded and manly to allow such 
 obligations, if they existed, to pass unacknowledged. 1 
 have no sympathy with the spirit which delights in detect- 
 ing plagiarisms in the casual and innocent coincidences 
 which every student knows are frequently occurring. That 
 there is such a coincidence worthy of notice, will be seen 
 iu these lines in The House of Fame : 
 
 " Sound is nought but air that's broken, 
 And every speecbe that is spoken, 
 Whe'er loud or low, foul or fair, 
 In his substance is but air : 
 For as flame is but lighted smoke, 
 Right so is sound but air that's broke, 
 Eke where that men harpstrings smite
 
 THE ENGLISH f,ANGUAGE. 138 
 
 Whether that be much or lite, 
 
 Lo ! with the stroke, the air it breaketh ; 
 
 Thus wot'st thou well what thing is speech* 
 
 Now, henceforth, I will thee teach 
 
 How ever each speeche, voice or sown, 
 
 Through his tnultiplicion, 
 
 Though it were piped of a mouse, 
 
 Must needs come to Fame's House. 
 
 I prove it thus ; taketh heed now 
 
 By experience, for if that thou 
 
 Throw in a water now a stone, 
 
 Well wot'st thou it will make anon 
 
 A little roundel as a circle, 
 
 Par venture as broad as a covercle, 
 
 And right anon thou shalt see well 
 
 That circle cause another wheel, 
 
 And that the third, and so forth, brother, 
 
 Every circle causing other, 
 
 Much broader than himselfen was: 
 
 Right so of air, my leve brother, 
 
 Ever each air another stirreth, 
 
 More and more and speech up beareth, 
 
 Till it be at the ' House of Fame.' "* 
 
 * That this was mere coincidence, Mr. Reed ascertained, in con- 
 versation with Mr. Babbage, on his visit to England, in 1854. " I 
 mentioned to him," Mr. Reed writes to a friend in America, "that I 
 had once in a public lecture quoted from his Bridgewater Treatise the 
 startling passage about the perpetuity of sound, and that some of my 
 audience used to say that it almost made them afraid for some days 
 to speak, from the dread that the sounds were to last, and mayhap 
 come back to them in the hereafter : on telling him I had cited the 'pas- 
 sage in a literary connection, as a curious parallelism with Chaucer, ho 
 expressed much surprise, and begged me to refer to the passage. It 
 was all new to him." — MS. Letter. 
 
 A curious chapter on these perfectly innocent coincidences might 
 be written — for literary history is full of them. In Lockhart s Scott, 
 (vol. x. p. 20S,) it is said, " Dr. Watson, having consulted on all things 
 with Mr. Clarkson and his father, resigned the patient to them, and
 
 ISC LKCTU>RE FOURTH. 
 
 One of the orightest dreams that poet ever fashioned 
 out of shadowy imaginings, is the allegory, " The Flower 
 and the Leaf," with its beautiful moral, and an exuberance 
 of fancy seldom met with out of the region of early 
 poetry. A gentlewoman, seated in an arbour, beholds a 
 great company of ladies and knights in a dance on the 
 grass, which being ended, they all kneel down and do 
 honour to the daisy — some to the flower, and some to the 
 leaf; and the meaning thereof is this : " They which 
 honour the flower, a thing fading with every blast, are 
 such as look after beauty and worldly pleasure ; but they 
 that honour the leaf, which abideth with the root, not- 
 withstanding the frosts and winter storms, are they which 
 follow virtue and during qualities, without regard of 
 worldly respects." 
 
 The fame of Chaucer rests, however, chiefly on the 
 
 returned, to London. None of them could have any hope but that of 
 soothing irritation. Recovery was no longer to be thought of, but 
 there might bo Euthanasia." A hundred years before Arbuthnot wrote 
 to Popo, " a recovery in my case and at my age is impossible : tho 
 kindest wish of my friends is Euthanasia." Haydon, in his strange 
 journal, writing in 1826, says, "There is hardly any thing new. I 
 never literally stole but one figure in my life (Aaron) from Raphael. 
 Yet to-day I found my Olympias, which I had dashed in in a heat, 
 exactly a repetition of an Antigone, and the first thing I saw in tho 
 Louvre was Poussin's Judgment of Solomon, with Solomon in nearly 
 the same position as in my picture. Yet I solemnly declare I never 
 saw oven the print when I conceived my Solomon, which was done 
 one night, before I began to paint, at nineteen, when I lodged in 
 Carey Street, and was ill in my eyes. I lay back in my chair, and 
 indulged myself in composing my Solomon. I will venture to say, do 
 painter but Wilkie will believe this, though it is as true as that tw» 
 and two moke four." Hay don's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 488; see also Wil 
 notion I'leramres of Literature, p. 259. W. B. R.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 137 
 
 great work of his matured powers, showing how genius 
 carries forward the freshness of feeling for three-scoie 
 years. I refer, of course, to the " Canterbury Tales," an 
 unfinished poem, like the Faery Queen, and, like it, won- 
 derful as a fragment, for the vast extent of what is 
 achieved, as well as of what was planned. The design 
 of this poem is one of the happiest thoughts that ever 
 housed itself in a poet's heart. A chance-gathered com- 
 pany of pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas 
 a, Becket at Canterbury, meet in a London inn, and the 
 host proposes that they beguile the ride by each telling 
 a tale to his fellow-pilgrims. Thus comes, with its large 
 variety, the collection of the Canterbury Tales. The 
 prologue, containing the description of the pilgrims, is 
 better known, perhaps, than the rest of the work, partly, 
 perhaps, from Stothard's well-known picture of the pil- 
 grimage. From this prefatory poem of a few hundred 
 lines, a truer and livelier conception of the state of so- 
 ciety in England, five hundred years ago, can be got than 
 from all other sources of information. It makes us more 
 at home there in the distant years ; carries us more into 
 the spirit of the age ; lets us see the men and the women 
 of those times, be among them and know their ways 
 of life, manners, and dress, far better than any unima- 
 ginative record can do. There are a hundred things — 
 prime elements, too, in a nation's heart — that history 
 never troubles itself with. The torch of a poet's ima- 
 gination is held on high, and forthwith a light is thrown 
 on the whole region round, and we see a multitude of 
 objects which else would be lost in the distance or the 
 darkness. 
 
 Among other matters, the poems of Chaucer are tuil 
 
 12*
 
 138 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 of testimony, unstudied testimony, on a momentous sub- 
 ject — the condition of the Church in those ages, when its 
 abuses, looseness, and luxury roused the indignation of the 
 first of the great Reformers. What an image of monastic 
 voluptuousness is there in one of Chaucer's pictures, a full- 
 length portrait in one line, when he describes the monk, 
 
 " Fat as a whale, and walked like a swan !" 
 
 Nor was the poet's bold satire of the corruptions which 
 had crept into the Church the sarcasm of a licentious, 
 irreverent temper, for he has bequeathed to all after- 
 times a portrait of the pure clerical character, which, as 
 an imaginative picture of holy life, of Christian piety, 
 zeal, meekness, and self-sacrifice, still stands unequalled 
 in English literature : 
 
 "A poor parson of a town : 
 
 *&- -£- £- •& 
 
 Wide was his parish — houses far asunder — 
 
 But he neglected nought for rain or thunder, 
 
 In sickness and in grief to visit all, 
 
 The farthest in his parish, great and small, 
 
 Always on foot, and in his hand a stave. 
 
 This noble example to his flock he gave : 
 
 That first he wrought, and afterward he taught; 
 
 Out of the gospel ho that lesson caught, 
 
 And this now figuro added ho thereto, 
 
 That if gold rust, then what should iron do?"* 
 
 The prologue is curious, too, as representing the free 
 dom and ease of intercourse between the characters, drawn, 
 as they are, from different ranks of society — an absence of 
 reserve and restraint remarkable in an age with which we 
 are apt, falsely perhaps, to associate much of stateliness 
 
 * Prologue to Canterbury Tales, v. 4.79.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 139 
 
 and ceremonial. We find here a little social drama, as 
 it were, bearing strongly the stamp of nature and reality, 
 and the parties are unreservedly communing with each 
 other — riding, talking, laughing, eating together. Here 
 is the knight, "a very perfect, gentle knight," newly 
 returned from his adventures, and modest with the meniu- 
 ries of many a battle on sea and land, fought with the 
 Moors and the foes of the faithful far away. With him 
 comes his son, full of gayety and gallantry, " wakeful as 
 a nightingale with his amorous ditties •" and the rest of 
 the company is made up of a demure prioress, a monk, a 
 friar and other ecclesiastical functionaries ; a merchant, a 
 franklin, a sea-captain, the doctor of physic, "whose 
 study was but little on the Bible;" the lawyer, " a very 
 busy man, yet seeming busier than he really was;" the 
 parson, drawing mankind to heaven by gentleness ; the 
 miller, crafty in cheating his customers; the ploughman, 
 a #ood, constant, labouring man, living in peace and 
 charity, working hard, and cheerfully paying his dues to 
 the church, along with other hearty commoners, spruced 
 up for the pilgrimage in holiday-dress. There is the fro- 
 licsome wife of Bath ; and a very different character, not 
 to be forgotten, the Oxford student, silent or sententious, 
 thoughtful and thin by dint of hard study, riding on a 
 lean horse : 
 
 " He had rather have at his bed's head 
 Some twenty volumes, clothed in black or red, 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophy, 
 Than richest robes, fiddle or psaltery. 
 But tho' a true philosopher was he, 
 Yet had he little gold beneath his key; 
 But every farthing that his friends e'er lent, 
 In books and learning was it always spent"
 
 140 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 These various characters are brought into happy com- 
 panionship ; and indeed the spirit of all Chaucer's poetry 
 shows that if his own lot was cast in the company of kings 
 and nobles, his human heart had large spaces to hold his 
 fellow-beings in. His sympathies were with freedom in 
 all created things, as in a passage, which is enough, I 
 think, of itself, to open the prison-door and give to liberty 
 and life again any caged bird in the world. 
 
 " Where birds are fed in cages, 
 Though you should day and night tend them like pages, 
 And strew the bird's room fair and soft as silk, 
 And give him sugar, honey, bread, and milk : 
 Yet had the bird, by twenty thousand fold, 
 Rather be in a forest wild and cold : 
 And right anon, let but his door be up, 
 And with his feet he spurneth down his cup, 
 And to the wood will hie, and feed on worms. 
 In that new college keepeth he his torms, 
 And Iearneth love of his own proper kind : 
 No gentleness of home his heart may bind." 
 
 The poetry of Chaucer is distinguished also for what is 
 an inseparable quality of all high poetry, its genuine and 
 healthy morality, for true imagination is ever one of 
 virtue's ministers. The indelicacy and grossness which 
 stain some of his pages seem to belong rather to the col- 
 loquial coarseness of his times, than to fasten on the 
 purity of his feelings. He pleads forgiveness for these 
 blemishes, as not of evil intent, and it is easy to follow 
 his advice when he bids his reader, 
 
 " Turn over the leaf, and choose another tale ; 
 For he shall find enough, both great and sniale, 
 Of storial thing that toucheth gentilesse, 
 And eke morality and holiness." 
 
 One of the purest and wisest of the great English poets
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 14 
 
 who have succeeded Chaucer, has said of him, "If Chaucer 
 is sometimes a coarse moralist, he is still a great one."* 
 The plain-spoken coarseness is a spot here and there, but 
 the great body of his poetry is a poet's pure and lofty 
 discipline, thoughtful and affectionate reverence of womanly 
 worth, teaching of Christian well-doing, of heroic morality, 
 and of the morality of every-day life. He moralizes in 
 the poet's happiest mood, imaginatively, feelingly, humor- 
 ously, as when he teaches us that much-neglected art, the 
 art of living with one another, the social duty of mutual 
 forbearance. 
 
 " One thing, sirs, full safely dare I say, 
 That loving friends each other must obey, 
 If they would long remain in company : 
 Love will not be constrain'd by mastery. 
 When mastery cometh, the God of Love, anon 
 Beateth his wings, and, farewell ! he is gone. 
 Love is a thing as any spirit free : 
 Women, by nature, wish for liberty, 
 And not to be constrain'd as in a thrall ; 
 And so do men — to speak truth — one and all. 
 Note well the wight most patient in his love : 
 He standeth, in advantage, all above. 
 That patience is a virtue high, is plain, 
 Because it conquers, as the clerkes explain, 
 Things that rude vigour never could attain. 
 Chide not for every trifle, nor complain; 
 Learn to endure, or, so betide my lot, 
 Learn it ye shall, whether ye will or not. 
 For in this world is no one, certain 'tis, 
 But that he sometimes doth or saith amiss. 
 Anger, ill health, or influence malign 
 Of planets, changes in the blood, woe, wine, 
 
 * Wordsworth, as quoted in the Introduction to Chaucer Modern- 
 ized, p scviii. "
 
 142 T. KCTURK FOURTH. 
 
 Oft -aiise in word or deed that we transgress; 
 For, for every wrong we should not seek redress. 
 After a time there must be temperance 
 In every man that knows self-governance." 
 
 There is a deeper strain of poetic wisdom on a kindred 
 subject, showing that indeed " we live by admiration, hope, 
 and love," in that fine exposition of the moral influences 
 of well-directed affection, when, speaking of dutiful love, 
 he says : 
 
 " In this world no service is so good 
 For every wight that gentle is of kind, 
 For thereof comes all goodness and all worth ; 
 All gentleness and honour thence come forth ; 
 Thence worship comes, content, and true hoart's pleasure, 
 And full-assured trust, joy without measure, 
 And jollity, fresh cheerfulness, and mirth: 
 And bounty, lowliness, and courtesy, 
 And seemliness and faithful company, 
 And dread of shame that will not do amiss." 
 
 The same spirit, connecting all true passion with 
 its deeper moral associations, is to be traced in that 
 stanza of Wordsworth's, conveying in a few lines at once 
 the simplest and sublimest conception of the passion of 
 Love : 
 
 "Learn by a mortal yearning, to ascond 
 Towards a higher object. Love was given, 
 Encouraged, sanctioned chiefly for that end; 
 For this the passion to excess was driven, 
 That self might be annulled: her bondago prove 
 The fetters of a dream, opposed to love."* 
 
 Such is the affinity between the souls of great poets, 
 though centuries are between them. 
 
 It is now well-nigh four hundred and fifty years since 
 
 * Laodamia, Works, p. 142. Am. Edition.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 143 
 
 the body of Chaucer was entombed in that corner of 
 Westminster Abbey where, in after generations, the pe- 
 rishable remains of other of England's great poets were 
 to be gathered round his. Four centuries pass not over 
 the writings of any mortal without defacing and oblite- 
 rating. Language is liable to undergo perpetual changes; 
 any person may observe, in even a short space of years, 
 new forms of expression coming into use, old ones 
 growing obsolete. Time brings along with it new modes 
 of life, of thought, and action. Opinions and feel- 
 ings often grow old-fashioned — fall behind the times, as 
 the phrase is ; and, as these are things that enter so 
 largely into the composition of books, it needs must be 
 that they, too, grow old-fashioned, obsolete, obscure. 
 Chiefly will this happen when it has fallen to an author's 
 lot to write in an unformed language, when the speech of 
 men is made up of various and unsettled dialects, and, 
 therefore, most quickly perishes for want of that consist- 
 ency which alone perpetuates it. Time is busy in the 
 work of change with all that is upon the earth : the 
 brow is furrowed, the voice is broken, and the sight fails; 
 temple and tower moulder with its touch ; empires and 
 dynasties are varying and wasting; but the strangest work 
 of mutability is that which is at work with language. The 
 most wondrous mortality the world witnesses is the dying 
 of language. It almost baffles human conception to 
 speculate either upon the birth or the death of the mul- 
 titude, or rather the family of words that make up a 
 nation's speech; to think how thousands of mankind 
 come to utter their thoughts and feelings in the same 
 words and the same combinations of words; and then, 
 that, in the course of time, as if the earth and all earthlv
 
 144 LECTURE FOURTH". 
 
 things should be as changeful as the moon which lights 
 it, such utterance is changed, and at length wholly lost 
 from the living tongue. Its sound becomes an uncertain 
 and disputed thing, for it is only seen on the pages of 
 books, or it may be only in dim and dubious inscriptions 
 on the broken column, the ruined arch, or the empty 
 monument. I know of nothing which so teaches the 
 transitoriness of things as that phrase of mournful sig- 
 nificance, " a dead language." How docs it startle us 
 in our pride, the bare apprehension of our English 
 speech changing into a lifeless and mouldy record — some- 
 thing dark for scholars and antiquaries vainly to attempt 
 to enlighten — something of a degenerate dialect, in which 
 might be faintly traced the shadows of a mighty lan- 
 guage. The curse of the confusion of tongues" is an 
 unending curse, like the sentence of labour, on rebel- 
 lious man. From the time when the ambition of men 
 brought down this penalty, and the whole earth ceased to 
 be " of one language and one speech," nations have been 
 scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth, no longer 
 understanding one another's speech — one generation, too, 
 becoming unintelligible to another. So must it ever be 
 'as long as a cloud of divine displeasure travels onward 
 with the earth, casting down upon it a dark shadow ; and 
 hence no language, no matter how lofty its literature may 
 be, can boast a privilege from decay : 
 
 " Babylon, 
 Learned and wise, hath perished utterly, 
 Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh 
 Thai would lament her." 
 
 The Pyramids, mysterious in their unnumbered centu- 
 ries, are standing almost as imperishable as the Nile, and
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. Ufc 
 
 yet not ono word survives that was spoken by the tens of 
 thousands who toiled in building them : 
 
 " Egyptian Thebes, 
 Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves, 
 Palmyra, central in the desert, fell j" 
 
 and all their dialects are silent as the desert sands. That 
 noble language, too, of antiquity, with which Athens 
 sent forth her philosophy and poetry to the islands of 
 the iEgean and the shores of Asia, and " fulmined over 
 Greece with her resistless eloquence" — the language 
 that Corinth, from her famous isthmus, spake over the 
 eastern and western waves, has, for many ages, known no 
 other existence than that which it holds on the pages of 
 books. The speech of the Roman — the language of em- 
 pire and of law, spread by consul and emperor till it was 
 stayed by the ocean and the barbarian — how has it ceased 
 to hold companionship with the voice, and learned men of 
 modern times can only conjecture respecting its accent 1 
 
 If I have been thus led into a digression on the 
 changes which are the destiny of all languages, let me 
 say, in excuse, that I could scarce check the train ot 
 thought, being forced to feel most painfully the perish- 
 able nature of speech by the reflection that it is that? 
 cause which has dimmed the glory of the earliest and one 
 of the greatest of England's poets. 
 
 The student of early English literature must not omit that 
 miscellaneous poetry, obscure in its origin, and indefinite 
 in its period — the ancient Minstrelsy. It is poetry of 
 native growth, and having the savour of the soil. Exist- 
 ing for a long time in a traditional state, it has suffered 
 the waste which mere oral tradition is never safe from ; 
 and it is only within the last fifty years that pains have
 
 146 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 been taken to gather the rude strains of those half-civilized 
 ages, and to place them on record at this long distance 
 of time after they existed as a living poetry. This has 
 been done chiefly in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English 
 Poetry, and in Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scot- 
 tish Border. It was a fine trait in Scott's literary career, 
 the affectionate earnestness with which he laboured for the 
 recovery of the ancient lays of his native land, and the pre- 
 servation of them in some safer form than what they had 
 in the memory of aged persons, in times when every year, 
 perhaps, was casting them more and more into neglect. 
 When Scott travelled over the country, highland and low- 
 land, seeking in its secluded glens for such remains of 
 the poetry of the olden times as might not yet be lost out 
 of the recollections of an illiterate peasantry — snatches of 
 song remembered by the aged, as having been chaunted 
 by the old folks of an earlier generation — he was not only 
 gathering materials to illustrate the literature of his 
 country, but he was storing his own mind with those large 
 resources which his genius afterward poured forth with a 
 copiousness which was the world's wonder. When the 
 authorship of Waverley was a secret vexing public curi- 
 osity, Professor Wilson exclaimed, "I wonder what all 
 these people are perplexing themselves with : have they 
 forgotten the prose of the Minstrelsy?"* 
 
 Of the minstrel poetry now extant, much belongs to a 
 period later than the age of Chaucer ; but there is also 
 reason to believe that it had a traditional connection with 
 a still earlier and ruder minstrelsy that has perished. A 
 more distant influence is to be traced back to the hymns 
 
 * Lockhart's Scott, v61. ii. p. 132.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 147 
 
 nnd spiritual songs of the Church which accompanied 
 Christianity, as it made its spiritual inroads on the fierce 
 idolatries of the races of the North. For, although the 
 sacred services chaunted hy the early Christians and those 
 grand hymns of the Middle Ages were in the Latin lan- 
 guage, still they accustomed the popular ear to metrical 
 sounds, and opened the hearts of the people to the uses of 
 poetry. While the ancient classical poetry was sleeping 
 its long sleep, to waken in later ages, the sacred songs of 
 the early Christians were never silenced, even in years of 
 persecution; and it is to them, that the poetry of Christen- 
 dom owes its first impulse. 
 
 At a remote age of Britain's history, religious houses 
 were built there, and as the holy men who dwelt in them, 
 amid aboriginal ferocities and the 'turmoil of successive 
 invasions — the Saxon and the Dane — uttered their songs of 
 adoration, those harmonies went forth over river and plain, 
 soothing the fierce elements they touched, and charming 
 the evil spirit of war which vexed the hearts of barbaric 
 kings. The music of a good man's chaunted devotions 
 could not float on the air, turbid and tumultuous though 
 it be with wicked passions, without awakening some pure 
 and gentle emotions. A single stanza of ancient Saxon 
 song survives as a memorial of such influence. When that 
 remarkable personage, the Danish King Canute, had over- 
 thrown the Saxon dynasty in England, and was making a 
 progress through his newly-conquered realm, as with his 
 queen and knights he approached by water the Abbey of 
 Ely, there arose upon the air the voices of the monks, 
 chaunting their stated services; and when the music fell 
 upon the conqueror's ear with such a sweet solemnity, 
 chiming both with the river's flow and his own placid
 
 148 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 emotions, the sword of his bloody conquest sheathed, the 
 active sympathy of his imagination found utterance in a 
 simple strain of Saxon song, of which but one stanza has 
 been spared by time : 
 
 " Sweetly sang the monks in Ely 
 As Canute the king was rowing by : 
 ' Knights, to the land draw near, 
 That the monks' song we may hear.' "* 
 
 " This accordant rhyme" was the response of one of the 
 mightiest of those Scandinavian monarchs, the " Sea-kings," 
 who struck terror into central Europe ; he, before whom 
 the ancient Saxon dynasty quailed, and whose barbarian 
 flatterers told him that his word had power to stay the 
 surges of the Atlantic ; but, in a happy moment of tran- 
 quillity, the saintly -music passed through the turbulent 
 passions of pride and power into the depths of his human 
 heart. 
 
 The same influences doubtless touched the nation's 
 heart, and like that rude royal strain, the popular song 
 echoed the music of hallowed verse. 
 
 An earlier instance of the power of the imagination to 
 impart truth, may be remembered in that beautiful image 
 of the mystery of human life which led to the conver- 
 sion of King Edwin. A Christian entered the hall of 
 the unconverted Saxon, but the tidings he brought were 
 strange to the pagan heart, and the king summons liis 
 chiefs and priests ; at that moment a bird flitted through 
 the council-hall, to call from the wise imagination of one 
 
 * Lectures on the History of England : by a Lady; p. 439. Words- 
 worth's Sonnet. Works, p. 295.
 
 KAl'.LV ENGLISH LITERATURE. U9 
 
 of the heathen councillors a lesson, recorded by an old 
 historian, and preserved in modern verse : 
 
 "Man's life is like a sparrow, mighty king, 
 That while at banquet with your chiefs you sit, 
 Housed near a blazing tire, is seen to flit, 
 Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering, 
 Here did it enter; there, on hasty wing, 
 Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold ; 
 But whence it came we know not, nor behold 
 Whither it goes. Even such, that transient thing, 
 The human soul, not utterly unknown, 
 While in the body lodged, the warm abode; 
 But from what world she came, what woe or weal 
 On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown. 
 This mystery, if the stranger can reveal, 
 His be a welcome cordially bestowed."* 
 
 Important as must have been the influence of the 
 metrical services of the church, considered simply as a 
 means of civilization, the rude ages needed poetry for 
 other uses than devotion. They craved the minstrel's 
 power to touch the stories of daring adventure, of wild 
 justice and revenge, and the tragic incidents of the field 
 and fireside. The earliest of the martial ballads comme- 
 morate the exploits of a body of bold outlaws, in whose 
 lives there was the last struggle against Norman tyranny. 
 The strong hand of the conqueror had seized large tracts 
 of land for royal hunting-grounds, the ancient owners 
 outcast; and well may the oppressed people have applauded 
 the exploits of the hardy archers who claimed their own 
 again within the forbidden limits, and thus Robin Hood 
 became indeed " the English ballad-singers' joy," asserting, 
 
 * Wordsworth's Works, p. 290. The legend is in Fuller's Church 
 History of Britain, vol. i. p. 109. 
 
 K 13*
 
 160 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 as he did, what, under a complicated tyranny of authority, 
 seemed 
 
 " The good old rule, the simple plan, 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 The old songs have kept his name, but no historian, 
 like Niebuhr with the Roman legends, has unwoven the 
 tangled threads of fact and fiction. 
 
 It would be a study of much interest to compare the 
 early British ballad poetry with the other ballad poetry 
 most famous in European literature. I mean that of 
 Spain. Mr. Lockhart's fine version of the Spanish ballads, 
 and our countryman Mr. Ticknor's recent classic work 
 on Spanish Literature would give facilities for the com- 
 parison.* The higher civilization in Spain, both Moorish 
 and Christian, and the struggle for centuries between the 
 two races, as the Saracen was driven slowly from his last 
 foothold in the West of Europe, wars which had the 
 dignity of the highest sentiments of religion and loyalty, 
 the greater refinement of society — all these things would 
 be found in strong contrast with the rudeness of a poetry, 
 picturing the feuds of petty chieftains, and the mingled 
 ferocity and frolic of the border warfare. 
 
 * To my friend, (for such he has been for many yoars,) Mr. Tick- 
 nor, is in some measure due the publication of t theso Lectures, for ob 
 his saying to me, in accidental conversation since my brother's death 
 that his litorary, and especially his poetical, judgments, wore concur- 
 rent with his own, I felt the assurance that I might, with no furthei 
 authority, give them to tho reading world. I felt, too, that in pub- 
 lishing these lectures, I might do something to raise Philadelphia let- 
 ters a little nearer to tho high levol to which such men as Proscott, 
 and Tickuor, and Longfellow, and Hillard, have elevated tho litera- 
 ture of a sister city. W. B. R. •
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1.. 
 
 Our early minstrelsy, with all its comparative rudeness, 
 was not without its gentle elements; and we can conceive 
 how it helped to civilize the people, when we observe how 
 much of pathos is woven into it, how it tells of the ten- 
 derness and pity that are congenial with courage and with the 
 love of fierce adventure, springing often out of the sternest 
 heart : the pathos is social, too, so free from sentimentalism, 
 and told so simply. When Edom of Gordon, in his fierce 
 assault on the castle, adding the terrors of fire to those of 
 the sword, not staying his spear's point from the little 
 girl who is lowered over the wall : as his victim lies before 
 him, the blood dripping over her yellow hair, remorse ia 
 in the words he said: 
 
 " You are the first that ere 
 I wish't alive again. 
 * * * * 
 
 I might have spared thafbonny face, 
 To have been some man's delight." 
 
 He calls his men away from his fierce victory 
 
 " 111 dooms I do guess ; 
 I cannot look on that bonny face, 
 As it lies on the grass." 
 
 This transition of feeling is sometimes given in these 
 rude strains with deep effect : observe it, for instance, in 
 the contrast between the opening and the close, in these 
 few detached stanzas : 
 
 "Beardslce rose up on a May morning, 
 Called for water to wash his hands ; 
 'Gar loose to me the good gray dogs. 
 That are bound wi' iron bands.' "* 
 
 * Edom of Gordon, Percy's Reliques, vol. i. p. 210. Johnfe of 
 Beardslee, Motherwell's Ancient and Modern Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 169.
 
 152 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 The outlaw's mother, with a presentiment of his fate, 
 entreats him to give over what was to prove a woful hunt- 
 ing, but in vain ; and in spite of her forebodings and the 
 terrors of the forest-laws, he goes forth. The rude and 
 animated strain continues : 
 
 " Beardslee shot, and the dun deer leap'd, 
 And he wounded her in the side; 
 But a'tween the water and the brae, 
 His hounds, they laid her pride. 
 
 And Beardslee has bryttled the deer so well, 
 
 That he's had out her liver and lungs; 
 And with these he has feasted his bloody hounds, 
 
 As if they had been Earl's sons." 
 
 The hunter and his dogs fall asleep, and are surprised 
 by the foresters, who overpower him, and, after a desperate 
 conflict, leave him dying in the lonely wood. The outlaw's 
 breath passes away in a very gentle strain : 
 
 " ! is there no a bonny bird 
 Can sing as I can say, 
 Would flee away to my mother's bower 
 And tell to fetch Beardslee away. 
 
 There 's no a bird in a' this forest 
 
 Will do as niickle for me, 
 As dip its wing in the wan water, 
 
 And streak it on my o'e bree." 
 
 Another characteristic of this poetry is the remarkable 
 dramatic power that pervades it, the vividness of the dia- 
 logue. This is shown* in that, the finest specimen of all, 
 which Coleridge called "the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick 
 Spens."* It is a poem with a certain air of historical 
 
 * Coleridge's Poems, Dejection, an Ode, p 282.
 
 EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 153 
 
 interest, heightened by the mysterious uncertainty of its 
 incidents, and remarkable both for the power of description 
 and its depth of passion. It has come down from a re- 
 mote antiquity, and has manifestly escaped the tampering 
 of modern hands. Let me mention, respecting it, that 
 after I had quoted it in a lecture of a former course, I was 
 told by one of my very kind friends that I had carried 
 him back to the days of his childhood in the old country, 
 when he had heard this very ballad chaunted by the old 
 Scotch people, who must have been familiar with it only 
 by tradition, and not by books. I mention this incident, 
 because it brought home to my mind most distinctly 
 the manner in which the minstrel literature has been per- 
 petuated.* 
 
 When the earliest poetry of Greece, the mighty song 
 of Homer, was a tradition from age to age, on the shores 
 and the islands of the iEgean, with no surer abiding-place 
 than the memories and the tongues of the Rhapsodists, 
 the wisest of Athenian lawgivers, and one of the most 
 politic of Athenian statesmen, made it a part of their wis- 
 dom and their policy to gather the scattered poetry into 
 safer keeping for the good of all after generations. No 
 British Solon, no British Pisistratus, took like heed for 
 Britain's early popular poetry. Doubtless, much of it has 
 perished, and the names of the minstrels, like the names 
 
 * " Tho very kind friend," to whom my brother refers, was the 
 Reverend Doctor Wylio, for many years Vice Provost and Professor of 
 Ancient Languages in the University of Pennsylvania, a man of great 
 learning and eminent purity of character and feeling. He died in 1852. 
 He was a native of the North of Ireland, and for many years pastor 
 of tho First Reformed Presbyterian Church in this city. He was a 
 man beloved by all who knew him. W. B. R.
 
 154 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 of the great church architects of the Middle Ages, have 
 perished utterly. They did their appointed work in their 
 day and generation ; and again, when in the last century, 
 (as I proprose to show at a later part of the course,) Eng- 
 lish poetry became artificial, feeble, unreal, and sophisti- 
 cated, the early song was revived, to breathe into it again 
 health, and strength, and truth.
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 ITitcratuK of % SSfcffcntjj Cmtorg.* 
 
 Dawn of letters a false illustration — Intellectual gloom from Edward 
 III. to Henry VIII. — Chaucer to Spenser — Caxton and the art of 
 printing — Civil wars— Wyatt and Surrey — The sonnet naturalized 
 in English poetry — Blank verse — Henry VIII. — Edward VI. — 
 Landor's sonnet — Stornhold and Hopkins — Bishop Latimer — Good- 
 win Sands and Tenterden Steeple — " Bloody Mary" — Sackville — 
 "The Mirror of Magistrates" — His career— Age of Elizabeth — Con- 
 trasts of her life — The Church as an independent English power— 
 Shakspeare — His journey to London — Final formation of the Eng- 
 lish language — " The well of English undefiled" — The Reformation 
 — Sir Philip Sydney — The Bishop's Bible — Richard Hooker — Spen- 
 ser and Shakspeare — Wilson's Criticism — Sir Walter Raleigh — 
 Shakspeare's Prose. 
 
 In approaching the early English literature in my last 
 lecture, I stated that, in forming a general notion of the 
 extent of it, we may regard the era of our literature as a 
 period of five centuries, from about 1350 to the present 
 time — the middle of the fourteenth century down to the 
 middle of the nineteenth. The student would, however, 
 be misled, were he to believe as he might natu- 
 rally do, that, during those five centuries, there was a 
 continuous and uninterrupted progress, that the light of 
 literature was faithfully handed from sire to son, and that 
 new fires were kindled, in due succession, to light the 
 new ages as the world moved on. Looking to that little 
 island of our forefathers, we shall see, in its history, how 
 
 * January 31, 1850. 
 
 r.v*>
 
 156 LECTCTRE FIFTH. 
 
 it trayelled on with other lights flashing over it than the 
 quiet illumination that shines from the studious watch- 
 towers of poets and scholars. Such tranquil beams were, 
 in many a year, dimmed by the fierce and lurid fires 
 which war in its worst form, civil strife, and ecclesiastical 
 persecutions were casting over the land. 
 
 The familiar and well-known metaphor which has long 
 designated Chaucer as the "Morning Star" of English 
 poetry, while it is most apt in telling of that primal and 
 fair shining in the eastern sky of our literature, is not so 
 truthful in its relations to the later as to the earlier times. 
 The light of day came on too slowly ; and, indeed, a 
 long night followed that early outbreak of the imagina- 
 tion of England's first great poet. Nearly two centuries 
 passed before another arose worthy to take place beside 
 him. Mr. Hallam's historical study of the progress of 
 the European mind during the Middle Ages, has led him 
 to remark, that "The trite metaphors of light and dark- 
 ness, of dawn and twilight, are used carelessly by those 
 who touch on the literature of the Middle Ages, and sug- 
 gest, by analogy, an uninterrupted succession, in which 
 learning, like the sun, has dissipated the shadows of bar- 
 barism. But, with closer attention, it is easily seen that 
 this is not a correct representation ; that taking Europe 
 generally, far from being in a more advanced stage of 
 learning at the beginning of the fifteenth century than 
 two hundred years before, she had, in many respects, gone 
 backward, and gave little sign of any tendency to recover 
 her ground. There is, in fact, no security, as far as the 
 past history of mankind assures us, that any nation will 
 be uniformly progressive in science, arts, and letters ; nor 
 do I perceive, whatever may be the current language,
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 167 
 
 that we can expect this with much greater confidence of 
 the whole civilized world." * 
 
 One of the most remarkable relapses of the kind in 
 intellectual advancement is the long interval between the 
 death of Chaucer, in the year 1400, and the birth of the 
 next of England's great poets, Edmund Spenser, in 1553, 
 and the appearance of the earliest of the great English 
 prose-Avriters in the latter part of the sixteenth century. 
 This period of more than a century and a half is, com- 
 paratively, a desolate tract of time; and, parting with 
 Chaucer in the era of the Middle Ages, we gain com- 
 panionship with no other master-spirit until, crossing the 
 threshold of modern times, the year 1500, we find our- 
 selves in the domain of the later civilization which suc- 
 ceeds the thousand years that separate the Roman world 
 from modern times. In this transition we pass, let it also 
 be remembered, from the ages in which the thoughts of 
 men and the oracles of God were recorded only by the 
 slow labour of the pen — the stupendous toil which modern 
 art may marvel at rather than despise — into the times 
 which become, in some respects, a new intellectual era by 
 the agency of printing. It was near a century after the 
 death of Chaucer that the first of English printers 
 died — the honoured William Caxton — whose life is to be 
 thought of, like that of the Venerable Bede, as monitory 
 of " perpetual industry j" for, as the aged Saxon expired 
 dictating the last words of a translation of St. John's 
 
 Gospel — 
 
 " In the hour of death, 
 
 The last dear service of his parting breath," 
 
 * Literature of Europe, chap. ii. § 49, vol. i. p. 173. 
 H
 
 158 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 60 did the old printer carry forward his last labour, on a 
 volume of sacred lore, to the last day of a life that bore 
 its burden of four-score years. 
 
 Having alluded to the familiar figure which is so often 
 used to typify the position of the earliest of tbe great 
 English authors, I maj correct the error which might 
 unawares be connected with it by another metaphor, 
 which the memory can easily keep hold on. With a 
 beauty of illustration, which does not often adorn the 
 pages of Warton's History of English Poetry, be happily 
 compares the appearance of Chaucer in the language to a 
 premature day in spring, after which the gloom of winter 
 returns, and the buds and blossoms, which have been 
 called forth by a transient sunshine, are nipped by frosts 
 and scattered by storms.* 
 
 Difficult as it may be to discover in the history of the 
 human mind why, at particular periods, it bursts forth with 
 such power, and at other times lies so torpid, we may 
 trace with some confidence causes which at least help to 
 account for this long and dismal blank between the reign 
 of Edward the Third and that of Queen Elizabeth — the 
 whole of the fifteenth century, and a large part of the six- 
 
 * " I consider Chaucer as a gonial day in an English spring. A bril- 
 liant sun enlivens the face of nature with an unusual lustre ; the sudden 
 appearance of cloudless skies, and the unexpected warmth of a tepid 
 atmosphere, after the gloom and inclemencies of a tedious winter, fill 
 our hearts with the visionary prospects of a speedy summer; and wo 
 fondly anticipate a long continuance of gentle gales and vernal serenity. 
 But winter returns with redoubled horrors; the clouds condense more 
 formidably than before ; and those tender buds, and early blossoms, 
 which wero called forth by the transient gleam of a temporary sun- 
 shine, are nipped by frost and torn by tempests." Warton, vol. ii. 
 p. 51. W. Ii. It.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 159 
 
 teenth : seven reigns of disputed legitimacy, thirty years 
 of civil slaughter, first brutalizing and then crushing the 
 nation's heart, the bloody variance of a feudal nobility, a 
 long series of battles, so fierce in their vengeance that the 
 very flowers, the innocent flowers, were torn from the once 
 peaceful gardens to be made the emblems of unrelenting 
 warfare; and then, when these evils had passed away, 
 there came the darker strife of a nation's distracted 
 church-persecution and the fiery terrors of the stake. 
 
 Chaucer had outlived the superb reign of Edward the 
 Third, with its half century of lofty dominion. He had 
 seen the miserable ending of Edward's giddy grandson, 
 the second Richard, thrust from his throne by " mounting 
 Bolingbroke." The cycle of the fortune of these Lan- 
 castrian Plantagenets, reaching its highest splendour in the 
 foreign victories of the fifth Henry, had its sad completion 
 in the disasters of the next reign, and the tragic death of 
 the last of the house of Lancaster. The hearfcbf the nation 
 was suffering the grievous wasting of all that might have 
 been dear to it, by the evil passions engendered in that 
 most deplorable of all political and social conditions, civil 
 warfare; a strife always the fiercest and most unrelenting, 
 for, the ties once broken, which had bound men together 
 by the unconscious bonds of instinctive feelings, bewildered 
 humanity looks on the once dearest friend as the direst 
 foe. "The bells in the church steeples," writes an old 
 church historian, " were not heard for the sound of drums 
 and trumpets."* The learned were not listened to, or 
 rather were hushed into silence, and the humanizing 
 music of poetry was unknown. How could the intellect 
 
 * Fuller, vol. i. p. 54.
 
 160 LECTURE FIFTH 
 
 adventure any thing when the heart was appalled ! Hon 
 could the imagination aspire when overwhelmed by th< 
 dark and fearful pressure of the present ! 
 
 Thus passed one hundred years of the century and & 
 half which lies between that genial age in which Chaucei 
 flourished, and the other more genial era, that of the 
 Elizabethan literature. 
 
 In looking at the early part of the sixteenth century 
 ■ — nearly ' the first half of it occupied by the reign of 
 Henry VIII. — it is pleasing to find some literary interest 
 in a period which is associated chiefly with ecclesiastical 
 change and the second Tudor' s domestic tyranny. An 
 abiding impression on the nation's literature was made at 
 that time by two writers, whose names from early and long 
 association are scarce separable — men of noble birth and 
 character — Sir Thomas Wyatt, the lover of Anne Boleyn, 
 and Henry Howard, the ill-fated Earl of Surrey. Surrey, 
 especially, is*esteemed as one of the improvers of Eng- 
 lish verse. Acquainted with the refinements of Italian 
 verse, acquired either by personal intercourse or by study, 
 he introduced important changes into that of England. 
 The language was made at once more graceful and simple ; 
 and Italian forms of verse introduced. The Sonnet was 
 naturalized into English poetry, to disclose in later tinies 
 that wondrous variety of power and of beauty which has 
 been proved, within its narrow limits, by Milton and by 
 Wordsworth. The English versification was more exactly 
 disciplined; and to Surrey is due the merit of having 
 given the first example of blank verse; that form which has 
 so eminently adapted itself to the language and to the 
 English poet's desires, that it has been well said to deserve 
 the name of " the English metro;'' a construction which
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 161 
 
 from time to time has been revealing the musical re- 
 sources of its unexhausted variety, in the dramatic lan- 
 guage of Shakspeare, the epic of the Paradise Lost, in 
 the homelier strains of the Task, in the heroic romance 
 of Roderic, and in the philosophy of the Excursion. 
 Such is our English blank-verse, alike it may be to the 
 eye, but wonderfully varied to the ear, and to that inner 
 Spiritual sense which seems, even more than the organ of 
 hearing, to take cognizance of the music of poetry; and 
 admitting, too, of some characteristic impress from the 
 genius of every great poet that has used it. 
 
 There gathered round this noble poet all that could 
 dignify and endear him to his own times and to after 
 times — a lofty lineage, rank, genius, virtue, loyalty, faith- 
 ful and honourable services ; but for his bright career as 
 scholar, courtier, soldier, there was a dark destiny of blood. 
 In our earliest knowledge of English history, one of the 
 first and most vivid impressions is that which we have of 
 the household atrocities of the eighth Henry — to a child's 
 *ancy, the British Bluebeard — driving to divorce or death 
 his wives, the mothers of his children, and devoting more 
 than one fair neck, once fondly embraced, to the bloody 
 handling of the headsman. What reign, in the range 
 of history, more execrable ! and the last act of it cast a 
 shadow on the annals of English literature. Henry 
 Howard had been in childhood an inmate of the palace, a 
 playmate of royal children ; and when he gre\%to manhood 
 he was a loyal and honoured courtier, a brave and trusted 
 soldier. But it was Surrey's crime, his only crime, to 
 bear the name of Howard, a name which had newly grown 
 hateful to the despot's ear. He was committed, on a 
 charge of treason, to the Tower; and in the very week 
 
 14*
 
 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 in which Henry VIII. died, the gallant Surrey, at 
 the age of twenty-seven, laid down his head upon the 
 scaffold. 
 
 Let me add a vivid description of the close of Henry',' 
 reign, and its connection with Howard's tragic end, t& 
 fix the memory of this early author by the help of the 
 dread association. 
 
 "It is fearful," says the author from whom I quote^* 
 "but not uusalutary, to cast a parting glance at the vicious 
 body of Henry VIII. after its work upon the earth was 
 done. It lay, immovable and helpless, a mere corrupt 
 and bloated mass of tyranny. No friend was near to com- 
 fort it; not even a courtier dared to warn it of its coming 
 hour. The men alone it had gorged with the offal of its 
 plunder, hurry back in affright from its perishing agonies, 
 in disgust from its ulcerous sores. It could not move a 
 limb nor lift a hand. The palace-doors were made wider 
 for its passage through them ; and it could only then pass 
 by means of machinery. Yet to the last it kept its ghastly 
 state, descended daily from bed-chamber into room of 
 kingly audience through a hole in the palace ceiling, and 
 was nightly, by the same means, lifted back again to its 
 sleepless bed. And to the last, unhappily for the world, 
 it had its terrible indulgences. Before stretched in that 
 helpless state of horror, its latest victim had been a Plan- 
 tagenct. Nearest to itself in blood of all its living kindred, 
 the Counte#s of Salisbury was, in her eightieth year, 
 dragged to the scaffold for no pretended crime, save that 
 of corresponding with her son; and having refused to lay 
 her head upon the block, (it was for traitors to do so, she 
 said, 'and she was mine,') but moving swiftly round, and 
 bossing it from side, to side to avoid the execution, sho
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 1(13 
 
 was struck down by the weapons of the neighbouring men- 
 at-arms, and while her gray hairs streamed with blood, 
 and her neck was forcibly held down, the axe discharged, 
 at length, its dreadful office. The last victim of all 
 followed in the graceful and gallant person of the young 
 Lord Surrey. The dying tyranny, speechless and inca- 
 pable of motion, had its hand lifted up to affix the formal 
 seal to the death-warrant of the poet, the soldier, the 
 statesman, and scholar, and on ' the day of the execution/ 
 according to Hollinshed, was itself ' lying in the agonies 
 of death.' Its miserable comfort, then, was the thought 
 that youth was dying too ; that the grave which yawned 
 for abused health, indulged lusts, and monstrous crimes 
 had, in the same instant, opened at the feet of manly 
 health, of generous grace, of exquisite genius, and model 
 virtue. And so perished Henry VIII."* 
 
 We pass on from the long and odious reign of the sire 
 to the short rule of his innocent and tender-hearted son, 
 
 " King, child, and seraph, blended in the mien 
 Of pious Edward."f 
 
 As the mind passes from this detested father to his son — 
 
 gentle Jane Seymour's gentle son — one cannot but think 
 
 how it exemplifies the truth which Landor's lines have 
 
 uold : 
 
 " Children are what the mothers are. 
 No fondest father's wisest care 
 Can fashion so the infant heart, 
 As those creative beams that dart, 
 With all their hopes and fears, upon 
 The cradle of a sleeping son. 
 
 * Forster's Troatise on Popular Progress, 
 f Wordsworth's Coll. Ed. p. 301.
 
 lfU LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 His startled eyes with wonder see 
 A father near him on his knee, 
 Who wishes all the while to trace 
 The mother in his future face; 
 But 'tis to her alone uprise 
 His wakening arms, to her those eyes 
 Open with joy, and not surprise."* 
 
 Another copartnership in letters, closer than that of 
 Surrey and Wyatt, and suggesting another kind of as- 
 sociations, may be noticed in that part of the sixteenth 
 century which belongs to the reign of Edward VI. I 
 refer to the first version of the Psalms of David in 
 English metre, produced by two writers — whose names 
 have become the symbols of dulness and clumsy versifi- 
 cation — Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins. Un- 
 doubtedly the grandeur of the Hebrew Psalmody is very 
 inadequately represented in the flat and prosaic diction 
 and the awkward metres of these two good men ; but it 
 should be remembered that a worthy translation of the 
 Psalms into English metre has never yet been achieved ; 
 and, indeed, the best judges make question of the possi- 
 bility of such version. If this old version, three hundred 
 — » 
 
 * Mr. Landor's poems are so scattered, and in their modes of publi- 
 cation so fugitive, that they must often be quoted at second-hand. I 
 6nd these verses marked with my brother's pencil in a little French 
 volume callod, "La Petite Chouanncrie, ou Histoired'unCoIlege Breton 
 sous 1'Empire, par A. F. Rio," p. 296. I am tempted to put on these 
 pages the following lines, by Landor, on Charles Lamb, which ap- 
 peared during the present year in the Examiner newspaper : 
 
 "Candid old man ! what youth was in thy years! 
 What wisdom in thy levity ! what truth 
 In every utterance of tlfat purest soul ! 
 Few are the spirits of the glorified 
 I'd spring to oarlior at the gates of heaven !" W. B. R.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY- 165 
 
 years ago, is rude and uncouth, honourable testimony has 
 been borne to its fidelity to the Hebrew original. The 
 version of later times, now most in use, is at once tame 
 and tawdry, (worse faults than rudeness,) taking, too, larger 
 license with the original, and " generally," it is said, " sacri- 
 ficing altogether the direct, lightning-like force of the 
 inspired sentences."* 
 
 Much of Sternhold and Hopkins's version would cer- 
 tainly now so. affect the dainty modern ear, as to give a 
 sense of ridicule most incongruous to the theme; but the 
 reproach that rests on the old version may be lightened a 
 little, when we meet with a stanza like this : 
 
 " The Lord descended from above, and bowed the heavens most high, 
 And underneath his feet he cast the darkness of the sky; 
 On cherub and on cherubim full royally he rode, 
 And on the wings of mighty winds came flying all abroad. "f 
 
 However rude this version was, it has a claim to re- 
 spect as the first that fitted to English lips the music of 
 the royal inspired singer; and as the homely verses were, 
 years after, familiarized in the people's devotions, the 
 imagery of the Hebrew poetry was sinking into the hearts 
 of the men of England, and helping to form that sacred 
 character which is the glory of all the highest inspirations 
 of English poetry. 
 
 The progress of English prose, as it was slowly ad- 
 vancing to its best estate, appears, at the period I have 
 been speaking of, in the sermons of him whose intrepid 
 spirit and cheerful constancy sustained him in the hour of 
 
 * Keble. 
 
 f Psalm xviii. 9, 10. It is to be observed that more modern para- 
 phrasers of the Psalms have generally shrunk from rendering the&o 
 verses into their slender English. W. B. R. 
 L
 
 1C6 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 .nartyrdom — Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester. It 
 was in a sermon preached before Edward VI. that he in- 
 troduced, in accordance with the quaint pulpit-oratory of 
 the times, the well-known illustration of the Goodwin 
 Sands and Tenterden Steeple, in reply to a very common 
 fallacy; and the passage may be quoted to show the cha- 
 racter of the prose, which was then equal, at least, to 
 simple purposes of natural narrative : 
 
 " Here was preaching," he says, " against covetousness 
 all the last year in Lent, and the next summer followed 
 rebellion ; ergo preaching ' against' covetousness was the 
 cause of rebellion. A goodly argument ! 
 
 " Here, now, I remember an argument of Master 
 More's, which he bringeth in a book that he made against 
 Bilney ; and here, by the way, I will tell you a merry 
 toy. Master More was once sent in commission into Kent, 
 to help to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of 
 Goodwin Sands and the shelf that stopped up Sandwich 
 Haven. Thither conic th Master More, and calleth the 
 country afore him — such as were thought to be men of 
 experience, and men that could, of likelihood, best certify 
 him of the matter concerning the stopping of Sandwich 
 Haven. Among others, came in before him an old man 
 with a white head, and one that was thought to be little 
 less than an hundred years old. When Master More 
 saw this aged man, he thought it expedient to hear him 
 say his mind in the matter; for, being so old a man, it 
 was likely he knew most of any man in that prcsenco 
 and company. So Master More called this old aged man 
 unto him and said, ' Father,' said he, ' tell me, if ye can, 
 what is the cause of this great arising of the sands and 
 shelves here about thiu haven, the which stop it up that
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTUR/. 167 
 
 no ships can arrive here ? Ye are the eldest man that I 
 can espy in all this company, so that if any man can tell 
 any cause of it, ye, of likelihood, can say most in it, or, 
 at leastwise, more than any other man here assembled.' 
 ' Yea, forsooth, good master,' quoth this old man, ' for 1 
 am well-nigh an hundred years old, and no man here in 
 this company any thing near unto mine age.' ' Well, 
 then,' quoth Master More, ' how say you in this matter ? 
 What think ye to be the cause of these shelves and flats 
 that stop up Sandwich Haven V ' Forsooth,' quoth he, 
 1 1 am an old man ; I think that Tenterden Steeple is the 
 cause of Goodwin Sands. For I am an old man, sir,' 
 quoth he, ' and I may remember the building of Tenter- 
 den Steeple, and I may remember when there was no 
 steeple at all there. And before that Tenterden Steeple 
 was in building, there was no manner of speaking of any 
 flats or sands that stopped the haven; and, therefore, I 
 think that Tenterden Steeple is the cause of the destroy- 
 ing and the decay of Sandwich Haven.' And even so, to 
 my purpose, is preaching of God's word the cause of re- 
 bellion, as Tenterden Steeple was cause Sandwich Haven 
 is decayed." 
 
 There is one sentence of English words uttered by this 
 same divine, which has a deeper and more enduring inte- 
 rest, and that was when he and Ridley stood in their 
 dread fellowship of martyrdom at the stake; when the 
 fagot, kindled with fire, was brought and laid at Ridley's 
 feet, Latimer, happy, as the martyr's crown was poised 
 above his brow, on which four-score years had placed their 
 crown of glory, spake in this manner : " Be of good 
 cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man ; we shall this
 
 168 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as, 
 I trust, shall never be put out."* 
 
 The gentle Edward's reign had too quickly given place 
 to his sister's — that hateful reign — when the palace of 
 England's monarcbs grew dark with the power of the 
 detested Spaniard, and the long list of martyrs fastened 
 forever the title of "Wood" to the sweetest of female 
 names. Just at the close of Queen Mary's reign, Eng- 
 lish literature produced one work, showing a force of 
 imagination which would have placed its author in the 
 highest rank of our poets, had he not turned his genius 
 away from poetic study to devote it, during a very long 
 life, to the political service of his country. " The Mir- 
 ror of Magistrates" is the title of a work planned by 
 Thomas Sackville — Lord Euckhurst — and intended to 
 comprise a series of poetic narratives of the disasters of 
 men eminent in English story. The first of these, on the 
 Duke of Buckingham, with the preface, or " Induc- 
 tion," as it is styled, was all that was accomplished ; but 
 those four hundred lines displayed an inventive energy 
 which was a foreshadowing of the allegorical imagination 
 which soon after rose in " The Faery Queen." Sack- 
 ville's Induction stands as the chief, the only great poem 
 between the times of Chaucer and of Spenser. Allego 
 rical poetry presents no more vivid imagination than his 
 personification of war, or of old age, in that single line 
 
 "His withered fist still striking at death's iluor." 
 
 What a gloomy conception was the plan of the poem ! 
 It has been likened to a landscape which the sun never 
 shines on. More than that might be said, when we thiulr 
 
 * Life of Latimer, prefixed to his Sermons, vol. i. p. elvii.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 169 
 
 how congenial it was to the time of its composition. 
 There hung on Sackville's genius not only a dark gloom, 
 but it may be thought to have caught a ghastly com- 
 plexion from the lurid lights of the flames of religious 
 persecution. We may picture this thoughtful poet ; turn- 
 ing his footsteps beyond' the confines of London, en a 
 winter's day, the dreary season described at the opening 
 of the poem 
 
 "Wandering till nightfall, 
 The darke had dimm'd the day ere I was 'ware." 
 
 And what was the spectacle be might have encountered ? 
 The dispersing throng that had just gathered round the 
 stake, where flames had wrapped a mar tyr's body, the fire not 
 yet burnt out in the smouldering ashes; perhaps the deso- 
 late family, the outcast wife and children, lingering near 
 the spot where a spiritual hero had sealed his faith. It 
 was a fit season for poetry's darkest imaginings, and well 
 might Sackville frame his gloomy personification of sor- 
 row to guide him in fancy into the realms of death, to 
 hear there, from the lips of the dead, the stories of their 
 woes. Under this dreary guidance, his genius entered 
 into the shadowy domains of imagination ; but soon after 
 he brought the j>owers of his mind forth into the world's 
 political service, in which he continued during the whole 
 of Elizabeth's reign, and part of that of her successor, 
 when the hand of death was laid upon the veteran states- 
 man suddenly, at the council-board of James I. It is a 
 remarkable fact that, in actual life, he personally witnessed 
 two reverses of fortune — political downfalls transcending 
 any his* tragic muse could have called up in his mournful 
 poem. Sackville was one of the judicial tribunal which 
 pronounced the doom of Mary Stuart : it was from his 
 
 15
 
 170 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 lips that the unhappy Queen received the message of her 
 doom ; and it was part of his stern duty to behold the last 
 look of that royal fair one, the " long array of woes and 
 degradations" at length closing, and to witness the blow 
 which severed from a now wasted body the head that once 
 had glittered with the diadems of France and of Scotland. 
 It was also Lord Buckhurst's lot (and these were per- 
 haps the only two calamities of his long and honourable 
 career) to sit in judgment on the Earl of Essex, when that 
 nobleman fell from his high place of queenly favour. 
 
 The reign of Mary was followed by a period more pro- 
 pitious to the national literature, in the latter part of the 
 sixteenth century. Thathalf century, almostentire, wasthe 
 time of her sister's reign. In styling it the Elizabethan 
 literature, there is a propriety beyond mere chronological 
 convenience, for the influences of her reign were in mani- 
 fold ways favourable to the development of the mind, to 
 the expression of thought and feeling. The heart of the 
 sovereign beat with the heart of the people ; and chivalry 
 mingled with loyalty to do honour to the woman-monarch. 
 Such was the predominant feeling, passing, indeed, often 
 into the extravagance of adulation, but outlasting all her 
 pomp and powers; for, in the preface to our English ver- 
 sion of the Bible she stands recorded in the glowing 
 phrase, "that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth, of 
 most happy memory." In her sway, there was a magna- 
 nimity, which she had learned not in the luxuries of regal 
 childhood, but in the school of adversity and a doubtful 
 destiny. History presents no finer contrast than between 
 those two days of her life : the first, when, a culprit on 
 suspicion of treason, she was brought in custody along 
 the Thames, to be committed, to the Tower, and perceiving
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 171 
 
 that the barge was steering to the traitor's gate, she re- 
 fused to enter that guilty portal, and in the utter destitu- 
 tion of a young and unfriended woman, called God to wit- 
 ness she was innocent ; when the first intelligence that 
 reached her as a prisoner was that the scaffold had 
 already drunk the blood of a meeker victim, the Lady 
 Jane Grey, and she knew it was thirsting for hers. After a 
 few, though weary and dismal years, she was again an inmate 
 of the ancient fortress of the metropolis, but it was to go 
 forth the Queen of a rejoicing nation, surrounded by cohorts 
 of her devoted nobles, and multitudes of a happy people: and 
 when before the crown was set upon her brow, lifting her 
 eyes to heaven, she poured forth her fervid thankfulness to 
 the Almighty for his wondrous dealings, for his won- 
 drous mercies. " Wherever she moved," says the record of 
 this the first of her magnificent progresses, " it was to be 
 greeted by the prayers, the shouts, the tender words, and 
 uplifted hands of the people : to such as bade ' God save 
 your grace,' she said again, ' God save you all ;' so that on 
 either side there was nothing but gladness, nothing but 
 prayer, nothing but comfort."* 
 
 Such was the fit opening of a reign for which was des- 
 tined the highest glory that has dwelt with the nation's 
 language and literature. An impulse was given by the 
 civil and ecclesiastical condition of the realm, for it 
 abounded in all that could cheer and animate a nation's 
 heart. There was repose from the agony of spiritual per- 
 secution, submission to Rome was at an end, and the 
 church in England was once more standing on its ancient, 
 
 * HoUinshcd, as quoted in Miss Strickland's " Queens of England," 
 vol. vi. chap, iv, p. 127, Am. ed.
 
 172 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 British foundations. It mattered little what foreign dan. 
 ger threatened, for there was the proud sense of national 
 independence and national power, its moral force greater 
 even than its physical. I have spoken this evening of 
 wars, like the wars of York and Lancaster, fraternal feuds, 
 which waste and harden a nation's heart; but there are 
 wars of another kind which animate that heart with a 
 high enthusiasm, a truth well proclaimed in a strain of 
 lyrical poetry, fitting the ebb and flow which belong to 
 that species of song to truth's varied aspects : 
 
 "War is passion's basest game, 
 Madly played to win a name. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 War is mercy, glory, fame, 
 
 Waged in freedom's holy cause, 
 Freedom such as man may claim, 
 
 Under God's restraining laws."* 
 
 The same year in which Shakspeare is supposed to 
 have gone up from Stratford to London was a proud one 
 in his countiy's annals, for it was then that stout hearts 
 and the stormy alliance of the ocean saved the soil from 
 the pollution of foreign invasion, and the boastful attempt 
 of the Spaniard, whose hateful presence in the palace 
 when he shared the throne was not forgotten, and who 
 was coming now with the terrors of the Inquisition in 
 his train. When the scattered remnants of the Armada 
 were driven, not back to the ports of Spain, but as far 
 north as the stormy latitude of the Hebrides, there must 
 have been a high and general fervour kindling each heart; 
 and none more so than the large heart that beat in the 
 
 * Wordsworth's Ode on the Installation of Prince Albert as Chan- 
 cellor of tho University of Cambridge, in 1817.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 173 
 
 breast of William Shakspeare. An intense nationality, 
 and a happy loyalty to the government, as represented in 
 the sovereign — fervid as were these emotions in the days 
 of Queen Elizabeth — could not but affect vividly the 
 national literature, especially the dramatic literature, 
 placed as it was in close contact with the people. This 
 influence is manifest in Spenser, in Shakspeare, in Ben 
 Jonson, and all the great authors of the time; and doubt- 
 less it was one of the causes that helped them to their 
 greatness. 
 
 The English language, too, was now better fitted for 
 all the uses of literature, more adequate to the needs of 
 philosophic thought, and of deep and varied feeling — at 
 once stronger, more flexible, and more copious. It was 
 now flowing one mighty flood, no longer showing the 
 separate colours of the two streams which filled its 
 channel — colours caught from the different soils, the 
 Saxon and the Norman, in which they had their springs. 
 The hidden harmonies of the language were disclosed, 
 and its power of more varied nrusic shown. The people's 
 speech had grown to its full stature.* The language 
 became affluent in expressions incorporated with it from 
 the literature of antiquity, for classical learning in its 
 
 * Dr. Johnson, ^n the preface to his Dictionary, a work demanding 
 his gigantic powers and congenial to them, has admirably remarked, 
 that " From the authors which arose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech 
 might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If 
 the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the trans- 
 lation of the Bible ; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon ; tho 
 phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect oK 
 poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sydney; and the diction of com- 
 mon life from Shakspeare, — few ideas would be lost to mankind, for 
 want of English words in which they might be expressed." II. It. 
 
 15«
 
 174 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 best forms was made, as it were, part of the mind of 
 modern Europe; and in England, under Elizabeth, the 
 great universities, which during the immediately previous 
 reigns had suffered from violence that had pierced even 
 those tranquil abodes, were gathering anew their scattered 
 forces. The attainments of the Queen herself, gained by 
 the superior education which Henry VIII. had the sagacity 
 to give his daughters, (it is one of the few good things to 
 be said of him,) created another sympathy between the 
 sovereign and her subjects. Beside the influence of 
 ancient literature, necessarily limited to the learned, there 
 was the larger and more open influence of the nation's 
 own older literature — Chaucer's poetry dear to the peo- 
 ple, and honoured by his grateful successors — for it was 
 to Chaucer, let it be remembered, that Spenser applies the 
 well-known phrase, the " well of English undefiled." 
 There was the early romance, and that strange expres- 
 sion of the mediaeval mind, the " Mysteries" and "Mo- 
 ralities,," " Miracle Plays" — that allegorical drama, in 
 which abstractions were personified, and the actors were 
 Buch things as " Pride," "Gluttony," " Swift-to-Sin," 
 " Charity," and, what might perhaps be the more appro- 
 priate personifications for later times, " Learning-without- 
 money," and " Money-without-learning," and " AU-for- 
 money." In the great controversy of the Reformation, 
 these devices for edification were freely employed by both 
 divisions of the church to promote their respective 
 opinions. An act of parliament in the reign of Henry 
 VIII., for the promotion of true religion, forbade all in- 
 terludes contradictory to established doctrines. In the 
 preparatory processes of the Elizabethan literature, there 
 was also the early minstrelsy in all its forms, tales told
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 175 
 
 by the fireside in the long English winter evenings, and 
 songs sung, as Shakspeare speaks of, by women as they 
 eat spinning and knitting in the sun. How deep was the 
 influence of the popular minstrelsy, is apparent from that 
 well-known sentence of Sir Philip Sydney : " I never heard 
 the old song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my 
 heart moved more than with a trumpet ; and yet it is 
 sung but by some blinde crowder, with no rougher voice 
 than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the 
 dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, 
 trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?"* Syd- 
 ney's feeling becomes still more intelligible when we re- 
 call how the same strain clung to the heart of Walter 
 Scott, (it was his favourite of the old ballads :) when 
 visiting the ruined castle of Douglas, feeling the sure 
 approaches of death, he repeated to Lockhart the old 
 poem, the pathos of the last stanza having an applica- 
 tion not to be mistaken, and leaving him in tears : 
 
 " My wound is deep — I fain would sleep — 
 
 Take thou the vanguard of the three} 
 And hide me beneath the bracken bush 
 
 That grows on yonder lilylee. 
 This deed was done at the Otterbourne, 
 
 About the dawning of the day ; 
 Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush, 
 
 And the Percy led captive away."f 
 
 Thus, as I have sought to show, there were propitious 
 influences, from the past and of the present, which gave 
 to our language the most illustrious period of its litera- 
 ture — that which is usually called the " Elizabethan," 
 
 * Defence of Poesy, p. 34. Oxford od. 1829. 
 \ Lockhart's Scott, vol. x. p. 86.
 
 176 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 passing over into the seventeenth century. First in it, 
 was the English version of the Bible ; for, although the 
 present standard is that of King James, published in 
 1611, it belongs more properly in tbe history of English 
 literature to an earlier period, modelled, as the new trans- 
 lation was, after Archbishop Parker's, commonly called 
 « The Bishop's Bible," of the year 1568. The first of 
 the instructions given to the translators in King James's 
 time, was, "The ordinary Bible read in the churches, 
 commonly called the Bishop's Bible, to be followed, and 
 as little altered as the original will permit." We may, 
 therefore, associate the language of our Bibles more truly 
 with the as;e of Elizabeth than with that of the first of 
 the Stuarts. To the same period belongs the first of the 
 great English prose-writers, llichard Hooker, the earliest 
 of that unbroken series of authors, during the last two 
 hundred and fifty years, who have shown the resources of 
 oar English prose; Bacon, Taylor, Milton, and Barrow, Dry- 
 den, Bolingbroke, Swift, and Burke, Johnson, Goldsmith, 
 and Cowper, and, in our own times, Scott and Southey, 
 Sydney Smith and Landor. Mr. Hallam, in his Consti- 
 tutional History, turns aside from his subject to express 
 his deep sense of the claims which Hooker, as the author 
 of the " Ecclesiastical Polity," has " to be counted among 
 the great luminaries of English literature. He not only 
 opened the mind, but explored the depths of our native 
 eloquence. So stately and graceful is the march of his 
 periods, so various the fall of his musical cadences upon the 
 ear, so rich in images, so condensed in sentences, so grave 
 and noble his diction, so little is there of vulgarity in 
 his racy idiom, of pedantry in his learned phrase, that 1 
 know not whether any later writer has more admirably
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. 177 
 
 displayed the capacities of our language, or produced pas- 
 sages more worthy of comparison with the splendid monu- 
 ments of antiquity." * 
 
 The chief glory, however, of the Elizabethan age, is 
 its poetry, at once the most abundant and the highest in 
 the annals of English literature. No fewer than two 
 hundred poets are referred to the period by a cata- 
 logue which, by good authority, is thought not to exceed 
 the true number. But it is not number alone. There are 
 the names of Edmund Spenser and of William Shaks- 
 peare. 
 
 When Spenser, in 1590, gave to the world the first 
 books of " The Faery Queen," it was done in a manner 
 worthy of the age and of his great inspiration. It was 
 dedicated to his Queen — "The most high, mighty, and 
 magnificent empress, renowned for piety, virtue, and all 
 gracious government, Elizabeth, by the grace of Gcd, 
 Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and Virginia." 
 Yes, there stands the name of that honoured State; and, 
 while there is many a reason for the lofty spirit of her 
 sons, the pulse of their pride may beat higher at the sight 
 of the record of " the ancient dominion" on the first page 
 of the Faery Queen. The poet placed it there as a tri- 
 bute to her from whom the name was taken, and also to 
 the gallant enterprise of Raleigh and his adventurous 
 followers. 
 
 The poem is ushered in not only by the dedication to the 
 sovereign, but by a series of introductory verses addressed 
 to the most illustrious statesmen and soldiers of the court, 
 Hatton, and Burleigh, and Essex, Howard, Walsingkam, 
 
 * Hallam's Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 291.
 
 178 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 and Raleigh — to Buckhurst, (whose own muse was slumber* 
 ing now;) and not only to these, the living men of power and 
 place, but, with a truth of affection worthy of the poet's 
 gentle spirit, to the mourning sister of his lost friend, Sir 
 Philip Sydney, and closing with an address, full of the 
 chivalry of the times, " to all the gratious and beautiful 
 ladies in the court." 
 
 Having occasion now to hasten to a few other subjects, 
 I propose to reserve what I wish to say of the Faery Queen, 
 until the nest lecture, when I desire to speak of Spenser 
 as a sacred poet, in connection with some counsel on the 
 subject of Sunday reading. At present, let me recommend 
 that remarkable series of papers from the pen of Professoi 
 John Wilson — the Christopher North of Blackwood'i 
 Magazine — papers of the highest value as pieces of trut 
 imaginative criticism, written with such a glowing admi- 
 ration of Spenser's genius, that I know of no better mean.! 
 than the perusal of them for extending the study of this 
 great allegory. They are to be found in Blackwood's 
 Magazine for 1833. 
 
 The large luminary of Spenser's imagination had scarce 
 mounted high enough above the horizon to kindle all it 
 touched, when there arose the still more glorious shape of 
 Shakspeare'sgenius, radiantlikc Milton's seraph — "another 
 morn risen on mid-noon." This was the wonderful dra- 
 matic era in English letters. Within about fifty years, 
 beginning in the latter part of the sixteenth century, there 
 was a concourse of dramatic authors, the like of which is 
 seen nowhere else in literary history. The central figure 
 is Shakspeare, towering above them all ; but there */«irc 
 there, Ben Jonson, and Beaumont, and Fletcher, ar»d 
 Ford, and a multitude of whom a poet has said,
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURY. . 179 
 
 '• They stood around 
 The throne of Shakspoare, sturdy, but unclean."* 
 
 Their productions were numerous : one of them, Heywood, 
 speaks of having had a share in the authorship of two 
 hundred and twenty plays, of which only twenty-five have 
 been preserved. They often worked, too, in fellowship, 
 such as linked the names of Francis Beaumont and John 
 Fletcher forever together — a beautiful literary companion- 
 ship, the secret of which seems to be lost in the more cal- 
 culating selfishness of later times. 
 
 It is scarce possible, it seems to me, to mistake that 
 this abundant development of dramatic poetry was cha- 
 racteristic of times distinguished by the admirable union 
 of action and contemplation 'in many of the illustrious 
 men who flourished then; for instance, Sir Philip Sydney 
 devoting himself to the effort of raising English poetry to 
 its true estate, kindling his heart with the old ballads, or 
 drawing the gentle Spenser forth from the hermitage ol 
 his modesty; at the same time sharing in affairs of state. 
 in knights' deeds of arms, and on the field of battle meet- 
 ing an early death, memorable with its last deed of charity, 
 when, putting away the cup of water from his own lips burn 
 ing with the thirst of a bleeding death, he gave it to a 
 wounded soldier with the words, "Thy necessity is yet 
 greater than mine :" or Raleigh preserving his love of 
 letters throughout his whole varied career, at court, in 
 camp, or tempest-tost in his adventures on the ocean. It 
 seems to me that an age thus characterized by the combi- 
 nation of thought and deed in its representative men, had 
 its most conp-cnial literature in the drama — that form of 
 
 * Walter Savage Landor.
 
 ISO LECTURE FIFTH". 
 
 poetry which Lord Bacon has described as "history made 
 visible." 
 
 I have said little of the greatest name that adorns the 
 literature of the age of Elizabeth and the few succeeding 
 years, and have now left myself no space to speak of what 
 demands such ample room as comment on Shakspeare. 
 It is a field that has been of late very much travelled 
 over. Its interest, if truly sought, can never be exhausted. 
 There is a mere chance that I may be pointing your atten- 
 tion to what has not attracted it before, when I ask 
 whether you have ever noticed the power of Shakspeare 
 peculiarly as a writer of English prose. Of its kind, it is 
 as admirable as his poetic language. It is interspersed 
 through his plays, never introduced probably without some 
 exquisite art in the transition from verse to prose, from 
 metrical to unmetrical diction. Let us for a few minutes 
 look at this subject, and I will place side by side two 
 passages, counterpart in some measure in subject; first, 
 of verse, that familiar passage on the music of the spheres, 
 which Hallam's calm judgment pronounced "perhaps the 
 most sublime in Shakspeare :"* 
 
 * Hallam's Literature of Europe, chap. iii. g 11, vol. iii. p. 147. It 
 is difficult to refrain from quoting, hackneyed as they are, the lines 
 which immediately precede those in the text, the playful dialogue of 
 the Venetian lovers, ending with the solemn, reverential outburst of 
 Lorenzo, as, turning from the bright, mortal eyes of his mistress, he 
 Looks up to the stars of heaven. There are some lines of Shelly, on 
 Night, which do not suffer in comparison with any thing sinco the 
 Merchant of Venice : 
 
 "How beautiful this Night! the balmiest sigh 
 Which venial zephyrs breathe in morning'6 ear, 
 Wore discord to the speaking quietude
 
 IITERATURE OF XVI. CENTORY, 1OT 
 
 "Look, how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold! 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiriug to the young-eyed cherubim. 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls : 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 
 
 Whose prose but Sliakspeare's could stand by the side 
 of such verse? I turn to an equally familiar passage in 
 Hamlet : " I have of late (but wherefore, I know not) 
 lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise : and, 
 indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this 
 goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory : 
 this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave 
 o'erhangiug firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with 
 golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a 
 foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece 
 of work is a man ! How noble in reason ! How infinite 
 
 That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon arch, 
 Studded with stars unutterably bright, 
 Through which the moon's unclouded splendour rolls, 
 Seems like a canopy which love has spread 
 To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
 Robed in a garment of untrodden snow: 
 Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 
 So stainless that their white and glittering spires 
 Tinge not the moon's pale beam; yon castled steep, 
 Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 
 So idly, that wrapt fancy deemeth it 
 A metaphor of Peace, — all form a scene 
 Where musing solitude might love to lift 
 Her soul above this sphere of earthliness : 
 Where silence undisturbed might walk alone, 
 So cold, so bright, so still." W. B. R. 
 M 16
 
 182 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and admi- 
 rable ! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, 
 how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of 
 animals ! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of 
 dust ? Man delights not me, nor woman neither, though, 
 by your smiling, you seem to say so." 
 
 Now let me exemplify a quick transition from prose to 
 verse : when Coriolanus is soliciting the plebeian votes, 
 citizens tell him he has not loved the common people : the 
 irony of his answer is prose : — " You should account me 
 the more virtuous, that I have not been common in my 
 love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn brother, the people, to 
 earn a dearer estimation of them ; 'tis a condition they 
 account gentle ; and since the wisdom of their choice is 
 rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the 
 insinuating nod, and be off to them most counterfeitly; thai 
 is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular 
 man, and give it bountifully to the desirers. Therefor* 
 beseech you, I may be consul." The bitterness of tb'i 
 soliloquy that follows is verge : 
 
 "Better it is to die, better to starve, 
 Than crave the hire which first we do deserve. 
 Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here, 
 To beg of Hob and Dick, that do appear, 
 Their needless vouches? Custom calls mo to't: 
 What custom wills, in all things should we do't, 
 The dust on antique time would lie unswep't, 
 And mountainous error be too highly henp'd 
 For truth to overpecr. Rather than fool it so, 
 Let tho high office and the honour go 
 To one that would do thus." 
 
 The poet's power over language as an instrument is 
 curiously apparent in this, that when he so purposes, he 
 takes all heart out of the words, and makes them sound
 
 LITERATURE OF XVI. CENTURl*. ■ 183 
 
 as if they came merely from the lips. Observe how this 
 occurs in the speeches of Goneril and Regan as contrasted 
 with Cordelia's words : or the contrast between the utter 
 hollowness of the king's request to Hamlet, and the reality 
 that there is in bis mother's language. The king's is 
 thus : 
 
 " For your intent 
 In going back to school in Wittenberg: 
 It is most retrograde to our desire ; 
 And we beseech you, bend you to remain 
 Here, in the cheer and comfort of our age, 
 Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son." 
 
 The queen speaks to her son : 
 
 " Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet, 
 I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg." 
 
 I propose in my nest lecture to pass to the literature 
 of the seventeenth century, and to connect with it some 
 lb. mghts on the subject of Sunday reading.
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 ITiftrafum of tbc f&zbiv&zzvcfy Ccntvtrg, ferilh inribental 
 Suggestions on Svuibaji ^cubing* 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity — Progress of English literature — Sir 
 Walter Raleigh's History of the World — Bacon's Essays — Mil- 
 ton — Comus — Hymn on the Nativity — Suggestions as to Sunday 
 reading — Sacred books — Forms of Christian faith — Evidences of 
 religion — Butler's Analogy— Charles Lamb's Remarks on Stack- 
 house — History of the Bible — Jeremy Taylor — Holy Living and 
 Dying- 1 — Life of Christ — Pulpit-oratory — Southey's .Book of tho 
 Church — Thomas Fuller — Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets — 
 Jzaak Walton's Lives — Pilgrim's Progress — The Old Man's Home — 
 George Herbert — Henry Vaughan — Milton resumed — Paradise Lost 
 — Criticism on it as a purely sacred poem — Shakspeare's modo of 
 treating sacred subjects — Spenser — The Faery Queen — John Wes- 
 ley — Keble's Christian Year — George Wither — Aubrey De Vere — 
 Trench's sonnet. 
 
 In following the progress of English literature, the 
 difficulty of considering it according to what may be re- 
 garded as the successive eras is greatly increased the far- 
 ther we advance. The literature becomes more abundant 
 in both departments, prose as well as verse, and the in- 
 fluences that affect it, and are affected by it, are found to 
 be more various and complicated. English prose-writing 
 was hardly entitled to be looked on as literature until 
 nearly two hundred years after English poetry had dis- 
 closed many of its finest resources. .. It was not till about 
 the year 1000 that Hooker, in the " Ecclesiastical Polity," 
 
 * February 7, 1S50. 
 184
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. CENTURY. 185 
 
 accomplished for English prose what Chaucer had done 
 for English poetry before the year 1400. Accustomed, as 
 we now are, to the combination of prose and poetry as 
 making up a literature — language unmetrical filling, too, 
 a larger space than the metrical — we are apt to forget how 
 long a period there was during which English literature 
 may truly be said to have been without its prose. In the 
 early literature, therefore, Chaucer may be thought of as 
 the solitary rather than the central figure ; and thus of 
 such a period a general view may be taken, which, at the 
 same time, may show the individual genius that belonged 
 to it. As we move forward, however, we find a more nu- 
 merous company of poets, each having claim to attention, 
 and, along with them, an increasing concourse of the 
 prose-writers. You can readily perceive how it becomes 
 more and more difficult to make any such grouping of the 
 many actors in our literature, at the several periods, as may 
 set them before you a well-arranged company rather than 
 a confused throng ; to discover which was the great mind 
 of the age, and yet not lose sight of others that circled 
 round it. We trace the progress of the nation's litera- 
 ture more laboriously, ^because more and varied elements 
 entered into it, and because more minds were contributing 
 to it. It becomes more necessary, in a brief and outline 
 course of lectures like this, to allude, in a very cursory 
 manner, to authors and their productions, well deserving 
 extended consideration under more favourable circum- 
 stances. 
 
 As I have advanced toward that period of our litera- 
 ture in which names illustrious, both in prose and in 
 poetry, come crowding to our thoughts, I feel the necessity 
 of asking you to bear in mind that this course of lectures 
 
 16*
 
 1S6 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 was designed to be merely of a suggestive character, to 
 present a general view of the progress of English litera- 
 ture, and its condition at successive periods, rather than a 
 detailed examination of particular authors or books. 
 
 It is possible to arrange in our minds the literature of 
 our language into a series of successive eras, and this may 
 be done with somewhat more precision than would at 
 first be anticipated ; for it is not a mere arbitrary, chrono- 
 logical distribution, corresponding with centuries or reigns, 
 but an arrangement according to a certain set of influences 
 affecting; the English mind and character during a given 
 length of time, more or less definite, to be succeeded by 
 a new set of influences, producing a new phase of the 
 nation's literature. Such a general view of English lite- 
 rature is important, not only as saving one from a great 
 deal of confusion of thought on the subject, but also as 
 enabling us to see the great authors of different times, 
 each in his appropriate grouping, and to carry out special 
 courses of reading. The succession of our literary eras, 
 with a little reflection and effort of memory, may be so 
 familiarized as not to be forgotten. The earliest era — the 
 age of Chaucer, as it may aptly be styled — the last, half 
 of the fourteenth century, was characterized by the va- 
 rious influences which marked the mediaeval civilization ; 
 the closing century of which civilization, from 1400 to 
 1500, was, in consequence chiefly of internal commotion 
 in England, a hundred years' sleep of the English mind, 
 so far as literature was concerned. The first half of the 
 sixteenth century his no more than a comparative inte- 
 rest, as a period in which the English mind was making 
 its transition from mediaeval to modern modes of thought 
 and feeling, affected, too, in some degree, by the change
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. CENTURY. 187 
 
 of the nation's ecclesiastical position. The latter part of 
 the sixteenth century and the first part of the seventeenth 
 century — in other words, the reigns of Queen Elizabeth 
 and of James the First — form properly one era, al- 
 though it is usually styled the Elizabethan era, in conse- 
 quence, perhaps, of the greater glory of that reign in 
 other matters than letters. The latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, after the Restoration, is the beginning of 
 an era extending into the eighteenth century, with which, 
 as a truer connection, I propose to consider it in the next 
 lecture, directing my attention now to the early and 
 middle portion of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The prose literature of the early part of the seventeenth 
 century received its most important addition in what may 
 be said to be the second (in time) of the great English 
 prose-works — Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, 
 the work with which he beguiled the years of his imprison- 
 ment; his mind, within the prison-walls, travelling out into 
 the remote regions of the ancient world's story, as actively 
 as his body, in its years of freedom, had mingled with his 
 fellow-men, and roamed over the distant spaces of the sea. 
 
 To the same period of our prose literature belong the 
 ■Authorship and the philosophy of another man famous 
 (and I had almost said infamous, too) in public life — 
 Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and 
 (would it had not been so) Lord High Chancellor of Eng- 
 land. His philosophical works belong not so much to 
 literature as to that high department of science which is 
 meant to guide human inquiry, and mark out the bound- 
 aries of human knowledge. His volume which does belong 
 to literature in the more exact sense of the term, is the 
 small one of " Essays or Counsels. Civil and Moral;" and
 
 188 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 it does so, for a reason, which he has himself assigned, in 
 a phrase which has become one of the familiar phrases of 
 the language : when, after the cloud had fallen on his cha- 
 racter, he collected these miscellanies — he said, "I do now 
 publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been 
 most current; for that, as it seems, they come home to 
 men's business and bosoms." That the Essays do so ad- 
 dress themselves thus universally and intimately to man- 
 kind, is apparent from a mere glance at the list of titles; 
 and that they contain a perpetual interest, is shown from 
 the manner in which their condensed wisdom may be 
 evolved for new applications — a condensation of wisdom 
 which is united with much of the imaginative processes of 
 thought, and is therefore doubly valuable as one of the 
 books of discipline for well teaching. " Few books," says 
 Mr. Hallam, "are more quoted, and what is not always 
 the case with such books, we may add, that few are more 
 generally read. In this respect they lead the van of our 
 prose literature : for no gentleman is ashamed of owning 
 that he has not read the Elizabethan prose-writers; but it 
 would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest 
 claim to polite letters were he unacquainted with the 
 Essays of Bacon. It is, indeed, little worth while to read 
 this or any other book for reputation's sake; but very few 
 in our language so well repay the pains or afford more 
 nourishment to the thoughts. They might lie judiciously 
 introduced, with a small number more, into a sound method 
 of education — one that sin mid make wisdom, rather than 
 mere knowledge its object, and might become a text-book 
 of examination in <mr schools."* 
 
 * Literature of Europe, vol. iii. chap. iv. Ji xxxiv. p. 341
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. CENTURY. 189 
 
 In that which, is essentially the literature of the seven- 
 teenth century — prose as well as poetry — the name of Mil- 
 ton is prominent, the beginning and the end of his career 
 approaching respectively the opening and the close of the 
 century. I speak of this, not simply as a matter of date, 
 but on account of the relation of that career to the age 
 in which it was cast. The first part of Milton's literary 
 life is full of a beautiful reflection of the age that had gone 
 before ; his genius is then glowing with tints of glory cast 
 upon it by the Elizabethan poetry : the meridian of it is in 
 close correspondence with the season of the power of the 
 Parliament and the Protector, when Milton stood side by 
 side with Cromwell ; and the latter period of it (which I 
 propose to speak of in the next lecture) was that of sub- 
 lime and solitary contrast with the times of Charles the 
 Second. The first was the genial season of youth, studious, 
 pure, and happy; the second was of mature manhood, 
 strenuous in civil strife, and the dubious dynasty of the 
 Protectorate ; the third was old age, darkened, disappointed, 
 but indomitable. 
 
 Of Milton's early poems, the most beautiful is the ex- 
 quisite Masque of Comus, one of the last and loveliest 
 radiations of the dramatic spirit, which seemed almost to 
 live its life out in about half a century of English litera- 
 ture, beginning in the times of Queen Elizabeth, and 
 ending in those of Charles the Pirst. It has been said by 
 more than one judicious critic of another of Milton's 
 early poems, " Lycidas," that the enjoyment of it is a 
 good test of a real feeling for what is peculiarly called 
 poetry. Of Comus, I think, it might be said, as truly as 
 of any poem in the language, that it is admirably adapted 
 to inspire a real feeling for poetry. It abounds with so
 
 190 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 much of true imagination, such attractiveness of fancy, 
 such grace of language and of metre, and withal contains 
 so much thought and wisdom wherewith to win a mind 
 unused to the poetic processes, that were I asked what 
 poem might best be chosen to awaken the imagination to 
 a healthful activity, I would point to Milton's Comus, as 
 better fitted than almost any other for the purpose. The 
 poem, both in the conception and the execution, finely 
 illustrates the power of the imagination, its moral al- 
 chemy in 
 
 "Turning the common dust 
 Of servile opportunity to gold ; 
 Filling the soul with sentiments august, 
 The beautiful, the brave, the holy, and the just."* 
 
 For, observe on what a homely and familiar incident the 
 poet has built up this beautiful superstructure of fancy 
 and philosophy. When he was dwelling at his father's 
 rural home, the Earl of Bridgewater was keeping his court 
 not far off, at Ludlow Castle, and it happened that his 
 two sons, and his daughter, the Lady Alice Egerton, were 
 benighted and bewildered in Haywood Forest; where the 
 brothers, seeking a homeward path, left the sister alone 
 awhile in a tract of country inhabited by a boorish pea- 
 santry. Such was all the story, simpler than the ballad 
 of the Children in the Wood ; and yet it is transfigured 
 into a poem of a thousand lines — a moral drama showing 
 the communion of natural and supernatural life, the mys- 
 terious society of human beings, and the guardian and 
 tempting spirits hovering round their paths: it teaches, 
 with a poet's teaching, how the spiritual and intellectual 
 
 * Wordsworth's Desultory Stanzas. Works, p. 243.
 
 
 'viiui 
 
 LITERATOBE 
 
 OF XVII. CENTURA 191 
 
 nature may be in. peril from the charms of worldly plea- 
 sures, and how the philosophic faith and the heaven- 
 assisted virtue are seen at last to triumph. The guardian- 
 ship of ministering angels — their encampment round the 
 dwellings of the just — is finely announced in the opening 
 lines, spoken by the attendant spirit alighting in the 
 wood, where the human footsteps are astray : 
 
 " Before the starry threshold of Jove's court * 
 My mansion is, where those immortal shapes 
 Of bright aerial spirits live insphered, 
 In regions mild of calm and serene air, 
 Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
 Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care, 
 Confln'd and pester'd in this pinfold here, 
 Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, 
 Unmindful of the crown that virtue gives 
 After this mortal change to her true servants, 
 Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats. 
 Yet some there be that by due steps aspire 
 To lay their just hands on that golden key 
 That opes the palace of eternity; 
 To such my errand is ; and but for such, 
 I would not soil these pure ambrosial weeds 
 With the rank vapours of this sin-worn mould." 
 
 The genuine power of invention displayed in Comus is 
 not disparaged ; nay, the beauty of it is heightened, by 
 the lights it reflects from the elder poets, of whom Milton 
 was deeply studious, for he knew that poetry is not in- 
 spiration alone, but art no less. There are passages 
 which seem almost like echoes of the sweet modulations 
 of Shakspeare's sentences — combinations of words which 
 we should say were Shakspeare's, could we forget they are 
 Milton's, as when the bewildered lady speaks : 
 
 "A thousand phantasies 
 Begin to throng into my memory,
 
 192 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, 
 
 And airy tongues, that syllable men's names 
 
 On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses. 
 
 These thoughts may startle well, but not astound, 
 
 The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 
 
 By a strong-siding champion, Conscience. 
 
 Oh ! welcome pure-eyed Faith, whito-handed Hope, 
 
 Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings, 
 
 And thou, unblemished form of Chastity; 
 
 I see ye Visibly, and now believe 
 
 That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 
 
 Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, 
 
 Would send a glist'ring guardian, if need were, 
 
 To keep my life and honour unassailed." 
 
 Again, there are passages which blend with a music of 
 their own the melody of both Spenser and Shakespeare — 
 the music of their words and of their thoughts — as when 
 the brother speaks : 
 
 "I do not think my sister so to seek 
 Or so unprincipled in Virtue's book, 
 And the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever, 
 As that the single want of light and noise 
 (Not being in danger, as I trust she La not) 
 Could stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts, 
 And put them into misbecoming plight. 
 Virtue could sec to do what Virtue would, 
 By her own radiant light, tho' sun and moon 
 Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self 
 Oft seeks to sweet, retired solitude, 
 Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation, 
 She plumos her feather.-, and lets grow her wings, 
 That in tho various bustle of resort 
 Weroall too ruffled, and sometimes impaired. 
 He that has light within his own clear breast 
 May sit in the centre, and enjoy bright day." 
 
 When the lady is at last rescued from the wicked 
 magic that encircled her, the good attendant spirit, his
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. CENTURY. 193 
 
 guardianship achieved, speeds away like Ariel, set free to 
 the elements, and leaves in poetry words of encourage- 
 ment and promise to humanity : 
 
 "Now my task is smoothly done, 
 I can fly or I can run 
 Quickly to the green earth's end 
 Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bond, 
 And from thence can soar as soon 
 To the corners of the moon. 
 Mortals, that would follow me, 
 Love Virtue ; she alone is free : 
 She can teach ye how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery chime, 
 Or if Virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her." 
 
 One cannot part with this poem, radiant as it is with 
 what is bright and pure and lofty in poetry and philoso- 
 phy, without thinking how little that high-born woman, 
 when her heart was throbbing in the loneliness of Hay- 
 wood Forest — how little could she have thought- that a 
 young poet's words were to win for her more enduring 
 honour than wealth or heraldry could bestow. 
 
 The most distinct foreshadowing of Milton's great epic 
 poem, and of his own independent genius, is an earlier 
 poem — " The Hymn on the Nativity" — which gives the 
 poet the fame of having composed almost in his youth the 
 earliest of the great English odes, the like of which had 
 not, I believe, been heard, since Pindar, two thousand 
 years before, had struck the lyre for assembled Greece. 
 It is a lyric that might have burst from that religious 
 bard of paganism, could he have had prophetic vision of 
 the Advent. It is a poem that revealed a new mastery 
 of English versification, disciplined afterward f o such 
 
 17
 
 f94 LECTURE rflXTII. 
 
 power in the blank verse of Paradise Lost. Nothing m 
 the way of metre can be grander than some of the 
 transitions from the gentle music of the quiet passages to 
 the passionate parts, and their deep reverberating lines 
 that seem to go echoing on, spiritually sounding, long 
 after they are heard no more. The universal peace at 
 the time" of the Nativity is told with the very musi« <A 
 pence : 
 
 " No war or battle's sound 
 Was heard the world around ; 
 
 The idle spear and shield were high up hung : 
 The hooked chariot stood 
 Unstain'd with hostile blood; 
 
 The trumpet spake not to the armed throng ; 
 And kings sat still with awful eye, 
 As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by. 
 
 But peaceful was the night 
 Wherein the Prince of Light 
 
 His reign of peace upon the earth began : 
 The winds, with wonder whist, 
 Smoothly the waters kist, 
 
 Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on tho charmed wave." 
 
 The stanzas that tell of hopes of a golden age again 
 are followed by that solemn one : 
 
 " But wisest Fate says no, 
 This must not yet be so; 
 
 The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy, 
 That on the bitter cross 
 Must redeem our loss, 
 
 So both himself and us to glorify ; 
 Yet first to those ychaincd in sleep 
 The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the doep." 
 
 The grandest portion of this poem is that which tells
 
 LITERATURE OF XVIT. CENTURY. 195 
 
 of the flight of the false deities of heathendom, the 
 panic of the priests, the silencing of the oracles, and the 
 cessation of the services of superstition, when the star 
 was seen over the infant Saviour. The profusion of 
 mysterious epithets and the dim imagery seem to blend 
 the magic of the dark incantations of Shakspeare's witch- 
 craft with the splendours of Greek mythology. Pagan- 
 ism and superstition — Europe's, Asia's, Africa's — all, 
 with all the host of their ministry, are vanishing like 
 witches at the touch of music — a babe's cry heard from 
 the manger at Bethlehem throughout the spiritual uni- 
 verse : 
 
 • The oracles are dumb ; 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 
 Runs through the arched roof in words doceiving. 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine, 
 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 
 Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 
 
 The lonely mountains o'er, 
 And the resounding shore 
 
 A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; 
 From haunted spring and dale, 
 Edged with poplar pale, 
 
 The parting Genius is with sighing sent : 
 With flower-inwoven tresses torn, 
 The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. 
 
 * * 9 * * 
 
 And sullen Moloch, fled, 
 Hath left in shadows dread 
 
 His burning idol all of blackest hue • 
 In vain with cymbals' ring 
 They call the grisly king, 
 
 In dismal dance about the furnaco blue :
 
 190 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 The brutish gods of Nile as fast 
 
 Isis and Orus and the dog Anubis haste. 
 
 Nor is Osiris seen, 
 
 In Memphian grove or green, 
 
 Trampling the unshowcr'd grass with lowings loud; 
 Nor can he be at rest 
 Within his sacred chest; 
 
 Nought but profoundest hell can be his shroud : 
 In vain with timbrel'd anthems dark 
 The sable-stoled sorcerers bear his worshipt ark. 
 
 He feels from Juda's land 
 The dreaded Infant's hand." 
 
 Of Milton's various prose-writings, and of his epic 
 poems, it would hardly be possible to say much in a ge- 
 neral lecture on the literature of the century. What I 
 have to say respecting the Paradise Lost, I propose to 
 put in this course in another connection. 
 
 I have ventured to include, in the subject of this 
 evening's lecture, some suggestions on Sunday reading ; 
 and, in turning aside to this topic, let me first explain why 
 I have connected it with this portion of my course. The 
 literature of the seventeenth century includes that which 
 is most generally regarded as the great sacred poem of our 
 language — I mean, of course, the Paradise Lost; and, 
 again, it- is the most illustrious age of English pulpit- 
 oratory and of theological literature. Let me, in the 
 next place, say, that I trust it will not be thought pre- 
 sumptuous or impertinent in me to introduce, even some- 
 what casually, into a course like this, the subject of Sun- 
 day reading. I am truly solicitous, on the one side, not
 
 SUNDAY READING. ,197 
 
 to put my hand unduly upon sacred subjects, which are 
 appropriate to another profession of public teachers ; and, 
 on the other, not to treat those sacred subjects, so far a? 
 I may have occasion to touch them, as ordinary topics of 
 literature and taste. The literature which is associated 
 with holy things must be approached with the reverential 
 feeling with which the picture of a sacred subject should 
 be looked on, remembering that there is due to it some- 
 thing deeper than unloving, technical criticism of art. 
 
 I have been attracted to this subject by the conviction 
 that every Sunday has its unappropriated portions of 
 time, and also that there is an abundant literature, in 
 English words, to be used appropriately to the day, and 
 beneficially. The week-day opportunities for reading 
 vary very much with the business and duties of our 
 lives ; but our Sundays, with the rest they bring, put us 
 all more on an ecpiality. The most punctual attendance 
 on public worship does not absorb the day ; and, the day's 
 duties discharged, the evening can have no better employ- 
 ment than that which is in-door and domestic. There 
 are the contingencies, too, that compel the spending of 
 the whole day at home ; and I believe that is a sore trial 
 to those who have no resources for the employment of it. 
 This is a great pity, considering how large those resources 
 are. I do not propose to speak of the study of the Bible, 
 because I am not willing to treat that as a literary occu- 
 pation. It stands on higher ground, and ground of its 
 own. 
 
 With regard to modes of Christian faith and systems 
 of church-government, it surely is becoming fur every 
 one, both man and woman, to' have an intelligent know- 
 ledge of their belief and membership Tt is right to 
 N
 
 1!)8 LECTURE SIXTH 
 
 hold, with confidence and charity combined, to well-formed 
 and precise principles, in all that we profess to give 
 our spiritual allegiance to ; to understand our own position 
 and to feel the strength of it, instead of that careless igno- 
 rance, that latitudinarian indiiference, which is seen and 
 heard so much of — a mock liberalism, which I speak of as 
 unreal, because, often when it is put to the test, it is found 
 to cover either a hollow scepticism or a bitter intolerance, 
 instead of genuine Christian charity. 
 
 In the discipline of habits of reading, it is on many ac- 
 counts important to draw a line of distinction between 
 week-day reading and Sunday reading. Independently of 
 the propriety of making the reading subservient to'the uses 
 of the day, such appropriation is desirable as a means of 
 securing acquaintance with a large and very valuable por- 
 tion of English literature — the department of its sacred 
 literature being very extensive both in prose and poetry ; 
 so extensive, indeed, that when this habit is well formed 
 and cultivated, it will be found that the Sunday reading 
 is more apt to encroach on the week-day reading than the 
 reverse. 
 
 The choice of books must be not only reverently suited 
 to the day, but also large in their influences. It should 
 be no narrow choice, for such would be unworthy of the 
 manifold power of the day. It may associate with bonks 
 which are formally and directly connected with sacred 
 subjects, and others no fess sacred in their influences, he- 
 cause the sanctity is held more in reserve, acting, ii 
 may be, more deeply, because less avowedly. 
 
 The sacred literature of our language may be described 
 as containing books on the 'evidences of religion, sermons, 
 devotional books, church history, biographies of saintly
 
 SUNDAY READING. 199 
 
 men and women, travels in the Holy Land, sacred allego- 
 ries and other prose stories, and sacred poetry. The un- 
 appropriated portions of the Sundays of a long life might 
 find in the English books on such subjects varied and un- 
 failing delight and spiritual health. 
 
 Of one of the classes of books named, those on the evi- 
 dences, it appears to me that injudicious use is not unfre- 
 quently made.- If a man is an unbeliever, these books 
 may be good for him ; or if he has to deal with unbelievers, 
 they may be of service to him : but to a believing Chris- 
 tian, man or woman, many a well-intentioned work of this 
 kind may be not only worthless, but injurious. A great 
 work, such as Bishop Butler's, may indeed be invaluable 
 both as a discipline of thought and as strengthening the 
 intellectual conviction of the truth of revelation ; or such 
 works as the Bridgewater Treatises may help to deepen 
 the sense of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the 
 Creator, as displayed in the universe. But there is a 
 multitude of books which, I fear, are mischievous, for 
 they tell the believing, faithful spirit of doubts which such 
 a spirit never would have dreamed of — doubts engendered 
 in the hard heart of unbelief, the miserable sophistries 
 which skepticism has spun out. Why should the happy 
 heart of belief even look at, much less pore over, such 
 things, studying the refutation of fallacies never else 
 heard of'/ What need of the antidote, if the poison would 
 not come nigh you ? Why should believing Christian people 
 think it worth while to waste their time and thoughts upon 
 such things? and above all, why the fresh and docile and 
 believing spirit of youth, manly or womanly youth— the be- 
 lieving children of believing parents — be trained in the 
 knowledge of what Hume denied, and how Gibbon scoffed,
 
 200 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 and the ribald deism of Paine, for the sake jf being 
 taught how these things may be answered? A little 
 argumentative strength of belief may be gained, (per- 
 haps,) but there is danger in the process that the power 
 of affectionate, instinctive belief — a thousand-fold more 
 precious — may be at the same time wasting and worn 
 away. 
 
 Charles Lamb's recollection from childhood of Stack- 
 house's History of the Bible is full of warning on this 
 subject. "I remember," he says, "it consisted of Old 
 Testament stories, orderly set down, with the objection 
 appended to each story, and the solution of the objection 
 regularly tacked to. that. The objection was a summary 
 of whatever difficulties had been opposed to the credibility 
 of the history by the shrewdness of ancient or modern 
 infidelity, drawn up with an almost complimentary excess 
 of candour. The solution was brief, modest, and satis- 
 factory. The bane and antidote were both before you. 
 To doubts, so put, and so quashed, there seemed to be an 
 end forever. The dragon lay dead for the foot of the 
 veriest babe to trample on. But — like as was rather 
 feared than realized from that slain monster in Spenser — 
 from the womb of those crushed errors young dragonets 
 would creep, exceeding the powers of so tender a St. 
 George as myself to vanquish. The habit of expecting 
 objections to a passage set me upon starting more ob- 
 jections, for the glory of finding a solution of my own for 
 them. I became staggered and perplexed, a skeptic in 
 long coats. The pretty Bible stories which I had read, 
 or had heard read in church, lost their purity and sin 
 eerity of impression, and were turned into so many his- 
 t,oric "i' chronologic theses to be defended against whatever
 
 SUNDAY READING. 20J 
 
 impugners. I was not to disbelieve them, but — the next 
 thing to that — I was to be quite sure that some one or 
 other would or had disbelieved them. Next to making a 
 child an infidel, is the letting him know that there are 
 infidels at all/'* 
 
 Such an influence is not limited to childhood, but 
 affects in like manner the spirit of belief at any age; and 
 therefore it is safer and wiser to seek no knowledge of 
 atheism, or deism, or skepticism, even in the refutation 
 of them. 
 
 This also should be borne in mind, that the evidences 
 of religion, as discussed in the last century, when they 
 were most rife, present Christianity in a defensive apo- 
 logetic attitude, which is unworthy of it. The literary 
 leaders of the times were the infidels Bolingbroke, and 
 Hume, and Gibbon, and others earlier and later, the 
 British infidelity which was followed by French infidelity. 
 The insolence of unbelief had risen high, and the tone of 
 the faithful was depressed ; a style of defence prevailed 
 which is out of place in a better age, where no infidel 
 author has bold prominence in literature. That subdued 
 mode of warfare with skepticism was oddly adverted to 
 at the time by George the Third, (who, whatever his 
 faults were, had the merit of being the first moral man that 
 had sat on the British throne for more than a century :f) 
 when Bishop Watson- published his "Apology for the 
 
 * Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 150. Essay on Witches and other Night 
 Fears. 
 
 f In Lord Mahon's last volume of " The History of England," are 
 two letters of George the Third to Bishop Hurd, on the death of one 
 of his children, in 1783, which brightly illustrate the King's private and 
 familiar character. Vol. vii. Appendix, p. 34. W. ii. R.
 
 202 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 Bible," George the Third remarked, " Apology ! I did 
 not know that the Bible needed an apology." 
 
 Turning to the sacred literature of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, you find in it not only greater power of argumenta- 
 tion, but also blended with it a fervid devotional spirit, 
 the glow of genuine imagination, kindling narrative, 
 reasoning, persuasion, philosophy, — all with one broad 
 light, so that it is not the logical faculty which alone is 
 appealed to, but the whole spiritual nature, the intellect, 
 and the heart, the soul of man. This would be seen most 
 clearly, perhaps, in the writings of the most imaginative, 
 and eloquent of the great divines of that century — Bishop 
 Jeremy Taylor : his Sermons, or his " Holy Living and 
 Dying," the volume which may be spoken of as the most 
 admirable manual of devotion in the language, or to that, 
 the greatest probably of all his works, " The Life of our 
 Saviour." Before those who are acquainted with the 
 writings of Jeremy Taylor, I would not trust myself to 
 speak of them, without a larger opportunity to do honour 
 to them than time would now give me : to those who 
 have yet in reserve the delight which such acquaintance 
 gives, I could hardly so speak that the soberest truth 
 should not sound like exaggeration. Every thing, almost, 
 that is attractive in a merely literary point of view, is to 
 be found there : a boundless variety of illustration gathered 
 by a marvellous scholarship, the deepest and the gentlest 
 habits of feeling, an opulence of imagination and fancy 
 like Shakspeare's or Spenser's, and a style that is the music 
 worthy of such a spirit. A few years ago, the writings 
 of Jeremy Taylor existed only in the early Folios, but 
 now they are accessible in the more convenient forms of 
 modern editions. The Iluly Living and Dying, published
 
 SUNDAY BEADING. 203 
 
 separately, and in many editions, is a volume not to 
 borrow, not to take out of a library, but to own, to hold 
 it as a possession. 
 
 Without attempting to speak of Barrow, or the other 
 great English divines of a former age, 1 can only remark, 
 that the literature is abundant in specimens of pulpit 
 wisdom and oratory; and that in our own day, the 
 strength and beauty of the olden time in this respect 
 have come back again in some of the contemporary sermon 
 literature. 
 
 The history of the Christian church is another subject 
 on which English literature gives us reading at once most 
 agreeable and instructive. All the charms of Southey's 
 prose may please you in his " Book of the Church;" or 
 turning to the old church historian, Thomas Fuller, you 
 may find in his History of the Church in Great Britain 
 (one of the most remarkable works in the language) the 
 varied powers of learning, sagacity, pathos, an overflowing 
 wit, humour, and imagination, all animating the pages 
 of a church history. The interest in this subject may be 
 expanded and deepened by the studious reading of that 
 poetic commentary on church history, the series of Words- 
 worth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets, in which the poet-historian, 
 with all a poet's truthfulness and feeling, has traced the 
 course of Christian faith, from the trepidation of the 
 Druids at the first tidings of the Gospel, onward through 
 the various fortunes of the church, down to the consecra- 
 tion of the first American Bishop. This series of poems 
 is a bcutiful and salutary study in connection with 
 English history, for there is not an important event, or 
 period, or influence, or saintly character in me annals of 
 the cVr «,h in England, on which there is not shed the
 
 204 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 light of wise, imaginative, and feeling commentary. You 
 have not forgotten, perhaps, the lines which in a former 
 lecture I quoted, on the conversion of the Saxon king, 
 and the incident that led to it. 
 
 Much appropriate Sunday reading is supplied by the 
 biography of the good men and women of early and late 
 times. Amid the large variety of such records, one may 
 be named — none more modest in origin, more unambitious 
 in plan, but none more admirable as a memorial. I refer 
 to Izaak Walton's Lives, of which the poet has said : 
 
 " There are no colours in the fairest sky 
 So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen 
 Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men 
 Dropped from an angel's wing."* 
 
 Passing to the imaginative side of our literature, there 
 is the sacred prose allegory, " The Pilgrim's Progress," 
 a work second, I believe, only to Robinson Crusoe in the 
 largeness of the audience it has gained in the world. 
 Allegory has been beautifully revived in our own day in 
 " The Old Man's Home."t 
 
 To any one who justly appreciates the moral uses of 
 poetry as a spiritual ministry, it will be apparent that it 
 should enter, well chosen, into our Sunday reading ; and 
 there is no more marked characteristic of English litera- 
 ture than the abundance and excellence of its sacred 
 poetry. The seventeenth century contributed largely to it — 
 beautifully so in the well-known poems of that saintly coun^ 
 try parson, George Herbert, and in the poetry, almost un 
 
 * Wordsworth, p. 306. Sonnet on Walton's Book of Lives, 
 f Tho Old Man's Homo, by the Reverend William Adams, M.A 
 Author of " The Shadow of the C'ro.ss."
 
 SUNDAY READING 206 
 
 Known, till its recent reproduction, fit to be associated 
 with Herbert's — the poems of Henry Vaughan ; and in 
 later times the English muse has not been regardless of 
 its peculiar sacred functions. 
 
 I must hasten, however, to the great sacred poems of the 
 language, and recur first to Milton's epics. Of these poems, 
 considered with reference to imaginative power, and all its 
 accessories of wondrous verse, no language could express 
 too strongly one's sense of their sublimity and beauty. 
 Not only for poetic description of nature and regions super- 
 natural, but also in deep human interest, the Paradise 
 Lost stands among the world's great poems. But when 
 we study it as a sacred poem, and ask ourselves carefully 
 .as to the religious impressions it gives, the character 
 becomes questionable. This is chiefly in two respects: 
 the character of Satan, and the bold handling of the 
 Divine nature. The Miltonic Satan is undoubtedly one 
 of the most stupendous and awful creations of poetry; one 
 of its grandest studies, but there is a heroic grandeur 
 in it which wins, do what you will, a human sympathy. 
 It is impossible to look on the Apostate Angel without 
 awe, and somewhat of admiration, rather than abhorrence; 
 sometimes perhaps with something of pity, as in that 
 famous passage, where, having called his followers, myriads 
 of the fallen angels thronged around their chief, and the 
 peerage of Pandemonium stood in mute expectation of his 
 
 voice. 
 
 " Thrice he essay'd, and thrice, in spite of scorn, 
 Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth." 
 
 It was from such a representation of Satan as is given 
 throughout the poem, that Arnold's deep religious feeling 
 revolted, remarking, that "by giving him a human likc- 
 
 18
 
 20<i LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 ness, and representing him as a bad man, you necessarily 
 get some images of what is good as well as of what is bad; 
 for no living man is entirely evil. Even banditti have 
 some generous qualities; whereas the representation of 
 the devil should be purely and entirely evil, without a 
 tinge of good, as that of .God should be purely and entirety 
 good, without a tinge of evil ; and you can no more get the 
 one than the other from any thing human. With the 
 heathen it was different; their gods were themselves made 
 up of good and of evil, and so might well be mixed up with 
 human associations. The hoofs and the horns and the 
 tail were all useful in this way, as giving you an image 
 of something altogether disgusting. And so Mephisto- 
 philes in Faust, and the other contemptible and hateful 
 character of the Little Master, in Sintram, are far more 
 true than the Satan of the Paradise Lost."* 
 
 With regard to Milton's hardihood in carrying his ima- 
 gination into the mysteries of the being of the Most High, 
 and the unreserved freedom with which the Father and 
 the Saviour are set before us in this dramatic epic, I be- 
 lieve that even the least sensitive reader must be conscious 
 of an instinctive shrinking from many passages of the 
 poem. It is in this, even more than in the character of the 
 Arch-fiend, that the Paradise Lost — and the Paradise Re- 
 gained also — may blunt the sense of adoration, and lower, 
 instead of raising, some of the emotions which sacred 
 poetry ought to inspire. There are passages in the poems 
 which, perhaps, it would be better never to read a second 
 time. I should be loth to read them aloud here, because 
 it would be difficult to divest them of a certain air of 
 
 * Arnold's Life und Correspondence, in a note to Appendix C, p. 468.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 207 
 
 irreverence, which was not a purposed irreverence in the 
 pure and lofty soul of Milton, but was an unconscious 
 manifestation of the intellectual pride which was part of 
 his character, and of the spiritual pride which belonge 1 
 to his times. 
 
 There is an impressive contrast between the spirit with 
 which Milton and Shakspeare have treated the most sacred 
 subjects. A reverential temper, less looked for in the dra- 
 matic bard, marks every passage in which allusion is made 
 to such subjects — a feeling of profound reverential reserve : 
 and as this may not have been generally observed, let me 
 group some brief and characteristic passages together. 
 There is the beautiful allusion to Christmas in Hamlet : 
 
 " Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes 
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
 This bird of dawning singeth all night long: 
 And then, they say, nor spirit dares stir abroad; 
 The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, 
 No fairy takes, no witeh hath power to charm, 
 So hallow'd and so gracious is the time." 
 
 The mention, in Henry the Fourth, of the Holy Land— 
 
 " those holy fields 
 Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet, 
 Which, fourteen hundred, years ago, were nail'd, 
 For our advantage, on the bitter cross." 
 
 Again, the single line in Winter's Tale, in which Poly- 
 genes refers to Judas and the betrayal 
 
 "my name 
 Be yok'd with his, that did betray the best!" 
 
 The allusion to the scheme of Redemption and to the 
 Lord's Prayer in Portia's plea for mercy 
 
 " Though justice be thy plea, consider this — 
 That in the course of justice none of us 
 Should see salvation ; we do pray for mercy;
 
 208 LECTURE SIXTII. 
 
 / 
 
 And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
 The deeds of mercy." 
 
 And most impressive, perhaps, of all — the deep feeling in 
 the words of the saintly Isabella : 
 
 "Alas! alas ! 
 Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once ; 
 And he, that might the 'vantage best have took 
 Found out the remedy : How would you be 
 If he, which is the top of judgment, should 
 But judge you as you are ? think of that ; 
 And mercy then will breathe within your lips 
 Like man new made." 
 
 I can do little more now than allude to a contrast still 
 more striking between Milton's want of reverential re- 
 serve and Spenser's handling of religious truth, moving 
 gently and with awe, as if with an ever-abiding sense 
 that the ground he was treading on was holy ground. 
 It was characteristic of Milton and of his times, when 
 religion was freely talked about and rudely handled, to 
 make his great epic avowedly a sacred poem — to put it in 
 direct connection, if possible, with scriptural subjects. 
 The genius of Spenser could not have ventured on what 
 would have seemed to his gentle and reverential nature 
 a profane handling of hallowed things and thereupon he 
 employed, not the direct, but the veiled mode of sacred 
 instruction. That veil interposed by his imagination was 
 a gorgeous one, so interwoven with the richness of pagan- 
 poetry, " barbaric gold," and of romantic Christian 
 fancy, that the dazzled eye often fails to look through it 
 to the scriptural truth that is steadily beaming there. 
 'Treat injustice is done lo Spenser, when, bewildered 
 with the mazes of his inexhaustible creations, or by 
 the brightness of his exuberant fancy, we see in the
 
 SUNDAY READING. 209 
 
 Faery Queen nothing more than a wondrous fairy tale, a 
 wild romance, or a gorgeous pageant of chivalry. Be- 
 yond all this, far within it, is an inner life ; and that is 
 breathed into it from the Bible. It is the great sacred 
 poem of English literature^/" I dare be known to think," 
 said Milton, addressing the Parliament of England, " our 
 sage and serious poet, Spenser, a better teacher than 
 Scotus or Aquinas."* "When John Wesley gave direc- 
 tions for the clerical studies of his Methodist disciples, 
 he recommended them to combine with the study of 
 the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Testament, the read- 
 ing of the Faery Queen ; and, in our own day, Mr. 
 Keble, the poet of "The Christian Year," has de- 
 scribed the Faery Queen as " a continual deliberate 
 endeavour to Enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous 
 feeling of an inquiring and romantic age on the side of 
 goodness and faith, of purity and justice. "f 
 
 Spenser himself, expounding his allegory to his friend 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, said, " The general end of all the 
 book is to fashion a gentleman, or noble person, in virtu- 
 ous and gentle discipline."! Christian philosopher, as 
 well as poet, Spenser's deep conviction, manifest through- 
 out the poem, was that the only discipline wherewith to 
 tame the rebellious heart of man is that morality which, 
 in one of his own sweet phrases, bears 
 
 "The lineaments of gospel-books. "g 
 
 * "Milton's ProseWorks, 8vo.p.l08. On Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. 
 
 f Quarterly Review, vol. xxxii. p. 225, June, 1825. In an article on 
 Sacred Poetry, attributed to Mr. Keble. 
 
 J Spenser's Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, prefixed to Poetical Works 
 vol. i. p. 5. 
 
 An Elegie on Friend's Passion for his Astrophell. Spenser's 
 
 Poetical Works, vol. v. p. 261. 
 
 18*
 
 ■-'10 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 The student of sacred poetry must not be startled at 
 meeting with thoughts, or rather images, drawn from other 
 sources than Holy Scripture. The imagination of a great 
 poet can make the heathen world tributary to the Chris- 
 tian ; you meet in the Faery Queen the exploded mytho- 
 logy of paganism, and Scripture story, so shadowed forth 
 together that the sanctity of the latter is no wise sullied 
 by the contact. When one of Spenser's heroes visits the 
 realms of the lost spirits, he beholds Tantalus with the 
 hunger and the thirst of ages on him, and the dread of 
 centuries to come; tind not far off another wretch, plunged 
 in the infernal waters, washing his blood-stained hands — 
 washing eternally, hopelessly, the deep damnation of Pon- 
 tius Pilate ; images, one caught from pagan fable, the 
 other from Holy Writ; images, too, of unending woe, the 
 sufferings hereafter of a wicked life. 
 
 In like manner, when Milton recounts the hosts of 
 Pandemonium, there is that transcendent effort of the 
 imagination by which he grasps the mythology of classi- 
 cal antiquity and thrusts it down into hell, ranging the 
 gods of Greece — Olympic Jove himself — with the inferior 
 powers of the apostate angels, Satan's followers and ser- 
 vants. It is a mistake, I think, to limit our notice of 
 sacred poetry to that which has an express and direct 
 connection with biblical topics, for it is a high prerogative 
 of the Christian imagination to rescue from the realms of 
 error, fictions and superstitions, and make them safely 
 subservient to the cause of revealed truth. It is this pro- 
 cess, admirably conceived and executed, which entitles 
 Southey's Curse of Kehama and Thalaba to be ranked 
 with the great sacred poems of the language. 
 
 Thus a large range may be demanded for sacred poetry;
 
 SUNDAY READING. 211 
 
 and yet in another aspect all narrowed to the -relation in 
 which it stands to revealed teaching and Holy Writ. 
 That remarkable poet of the seventeenth century, George 
 Wither — whose writings, unfortunately, are so little acces- 
 sible — seems to have been disposed to look more to the 
 resources of his own thoughts than either to the pro- 
 fession of preaching or the increase of books : he says it 
 was not his religion 
 
 " Up and down the land to seek, 
 To find those well-breath'd lecturers, that can 
 Preach thrice a Sabbath, and six times a week, 
 Yet be as fresh as when they first began." 
 
 And speaking of books, he writes : 
 
 "For many books I care not, and my store 
 Might now suffice me, though I had no more 
 Than God's two Testaments, and then withal 
 That mighty volume which the world we call; 
 For these well look'd on, well in mind preserved, 
 The present Age's passages observed; 
 My private actions seriously o'erviewed, 
 My thoughts recalled, and what of them ensued, 
 Are books, which better far instruct me can, 
 Than all the other paper-works of man; 
 And some of these I may be reading, too, 
 Where'er I come, or whatsoe'er I do."* 
 
 A poet, a happy-hearted poet, like Wither, whose 
 imagination could make cheerful employment within his 
 prison walls, might speak thus; but for our common 
 minds the poet's help is needed : it will often help us the 
 better to know and feel the three volumes with which the 
 old poet was content with — the two Testaments and the 
 mighty volume called the world; and doubtless not only 
 
 * Wither, as quoted in " Church Poetry," p 72.
 
 212 LECTURE SIXTII. 
 
 the sacred poetry, but all high and serious poetry, may 
 be traced to some germ of revealed truth. The highest 
 human poetry is in affinity with the divine poetry; and, 
 however they may differ in degree, I do not believe that 
 they are separated by characteristic difference in kind 
 What are the Latin hymns of the mediaeval church, such 
 as that famous one on the Day of Judgment, which clung 
 to the dying lips of Walter Scott, murmuring snatches of 
 it when his mind had on 'all else faded away, — what were 
 those poems but human versions of inspiration ?* What 
 are the hymns of Ken and of Keble but echoes from the 
 lyric song of the Bible ? Wordsworth's sublime com- 
 munings with nature do but amplify and reiterate the 
 Psalmist's declaration of the glory of God as manifested 
 in the universe ; and when the poet shows that 
 
 "Heavon lies about us in our infancy,"f 
 and teaches the holiness and beauty of the innocence of 
 childhood — a theme for sophisticated man to reflect on — 
 what is this but an expression of the truth that is con- 
 tained in the Saviour's words, " of such is the kingdom 
 of heaven?" 
 
 Aubrey De Vere's thoughtful lines on Sorrow, are but 
 va echo of the divine teaching : 
 
 1 "We very often beard distinctly tbe cadence of the Dies Irm : and 
 
 [ think the. very last stanza that we could make out was the still 
 
 greater favourite : 
 
 Stabat mater dolorosa, 
 
 Juxta crucem lachrymosa, 
 
 Dum pendobat filius." 
 
 Lockhart's Scott, vol. x. p. 214. As this volume is passing through 
 the press, we have received the news of Mr. Lockhart's death at Ab- 
 botsford, in Decembor, 1854. \V. B. R. 
 
 f Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality. Works, p. 388.
 
 SUNDAY KKADTNCi. 2i£ 
 
 "Count each affliction, whether light or grave 
 God's messenger sent down to thee. Do thou 
 With courtesy receive him : rise and bow, 
 And ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 
 Permission first his heavenly feet to lave. 
 Then lay before him all thou hast. Allow 
 No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow, 
 Or mar thy hospitality ,• no wave 
 Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
 The soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be, 
 Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate, 
 Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; 
 Strong to consume small troubles ; to commend 
 Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end."* 
 
 Again : another living poet does but teach how to apply 
 a well-known text, and feel its truth 'the more, when he 
 
 Says : 
 
 " Wo live not in our moments or our years — 
 The Present we fling from us as the rind 
 Of some sweet Future, which we after find 
 Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears, 
 And water it beforehand with our tears — 
 Vain tears for that which never may arrive ; 
 Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live 
 Neglected or unheeded disappears. 
 Wiser it were to welcome and make ours 
 Whato'er of good, though small, the Present brings — 
 Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers, 
 With a child's pure delight in little things ; 
 And of the griefs unborn to rest secure, 
 Knowing that mercy ever will endure. "f 
 
 This is a poet's teaching of the cheerfulness of Chris- 
 tian faith and the love of Christian content and happiness; 
 
 * Aubrey De Vere's Waldenses, with other poems quoted in an 
 Essay on De Vere's Poems, in Taylor's Notes from Rpoks, p. 215. 
 
 f Sonnet by the Rev. R. C. Trench, quoted in Church Poetry, or 
 Christian Thoughts in Old and Modern Vorso, p. 62. 

 
 .214 LECTURE SITXII. 
 
 and this is but the rebuke of unchristian sulleno-»«s, and 
 the praise of Christian thankfulness : 
 
 "Some murmur, when their sky is clear 
 
 And wholly bright to view, 
 If one small speck of dark appear 
 
 In their great heaven of blue. 
 And some with thankful love are fill'd 
 
 If but one streak of light, 
 One ray of God's good mercy gild 
 
 The darkness of their night. 
 In palaces are hearts that ask, 
 
 In discontent and pride, 
 Why life is such a dreary task, 
 
 And all good things denied ? 
 And hearts in poorest huts admire, 
 
 How love has in their aid 
 (Love that not ever seems to tire) 
 
 Such rich provision made."* 
 
 Thus do the Poets minister in the Temple. 
 
 * Trench's Poems, p. lift.
 
 LECTUKE Vli. 
 
 ^iterator* of % Jkfaniernilj anb (lighten!^ Cmtnries* 
 
 Milton's old age — Donne's Sermons — No great school of poetry with- 
 out love of nature — Blank in this respect between Paradise Lost and 
 Thomson's Seasons — Court of Charles the Second — Samson Ago- 
 nistes — Milton's Sonnets — Clarendon's History of the Rebellion — Pil- 
 grim's Progress — Dryden's Odes— Absalom and Achitophel — Rhym- 
 ing tragedies — Age of Queen Anne — British statesrnen-«-Essayists — 
 Tatler — Spectator — Sir Roger 1)9 Coverley — Pope — Lord Boling- 
 broke— English infidels — Johnson's Dictionary — Gray — Collins — 
 Cowper — Goldsmith — The Vicar of Wakefield — Cowper — Elizabeth 
 Browning. 
 
 In proceeding to the literature of the close of the 
 seventeenth century, we approach a period which is 
 marked by great change. Heretofore in the succession 
 of literary eras there had been a continuity of influence, 
 which had not only served to give new strength and 
 develope new resources, but to preserve the power of the 
 antecedent literature unimpaired. The preseut was never 
 unnaturally or disloyally divorced from the past. The 
 author in one generation found discipline for his genius 
 in reverent and affectionate intercourse with great minds 
 of other days. Such was their dutiful spirit of discipline, 
 streng-thenino- but not surrendering their own native 
 power — the discipline so much wiser and so much more 
 richly rewarded in the might it gains, than the self-suffi- 
 cient discipline, which, trusting to the pride of origi- 
 
 * Thursday, February 14, 1850 
 
 215
 
 216 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 nality or the influences of the day, disclaims the ministry 
 of time-honoured wisdom. Milton was studious of Spen- 
 ser, and Spenser was grateful and reverent of Chaucer ; 
 and thus, as age after age gave birth to the great poets, 
 they were bound " each to each in natural piety." But 
 when we come to those who followed Milton, the golden 
 chain is broken. The next generation of the poets aban- 
 doned the hereditary allegiance which had heretofore been 
 cherished so dutifully, transmitted so faithfully. 
 
 It was at this time that the earlier literature began to 
 fall into neglect, displaced with all its grandeur and 
 varied power of truth and beauty, displaced for more than 
 a century by an inferior literature, inferior and impurer, 
 so that for more than a hundred years, many of the finest 
 influences on the English mind were almost wholly with- 
 drawn. Indeed, it is only within the present century 
 that the restoration of those influences has been accom- 
 plished. Here we see within our own day, the revival of 
 early English literature, bringing from dust aud oblivion 
 the old books to light and life again, to do their perpetual 
 work upon the earth — the work that was denied to them 
 by an age that was unworthy of them. No longer since 
 than ten years or less, there was no good edition of the 
 complete works of Chaucer. Ten years ago, the sermons 
 of the greatest preacher of the times of James the First, 
 Donne, the Dean of S,t. 'Paul's, were almost inaccessible, 
 entirely so, I might say, to scholars in this country, in 
 the first aud very rare folio edition. Even the writings 
 of Jeremy Taylor were a rare treasure, until about twenty- 
 five years ago, Bishop Ileber did the good service of giv- 
 ing ready access to them in a modern edition ; and not to 
 speak of the miscellaneous literature, over which the dust
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 217 
 
 lay so thick, all the early dramatists, save Shaks- 
 peare, lay in comparative neglect till their recent resto- 
 ration. % 
 
 I refer to this neglect as both a symptom and a cause 
 of the decline of English literature, which began at the 
 close of the seventeenth century, and lasted for about a 
 century. Genius of a higher order would never have di- 
 vorced itself from such an influence. It would have 
 strengthened itself by loyalty to it. 
 
 Besides their disloyalty to the great poets who had 
 gone before, the poets of the new generation were guilty 
 of another neglect, equally characteristic, and more fatal 
 perhaps to high poetic aspirations ; I refer to the neglect 
 of the poetic vision of nature, external nature, the sights 
 and sounds of this material world, the glory of which, 
 proclaimed in divine inspiration, is ever associated with 
 " the consecration and the poet's dream." Who can 
 question, without questioning the Creator's wisdom and 
 goodness, that the things of earth and sky have their 
 ministry on man's spiritual nature? We may not be able 
 to measure or define it, but it is a perpetual and universal 
 influence, and it must be for good. Most of all is it 
 recognised by the poet, prepared as he is 
 
 "By his intense conceptions to receive, 
 Deeply the lesson deep of love which he 
 Whom nature, by whatever means, has taught, 
 To feel intensely, cannot but receive."* 
 
 No great poet, perhaps I may say no great writer, is 
 without the deep sense of the beauty and glory of the 
 
 * The Excursion, book i. 'M7.
 
 218 L E C T U It E S E V E N T H. 
 
 universe, the earth that is trod on, the heavens that are 
 gazed at. It is an element of the poetry of the Bible. 
 The classical poetry of antiquity shows it ; it abounds, in 
 vernal exuberance, in Chaucer; you meet with it per- 
 petually in Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and in 
 the prose of Bacon and Taylor. But when we come to 
 the next generation, particularly of poets, the spiritual 
 communion with nature was at an end. They had not 
 vision of sunlight or starlight, but were busy within doors 
 with things of lamp-light or candle-light. The}' took not 
 heed of mountain, or seaside, or the open field, and nature's 
 music there, but city, " the town," street and house were 
 all in all to them : 
 
 " The soft blue sky did never melt 
 Into their hearts."* 
 
 If it can be shown, as it undoubtedly can, that thought- 
 ful, genial communion with Nature is an accompaniment 
 of all poetry of the highest order, in all ages, surely we 
 may infer that a literary era which is deficient in this 
 element is the era of a lower literature. Now, it has 
 been ascertained, by careful examination, that, with two 
 or three unimportant exceptions, "the poetry of the pe- 
 riod intervening between the publication of the Paradise 
 Lost and Thomson's Seasons (a period of about sixty 
 years) does not contain a single new image of external 
 nature ; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which 
 it can be inferred that the eye of the poet had been 
 steadily fixed upon his object — much less that his feelings 
 had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine 
 
 : Pctor Bull, part i. p. 103.
 
 UTERATUKE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 219 
 
 imagination."* Let us now rapidly consider some of the 
 causes, o v , at least, accompaniments, of the degeneracy 
 of English literature, and particularly of its poetry, which 
 began in the latter part of the seventeenth century. 
 The civil war was over, and the fierce bloodshedding which 
 marked England's civil wars, and which should be an 
 awful warning to all who are sprung from that stock, the 
 strong usurpation of Cromwell had passed away — each 
 period with its evils. f The Restoration came, and what 
 were the evils that came alone; with it ? In the Middle 
 Ages, the miseries that were the common train of war in 
 Europe were pestilence and famine ; but, after the do- 
 mestic war in England in the seventeenth century — an ec- 
 clesiastical civil war — came debauchery, licentiousness, riot, 
 and blasphemy. The rigour of Puritanism once removed, 
 there came quickly in its stead a lawlessness in which the 
 exultation of triumph mingled, and men took a party 
 pride in immorality. All high moods of feeling were 
 ridiculed : honour was a jest, and so were justice and 
 dignity, and piety and domestic virtue ; and conjugal faith 
 
 * Appendix to Wordsworth's Works. Essay, p. 490. 
 
 •f- " The usurpation of Cromwell" is a phrase about which, in our 
 day, there may be some question, not, however, here to be discussed. 
 There is American authority for it, which I cite, as curiously illus- 
 trative of the cavalier tendencies of " the Father of bis country." In 
 1792, Washington sent to Sir Isaac Heard a memorandum as to his 
 family, which begins thus : 
 
 " In the year 1657, or thereabouts, and during the usurpation of 
 Oliver Cromwell, John and Lawrence Washington emigrated from the 
 North of England and settlod at Bridge's Creek, on the Potomac River, 
 in the county of Westmoreland. But from whom they descended, the 
 subscriber is possessed of no document to ascertain." — Sparks' Was).- 
 mgton, vol. xii. p. 54.7. W. B. R.
 
 220 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 was the greatest jest of all. The civil war had also de- 
 moralized the nation by breaking up the habits of domes- 
 tic life : households were destroyed, and their proprietors 
 found a shelter in taverns ; and when the necessity for 
 such disordered life had passed away, the low habits were 
 left behind. 
 
 To a nation, thus diseased, there was perpetually passing 
 the moral poison that issued from the avenues of the pa- 
 lace. From the earliest era of the history of the island, 
 no portion had been so loathsome as the quarter of a cen- 
 tury during which Charles Stuart, the younger, was on 
 the throne. When the early life of Queen Elizabeth was 
 visited with afflictions, she came forth from her trials with 
 a spirit chastened and invigorated for a mighty reign. 
 But upon Charges Stuart the lesson of adversity was 
 wasted. The bloody fate of his father might well have 
 thrown a solemn memory of the past over all his after 
 life. When the Restoration brought him once more to 
 the royal home of his childhood, he seems to have 
 mounted the throne with a determination to make up the 
 arrears of interrupted pleasure by a career of unrestrained 
 debauchery, the like of which had not been seen in Eng- 
 land before. The ancient palace was reeking with the 
 filthy atmosphere of the tavern or viler haunts of iniquity. 
 Moral opinion was scoffed at, and national honour be- 
 trayed. The monarch of that island which had inure 
 than once swayed the destinies of Europe, sold himself 
 to a monarch as profligate, but prouder, for Charles be- 
 came the mean-spirited pensioner of Louis the Fourteenth. 
 Vice was in riotous possession of the high places of the 
 land, and the throne was the seat of the scoffer. Look- 
 ing from the throne thus occupied, and begirt with profli
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 221 
 
 gates and wits, Shaftesbury, and Buckingham, and 
 Piochester, the old age of Milton is seen with heightened 
 Miblimity. There was hanging over the palace, the capi- 
 tal, the land, a dark atmosphere of sensuality, lurid, at 
 times, with such cruelties as mingle with heartless frivo- 
 lity ) and Milton had passed into that seclusion "of which 
 it his been grandly said : 
 
 " Milton, 
 Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart : 
 Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea — 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free."* 
 
 His varied career drew to a solemn ending. He who in 
 youth and early manhood had given the freshness of 
 poetic fervour a homage to the best of England's nobility, 
 the Egertons and Spensers ; he who roamed over the Alps 
 and Italy, visiting Galileo, and communing with the friend 
 of Tasso, and Italian scholars ; he who had stood by the 
 side of Cromwell and Fairfax and Vane, in their years of 
 power, — was now a lone man in the land, all his strife for 
 the commonwealth wasted, and left to what the world then 
 little heeded, but which has made his name immortal. It 
 is of this period of Milton's life, that Mr. Hallaui has elo- 
 quently spoken in a passage which I desire to quote, 
 especially for the sake of an educational suggestion which 
 accompanies it: 
 
 " Then the remembrance of early reading came over 
 his dark and lonely path, like the moon emerging from 
 the clouds. Then it was that the muse was truly his ; not 
 only as she poured her creative inspiration into his mind, 
 
 * Wordsworth, p. 213. Am. Ed. 
 
 IT?
 
 222 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 but as the daughter of memory, coming with fragments of 
 ancient melodies, the voice of Euripides, and Homer, and 
 Tasso; sounds that he had loved in youth, and treasured 
 up for the solace of his age. They who, though not endur- 
 ing the calamity of Milton, have known what it is, when 
 afar from books, in solitude or in travelling, or in the 
 intervals of worldly care, to feed on poetical recollections, 
 to murmur over the beautiful lines whose cadence has long 
 delighted their ear, to recall the sentiments and images 
 which retain by association the charm that early years 
 once gave them — they will feel the inestimable value of 
 committing to the memory, in the prime of its power, 
 what it will easily receive and indelibly retain. I know 
 not, indeed, whether an education that deals much with 
 poetry, such as is still usual in England, has any more 
 solid argument among many in its favour, than that it 
 lays the foundation of intellectual pleasures at the other 
 extreme of life."* 
 
 Such is the opinion of one of the most judicious minds 
 of the day — a mind trained in the most exact and laborious 
 historic research ; and I quote it because T apprehend that 
 among us the tendency of late years has been to neglect 
 this excellent discipline of the memory, which enabled our 
 
 * Literaturo of Europe, vol. 3. p. 425. The late Mr. Gallatin (at the 
 time I refer to more than eight}' years old) once told me that one of the 
 purest pleasures and consolations of his advanced years was the rocol- 
 lectioo of his earliest studies, his Latin and Greek which he had learned 
 at school, and passages of the ancient poets, that, without conscious 
 effort, were constantly. presenting themselves to his mind. The memo- 
 ries nf inter) liate polities, and finance, and business, active and un- 
 
 romittcd, were fading away, hut what lie learned by rule when a hoy 
 name baok fresh to cheer him. W. 1!. R.
 
 ,ITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 223 
 
 elders to keep that possession in their minds of long 
 passages of poetry, which, astonishes their feebler de- 
 scendants. 
 
 To return to Milton : he whose delight it had once been 
 to roam through woods, and over the green fields, was 
 now chained by blindness to the sunny porch of a subur- 
 ban dwelling. He whose heart's pulse was a love of inde- 
 pendence, was now a helpless dependent for every motion, 
 for all communion with books ; every step of him, who 
 had walked through all the ways of life so firmly, was at 
 the mercy of another. His spirit was darkened, too, with 
 disappointment in his countrymen, and with bitter memo- 
 ries of domestic discords. As the Comus was a beautiful 
 reflection of happy youth, the Samson Agonistes shadows 
 forth the gloomy grandeur of the poet's old age. In some 
 passages there is the breaking out of a bitter agony ; but a 
 stern magnanimity pervades the poem — a high-souled pa- 
 thos befitting the sorrows of a vancpiished, captive giant. 
 With our thoughts of the hero of the tragedy mingle 
 thoughts of the poet himself, for what was John Milton 
 in the degenerate days of Charles the Second, but a blind 
 Samson in the citadel of the Philistines ? In the words 
 the hero speaks, we seem to hear the voice of Milton's own 
 spirit, subdued to a gentle melancholy : 
 
 " I feel my gonial spirits droop, 
 
 * # * * 
 
 My race of glory run, and race of shame ; 
 And I shall shortly be with them that rest." 
 
 Before passing from this subject, let me briefly notice the 
 service which Milton rendered to English poetry in that 
 short series of short poems — his English Sonnets, which
 
 224 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 Doctor Johnson was disposed to dismiss with contempt.* 
 Heretofore that form of verse had been appropriated almost 
 exclusively to the expression of love or some tender emo- 
 tion • but Milton showed that it could be made a high 
 heroic utterance, as in that one on the massacre of the 
 Piedmontese, which is a solemn cry to Heaven for ven- 
 geance that seems to echo over the Alps. This service in 
 disclosing the hidden powers of the sonnet has been ac- 
 knowledged by Wordsworth : 
 
 " When a damp 
 Full round the path of Milton, in his hand 
 The Thing became a trumpet, whence he blow 
 Soul-animating strains — alas, too few !"f 
 
 And Landor has finely put this page of literary history 
 into three lines, (so much can a few words do in a master's 
 hand !) when speaking of Milton, he says, 
 
 " Few his words, but strong, 
 And sounding through all ages and all climes; 
 He caught the sonnet from tho dainty hand 
 Of Love, who cried to lose it; and he gave tho notes 
 To Glory." 
 
 Within the same twelve months in which Milton died, 
 occurred the death of the Earl of Clarendon, who, like 
 Milton in this, that in a season of political adversity ho 
 sought employment in letters, gave to English prose what 
 may be considered the first of the great English his- 
 tories — that wondrous portrait gallery, the "History of the 
 Rebellion." 
 
 To the English prose of the same period belongs a very 
 
 * " They deserve not any particular criticism, for of the bost it can 
 only bo said they aro nol bad." Life of Milton, p, 234. W. B. R. 
 t Wordsworth's Miscellaneous .Sonnets, |>. IS".
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 225 
 
 different work — associated also with the calamities of 
 authors — the "Pilgrim's Progress," the great sacred prose 
 fiction of our literature, which justifies the title given to 
 John Bunyan by D'Israeli, who calls him " the Spenser 
 of the people." It is one of the few books which, trans- 
 lated into the various languages of Europe, has gained an 
 audience as large as Christendom. In his own country, 
 he caught the ear of the people by using the people's own 
 speech — genuine, homely, hearty English — at the time 
 when the language was becoming vitiated, his simple 
 rhetoric being as he describes it in rude verse : 
 
 " Thine only way, 
 Before tliem all, is to say out thy say 
 In thine own native language, which no man 
 Now useth, nor with ease dissemble can."* 
 
 But the author who is most truly to be looked on as 
 the representative of the latter part of the seventeenth 
 century is Dryden, the laureate of the court of Charles 
 the Second. That degenerate era is reflected both in the 
 character of Dryden' s writings and in their quick-earned 
 popularity. Content to write for his own age alone, 
 rather than for all after-time, a brief popularity has 
 been followed by the utter neglect — a wise neglect — 
 of a very large portion of his voluminous productions. 
 His genius did not raise itself above his times, but 
 dwelling there, a habitation steaming with a thousand 
 vices, his garland and singing-robes were polluted by the 
 contagion. 
 
 Por wellnigh fifty years Dryden was contemporary with 
 Milton, living in the same city much of that time, and 
 
 * Quoted in Southey's Life of Bunyan, prefixed to his edition of 
 the Pilgrim's Progress, p. 29.
 
 22b LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 in occasional intercourse ; and I cannot but picture to 
 myself how different might have been the career of the 
 young poet, how much purer and nobler the issues of his 
 imagination, how much happier and more genial his life, 
 and how far more honoured his memory, if, instead of 
 setting himself in sympathy with the dominant influences 
 and fashions of the day, and serving them, he had sought 
 communion with the solemn solitude of Milton ! How 
 noble a spectacle it would have been for after ages to con- 
 template the older bard, blind, pooi', neglected, and with 
 a grieved but unconquered spirit, the younger poet seated 
 at the old man's feet, making himself a partner in his 
 fallen fortunes, honouring and cherishing him, and at the 
 same time fortifying his own heart, and enriching his own 
 imagination ! It would have been a filial piety, such as 
 Milton gladly would have rendered to Spenser — homage 
 such as Spenser would have paid to Chaucer. 
 
 But the soul of Dryden was not cast in heroic mould, 
 nor was it susceptible of that purity, and innocence, and 
 ardour of affection which is often associated with heroism. 
 Dazzled by the prize of a speedy popularity, and losing 
 sight of the poet's high spiritual ministry of "allaying 
 the perturbations of the mind, and setting the affections 
 in right tune," he turned to the base office of pampering 
 the vices of an adulterate generation. Even when his 
 youthful enthusiasm was fired with the ambition of com- 
 posing an epic poem on King Arthur and the Knights of 
 the Round Table, (the same subject which had attracted 
 Milton's young imagination,) the high design was swept 
 from his thoughts by the corruption of the times — sacri- 
 ficed to the ignominious thraldom he was held in by 
 patrons who, exacting unworthy service, would not suffer
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 22- 
 
 him to put on the incorruption of a great poet's glory.* 
 In Walter Scott's indignant lines : 
 
 " Dryden, in immortal strain, 
 Had raised the table-round again, 
 But that a ribald king and court, 
 Bade him toil on, to make them sport; 
 Demanded for their niggard pay, 
 Fit for their souls, a looser lay, 
 Licentious satires, song and play ; 
 The world defrauded of the high design, 
 Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line."f 
 
 When we look at Dryden's vigorous command of lan- 
 guage, in prose and verse, the poetic energy in those de- 
 partments in which his genius moved most freely, we may 
 well conceive that a higher region of authorship was in his 
 reach, had he united with intellectual cultivation that 
 moral discipline, which no endowment can dispense with, 
 without grievous peril to its powers. In the following 
 passage from his (Edipus, there is a certain tone of reflec- 
 tion and imagery which is not without resemblance to the 
 thought and language of Shakspeare : 
 
 * Dryden's intended epic was not a mere vision of youth, but, ac- 
 cording to his best biographers, was in his mind at different periods 
 of life, though always deferred by the low influences around him. At 
 one time, King Arthur was the theme ; at another, it was Edward 
 the Black Prince subduing Spain. {Mitford'a Life, Aldine Poeta,p. 78.) 
 Milton's young vision appears in his Epistle to Mansus : 
 "0 mihi si mea sors talem concedat amicum 
 
 Phoebseos decorasse viros qui tarn bene norit, 
 
 Siquando indigenas revocabo in carmina reges, 
 
 Arturumque etiam sub terris bella moventem ! 
 
 Aut dicam invictas sociali fasdere mensae 
 
 Magnanimos heroas ; et modo spiritus adsit 
 
 Erangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges !" W*. B. R 
 
 | Introduction to Marmion., Canto i. Poetical Works, vol. vii. p. 36
 
 fc>S LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 " Ha ! again that scream of woe ! * 
 
 Thrice have I heard, thrice since the morning dawn'd, 
 It hollow'd loud, as if my guardian spirit 
 Called from some vaulted mansion, ' CEdipus !' 
 Or is it but the work of melancholy ? 
 When the sun sets, shadows that showed at noon 
 But small, appear most long and terrible ; 
 So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads, 
 Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death ; 
 Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons. 
 Echoes, the very leavings of a voice, 
 Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves : 
 Ea"eh mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus, 
 While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, 
 And sweat with an imagination's weight; 
 As if, like Atlas, with these mortal shoulders 
 We could sustain tho burden of the world." 
 
 That one fine stanza in the Ode for St. Cecelia's Day, 
 shows what lyric grandeur Dryden might have at- 
 tained to : 
 
 "What passion cannot Music raise and quell? 
 When Jubal struck the chorded shell, 
 His listening brethren stood around, 
 And wondering, on their faces fell, 
 To worship that ceTestial sound ; 
 Less than a god they thought there could not dwell, 
 Within the hollow of that shell, 
 That spoke so sweetly and so well." 
 
 In no respect did Dryden more rashly and fatally aban- 
 don the authority of his great predecessors, than in his 
 attempt to introduce rhymed tragedies. The introduction 
 of rhyme into the dramatic poetry was a false substitute 
 for that exquisite blank-verse which, in the hand of a 
 great master, is at once so imaginative and natural, that it 
 sounds like an ordinary speech idealized — the dialect of 
 daily life in its highest perfection. Dut the rhymed dra-
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURI ES. 229 
 
 inatic dialect stood in no such near and truthful relation to 
 the realities of life, as I may show, perhaps, by a reference 
 to a variety of language occurring in Shakspeare. It will 
 be remembered that the chief and best reputation of Dry- 
 den lies in this, that he enlarged the domain of English 
 poetry by the production of the most nervous satire in 
 verse that English literature had yet known. It has been 
 said by Milton, in one of his prose works, that "a satire, as 
 it was born out of a tragedy, so ought to res|mble his 
 parentage, to strike high, and adventure dangerously, at 
 the most eminent vices among the greatest persons."* 
 Dryden's satire had this merit. It struck at Buckingham. 
 It was also employed on the unworthy versifiers and 
 scribblers, for authorship had degenerated to a low craft, 
 with all its worst enviousness and meanness, in dismal 
 contrast with that frank and hearty intercourse which dis- 
 tinguished the companionship of authors in an earlier 
 generation, living in genial fellowship, and weaving even 
 their inspirations together in partnership that was a 
 brotherhood. 
 
 A literary life like Dryden's closed with an old age 
 without dignity and without happiness — the remnant of 
 life, worn out in his Egyptian bondage, embittered both 
 by neglect and the memory of talents misspent in the 
 service of a sensual and sordid king and corrupt cour- 
 tiers. There was nothing of the grandeur of Milton's lonely 
 old age ; but, in the period of Dryden's desolation, we 
 may trace the chastening of adversity in some strains of a 
 hig-her mood, as in those admirable lines in which he tells 
 of his effort at Christian forbearance when provoked to 
 
 * Milton's Apology for Smectyninuus,^ vi. ProseWorks, p. 88, 8 vo. 
 P 20
 
 230 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 resent and retort. This passage is worthy of all praise, 
 especially when we remember his power of satire, his 
 unimpaired poetic invective, now controlled by a higher 
 principle : 
 
 " If joys hereafter must be purchased here 
 With loss of all that mortals hold so dear, 
 Then welcome infamy and public shame, 
 And, last, a long farewell to worldly fame ! 
 'Tis said with ease ; but, oh, how hardly tried 
 By haughty souls to human honour tied ! 
 Oh, sharp, convulsivo pangs of agonizing pride ! 
 Down then, thou rebel, never more to rise! 
 And what thou didst, and dost so dearly prize, 
 That fame, that darling fame, make that thy sacrifice. 
 'Tis nothing thou hast given ; then add thy tears 
 For a long rare of unrepenting years, — 
 'Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give : 
 Then add those maybe years thou hast to live ; 
 Yet nothing still : then, poor and naked, come, 
 Thy Father will receive his unthrift, home, 
 And thy blest Saviour's blood discharge the mighty sin."* 
 
 The death of Dryden took place in the year 1700, and 
 we pass into the literature of the eighteenth century, the 
 first, part of which is not unfrequently styled the Augustan 
 age of Queen Anne. It was Augustan in that men of 
 letters were basking in the sunshine of aristocratic pa- 
 tronage, and a courtly refinement succeeded to that gross- 
 ness of manners and of speech which had disgraced society 
 in the years just previous. Writers were no longer plunging 
 in the mire of that obscenity which defiled the times of 
 Charles the Second; but they were often walking in the 
 dry places of an infidel philosophy. The religious agita- 
 tion of the middle of the previous century had sunk 
 
 * The Hind and Panther, part iii. v. 1575.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 231 
 
 down from the high-wrought power of fanaticism, first, 
 into indecent profanity, and then, by degrees, into a more 
 decorous, but cold, self-complacent skepticism. Enthusi- 
 asm of all kinds had burned out, and there was a low tone 
 of thought and feeling in church and state — in the people, 
 and, of consequence, in literature. There was no great 
 British statesman — I mean no genuine, magnanimous 
 statesman — from the time of Strafford, and Clarendon, and 
 Falkland, and the great republican statesmen of the 
 seventeenth century, down to a century later, when the 
 first William Pitt, "the great Commoner," breathed a 
 spirit of magnanimity once more into British politics. 
 
 The prose literature developed, in the reign of Queen 
 Anne, a new agency of social improvement in the pe- 
 riodical literature, destined to acquire such unbounded 
 influence in later times in the newspaper press and the 
 leading: Reviews. There is much to show that a more 
 correct and refined tone of society was brought about by 
 'die papers which, under the title of " The Tatler," from 
 the pen of Steele, began that series which became more 
 famous in the " Spectator," and in connection with Ad- 
 dison. " It was said of Socrates," remarked Steele, 
 "that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit 
 among men. I shall be ambitious to have it said of me 
 that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libra- 
 ries, schools, and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, 
 at tea-tables, and in coffee-houses." Not many years ago, 
 it was very generally the custom, I remember, for every 
 young person, male and female, to go through a course 
 of reading of the papers of the Spectator. This has 
 fallen quite into disuse now-a-days, and I do not know 
 that it is much to be regretted. The Spectator contains.
 
 232 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 undoubtedly, much sensible and sound morality ; but it 
 is not a very high order of Christian ethics. It contains 
 much judicious criticism, but certainly not comparable to 
 the deeper philosophy of criticism which has entered into 
 English literature in the present century.* Those papers 
 will always have a semi-historical interest, as picturing the 
 habits and manners of the times — a moral value, as a 
 kindly, good-natured censorship of those manners. In 
 one respect, the Spectator stands unrivalled to this day : 
 I allude to the exquisite humour in those numbers in 
 which Sir Roger de Coverley figures. If any one desire 
 to form a just notion of what is meant by that very inde- 
 
 * Let me, in other and better language than my own, say a word 
 for our classic. " It seems to me," says the greatest of living writers 
 of fiction and the manliest satirist of our times, " that when Addison 
 looks from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, 
 up to the heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a hu- 
 man intellect thrilling with a purer love and adoration than Joseph 
 Addison's. It seems to me his words of sacred poetry shine like 
 stars. They shine out of a great, deep calm. When he turns to hea- 
 ven, a sabbath comes over that man's mind, and his face lights up 
 from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs 
 bis whole being. In the fields, in the town ; looking at the birds in 
 the trees — at the children in the streets; in the morning or in the 
 moonlight ; over his books in his own room ; in a happy party at a 
 country merry-making or a town assembly, good-will and peace to 
 dod's creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his 
 pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the 
 most wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable. 
 K life prosperous and beautiful, a calm death, an immense fame and 
 iffoction afterward for his happy and spotless name."— Thach ray's 
 Lectures on the English Humorist*. I may veuturo to express the hope 
 Iha.t the habit of reading the Spectator will not fall into disuse. I 
 inuw no finer line in any English poet than one of Addison's, when 
 ,hc Moon -opeats her wondrous tale 
 
 " Nightly to he listening earth." W. B. R.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CEN TURIES. 233 
 
 finable quality called " humour," he cannot more agree- 
 ably inform himself than by selecting the Sir Kog'er de 
 Coverley papers, and reading them in series. 
 
 While Addison was giving to English prose that refine- 
 ment which was verging, perhaps, to somewhat of feeble- 
 ness, the strong hand of Swift — a man with a stronger 
 intellect and a rougher heart — was scattering that vigorous 
 prose which touched the other extreme of coarseness; and 
 Bolingbroke was giving, in his statelier and more elegant 
 diction, that prose the study of which has by some of 
 England's best orators been pronounced an orator's best 
 training. 
 
 The chief representative name in the literature of the 
 times of Queen Anne is that of Pope. His rank as a poet 
 has been a subject of much dispute; but it may now, I 
 think, be considered as the settled judgment of the most 
 judicious critics, ardent admirers, too, of Pope's poetry, 
 that his place is not with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, 
 and Milton, the poets of the first order, but with Dryden, 
 in a second rank. Shakspeare alone excepted, perhaps 
 no English poet has furnished a greater amount of single 
 lines for apt and happy quotation, on account either of 
 their force or beauty. In the famous satire on the 
 Duchess of Marlborough occurs this passage : 
 
 "Strange ! by tho means defeated of the enda — 
 By spirit robb'd of power — by warmth, of friends — 
 By wealth, of followers ! without one distress, 
 Sick of herself through very selfishness ! 
 Atossa, curs'd with every granted prayer, 
 Childless with all her children, wants an heir- 
 To heirs unknown descends the unguarded store, 
 Or wanders, heaven-directed, to the poor!' 
 
 This passage furnishes two most characteristic lines ; the 
 
 • 20*
 
 234 LECTIJUK SEVENTH. 
 
 first one of great force — a truth from the dark side of hu- 
 manity, the wasting malady of selfishness : 
 
 " Sick of herself through very selfishness." 
 
 The other, a beautiful expression of the sense of a good 
 Providence : 
 
 " Or wanders, heaven-directed, to the poor." 
 
 There is another description of lines in Pope, as favourite 
 in the way of quotation as any : I mean those which ex- 
 press in smooth verse some truism, or commonplace senti- 
 ment, or something the very tameness of which makes it 
 untrue. What line has been quoted so often? — you may 
 see it even on tombstones — 
 
 "An honest man's the noblest work of God." 
 
 Does anybody think so ? Is honesty so rare ? Has it so 
 much of heroism in it, or so much of saintliness, that it is 
 God's noblest work ? Surely, the poet must have uttered 
 it in contempt of his fellow-men — must have meant it in 
 sarcasm.* 
 
 And here we may see what disqualified Pope from being 
 the great moral poet he aspired to be — from being a great 
 poet of the first rank. Whatever was his power of imagi- 
 nation, of fancy, his command of language, or flow of 
 verse, his genius had not that spiritual healthfulness 
 which is a characteristic of our greatest English poets. 
 There is, running through all the writings of Pope, a large 
 vei-n of misanthropy. It was his habit to proclaim con- 
 tempt of the world, antipathy to his fellow-beings, ex- 
 cept a few choice friends, whom he clung to most faith 
 fully. It is not with such morbid feeling that a poet can 
 
 * From this criticism I vendue to note an earnest dissent. 
 
 \V. li. It.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES.- 2SS 
 
 either study or expound human nature. His ministry is 
 to inspire his fellow-beings with high and happy emotions, 
 to foster a just sense of the dignity of human nature, to 
 make man lowly wise, to cheer him amid his frailties, not 
 to depress him, to animate his heart with faith, and hope, 
 and love, not to chill and harden it with discontent and 
 hatred. Instead of aggravating all that is dark and for- 
 lorn in man's mingled nature, it belongs to the poet, of all 
 others, to show that while the son of earth is lying on the 
 earth, lonely, benighted, his head pillowed on a stone, 
 thoughts of a better life, the soul's celestial aspirations, 
 are ascending and descending over him, like angels in the 
 patriarch's dream. For such, the poet's truest ministry, 
 Pope's temperament was unhappily constituted. In a 
 letter to Bishop Atterbury — a serious letter on a serious 
 occasion — addressed to that prelate on the eve of his exile, 
 he asks, "What is every year of a wise man's life but a 
 censure or critic on the past*? Those whose date is the 
 shortest, live long enough to laugh at one-half of it : the 
 boy despises the infant, the man the boy, the philosopher 
 both, and the Christian all."* What could have been that 
 notion of philosophy, what that notion of Christianity, 
 which could make one of its attributes contempt, that in- 
 firmity of the morbid mind, in the eye of divine wisdom a 
 vice ! How different, too, such contempt of the past 
 periods of one's life, from that deeper wisdom which incul- 
 cates the moral continuity of our being, showing how .im- 
 portant it is for the growth of our spiritual nature that 
 we should so dwell in each partition of our earthly time, 
 that we may move on from one to the other with happy 
 
 * Letter, May 17th, 1723. Roscoe's Pope, vol. ix. p. 241-
 
 236 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 memories of the past — with happy consciousness of its 
 
 abiding influences ! 
 
 " The child is father of the man ; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety."* 
 
 It is a characteristic view of human life which Pop© 
 gives in such a passage as this : 
 
 " Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, 
 Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw ; 
 Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, 
 A little louder, but as empty quite ; 
 Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper age, 
 And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age : 
 pleased with this bauble still, as that before, 
 Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er." 
 
 The " rattle," a " straw," " scarfs, garters, gold, beads, 
 and prayer-books," equally toys and baubles, and ending 
 alike in weariness, and then death or sleep. What a 
 picture of life ! what a picture for a poet, whose duty is 
 to dignify and elevate, to draw, of the life of man, whe 
 with all his infirmities, is an immortal, gifted with a soul, 
 precious in the sight of his Creator, and not unworthy 
 the awful ransom of the Redeemer's blood ! A great 
 moral poet does not so teach. " Life's poor play !" Such 
 is this didactic poet's deliberate doctrine. The image is 
 Shakspeare's, but with»a most significant difference: 
 
 " Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 
 * There may be noted a coincidence between these familiar lines of 
 Wordsworth and those of Milton : 
 
 "The childhood shows tho man, 
 As morning shows tho day." 
 
 Paradiee Regained, B. 4, v. 220. W. B. R.
 
 * 
 
 I 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 23'i 
 
 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing." 
 
 But mark the dramatic truth, when you see what voice 
 speaks thus; it is the utterance of the agony of a blood- 
 stained conscience, whose guilt has so wasted out all its 
 humanity, that it would fain lose all belief in life's 
 realities. 
 
 The sophisticated state of society in which Pope lived, 
 and the morbid excess of his critical powers, show them- 
 selves in his treatment of womanly character : it is full 
 of querulousness, and sarcasm, perverse in sentiment and 
 in morals. He exhorts a female friend 
 
 " Not to quit the free innocence of life, 
 For the dull glory of a virtuous wife." 
 
 What a line for a poet to utter ! and what a contrast to 
 
 those bright images of womanly heroism and beauty 
 
 which the older poets delighted to picture in marriage ! 
 
 When Pope begins a healthier strain in that sweet 
 
 couplet — 
 
 " blest with temper, whose unclouded ray 
 Can make to-morrow happy as to-day" — 
 
 see what straightway it declines to, — such a tribute to 
 womanly character as this, that a sister can be unenvious 
 of a sister's beauty, and that a mother can hear un- 
 aggrieved the love that is given to a daughter, and that a 
 wife's merit is to win a way for her own will by a crafty 
 self-control and a refined dissimulation : 
 
 " She who can love a sister's charms, or hoar 
 Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear; 
 She who ne'er answers till a husband cools, 
 Or if sho rules him, never shows sho rules ;
 
 238 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, 
 Yet has her humour most when she obeys." 
 
 When the household emotion of filial piety got the 
 
 better of the worldly want of feeling and the artifices 
 
 of society, Pope's heart spoke in the lines alluding to his 
 
 mother, beautiful for their truth of feeling : 
 
 "Oh, friend, may each domestic bliss be thine! 
 Be no unpleasing melancholy mine ! 
 Me let the tender office long engage 
 To rock the cradle of declining age ; 
 With lenient arts extend a mother's breath — 
 Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, 
 Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, 
 And keep at least one parent from the sky." 
 
 There was an influence over the mind of Pope, which 
 must be alluded to as belonging to the literary history of 
 the times : I refer to the overshadowing and malignant 
 influence of the friendship of Lord Bolingbroke — a man 
 whose brilliant talents do not redeem his memory from 
 the reproach of corrupt statesmanship, and the more en- 
 during agency of evil which he exercised as one of tlft 
 leading deistical writers of the eighteenth century. That 
 influence often intercepted the light of revelation. You 
 may see not unfrcquently playing on the surface of Pope's 
 fancy the shadows that were cast by the restless leaves 
 of the poison-tree of a godless philosophy.* 
 
 * It may be hazardous, even as a matter of criticism, to express an 
 opinion favourable to Bolingbroke, yet no one can road a page of his 
 matchless English — any page taken at random from that greatest of 
 political apologies, the letter to Wyndham — without enthusiastic 
 admiration of his art of style, and without, admitting it to lie the per- 
 fection of written eloquence. .Such is the opinion of Lord Mahon in 
 nis excellent delineation of his character. ( History >;/ England, vol. ii. 
 p, 27.) Another writer of our day says justly : "The best test to use,
 
 WT.KATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 239 
 
 No company of writers has sunk into such general and 
 merited oblivion as the British infidels, who were the 
 precursors of the French skeptics in the last century. 
 We look back with somewhat of wonder and dismay at 
 the extent of the influence they exerted for a considerable 
 time over the minds of their countrymen in an advanced 
 stage of intellectual refinement. It had its sway over the 
 most cultivated classes of society, the court, the men of 
 letters, but happily had less effect on what is less heard 
 of — the simple piety which never died out in the quiet 
 parish churches of the land, and was cherished at many a 
 lowly hearth. In the prouder spheres of society, and in 
 literature, deism and all the motley mockery of unbelief 
 had an almost unresisted power. I know of no sadder 
 sentence in English literature, than that in which Bishop 
 Butler, in the preface to his great defence of revealed 
 religion, remarks, "It is come, I know not how, to be 
 taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is 
 
 before we adopt any opinion or assertion of Bolingbroke's, is to con- 
 sider whether in writing it he was treating of Sir Robert Walpole or 
 revealed religion. On other occasions he may be followed with 
 advantage, as he always may be read with pleasure." Greasy' 8 Battles 
 of the World, vol. ii. p. 158. Surely He must always be regarded reve- 
 rentially, as a master of English rhetoric, whom Burke studied, whose 
 lost speeches the younger Pitt mourned as the greatest loss to modern 
 letters, and of whom a writer like Chesterfield said, " Till I read Bo- 
 lingbroke, I confess I did not know all the extent and power of the 
 English language." Bad as were his religious opinions, they do not 
 seem to have degenerated to the low atheistic level which some of his 
 contemporaries reached. "When I took my last farewell of him," 
 writes Lord Chesterfield, " he returnod his last farewell with teuderness, 
 and said, 'God, who placed me here, will do what he pleases with me 
 hereafter; and he knows best what to do. May he bless you!'" 
 W. B. R.
 
 240 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is ; m, 
 at length, discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly 
 they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed 
 point among all people of discernment; and nothing 
 remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth 
 and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having 
 so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."* 
 
 This was said in 1736, and to such a state of things no 
 man contributed more than Henry St. John, Viscount 
 Bolingbroke, he whom Pope, in the poem which professed 
 to be his philosophical poem — " The Essay on Man" — has 
 apostrophized as his "genius," "master of the poet aud 
 the song," his "guide, philosopher, and friend." 
 
 The middle of the eighteenth century presents English 
 literature, and especially its poetry, reduced to its lowest 
 estate. Those who followed Pope, to imitate him with- 
 out his powers, rendered the poetry of that period tame, 
 trite, mechanical, and monotonous in versification. What 
 the middle of the last century has to be proud of is, Dr. 
 Johnson's colossal work, the first great Dictionary of our 
 language. 
 
 The last half of the century is an era of the revival of 
 English poetry — a revival which began indeed somewhat 
 earlier with Thomson, but which was carried on by Gray, 
 and by Collins, and Goldsmith, and Cowper, and another 
 whose peasant hand was a fit one to bring poetry back to 
 nature again — Robert Burns, who led the muse into the 
 open fields once more, to look on the flowers, and most of 
 all, that one which " glinted forth" to delight his age, as it 
 used to do Chaucer's, four hundred years before. . We feel 
 
 * Advertisement to the iirst edition to Butler's Analogy, p. 48.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 241 
 
 that we are getting out of a close atmosphere and an artificial 
 light into the open air and sunshine again, when, passingfrom 
 the previous versifiers, we come to Burns, and see that it way 
 
 "Mid 'lonely heights and hows' 
 He paid to Nature, tuneful vows ; 
 Or wiped his honourable brows 
 
 Bedewed with toil, 
 While reapers strove, or busy ploughs 
 
 Upturned the soil." 
 
 Connected with one of the names I have mentioned as 
 of the revivers of a truer spirit of English poetry, there is 
 an incident of much interest, the memory of which was 
 recovered a few years ago, and which serves to mark the 
 period of a favourite poem. The incident has been intro- 
 duced by Lord Mahon, in his admirable History of Eng- 
 land, and I cannot do better than use his words. On the 
 night of the 13th of September, 1759, the night before the 
 battle on the Plains of Abraham was to give to Wolfe the 
 fame of the Conqueror of Canada, the English general 
 passed along the St. Lawrence, with a portion of his army 
 in boats ; the historian proceeds : " Swiftly, but silently, 
 did the boats fall down with the tide, unobserved by the 
 enemy's sentinels at their posts along the shore. Of 
 the soldiers on board, how eagerly must every heart have 
 throbbed at the coming conflict ! how intently must every 
 eye have contemplated the dark outline, as it lay pencilled 
 upon the midnight sky, and as every moment it grew 
 closer and clearer of the hostile heights ! Not a word was 
 spoken — not a sound heard beyond the rippling of the 
 stream. Wolfe alone — thus tradition has told us— re- 
 peated in a low voice to the other officers in his boat thosc- 
 beautiful stanzas with which a country church-yard in 
 spired the muse of Gray. One noble line
 
 242 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 ' Tho paths of glory lead but to the grave'— 
 
 must have seemed at such a moment fraught with mourn- 
 ful meaning. At the close of the recitation, Wolfe added, 
 'Now, erentlemen, I would rather be the author of that 
 poem than take Quebec!' "* 
 
 Of Gray, and Goldsmith, and Cowper this is also to be 
 remembered — that they have enriched the literature with 
 prose as attractive as their poetry. It would be hard to 
 say in which respect Goldsmith is most agreeably and 
 affectionately remembered — as the author of " The Deserted 
 Village," or of " The Vicar of Wakefield." Besides, the 
 letters of Gray, our epistolary literature received its largest 
 contributions in these two collections, equally characteristic 
 of the writers, and very different in their tone — the letters 
 of Horace Walpole, covering more than half a century, 
 filled with political and private gossip, and sparkling with 
 the wit of an acute man of the world, in the midst of the 
 world's busiest society — and the letters of Cowper, partly 
 by virtue of his exquisite English, and partly by the 
 purity and earnestness of his character, and his gentle 
 humour, giving a charm that is indescribable to the simple 
 incidents and occupations of his secluded life, and that 
 places his letters with the most agreeable reading in Eng- 
 lish literature. The historical literature of the century 
 I reserve for a connection in which I propose to speak of 
 it hereafter. 
 
 In the revival of English poetry which I have been 
 
 * History of England, vol. iv. p. 163. One of Mr. Reed's modest 
 literary lnbours wns an American odition, with notes, of Lord Mahon's 
 early volumes. The notes were illustrative, and very judicious. Had 
 his life been spared, he would probably have completed tho odition. 
 
 W. B. li.
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 212 
 
 speaking of, an auxiliary influence was exerted by the resto- 
 ration of the early minstrelsy in Percy's Reliques. That 
 popular poetry was made familiar to reading men, and its 
 simple power helped English poetry to recover not only 
 its natural graces, hut the best freedom and variety of its 
 music. Cowper caught the free movement of verse in his 
 well-known comic ballad of John Gilpin, and not less in 
 the tragic one — that simple and noble Dirge, on the re- 
 markable casualty of the sinking of the Royal George 
 at her moorings : 
 
 "Toll for the brave! 
 
 The brave that are no more ! 
 All sunk beneath the wave, 
 Fast by their native shore ! 
 
 Eight hundred of the bravo, 
 
 Whose courage well was tried, 
 Had made the vessel keel, 
 
 And laid her on her side. 
 
 A land-breeze shook the shrouds, 
 
 And she was overset: 
 Down went the Royal George, 
 
 With all her crew complete. 
 
 Toll for the brave! 
 
 Brave Kempenfelt is gone; 
 His last sea-fight is fought, 
 
 His work of glory done. 
 
 It was not in the battle; 
 
 No tempest gave the shock ; 
 She sprang no fatal leak; 
 
 She ran upon no rock. 
 
 His sword was in the sheath ; 
 
 His fingers held the pen, 
 When Kempenfelt went down 
 
 With twice four hundred men.
 
 244 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 Weigh the vessel up, 
 
 Once dreaded by our foes ! 
 And mingle with our cup 
 
 The tear that England owes. 
 
 Her timbers yet are sound, 
 
 And she may float again, 
 Full charged with England's thunder, 
 
 And plough the distant main. 
 
 But Kempenfelt is gone, 
 
 His victories are o'er; 
 And he, and his eight hundred, 
 
 Shall plough the wave no more." 
 
 No poet of the last century did as much as Cowper for 
 the restoration of the admirable music of the then neglect- 
 ed blank verse. When Cowper died, in the year 1800, 
 exactly one hundred years after the death of Dryden, 
 English poetry was again in possession of all its varied 
 endowment of verse: In a course of lectures which I 
 delivered here some ten years ago, I concluded a lecture 
 on Cowper by quoting a poem then new and little known 
 — the stanzas entitled u Cowper' s Grave," by Elizabeth 
 Browning, then known by her maiden name of Barrett. 
 While I have avoided, as far as possible, repetitions from 
 my former courses, I am tempted to repeat the stanzas 
 now, because on the former occasion they made, as I have 
 been informed, an impression that was not lost. The 
 merit of the poem is not only in the happy allusions to 
 Cowper's character and career of checkered cheerfulness 
 and gloom, but also in its depth of passion and imagination. 
 
 COWPER'S GRAVE. 
 
 It is a place where poets crowned 
 
 May foel the heart's decaying — 
 It is a place wbero happy saints 
 
 May weep amid their praying —
 
 LITERATURE OF XVIT. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 2« 
 
 Yet let the grief and humbleness, 
 As low as silence, languish ; 
 
 Earth surely now may give her calm 
 To whom she gave her anguish. 
 
 poets ! from a maniac's tongue 
 
 Was poured the deathless singing! 
 Christians ! at your cross of hope 
 
 A hopeless hand was clinging ! 
 men ! this man in brotherhood, 
 
 Your weary paths beguiling, 
 Groaned inly while he taught you peace, 
 
 And died while ye were smiling ! 
 
 And now, what time ye all may read 
 
 Through dimming tears his story — 
 How discord on the music fell, 
 
 And darkness on the glory — 
 And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds 
 
 And wandering lights departed, 
 He wore no less a loving face, 
 
 Because so broken-hearted — 
 
 He shall be strong to sanctify 
 
 The poet's high vocation, 
 And bow the meekest Christian down 
 
 In meeker adoration : 
 Nor ever shall he be in praise 
 
 By wise or good forsaken : 
 Named softly, as the household name 
 
 Of onfe whom God hath taken. 
 
 With quiet sadness, and no gloom, 
 
 I learn to think upon him ; 
 With meekness that is gratefulness, 
 
 To God whose heaven hath won him — 
 Who suffered once the madness-cloud, 
 
 To his own love to blind him ; 
 But gently led the blind along 
 
 Where breath and bird could find him: 
 Q 21*
 
 ue LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 And wrought within his shattered brain 
 
 Such quick poetic senses, 
 As hills have language for, and stars 
 
 Harmonious influences ! 
 The pulse of dew upon the grass 
 
 Kept his within its number; 
 And silent shadows from the trees 
 
 Refreshed him like a slumber. 
 
 Wild timid hares were drawn from wood* 
 
 To share his home caresses, 
 Uplooking to his human eyes 
 
 With sylvan tendernesses : 
 The very world, by God's constraint, 
 
 From falsehood's ways removing, 
 Its women and its men became, 
 
 Besido him, true and loving ! — 
 
 But while, in blindness he remained 
 
 Unconscious of the guiding, 
 And things provided camo without 
 
 The sweet sense of providing, 
 He testified this solemn truth, 
 
 Though frenzy-desolated — 
 Nor man nor nature satisfy, 
 
 Whom otily God created! 
 
 Liko a sick child that knoweth not 
 
 His mother while she blesses, 
 And drops upon his burning brow 
 
 The coolness of her kisses; 
 That turns his fevor'd eyes around — 
 
 " My mother! whore's my mother?"— 
 As if such tender words and looks 
 
 Could come from any other ! — 
 
 The fever gone, with leaps of heart 
 Ho sees her bending o'er him ; 
 
 Her faco all pale from watchful love, 
 Tho unwoary love she bore him !
 
 LITERATURE OF XVII. AND XVIII. CENTURIES. 24T 
 
 Thus woke the poet from tho dream 
 
 His life's long fever gave him, 
 Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, 
 
 Which closed in death to save him. 
 
 Thus ! oh, not thus ! no type of earth 
 
 Could image that awaking, 
 Wherein he scarcely heard the chaunt 
 
 Of seraphs round him breaking — 
 Or felt the new immortal throb 
 
 Of soul from body parted; 
 But felt those eyes alone, and knew 
 
 "My Saviour ! not deserted !" 
 
 Deserted! who hath dreamt that when 
 
 The cross in darkness rested 
 Upon the Victim's hidden face, 
 
 No love was manifested ? 
 What frantic hands outstretched have e'er 
 
 The atoning drops averted — 
 What tears have washed them from the soul- 
 
 That one should be deserted? 
 
 Deserted ! God could separate 
 
 From his own essence rather: 
 And Adam's sins have swept between 
 
 The righteous Son and Father; 
 Yea ! once Immanuel's orphaned cry 
 
 His universe hath shaken — 
 It went up single, echoless, 
 
 " My God, I am forsaken !" 
 
 It wont up from the Holy's lips 
 
 Amid his lost creation, 
 That of the lost, no son should use 
 
 Those words of desolation ; 
 That, oarth's worst frenzies, marring hope, 
 
 Should mar not hope's fruition; 
 And I, on Cowper's grave, should «ee 
 
 His rapture, in a vision '
 
 LECTURE VIII. * 
 
 ^iterator* of % ^mrfccrrib fetturg. 
 
 Literature of our own times — Influence of political and social rela- 
 tions — The historic relations of literature — The French Revolution, 
 ind its effects — Infidelity — Thirty years' Peace — Scientific progress 
 coincident with letters — History — Its altered tone — Arnold — Pres- 
 cott — Niebuhr — Gibbon — Hume — Robertson — Religious element in 
 historical style — Lord Mahon — Macaulay's History — Historical ro- 
 mance — Waverley Novels — The pulpit — Sydney Smith — Manning — 
 Poetry of the early part of the century — Bowles and Rogers — Camp- 
 bell — Coleridge's Christabol — Lay of the Last Minstrel — Scott's 
 poetry. 
 
 In my last lecture, I noticed the date of the death of Cow- 
 per, in the year 1800, as conveniently marking the close of 
 the literature of the eighteenth century. The excellence of 
 his prose, as well as of his poetry, and his share in that 
 literary revival which began during the 'latter part of 
 that century, make such a use of his name subservient, 
 in a reasonable rather than an arbitrary manner, to the 
 purposes of literary chronology. "We pass thence into 
 what may be entitled " The Literature of our own 
 Times/' or, having nearly completed its era of fifty years, 
 " The Literature of the first half of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury." It has its characteristics — distinctive qualities, 
 with their origin from within, in the minds of those whose 
 writings make the literature, and from without, in the 
 influence exerted on those minds by the world's doings 
 
 * January 21, 1S50. 
 243
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 24» 
 
 and the world's condition. In the study of literature, it 
 is needful, for our knowledge of it, to look at it in its 
 relation to civil and political history, in order to under- 
 stand how, in a greater or less degree, it takes a colour 
 from the times. The mind of no author can dwell so 
 aloof from his generation that his thoughts and feelings 
 shall be above or beyond outward influences. He is more 
 or less what he is, because he is where he is. These 
 outward influences affect genius of the highest order, with 
 this difference, indeed, that they do not limit or control it, 
 but, by its own inborn power, it carries them up, idealized, 
 into the highest truth for the perpetual good of all after 
 time. 
 
 Looking back to the early and distant eras of English 
 literature, it is not difficult to trace the relations between 
 .the literature and the national history — the record of 
 words and the record of actions and events. The full 
 and varied outburst of poetry, grave and gay, in Chaucer, 
 becomes a more intelligible phenomenon when we think 
 of it in association with the chivalry, the enterprise, and the 
 cultivation of Edward the Third's long and glorious reign. 
 The genius of Spenser and the genius of Shakspeare 
 shine with a clearer light when our eyes look at it 
 as issuing from the Elizabethan age — that age strenu- 
 ous with thoughts and acts, chivalrous, philosophical, 
 adventurous, of whose great men it might be said, as 
 it was said of one of them, that they were so contem- 
 plative you could not believe them active, and so active 
 you could not believe them contemplative. Milton's 
 great epic seems, at first thought, strangely uncongenial 
 to the immediate period of its appearance ; but ceases to 
 be so when it is thought of as engendered in those years
 
 750 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 of ordeal through which Milton's mind had passed in the 
 times of the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the Pro- 
 tectorate. The age that Dryden lived in left a more un- 
 resisted impress on his genius — the stamp of a degenerate 
 and dissolute generation ; and the pages of Pope have 
 their commentary in the reflection they give of an artificial 
 and sophisticated state of society — an age of wits and free- 
 thinkers; so that when his genius rose to its most imagina- 
 tive strain, it could not content itself with a theme less 
 stimulant than the revolting story of Abclard and Eloisa. 
 
 When we come to the study of the literature of our 
 own times, it is, of course, more difficult to trace the his- 
 toric relation of literature, because it is the literature of 
 our own times — times which have not yet become a part 
 of history. We stand too near them — are, indeed, too much 
 in them — to see them clearly, dispassionately, to measure 
 the prevailing influences, and understand them justly. We 
 cannot yet adventure to speak of the literature of this 
 century as hereafter they may do who shall look back to 
 it from a distance, when time, and the calm judgments 
 time brings along with it, shall group the authors of these 
 times in their true places ; and when the narrowness of 
 contemporary partiality, or, what is worse, contemporary 
 prejudice, shall be expanded to a larger wisdom. 
 
 We cannot err in this, that the half century, now 
 nearly completed, has been distinguished by great intel- 
 lectual and imaginative activity. The revival, which be- 
 gan in the latter part of the last century, was, in a great 
 measure, the reaction from the overwrought artifice and 
 formality of thought, and feeling, and expression of the 
 times that had gone before. The hearts of men began 
 iO assert once more I heir claims to what Nature could
 
 T,TTERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 251 
 
 give them, and the poets, who are Nature's interpreters. 
 Other agencies, besides the simple power of reaction, 
 were at work on the European mind, giving it an impulse 
 to break through old and contracted conventional re- 
 straints, calling forth freer movements of thought and 
 feeling. I refer especially to the general agitation 
 throughout Europe consequent on the French Revolu- 
 tion. Change was the condition of the closing years of 
 the last century. Things which had endured for ages 
 were perishing, not by slow gradations of decay, but by 
 quick and unlooked-for violence. Time-honoured insti- 
 tutions were not suffered to attain the limit of their natu- 
 ral existence, and then to sink under the gradual accumu- 
 lation of years, but were swiftly swept away by a new 
 compulsion. The clenched hand of prescriptive tyranny 
 was forced to loose its grasp ; and if simpler generations 
 of men, in the olden time, had held to the fond belief 
 that 
 
 "Not all the water in the rough, rude sea 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed king," . 
 
 men of the new times were ready to shed the blood of 
 king and queen with pitiless contempt. The people in 
 one of the central monarchies of Europe had suddenly 
 started up, and, casting away respect for prerogative, 
 boldly questioned the authority of a power which so long 
 had trampled on them. Men began to ask why the boun- 
 ties of heaven should be garnered up for the bloated luxury 
 of the few, while the many were pining, hungry and 
 heart-stricken. The sympathies of Christendom were, for 
 a season, enlisted ; and the pulse of other nations began 
 to beat quicker. The French Revolution began to assume 
 the aspect of a general European revolution Ancien'
 
 252 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 opinions and rules of life were abandoned, and new modes 
 of thought and feeling took their place. The political 
 revolution became an intellectual and moral one ; for, so 
 entire was the subversion of old institutions, that in recon- 
 structing society, men were led to speculate on its very ele- 
 ments, and on the principles and destiny of human nature — 
 speculations which, from a revolutionary forsaking of the 
 old paths, too often fostered a self-sufficient and faithless 
 philosophy. It was not as in the American Revolution, in 
 which our fathers, not clamorous for new privileges, were 
 the defenders of old rights — rights as ancient as the Great 
 Charter, advocates of the Constitution and the freedom it 
 gave, the " good old cause." But in the revolutionary 
 agitation that attended the French Revolution, new creeds 
 of liberty were taught, new doctrines of the rights of man. 
 Christianity, with its day of sanctity and repose, sacred 
 from the Creation, was banished to make way for a sen- 
 sual, brutalizing atheism, with its tenth-day holidays, (I 
 cannot call them Sabbaths,) and with its idolatry of human 
 reason. Theories of ecclesiastical, p ilitical, and social re- 
 generation were propagated with apostolic zeal into all 
 lands — doctrines which cast a shadow on the spire of every 
 village-church, and which, while they gave some wild 
 hopes to the down-trodden and the desperate, struck dis- 
 may where the domestic virtues were grouped at the once 
 secure and happy fireside. It was a commotion of the 
 very primal elements of society. The scene was a new 
 one — suddenly a new one — in the drama of civilization : 
 the power of strange rights was thrust into the hands of 
 men ; the burden of strange duties was harnessed on their 
 backs. Ancient landmarks, covered with the moss of 
 many years, were torn up. The guidance of principles,
 
 LITEKATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 253 
 
 drawn not from any customary or conventional authority, 
 but from the depths of human nature, was needed alike 
 for those who hailed and those who abhorred the change. 
 J' en long accustomed to float on the placid waters of a 
 iiver, within sight and reach of safe and smiling shores, 
 found themselves suddenly driven out upon a stormy and 
 shoreless sea; and, in their peril, some were earnestly 
 ;>-azing for a beacon-light from the lost coast, others were 
 idly gazing at the flashing fires that crest the dark billows 
 of the deep, and a few were looking upward hopefully for 
 some star in the clouded sky. The agitation of the times 
 carried some minds into the delusions of sophistry and 
 irreverence, but it also led others into deeper moods of 
 thought and larger sympathies. Superficial precepts, 
 whether in government, philosophy, or literature, were not 
 enough ; but there was needed what should deal with 
 human nature with a deeper and truer wisdom. This in- 
 fluence, either direct or indirect, extended over all depart- 
 ments of thought and action, and thus made its impression 
 on European literature, on English literature, for the per- 
 turbation of the times stirred the mind of England, though 
 it did not shake her ancient constitution. 
 
 When I speak of the agitation consequent on the 
 French Revolution, I include all that forms the historic 
 era, the revolution itself, the wars of the republic, and the 
 wars of the French Empire ; in short, the quarter of a cen- 
 tury of tumult and war which closed in 1815 with the bat- 
 tle of Waterloo. It has been followed by the thirty years' 
 peace, the longest period of tranquillity in modern history 
 — perhaps I may say, in the world's history. The increased 
 activity and independence of thought that attended the 
 political convulsions of Europe, and even then found ex- 
 
 22
 
 254 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 pression in literature, continued, and indeed expanded still 
 further, in the more genial years of peace that followed.* 
 This half century, in which our lot has been cast, has 
 been unquestionably one of great and varied intellectual 
 activity, distinguished by achievements in the two chief 
 departments of thought and inquiry, science and litera- 
 ture. Never perhaps have they been cultivated in truer 
 proportion, and they have moved forward with harmonious 
 progress, giving to mankind the various elements of civili- 
 zation and improvement which are respectively in the 
 gift of science and literature. In this connection, one 
 cannot but feel how fortunate, how providential it was 
 that the wonderful results of physical science which this 
 century has witnessed were not accomplished in the last 
 century, at a time when a low state of religious opinion 
 was prevailing, when skepticism was dominant in litera- 
 ture ; for at such a time the victories of science over the 
 powers of the material universe, instead of raising our 
 sense of the Creator's power, and inspiring that humility 
 which true science ever cherishes, the more deeply at 
 every advance it makes — instead of this, an age of un- 
 belief, whose literature had divorced itself from revelation, 
 would have been ready to use the results of science to 
 decoy men into that insidious atheism which substitutes 
 Nature for God, and would have entangled our spiritual 
 nature in the meshes of materialism. The truest culti- 
 
 * Since these words were writton, peaoi-, European peace, is no 
 more, and new Dames of bloody note are adding to the catalogue of 
 modern battles. Alma and Inkermann are the last and bloodiest 
 And who, in reading thcso lectures on the Poetry and Literature of 
 >vr languago, can hesitate to give his sympathy to those who ar» 
 lighting the battle of civilization? W. 13. R.
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 255 
 
 vation of science and the truest cultivation of literature 
 in our day have shown this harmony, that alike for the 
 scientific and the literary study of man and nature — for 
 the naturalist, for instance, and the poet — there is needed 
 the same spirit of humble, willing, dutiful inquiry, a power 
 of recipiency as well as of search. The man of science, 
 and the poet equally, will miss the truth, if either the 
 one or the other be such as has been described as the 
 man who "grows to deal boldly with nature, instead of 
 reverently following her guidance; who seals his heart 
 against her secret influences; who has a theory to main- 
 tain, a solution which shall not be disturbed; and once 
 possessed of this false cipher, he reads amiss all the 
 golden letters round him."* 
 
 The intellectual activity of the nineteenth century has 
 been displayed in a very extended and various litera- 
 ture, in prose and poetry, and in literature on each side 
 of the Atlantic. With no disposition to magnify the 
 present at the expense of the past, it may, I believe, be 
 safely said, in an estimate of the literature of this century, 
 that in some departments it has excelled that of the 
 previous centuries. This is especially the case in historic 
 literature, for never heretofore in English letters has there 
 been so true a conception of an historian's duties, so deep 
 a sense of the difficulties of his story, and at the same 
 time such hopefulness of its powers. It is far better 
 understood now than heretofore, that in order to recon- 
 struct the testimonies of the past, so as to make not only 
 a record but a picture of the men that lived in the past 
 
 * The marginal reference in pencil here is to Bishop Wilberforco, 
 but I ami unablo to verify it. W. B. R.
 
 756 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 and the events that belong to it, the historian must pos- 
 sess some of the knowledge of the statesman and of the 
 powers of the poet and philosopher. In no respect has 
 historical literature been more improved than in the 
 thorough and laborious processes of research which are 
 now demanded at the historian's hands. Thus various 
 tracts in the world's history, known formerly with a sort 
 of careless familiarity, have been admirably reclaimed by 
 the better cultivation, which is rewarded with the recovery 
 of abundant materials neglected by an indolent generation. 
 It is such dutiful and laborious research, united with other 
 high qualifications, which has placed our countryman, Mr. 
 Prescott, among the best historians in our times. 
 
 Nor is it only by more accurate methods of research 
 that this department of literature is now distinguished. 
 A deeper philosophy of history has entered into it. The 
 historic sagacity of Nicbuhr may be considered as having 
 led the way in those processes which give him almost the 
 fame of a discoverer, and which have been followed out 
 in the history of antiquity by English as well as French 
 historians ; so that it may be said, that within the last 
 twenty years the whole history of Greece and Koine has 
 been not only reconstructed, but fashioned into a more 
 life-like reality. Hannibal's campaign in Italy, in the 
 posthumous volume of Arnold's History of Home, is as 
 vivid a narrative as could be given of one of Napoleon's 
 or Wellington's campaigns. 
 
 It is in these particulars, laborious and accurate research 
 and use of historical materials, and in a better science of 
 history, that the later writers have entitled themselves to 
 a reputation so much worthier than that of the best-known 
 historians in the last century. Of those historians, (Jib-
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 257 
 
 bon is the ouly one whose history preserves to this day 
 its authority, on the score of such extensive research and 
 deep learning as were required by his large theme. With 
 regard to Hume and Robertson, the two most popular his- 
 torians, the labours of later students of history have de- 
 monstrated that their works are of that indolent and 
 superficial character which destroys their authority as 
 trustworthy chroniclers. I do not suppose that any care- 
 ful and conscientious inquirer after historic truth would at 
 the present day consider a question of history determined by 
 a statement in the histories of either Hume or Robertson.* 
 Another and a very high merit may be claimed for his- 
 tory in the English literature of our times: I mean the 
 religious element which has been developed in it, and 
 most of all by Arnold. This is a noble contrast to the 
 aggressive infidelity, and the low and false views attendant 
 on it, which vitiates the histories of Gibbon and Hume, cor- 
 rupting the learning of the former, and coupling a positive 
 
 * As this volume is passing through the press, my eye has been 
 attracted by two contemporary criticisms, though from very different 
 sources, on Gibbon and Hume ; the one by Lord John Russell, in a 
 recent speech at Bristol, the other by Landor in a poetical contribution 
 to the Examiner. The first I have not space to quote or to refer to, 
 further than to say it is precisely in accord with Mr. Reed's criticism. 
 Of the other, I can cite but a few lines. Of Gibbon the poet well says : 
 
 " There are who blame them for too stately step, 
 And words resounding from inflated cheek. 
 Words have their proper places, just like men. 
 I listen to, nor venture to reprove, 
 Large language swelling under gilded domes — 
 Byzantine, Syrian, Persepolitan." 
 And he concludes : 
 
 " History hath beheld no pile ascend 
 So lofty, large, symmetrical as thine." W. B. R. 
 22*
 
 258 LECTUKE EIGHTH. 
 
 evil with the defects of the latter; so that history was made 
 a godless, infidel study, subservient to the shallow skepti- 
 cism of the eighteenth century. With minds blinded to 
 Christian truth, and tempers alien from all Christian earn- 
 estness, they looked upon religious feeling as either fraud 
 or superstition, and so they spoke of it in the narrative of 
 portions of the world's history in which the Christian 
 church was leading the nations of Europe to the truth. 
 
 It is not only in such offensive, assailant unbelief, as 
 Gibbon's and Hume's, that history has been in fault, but 
 there has also been the negative fault of the omission of 
 all thought of a providential government and guidance of 
 the nations of the earth. We are thus tempted to draw 
 too broad a line between sacred and profane history, and 
 to fancy that there was a providence over the one chosen 
 people, but that all the kindred peoples of the earth were 
 ubandoned to chance, to fate, to any thing but the govern- 
 ment of God. Now Arnold's great achievement in his- 
 torical science is, that in treating the history of a pagan 
 people, he gives to his reader a sense of a divine provi- 
 dence over the Roman nation, for the future service of 
 Christian truth, at the same time that this religious ele- 
 ment is not irreverently obtruded or mingled with incon- 
 gruous subjects. When Hume, in his History, reaches 
 the end of a splendid era in the English annals, he closes 
 it with this meagre reflection, " that the study of the 
 early institutions of the country is instructive as showing 
 that a mighty fabric of government is built up by a great 
 deal of accident, with a very little human foresight and 
 wisdom." In our meek hours of faith we are taught that 
 not a sparrow falls to the ground without God's providence; 
 and then we turn to the infidel history, to be admonished
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 25!v 
 
 that the " kingly commonwealth" of England, that has 
 swayed the happiness of millions of human beings, and 
 from which sprang this vast Republic of the West, was 
 " built up by accident ;" that there was a little human 
 foresight, and all the rest was chance. 
 
 When Arnold was planning his history, he said, " My 
 ighest ambition ... is to make my history the very 
 reverse of Gibbon in this respect, that whereas the whole 
 spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to 
 religion, without speaking* directly against it; so my 
 greatest desire would be, in my history, by its high 
 morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, with- 
 out actually bringing it forward."* 
 
 Besides this high quality, another merit of recent his- 
 torical literature is, that it has modified what used to be 
 called the " dignity of history," and has blended with it 
 more of the lively interest of biography. An excellent 
 specimen of such historical composition, an accurate, 
 calmly-tempered, and attractive history, will be found in 
 Lord Mahon's History of England during an important 
 part of the last century. "j" 
 
 In this department of literature the greatest power of 
 attraction has been proved in the first volumes of Mr. 
 Macaulay's History of England, for they have won a far 
 larger number of readers, it is believed, than did any one 
 of the Waverley novels in Scott's palmiest day. Such 
 
 * Life and Correspondence, p. 139, Am. ed. 
 
 f There is no work that can be more safely put in the hands of 
 the American historical student than Lord Mahon's, not only for its 
 tolerant and philosophic views of English affairs, but as enabling a 
 reasonable American to feel and understand how his own history 
 appears to a generous and friendly foreign observer. Such a process 
 is very salutary in this self- tomplacent meridiau. W. B. R.
 
 260 LECTURE ETGIITII. 
 
 rapid and wide-spread popularity is proof of power, the 
 measure of which will be taken more accurately after the 
 lapse of some years than now, when it is new to us. Mr. 
 Macaulay's aim, as an historian, is to bring into history a 
 greater number and variety of the testimonies of the life of 
 the past than history has been in the habit of taking cogni- 
 zance of. With great powers of accumulating such mul- 
 tifarious memorials of former times, with a dexterous skill 
 in combining them, and with a brilliant, effective style, 
 he has gained such applause as, perhaps, was never given 
 to historian before. It is most attractive and exciting 
 reading — the more delightful, if you can lull to sleep all 
 questioning of truthfulness, and can bring your mind to 
 a passive, submissive recipiency of Mr. Macaulay's abso- 
 lute and contemptuous condemnation of characters you 
 might otherwise have been inclined to honour or respect 
 There are few writers who exact from the reader such 
 unquestioning obedience — obedience, too, to sarcasm and 
 scorn. It has been justly said that an historian's first "great 
 qualification is an earnest craving after truth, and utter 
 impatience, not of falsehood merely, but of error."* I 
 would ask any reader of this work, even with the fresh 
 fascination on him, whether, on closing the volumes, he 
 feels an assurance of the presence there of such an earnest 
 craving after truth. Mr. Macaulay has another ambition, 
 fostered, pcihaps, by his habit of writing as a reviewer, and 
 not yet duly disciplined in him — the ambition, or, as it 
 may be more fitly called, the vanity of showy and startling 
 display. Of the majestic beauty of quiet and simple 
 truth he seems to have no conception. His moral and 
 intellectual nature seem not to be justly balanced. This 
 
 * Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, p. 293.
 
 fclTERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 261 
 
 appears in another form of intellectual pride — an absence 
 of all genial appreciation of lofty character — heroic or 
 saintly — an unbelief in bigh and earnest moods of 
 thought and feeling, and a pride of power in despoiling 
 men of the sentiments of reverence and admiration they 
 had been glad to bestow. The more habitual those senti- 
 ments have been, the greater the power displayed in scat- 
 tering them. If Mr. Macaulay should carry his history on 
 to that period when it will be necessary for him to treat of 
 what he has not as yet thought it worth while to allude 
 to, colonial America, as part of England's history, and 
 when he will have occasion to speak of Washington and 
 Franklin, I venture \o predict that the temptation to bid 
 the world abate their admiration will be irresistible ; and 
 that then some of Mr. Macaulay' s American admirers, 
 who are now rather intolerant of the least dissent, will 
 fain recall some of their present praises. 
 
 It is an easy transition from the historical literature to 
 another department, scarce separable from it, and in 
 which, also, this century is entitled to a pre-eminence. 
 I refer to the " historic romance," especially as developed 
 in the Waverley novels. Scott may be said to have cre- 
 ated this new department of English letters. Never has 
 the true idea of historic fiction been more happily seized 
 — the calling up, in a living array, not merely thenames, 
 but the character, the manners, the thoughts and passions 
 of past ages. Two of the finest historical minds of our 
 times, Arnold in England and Thierry in France, have 
 expressed their high admiration of Scott's remarkable his- 
 toric sagacity. With studious and laborious habits of re- 
 search, he had large-hearted sympathies, an acute instinct 
 
 of historic truth, and, above all, the truthful ci«ative 
 R •
 
 262 h E C T U R E E I G II 1 II. 
 
 power of imagination ; which powers combined, enabled him 
 to achieve in prose literature what Shakspeare, with like ori- 
 ginality, had accomplished in historical poetry, by his chro- 
 nicle plays and the tragedies of Greek and Roman story. 
 
 Apart from their historical value, the Waverley Series 
 raised a far higher and truer standard of novel writing 
 than had been known before; giving, instead of the vapid 
 sentimentalism and the romantic extravagance and folly 
 which had been in fashion, good sense and genuine feel- 
 ing, humanity's true character, with its passions, its weak- 
 nesses, its virtues, and its heroism, and a company of life- 
 like impersonations of womanly character, from the throne 
 to the cottage. The services Scott' did would be better 
 appreciated by comparison with the common run of novels 
 in vogue some forty or fifty years ago, which Charles 
 Lamb has described as " those scanty intellectual viands 
 of the whole female reading public, till a happier genius 
 arose and expelled forever the innutritious phantoms 
 in which the brain was ' betossed,' the memory puz- 
 zled, the sense of when and where confounded among 
 the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, the in- 
 consistent characters, or no characters, of some third-rate 
 love intrigue ; . . . persons neither of this world nor of 
 any other conceivable one ; an endless string of activities 
 without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive."* 
 
 This description of novels ceased to be tolerable to the 
 improved taste which Scott created, and the eifect of 
 which was immediate and manifest. There is perhaps 
 reason to apprehend that the good influence has begun 
 to wear away, and that another revolution in novel 
 
 * Essuy on the Sanity of True Genius. Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 81.
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 26o 
 
 literature is going on — an appetite for more stimulant 
 fiction being fostered, partly by corrupt foreign influences, 
 and also by tbe craving for something more exciting than 
 a just and pure imagination gives. 
 
 The literature of our times has been very abundant and 
 often excellent in a variety of miscellaneous prose litera- 
 ture. In pulpit oratory, voices have been heard that 
 bring back the sound of the sacred eloquence of England 
 in the age of her great divines. 
 
 Looking to our English prose as an instrument of 
 expression, it may be said to have been brought in our 
 times to a high state of excellence, for in our con- 
 temporary literature it is possible to find passages — charac- 
 teristic passages — which bear comparison with the best 
 English prose of any former period, combining indeed 
 with the merits of the earlier prose new powers suited to 
 the new uses that the progress of a people's mind de- 
 mands. A high order of excellence of English prose, 
 both as to the choice of words, the structure and the 
 rhythm of the sentences, is a much rarer attainment than 
 people are apt to suppose. It is of such high excellence 
 that I speak, when I say that in our contemporary litera- 
 ture it is to be found in the prose of Arnold, of Southey, 
 of Sydney Smith, and of Byron, and Landor, and in the 
 sermons of Manning. A high authority in English 
 philology places the prose of Landor as first among 
 living authors ; — the prose in the " Imaginary Conversa- 
 tions," a work of great but very unequal merit, and also 
 in some smaller productions. 
 
 The poetic literature of this half century has displayed 
 an abundance that proves an imaginative activity equal 
 to the intellectual activity of our times. We are apt
 
 264 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 sometimes to yield to the notion that our modern days 
 are unpoetic, and that the sphere of imagination has been 
 contracted by the influences of later times. But when 
 this half century shall be looked back to from a distance, 
 the judgment of posterity cannot but be that it was dis- 
 tinguished by great poetic fertility and power — a period 
 that has produced many elaborate poems of a high order, 
 and a large amount of such minor poetry, as maybe seen, 
 when such poetry is good, shining in modest beauty in 
 the same sky with the larger luminaries. Considering 
 the number of poets who have been successful in their 
 appropriate spheres, the amount, the variety, and the 
 merit of the poetry which the nineteenth century has 
 already given to English literature, it may be more fitly 
 compared with the Elizabethan age, rich as it was in the 
 company of poets, than with any other period of our lan- 
 guage. Indeed it may be added, that one cause of literary 
 power in our times is to be discovered in this, that never be- 
 fore has there been such dutiful zeal for the revival and re- 
 storation of the elder literature ; never before has that litera- 
 ture been so carefully and reverently studied. The best 
 criticism on Shakspeare, on Spenser, on Milton, is. that 
 which this century has produced ; and within the same 
 time has there been the most earnest desire to promote 
 the study of Bacon and the great divines. 
 
 In attempting to group, with reference to time, the 
 poets of the present century — the poets of our own times — 
 some curious considerations at once present themselves. 
 It is now more than a quarter of a century since the 
 death of Byron and of Shelley, both poets of a youngci 
 generation than Wordsworth; and we begin to think of 
 them as belonging to past times, while the elder poet sur-
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 265 
 
 vives, now in bis eightieth year. But what is more 
 remarkable, there are living two poets, who were known 
 as poets when Wordsworth was a youth — Bowles and 
 Rogers, each on the verge of fourscore and ten. It seems 
 scarcely credible that there should be living now a poet 
 (I refer to Mr. Rogers) whose first poem was published 
 sixty-four years ago, in 1786, fourteen years before the 
 death of Cowper, (whom he has survived half a century,) 
 and within a twelvemonth after the publication of the 
 Task.* A subsequent poem of Rogers, " The Pleasures 
 of Memory," a subject of universal interest agreeably 
 presented, established his reputation, and was no doubt 
 the prompting of Campbell's poem on " Hope." Rogers' 
 higher poetic power is, however, to be found in a later 
 work, which, appearing at a time when new poets had 
 gained the public ear, never attained the same popularity 
 as his earlier poem, which was more fortunate in its time. 
 From the poem — I allude to the " Italy" — I am tempted to 
 cite one passage for the sake of the fine picture it gives 
 of an occurence of which I made a passing mention in a 
 former lecture — the interview of Galileo and Milton : 
 
 " Nearer we hail 
 Thy sunny slope, Areetri, sung of old 
 For its green vine, dearer to me, to most, 
 As dwelt on by that great astronomer, 
 Seven years a prisoner at the city-gate ; 
 Let in but in his grave-clothes. Sacred be 
 His cottage, (justly was it called tho Jewel,) 
 Sacred the vineyard, where while yet his sight 
 Grlimmer'd, at blush of dawn, he dress'd his vines, 
 Chaunting aloud in gayety of heart 
 
 * This was writton in 1850, and now, in 1855, this aged poet still 
 lives, tho survivor of him who thus spoke of him. W. B. R 
 
 23
 
 266 LECTURE EIGUTII. 
 
 Some verse of Ariosto. There, unseen, 
 
 In manly beauty, Milton stood before him, 
 
 Gazing with reverent awe, Milton his guest, 
 
 Just then come forth, all life and enterprise ; 
 
 He in his old age and extremity, 
 
 Blind, at noonday exploring with his staff, 
 
 His eyes upturned as to the golden sun, 
 
 His eyeballs idly rolling. Little then 
 
 Did Galileo think whom he bade welcome, 
 
 That in his hand he held the hand of one 
 
 Who could requite him, who would spread his name 
 
 O'er lands and seas; great as himself, nay greater: 
 
 Milton, as little, that in him he saw, 
 
 As in a glass, what he himself should be ; 
 
 Destined so soon to fall on evil days 
 
 And evil tongues ; so soon, alas ! to live 
 
 In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, 
 
 And solitude."* 
 
 Of the other aged poet, William Lisle Bowles, who haa 
 survived so many of his brother bards, I can only remark, 
 in so cursory a survey of the contemporary literature as 
 this must be, that Coleridge acknowledged a deep obliga- 
 tion to his poems — a tribute which in itself is proof of 
 some beauty and power in them. 
 
 The most decided and marked influence of a contem- 
 porary production is that which is known to have been 
 exerted by Coleridge's Christabel — an influence that may 
 be traced on the genius of Scott, Shelley, and Byron. It 
 was an influence that Scott acknowledged with all his 
 characteristic frankness, and Byron too, though with more 
 reserve, for it was not his habit to acknowledge or per- 
 haps to recognise such influences. " Christabel" was 
 circulated in manuscript many years before it was pub- 
 
 * Italy, p. 115.
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 267 
 
 lished; and, recited among the poets, it made, especially on 
 their minds, an impression that proved an agency of 
 poetic inspiration to them. Mr. Lockhart tells us that 
 the casual recitation of " Christabel" in Scott's presence 
 so " fixed the music of that noble fragment in his memory," 
 that it prompted the production of the " Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel."* It was a great lesson to the poets, in that it 
 disclosed an unknown, or at least forgotten, freedom and 
 power in English versification — a music the echoes of 
 which are to be heard in the poems both of Scott and 
 Byron. The grandeur of its imagery, too, moved the poets 
 to whom it was made known, as in that sublime and 
 familiar passage on a broken friendship : 
 
 " They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
 
 Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; 
 A dreary sea now flows between ; 
 
 But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, 
 Shall wholly do away, I ween, 
 The marks of that which once hath been." 
 
 "Christabel" proved its influence over the poetry that 
 followed, by the power with which both the natural and 
 the supernatural were imaged in it ; in the latter respect, 
 particularly, Scott felt the power of the poem. There is 
 probably nothing finer of its kind in poetry than thos« 
 passages which tell of the wicked might of witchcraft in 
 the eye of the witch, who has assumed a beautiful human 
 form : it is first felt as Christabel passes with her by th<> 
 nearly extinct embers on the hall-hearth : 
 " They passed the hall that echoes still, 
 
 Pass as lightly as you will ! 
 
 The brands were flaUihe brands wero dying. 
 
 Amid their own whiWashes lying; 
 
 * Lockhart's Scott, vol. ii. p. 210.
 
 268 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 But when the lady passed, there came 
 
 A tongue of light, a fit of flame ; 
 
 And Christabel saw the lady's eye, 
 
 And nothing else saw she thereby, 
 
 Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, 
 
 Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall." 
 
 Aiid in that other passage, which shows the ixagic 
 might of witchcraft in the witch's eye as she fascinate* 
 her mute victim with it, the shrinking up of the eye 
 the sudden dilation again when the look of innocence 
 is counterfeited once more, and Christabel's unconscious 
 imitation of the serpent-look that fascinated and appalled 
 her : 
 
 " A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy, 
 
 And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head — 
 
 Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye; 
 
 And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread, 
 
 At Christabel she looked askance ! 
 
 One moment — and the sight was fled ! 
 
 •But Christabel in dizzy trance, 
 
 Stumbling on the unsteady ground; 
 
 Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound. 
 
 And Geraldine again turned round ; 
 
 And like a thing that sought relief, 
 
 Full of wonder and full of grief, 
 
 She rolled her large bright eyes divine 
 
 Wildly on Sir Leoline. 
 
 The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone; 
 
 She nothing sees — no sight but one ! 
 
 The maid devoid of guile and sin, 
 
 I know not how, in fearful wiso, 
 
 So deeply had sho drunken in 
 
 That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, 
 
 That all her features were resigned 
 
 To this sole image in hoflpiind; 
 
 And passively did imitate 
 
 That look nf dull and treacherous hate!
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 269 
 
 And thus she stood, in dizzy trance, 
 Still picturing that look askance 
 With forced, unconscious sympathy, 
 Full before her father's view, 
 As far as such a look could be 
 In eyes so innocent and blue ! 
 And when the trance was o'er, the maid 
 Paused awhile, and inly prayed : 
 Then falling at the Baron's feet, 
 ' By my Mother's soul do I entreat 
 That .thou this woman send away !' 
 She said : and more she could not say ; 
 For what she knew she could not tell, 
 O'ermastered by the magic spell." 
 
 It is that description of the serpent-look of the witch's 
 eyes that, being read in a company at Lord Byron's, so 
 affected Shelley's sensitive fancy that he fainted.* 
 
 Along with the influence of this poem on the imagina- 
 tion of Walter Scott, there was blended the influence of 
 his long-cherished and studious culture of the early 
 minstrelsy, for which he laboured with patriotic as well 
 as poetic zeal. The genius of Scott, thus wrought on, 
 produced that series of poems which fills a large space in 
 the poetic literature of the early part of this century. 
 With much of Homeric animation, and with the pathos 
 of Greek and British minstrel combined, he sung of the 
 chivalry and the rude heroism of the olden time ; and to 
 those heroic lays there was given a popularity which was 
 dimmed only by the sudden splendour of the speedy and 
 
 * In Moore's Life of Byron, vol. iv. p. 147, is the anecdote which I 
 presume is referred to. Lord Byron was most earnest in his admira- 
 tion of Christabel. His correspondence is full of it. "I won't have 
 any one," he writes to Mr. Murray in 1816, " sneer at Christabel ; it la 
 
 a fine, wild poem." W. B. R. 
 
 23*
 
 270 LECTURE EIGHTH. 
 
 more fervid popularity which was won by the genius of 
 Byron. 
 
 There is nothing in literary biography finer than the 
 composure, the magnanimity (rather let me call it) with 
 which Scott, making up his mind that he was about to be 
 supplanted in popular favour by a greater poet, tranquilly 
 turned his genius to a new department of invention, in 
 which, as it proved, no rival was to reach him. There is 
 truth, too, in what Scott's biographer has said of this 
 part of his career, that, " Appreciating, as a man of his 
 talents could hardly fail to do, the splendidly original 
 glow and depth of Childe Harold, Scott always appeared 
 to me quite blind to the fact, that in the Giaour, in the 
 Bride of Abydos, in Parisina, and, indeed, in all his 
 early serious narratives, Byron owed at least half his 
 success to clever, though perhaps unconscious, imitation 
 of Scott, and no trivial share of the rest to the lavish use 
 of materials which Scott never employed, only because 
 his genius was, from the beginning to the end of his 
 career, under the guidance of high and chivalrous feelings 
 of moral rectitude."* 
 
 This last remark recalls the account given of a conver- 
 sation of Scott, toward the close of his life, which may 
 be mentioned before I pass to the name of Byron. Not 
 long before Sir Walter's death, a friend remarked to him 
 that he must derive consolation from the reflection that 
 his popularity was not owing to works which, in his latter 
 moments, he might wish recalled. Scott remained silent 
 for a moment, with his eyes fixed on the ground. "When 
 he raised them," says the narrator, " as he shook ine by 
 
 * Lockliart's Scott vol. v. p. 31.
 
 LITERATURE OF XIX. CENTURY. 271 
 
 the hand, I perceived the light-blue eye sparkling with 
 unusual moisture ; he added, ' I am drawing near the 
 close of my career. I have been, perhaps, the most 
 voluminous author of the day, and it is a comfort to me 
 to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to 
 corrupt no man's principle, and that I have written 
 nothing which, on my death-bed, I should wish blotted."* 
 In this utterance of dignified self-complacency, he stands 
 justified by the story of his wondrous authorship. With 
 regard to Scott's poetry, there are indications that, in the 
 calmer judgment of posterity, the world is willing to re- 
 store a part, at least, of the fame it too quickly took away. 
 It is only the other day that Landor, ranking Scott's 
 poems with the classics, has said, 
 
 " The trumpet-blast of Marmion never shook 
 The walls of God-built Hion ; yet what shout 
 Of the Achaians swells the heart so high !" 
 
 In the concluding lecture I propose to proceed with 
 the general considerations of the literature of this cen- 
 tury — its chief productions and infiuences ; among which 
 I desire to speak of the character and influence of Lord 
 Byron's poetry, the prose and poetry of Southey, the 
 poetry of Wordsworth, the influence of Mr. Carlyle's 
 writings, and also of some of the women who, both in 
 prose and poetry, have adorned the literature of our times. 
 
 * Lockhart's Scott, vol. x ) 196.
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 (ftottlemporarg literature.* 
 
 Lord Byron — His popularity and its decline — His power of simple, vigor- 
 ous language — Childc Harold — The Dying Gladiator — The Isles of 
 Greece — Contrast of Byron's and Shakspeare's creations — Miss Bar- 
 rett — Miss Keinble's sonnet — Byron as a poet of nature — His an- 
 tagonism to Divine Truth — The Dream, the most faultless of his 
 poems — Don Juan — Shelley — Leigh Hunt's remarks on — Carlyle 
 — His earnestness — Southey — His historical works — Thalaba — 
 Wordsworth — His characteristics — Female authors — Joanna Baillio 
 — Miss Edgeworth — Mrs. Kemblo — Mrs. Norton — Miss Barrett- 
 Cry of the children, &c. 
 
 In bringing this course of lectures toward a conclusion, 
 [ shall resume the cursory view of the contemporary 
 English literature which I began in the last lecture. 
 When the literary history of this period shall hereafter 
 come to be written, a voluminous chapter will be needed 
 for what the English language has given expression to 
 within it. During the first quarter of this century, the 
 writings of Lord Byron had the most high-wrought and 
 wide-spread celebrity. His was the commanding name 
 of the day for some ten or twelve, years in the first quar- 
 ter of this century. Scott, as a poet, calmly withdrew at 
 the approach of the new influence. He had probably 
 exhausted that fine, but not very deep, vein of poetry, 
 which gained him a quick popularity and a permanent 
 place among English poets ; he withdrew from the region 
 
 * Thursday, February 28, IS50. 
 272
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 273 
 
 of verse to pass into those unexplored spaces of the ima- 
 gination in which he was to establish his chief fame as 
 the great writer of historical romance. 
 
 The popularity of Byron, take it for all in all, was pro- 
 bably the most splendid that ever poet was applauded 
 and flattered with. His song had larger audience over 
 the earth, and on that audience it exerted an unwonted 
 fascination, swaying the feelings of multitudes, and mak- 
 ing its words and its music familiar on their lips. It was 
 popularity too quick grown to last without a large dimi- 
 nution ; the love of his poetry was too passionate to 
 stand the test of time. It is not worth while now to 
 measure the extraneous causes which helped that popu- 
 larity : his rank, his beauty, his audacity, the exposure of 
 his domestic discord, his foreign adventures, half wan- 
 derer, half exile — all were elements in that fascination, 
 wherewith all the world watched him and welcomed his 
 words. Without meaning, in a lecture in which I have 
 so much to dispose of, to dwell on the personal history of 
 Lord Byron, let me only remark, in passing, how striking 
 is the contrast between the husband's sentimental solicit- 
 ing of the world's sympathies, along with a sensual defi- 
 ance of all that is most sacred by the laws of God and of 
 man ; and, on the other hand, the heroic silence and self- 
 control of the wife, and, along with it, a life of devoted 
 and toilsome charity, in which die has sought the repa- 
 ration of her hopes and happiness. Who can question 
 which was the injured one ? 
 
 The extraneous causes of Byron's popularity would be 
 altogether inadequate to account for it. Much as they 
 may have helped it, they alone never could have given it. 
 Looking at it now as a matter of literary history, the
 
 271 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 true causes are to be discovered, I believe, both in the 
 strength and in the weakness of his genius. If that 
 strength had been less than it was, he could not have 
 gained the influence he did over the minds of his fellow- 
 inen : if there had been less of weakness blended with 
 his might, he would not have gained that influence so 
 widely and so soon. Such is the paradox of poetic popu- 
 larity. The same causes will explain the decline of By- 
 ron's influence. I mean the extent of that decline, fur- 
 nishing a discrimination between what is permanent and 
 what is perishable in his poetry. All that I propose to 
 do is to notice some of the chief characteristics of his 
 poetry, so as to judge thereby of its past popularity and 
 the estimation it is now held in. 
 
 Lord Byron gained the public ear, in part, by his com- 
 mand of the simple Saxon part of the language. In his 
 choice of words, he is one of the most idiomatic of the 
 English poets : his genuine English is shown forth in his 
 poetry and the vigorous prose style of his letters — the 
 English-Latinized words being present in small pro- 
 portion. This admirable command of the " best trea- 
 sures" of our tongue was not, I think, accompanied with 
 an equal power of structure and combination, in the ab- 
 sence of which there is betrayed the want of that stu- 
 dious and dutiful culture of the language and versification 
 which the greatest of the poets recognise as part of their 
 discipline, and to which, no doubt — the art and the inspira- 
 tion combined — we owe both the exquisite graces of Shaks- 
 peare's verse and the magnificent harmonies of Spenser's 
 and Milton's. 
 
 With such power over his language, as an organ of 
 expression, Byron had other powers which are the poet's
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 276 
 
 endowment; a%l the one and simple solution of his fame 
 is his gift of imagination, accompanied with, or perhaps 
 more truly including, fine poetic sensibilities. Now when 
 these sensibilities were in a natural and healthy mood.; 
 when his heart was open to genuine influences, so that 
 there was the true poetic sympathy between the inner 
 world of spirit and the outer world of sense; when, in 
 short, Nature had her will with this wayward child, — the 
 utterance was a true and beautiful flow of poetic inspira- 
 tion, as in that tranquil passage in Childe Harold : 
 
 " Clear, placid Lenian ! thy contrasted lake 
 With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing 
 Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake 
 Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. 
 This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing 
 To waft me from distraction. Once I loved 
 Torn Ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring 
 Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, 
 That I with stern delight should e'er have been so moved. 
 
 It is the hush of night, and all between 
 Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, 
 Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen, 
 Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear 
 Precipitously steep ; and drawing near 
 There breathes a living fragrance from the shore 
 Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear 
 Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, 
 Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more." 
 
 This is true poetic description, in which, while the poet 
 appears only to express a docile recipiency of what Nature 
 bestows, he gives back to be blended with it both his 
 own emotion and the light which a poet's imagination 
 creates. 
 
 A passage proving higher power is the well-known de-
 
 276 LECTURE NINTII. 
 
 scription of the Gladiator, in the samegpoem. It is a 
 higher strain, for it is a description purely visionary — 
 telling of no spectacle of the bodily sight — hut a reality 
 of spiritual vision. The poet stood within the vacant and 
 silent circuit of the Coliseum, no sound touching his car, 
 no sight save the ruins reaching his eye, hut inspired by 
 the local association, and by the image which sculpture 
 had made familiar, he sees and hears through centuries : 
 and the thronged amphitheatre rises up before him with 
 all the horrid sights and sounds of Rome's brutal sports, 
 in his rapt vision of the dying athlete : nay more, (and 
 this is the grandest part of the vision, full of a moral 
 beauty,) looking to the wild region of the Danube, he 
 beholds the distant cottage of the Gladiator, with his chil- 
 dren in happy ignorance of the murdered father's misery ; 
 and further — such can be a poet's seeing — he beholds 
 Alaric and his hosts coming down in vengeance on the 
 doomed and guilty city : 
 
 " I see before me tho Gladiator lie ; 
 He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
 Consents to death, but conquers agony, 
 And his droop'd head sinks gradually low — 
 And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
 From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
 Like the first of a thunder shower;* and now 
 
 * This — "the first of a thunder shower," as applied to the heavy 
 blood-urops from the Gladiator's wound — always seemed to me a de- 
 fective figuro; but where, in any poem, will any thing be found more 
 perfect in its simple illustrative beauty than tho linos of Childo 
 fiarola on the march to Waterloo? 
 
 " And Ardcrines waves above them hor green loaves 
 Dewy with Nature's tear-drops, as they pass, 
 Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves 
 Over the nnreturning brave." W. 15. It.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 277 
 
 The arena swims around him — he is gone 
 Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won 
 
 He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes 
 Were with hia heart, and that was far away: 
 He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize, 
 But where his rude hut by the Danube lay — 
 There were his young barbarians all at play, 
 There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire, 
 Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday — 
 All this rush'd with his blood. — Shall he expire 
 And unavenged ? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire !" 
 
 In this, there is genuine poetic vision, genuine feeling; 
 in a word, true imaginative power, and wondrous words 
 c -f simple English to give voice to it. 
 
 I would refer to another passage, less striking, but also 
 characteristic of Byron's best power, and which I wish to 
 cite, because it admirably exemplifies how simple, both in 
 conception and in expression, is true poetic sublimity. It 
 in the passage in which the poet, assuming the character 
 of a Greek, utters his emotion on the plain ol Marathon ; 
 and the imaginative truth and sublimity of the lines ad- 
 mit of a very simple analysis. There are presented two 
 of the grandest of earth's natural objects — a range of 
 mountains on the one side, and the sea on the other; 
 between them a tract of ground hallowed by one of the 
 world's greatest battles, the victory that saved Europe 
 from Asia's conquest; and that combining power, which is 
 one of the chief functions of the imagination — not only 
 groups, nay, more than groups— unites these three great 
 objects, mountain, plain, and ocean, with all their 
 memories, but also vivifies them with the deep emotion 
 of the solitary human being standing in the midst of 
 
 them : 
 
 S 24
 
 078 LECTURE NINTil. 
 
 "The mountains look on Marathon, 
 
 And Marathon looks on the sea; 
 And musing there an horn alone, 
 
 I thought that Greece m.ght still be free; 
 For standing on the Persian's grave, 
 I could not deem myself a slave. 
 
 A king sat on the rocky brow, 
 
 Which looks o'er seaborn Salamis; 
 And ships, by thousands, lay below, 
 
 And men in nations ; all were his ! 
 He counted them at break of day; 
 And when the sun set, where were they?" 
 
 Such passages illustrate the best moods of Byron's 
 genius, and it would be agreeable to unweave more 
 of the same description from all that is false and 
 morbid in his poetry, but such a process would be 
 altogether inadequate for the understanding of that 
 poetry and the influence it exerted. When we re- 
 member how largely a weak sentimentalism entered into 
 that popularity, there can be little doubt that it was won 
 by the poet's weakness as well as by his power; by what 
 was morbid as well as by what was healthful. We may 
 form a judgment now of the character of his poetry, by 
 looking at his dealing with what were his two chief 
 themes, human character, and the material world — the 
 universe of sight and sound. Now with regard to his 
 treatment of human character, whether it be in the ex- 
 pression of his own thoughts and feelings, or in the 
 invention of poetic persons, and whether these inventions 
 be meant to be independent of himself, or to shadow 
 forth his own nature, there is, in all, disease, deep-seated, 
 clinging disease. You search in vain for a single health- 
 ful impersonation of humanity; all the creations are hoi-
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 279 
 
 low images, with no life or heart in them. Turn to Shaka- 
 peare's creations, even those most removed from common 
 life, or follow Spenser into the shadowy regions of Fairy 
 Land, or Milton into his supernatural spaces, and so faithful 
 are their creations to a deep science of humanity, that every 
 human heart recognises the truth of them : they live and 
 have a reality by virtue of their poetic truthfulness. But 
 of Byron's heroes or of his heroines, which is a natural, 
 truthful character, such as great poets give for the admi- 
 ration or for the admonition of their fellow-beings ? No 
 pure and lofty idea of womanhood appeared in his female 
 personages ; he scarce lifts them above the sensual soft- 
 ness of oriental degradation, investing it in a delusive 
 light of false and fanciful sentiment. His male person- 
 ages (they are not truthful enough to be called characters) 
 are strangely alike in their unreality. "But" (as has 
 been justly remarked *by the sagacious author of Philip 
 Van Artavelde*) " there is yet a worse defect in them. 
 Lord Byron's conception of a hero, is an evidence not 
 only of scanty materials of knowledge from which to con- 
 struct the ideal of a human being, but also of a want of 
 perception of what is great or noble in our nature. His 
 heroes are creatures abandoned to their passions, and 
 essentially, therefore, weak of mind. Strip them of the 
 veil of mystery and the trappings of poetry, resolve them 
 into their plain realities, and they are such beings as, in 
 the eyes of a reader of masculine judgment, would cer- 
 tainly excite no sentiment of admiration, even if they did 
 not provoke contempt. When the conduct and feelings 
 attributed to them are reduced into prose, and brought to 
 
 * Prefaco to Philip Van Artavelde, p. xv
 
 L'SO LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 the test of a rational consideration, they must be perceived 
 to be beings in whom there is no strength, except that of 
 their intensely selfish passions; in whom all is vanity; 
 their exertions being for vanity under the name of love 
 or revenge, and their sufferings for vanity under the name 
 of pride. If such beings as these are to be regarded as 
 heroical, where in human nature are we to look for what 
 is low in sentiment or infirm in character?" 
 
 How nobly opposite to Lord Byron's ideal was that 
 conception of an heroical character which took life and 
 immortality from the hand of Shakspeare : — 
 
 " Give me that man 
 That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him 
 In my heart's core ; ay, in my heart of heart." 
 
 It was, however, with these fictions, that the popuhu 
 fancy was fascinated, not only because the poet's genius 
 gave a charm to them, but becausf that which addresses 
 itself to what is false and morbid in man or woman will 
 find a response, happily only for a time. In like manner, 
 there was an attraction in the unreserved disclosures which 
 the poet was all the while making of his own feelings 
 and passions, taking the large concourse of his listeners 
 into his confidence; and running through those feelings 
 tliere was the poison of moral disease. On the pages of 
 Byron you can scarce escape from some form or other of 
 morbid feeling, a vicious egotism, pride, contempt, misan- 
 thropy : these arc attributes not of strength, but of weak- 
 ness; and knowing, as we now do, the story of his career, 
 is it not pitiful that one so gifted should have gone whin- 
 ing through life, complaining of man, and rebellious of 
 God, and all the while serf-indulgent alike in sensual and 
 sentimental voluptuousness ? It is well said, that if life bo
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 281 
 
 " ever so unfortunate, a man's folding his hands ovei it in 
 melancholy mood, and suffering himself to be made a 
 puppet by it, is a sadly weak proceeding. Most thoughtful 
 men have probably some dark fountains in their souls, by 
 the side of which, if there were time, and it were decorous, 
 they could let their thoughts sit down and wail indefinitely. 
 That long Byron wail fascinated men for a tinie,j3ecause- 
 there is that in human nature."* Herein was the mischief 
 that Byron's poetry did in its season of authority: revers 
 ing the poet's function, which is to heal what is unhealthy, 
 to strengthen what is weak, to chasten what is corrupt, 
 and to lift up what is sinking down : he fostered what was 
 false, ministered to what was morbid, and, moreover, 
 tempted them on to the willing delusion that their weak- 
 ness was strength. Thus unreal and false habits of feeling 
 were engendered, and men and women, under this delu- 
 sion, grew sentimental and fantastic, and flattered them- 
 selves that there was beauty in the ugliness of pride, that 
 there was magnanimity in the littleness of contempt, and 
 depth of passion in the shallowness of discontent, and 
 majesty in unmanly moodiness and misanthropy. Now all 
 this, which came from the Byron teaching, was false both 
 in morals and in poetry ; for in this mortal life crowded 
 with its realities for every hour of every human being's 
 existence, all fantastic and self-occupied sadness is a folly 
 and a sin — unmanly in man, unpoetic in the poet, well re- 
 buked by a woman -poet's strenuous words : 
 
 " We overstate the ills of life, and take 
 Imagination, given us to bring down 
 The choirs of singing angels, overshone 
 By God's clear glory, — down our earth to rake 
 
 * Friends in Council, p. 198. 
 * 24*
 
 282 LEOTUiiE NINTH. 
 
 The dismal snows instead ; flake following flako 
 To cover all the corn. We walk upon 
 The shaijow of hills across a level thrown, 
 And pant like climbers. Near the alder-brake 
 We sigh so loud, the nightingale within 
 Kefuses to sing loud, as else she would. 
 brothers ! let us leave the shame and sin 
 Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood, 
 . * The holy name of Grief. — holy herein, 
 
 That by the grief of One, came all our good."* 
 
 I know of nothing that more betrays the moral weak- 
 ness of Byron, than that he gave so much of his power to 
 spread the contagion of a morbid melancholy, the selfish, 
 thankless, faithless weariness of life, which another woman- 
 poet has justly called a blasphemy: 
 
 " Blaspheme not thou thy sacred life, nor turn 
 O'er joys that God hath for a season lent 
 Perchance to try thy spirit, and its bent, 
 Effeminate soul and base, weakly to mourn. 
 There lies no desert in the land of life, 
 For e'en that tract that barrenest doth seem, 
 Laboured of thee in faith and hope, shall teem 
 With heavenly harvests and rich gatherings, rifo. 
 Haply no more, music and mirth and love, 
 And glorious things of old and younger art, 
 Shall of thy days make one perpetual feast : 
 But when these bright companions all depart, 
 Lay there thy head upon the ample breast 
 Of Hope, — and thou shalt hear the angels sing above. "f 
 
 In Lord Byron's portraiture of human character, his 
 genius was prostituted to a worse abuse, in that i-t con- 
 founds and sophisticates the simplicity of conscience — 
 breaks down the barriers between right and wrong-, by 
 abating the natural abhorrence of crime, and arraying the 
 
 * Sonnet 6n Exaggeration. Mrs. Browning's l'oems, vol. i. p. 344. 
 f Fcoina by Franco; V.miu Komble, p. L50
 
 Cal. 
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 283 
 
 guilt of even the vilest vice in a false splendour and pride. 
 How different from Shakspeare's genuine morality, so 
 loval to the best moral instincts, never making vice at- 
 tractive, not tempting us even to look fondly on the 
 proud and sinful temper until it be chastened by adver- 
 sity, still less holding up for admiration the moral 
 monsters in whom one virtue is linked with a thousand 
 crimes ! 
 
 Let me next hasten to notice something of the character 
 of the poetry of Byron, considered as a poet of nature : I 
 mean, of the material world. In the last lecture I had oc- 
 casion to remark, that it seemed to me a happy circum- 
 stance that the great results in physical science did not 
 take place during the low state of religious belief that ex- 
 isted in the last century, but were reserved for a better 
 period of opinion, which -could make those results sub- 
 servient to the cause of truth, instead of being perverted 
 to the uses of materialism. I would now add that, while 
 in our times there has been such active scientific, study of 
 nature, happily the poetic culture of nature has been no 
 less earnest, and thus a deeper knowledge of the marvels 
 and the glory of the universe has been promoted both by 
 the processes of analysis and observation, and by the pro- 
 cesses of the imagination. Let us see how Byron contri- 
 buted to this, and what he has done to help his fellow- 
 men to the poetic visions of nature. No poet ever enjoyed 
 larger or more various opportunities of communing with 
 earth and the elements. He was familiar with ocean and 
 lake, with Alpine regions, and with Grecian and Italian 
 lands and skies. He had a quick susceptibility to all that 
 is grand and beautiful in the world of sense, as he wandered 
 over the earth.
 
 284 LKCTURE NINTH. 
 
 "The sounding cataract 
 Haunted (him) like a passion : the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colours and their forms, were then to (him) 
 An appetite ; a feeling and a love 
 That had no nead of a remoter charm, 
 By thought supplied, nor any interest 
 Unborrowed from the eye."* 
 
 But his love of nature was not only passionate; it waa 
 thoughtful and imaginative. He knew that true poetic 
 description must go beyond the rapture which mere bodily 
 sight can give, and deal with all of which this material 
 world is symbolical. His strong poetic instincts, when 
 they chanced to be associated with true and healthy feel- 
 ing, gave forth often grand or beautiful description ; he 
 aspired to the highest reach of poetic description of nature, 
 for of himself he said, 
 
 " With the stars 
 And the quick spirit of the universe 
 He held his dialogues ; and they did teach 
 To him the magic of their mysteries. 
 To him the book of night was open'd wide, 
 And the voices from the deep abyss reveal'd 
 A marvel and a secret.""|" 
 
 But these aspirations were frustrated, for a moral weak- 
 ness perverted and lowered them, causing an inequality in 
 his poetry which it is lamentable to look at. At one 
 moment we believe that we are about to behold him 
 
 " Springing from crystal step to crystal step, 
 In tho bright air, whore nono can follow him ;" J 
 
 but straightway we see the winged energy dragged down 
 
 * Wordsworth's Lines written abo»9 Tintern Abbey. Works, p. 159. 
 
 f The Dream, stanza viii. 
 
 } Landor, Imaginary Conversation, vol. iii. p. 303.
 
 CONTEMPORAKY LITERATURE. 285 
 
 to earth, soiled with earthy things, and stumbling in the 
 darkness and the mire of low and turbid passions. Aspir- 
 ing to commune with the infinite, the poet's heart, and 
 therefore his genius too, were cramped within the narrow 
 confines of petty pride and weak hatred. The blindness 
 of idolatry came over him. The world of sight and sound 
 became a divinity to him. That which was meant for 
 only a means to higher en/ls was made all in all to him. 
 The material world, framed as it so wondrously is, to 
 minister not only to our bodily wants, but to the imagi 
 native appetites which feed on the grand and the beauti- 
 ful, hemmed his faithless spirit in; and the genius of 
 Byron had not power enough to extricate hijp from the 
 shallow sophistries of materialism. His strong passion 
 for nature, divorcing itself from the vision of faith, began 
 to spread itself in misty rhapsodies, meaningless of every 
 thing but the old errors of sensuous systems of unbelief. 
 When Byron's poetry began to utter materialism, it began 
 to utter folly, and then it ceases to be poetry, for poetry 
 is allied to wisdom, and not to madness. He talked of 
 loving earth only for its earthly sake, " becoming a por- 
 tion of that around him j" of high mountains being a feel- 
 ing to him ) and 
 
 " That he could see 
 Nothing to loathe in nature, save to be 
 A link reluctant in that fleshly chain, 
 Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, 
 And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain 
 Of ocean, and the stars mingle, and not in vain : 
 jt % -% -s- ♦ 
 
 And when at length the mind shall be all free 
 From what it hates in this degraded form, 
 Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be, 
 Existent happier in the fly and worm :
 
 286 'LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 Where elements to elements conform, 
 And dust is as it should be, shall I not 
 Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more warm ? 
 The bodiless thought? The spirit of each spot, 
 Of which, even now, I share at times, the immortal lot."* 
 
 Now strip this, and the multitude of passages like it, of 
 all that is fantastic ; measure it, as you please, either by 
 the practical rules of common sense, or, by what is more 
 appropriate, the standard of imaginative truth and wisdom, 
 and what is it but the perplexity and the folly of material- 
 ism ? What natural instinct, let me ask, is so strong in the 
 human heart as that which recoils from the dread anticipa- 
 tion that this living flesh of ours, or the cherished features 
 of those th* are dear to us, will be fed upon by the worms 
 in the grave? — a thought that would crush us down in des- 
 perate abasement, but for the one bright hope bcyoud, and 
 then, to think of a poet exulting in the prospect of that 
 remnant of his carnal life " existent happier in the worm !" 
 When Byron is honoured as a great poet of nature, it is 
 well to understand where he will lead his disciple, and 
 where he will desert him. The material world has high 
 and appropriate uses in the building up of our moral being : 
 the study of it, in a right and believing spirit, is full of 
 instruction; but it is worthless and perilous if we lose 
 sight of the great truth of the soul's spiritual supremaey 
 ivcr it; that there is implanted in each human being an 
 undying particle, destined to outlive not this earth alone, 
 but the* universe. This poet, "sick of himself foi very 
 selfishness," his heart aching with its hollowness, gent his 
 materialized imagination to roam over the world of sense, 
 ocean and mountain, seeking what the world could not 
 
 * Childe Harold, canto iii, 72, 74.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 287 
 
 give. " Where shall wisdom be found? and where is the 
 place of understanding ? The depth saith, It is not in 
 me, and the sea saith, It is not with me."* 
 
 Now, if we seek a solution of the strange inequality of 
 Byron's poetic power, and the perversion and imperfection 
 of his descriptions of nature, it is in this happy truth 
 that the cultivation of the imagination is dependent on 
 the moral feelings ; and all 
 
 " Outward forms, the loftiest, still receive 
 Their finer influences from the life within." 
 
 Coleridge, in his Ode on Dejection, tells us that the 
 poetic vision of nature is sealed even to that uncongenial 
 mood — 
 
 " The wan and heartless mood — 
 A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear ; 
 
 A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 
 
 Which finds no natural outlet — no relief 
 In word, or sigh, or tear. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 My genial spirits fail, 
 
 And what can these avail 
 To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ? 
 
 It were a vain endeavour, 
 
 Though I should gaze forever 
 On that green light that lingers in the West : 
 
 I may not hope, from outward forms, to win 
 
 The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. 
 
 From the soul itself must issue forth 
 
 A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud, 
 Envoloping the earth ; 
 And from the soul itself must there be sent 
 
 A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth — 
 Of all sweet sounds the life and element I" 
 
 * Job xxviii. 12, 11-
 
 283 LKCTURJS NINTH. 
 
 But if the fountain of the life within be not only 
 darkened with dejection, but turbid with evil passions — 
 if the soul itself be distempered — it cannot send forth 
 "the beautiful and beauty-rnaking power," but, in its 
 stead, such perplexed and lurid flashes as burst from the 
 genius of Byron. 
 
 That wise expounder of poetic power and of nature, 
 the author of " The Modern Painters," has justly said 
 that "all egotism and selfish care or regard are, in propor- 
 tion to their constancy, destructive of imagination, whose 
 play and power depend altogether on our being able to 
 forget ourselves, and enter, like possessing spirits, into the 
 bodies of things about us."* Now there is deep instruc- 
 tion in this — that, whenever Byron's imagination rose 
 above that selfishness which was his clinging vice, his 
 greatest power was displayed ; and it is woful to see how 
 often this leprosy is breaking out on the poet's brow as 
 he stands by the incense-altar. 
 
 There is this further admonition in all that Byron failed 
 in — an admonition plain and irresistible — that just so far 
 as poet or philosopher places himself in antagonism to 
 Divine Truth, so far must he fail in all that he adven- 
 tures in the deep things of nature, of man, of his own 
 bouI. " Science," it has been justly said, " in the hands 
 of infidelity, degenerates into crumbling materialism : it 
 is blind to the beauty, deaf to the harmony of the uni- 
 verse; as its objects rise, it sinks; when it comes to treat 
 of human nature, its views arc base and degrading; its 
 morality is a matter of barter, or a wary drifting along 
 before the animal impulses. And what can the poetry 
 
 * Ruskin's Modern Painters, vol. ii. p. ISO.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 289 
 
 of infidelity be, except a deifying of the senses and the 
 passions, while the consciousness of higher cravings 
 and aspirations, which cannot be wholly extinguished, 
 vents itself in bursts of self- mockery, or in the cold sneer 
 of derision and contempt for all mankind?"* The highest 
 truth and grandeur that pagan poetry attained, what were 
 they but aspirations for the coming Christian truth ? 
 And when, in Christian times, the poet rejects that truth, 
 refusing its light, he takes up his abode in darkness 
 deeper than the heathen's, and it is impossible for him to 
 comprehend, much less expound, nature, himself, or his 
 fellow-men ; for nowhere can the unaided, solitary mind 
 9f man travel, whether it be into his own moral and spi- 
 ritual nature, with the mysterious tribunal of conscience, 
 so weak and so strong, or into the hearts of mankind, or 
 to the mute creation, or into the spaces of the universe, 
 to the blade of grass at our feet, or the most distant star 
 in the firmament, — nowhere can it travel, but it shall find 
 itself baffled by mystery — mystery, the burden of which 
 grows heavier and heavier the farther it is removed from 
 the only truth that can solve it : 
 
 " For the soul, 
 At every stop when she around, her cell, 
 Sees, yet adores not the Adorable. 
 
 More faint and faint the gleams which with Him dwell, 
 Break out on her ; more feebly His dear voice, 
 That which alone bids nature to rejoice, 
 More faint and faint she hears ; till all alone, 
 From scene to scene of doubt, she wanders on 
 
 * The Mission of the Comforter, by Julius Charles Hare, vol. .. 
 p. 200. 
 
 25
 
 290 LECTURE NINTH 
 
 Along a dreary waste, starless and long, 
 Starless and sad, a dreary waste along, 
 Uncheer'd, unsatisfied, for evermore 
 Companionless, and fatherless, and poor."* 
 
 With a mind too vigorous for inaction, and a temper 
 too proud and wilful for either the moral or intellectual 
 discipline which the greatest writers recognise as a duty 
 they ask no exemption from, Lord Byron, amid the 
 large variety of his productions, has left no one elaborate, 
 well-sustained poem; and the evidence of his genius is 
 to be found in passages or in the short poems, such as the 
 " Prisoner of Chillon," or, what is perhaps the first and 
 most faultless of his poems, (which I should be glad to 
 pause on,) " The Dream." 
 
 If a fitful irregularity was characteristic of this splendid 
 career of authorship, no less so was the close of it. All 
 restraint growing more vexatious and burdensome to him, 
 whether the discipline of his art, the discipline of society, 
 or the discipline of conscience, he fashioned that ribald 
 poem, Don Juan, to let his fancy riot in. It was an igno- 
 minious retreat for genius, the last act of self-degradation. 
 I cite one stanza from it, to show, by a contrast that shall 
 follow, to what base uses a poet can bring his talent. He 
 looks at the metropolis of England, with the dome of St. 
 Paul's, sublime in magnitude, and venerable by the devo- 
 tions of many generations — the dead and the living — and 
 thus he images it : 
 
 "A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, 
 Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye 
 Could reach, with hero and there a sail just .-kipping 
 In sight — then lost amidst a forestry 
 
 * The Christian Scholar, by the author of The Cathedral, p. 256.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 2<)1 
 
 Of masts ; — a wilderness of steeples peeping 
 On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; 
 A huge, dim cupola, like a foolscap crown 
 On a fool's head — and this is London-town !"* 
 
 I Ho not pause to say what pitiable prostitution this is 
 of the poetic talent, corrupting the fancy with such a 
 nean association of poor and heartless wit; but, in the 
 ontrast, let me sweep the scoff from out your thoughts 
 by a short sentence, not clothed in verse, but overflowing 
 with poetry, not graced with metrical music, but glowing 
 with the purity and the grandeur of imaginative truth : 
 " It was only the other morning," says the living writer 
 from whom I quote, "as F was crossing one of the bridges 
 which bear us from our mighty metropolis, that para- 
 mount city of the earth, that I was struck, for the thou- 
 sandth time it may be, by the majesty with which the 
 dome dedicated to the apostle of the Gentiles rises out of 
 the surrounding sea of houses ; and I could not but feel 
 what a noble type it is of the city set upon a hill ; I 
 could not but acknowledge that thus it behooves the 
 church to rise out of the world, with her feet amid the 
 world, with her head girt only by the sky."f 
 
 Byron's career of authorship and life brought him, 
 it might be said almost without exaggeration, super- 
 annuated at the age of thirty-seven, to the grave. There 
 is a passage in "Manfred" which has, I think, a fearful 
 significancy as an image of that proud defiance with which 
 Byron thrust away what alone could have restored a 
 heart wasted with self-indulgence, wounded with self- 
 torment. The lines tell of the death of Otho : 
 
 * Don Juan, canto x. v. 82. • 
 
 •j" Archdeacon Hare's charge at Lewes, in 1810, p. fi.
 
 tt)2 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 "When Rome's sixth emperor was near his last, 
 The victim of a self-inflicted wound, 
 To shun the torments of a public death 
 From senates once his slaves, a certain soldier, 
 With show of loyal pity, would have stanched 
 The gushing throat with his officious robe ; 
 The dyiftg Roman thrust him back, and said — 
 Some empire still in his expiring glance, — 
 ' It is too late.' " 
 
 While the influence of Lord Byron's poetry has declined, 
 fhow rarely now is it quoted !) the estimation of Shelley's 
 genius has risen. With fine poetic endowment, both of 
 imagination and feeling, and with a willing spirit of poetic 
 discipline by the study of his art, his mind, unhappily, was 
 bewildered in the mazes and the misery of a speculative 
 skepticism, which possibly a nature generous, sincere, and 
 enthusiastic as his, might have outgrown in a longer life. 
 There was an earnestness in his character that elevates 
 his memory above that of Byron, but the cloud of unbelief 
 brought kindred confusion over his vision, as when he 
 speaks of life and death : 
 
 "In this life 
 Of error, ignorance, and strife, 
 Where nothing is, but all things soom, 
 And we the shadows of a dream, 
 It is a modost croed, and yet 
 Pleasant, if one considors it, 
 • To own that death itself must bo 
 Like all the rest, a mockery."* 
 
 In the beautiful lines written among the Euganean 
 dills, you cannot but see how Shelley's profound sense of 
 the beauty of earth is imbittercd by the gloom of infidelity: 
 
 • 
 
 * The Sensitive Plant, Shelley's Works, vol. iii. p. 1.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 293 
 
 " Many a green isle needs must be 
 In the deep, wide sea of misery ; 
 Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
 Never thus could voyage on, 
 Day and night, and night and day, 
 Drifting on his weary way, 
 With the solid darkness black 
 Closing round his vessel's track, 
 While above the sunless sky, 
 Big with clouds, hangs heavily." 
 
 It is no untruthful tenderness that has described Shel- 
 ley as " an unhappy enthusiast, who, through a calami- 
 tous combination of circumstances, galling and fretting a 
 morbidly sensitive temperament, became a fanatical hater 
 of the perversions and distortions conjured up by his own 
 feverish imagination. ... He was under the miserable 
 delusion of hating, under the name of Christianity, what 
 was not Christianity itself, but rather a medley of anti- 
 christian notions which he blindly identified with it." 
 
 Considering how pure Shelley's poetry is from all such 
 sensual depravity as vitiates the pages of Byron, and how 
 earnest he was in speculations he believed to be for the 
 good of his fellow-men, one would fain look with pity on 
 his errors as well as on his tragic death. It is with an 
 honest power of friendship that Leigh Hunt says of Shel- 
 ley, that " Whether interrogating nature in the icy soli- 
 tudes of Chamouny, or thrilling with the lark in the sun- 
 shine, or shedding indignant tears with sorrow and poverty, 
 or pulling flowers like a child in the field, or pitching 
 himself back into the depths of time and space, and dis- 
 coursing with the first forms and gigantic shadows of 
 creation, he is alike in earnest and at home."* A more 
 
 * Book of Gems, vol. i. p. 40. 
 25*
 
 204 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 sober judgment, well describing a great deal of Shelley's 
 poetry, is given by Mr. Henry Taylor, in the preface to 
 Philip Van Artavelde : " Much beauty, exceeding splen- 
 dour of diction and imagery, cannot but be perceived in 
 his poetry, as well as exquisite charms of versification ; 
 and a reader of an apprehensive fancy will doubtless be 
 entranced while he reads ; but when he shall have closed 
 the volume, and considered within himself what it has 
 added to his stock of permanent impressions, of recurring 
 thoughts, of pregnant recollections, he will probably find 
 his stores in this kind no more enriched by having read 
 Mr. Shelley's poems, than by having gazed on so many 
 gorgeously coloured clouds in an evening sky : surpassingly 
 beautiful they were while before his eyes ; but forasmuch 
 as" they had no relevancy to his life, past or future, the 
 impression upon the memory barely survived that upon 
 the senses." 
 
 In even the most cursory survey of the literature of 
 our times, it becomes a part of its history that one of the 
 prose-writers, who has made a strong and peculiar impres- 
 sion on many thoughtful intellects, is Thomas Carlyle. 
 Converting simple English speech into a strange Teu 
 tonic dialect, he uses a style which, while it is odious and 
 repulsive to some, seems, by a sort of fascination, to com- 
 pel the attention of others ; and yet this uncouth style, 
 so alien from what the use of centuries has proved to be 
 genuine English, that it almost sounds like the making 
 strange noises to gain and force a hearing, is so redeemed 
 by the author's vigour, and is in such affinity with the 
 strangeness of imagery and illustration with which he 
 utters his strong thinking and hearty feeling, that one is 
 willing to look on it, not as affectation, but as the natural
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 295 
 
 expression of such a mind — a fashion of speech for him- 
 self alone. The impression Mr. Carlyle has made is 
 owing, no doubt, chiefly to his intense earnestness; and 
 he has done good service in teaching men the worthless- 
 ness of all formality from which the truth has died out, 
 and by exposing unreality, mockery — the forms of un- 
 truthfulness and counterfeit, described by the emphatic, 
 homely term, " sham." The time has not yet come for a 
 full estimate of Mr. Carlyle's genius ; for there is not 
 assurance enough whither he may lead his disciples. A 
 deep sense of earnestness does not give all the moral se- 
 curity that is needed ; for vice has its earnestness, far 
 less real indeed, as well as virtue ; and thus the mere 
 sense of earnestness, though for the most part giving 
 good guidance, may betray, if it be not held in just sub- 
 ordination to the supremacy of the sense of truth. The 
 admiration of power, as in Carlyle's just tribute to all the 
 robust reality of Dr. Johnson's character, may be appro- 
 priate and wise ; but, gazing too much at mere power, it 
 may disparage the sense of right, or rather confound 
 might with right. The readers of Mr. Carlyle's writings 
 therefore, while they may draw moral good and wisdom 
 from them, must needs follow him with some caution, for 
 he may lead them into strange places. When I consider 
 what the English language, in all its natural simplicity, 
 and beauty, and majesty, has been in the hands of the 
 great masters of it, whether in prose or verse, I cannot 
 divest myself of a misgiving that such strange and selfr 
 willed use as Mr. Carlyle makes of his mother-tongue is 
 a symptom of something unsound in the constitution of 
 his mind. 
 
 I pass, by an association of contrast, to Southey, whosv
 
 296 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 use of the language shows that natural and scholarlike 
 beauty which is an element of his reputation, both as a 
 prose-writer and a poet. His career of authorship, in 
 both departments, has been most remarkable : in prose, 
 embracing, with much miscellaneous essay-writing of a 
 high order, one of the most popular biographies in our 
 literature, the Life of Nelson, and a learned and elabo- 
 rate historical work, such as his History of Brazil ; and 
 in poetry the political odes, resembling Milton's poli- 
 tical poems in power, a great variety of minor pieces, 
 and such extended productions as the heroic narra- 
 tive poem of Roderic, and those highest efforts of his 
 genius, the poems in which he brought Asiatic forms 
 into the service of Christian poetry and truth, spiritual- 
 izing those forms of error as Spenser hallowed and puri- 
 fied chivalry and its customs. The most attractive of 
 these poems is Thalaba — the finest achievement, perhaps, 
 of what has been well styled Southey's judicious daring 
 in supernatural poetry. It shadows forth, as its pervad- 
 ing but not obtruded moral, the war and victory of faith, 
 a spiritual triumph over the world and evil powers, and 
 thus is one of the great sacred poems in our literature. 
 I should have been glad of an opportunity to show 
 more fully the high imaginative character of thfe poem, 
 and how much interest may be found in the study 
 of it. I can now do little more than remark that the 
 poet has taken not so much Mohammedanism, (certainly 
 .not at all in its impurity,) but "a system of belief and 
 worship developed under the covenant with Ishmael," a 
 remnant of patriarchal faith traditional among the pure and 
 the believing in Arabia ; and upon it he has brought the 
 light of Christian imagination to shine, as the angel's face
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 287 
 
 beamed on the fugitive bondwoman when he bade her 
 turn her wandering footsteps home again, and opened for 
 her outcast and fainting child a fountain in the desert 
 " Thalaba" is a poetic story of faith — its spiritual birth, 
 its might, its trials, and its victory — such a story as none 
 but a Christian poet could have told. As you follow the 
 hero along his wondrous career to its sublime and pathetic 
 close, the feeling which the rapt imagination retains is a 
 deep sense of the majestic strength given to the soul of 
 man when God breathes into it the spirit of faith. It 
 has been truly remarked of Shakspeare's dramas, that the 
 opening scene always bears an impress characteristic of 
 the sequel ; and never was the same principle of art more 
 finely proved than in the beautiful opening stanzas of 
 Thalaba — not least admirable in this, the reverential re- 
 serve - with which they breathe of Scripture truth and 
 story : 
 
 " How beautiful is night ! 
 A dewy freshness fills the silent air; 
 No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain 
 Breaks the sereno of heaven; 
 In full orbed glory yonder moon divine 
 Rolls through the dark blue depths. 
 
 Beneath her steady ray 
 The desert circle spreads, 
 Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. 
 How beautiful is night ! 
 
 Who, at this untimely hour, 
 Wanders o'er the desert sands ? 
 No station is in view, 
 Nor palm-grove, islanded amid the waste. 
 
 The mother and her child, 
 The widowed mother, and the fatherless boy,— 
 They at this untimely hour 
 Wander o'er the desert sands.
 
 LECTURE NINTII. 
 
 Alas ! the setting sun 
 Saw Zeinab in her bliss, 
 Hodeirah's wife beloved : 
 Alas ! the wife beloved, 
 The fruitful mother late, 
 Whom, when the daughters of Arabia named, 
 They wished their lot like hers, — 
 She wanders o'er the desert-sands. 
 
 A wretched widow now ; 
 The fruitful mother of so fair a race, 
 / With only one preserved, 
 She wanders o'er the wilderness. 
 No tear relieved the burthen of her heart ; 
 Stunned with the heavy woe, she felt like one 
 Half- wakened from a midnight dream of blood : 
 But sometimes when the boy 
 Would wet her hand with tears, 
 And, looking up to her fixed countenance, 
 Sob out the name of mother ! then she groaned. 
 At length, collecting, Zeinab turn'd her eyes 
 To heaven, and praised the Lord; 
 ' He gave — he takes away !' 
 
 The pious sufferer cried : 
 'The Lord our God is good!' 
 
 * * * * 
 
 She cast her eyes around : 
 Alas! no tents were there 
 Beside tho bending sands ; 
 No palm-tree rose to spot the wilderness ; 
 The dark blue sky closed round, 
 And rested like a dome 
 Upon the circling waste — 
 She cast her eyes around, 
 Famine and thirst were there ; 
 And then tho wretched mother bowed her head 
 And wopt upon her child." 
 
 During nearly the first forty years of this century did 
 Southcy devote himself, as long as his powers lasted, to an
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 299 
 
 honourable activity in his country's literature, associating, 
 like Scott, in genial companionship with all the good 
 and great in the same cause : the record of his life, (his 
 son is now giving it to the world,) like the inimitable 
 biography of Scott, is not only a personal narrative, but 
 a history of the literature of our times. I know not 
 where you could look for that history so agreeably told as 
 in these two biographies.* 
 
 * My brother was an earnest adniirer of Southey, not only of his 
 prose and verse, but of his personal character as revealed in his 
 writings ; and I well remember the triumphant pleasure he felt and 
 expressed to me when the fact was revealed, a few years ago, that 
 Southey was not responsible for the ancient acrimony of the Quarterly 
 Review toward America. He seemed to exult that his favourito 
 had not maligned his country. While he was in England last sum- 
 mer, he visited Miss Southey at Keswick ,• and I am tempted to make 
 an extract from one of his letters home, if only to illustrate the gentle 
 habit of his mind and current of his thoughts : " As we parted," he 
 says, "Katharine Southey said she supposed I wished to see the 
 church. I said we were on our way there, and she at once offered 
 herself and the children for an escort through the fields. The children, 
 Edith, and Bertha, and Robert, were sweet, loving, little bodies, who 
 kept close to us during the whole visit. A short walk along the hedges 
 — it was a beautiful day — brought us to the churchyard, and opposite 
 the gate. Miss Southey said she would wait for us and the children. 
 They had a winning, affectionate way, that would have charmed 
 you, of taking us by the hand and leading the way. We went into 
 the church, and saw the very impressive recumbent statue of Southey : 
 these recumbent monumental figures are always imposing and solemn, 
 this one peculiarly so. The children then took us to Southey's grave. 
 While there, the little boy, putting his hands on the tomb, said to his 
 sister, 'Edy, who in here?' and she told him, ' Grandfather.' This 
 did not seem to satisfy him, for, coming back, he renewed his question, 
 ' Erly, who in here?' and then she varied her young rhetoric, and 
 said, 'Aunt Katy's father and mother.' One spoils, I fear, this prattle 
 in repeating it, but on the spot, and with all the asoociations, it was 
 delightful." MS. Letter, 19 June, 1854. About the time this letter
 
 300 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 In this rapid and very inadequate view of contempo- 
 rary literature, I have reserved little space for an influ- 
 ence which is felt most amply and gratefully where it ia 
 felt at all, and which, in my belief, will prove the most 
 
 was written, or not long after, Southey's second wife, better known 
 as Caroline Bowles, died in a distant part of England; and since hei 
 death some very interesting though painful letters from her, descrip ■ 
 tive of Southey's latter days of fading or faded intellect, have found 
 their way into the newspapers. I am tempted to make short extracts 
 from two of these, dated in 1840, which seem to me very touching: 
 .... "Nothing gratifying, nothing hopeful, have I now to tell, 
 though there is still great cause for thankfulness in continued ex- 
 emption from all acute pain and bodily suffering; but I think there 
 is increased feebleness ; and certainly, from week to week, the mental 
 failure progresses. Spark after spark goes out of the little light now 
 left. Yet a capacity for enjoyment remains; and, God be thanked! 
 and in his way, he still lives in his books, taking, to all appearance, 
 as much delight in them as ever. I have no doubt, however, that 
 there is at times a painful consciousness of his condition." .... 
 " Of late my dear husband has been less restless in the day-time, 
 sitting quietly on the sofa, turning over his leaves for an hour or two 
 at a time, so that I have boen able to occupy myself a little, as of 
 old, with my pencil; .... and now my latest and perhaps last 
 attempt satisfies even me, for I have somehow made out an excellent 
 likeness of that dear husband, of whom there has never yet been 
 
 a resembling portrait Here is a chapter of egotism, but 
 
 never was Raphael so contented with the most glorious of his works 
 as I with this, my poor defective drawing. 'Yes, this me/ was tho 
 remark of my doar husband when I showod it to him." 
 
 I cannot refrain from still farther extending this noto by a poem 
 commemorative of Southey by Landor, which I find in tho Annual 
 Register for 1853 — a book, by-the-by, let mo say, whore year after 
 year, when there is any current poetry, beautiful selections are always 
 to bo found. It is quoted from " Tho Last Fruits of an Old Treo :" 
 
 " It was a droam, (ah ! what is not a dream ?) 
 In which I wandorod through a boundless space 
 Poopled by tho*o that peopled earth erewhile.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 301 
 
 permanent poetic influence of these times : I refer, t need 
 hardly add, to the poetry of Wordsworth, of which, it 
 might have been expected, I should have made room to 
 speak more at large. I should certainly have rejoiced in 
 
 But who conducted me ? That gentle Power, 
 Gentle as Death, Death's brother. On his brow 
 Some have seen poppies ; and perhaps among 
 The many flowers about his wavy curls 
 Poppies there might be ; roses I am sure 
 I saw, and dimmer amaranths between. 
 Lightly I thought I lept across a grave 
 Smelling of cool fresh turf, and sweet it smelt. 
 I would, but must not linger ; I must on, 
 To tell my dream before forgetfulness 
 Sweeps it away, or breaks or changes it. 
 I was among the Shades, (if Shades they were,) 
 And lookt around me for some friendly hand 
 To guide me on my way, and tell me all 
 That compast me around. I wisht to find 
 One no less firm or ready than the guide 
 Of Alighieri, trustier far than he, 
 Higher in intellect, more conversant 
 With earth and heaven, and what so lies between. 
 He stood before me — Southey. ' Thou art he,' 
 Said I, 'whom I was wishing.' ' That I know,' 
 Replied the genial voice and radiant eye. 
 •We may be questioned, question we may not; 
 For that might cause to bubble forth again 
 Some bitter spring which crost the pleasantest 
 And shadiest of our paths.' ' I do not ask,' 
 Siiid I, 'about your happiness ; I see 
 The same serenity as when we walkt 
 Along the downs of Clifton. Fifty years 
 Have rolled behind us since that summer-tide, 
 Nor thirty fewer since along the lake 
 Of Lario, to Bellagio villa-crowned, 
 Thro' the crisp waves I urged my sidoling bark, 
 26
 
 302 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 the opportunity of deepening the sense of thoughtful 
 admiration aud'gratitude to Wordsworth's genius in any 
 mind that has already possessed itself of the treasures of 
 such emotions, and possibly of persuading some so to 
 approach that poetry as to find in it, what it can surely 
 give to all who are willing as well as worthy to find it — 
 a ministry of wisdom and happiness, both in the homely 
 realities of daily life, and in the deepest spiritual recesses 
 of our being. But such a theme transcends the limits 
 now left for me ; and I propose therefore only to notice 
 two or three points having a connection with subjects I 
 have already had occasion to speak of. With regard to 
 language, an English editor of Wordsworth has said, 
 " By no great poet, besides Shakspeare, has the Eng- 
 lish tongue been used with equal purity, and yet such 
 flexible command of its resources. Spenser gives us too 
 many obsolete forms, Milton too much un-English syntax, 
 to make either of them available for the purpose of train- 
 
 Amicl sweet salutation off the shore 
 
 From lordly Milan's proudly courteous dames.' 
 
 'Landor ! I well remember it,' said he. 
 
 'I had just lost my first-born, only boy, 
 
 And then the heart is tender; lightest things 
 
 Sink into it, and dwell there evermore.' 
 
 Tho words wore not yet spoken whon the air 
 Blew balmier ; and around the parent's neck 
 An angel threw his arms : it was that son. 
 ' Father ! I felt you wisht me,' said the boy. 
 'Behold me here !' 
 
 Gentle tho sire's embrace, 
 Gentle his tone. 'See hero your father's friend!' 
 He gazed into my face, then meekly said, 
 ' Ho whom my father loves hath his reward 
 On earth; a richer one awaite him here.'" W. B. R.
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 303 
 
 ing the young men of 'our country in the laws, and 
 leading them to apprehend and revere the principles of 
 their magnificent language. But in Wordsworth .... 
 is the English tongue seen almost in its perfection ; its 
 powers of delicate expression, ita flexible idioms, its vast 
 compass, the rich variety of its rhythms, being all dis- 
 played in the attractive garb of verse, and yet with a most 
 rigorous conformity to the laws of its own syntax."* This 
 high tribute will bear the test of close study; and, let me 
 add, that this admirable command of the language is the 
 reward of that dutiful culture which is a characteristic 
 of the poet. 
 
 In the early part of this lecture, I had occasion to 
 speak of those miserable poetic sophistries which tempted 
 men and women to think that there is magnanimity in 
 the littlenesses of a morbid pride, and poetic beauty in 
 dreary moodiness. It was Wordsworth's function, with 
 his manly wisdom, with the true feeling of his full-beat- 
 ing heart, and with the further-reaching vision of his 
 imagination, to sweep these heresies away, showing by his 
 own example that 
 
 "A cheerful life is what the Muses love, 
 A soaring spirit is their prime delight/'f 
 
 and teaching that lesson, which poetry and morals alike 
 
 should give : 
 
 " If thou be one whose heart the holy forms 
 Of young imagination have kept pure, 
 
 Henceforth be warned; and know that Pride, 
 
 Howe'er disguised in its own majesty, 
 Is littleness; that he who feels contempt 
 
 * The advertisement to " Select Pieces from Word?worth," p. 4. 
 t Linus left upon a Seat in a Yew Tree. Works, p. 338.
 
 304 LECTURE NINTII. 
 
 For any living thing, hath faculties 
 
 Which he has never used; that thought with him 
 
 Is in its infancy. The man whose eye 
 
 Is ever on himself doth look on one, 
 
 The least of Nature's works — one who might movo 
 
 The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
 
 Unlawful ever. Oh be wiser, thou ; 
 
 Instructed that true knowledge leads to love, 
 
 True dignity abides with him alone 
 
 Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
 
 Can still suspect, and still revere himself, 
 
 In lowliness of heart." 
 
 I have also had occasion to show how morbid and danger- 
 ous the love of innocent, inanimate nature may become 
 when it is linked with infidelity — how it will sink down 
 into a vile and weak materialism. By no poet that ever lived 
 has the face of nature, the world of sight and sound, from 
 the planetary motions in the heavens down to the restless 
 shadow of the smallest flower, been so sedulously studied 
 during a long life, and all the utterance his poetry gives 
 of that study is meant to inspire 
 
 "The glorious habit by which sense is made 
 Subservient still to moral purposes, 
 Auxiliar to divine."* 
 
 Never, as in the sensuous and irreligious poets, is the ma- 
 terial world suffered to encroach upon the spiritual, still 
 less to get dominion over it. So far from any such delu- 
 sion, observe how, in that well-known passage in The Ex- 
 riirsfon, the sublimity of which is sometimes overlooked in 
 the beauty of the illustration, he proclaims this truth — that 
 the universe, this material universe, is a shell, from which 
 the ear of Faith can hear mysterious murmurings of the 
 Deity. 
 
 * Excursion, book iv. p. 132
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 305 
 
 "I have seen 
 A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell: 
 To which, in silence hushed, his very soul 
 Listened intensely ; — and his countenance soon 
 Brightened with joy ; for murmurings from within 
 Were heard, sonorous cadences ! wherehy, 
 To his belief, the monitor expressed 
 Mysterious union with its native sea. 
 Even such a shell the universe itself 
 Is to the ear of Faith,"* 
 
 The love of nature thus taught, associated with holy 
 thoughts and reverent emotions, is made perpetual enjoy- 
 ment, open, too, to every human being : and he who receives 
 the poet's teaching may make the poet's words his own : 
 
 "Beauty — a living presence of the earth, 
 Surpassing the most fair ideal forms 
 Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed 
 From earth's materials — waits upon my steps ; 
 Pitches her tents before me as I move, 
 An hourly neighbour. Paradise, and groves 
 Elysian, Fortunate Fields — like those of old 
 Sought in the Atlantic main — why should they he 
 A history only of departed things, 
 Or a mere fiction of what never was? 
 For the discerning intellect of man, 
 When wedded to this goodly universe 
 In love and holy passion, should find these 
 A simple produce of the common day."f 
 
 I had reserved for the conclusion of this lecture some 
 
 notice of the female authors of this century. Ungracious as 
 
 it will be for such a subject, I feel that I must give it a 
 
 brevity considerate of your patience. It is a fine cha- 
 
 * Excursion, book iv. p. 432. 
 -j- Preface to the Excursion, p. 394. 
 26*
 
 flnfi LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 racteristic of the literature of our times, that the genius 
 of woman has shared largely and honourably in it. It has 
 been so, from the share which Joanna Baillie had in the 
 restoration of a more truthful tone of poetic feeling, and 
 the delightful fictions with which Maria Edgeworth used 
 to charm our childhood, down to the later company of 
 women who still adorn both prose and poetic literature. 
 There have been instances of female authorship in such 
 modest retirement that the world has not known them well 
 enough. There is much that illustrates the gracefulness 
 and delicacy of the womanly mind, but over and above all 
 this, and combined with it, the literature of our times has 
 developed an energy which womanly authorship had not 
 shown before : I do not mean a masculine energy, but a 
 genuine womanly power. Those writers who are, I think, 
 chiefly distinguished for such power, as well as beauty of 
 genius, are Mrs. Jameson, as a prose-writer, and especially 
 in her admirable criticisms both on art and literature; Mrs. 
 Kemble, Mrs. Norton, and Mrs. Browning, formerly Miss 
 Barrett. Indulge me with a few minutes more for an 
 illustration or two of the poetic power I speak of. Every 
 person, probably, after youth is passed, is conscious at 
 some time of a deep craving for repose, for a tranquillity 
 inward and outward : this universal feeling is thus ex- 
 pressed in these lines : 
 
 " But to be still ! oh, but to cease a while 
 The panting breath and hurrying steps of life, 
 The sights, the sounds, the struggle, and the strife, 
 Of hourly being; the sharp biting file 
 Of action fretting on the tightened chain 
 Of rough existence ; all that is not pain, 
 But utter weariness ! oh ! to be free, 
 But lor a while, from conscious entity!
 
 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 307 
 
 To shut the hanging doors and windows wide 
 Of restless sense, and let the soul abide, 
 Darkly and stilly, for a little space, 
 Gathering its strength up to pursue the race; 
 Oh, heavens ! to rest a moment, but to rest, 
 From this quick, gasping life, were to be blest !"* 
 
 It is an honourable and characteristic distinction of the 
 emale authorship of the day that it has devoted itself, in 
 several forms, to the cause of suiFering humanity. 
 
 " Some there are whose names will live 
 Not in the memories, but the hearts of men, 
 Because those hearts they comforted and raised 
 And where they saw God's images cast down, 
 Lifted them up again, and blew the dust 
 From the worn features and disfigured limb. ""I" 
 
 Would you know what might there is in the voice tha< 
 speaks from a woman-poet's full heart, what power of 
 imagination no less than of sympathy and pity, find that 
 earnest plea which Elizabeth Barrett uttered against the 
 horrid sacrifice to Mammon, which was once the shame of 
 Britain's factories. It is entitled "The Cry of the Chil- 
 dren." I quote only the opening and closing stanzas: 
 
 " Do ye hear the children w.eeping, my brothers, 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years ? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 
 And that cannot stop their tears. 
 The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, 
 
 The young birds are chirping in the nest, 
 The young fawns are playing with the shadows, 
 The young flowers are blowing toward the West ; 
 
 * Poems by Frances Anne Kemble, p. 151. 
 
 ■\ Landor's Lines to " The Author of Mary Barton," in the Examiner, 
 March 17, 1849.
 
 LECTURE NINTH. 
 
 But the young, young children, my brothers, 
 
 They are weeping bitterly ; 
 They are weeping in the playtime of the others, 
 
 In the country of the free. 
 
 * * * * •» * 
 
 They look up with their pale and sunken faces, 
 
 And their look is dread to see, 
 For you think you see their angels in their places, 
 
 With eyes meant for Deity; 
 'How long,' they say, 'how long, cruel nation, 
 
 Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, 
 Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, 
 
 And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? 
 Our blood splashes upward, our tyrants, 
 
 And your purple shows your path : 
 But the child's sob curseth deeper in the silence 
 
 Than the strong man in his wrath !'" 
 
 I am loth to leave so stern a strain of impassioned verse 
 the last in your minds : she speaks with as genuine, but 
 a gentler, voice of poetic power in the lines entitled 
 "Patience Taught by Nature:* 7 
 
 " ' O dreary life !' we cry, ' dreary life !' 
 And still the generations of the birds 
 Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds 
 Serenely live, while we are keeping strife, 
 With heaven's true purpose in us, as a knifo 
 Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds, 
 Unslaekcned, the dry land: savannah swards 
 Unweary sweep: hills watch unworn; and rifo, 
 Meek leaves drop yearly from the forost trees, 
 To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass 
 In their old glory. thou God of old ! 
 Grant me some smaller grace than comes to thoso; 
 But so much patience, as a blade of grass 
 Grows by, contented through the heat and cold."* 
 
 * Mrs. E. Barrett Browning's Poems, vol. i. p. 342.
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 tragic anb Elegiac |pocir{).* 
 
 Jontrast of subjec s, serious and gay — Tragic poetry- — Illustrated in his- 
 tory — Death of the first-born — Clarendon's raising the standard at 
 Nottingham — Moral use of tragic poetry — Allston's criticism — Ele- 
 giac poetry— Its power not mere sentimentalism — Gray's Elegy, an 
 universal poem — Philip Van Artevelde — Caroline Bowles — "Pau- 
 per's Death Bed" — Wordsworth's Elegies — Milton's Lycidas — Ado- 
 nais — In Memoriam — Shelley's Poem on Death of Keats — Tennyson 
 —In Memoriam reviewed. 
 
 The two lectures I am about to deliver relate to sub- 
 jects aside from the continuous course just completed. 
 They are, however, illustrative of it, though not part of 
 it ; and therefore, I hope, not inappropriate or unwelcome. 
 The first lecture relates to the literature of tragedy and 
 sorrow, the second to the literature of wit and humour ; 
 whether I shall add another to this brief supplementary 
 course will depend on personal considerations which I need 
 not now refer to. It is not necessary, I hope, for me to 
 disclaim, in this arrangement of two of these lectures, all 
 attempts at the mere effect of contrast, for it is no ambi- 
 
 * The course of lectures delivered in 1850 terminated with the 
 Ninth, on Contemporary Literature. Those that follow, together with 
 one on Wordsworth's Prelude, were prepared in March, 1851. I have 
 thought it best to add them to this course, as, in a certain degree, illus- 
 trative of the general subject of English Literature. The one on the 
 Prelude was rather the introduction of a new poem to those who had 
 never read it, than a criticism on one that was familiar. It mainly 
 consisted of extracts, with brief comment. On this account I do not 
 think it worth while now to reproduce it. W. B. R. 
 
 U 309
 
 310 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 tion of mine to catch the attention of my hearers hy any 
 such artific'e, or to startle them with an antithesis of sub- 
 jects. My purpose in placing, immediately after the 
 serious subjects of the first lecture, the literature of Wit 
 and Humour, was rather to show that the transition need 
 not be a violent one; that there may be found in litera- 
 ture a response to the sad and solemn feelings of our 
 nature, and also for its happy and joyous emotions; and 
 that over both these departments of letters there may be 
 seen shining the same moral light. I have set these sub- 
 jects, apparently so different, in close continuity, in the 
 hope of thus proving the completeness of such companion- 
 ship as books can add to that between living human 
 beings — a companionship for life, in shadow or in sunshine ; 
 in the hope of showing that there is a wisdom in books 
 which holds genial and restorative communion with tears 
 and a sorrowing spirit, and no less genial and salutary 
 with that other attribute of humanity, smiles and a cheer' 
 ful heart. Thus there may be a discipline for faculties 
 and powers too often fitfully or unequally indulged or 
 cultivated — a discipline of the thoughts and feelings which 
 are associated with the sorrows of life, and no less of those 
 which have fellowship with its joys and merriment: for 
 those who are docile to receive, or sedulous to seek them, 
 there are lessons which teach a sanity of sadness and also 
 a sanity of gladness. It is, too, a ministry of human sym- 
 pathy; for as it explores the sources of genuine grief and 
 joy, it not only helps us the better to know our own 
 hearts, but to enter into the feelings that are in the hearts 
 of our fellow-beings, and thus to " rejoice with them that 
 do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." 
 
 Tragic poetry has been well described as " poetry in
 
 TRAGIC rOETRY. 31> 
 
 its deepest earnest." The upper air of poetry is the 
 atmosphere of sorrow. This is a truth attested by every 
 . department of art, the poetiy of words, of music, of the 
 canvas, and of marble. It is so, because poetry is a re- 
 flection of life; and when a man weeps, the passions that, 
 are stirring within him are mightier than the feelings 
 which prompt to cheerfulness or merriment. The smile 
 plays on the countenance : the laugh is a momentary and 
 noisy impulse ; but the tear rises slowly and silently from 
 the deep places of the heart. It is at once the symbol 
 and the relief of an o'ermastering grief, it is the language 
 of emotions to which words cannot give utterance : pas- 
 sions, whose very might and depth give them a sanctity, 
 we instinctively recognise by veiling them from the com-* 
 mon gaze. In childhood, indeed, when its little griefs and 
 joys are blended ^with that absence of self-consciousness, 
 which is both the bliss and the beauty of its innocence, 
 tears are shed without restraint or disguise : but when the 
 self-consciousness of manhood has taught us that tears are 
 the expression of emotions too sacred for exposure, the 
 heart will often break rather than violate this instinct of 
 our nature. Tragic poetry, in dramatic, or epic, or what 
 form soever, has its original, its archetype in the sorrows, 
 which float like clouds over the days of human existence. 
 Afflictions travel across the earth on errands mysterious, 
 but merciful, could we but understand them : and the 
 poet, fashioning the likeness of them in some sad story,, 
 teaches the imaginative lesson of their influences upon 
 the heart. 
 
 In history, what is there so impressive as when the his- 
 toric muse, speaking with the voice of the tragic muse, 
 tells of terror and of woe ? If science teaches that tint
 
 LECTURE TENT II. 
 
 earth of ours is a shining planet, the records of history 
 as surely teach that it rolls through the spaces of the 
 rirmament, stained with blood and tears. So has it ever 
 been. In the annals of the ancient dynasty of Egypt, 
 what is there like that tragic midnight, when the first- 
 born of the land were smitten, "from the first-born of 
 Pharaoh that sat on the throne, unto the first-born of the 
 captive that was in the dungeon :" what in the chronicles 
 of Babylon, like that tragic hour, when there came forth 
 the fingers of a man's hand, and wrote upon the palace wall 
 an empire's doom ? In classic story, what rises up to the 
 memory more readily than the heroic sacrifice in the tragic 
 pass of Thermopylae ? What pages in the annals of 
 our fatherland have a deeper interest than when the 
 career of King Charles turned to tragedy, when gloom 
 was gathering over his fortunes, from the day when the 
 royal standard was raised at Nottingham, and ominously 
 cast down in a stormy and unruly night, onward to the 
 bloody 'atonement on the scaffold.* In the history of 
 
 * Clarendon's celebrated description of the raising of the standard 
 of Charles the First, at Nottingham, cannot be too often quoted. It ia 
 very grand and very sad.' 
 
 " According to the proclamation," says the historian, " upon tho 
 twenty-fifth day of August (1642) the standard was erected about six 
 of tho clock of tho evening of a very stormy and tempestuous day. 
 Tho king himself, with a small train, rode to tho top of the castle-hill ; 
 Varney, tho knight-marshal, who was standard-bearer, carrying the 
 standard, which was then erected in that place, with little other cere- 
 mony than the sound of drums and trumpets : melancholy men dis- 
 cerned many ill presages about that timo. There was not one regi- 
 ment of foot yet levied and brought thither ; so that the trained bands 
 which the sheriff had dr.'.wn together was all the strength the king 
 had for his person or tho guard of tho standard. There appeared no 
 conflux of men iu obudieuce to the proclamation : the arms and amtnu-
 
 TRAGIC POETRY. 313 
 
 France, what passage is there so impressive — as gathering 
 into one awful moment a consummation of a long antiquity, 
 and casting a dark shadow over the future — as that which 
 tells of the descendant of sixty kings, laid bound, hand 
 and foot, beneath the glittering axe ? And in our own 
 history, what is there so sublime, as when the young 
 nation was baptized in blood on its first battle-field? 
 
 What has been finely called " the power and divinity 
 of suffering'' is shown also in # the moral interest which 
 clings. to spots sacred by the memory of affliction — an inte- 
 rest which prosperous grandeur cannot boast of. A 
 thoughtful traveller has thus expressed the feeling on 
 visiting the palace of the Doges at Venice : " It is a 
 strange building with its multitudinous little marble 
 columns and grotesque windows, and the giant staircase 
 all glorious of the purest Carrara marble, carved and chi- 
 selled into ornaments of the most beautiful minuteness. A 
 splendid palace indeed it is : yet, while my eye wandered 
 in a few minutes over the gorgeous part of the structure, 
 it was long riveted with undiminished interest upon the 
 little round holes close to the level of the sullen canal 
 beneath the Bridge of Sighs — holes which marked the 
 passages to the dungeons beneath the level of the canal, 
 where, for years, the victims of that wicked merchant- 
 republic were confined. 
 
 nition were not yet come from York, and a general sadness covered 
 the whole town, and the king himself appeared more melancholic than 
 he used to be. The standard itself was blown down the same night it 
 had been set up, by a very strong and unruly wind, and could not be 
 fixed again in a day or two, till the tempest was allayed. This was 
 the melancholy state of the king's affairs whon the standard was set 
 up." History of the Rebellion, book v. p. 308. W. B. R. 
 
 27
 
 LECTUttE TENTH. 
 
 " And why is it that suffering should have a spell to 
 nv the eye above the power of beauty or of greatness ? Is 
 it because the cross is a religion of suffering, a faith of suf- 
 fering, a privilege of suffering, a perfection arrived at by and 
 through suffering only ? Half an hour was enough for 
 the dueal palace. I could gaze for hours upon those dun- 
 geon-holes, gaze and read there, as in an exhaustless volume, 
 histori.33 of silent, weary suffering, as it filed the soft heart 
 of man iiway, attenuated his reason into a dull instinct, 
 or cracVed the stout heart as you would shiver a flint. 
 
 "There is seldom a line of glory written upon the 
 earth's face, but a line of suffering runs parallel with it ; 
 and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and 
 stoop not to decypher the spotted and worn inscription of 
 the other, get the least half of the lesson earth has to 
 give."* 
 
 Lord Bacon, in one of those essays in which he has so 
 sententiously compacted his deep thoughts, said, "Pros- 
 perity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is 
 the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater bene- 
 diction and the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet 
 even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, 
 you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols : and the 
 pencils of the Holy Ghost have laboured more in describ- 
 ing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. "| 
 
 The moral use of tragic poetry cousists then in such 
 employment of poetic truth that the poet's sad imaginings 
 shall serve to chasten, to elevate, and to strengthen the 
 
 * Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign 
 Peoples; by Frederick William Faber, M. A. p. 285, 288. 
 t Essay on Adversity.
 
 TRAGIC POETRY. 315 
 
 soul — a moral ministry which justified as sage and solemn 
 a spirit as Milton's in speaking of " the lofty, grave trage- 
 dians," and styling them " teachers best of moral pru- 
 dence, high actions and high passions best describ- 
 ing."* And the great critic of antiquity, with all the 
 sublime solemnities of his country's tragic drama in his 
 thoughts, in the presence, as it weseof that spectral mys- 
 tery of fate, which overshadowed the Athenian stage, has 
 told us that " Tragic poetry is the imitation of serious 
 action, employing pity and terror for the purpose of chas- 
 tening the passions." 
 
 This discipline, however, it must be borne in mind, can 
 have no practical influence on character, if it accomplish 
 nothing more than the production of emotions, instead of 
 being carried on into action ; for it is a great law of our 
 moral being that feelings, no matter how amiable and vir- 
 tuous, will surely perish, if they be not converted into 
 active principles; nay, they may coexist with conduct the 
 most selfish and unfeeling; there may be a worthless 
 sentimentalism utterly delusive and negative, and this, 
 by due transition, may pass into odious self-indulgence, or 
 still more odious inhumanity. In the worst days of the 
 French Revolution, the very men who in the theatres 
 applauded the heroic sentiments in the tragedies of Cor- 
 neille, and were melted even to tears by the pathos of 
 Racine, rose upon the morrow's morn to join in the fero- 
 cious cries for blood that echoed in the streets of Paris. 
 
 And further, if this example shows how worthless and 
 wicked mere sentimentalism may be, self-indulgent in the 
 luxury of ideal woe, it also shows that the sight of actual 
 
 * Paradise Regained, book iv. v. 261.
 
 316 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 Buffering may obliterate all sympathy, and harden tho 
 heart by familiarity with human distress or agony looked 
 on as a spectacle. Now it is the function of art, through 
 whatever medium it addresses the heart, so to transfigure 
 the tragic realities of life, as to make the contemplation 
 of them endurable and salutary, which otherwise would 
 be appalling, repulsiv§, and, if repeated, destructive of 
 true sensibility. That wise artist, the kte Washington 
 Allston, speaking with the truest philosophy of his art 
 and of human nature, said it is " through the transform- 
 ing atmosphere of the imagination (that) alone the sad- 
 dest notes of woe, even the appalling shriek of despair, 
 are softened, as it were, by the tempering dews of this 
 visionary region, ere they fall upon the heart. Else how 
 could we stand the smothered moan of Desdemoua, or the 
 fiendish adjuration of .Lady Macbeth, more frightful 
 even than the after-dee d^of her husband, or look upon the 
 agony of the wretched Judas, in the terrible picture of 
 Rembrandt, when he returns the purchase of blood to the 
 impenetrable Sanhedrim 'I Ay, how could we ever stand 
 these but for that ideal panoply through which we feel 
 only their modified vibrations ? Let the imitation be so 
 close as to trench on deception, the effect will be far differ- 
 ent. I remember," adds Mr. Allston, "a striking instance 
 of this in a celebrated actress, whose copies of actual suf- 
 fering were so painfully accurate, that I was forced to turn 
 away from the scene, unable to endure it; her scream of 
 agony in 13e\videra seemed to ring in my ears for hours 
 after. Not so was it with the great Mrs. Siddons, who 
 moved not a step but in a poetic atmosphere, through 
 which the fiercer passions seemed rather to loom like dis-
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 317 
 
 tant mountains when first descried at sea, massive and 
 solid, yet resting on air."* 
 
 I pass from these brief hints, scarcely worthy of a place 
 in a lecture on tragic poetry, to that kindred species which 
 is found in the literatures of all nations, and which is en- 
 titled Elegiac Poetry. Serving, as all true poetry does, for 
 a ministry and discipline of feeling, it could not neglect 
 that one form of affliction which sooner or later comes to 
 every human being — ^sorrow for the dead. The phases of 
 this emotion are as various as the heart or the counte- 
 nance. With some it is impetuous and turbulent, stormy 
 as a cloud, but it pours down its shower, and then its form 
 changes and it melts away, no one can tell whither. The 
 passion sometimes is proud and self-willed and rebellious : 
 or it is moody and sinks into sullenness. Again, it is 
 gentle and resigned, and easy to be entreated. Some- 
 times it is social, and delights in the relief of utterance 
 and sympathy. With others it holds no communion with 
 speech or tears, but dwells in the depths of the silent 
 heart. The poet, as an interpreter and guide of humanity, 
 and especially as always raising the mind of man above 
 the pressure of tangible and temporal things into the 
 region of the spiritual and the immortal, finds one of his 
 worthiest duties in training this species of sorrow into the 
 paths of wisdom. In the small space now at my com- 
 mand, I can attempt to notice only a few of the truths 
 that the poets in their elegies have taught. Let me first 
 say, that there is a spurious form of elegiac poetry, which 
 might be dismissed with a word of pity rather than of con- 
 
 * I am unable to verify this citation from Allston. W. B. R. 
 
 27*
 
 318 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 demnation, was it. not a counterfeit of that genuine grief 
 which is wronged by the imitation. I refer to that form 
 which is the expression of unreal and subtly selfish senti- 
 mentalism, which is not too strongly condemned when it 
 is spoken of as " a base lust of the mind, which indulges 
 in the excitement of contemplating its own emotion, or 
 that of others, for the excitement's sake."* Such senti- 
 ment is often ostentatious, obtrusive, and factitious; and real 
 grief recoils from it into a deeper seclusion. But where 
 the feelings are truthful, and poetry gives them worthy 
 form, their truth is proved by the prompt and the uni- 
 versal response. What else can explain the large accep- 
 tation which a poem like Gray's Elegy in a Country 
 Churchyard found at once, and finds to this day, not only 
 wherever English words are known, but by translation 
 into more languages than any English poem has ever been 
 turned into. Indeed, throughout our thoughtful English 
 poetry, the duty has ever been worthily recognised of up- 
 holding the communion between the living and the dead, 
 and of so disciplining sorrow that it shall not be a dreary, 
 self-indulgent, self-consuming sentiment, but a moral power, 
 diffusing purity and wisdom, and dwelling in the high 
 places of humanity. English poetry often speaks in the 
 spirit of the elegy, though it may not assume the form of 
 it. In that grand historical poem, "Philip Van Arta- 
 velde," when the hero, alluding to a stirring and disturbed 
 condition of society, says, 
 
 " Lightly is life laid down amongst us now, 
 And lightly i.s death mourned — 
 We have not time to mourn ;" 
 
 * North British Review, vol. xiii. p. 551.
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 319 
 
 his old preceptor, Friar John, makes answer in words that 
 
 contain the whole philosophy of elegiac poetry : 
 
 " The worse for us ! 
 He that lacks, time to mourn, lacks time to mend. 
 Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure 
 For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them, 
 Where sorrow's held intrusive and turned out, 
 There wisdom will not enter, nor true power, 
 Nor aught that dignifies humanity. 
 Yet such the barrenness of busy life !" 
 
 It is the theme of the elegiac poet to show these virtues 
 of sorrow, its power to strengthen, to purify, to elevate, 
 and to give moral freedom — its strength to consume the 
 small troubles which so often waste and weaken our best 
 powers. For this the poet needs the genius to look into 
 the deepest and most mysterious parts of the human soul, 
 to sympathize with its most acute sensibilities, and to 
 illustrate all the consolatory agencies which are vouch- 
 safed to man. In the first place, the poetic power may do 
 a salutary work, by restoring a just sense of the awfulness 
 of death — a sense so apt to grow callous, especially in large 
 cities, where the solemnities of the grave are a trivial 
 spectacle.* The heart loses some of its most natural and 
 purest sensibilities when it becomes indifferent to the aspect 
 of any of the circumstances or forms of death. An elegy 
 on a pauper's death-bed was made to express these truths : 
 
 " Tread softly — bow the head, 
 
 In reverent silence bow — 
 No passing bell doth toll ; 
 Yet an immortal soul 
 
 Is passing now. 
 
 * History tells, on more occasions than one, that one of the moral 
 evils which follow in the path of pestilence, is that men are brutalized 
 by the common sight of the dead and the dying. II. R.
 
 320 LECXUKE TENTH. 
 
 Stranger ! however great. 
 
 With lowly reverence how: 
 There's one in that poor shed, 
 One by that paltry bed, 
 
 Greater than thou. 
 
 Beneath that beggar's roof, 
 
 Lo ! Death doth keep his state : 
 
 Enter — no crowds attend — 
 
 Enter — no guards defend 
 This palace-gate. 
 
 That pavement damp and cold 
 
 No smiling courtiers tread; 
 One silent woman stands, 
 Lifting with meagre hands 
 
 A dying head. 
 
 No mingling voices sound — 
 
 An infant wail alone; 
 A sob suppressed — again 
 That short, deep gasp, and then 
 
 The parting groan. 
 
 Oh ! change — oh ! wondrous change — 
 
 Burst are the prison bars — 
 This moment there, so low 
 So agonized, and now 
 
 Beyond the stars ! 
 
 Oh ! change — stupendous change ! 
 
 There lies the soulless clod : 
 The sun eternal breaks, 
 The new immortal wakes — 
 
 Wakes with his God."* 
 
 There might be gathered from English poetry large and 
 wise discipline of all the emotions with which the living 
 render homage unto the dead; and the thoughtful student 
 would find his recompense in it. The laments of Spen- 
 
 * The Birth-day, and other Poems, by Caroline Bowles, p. 227.
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 321 
 
 ser are full of the tender sensitiveness of that gentle bard : 
 the class of poems which Wordsworth has left under the 
 title of Elegies abound in the " true poetic teaching of 
 wise, strong-hearted Christian sorrow." I must, however, 
 confine myself to three elegiac poems, the most remark- 
 able in our language : Milton's " Lycidas," Shelley's 
 " Adonais," and Mr. Tennyson's " In Memoriam." These 
 poems may well be grouped together from the similarity 
 of the occasions, and for the high, the varied imaginative 
 power displayed in them. Each is a lament over the 
 death of a friend of high intellectual and moral promise, 
 & v 'd away in early manhood. The "Lycidas" is fash- 
 io 1 in a great degree by the spirit of classical elegy ; the 
 element of Christian belief present, however, in it. In 
 Shelley's poem on the death of Keats the classical form 
 is yet more manifest in purposed imitations of the Greek 
 elegies.* That unhappy enthusiast, Shelley, with all his 
 purity of character and loftiness of genius, could couple 
 with classical imagery only the reveries of a bewildered 
 unbelief. There is, in reading his poem, a feeling of 
 deeper sorrow for the poet that wrote than for him that was 
 lamented. The highest consolation, his fine imagination 
 
 * My attention has been specially called to the extent of these imi- 
 tations, by a list of parallel passages in the Greek elegies, prepared 
 by two of my former pupils, who have preserved their zeal for litera- 
 ture, ancient and modern, amid their professional studies. H. R. 
 
 The accomplished scholars to whom my brother refers, are William 
 Arthur Jackson and G. Hermann Robinett. Mr. Jackson has kindly 
 placed at my disposal his notes on these parallelisms, and I regret 
 that I have not room to print them here. Let mo add, for I shall have 
 no other chance of noting it, that my brother felt very high prido in 
 the scholars of the University, who, having been reared by him, had 
 not forgotten his precepts or their early studies. W. B. R.
 
 322 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 can reach to, is that his dead friend lives as a portion of 
 the universe : ' 
 
 "He is made one with nature: there is heard 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 Spreading itself where'er that power may move, 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own; 
 Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
 Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 Which once he made moro lovely." 
 
 These, are at best but dreary speculations ; and when 
 the poet, in spite of himself, is carried out of them by an 
 instinctive belief in individual life beyond the grave, 
 instead of that absorption into nature which would be 
 annihilation, he rises into that grand strain ou the unful- 
 filled promise of the genius of Keats : 
 
 " The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
 
 Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
 
 Par in the unapparent. Chattorton 
 
 Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
 
 Yet faded from him; Sidney as he fought, 
 
 And as he fell, and as he lived, and loved, 
 
 Sublimely mild, a spirit without .spot, 
 
 Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved: 
 Oblivion, as they rose, shrank like a thing reproved. 
 
 And many more whose names on earth are dark, 
 But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
 So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
 Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
 'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry, 
 ' It was for thee yon kingli | here has long 
 Swung blind in una icended ma 
 Silent, alone, amid a heaven of song: 
 Assume thy winged throne, thou vesper of our throng!'"
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 32:J 
 
 The gloom which envelopes this poem is deepened by 
 the impressive anticipation of Shelley's own death, one of 
 the most remarkable coincidences to be found in literature. 
 It will be remembered that he set sail in his small boat 
 from the coast of Genoa, was overtaken at some distance 
 from shore by a Mediterranean thunder-storm, and 
 ingulfed in the deep waters : they who had watched the 
 little skiff from the shore, saw it disappear in the dark- 
 ness of the storm that struck it, and when the storm 
 cleared away, it was seen no more. The lament over 
 Keats — " Adonais" as Shelley styled him — written about 
 two years before, ended with this stanza — 
 
 " The breath whose might I have invoked in song, 
 Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng, 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; 
 While burning through the inmost veil of heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." 
 
 The poem, or rather series of poems, of Mr. Tennyson 
 is, however, in all respects the most important contribution 
 which has yet been given to this department of poetry ; 
 and I regret that I have left me but a very little space for 
 a few words on the character of the book. It is no prompt 
 and passionate poetic utterance of grief ; but has a higher 
 authority on account of the reserve of near twenty years 
 which distinguishes it. Young Hallaiu, the son of the 
 historian, to whose memory the work is a tribute, died in 
 1833, at a distance from home — (in the poet's own words : ) 
 
 " In Vienna's fatal walls 
 God's finger touched him, and he slept;"
 
 324 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 and it was not until 1850 that the poet made the world 
 a sharer in these imaginings, composed at various inter- 
 vals, and expressive of a profound and thoughtful sorrow, 
 modified by seasons and by time. The volume must be 
 a sealed book to all who allow themselves to think of poe- 
 try as words to be lightly or indolently read, or as a mere 
 effusion of effeminate sentimentalism : it demands not 
 only study, but reflection on the reader's own inmost 
 being. To such, and to repeated reading, the wisdom ana 
 beauty of the work disclose themselves; and in this lies 
 one of the proofs of genius in it, for the poet is treating 
 none of the merely superficial sentiments, but the more 
 profound emotions and the most mysterious meditations, 
 with which the soul of man strives to preserve communion 
 with those who have passed behind the veil that hides the 
 dead from the living. It ' is an effort made in no vain 
 . curiosity; there is no irrational and immoral dallying with 
 grief, no wandering away from the light of divine truth, 
 in chase of the false fires of human speculations. The 
 poet clings to the memory of his dead friend, with a high- 
 souled loyalty, holding it as an ever-present possession of 
 
 good 
 
 " This truth camo borne with bier and pall, 
 I felt it when I sorrowed most, 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all." 
 
 It is grief cherished, not for grief's sake — that were un- 
 manly, irrational, weak, and wicked — but for its highest 
 moral uses, a spiritual companionship that lifts him who 
 is true to it above all ignoble thoughts and passions, and 
 makes him truer to himself and to his God, by deepening 
 mid expanding his sense of immortal life. Here is a mi-
 
 ELEGIAC POETEY. 32o 
 
 nistry of good foi every human being who knows a single 
 
 grave that holds the earthly part of one that ever was 
 
 dear to his eyes ; and thus the poet expounds the chastening 
 
 power of sorrow : 
 
 " How pure at heart, and sound in head, 
 With what divine affections bold. 
 Should be the man whose thought would hold 
 An hour's communion with the dead ! 
 
 In vain shalt thou, or any, call 
 The spirits from their golden day, 
 Except, like them, thou too canst say, 
 
 My spirit is at peace with all. 
 
 They haunt the silence of the breast, 
 
 Imaginations calm and fair, » 
 
 The memory, like a cloudless air, 
 The conscience as a sea at rest. 
 
 But when the heart is full of din, 
 
 And doubt beside the portal waits, 
 
 They can but listen at the gates; 
 And hear the household jar within." 
 
 It was said by Jeremy Taylor of one of the early 
 /athers, that there were some passages in his writings 
 which a lamb might ford, and others which an elephant 
 could not swim. In this volume of poems there are 
 pieces which are the lucid expression of thought or feel- 
 ing, common to many a mind, but uncommon in the 
 exquisite utterance : there are other passages dim and 
 even dark, for they tell of a great poetic imagination look- 
 ing into very deep places. Nowhere is this more so, than 
 in that series of stanzas in which he describes the home- 
 ward voyage of the ship from the Danube to the Severn 
 freighted with his friend's lifeless remains. 
 
 How wonderfully expressive are they of that complex 
 V 28
 
 826 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 and confused state of thought and feeling toward the dead 
 while they are yet within the reach of a tender care and 
 of a sacred duty ! The first of this series speaks of the dead 
 as of the sleeping, and tenderly solicits the quiet guardian- 
 ship of the ship, and the ocean, sky, and elements : 
 
 "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore 
 Sailest the placid ocean-plains 
 With my lost Arthur's loved remains, 
 Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. 
 
 * * s * * 
 
 Sphere all your lights around, above; 
 
 Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; 
 
 Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 
 My friend, the brother of my love." 
 
 * f * «- * ■» 
 
 The voyage brings to the poet's earnest imagination the 
 dread of dismal burial in the sea, what he elsewhere speaks 
 of in allusion to the sailor's funeral in that remarkable 
 line, 
 
 "His heavy-shotted hammock shroud' 
 Drops in his vast and wandering grave." 
 
 The " vast and wandering grave" seems more fearful that, 
 the " narrow house" that moves only with the earth's m<»- 
 tion, and is quiet in the churchyard or in the chancel * 
 
 "I hear the noise about thy keel; 
 
 I hear the bell struck in the night; 
 I see the cabin-window bright; 
 I see the sailor at tho wheel. 
 
 Thou bringest the sailor to his wife, 
 And travelled men from foreign lands ; 
 And letters unto trembling hands; 
 
 And thy dark freight, a vanished life. 
 
 * And he who tnus wrote, "the friend, tho brother of my love." 
 found his " vast and wandering grave" in the Atlantic. W. 13. R.
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 3?" 
 
 So bring him : we have idle dreams ; 
 
 This look of quiet flatters thus 
 
 Our home-bred fancies : oh, to us, 
 The fools of habit, sweeter seems 
 
 To rest beneath the clover sod, 
 
 That takes the sunshine and the rains, 
 Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
 
 The chalice of the grapes of God; 
 
 Than if with thee the roaring wells 
 Should gulf him fathom deep in brine; 
 And hands so often clasped in mine, 
 
 Should toss with tangle and with shells." 
 
 When the ship has given up her trust, the poet's last 
 thought of her follows her with thankfulness and benedic- 
 tion : 
 
 " Henceforth, wherever thou niayst roam, 
 My blessing, like a line of light, 
 Is on the waters day and night, 
 
 And like a beacon, guards thee home. 
 
 t 
 
 So may whatever tempest mars 
 
 Mid ocean, spare thee, sacred bark ; 
 
 And balmy drops in summer dark 
 Slide from the bosom of the stars ; 
 
 So kind an office hath been done, 
 Such precious relics brought by thee ; 
 The dust of him I shall not see 
 
 Till all my widowed race be run." 
 
 After the unconscious and sacred freight is placed upon 
 the land again — the devouring ocean having done gentle 
 eerviceof restoration — the poet's heart is almost exultant : 
 
 "'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand 
 Where he in English earth is laid, 
 And from his ashes may be made 
 Tho violet of his native land.
 
 328 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 "lis little ; but it looks in truth 
 
 As if the quiet bones were blest 
 
 Among familiar names to rest, 
 And in the places of his youth. 
 
 Come then, pure hands, and bear the head 
 That sleeps, or wears the mask of sleep, 
 And come, whatever loves to weep, 
 
 And hear the ritual of the dead." 
 
 In this instance, the first period of grief was, by the pecu- 
 liar circumstances, protracted much beyond the common 
 duration ; and thus there was delayed for a while that 
 second period — which lasts through the mourner's life — 
 when the separation is consummated by the grave. The 
 sharp agony or the dull anguish which follows, is coupled 
 perhaps, first, with the memories that are prompted by 
 local association, the familiar places that are darkened by 
 the shadow. These feelings have their record in the 
 volume, but perhaps even more expressively in some 
 stanzas not contained in it, and different in metre, but 
 obviously belonging to the same subject, written perhaps 
 on the heights of the Bristol Channel : 
 
 "Break, break, break 
 
 On thy cold gray stones, sea ! 
 And I would that my tonguo could utter 
 The thoughts that arise in me. 
 
 Oh well for the fisherman's boy, 
 
 That ho shouts with his sister at play! 
 
 Oh well for the stilor lad, 
 
 That he sings in his boat on the bay ! 
 
 And the stately ships go on 
 
 To their haven under the hill ; 
 But oh for the touch of a vanish'd hand, 
 
 And the sound of a voico that is still !
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 329 
 
 Break, break, break 
 
 At the foot of thy crags, sea ! 
 But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
 
 Will never come back to me." 
 
 If local association can thus quicken the pangs of sorrow 
 there is also a ministry of nature soothing them, a salu 
 tary influence working either in sympathy or in consola- 
 tion, so that the heart takes strength from either the 
 tumult or the tranquillity of earth and sky. These are 
 processes of which it belongs especially to the poet, as 
 moralist and philosopher, to give the exposition. This 
 poem shows the mind in its various moods in unison with 
 the various moods of nature, calm and stormy; but 
 throughout all such changes, the deep, unalterable sorrow 
 is asserted when it is asked — * 
 
 "What words are these have fallen from me? 
 Can calm despair and wild unrest 
 Be tenants of a single breast, 
 Or sorrow such a changeling be? 
 
 Or doth she only seem to take 
 
 The touch of change in calm or storm; 
 But knows no more of transient form 
 
 In her deep self, than some deacLlake- 
 
 That holds the shadow of a lark 
 Hung in the shadow of a heaven?" 
 
 *P *P ^v \f? 
 
 This action and reaction between nature and the heart, as 
 influenced through the imagination, is shown (to take an 
 illustration from another poet) in those stanzas of Words- 
 worth, composed during an evening walk after a stormy- 
 day, when the public mind was agitated by the news of 
 the approaching death of a favourite statesman : 
 
 28*
 
 3,10 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 "Loud is the vale ! the voice is up 
 With which she speaks when storms aro gone, 
 A mighty unison of streams, 
 Of all her voices, one ! 
 
 Loud is the vale; this inland depth 
 In peace is roaring like the sea ; 
 Ton star upon the mountain-top 
 Is listening quietly. 
 
 Sad was I, even to pain deprest, 
 Importunate and heavy load! 
 The comforter hath found me here, 
 Upon this lonely road." 
 
 Thus did the tranquillity of the star shining in the 
 peaceful heavens sink down into the human heart. 
 
 To return to Mr. Tennyson's volume, let me advert to 
 its truthfulness in another respect. There is a trial to 
 which Christian sorrow is subjected from which, I believe, 
 the heathen heart in ancient times must have been in 
 some measure free. The pagan faith could at best teach 
 only the immortality of the soul, but it made no attrac- 
 tions for the place of repose of the lifeless body ; and all 
 the skill and pains bestowed by Egyptian art, or in the 
 Roman sarcophagus, seem to be no more than a blind 
 obedience to some natural instincts. But one great truth 
 of the Christian creed, lifting the mind above mere 
 instincts to an assured ground of belief, teaches that the 
 body too shall have its portion in the hereafter. Pagan 
 belief, simpler in its error, could follow, obscurely indeed, 
 the disembodied spirit; while the Christian mind, happier 
 in its truth, is often perplexed between thoughts that 
 travel to the body's home, and thoughts that would fain 
 eoar to the spirit's home. 
 
 It would, I believe, be asserting not too much to say,
 
 ELEGIAC PfcfETRY. 331 
 
 that the mind of the author of " In Memoriam" must 
 have passed through a perturbed spiritual condition, 
 passed through it thoughtfully and triumphantly, to give 
 to other minds guidance through the same perplexity. 
 One of the most pitiable conditions to which that per- 
 plexity sometimes leads, is the morbid and materialized 
 state of mind which clings in all its thoughts to the visible 
 burial-place. You remember that deplorable example of 
 the Spanish princess, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isa- 
 bella, the mother of Charles the Fifth, the half-crazed 
 Joanna, and the frenzied infatuation with which she clung 
 for years to the mouldering remains of her husband. 
 It is as one of the morbid moods of a perturbed soul that 
 Shakspeare represents Hamlet questioning the grave- 
 digger's technical knowledge, and handling the skull of 
 Yorick. On the other hand, it was a genuine and wise 
 and dutiful feeling which was expressed by Lady Russel, 
 the widow of him who had died cruelly on the scaffold. 
 " When," said she, " I have done (my) duty to my best 
 friend, and (to my children,) how gladly would I lie 
 down by that beloved dust I lately went to visit, (that is, 
 the case that holds it.) It is a satisfaction to,me you did 
 not disapprove of what I did, as some do, that it seem? 
 have heard of it, though I never mentioned it to anj 
 beside yourself. I had considered I went not to seek 
 the living among the dead ; I knew I should not see him 
 any more wherever I went, and had made a covenant with 
 myself not to break out in unreasonable, fruitless passion, 
 but quicken my contemplation whither the nobler part 
 was fled, to a country afar off, where no earthly power 
 bears any sway, nor can put an end to a happy society." 
 One expression of this noble-minded lady shows an
 
 &T2 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 assumption very common in deciding that it is to " a 
 
 country afar off" that the spirit has departed. As a 
 
 mode of expressing the sense of separation it is natural, 
 
 but in other respects it is without authority, and too often 
 
 tends to a thought of utter annihilation in death. One 
 
 of the great English divines says, "Little know we, how 
 
 little away a soul hath to go to heaven, when it departs from 
 
 the body • whether it must pass locally through moon, sun, 
 
 and firmament, (and, if all that must be done, it may be done 
 
 in less time than I have proposed the doubt in,) or whether 
 
 tbat soul find new light in the same room, and be not 
 
 carried into any other, but that the glory of heaven be 
 
 diffused over all, I know not, I dispute not, I inquire 
 
 not."* It is a belief which imaginative wisdom asserts 
 
 in poetry, that after the material presence has passed 
 
 away from sight and hearing, there may be a spiritual 
 
 presence nearer, closer, and more real. The popular and 
 
 vulgar belief in the gross fictions of ghosts and phantoms 
 
 is perhaps an attestation of truth distorted.")* Southey, in 
 
 one of his prose works, said tbat the most entire constancy 
 
 to the memory of the dead can be found only where there 
 
 is the unioji of a strong imagination and a strong heart, 
 
 and in his ode to the memory of Bishop Heber — 
 
 "Heber, thou art not dead, thou canst not die ! 
 Nor can I think of thee as lost. 
 
 * Donne's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 400. 
 
 f It is a pity, it soems to mo, that the word "ghost" has become so 
 perverted and debased from its high and pure spiritual meaning, for 
 in common speech it signifies the fantastic notion of an immaterialisn> 
 something sensualized, for if impalpable yet visible, too refined fur 
 one sense, but gross enough for another, and therefore belonging to 
 sonsc, and not to spirit. Thus it is that truth first is materialized and 
 moused, and then wholly denied. II. 11. 
 

 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. 333 
 
 A little portion of this little isle 
 At first divided us ; then half the globe : 
 The same earth held us still ; but when, 
 Reginald, wert thou so near as now j 
 'Tis but the falling of a withered leaf, 
 
 The breaking of a shell, 
 
 The rending of a veil !" 
 
 And Wordsworth, in one of his elegies, boldly pro 
 Cuiinis : 
 
 " Thou takest not away, Death ! 
 Thou strikest, absence perisheth, 
 
 Indifference is no more ; 
 The future brightens on our sight; 
 For on the past hath fallen a light, 
 That tempts us to adore." 
 
 I have apparently stepped aside from my subject in 
 citing these authorities, but the truth they sanction is set 
 forth in this poem in the manifold forms into which the 
 poet's" genius has fashioned it, showing how that spiritual 
 presence has been a reality to him, helping him onward 
 in the destiny of life. The manly loyalty of his sorrow 
 never fails him, but, conscious of the wisdom which sor- 
 row brings, he clings to it with gratitude. 
 
 The deep mystery that wraps the whole subject of the 
 relation between the living and the dead is in most minds 
 barren of all belief; and, often worse than mere negative 
 unbelief, it boldly denies that which lies much farther 
 beyond the reach of denial than of assertion : that any 
 influence of the spirits of the departed upon the spirits of 
 the living is possible, and so covenant with the 'dead is 
 boldly broken. One of the most learned and logical theo- 
 logians among English laymen, in the present century, 
 the late Alexander Knox, said that there was no opinion 
 on< which his mind rested with stronger assurance than
 
 SSt LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 that the spirits of the departed have a larger knowledge 
 of transactions on earth than they had in life ; and that 
 having lost his father at twelve years of age, he felt, after 
 the lapse of half a century, that all his days had been 
 overshadowed by paternal solicitude. These opinions 
 occur in an argument to prove the concern felt by departed 
 spirits for those left behind, and I refer to it because it 
 shows one of the prime truths of this poem reached by 
 another path, the process of strict argumentation.* 
 
 The study of " In Memoriam" will also show how it vin- 
 dicates other truths affecting the life and destiny of man — 
 elemental truths which have been assailed by some of the 
 philosophical heresies of the day ; and, indeed, there is to 
 my mind something sublime in the poet's strong affection 
 to his friend, passed from mortal sight, having power to 
 sweep these heresies away. The notion, coupled perhaps 
 with pantheism, which would deny individuality of exist- 
 ence in the hereafter, is dissipated by the assurance which 
 affection gives — the feeling that it 
 
 " Is faith as vague as all unsweet : 
 Eternal form shall still divide 
 The eternal soul from all beside, 
 And I shall know him when we meet." 
 
 Hombre as the poem at first appears, it works its way on 
 to happy hopes — the confidence of future recognitions, and 
 a cheerful faith. 
 
 The poet's voice is heard, too, against another error of 
 the times — that which" would give intellect supremacy over 
 the higher powers which are in the soul, confounding 
 knowledge with wisdom, or even making wisdom the mid- 
 
 * Alexander Knox's Remains, vol. ii.
 
 ELEGIAC POETRY. °3& 
 
 ordinate. The better truth comes from the memory and 
 imaginative contemplation of the character of his friend, 
 when, speaking of knowledge falsely elevated, he says — 
 
 " Half grown as yet, a child and vain, — 
 She cannot fight the fear of death : 
 What is she, cut from love and faith, 
 But some wild Pallas from the brain 
 
 Of demons ? fiery-hot to burst 
 All barriers in her onward race 
 For power. Let her know her place ; 
 
 She is tho second, not tho first. 
 
 A higher hand must make her mild, 
 If all be not in vain : and guide 
 Her footsteps, moving side by side 
 
 "With wisdom, like the younger child: 
 
 For she is earthly of the mind, 
 
 But wisdom heavenly of the soul. 
 
 friend, who earnest to thy goal 
 So early, leaving me behind, 
 
 I would the great world grew like thee, 
 Who grewest not alone in power 
 And knowledge, but from hour to hour 
 
 In reverence and in charity." 
 
 The effect of a sorrow not weakly indulged, but at once 
 faithfully cherished and wisely disciplined, is perhaps 
 most comprehensively shown in those stanzas which 
 affirm the need, for the highest purposes of sorrow, of 
 health and strength, in all that makes up our moral being. 
 
 In concluding this lecture, let me say that I have made 
 no attempt to make choice among the poems with a view 
 to present effect, but rather, in this desultory way, to illus- 
 trate the general purpose and character of the work, and 
 gome of the principles involved in it. I have thus passed
 
 S36 LECTURE TENTH. 
 
 in silence by many of the most admirable- pieces in the 
 volume, and have not stopped to speak of the superior m> 
 *:rical art which pervades the verse. Indeed, I am wdl 
 aware, that in many respects this is rude handling of a 
 poem which peculiarly demands the meditative study of 
 silent reading. It is then that you may hear and see this 
 stream of song and of sorrow — at first flowing deeply but 
 darkly, contending alike against its own force and against 
 resistance, light from the sky breaking only fitfully through 
 the gloom : you may follow it "after a while, gathering its 
 strength into a more placid channel, and you will behold 
 it at the last flowing as deeply as at first, but calmly, and 
 in the light of peaceful memories and tranquil hopes, and 
 bearing in the bosom of its own deep tranquillity the re- 
 flection of the deep tranquillity of the heavens.
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 
 ITitcratuw of Wat anb f) amour * 
 
 Subtilty of theso emotions — Sydney Smith and Leigh Hunt — Dullness of 
 jest-books — Hudibras a tedious book — Sydney Smith's idea of the 
 study of wit — Charles Lamb — Incapacity for a jest — German note on 
 Knickerbocker— Stoicism and Puritanism — Guesses at Truth — Cheer- 
 ful literature needed for thoughtful minds — Recreative power of 
 books — Different modes of mental relaxation — Napoleon — Shelley — 
 Cowper — Southoy's merriness — Doctor Arnold — Shakspeare and 
 Scott's humour — The Antiquary — Burke — Barrow's definition of wit 
 — Hobbes — Forms of Humour — Doctor Johnson's grotesque defi- 
 nitions — Collins, the landscape painter — Examples of grotesque style 
 — Irish Bulls — Rip Van Winkle — Sydney Smith and Doctor Parr — 
 Humour in old tragedies — Lear and the fool — Hamlet and the grave- 
 digger — Irony — Macbeth and the doctor — Anne Boleyn — Bishop 
 Latimer — Fuller — Dean Swift and Arbuthnot — Gulliver — Sir Roger 
 De Coverley — Charles Lamb — Swift and Byron's humour — Prosti- 
 tution of wit — Sir Robert Walpole — Lord Melbourne — Hogarth — 
 Danger of power of humour illustrated — Ruskin's criticism. 
 
 In my last lecture I was engaged in the consideration 
 * I some very serious subjects, the gravest that belong to 
 literature. In passing from tbem at once to the Litera- 
 ture of Wit and Humour, I have less apprehension of the 
 transition being felt as a violent one than that there will 
 be found in this lecture more of seriousness than the chief 
 title of it might lead one to expect. The movements of 
 the mind which are connected with the faculties styled 
 " Wit" and " Humour," are among the most subtile of 
 
 * University of Pennsylvania, March 13, 1851. 
 
 29 337
 
 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 which the mind is capable, are, for the most part, difficult 
 of description, and demand an acute and delicate ana- 
 lysis. In contrast with my last lecture, I am anxious at 
 the outset to give you the assurance of a promise that I 
 shall this evening make a more reasonable demand upon 
 your time and thoughts, for the light artillery which I 
 have now to do with can be more expeditiously manoeuvred 
 than the heavy ordnance to which I had to stand on 
 the former occasion. 
 
 It is well that it should be understood between us that 
 the subject of Wit and Humour does not at all imply that 
 the treatment of it should be identical with the effects of 
 those powers; on the contrary, by raising such expectation 
 and not fulfilling it, the subject may, in reality, prove 
 more serious than even a grave subject, wherewith such 
 anticipations could not be associated. Though I am 
 usually averse to adverting in any way to the difficulty of 
 any subject on which I have undertaken to lecture, indulge 
 me in saying that the subject of the literature of Wit and 
 Humour is one for which there is peculiarly demanded, 
 not only a genial and cultivated capacity to enjoy such 
 literature, but a skill and tact in the handling of it; the 
 importance of which I am so well aware of, that it is with 
 no small misgiving that I have ventured upon the subject. 
 When the late Sydney Smith, the most distinguished wit 
 of contemporary literature, in a course of lectures on 
 Moral Philosophy, discussed these faculties of Wit and 
 Humour, the subject, though manifestly not an unconge- 
 nial one to him, becomes even in his hands, a somewhat se- 
 date disquisition. When Leigh Hunt wrote his volume on 
 " The Poetry of Wit and Humour," vivacious and plea- 
 sant and facetious as he has often shown himself in other
 
 LITERATURE OP WI1 AND IIUMODK, 339 
 
 productions, in this we find less of that sprightliness 
 which once made sunshine for him within prison walls. 
 
 But when one comes to reflect upon it, it is not sur- 
 prising that a subject of this kind should assume what 
 appears to be an unwonted and inapposite seriousness, 
 when it is taken out of its life of activity, and made a mat- 
 ter of speculation. Everybody knows what a dull process 
 it is to explain a piece of wit. 
 
 "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear 
 Of him that hears it, never in the tongue 
 Of him that makes it ;"* 
 
 and much graver than explanation is the work of analysis. 
 It is a cruel business to anatomize the creatures of wit or 
 humour, to place them on the metaphysical disseeting- 
 table, and there to lay bare the hidden places of their 
 power; and it demands, too, for this serious service the 
 most acute intellectual scalpel which the metaphysician 
 can handle. 
 
 This also is to be considered, that not only does a jest's 
 prosperity lie in the ear of him that hears it, but it has 
 its life in an atmosphere of its own ; it springs up from a 
 soil of its own; and there are few plants so tender in the 
 transplanting. A happy, well-timed, well-applied piece 
 gf wit, which would electrify a House of Commons, becomes 
 tame and vapid when removed by repetition out of its 
 own sustaining atmosphere : one proof of this may be 
 observed in the fact that there are few duller books than 
 what are called " jest-books," whether the collection be 
 made by Hierocles or by' Joe Miller, (who is, I believe, 
 not an apocryphal person,) or by the capacious intellect 
 
 * Love's Labour's Lost.
 
 310 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 of Lord Bacon. They are not only very lifeless reading, 
 but are regarded with a degree of contempt, which almost 
 denies them admission into a nation's literature, even with 
 the authority of the name of the philosophic Lord Chan- 
 cellor pleading for entrance.* The same cause makes it,' 
 to a certain degree, a difficult and delicate task to present 
 illustrations of this subject, for even without subjecting 
 them to the torture of analysis, they must, although syn- 
 thetically considered, be detached from their -context, 
 separated from all that was preparatory of their reception, 
 and upon which their welcome is so dependent. The 
 magic of wit and humour will be found very often to be 
 so intimately connected with other intellectual action and 
 other states of feeling, that all effect is destroyed B*y the 
 attempt to separate it ; a dull, heavy residuum is left, and 
 all the delicate, volatile spirit is evaporated away. It will 
 be one of my purposes in this lecture, to show the har- 
 monious connection of the faculties of wit and humour 
 with states of mind and of feeling with which we do not 
 ordinarily associate them. 
 
 Assuming, as we are entitled to do, that that alone is 
 genuine literature which contributes in some way to 
 fashion the reader's character, to give both strength and 
 guidance to his thoughts and feelings, books which abound 
 
 * There are, I believe, few more tedious books in the language than 
 Butler's Hudibras; the perpetual and sustained effort at wit becomes 
 oppressive, and it can be read only, I am disposed to think, in small 
 quantities Ithasbeennotunfrequently said, in Shakspearian criticism, 
 that the gayest and one of tho bitterest characters, Mercutio, is put 
 out of the way in tho third act, not because the poet's fund of inven- 
 tive wit was exhausted, (that could not be with him who carried Fal- 
 Staff through three dramas,) but tho continuance of Mercutio's vivacity 
 would have boon inapposite. II. R.
 
 lilTERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 341 
 
 with wit or humour are entilled to take a place in a 
 nation's literature, only so far as they subserve the same 
 ends. As in one of my lectures I spoke of the error of 
 attempting to draw too precise a boundary line around 
 ' sacred literature, making it too much a thing standing 
 apart, so, in regard to the literature of wit and humour. 
 I shall be sorry if such a title, which I have been obliged 
 to use, led any one to think of it as of a more distinctive 
 existence than is the case, instead of regarding those facul- 
 ties as pervading the literature in various degrees, and 
 thus forming some of the elements of its life. I shall 
 have occasion to trace these elements in close contact with 
 elements of tragedy, and to show how the processes which 
 we generalize under the names of wit and humour are kin- 
 dred with the most intense passion and with the deepest 
 feeling. Our English literature shows, I think most con- 
 clusively, in ways that are respectively example and warn- 
 ing, that these faculties are strongest and healthiest when 
 they exist and are cultivated in just proportion with other 
 faculties and feelings, without gaining a predominance or 
 pre-eminence, which makes them perilous to him in whom 
 they thus get the mastery, and formidable to others. The 
 best books in the language prove the power and the beauty 
 of this harmony and proportion of the faculties ; the lite- 
 rature should serve as an agency of discipline to produce 
 in readers a like well-balanced, well-proportioned condition 
 of the mind, and in the literature of wit and humour we 
 are to find help for the cultivation of those powers. 
 
 Sydney Smith said, " It is imagined that wit is a sort 
 
 of inexplicable visitation, that it comes and goes with the 
 
 rapidity of lightning, and that it is quite as unattainable 
 
 as beauty or just proportion. I am so much of a contrary 
 
 W 29*
 
 o42 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 way of thinking, that I ski) convinced a man might sit 
 down as systematically and as successfully to the study of 
 wit as he might to the study of mathematics ; and I 
 would answer for it, that, by giving up only six hours a 
 day to being witty, he should come on prodigiously before 
 Midsummer, so that his friends should hardly know him 
 again. For what is there to hinder the mind from gra- 
 dually acquiring a habit of attending to the lighter rela- 
 tions of ideas in which wit consists ?"* Now this is 
 obviously the exaggeration of one who, in the triumphant 
 consciousness of his own endowment, pictures the per- 
 plexity of a student of wit coming to his task as he would 
 to the differential calculus, giving only six hours a day to 
 ir,, and astonishing his friends by Midsummer with his 
 progress. But if this Is witty exaggeration, so far as 
 creative power is concerned, it covers a truth with respect 
 to the culture of a susceptibility to the productions of 
 wit and humour; and that susceptibility may fairly be 
 considered as a constituent of every vigorous and well-cul- 
 tivated mind — undoubtedly so, when the full extent of the 
 operations of wit and humour is justly appreciated. 
 
 In such culture, whether by literature or otherwise, 
 there will of course be found the same disparity of natural 
 endowment of those as of other faculties. As there are 
 unimaginative intellects to which all poetry is a sealed 
 mystery, so are there others which are impenetrable to all 
 the influences of wit and humour, and this is owing not 
 so much to any exclusive predominance of seriousness as 
 to that of dulness. It was in this respect that Charles 
 Lamb, in his Essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," com- 
 
 Sketohets on Mural Philosophy, Lecturo x. p. 125, Am. edition.
 
 LI1EUATURK OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 34!' 
 
 plained of his inability to like a certain description of 
 Scotchmen — that dry, literal phase of intellect, winch is so 
 alien to all poetic or humorous liberty of language. " I 
 was present," writes Lamb, "not long since, at a party 
 of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected; 
 and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South 
 British way) that I wished it were the father instead of 
 the son, when four of them started up at once to inform 
 me that ' that was impossible, because he was dead.' 
 An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they 
 could conceive." This character of mind (so different, I 
 may remark from the genial Scotch humour of Burns, or 
 Walter Scott, or John Wilson) is not peculiar to Scot- 
 laud, but every one can probably find specimens of it in 
 the range of his own acquaintance. 
 
 The most remarkable instance of obtuseness to li<?ht 
 letters that I ever met with occurred in another region. 
 Goeller, a German editor of Thucydides, in annotating a 
 passage of the Greek historian, describing the violence of 
 the Athenian factions, gives two modern illustrations : one 
 of the Guelf and Ghibelliue parties in Italy ; the other — he 
 cites Washington Irving and his book very gravely in 
 Latin — the factions of long pipes and short pipes in New 
 York, under the administration of Peter Stuyvesant. 
 Imagine this erudite and ponderous German poring over 
 Knickerbocker as seriously as over Guicciardini's History 
 of the Italian Republics !* 
 
 * This instance of simplicity has a most grotesque effect in the ori- 
 ginal, printed at Leipsic in 1836. It literally reads thus : " Addo locum 
 Washingtonis Irwingii, Hist. Novi Eboraci. lib. vii. cap. v." — " Tho old 
 factions of Long Pipes and Short Pipes, strangled by tho Herculean 
 grasp of P. Stuyvesant." W. B. K.
 
 lit LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 But the genial mind is accessible, at least, to some one 
 or other of the manifold influences which are very inade- 
 quately expressed by these two general names, " Wit'' 
 and "Humour." They do but describe an inventive 
 energy of genius, which assumes a vast variety of expres- 
 sion, ranging from the most acute intellectual wit, through 
 the many forms of humour, down to frolic drollery and 
 mere fun and the broadest buffoonery. If it be asked what 
 claim to culture this class of faculties has, the first and 
 simplest answer is, that they are among the talents with 
 which man.is gifted — the gift blunging along with it the 
 necessity and the duty of culture : they are powers which 
 will run riot and run to mischief, unless guided and dis- 
 ciplined. They cannot be destroyed by being disowned. 
 It was a wretched delusion when Stoicism strove to stiffen 
 humanity into stone : and so, in later days, there was like 
 wrong when Puritanism looked black upon natural, inno- 
 cent, healthful cheerfulness, frighting the joyous temper 
 of a people with a frown, which I believe to this day 
 haunts the race both in Britain and in America, to an 
 extent which is irrational, unchristian, and of course in- 
 jurious, by abandoning what is festive to the world's 
 keeping, instead of retaining them under better and safer 
 influences. It was Wesley, I believe, who said he had 
 no idea of allowing the devil to monopolize all the good 
 tunes; and it is certain that that same personage (I 
 don't mean Wesley) will be ready enough to furnish to 
 the needs of men holydays of his contriving, if no other 
 provision be made for what is a natural and lawful craving 
 jf toiling humanity. There will be, too, a literature of 
 wicked wit to fascinate and poison men, unless that of a 
 truthful and healthful kind be cultivated. It is, I believe,
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 345 
 
 not an uncommon inclination, to disown and to disparage 
 that literature which is an agency of pleasant thoughts ; and 
 in opposing to such an opinion a few serious authorities, 
 I hope you will not apprehend an inappropriate relapse 
 into the grave subjects of my last lecture. A great divine, 
 preaching at a time when Puritan rigour was beginning 
 to make itself felt, said, " Fear not thou, that a cheerful- 
 ness and alacrity in using God's blessings — fear not thou, 
 that a moderate delight in music, in conversation, in 
 recreations, shall be imputed to thee for a fault, for it is 
 conceived by the Holy Ghost, and is the offspring of a 
 peaceful conscience :"* and another who lived to see and 
 to suffer by the new severity, Jeremy Taylor, said, " It Ja 
 certain that all that which can innocently make a man 
 cheerful, does also make him charitable, for grief, and age, 
 and sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and trouble- 
 some ; but mirth and cheerfulness are content, and civil, 
 and compliant, and communicative, and love to do good, 
 and to swell up to felicity only upon the wings of chanty. 
 .... If a facete discourse, and an amicable, frier dly 
 mirth can refresh the spirit, and take it off from the vile 
 temptation of peevish, despairing, uncomplying melan- 
 choly, it must needs be innocent and commendable. And 
 we may as well be refreshed by a clean and brisk dis- 
 course, as by the air of Campanian wines ; and our faces 
 and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant 
 with wit and friendly intercourse, as with the fat of the 
 balsam-tree." A living divine, speaking not profession- 
 ally, but in that agreeable work, the " Guesses at Truth," 
 has said : What a dull, plodding, tramping, clanking would 
 
 * Donno's Works, vul. ii. p. 103.
 
 346 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 the ordinary intercourse of society be, without wit, to 
 enliven and brighten it ! When two men meet, they 
 seem to be, as it were, kept at bay through the estranging 
 effects of absence, until some sportive sally opens their 
 hearts to each other. Nor does any thing spread cheerful- 
 ness so rapidly over a whole party, or an assembly of 
 people, however large. Reason expands the soul of the 
 philosopher. Imagination glorifies the poet, and breathes 
 a breath of spring through the young and genial : but if 
 we take into account the numberless glances and gleams 
 whereby wit lightens our every-day life, I hardly know 
 what power ministers so bountifully to the innocent plea- 
 sures of mankind."* 
 
 Another thoughtful essayist of our day has said, " If 
 ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted 
 Anglo-Saxons :" (the phrase includes us ever-working 
 Americans.) " Heavy eaters," (rapidity must be substi- 
 tuted for weight for the Anglo-Saxon on this side the 
 ocean,) " hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar 
 melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months 
 together would frown away mirth if.it could, many of us 
 with very gloomy thoughts about our hereafter, — if ever 
 there were a people who should avoid increasing their 
 dulness by all work and no play, we are that people. 
 ' They took their pleasures sadly,' says Froissart, ' after 
 their fashion.' We need not ask of what nation Froissart 
 was speaking. "f But let me add, that the blood and tem- 
 perament of race are not safeguards of contentment, for it is 
 with the most vivacious people, Froissart' a countrymen, 
 that the perpetration of suicide is most common. 
 
 • Archdeacon Hare's Guesses ;it Troth, lir.si .scries, p. 316. 
 I Friends in < !oun< il, part i. p. 56.
 
 LITERATURE OP WIT- AND HUMOUR. 347 
 
 It is for thoughtful minds that the agency of a cheer- 
 ful literature is most needed, for remember that it is 
 such minds that are most exposed to morbid moods, 
 to despondency, to discontent, to some dull depression, 
 more fatal to the energies of the mind, than danger 01 
 earnest labour, which nerve the spirit to encounter them 
 These are intellectual and moral evils, which must be met 
 and mastered by thoughtful self-discipline, and in that 
 discipline, the service of literature may be found, if pro- 
 perly sought for, providing as it does,in such varied form, 
 so much of restorative influence. The good will be 
 gained, not so much by seeking it in books especially meant 
 for amusement, as in the culture of a capacity to relish wit 
 and humour, as they are blended with other influences 
 also intended to give strength and health to the mind. 
 The recreative power of literature will of course be rela- 
 tive to the character and habits of the reader, and happily 
 it is as largely varied as they are, thus suiting their vari- 
 ous needs. It is stated by Lord Holland in his " Foreign 
 Reminiscences," that Napoleon, when he had an hour for 
 diversion, not unfrequently employed it in looking over a 
 book of logarithms, which he said was at all seasons of 
 his life a recreation to him.* It would be curious, and 
 
 * Lord Holland's Foreign Reminiscences, p. 174, Am. ed. I am 
 rather sorry to see this volume quoted as authority for any thing ; but 
 as it is not matter of defamation, it may be credible. I know nothing 
 more painful in political literature than these posthumous effusions 
 of Lord Holland, who was known on this side the Atlantic, thanks, very 
 much to one of Mr. Macaulay's reviews, as a good-humoured, liberal 
 nobleman, in the sunshine of whose hospitality literary men of England 
 were wont to congregate — who was a scholar and a gentlemnn. These 
 books, published since his death, as well those relating to foreign as 
 domestic politics, show him to have been the studious recorder nl
 
 S4S LECTUIIE ELEVENTH. 
 
 perhaps not unprofitable, to speculate on such a process of 
 recreation, and trace its relation to the active life which 
 was refreshed by it. The poet Shelley is said to have 
 been extremely fond of mathematics, and every hard, dry 
 science; and I can well conceive that such fondness may 
 be traced to the relief and repose which such subjects 
 brought to one whose imagination soared amid the clouds, 
 and whose moral creed was filled with wild and wonder 
 ing speculations. Another poet, whose genius had wiser 
 mastery over his imagination, Wordsworth, in the poetic 
 history of his mind, speaking of geometric truths, has said, 
 
 " Mighty is the charm 
 Of those abstractions to a mind beset 
 With images and haunted by herself; 
 And specially delightful unto me 
 Was that clear synthesis built up aloft 
 So gracefully :"* 
 
 and the same poet, after describing the agitatiou of his 
 mind in sharing the excitement and depression of a tumul- 
 tuous condition of the world, says that he 
 
 " Turned to abstract science, and there sought 
 Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned, 
 Where the disturbances of spare and time, 
 Whether in matters various, properties 
 Inherent, or from human will and power 
 Derived, find no admission." 
 
 malignant gossip of all sorts of people. Credulity, the wicked credu- 
 lity that inclines to believe evil of one's kind, is hardly a sufficient apo- 
 logy for such a record. .For its publication there is none. His enthu- 
 sinsni (if such it is) for ono so selfish and defamatory as Napoleon, is, 
 in my poor judgment, eminently characteristic. Lot me here record my 
 wonder how any American man,- fond of the institutions, and proud 
 of the traditions of his country, can havo sympathy with any European 
 Bonaparte. W. 15. R. 
 
 * The Prelude, bouk vi. p. 503, and book xi. p. 530. Am. cd.
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 349 
 
 And, in like manner, we may suppose that it was recrea- 
 tion for Napoleon to turn away from a world in which 
 men by thousands and tens of thousands moved for life 
 and death, by his controlling will, and kingdoms shifted 
 about " like clouds obedient to his breath" — to turn away 
 from such life, and find a brief and happy seclusion in the 
 tranquil and enduring truths of abstract science. It may 
 be, too, that the book of logarithms brought with it memo- 
 ries of early days, before he began to bear the giant bur- 
 den of Europe's fortunes, and thus carried him away to 
 breathe in spirit the clear atmosphere of studious boyhood. 
 
 I have spoken of this case to show how various and 
 relative a thing is recreation, as the game of chess is 
 amusement to some minds, while others shrink from it, as 
 Sir Walter Scott says he did, as from a toil and a waste 
 of brains.* Charles Lamb describes the old lady who 
 went so.. earnestly to her game of whist, that "she could 
 not bear to have her noble occupation, to which she wound 
 up her faculties, considered in the light of unbending the 
 mind after serious studies in recreation. . . . She unbent 
 her mind afterwards, over a book."* In like manner, with 
 regard to books, their recreative character is greatly modi- 
 fied by the disposition of the recipient. Mr. Dickens has 
 somewhere a story of a sombre-spirited sentimentalist, who 
 pronounced Milton's " L' Allegro" his worst performance, 
 and complained of Gray's Elegy as too light and frivolous. 
 
 If the case of Napoleon shows a peculiar recreation con- 
 genial to a spirit of the most intense energy, literary his- 
 tory tells of such a case as that of Cowper, where the 
 
 * Lockhart's Scott, vol. i. p. 174. 
 
 f Mrs. Battlo's Opinions of Whist. Lamb's Prose Works, vol. ii. p. 74.
 
 350 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 hauntings of melancholy were allayed by sportive inven- 
 tion. His biographer tells us, that " For a while Lady 
 Austen's conversation had as happy an effect upon the 
 melancholy spirit of Cowper as the harp of David upon 
 Saul. Whenever the cloud seemed to be coming over 
 him, her sprightly powers were exerted to dispel it. One 
 afternoon, when he appeared more than usually depressed, 
 ?he told him the story of John Gilpin, which had been 
 told to her in her childhood, and which, in her relation 
 tickled his fancy as much as it has that of thousands and 
 tens of thousands sinpe in his. The next morning, he 
 said to her that he had been kept awake during the 
 greater part of the night by thinking of the story and 
 laughing at it, and that he had turned it into a ballad. 
 The ballad was sent to Mr. Unwin, who said in reply that 
 it had made him laugh tears. Cowper himself said in 
 one of his letters : ' If I trifle, and merely trifle, it is 
 because lam reduced to it by necessity; a melancholy, 
 that nothing else so effectually disperses, engages me 
 sometimes in the arduous task of being merry by force. 
 And, strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I 
 ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood, and but 
 for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at 
 all.'"* 
 
 But it is not only for their recreative agency that the 
 faculties of wit and humour are to be considered ; they are 
 also to be regarded as elements of genius, as entering into 
 the constitution of the highest order of the human mind. 
 i do not, of course, tribaa that every man eminent in the 
 world of letters or of action is a wit or a humourist; but 
 
 * SouHiey's Cowper, vol. ii. p. 74.
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 351 
 
 that there is abundant proof, either in acts or writlen 
 words, of the presence of these faculties, made more or less 
 manifest, according to the tenor of the life or the subject 
 of the writings, and not unfrequentby breaking forth 
 through adverse circumstances of life or unpropitious 
 topics of books. When Dr. Arnold is describing the great 
 Carthaginian hero putting on a variety of disguises to 
 baffle the attempts of assassins, he says : Hannibal " wore 
 false hair, appearing sometimes as a man of mature years, 
 and sometimes with the grey hair of old age ; and if he 
 had that taste for humour which great men are seldom 
 'without, and which some anecdotes of him imply, he must 
 have been often amused by the mistakes thus occasioned, 
 and have derived entertainment from that which policy or 
 necessity dictated."* A thoughtful and eloquent defender 
 of Luther, in excusing the plainness, and even coarseness, 
 of expression for which he has been reproached, says, 
 "he could not mince his words, or take thought about 
 suiting them to fastidious ears, even if there had been 
 such to suit them to ; and the humour with which he was 
 so richly gifted, and which is the natural associate of an 
 intense love of truth, if it be not rather a particular form 
 and manifestation of that love, led him to strip off the 
 artificial drapery and conventional formalities of life, and 
 to look straight at the realities hidden beneath them in 
 their naked contrasts and contradictions." I quote the 
 passage simply as an authority for considering humour as 
 a " natural associate of an intense love of truth, perhaps 
 rather a particular form and manifestation of that love," 
 and thus explaining, at least in part, how it enters into the 
 
 * History of Rome, vol. iii. p 102.
 
 S62 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 constitution of genius. Observe, too, that it is the strong- 
 est and most capacious mind which will perceive most 
 keenly and feel most deeply the manifold and perpetually 
 occurring contradictions, and incongruities, and inconsist- 
 encies of life, the slight steppings down from the sublime 
 to the ridiculous, the quaint contact of the comic and the 
 solemn, provoking the laugh at the wrong time or in the 
 wrong place, and all the strange combinations which grow 
 out of man's mingled nature of strength and weakness, 
 which a thoughtful mind observes in others, and is yet 
 more deeply conscious of it in itself. These things are 
 the themes of wit and humour. There is another order 
 of minds, narrower in its range of observation, and less re- 
 flective on its own being, which, dwelling within the covert 
 of some hypothesis of its own, shapes the world to its own 
 standard, and neither sees nor feels the incongruities of 
 humanity. Such is not genius — but a dry, hard, and 
 mechanical sort of intellect, and wit and humour are all 
 mystery to it. 
 
 The authors who deal most largely with human nature 
 are those in whom the elements of wit and humour will be 
 most displayed — in connection, however, with serious ele- 
 ments. This will be seen especially in those writers whose 
 imaginations have produced the greatest number of crea- 
 tions — I mean of invented characters — representative of hu- 
 manity. In English literature, the three who may, T think, 
 be regarded as pre-eminent for the number and life-like 
 reality of their creations, are Chaucer, Shakspcare, and 
 Scott ; and in their writings may be found the finest spe- 
 cimens of genuine humour, coupled, too, with tragic power 
 equally admirable. It is remarkable, too, to observe how, 
 in an early age, the large imagination of Chaucer blended
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. ^ 353 
 
 with the tenderest pathos a humour coarse at times, but 
 again as delicate as any of an age of refinement — such as 
 his description of the " Sergeant of the Law," which is 
 like a smile of kindly-natured humour, rather than a stroke 
 or a sneer of satire : 
 
 "Discreet lie was, and of great reverence 
 He seemed such, his words were so wise : 
 
 Nowhere so busy a man as he there n'as, 
 And yet he seemed busier than he was." 
 
 Examples without number of Sir Walter Scott's genial 
 humour, as displayed in the personages of his novels, will 
 rise up to the thoughts of any one. How beautifully is 
 it interwoven with the serious passages in the Antiquary ! 
 How it gleams through the clouds of civil war and the 
 gloom of Puritan severity in Old Mortality ! and what a 
 fine relief does it not give to the deeper tragedy of the 
 Bride of Lammermoor ! In Shakspeare, the whole subject 
 might be studied' and illustrated through a boundless 
 variety of character, from the malevolent and wicked wit 
 of Iago, with its serpent-like venom, the inexhaustible 
 resources of Falstaff, the morbid humour of Jaques, or the 
 healthy humour of Falconbridge, and the many other 
 phases of these faculties in his men and women. 
 
 These powers may be discovered also in other great 
 poets of our language, the subjects or forms of whose 
 poems were less favourable to their appearance. The pen- 
 sive atmosphere with which the sage and solemn spirit of 
 Spenser has enveloped the region of his Faery Land, admits, 
 at times, some rays of a quaint humour. In Milton, the 
 powers assume so stern an aspect, that one hesitates in as- 
 sociating them with wit and humour, and yet, assuredly, 
 
 30*
 
 354 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 such are the faculties, in their most repulsive shape, both 
 in his prose writings and his poems, betraying how a grand 
 and noble spirit was imbittered by the adverse circum- 
 stances of both public and private life. It was eminently 
 characteristic for him to speak of " anger and laughter," 
 as " those two most rational faculties of human intellect," 
 and to boast of that " vein of laughing," which " hath oft- 
 times a strong and sinewyforcein teachingand confuting."* 
 The presence of these faculties in the greatest English 
 prose writers is also susceptible of proof. In the most 
 illustrious of the old divines, they appear in a way that is 
 not permitted to later theologians — I refer not only to 
 such instances as the works of the church historian, 
 Thomas Fuller, or the sermons of " the witty Dr. South," 
 but also to the humour which is blended with the reason- 
 ings of Barrow and the poetic eloquence of Jeremy Tay- 
 lor. The wit of Swift is universally recognised as his 
 most effective weapon : and in another masculine mind, 
 also distempered by disease as Swift's was, there was a 
 sort of rough humour, in Dr. Johnson's. The high-toned 
 eloquence of Burke, though far from sparkling with 
 wit like Sheridan's, was not without its humour : ob- 
 serve it, too, in his chief political treatise — the quiet 
 humour for example, in the well-known comparison of 
 the noisy, factious pamphleteers with solid uulnquacious 
 English sobriety • " Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers 
 under a fern make the field ring with their importunate 
 chirp, while thousands of great cattle reposing beneath the 
 shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, 
 
 * Milton's Proso Works. Preface to Animadversions upon tho Re. 
 monstrants' Defence against Sniectyninuus, p. 55.
 
 LITERATURE OP WIT AND HUMOUR. 355 
 
 pray do not imagine that those who make the noise arc 
 the only inhabitants of the field ; that, of course, they are 
 many in number; or that, after all, they are other than 
 the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and 
 troublesome, insects of the hour." 
 
 It is to one of the great divines of the seventeenth cen- 
 ury that we owe the most famous description (it at- 
 tempts not definition) of Wit : I refer, of course, to that 
 passage so often, and yet never too often, quoted in Bar- 
 row's sermon " against foolish talking aud jesting." It 
 was composed at a time when the word " Wit" was begin- 
 ning to change its original meaning of mental power for 
 the more limited sense of later times, and when the faculty 
 itself, having the special favour of the " merry monarch" 
 was in unwonted, and, it may be added, wanton activity. 
 Dr. Barrow said, "To the question what the thing we 
 speak of is, or what this- facetiousness doth import? I 
 might reply as Democritus did to him that asked the defi- 
 nition of a man, 'Tis that which we all see and know : any 
 one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance than I 
 can inform him by description. It is, indeed, a thing so 
 versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so 
 many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended 
 by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less 
 hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to 
 make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of ? 
 fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in a pat allusion to a 
 known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial say- 
 ing, or in forging an apposite tale : sometimes it piayeth 
 in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambi- 
 guity of their sense or the affinity of their sound : some- 
 times it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression .
 
 S56 FIXTURE E1EVENT II. 
 
 sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude : sometimes 
 it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a 
 quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly di- 
 verting or cleverly retorting an objection : sometimes it 
 is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in 
 a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible 
 reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense : some- 
 times a scenical representation of persons or things, a 
 counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture, passeth for 
 it: sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a pre- 
 sumptuous boldness, giveth it being; sometimes it riseth 
 from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, sometimes from 
 a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose; often it 
 consisteth in one knows not what, and springeth up one 
 can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and in- 
 explicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of 
 fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a man- 
 ner of speaking out of the simple and plain way, (such as 
 reasoning teacheth and proveth things by,) which, by a 
 pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression, 
 doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring it to some 
 wonder and breeding some delight thereto." 
 
 One cannot read this large induction and analytical 
 description of the forms of wit, from the higher inventions 
 down to " acute nonsense," without thinking how thought- 
 fully this great and learned divine must have observed the 
 wits of the times of Charlos the Second, and how genially 
 he must have received what he so wisely expounded ! Nor 
 can I discover that the metaphysicians have been able tc 
 advance beyond (his description to the more precise ground 
 of definition. The most acute of the Greek philosophers, 
 Aristotle, gave what is at best a negative definition of the
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 357 
 
 laughable, when he said it depended on what is out of its 
 proper time and place, yet without danger or pain. That re- 
 markable- but wrong-headed English philosopher, Hobbes, 
 who thought that war was man's natural state, defined 
 laughter to be " a sudden glory arising from a sudden 
 conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison 
 with infirmity of others or our own infirmity." The defi- 
 nitions given by Locke and by the Scotch rhetoricians, 
 and the analysis made by Coleridge and by Sydney Smith, 
 have done little more than trace the effect of wit or hu- 
 mour to an agreeable surprise occasioned by an unusual 
 connection of thoughts. Still more difficult would it be 
 to trace the subtle relations between wit and humour, and 
 to analyze that higher form in which both are combined, 
 but for which language helps us with no name. Wit may, 
 I think, be regarded as a purely intellectual process, while 
 humour is a sense of the ridiculous controlled by feeling, 
 and coexistent often with the gentlest and deepest pathos, 
 visible, it may be, even in those smiles which have been 
 finely described, as "a sad heart's sunshine." 
 
 Often the simple sense of incongruity produces the 
 effect of the laughable — the unfitness of the means to the 
 end, as in some of Dr. Johnson's definitions, where his 
 Latinized dialect makes him like the interpreter in Sheri- 
 dan's farce, the harder to be understood of the two — his 
 definition of " Network — any thing reticulated or decus- 
 sated at equal distances, with interstices between the 
 intersections," or when, in the preface to his Dictionary, 
 in explanation of the difficulty of ranging the meanings of 
 a word in order, he asks: "When the radical idea branches 
 out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive 
 
 series be formed of senses in their nature collateral?'" 
 X
 
 358 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 Again, when Johnson defines "Excise," to'be "a hateful 
 tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by the 
 common judges of property, but wretches hired by those 
 to whom excise is paid :" and Peusion, to be "an allow- 
 ance made to any one without an equivalent. In England 
 it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state- 
 hireling for treason to his country" — a comic effect is pro- 
 duced by the unexpected encounter with such a fervid 
 temper among the dispassionate definitions of a dictionary, 
 almost as if one should meet with a spiteful demonstration 
 in geometry.* To an ear accustomed to simple English, 
 simple in the choice and in the arrangement of the words, 
 the highly Latinized and stately sentences of Dr. Johnson 
 now make an impression bordering sometimes on the lu- 
 dicrous — owing, 1 think, to the unnatural disparity be- 
 tween his style and the ordinary colloquial use of lan- 
 guage: this was curiously shown by a practical joke that 
 was practised on that worthy and simple-mannered man, 
 the late Sir David Wilkie, by a fellow-painter and his 
 brother, and described in the Memoir of Collins, the laud- 
 scape-painter : " Mr. Collins's brother Francis possessed a 
 remarkably retentive memory, which he was accustomed 
 to use for the amusement of himself and others in the fol- 
 lowing manner. He learnt by heart a whole number of 
 one of Dr. Johnson's ' Ramblers/ and used to occasion 
 considerable diversion to those in the secret, by repeating 
 it all through to a new company, in a conversational lone, 
 as if it was the accidental product of his own fancy, — now 
 
 * It may have been a definition like that of "excise," whieli occa- 
 sioned the criticism from a Scotch peasant, whom Sir Walter Scott 
 found reading aloud the Dictionary containing the autnonties, "that 
 they wort Draw stories, but unco short." H. R.
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 359 
 
 addressing his flow of moral eloquence to one astonished 
 auditor, and now to another. One day, when the two 
 bi - others were dining at Wilkie's, it was determined to try 
 the experiment upon their host. After dinner, accord- 
 ingly, Mr. Collins paved the way for the coming speech, 
 by leading the conversation imperceptibly to the subject 
 of the paper in the ' Rambler.' At the right moment, 
 Francis Collins began. As the first grand Johnsonian 
 sentences struck upon his ear, (uttered, it should be re- 
 membered, in the most elaborately careless and conversa- 
 tional manner,) Wilkie started at the high tone that the 
 conversation had suddenly assumed, and looked vainly for 
 explanation to his friend Collins, who, on his part, sat with 
 his eyes respectfully fixed on his brother, all wrapt attention 
 to the eloquence that was dropping from his lips. Once 
 or twice, with perfect mimicry of the conversational cha- 
 racter he had assumed, Francis Collins hesitated, stam- 
 mered, and paused, as if collecting his thronging ideas. 
 At one or two of these intervals, Wilkie endeavoured to 
 speak, to ask a moment for consideration ; but the torrent 
 of his guest's eloquence was not to be delayed . . . until 
 at last it reached its destined close; and then Wilkie, 
 who, as host, thought it his duty to break silence by the 
 first compliment, exclaimed, with the most perfect uncon- 
 sciousness of the trick that had been played him, ' Ay, 
 ay, Mr. Francis ; verra clever — (though I did not under- 
 stand it all) — verra clever !' " 
 
 It not unfrequeutly happens, also, that a sense of the 
 ludicrous in style may be traced in a false and florid rhe- 
 toric to the incongruous combination of literal and figura- 
 tive forms of expression. Reading the Earl of Ellesmere's 
 agreeable and usually well-written History of the Two
 
 860 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 Sieges of Vienna, I noted this sentence : speaking of So- 
 bieski, he says, " inspired by the memory of former victo- 
 ries, ... he flung his powerful frame into tbe saddle, 
 and his great soul into tbe cause." This is tbat juxtapo- 
 sition of the literal and metapborical, wbich is best exem- 
 plified by' a well-known instance in a panegyric on the 
 celebrated Robert Boyle, in which he was described as 
 " father of chemistry, and brother of the Earl of Cork." 
 Again, another form of the literary ludicrous, is in the in 
 congruous combination of metaphors produced by the 
 want of discipline in speech, increased, perhaps, by an ex- 
 cet3S of unguided fancy. Lord Castlereagh's parliamentary 
 speeches are said to have been full of such confusion of 
 language — without, however, spoiling the speaker's high 
 bearing and elegance of manner : in one of these speeches 
 he used that sentence in which, perhaps, there is as curi- 
 ous an infelicity of speech and confusion of figure as ever 
 were crowded into as small a number of words, " And 
 now, sir, I must embark into the feature on which this 
 question chiefly hinges."* 
 
 * My impression is, that those traditions as to Lord Castlereagh are 
 not now regarded as trustworthy. His is- one of the cases (I speak 
 of the American mind) in which a healthy revolution of opinion may 
 be traced. Thirty — nay, twenty — years ago, when Galilean sympathies 
 wore active, and Moore's clever pasquinades in every one's mouth, Lord 
 Castlereagh was an especial object of disparagement. Let any one 
 study his correspondence, lately published, especially in 1814 and 
 1815, and it will bo seen what a manly, honest-minded statesman he 
 was. It is a matter, I believe, of well-ascertained diplomatic tradi^ 
 tion, tbat such was his uniform temper and tone in all his relations to 
 this country. The fact, too, is unquestionable, that extremo conserva- 
 tives, such as Lord Castlereagh and Lord Aberdeen have always shows 
 more consideration, and made themselves more acceptable to our re- 
 presentatives abroad, than others claiming to be more liberal. W. U. R,
 
 LITERATURE OP WIT AND HUMOUR. 361 
 
 And so in that form of error, which is regarded as be- 
 longing pre-eminently to Lord Castlereagh's countrymen, 
 that strange mixture of error and accuracy, called an 
 "Irish bull," the ludicrous effect is, I believe, produced 
 by the sense working its way out through the complexity 
 and confusion of the phrase. 
 
 , Sir Walter Scott, in the account of his tour in Ireland, 
 mentions an occurrence which illustrates this form of the 
 laughable, for it is a sort of bull in action. " They were 
 widening," he says, " the road near Lord Claremont's seat 
 as we passed. A number of cars were drawn up together 
 at a particular point, where we also halted, as we under- 
 stood they were blowing a rock, and the shot was expected 
 presently to go off. After waiting two minutes or so, a 
 fellow called out something, and our carriage as a planet, 
 and the cars for satellites, started all forward at once, the 
 Irishmen whooping and the horses galloping. Unable to 
 learn the meaning of this, I was only left to suppose that 
 they had delayed firing the intended shot till we should 
 pass, and that we were passing quickly to make the delay 
 as short as possible. No such thing; by dint of making 
 great haste, we got within ten yards of the rock just when 
 the blast took place, throwing dust and gravel in our car- 
 riage ; and had our postillion brought us a little nearer, 
 (it was not for want of hollowing and flogging that he 
 did not,) we should have had a still more serious share of 
 the explosion. The explanation I received from the 
 drivers was, that they had been told by the overseer that 
 as the mine had been so long in going off, he dared 
 say we would have time to pass it, so we just waited 
 long enough to make the danger imminent. I have 
 
 only to add, that two or three people got behind the 
 
 3J
 
 SC2 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 carriage, just for nothing but to see how our honours got 
 past."* 
 
 It is curious, let me remark, to observe how a form of 
 expression which is essentially a bull, may be lifted out of 
 the region of the ridiculous, as in that truly poetic expres- 
 sion of Keats : 
 
 "So the two brothers and their murdered man * 
 
 Rode toward fair Florence. "f 
 
 Now, if that be looked at in a prosaic point of view, it 
 becomes a downright blunder, but, poetically, you see in 
 it the activity of the imagination darting forward to the 
 murder, a " ghastly foregone conclusion," as Leigh Hunt 
 has well called it. 
 
 I have spoken of the incongruity of style : there may 
 also be such incongruity of time as to make the anachron- 
 ism laughable. Washington Irving, one of the finest of 
 modern humorous writers, has shown this in that practical 
 anachronism : " Rip Van Winkle." It is, I believe, 
 Horace Walpole, who tells of one of the family pictures 
 of the De Levis, a French family that prided itself on its 
 great antiquity ; it was a picture of an antediluvian scene, in 
 which Noah was represented going into the ark with a 
 bundle of the archives of the house of De Levi under his 
 arm. | I have myself seen in a private library in this city 
 an old Bible, with engravings, Dutch, I believe they were; 
 one of which pictured an Old Testament event; in the 
 foreground Samson slaying the lion, if I remember rightly, 
 
 * Loekhart's Scott. 
 
 f Keats's Poetical Works, p. 42. Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. 
 X This is in a noto by Lord Dover. Horace Walpole's joke is rather 
 loss decorous. Collected Works, vol. ii. p. 2'JS. W. B. 11.
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. . 36S 
 
 and in the background a man with a fowling-piece shoot- 
 ing snipe. 
 
 These are broad incongruities, bordering upon the farci- 
 cal : there are others, either wilful or unconscious, which 
 are more delicate in their impression. When Lady Sale 
 made in her diary the simple entry, " Earthquakes as 
 usual," the humour was in the coolness of the womanly 
 courage, and the notion of the frequency coupled with one 
 of the rarest and most appalling of earthly perils. It was 
 not unlike the advertisement beginning, " Anybody in 
 want of a diving-bell," as if a diving-bell was one of the 
 common wants in society. A quaint example recurs to 
 my mind in this connection : it is in Horrebou's History 
 of Iceland, an old folio volume, which is divided into 
 chapters according to various subjects: one of these is 
 headed (chapter 47,) " Concerning Owls." I can quote 
 the whole chapter without fatiguing you, for it is in these 
 words : " There are in Iceland no owls of any kind what- 
 ever." Yet the historian seems to have considered him- 
 self under some obligation to that species of birds, so far 
 as to devote a chapter to their absence. 
 
 These unexpected connections, which are produced by 
 wit or humour, carried beyond the mere ludicrous effect, 
 are seen also subserving argumentation, as these processes 
 are combined by Swift in his " Drapier's Letters," and 
 other occasional pieces ; by De Foe, or in later times by Wal- 
 ter Scott, in his letters on the Scotch currency question; 
 and yet more in Sydney Smith's writings, the wittiest- 
 reasoning and satire in the language. There is, perhaps 
 no more characteristic passage than that suggested by his 
 reflections on the learned prolixity of Dr. Parr. " There 
 is an event," he goes on to say, " recorded in the Bible,
 
 3M LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 which men who write books should keep constantly in 
 their remembrance. It is there set forth, that many cen- 
 turies ago the earth was covered with a great flood, by 
 which the whole of the human race, with the exception of 
 one family, were destroyed. It appears also, that from 
 thence a great alteration was made in the longevity of 
 mankind, who, from a range of seven hundred or eight 
 hundred years, were confined to their present period of* 
 seventy or eighty years. This epoch in the history of 
 man gave birth to the twofold division of the antediluvian 
 and the postdiluvian style of writing, the latter \>i which 
 naturally contracted itself into those inferior limits which 
 were better accommodated to the abridged duration of 
 human life and literary labour. Now to forget this event, 
 to write without the fear of the deluge before his eyes, 
 and to handle a subject as if mankind could lounge over 
 a pamphlet for ten years, as before their submersion, is to 
 be guilty of the most grievous error into which a writer 
 can possibly fall. The author of this book should call in 
 the aid of some brilliant pencil, and cause the distressing 
 scenes of the deluge to be pourtrayed in the most lively 
 coiours for his use. He should gaze at Noah, and be 
 brief. The ark should constantly remind him of the little 
 time there is left for reading; and he should learn, as 
 they did in the ark, to crowd a great deal of matter into 
 a very little compass.''* This was written in Sydney 
 Smith's early reviewing days; but his wit- took a more 
 concentrated form, as when he said of Lord John Rupsel, 
 *' His worst failure is that he is utterly ignorant of all 
 mural fear ; there is nothing he would not undertake. 1 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, 1809. Works, vol. ii. p. 208.
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 305 
 
 believe he would perform the operation for the stone, build 
 St. Peter's, or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) 
 the command of the channel fleet ; and no one would dis- 
 cover by his manner that the patient had died, the church 
 tumbled down, and the channel fleet been knocked to 
 atoms;" and then he adds quietly in a note, "Another 
 peculiarity of the Russels is, that they never alter their 
 opinions : they are an excellent race, but they must be 
 trepanned before they can be convinced."* Nay, some- 
 times the subtle element is concentrated in a single word 
 or phrase, as when he speaks of " a gentleman lately from 
 the Pyramids or the upper cataracts, let loose upon the 
 drawing-room ;'" or that phrase, so excellent in the satire, 
 and admitting unfortunately of such frequent application, 
 which mentions an orator " splashing in the froth of his 
 own rhetoric" — a descriptive image which is worth a whole 
 chapter of rhetorical admonition. 
 
 This combination of wit and reasoning makes also much 
 of the virtue of that instruction which, in Fables, charms 
 the mind of childhood, and is not cast aside by mature 
 reason. It enters, too, into a people's instruction by pro- 
 verbs, which have been happily described as " the wisdom 
 of many and the wit of one." 
 
 One of the most remarkable uses of wit and humour, is 
 that which combines them with tragedy, and makes them 
 subservient to tragic effect. These combinations seem to 
 be denied to modern art by the refinement or daintiness 
 of later times; and by such denial, modern art loses much 
 of the power which resulted from that natural blending 
 of the humorous and the serious, each equally earnest. 
 
 * Second Letter to Archdeacon Singleton, AVorks, vol. iii. p. 193, 191. 
 
 31*
 
 366 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 which may be seen in the early minstrelsy, and in the 
 highest form of genius and art in Sbakspeare's deepest 
 tragedies. The most careless reader must have noticed 
 how profoundly the tragic pathos of King Lear is deepened 
 by the wild wit and pathetic humour of that faithful 
 and full-hearted follower — the fool. E-emembcr how, in 
 Hamlet, one of .the most solemn scenes is preceded by 
 the quaint professional witticisms of the gravedigger, 
 so different and yet not discordant. In Macbeth the brief 
 and awful interval between the murder of Duncan, and 
 the disclosure of it, is filled with that rudely-comic passage 
 of the drunken, half-sobered porter, to whose gross jocu- 
 larity you pass from the high-wrought frenzy of Macbeth, 
 reeking with his victim's blood, and from the yet more 
 fearful atrocity of his wife, to return quickly to the tragic 
 horror on the discovery of the murder; and in that transi- 
 tion, through a species of the comic, the harmony is pre- 
 served by the quaint allusions to hell and the vain equivo- 
 cations to heaven. 
 
 Another kindred combination, which also shows a unity 
 connecting the serious and the sportive, proving what 
 Socrates is said to have asserted, that there is a common 
 ground for tragedy and comedy, is in that contrast between 
 the thought or feeling and its expression, which is termed 
 '' irony." It is the humorous wresting of language from 
 its literal use for the expression of feeling, either happy 
 or painful, but too vehement to be contented with that 
 literal use. The pensive perplexity of a gentle and phi- 
 losophic soul like Hamlet, bewildered and self-secluded in 
 4 wicked world, finds relief in almost every form of bitter 
 or tianquil humour for meditations and for emotions that 
 overmastered him. When the thoughtful spirit of Mac-
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 367 
 
 beth is distorted by guilt, and as the agony of that guilt 
 grows. more and more intense, the pent-up misery either 
 flows forth in a subdued irony, or breaks out in that which 
 is fierce and frenzied. In one very familiar passage, the 
 beauty of the expression makes many a reader forget that 
 it is pure and essential irony : when Macbeth puts to the 
 Doctor the simple and literal inquiry after Lady Mabeth : 
 
 " How does your patient, doctor ? 
 
 Doctor. Not so sick, my lord, 
 As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, 
 That keep her from her rest." 
 
 Then comes the deep feeling, with its ironical questions, 
 sounding more like soliloquy : 
 
 " Cure her of that : 
 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ? 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow? 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain ? 
 And, with some SAveet, oblivious antidote, 
 Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous grief m 
 Which weighs upon the heart?" 
 
 The literal answer — 
 
 " Therein the patient 
 Must minister to himself" — 
 
 brings him back to reality with the exclamation, 
 
 " Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it !" 
 
 But, even in the irritable putting on of his armour, the 
 bitter relief of^an ironical humour comes again in ano- 
 mer form : 
 
 "What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug 
 Would scour these English hence ?" 
 
 If the truthfulness of such use of irony be doubted, let
 
 868 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 it be remembered bow abundantly and remarkably it per- 
 vades Holy Writ. I do not refer merely to the bitter, 
 ironical taunts wbicb the prophet hurled at the priests of 
 Baal, but to the manifold use of it in the expression of 
 thoughts and emotions affecting the spiritual intercourse 
 of man and his Maker. Remember how something of 
 the kind breaks out in the very midst of St. Paul's most 
 solemn argument. Again, it is not contrary to nature — 
 it is not a levity unworthy of man's nature — that these 
 playful faculties make their appearance in the most awful 
 realities of life. The gentle spirit of Anne Bolcyn was 
 pleasant with the headsman on the scaffold; and so 
 
 " More's gay genius played 
 With the inoffensive sword of native wit, 
 Than the bare axe more luminous' and keen."* 
 
 The power of wit to combine itself harmoniously and 
 vigorously with sagacity and seriousness, is eminently ex- 
 emplified in all the works of that remarkable author of 
 the seventeenth century, the church historian, Thomas 
 Fuller, whose wit, in the largeness of its circuit, the va- 
 riety of its expression, its exuberance, and its admirable 
 sanity, stands second only to that of Sbakspeare. It ha3 
 the indispensable merit of perfect naturalness, and the 
 excellence of being a growth from a soil of sound wisdom. 
 There are no large works in our language so thoroughly 
 ingrained with wit and humour as Puller's " Worthies of 
 England," his Church History of Britain no less so, and 
 the essays entitled " The Holy and Profane State" — 
 essays which, in wit, and wisdom, and just feeling, are 
 not unlike the Elia Essays of Charles Lamb. The genius 
 
 * Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Sonnet 22.
 
 LTERATDRE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 of Fuller is, perhaps, unequalled in harmonizing a play 
 'upon words, quiet jocularity, kindly irony, with thought- 
 fulness and genuine earnestness, and in making the tran- 
 sition from quaintness to sublimity. 
 
 The great satire of the eighteenth century, " Gulliver's 
 Travels," exemplifies another form of wit, too often repul- 
 sive, not only by indecent coarseness, but by that misan- 
 thropy which darkens the writings of Swift. His morbid 
 contemplation of the vices and follies of his fellow-beings 
 betrays the disease which, probably, clung to his whole 
 life, distorting and darkening it with the dread that in- 
 sanity had a lurking-place in his brain — that haunting 
 consciousness, which once was expressed when walking 
 with the author of the Night Thoughts, (like himself a 
 dealer in distempered fancies and feelings,) Swift, after 
 gazing earnestly at a noble elm which was, in its upper- 
 most branches, withered and decayed, pointing to it, said 
 to Dr. Young, " I shall be like that tree — I shall die at 
 the top."* Arbuthnot, the friend of Swift and Pope, 
 is believed to have had more learning and as much wit 
 as either of them, and with it all a sweetness of temper 
 and purity of character which made Swift exclaim, "Oh, 
 if the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would 
 burn my Travels !" It is a sad pity that his genius was 
 not more open to influences of such a character, or of the 
 equally admirable and amiable nature of his other friend. 
 Bishop Berkeley. 
 
 The best and most agreeable specimen of English humour 
 (it is humour in contrast to wit) which belongs to that 
 period, is Steele's invention, and Addison's use, of the 
 
 * Scott's Life of Swift, p. 291. Am. ed.
 
 370 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 character of Sir Roger de Coverley. This will be felt by 
 any one who will select the papers in the Spectator which 
 are devoted to him, and read them continuously, following 
 the good knight to his mansion, to the assizes, to the 
 parish church, where, as soon as he wakes out of a nap 
 during the sermon, he sends his footman to wake up any 
 of the congregation who chance to be asleep ; then onward 
 to his death-be'd, after having bequeathed (his will chanced 
 to be written on a very cold day) a stout frieze coat to the 
 men, and a comfortable hood to the women, in the parish. 
 The same species of pure, genial, wise, and healthful hu- 
 mour has been sustained in the incomparable Vicar of 
 Wakefield, and in the writings of our countryman, Wash- 
 ington Irving, who is gifted with many of the best quali- 
 ties of Goldsmith's genius. Among the humorous wri- 
 ters belonging to the literature of our own day, (there are 
 several whom I will not stop to name,) Charles Lamb repre- 
 sented a form of humour of a very high order, and peculiar 
 to himself — a humour which has assumed a deeper interest 
 and commands a higher admiration, now that we know the 
 terrible memories and sorrows of his days — 
 
 " The troubles strange, 
 Many and strange, that hung about his life,"* 
 
 and his heroic self-devotion to his afflicted sister. 
 
 Our English literature of wit and humour gives abun- 
 dant proof that these faculties may be cither a precious or 
 a perilous possession; precious, as ministering to thought- 
 ful cheerfulness, and serving the cause of truth and gen- 
 tleness; perilous, as coupled with intellectual pride and 
 
 * Wordsworth's Linos, written after the death of Charles Lamb. 
 p. 467, Am. ed.
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 371 
 
 malevolent passions. I have spoken of the repulsive cha- 
 racter of the wit of Dean Swift — still, if unattractive, there 
 was something in his stern hatred of vice and folly, which 
 commands respect; but when you turn to such as Lord 
 Byron's, (as in Don Juan,) there is disease without a par- 
 ticle of the dignity of disease ; there is lawless force of 
 mind, owning no restraint of reverence for aught human 
 or divine — sustained by no self-respect, by no confidence 
 in virtue — womanly, even less than manly. Thus wit 
 sinks down into barren scoffing. It is the lowest moral 
 condition when crime clothes itself with jest. Salutary as 
 the culture of the faculties of wit and humour may be, 
 when justly proportioned and controlled, the indulgence 
 of them as a habit is as injurious to him who so indulges 
 it, as it is wearisome to all who encounter it. The habit 
 of always looking at things on the laughable side is sure 
 to lower the tone of thought and feeling, and at length 
 can only content its restless craving by attributing the ridi- 
 culous to things which ought to be inviolate by such as- 
 sociation. When the habitual joker is sometimes seized 
 with a fit of seriousness, the change is such an incongruity, 
 as to provoke the retaliation of unseasonable jocularity, 
 and no one is as sensitive to ridicule as he who habitually 
 handles it. 
 
 Another abuse which may be observed in intercourse 
 with the world, is when jocularity is employed as subter- 
 fuge, to escape from the demands of earnestness and can- 
 dour, and the jest is made a method of non-committal. 
 It is said that Sir Robert Walpole used to divert his guests 
 away from political conversation by a strain of ribald jest- 
 ing; and a more modern prime minister, the late Lord 
 Melbourne, is described as one whose first impulse, in ordi-
 
 372 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 nary conversation, was always to treat things lightly. This 
 was an adroitness, which a higher order of statesmanship 
 does not concern itself to use. 
 
 As a habit, wit will prove fatal to that better and wiser 
 cheerfulness which is attendant on imaginative culture — 
 the genuine poetic habit of beholding or discovering the 
 beauty of truth, of moral worth, and whatever of beauty, 
 spiritual or material, is given to man to enjoy. It is said 
 that Hogarth lamented his talent for caricature, as the 
 long practice of it had impaired his capacity for the enjoy- 
 ment of beauty : while the best critic on his works ap- 
 plauded him as an artist "in whom the satirist never ex- 
 tinguished that love of beauty which belonged to him as 
 a poet;" and who so used his genius as to "prevent the 
 instructive merriment at the whims of nature, or the foi- 
 bles or humours, of our fellow-men from degenerating into 
 the heart-poison of contempt or hatred." 
 
 It is a narrowness of mind which causes the exclusion 
 of either the poetic sense or of wit; it is partial moral 
 culture which refuses the good that is to be gained from 
 either. The larger mind and the well-disciplined heart 
 find room for both powers to dwell together in harmony. 
 Of such harmony let me give a single example in proof — 
 a transition from a passage of well-conceived and well- 
 expressed satire to one no less distinguished hy a. deep 
 poetic sense of beauty; or rather not so much a transition 
 us a haiuiouious combination. I quote two passages which 
 occur in close connection in the work of a living author — 
 Mr. Kuskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture. 
 
 " Another of the strange tendencies of the present day 
 is to the decoration of the railroad station. Now if 
 there be any place in the world in which people are de-
 
 LITERATURE OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 37a 
 
 prived of that portion of temper and discretion which are 
 necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is there. It 
 is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that 
 the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may 
 as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole- 
 system of railroad travelling is addressed to people who, 
 being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being, misera- 
 ble. No one would travel in that manner who could help it, 
 who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, 
 instead of through tunnels and between banks ; at least 
 those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that 
 we need consult it at the station. The railroad is, in all 
 its relations, a matter of earnest business, to be got through 
 as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveller 
 into a living parcel. For the time, he has parted with the 
 nobler characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a 
 planetary power of locomotion. Do not ask him to ad- 
 mire any thing. You might as well ask the wind. Carry 
 him safely, dismiss him soon : he will thank you for no- 
 thing else. All attempts to please him in any other way 
 are mere mockery, and insults to the things by which you 
 endeavour to do so. There never was more flagrant nor 
 impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in 
 any thing concerned with railroads or near them. Keep 
 them out of the way, take them through the ugliest coun- 
 try you can find, confess them the miserable things they 
 are, and spend nothing upon them but for safety and 
 speed."* 
 
 Now turning from satire on ornament misplaced to the 
 sense of beauty well-placed : 
 
 * Seven Lamps of Architecture p. 106. The Lamp of Beauty. 
 Y 32
 
 374 LECTURE ELEVENTH. 
 
 " The question of greatest external or internal decora- 
 tion depends entirely on the condition of probable repose. 
 It was a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so 
 rich in external ornament, for there is no couch of rest 
 like the gondola. So, again, there is no subject of street 
 ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a 
 fountain of use; for it is just there that perhaps the hap- 
 piest pause takes place in the labour of the day, when the 
 pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the 
 bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the fore 
 head, and the uprightness of the form declined against 
 the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light 
 laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard 
 shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so 
 sweet as that — so full of the depth of ancient days, so 
 softened with the calm of pastoral solitude 2"
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 Ut literature of grtki ®ri%* 
 
 Characteristics of a true letter — Historical and familiar letters — Lord 
 Bacon — Dr. Arnold's remarks — Despatches of Marlborough — Nel- 
 son — Franklin — John Adams — -Reception by George III. — Wash- 
 ington's correspondence — Bishop White's anecdote of Washington 
 — American diplomatic correspondence — Lord Chatham's Letters — 
 Duke of Wellington's — Archdeacon Hare's remarks on — General 
 Taylor's official letters — Familiar letters — Cowley — Impropriety of 
 publishing private correspondence — Arbuthnot and Johnson's re- 
 marks on — Burns's Letters — Tennyson — Howell's Letters— The 
 Paston Letters — Lady Russell's — Pope's — Hartley Coleridge's remark 
 — Chesterfield — Horace Walpole — Swift and Gray's — Cowper's — 
 Scott's — Byron's — Southey's, and Lamb's Letters of Dedication — 
 Lamb's to his sister. 
 
 In devoting a lecture to what I have entitled " The 
 Literature of Letter-Writing," I had less hope of being 
 able to make the treatment of such a subject interesting 
 than of pointing out some of the uses of this department, 
 and suggesting the agreeable and instructive reading 
 which is to be found in collections of letters. It is a de- 
 partment which may be viewed in several aspects, either 
 as tributary to history, political or literary, or as a form 
 
 * March 20, 1851. Had I no other reason for publishing this, the 
 last of this series of lectures, I could find one in the familiarity it 
 shows with American history and its original materials. Thorougnly 
 imbued as was the writer with the spirit and sentiment of English 
 literature, he was as w r ell-informed in all that related to his own coun- 
 try, its men, and its republican institutions. W. B. R. 
 
 375
 
 37G LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 of biography — thus helping us to a knowledge of the 
 movements of mankind, or of individual character, by its 
 written disclosures. Our English literature is enriched 
 with collections of remarkable and very various interest: 
 so varied as to furnish an abundant adaptation to different 
 tastes. In treating this subject, my aim will be to endea- 
 vour not to wander off into either history or biography, 
 but; as far as possible, to confine my attention to the 
 epistolary literature in itself, making some comments 
 on the principal collections, and incidentally considering 
 the character of a true letter. It happens not un fre- 
 quently that the form of the letter is assumed for the sake 
 of convenience, when neither the writer nor the hearer is 
 at all deluded in the belief that the production is what ij 
 \isually understood by the term " a letter," or epistle. 
 Essays, disquisitions, satires, wear the epistolary name 
 and garb, fulfilling a not unreasonable fancy of the writer 
 that such a medium interposes less of formality between 
 him and his readers, and, indeed, brings them into closer 
 and more life-like relations — the letter being somehow 
 more of a reality between the writer and the recipient, 
 than a book is between the author and the reader. The 
 " Drapier's Letters" of Swift, Bolingbroke's Letter to 
 Wyndham, the " Letters of Junius," Burke's " Re- 
 flections on the French Revolution," and other similar 
 productions, of which there are many with an epistolary 
 designation, do not belong to the proper class of " Letters ;" 
 to which class I propose to confine my attention — at the 
 outset simply suggesting to your minds that it is a subject 
 which does not admit of convenient illustration in a 
 Lecture. 
 
 I have arranged this subject under the two general di-
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 377 
 
 visions "historical letters" and "familiar letters" — au 
 arrangement which may he found convenient in the gene- 
 ral consideration of it, but which makes no pretension to 
 any thing of logical precision. Unfter the first head, I 
 do not propose to limit the class to public or official cor- 
 respondence, but rather to comprehend such letters, whe- 
 ther public or private, which subserve a knowledge of 
 history, and are thus valuable in the study of it : while 
 the second class, being under a more exact principle of 
 classification, is intended to include those private letters, 
 the nature of which is readily understood by the title 
 " Familiar Letters;" and the true aim and character of 
 which I will endeavour to explain, when I come to that 
 division of my subject. 
 
 Lord Bacon, in his treatise on the Advancement of 
 Learning — that great legacy, so rich in counsel for the 
 guidance of inquiry in various departments of human 
 knowledge, that treasury of sagacious sentences of ad- 
 v i ce — tag specially referred to letters among what he calls 
 the " Appendices" to history. "Letters," he says, "are 
 according to all the variety of occasions, advertisements, 
 advices, directions, propositions, petitions, commendatory, 
 expostulatory, satisfactory; of compliment, of pleasure, 
 of discourse, and all other passages of action. And such 
 as are written from wise men are, of all the words of man, 
 in my judgment, the best; for they are more natural 
 than orations and public speeches, and more advised 
 than conferences or private ones. So, again, letters of 
 affairs from such as manage them, or are privy to them, 
 are, of all others, the best instructions for history, and, to 
 a diligent reader, the best histories in themselves." 
 Another wise counsellor, in a later day, the lat^ Di 
 
 32*
 
 378 liJiCTUUE TWELFTH. 
 
 Arnold, speaking words of special advice to the student 
 of history, after noticing that " alchemy which can change 
 apparently dull (historical) materials into bright gold," 
 adds, " some of the great men of our age have, in all 
 probability, left some memorials of their minds behind 
 them — speeches, it may be, or letters, or a journal ; or, 
 possibly, works of a deeper character, in which they have 
 bandied, expressly and deliberately, some of the ques- 
 tions which most interested their generation. Now, if 
 our former researches have enabled us to people our view 
 of the past with many images of events, institutions, 
 usages, titles, etc., to make up with some completeness 
 what may be called the still life of the picture, we shall 
 next be anxious to people it also with the images of its 
 great individual men, to change it, as it were, from a 
 landscape or a view of buildings, to what may truly be 
 called an historical picture. Whoever has made himself 
 famous by his actions, or even by his rank or position in 
 society, so that his name is at once familiar to our ears, 
 such a man's writings have an interest for us even before 
 we begin to read them ; the instant that he gets up, as it 
 were, to address us, we are hushed into the deepest atten- 
 tion. These works give us an insight not only into the 
 spirit of an age, as exemplified in the minds of its greatest 
 men, but they multiply, in some sort, the number of those 
 witli whom we are personally and individually in sym- 
 pathy ; they enable us to recognise, amid the dimness of 
 remote and uncongenial ages, the features of friends and 
 of brethren." 
 
 Of the many indications of the great activity and zeal 
 of historical research and study, which distinguishes the 
 present times, none is more remarkable than the care
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 379 
 
 which has been bestowed in collecting and publishing the 
 letters, official and private, of men eminent in their day 
 and in the thoughts of posterity — men illustrious in civil 
 or military life. Within a short period this has grown to 
 be an extensive and most valuable department of historical 
 literature ; and the light that has issued from it has not 
 i-mly dispelled frequently much of traditional, oft-re- 
 peated error, but given to the historian, both student and 
 writer, larger privileges of power to gain the truth, and 
 new duties in striving for it. It is within a few years 
 past that English history has been illustrated by the pub- 
 lication of Cromwell's letters, of the letters of the Duke 
 of Marlborough, the Stuart papers, the letters to and 
 from the leader of that luckless family during all their 
 years o* hope and despair for the recovery of the throne 
 of England, the correspondence of Lord Chatham, the 
 despatches of Nelson, and all the despatches and general 
 orders of the Duke of Wellington, beginning at a camp 
 in India and closing after the battle of Waterloo. In 
 American history, the contributions of epistolary materials 
 have been no less valuable ; for we have the whole series 
 of the letters of Washington, extending through his ca- 
 reer of military and civil services, and illustrating both 
 his public and private life ; the letters of Dr. Franklin, 
 comprehending a scientific, as well as political, career, 
 and the composite collection of letters from various pens, 
 entitled "The Diplomatic Correspondence of the Kevo- 
 lution and of the period of the Confederation." Many 
 other collections of letters have appeared both in England 
 and the United States ; but the most important which I 
 have mentioned amply exemplify the extent to which his- 
 tory has of late received contributions of this kind
 
 380 " LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 Their general historical value I need not stop to speak of; 
 but let me remark that, as many minds are attracted by 
 biography, and find in the deeds and words of their fel- 
 low-men individually an interest and sympathy more vivid 
 than that which general history inspires, a collection of 
 letters may have such completeness — may be so identified, 
 both as to time and the participation of the writer in 
 public events — that history may be read in the letters, and 
 thus achieved through the medium of biography. It is 
 a method of reading which will be found very agreeable, 
 as well as instructive, and has a peculiar advantage, too, 
 in giving the reader that discipline of mind which may 
 be gained by the effort, to which he is attracted con- 
 sciously, or unawares, of giving something of historical 
 consistency to the informal and familiar narrative of 
 events found in a series of letters; and, further, the moral 
 discipline of freer opinion, instead of that more submis- 
 sive process of always having his mind made up for him 
 by that kind of historical dictation of which Charles 
 Lamb complained, when he said, " The modern historian 
 flings at once the dead weight of his own judgment into 
 the scale, and settles the matter," when a wider and more 
 independent sense of truth would come to a less arbitrary 
 conclusion. 
 
 To all readers of history, whether the taste be for pure 
 history or for biography, a letter will often give a reality 
 to an historical occurrence, the truth of which is other- 
 wise much less life-like. Allow me to give an illustration 
 of this in a well-known incident in our own history. I 
 refer to what may be considered the very last fact in the 
 history of the war of American Independence, the shaking 
 of hands as it were, when the fighting was done, the re-
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 3SI 
 
 oeption by George the Third of the first American ambas- 
 sador, which consummated the treaty of peace, and the 
 recognition by Great Britain of the United States among 
 the nations of the earth. The pertinacity with which the* 
 British monarch had protracted the war, while it showed 
 the unwise statesmanship of the times, illustrated two 
 traits in the king's character — his obstinacy and his .ho- 
 nesty. He probably thought he had no more right to con- 
 sent to the partition of the British Empire than to pawn 
 or part with the crown jewels; and thus an unwise and 
 unnatural war was lengthened out, even after the ques- 
 tion of independence was practically settled. The obstinacy 
 of the sovereign had, however, an element of uprightness 
 in it, which may be spoken of with respect, especially 
 when one reflects on what is not so generally known, that 
 anxiety and sleeplessness, during the American war, are 
 believed, by those who had opportunities of judging, to 
 have laid the foundation of that mental malady with 
 which George the Third was afflicted during many of the 
 latter years of his life. The first American minister to 
 his court was, let it be remembered, John Adams, one 
 whose name could not but have been familiar to the king 
 as one of the earliest and most strenuous of the leaders of 
 colonial resistance. The interview on his reception was 
 one full of impressive recollections for both, accompanied 
 with more than ordinary emotion, and it comes within 
 the scope of general history to record that it was conducted 
 in a manner honourable to each. It is, however, Mr. 
 Adams's letter to Mr. Jay that alone produces an adequate 
 conception of the interview. Mr. Adams mentions, that 
 his first thought and intention was to deliver his creden- 
 tials silently and retire, but being advised by several of
 
 382 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 the other foreign ministers to make a speech, he made a 
 short address to the king, concluding with the expression 
 of the hope of " being instrumental in restoring an entire 
 •esteem, confidence, and affection, or, in better words, the 
 old good-nature and the old good-humour, between peo- 
 ple who, though separated by an ocean, and under differ- 
 ent governments, have the same language, a similar 
 religion, and kindred blood." 
 
 This was well said — worthy of the representative of the 
 young nation — manly thoughts and feelings, well meant 
 and well worded. Mr. Adams, in his letter, goes on to 
 say : " The King listened to every word I said with dignity, 
 but with an apparent emotion. Whether it was the nature 
 of the interview, or whether it was my visible agitation, for 
 I felt more than I did or could express, that touched him, I 
 cannot say; but he was much affected, and answered me 
 with more tremor than I had spoken with, and said — 
 
 "' Sir, the circumstances of this audience are so extra- 
 ordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely 
 proper, and the feelings you have discovered so justly 
 adapted to the occasion, that I must say that I not only 
 receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly dispo- 
 sitions of the United States, but that I am very glad the 
 choice has fallen upon you to be their minister. I wish 
 you, sir, to believe, and that it may be understood in 
 America, that I have done nothing in the late coutest 
 but what I thought myself indispensably bound to do by 
 the duty which I owed to my people. I will be very frank 
 with you. I was the last to consent to the separation; 
 but the separation having been made, and having become 
 inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would 
 In: the first to meet the friendship of the United Stales as
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 383 
 
 an independent power.' "... Mr. Adams adds, " He 
 (the king) was much affected, and I was not less so;" and 
 certainly the occasion, as thus pictured in a letter was one 
 fitted to awaken no small emotion, a conflict of many 
 emotions, for how at that moment, must the memories of 
 twenty years of civil strife, with all its varying fortunes 
 and hopes, have risen up to the minds of those two men as 
 they were thus confronted ! If there had been obstinacy 
 and wrong in the royal policy which had assented to the 
 first restrictive measure on American trade in 1764, to 
 the Stamp Act, to the Boston Port Bill, to the conduct 
 of the war, at once cruel and imbecile, to that greatest and 
 most tyrannic error, fatal of itself to reconciliation, the 
 hiring of the Hessians — there was on the other hand 
 good feeling and a manly frankness in the expression, at 
 the close of twenty years from the beginning of the colo- 
 nial diffiulties, of a solicitude that it might be understood 
 in America that in all, he had done nothing but what he 
 thought himself in duty bound to do. 
 
 Not the least interesting portion of such a letter is that 
 which describes what passed after the formalities of the 
 interview were over. " The King," writes Mr. Adams, 
 u then asked me whether I came last from France, and 
 upon my answering in the affirmative, he put on an air 
 of familiarity, and smiling, or rather laughing, said, There 
 is an opinion among some people that you are not the 
 most attached of all your countrymen to the manners of 
 France. I was surprised at this, because I thought it 
 an indiscretion and a departure from dignity. I was a 
 little embarrassed, but determined not to deny the truth, 
 on the one hand, nor leave him to infer from it any 
 attachment to England, on the other. I threw off at»
 
 384 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 much of gravity as I could, and assumed an air of gaycty 
 and a tone of decision as far as was decent, and said, That 
 opinion, sir, was not mistaken. I must avow to your 
 majesty I have no attachment but to my own country. 
 The king replied, as quick as lightning, An honest (man) 
 will never have any other." 
 
 I have quoted these passages to show how a letter may 
 place a familiar piece of history in a more vivid light of. 
 truth and reality than mere historic narration gives to it ; 
 illustrating Horace Walpole's remark that " nothing gives 
 so just an idea of an age as genuine letters; nay, history 
 waits for its last seal from them." 
 
 It is in another letter from John Adams to John Jay 
 that there occurs a character of George the Third, as just, 
 probably, as has been written. "The King, I really 
 think," says Mr. Adams, "is the most accomplished cour- 
 tier in his dominions ; with all the affability of Charles 
 the Second, he has all the domestic virtues and regularity 
 of conduct of Charles the First. He is the greatest talker 
 in the world, and a tenacious memory stored with resources 
 of small talk, concerning all the little things of life, which 
 are inexhaustible. But so much of his time is and has 
 been consumed in this, that he is, in all the great affairs 
 of society and government, as weak, as far as I can judge, 
 as we ever understood him to be in America. He is also 
 as obstinate. The unbounded popularity acquired by his 
 temperance and facetiousness, added to the splendour of 
 his dignity, gives him such a continual feast of flattery, 
 that he thinks all he does is right, and he pursues his 
 own ideas with a firmness which would become the best 
 system of action. He has a pleasure in his own will and 
 way, without which he would be miserable, which aeema
 
 1 
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 385 
 
 (o be the true principle upon which he has always chosen 
 and rejected ministers."* 
 
 It is a happy thing for the student of history, and 
 indeed for the American citizen, that the letters of 
 Washington have been preserved in remarkable com- 
 pleteness — a result in no small degree owing to those 
 exact habits of business which a controlling sense of duty 
 carried through his whole career. The manifold lessons 
 which those letters inculcate are as legible as that admi- 
 rable handwriting, which, without pretensions to elegance, 
 or that delicacy which often belongs to the pen of men of 
 letters, (such as Gray's, and Cowper's, and Southey's,) is 
 eminently characteristic in its uniformity, regularity, and 
 firmness. The historical value of the letters may readily be 
 conceived, when it is remembered that they extend over 
 the whole era of early American nationality, connecting 
 it by actual presence and participation. I speak of that 
 era in an extended completeness, beginning with the old 
 French war, which is properly to be regarded as part of 
 the preparation for the War of Independence, continued 
 onward through the Revolution, its immediate sequel, the 
 feeble period of the Confederation, and the triumphant 
 completion of the political change in the establishment 
 
 * The recently-published diary of Mr. Adams contains, under date 
 of 30th March, 1786, the following very characteristic entry : 
 
 "Wont at nine o'clock to the French ambassador's ball, where were 
 two or three hundred people, chiefly ladies. Here I met the Marquis 
 of Lansdowne and the Earl of Harcourt. These two noblemen ventured 
 to enter into conversation with me; so did Sir George Young. But 
 there is an awkward timidity in general. This people cannot look 
 mo in the face ; there is conscious guilt and shame in their counte- 
 nances when they look at me. They feel they have bohaved ill, ano 
 that I am sensible of it." Works of John Adams, vol. iii. p. 393. 
 
 33
 
 S8C LECTURE TWELFTn 
 
 of the Constitution, and "Washington's administration ; 
 nay, heyond that, to the tranquil evening of that life so 
 matchless in its harmony, in its freedom from contradic- 
 tions, the quiet glory of its close in the rural seclusion 
 of Mount Vernon. Now the history of that whole era 
 may be read as it is reflected in the clear mirror of that 
 mind, undimmed by any unworthy passion, and capacious 
 enough to hold within it the image of his country's annals 
 for near half a century. Nowhere can so well be seen 
 first the dutiful and not degrading loyalty of a colonial 
 subject, giving to his king and country a soldier's ser- 
 vice ; the no less dutiful, but far more difficult, transition 
 from loyal obedience to resistance ; the progress from 
 peaceful to armed resistance; the magnanimous self-con- 
 trol and heroism alike in the prosperity and adversity 
 of military command ; the perpetual sense of subordination 
 to law; and the willing, happy laying down of power 
 when the purposes of that power were achieved in the 
 public good. It needs no comment to show how the 
 Washington letters illustrate all the eventful years of his 
 life, but there are other portions of it less attractive and 
 less known, on which the letters alone throw light. In a 
 course of historical lectures I had occasion lately to treat 
 of that uneventful, that uninviting but instructive period 
 between the peace of 1783 and the adoption of the present 
 Constitution — those latter years of the Confederation, when 
 the nation seemed to be sinking from the height of its 
 new independence down into anarchy and the world's 
 contempt; and nothing seemed to my mind to express 
 with so deep and sad an eloquence the gloom which was 
 gathering over the land, as the simple words of disappoint- 
 ment and depression which . Washington was sending
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 387 
 
 from Mount Vernon to his friends and correspondents. 
 The feeling approaching to despair, which he uttered in 
 confidence in the darkest days of the war, before the bat- 
 tle of Trenton, had something far more placid and less 
 painful than the bitterness of disappointment and distrust 
 occasioned by wha>t seemed so like popular degeneracy in 
 a season of safety. 
 
 The letters of Washington serve another purpose, in 
 completing a biographical impression which often is in- 
 complete — made so by the very awe which his character 
 inspires. The most usual idea of that character is perhaps 
 that which presents it in a kind of marmoreal purity and 
 majestic repose; a truthful idealizing of those high and 
 heroic attributes of his nature which lift him, if not above, 
 into a lofty region of humanity ; such a conception as a 
 great American sculptor has embodied in marble, and 
 which Southey had in his thoughts, when, in one of his 
 lyrics, he spake of America as the land 
 
 "Where Washington hath left 
 His awful memory, 
 A light for after times."* 
 
 It is in no contradiction to, but in perfect harmony with, 
 this aspect of his character, that other phases of it are 
 visible in his letters. The same sense of duty and lofty 
 self-respect, which at times produced a passionless and im- 
 perturbable dignity, admit at other times the utterance of 
 a vehement and righteous indignation, or a placid and 
 half-humorous tenderness for some 9-miabio frailty of a 
 fellow-being. This, too, is made manifest, that in all bin 
 lame and varied intercourse with men, there was no reir'-l 
 
 * Southey's Work*, rel. in. p ?£>.
 
 S88 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 sive or oppressive dignity, but a genial and modest com- 
 munion with them, and even an affectionate fellowship 
 with those who were closely associated with him in the 
 public service or in private life. In short, the letters show, 
 what history cannot do, the gentle side of the great man's 
 nature, which endeared him to all wh<5 came within the 
 influence of it; there is proof of this in a little incident 
 which might easily have perished out of the memories of 
 men, if it had not been witnessed by one upon whose 
 genuine delicacy of feeling it was not lost, and who wisely 
 judged it worthy of record. The incident is so simple, 
 and Bishop White's little narrative of it is given with 
 such graceful simplicity, that I almost fear the feeling 
 cannot be communicated by repetition. It was in a letter 
 to the biographer of Washington that Bishop White com- 
 municated what may be entitled an 
 
 ANECDOTE CONCERNING PRESIDENT WASHINGTON. 
 
 " On the day before his leaving the presidential chair, 
 a large company dined with him. Among them were the 
 foreign ministers and their ladies, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, 
 Mr. Jefferson, with other conspicuous persons of both 
 sexes. During the dinner much hilarity prevailed; but 
 on the removal of the cloth, it was put an end to by the 
 President — certainly without design. Having filled his 
 glass, he addressed the company, with a smile on his coun- 
 tenance, as nearly as can be recollected, in the following 
 terms : ' Ladies and gentleman, this is the last time I shall 
 drink your health as a public man. I do it with sincerity, 
 and wishing you all possible' happiness.' There was 
 an end to all pleasantry. He who gives this relation
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 
 
 accidentally directed his eye to the lady of the British 
 minister, (Mrs. Listen,) and tears were running down 
 her cheeks."* 
 
 I have referred to this as proof of that blending of 
 ths gentle with more impressive traits of character, 
 which may be seen in Letters and not on the pages 
 of history. 
 
 The letters of Dr. Franklin were in like manner re- 
 markable for their extended historical interest — more ex- 
 tended indeed than Washington's, both in time and place, 
 for the correspondence, continuing nearly as late, began 
 much earlier, and carries the reader, therefore, further 
 back into colonial society ; it was enlarged, too, by a long 
 and renewed European residence, first in England, with 
 intercourse with Lord Chatham and other British states- 
 men friendly to the colonial cause, and to Franklin person- 
 ally , and afterwards in France, where the sagacious and 
 simply-attired republican was a fashionable novelty, ca- 
 ressed by the nobles and ladies of the court of Louis the 
 Sixteenth. The letters of Franklin have also an addi- 
 tional interest by his connection with that large commu- 
 nity, the society of men of science, not limited to the 
 soil of any country. It is a correspondence which has fur- 
 ther attraction, as showing that fine mastery which Frank- 
 lin — by the help of a plain but substantial education, by 
 
 * Dr. Wilson's Memoir of Bishop White, p. 191. Let me here re- 
 <}ord the expression of my. regret that the editor of a work published 
 lately in this country called " The Republican Court," (p. 305,) should 
 Lave preserved, on very uncertain, and, to my mind doubtful, tradition. 
 an anecdote of Washington's violence of language and temper in 
 most painful contrast with this anecdote W. B. R, 
 Z 33*
 
 .■!90 LECTURE TWELFTH 
 
 native sagacity, and continued culture — acquired in the use 
 of good English speech.* 
 
 The American diplomatic correspondence of that period 
 is interesting, too, as containing the impressions of sagacious 
 men trained in the simplicity of republican life, (for the 
 British colonies in America were virtually republics before 
 independence;) such men brought into contact with artifi- 
 cial European society, and with political systems fast tend- 
 ing towards the great revolutionary convulsions at the close 
 of the last century. It is not the least instructive portion 
 of American state-papers, which somewhat later describes 
 the progress of the French Revolution, as it appeared to 
 one with high-toned, aristocratic political views, like Mr. 
 Gouverneur Morris, or to one with democratic inclinations, 
 like Mr. Monroe, and whose letters have respectively re- 
 corded what they witnessed in revolutionary Paris. 
 
 It is an easy and natural transition from the statesmen 
 of the American Revolution to one who, in Parliament, 
 was the friend and advocate of America in the hour of 
 need — the Earl of Chatham ; he who, as William Pitt, holds 
 a title of the world's bestowing, " the great Commoner •" 
 who gave to England, in that corrupt and degenerate 
 eighteenth century, the example of a pure and lofty pa- 
 triotism, and whose statesmanship may be paralleled with 
 
 * I know of few more graceful specimens of style than odo from 
 Franklin's letter to Lord Kames on 17th August, 1762. " I am now 
 waiting hero only for a wind to waft mo to America, but cannot leave 
 this happy island and my friends in it without estremo regret, though 
 I am going to a country and a people that I love. * I am going from the 
 Old "World to the New ; and I fancy I feel like those who are leaving 
 this world for the next ; grief at the parting — fear of th<; passage— 
 aope of the future." Sparks's Franklin, vol. i. p. 269. W. B. R.
 
 LITERATURE OF' LETTER-WRITING. 391 
 
 Washington's in magnanimity. Unlike Washington, how- 
 ever, in simplicity of character, he seemed impelled, by the 
 fame he had gained as an orator, to carry a sort of oratori- 
 cal ambition into all his ways of life : in a letter of advice to 
 his nephew, he says, "Behaviour, though an external thing, 
 which seems rather to belong to the body than to the 
 mind, is certainly founded in considerable virtues."* It 
 has been said of him that his very infirmities were ma- 
 naged to the best advantage, and that in his hands even 
 his crutch could become a weapon of oratory ; but that 
 this striving for effect has helped to give to his private 
 letters a forced and unnatural appearance — the style of 
 homely texture, but here and there pieced with pompous 
 epithets and swelling phrases. "j" The praise of a Roman 
 
 * Chatham Correspondence, p. 77. 
 
 f Lord Mahon's History, vol. iii. p. 20. As this volume is going 
 through the press, I have received from London a little tract privately 
 printed by Lord Mahon, called "Lord Chatham at Chevening, 17G9." 
 Chevening is the seat of Earl Stanhope; and thither in 1769. in 
 the absence of the owners on the Continent, came the valetudinarian 
 statesman. This tract contains the letters of Mr. Brampton, the steward, 
 describing to his mistress the demeanour of the guests: "The two young 
 ladies in the yellow mohair room — Master William in the nursery." 
 "Lord Chatham playing at billiards with the young gentlemen and la- 
 dies, so long as to bring on the gout in his ankle," &a. &c. It would 
 seem from the tract that the poor steward had some trouble from the 
 Earl's changeableness, and that though but a guest, he acted (as on other 
 occasions he was apt to do) very much like an imperious master. 
 
 I confess a strong admiration for Lord Chatham, with all his infirm- 
 ities ; themselves palliated by what is now conceded, his occasional in- 
 tellectual prostration. Horace Walpole, whose letters are read by every- 
 body, and who had good hereditary cause to hate him, has damaged 
 his fame with studious posterity ; and yet where is there a nobler tri- 
 bute to an English statesman than in one sentence of AValpole, in a 
 letter to Mason, written when Chatham was in nis grave ? — " The Admi-
 
 3<J2 
 
 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 spirit, in the best sense of that term, has often been justly 
 claimed for Pitt; and when writing to his wife, he says to 
 Lady Chatham, u Be of cheer, nolle love!" it sounds 
 like Coriolauus speaking to the sister of Poplicola, or 
 Brutus to his wife, the daughter of Cato. If the Chatham 
 correspondence — both in the public and private letters — is 
 distinguished by this statcliness of style, it is no less so 
 by a loftiness of feeling and by the large thoughts of 
 genuine statesmanship. 
 
 If Lord Chatham's oratory transgressed into his letters, 
 the reverse may be observed in a living British statesman, 
 more illustrious as a soldier. That simple and somewhat 
 peremptory sententiousness which marks the Duke of 
 Wellington's writings, whether an important public de- 
 spatch or a private note, is also the tone of his parlia- 
 mentary speeches. Whether writing or speaking, he 
 uses words with a stern frugality, and sends them straight 
 to their mark. Trained by the discipline of camp to 
 know and feel the mischief of a waste of words, he has 
 gained, through long service as a soldier and a statesman, 
 a soldierly command of the language, producing a prac- 
 tical species of eloquence, wherein the most serviceable 
 words are marshalled in compact and effective order. It 
 is now near fifty years since, in his camp in India, he 
 said that, when business could be done verbally, corre- 
 spondence should be forbidden, to save the time of officers 
 in perusing, considering, and copying voluminous docu- 
 ments about nothing; and, as commander-in-chief, he 
 
 ral has relieved Gibraltar. The Spanish fleet ran into their burrows, 
 u* if Lord Chatham reus alive." Letters to Mason, vol. ii. p. 179. 
 
 W. B. R.
 
 LITERATURE OF -LETTER-WRITING. 393 
 
 said, " If officers abroad will have no mercy upon each 
 other in correspondence, ... I entreat them to have some 
 unon me ; to confine themselves to the strict facts of the 
 case, and to write no more than is necessary for the elu- 
 cidation of their meaning and intentions." On another 
 occasion, he quietly suggests how writing may be a dan- 
 gerous qualification : " A very trifling degree of educa- 
 cation and practice," he remarks, " will enable an officer 
 to string together a few words in a letter ; . . . but this 
 ability is a most dangerous qualification to the possessor, 
 unless he has sense to guide his pen, and discretion to 
 restrain him from the use of intemperate and improper 
 language."* 
 
 The voluminous publication of Wellington's letters in- 
 cludes only, it must be remembered, his military corre- 
 spondence; and whatever subjects it treats of are either 
 subjects of warfare, or are looked at from a military point 
 of view. Indeed, that soldierly vision had become, in a 
 great measure, habitual, and may be discerned in his civic 
 career. You have probably heard the story that is told 
 of him, that, when it was represented to him, as constable 
 of the Tower of London, some valuable national archives 
 were deposited very near the magazine, he replied that 
 they could not be of any damage to the saltpetre. 
 Thus there is a ready explanation of a letter to hi? 
 adjutant-general during the Peninsular War, the subject 
 of which has rather a quaint sound, when briefly ana ■ 
 lyzed in an index, with the title, " Singing of psalms in 
 the abstract innocent." Military discipline is, of course, 
 a general's first thought and duty, and accordingly he 
 
 * Selections from Gurwood, p. 429.
 
 SWi LECTUUE TWELFTH. 
 
 says, ' The meeting of soldiers in their cantonments to 
 sing psalms or hear a sermon read by one of their com- 
 rades, is, in the abstract, perfectly innocent v and it is a 
 better way of spending their time than many others to 
 which they are addicted; but it may become otherwise: 
 and yet, till the abuse has made some progress, the com- 
 manding officer would have no knowledge of it, nor could 
 he interfere. Even, at last, his interference must be 
 guided by discretion, otherwise he will do more harm 
 than good; and it can in no case be so effectual as that 
 of a respectable clergyman. I wish, therefore, you 
 would turn your mind a little more to this subject, and 
 arrange some plan by which the number of respectable 
 and efficient clergymen with the army may be in 
 creased."* 
 
 Like Washington's, the letters of Wellington display 
 the same solicitude for not only the discipline, but the 
 well-being of his soldiers — the same thoughtfuluess of 
 details, coupled with the genius for planning and execut- 
 ing large operations. There is a pervading good souse, 
 (to call it by the humblest name,) whether the subject of 
 the letter be the use of currycombs or hair-brushes for the 
 horses, the stern repression of plunder, the respectful 
 control of impracticable allies, or the report of a great 
 cattle. In the despatches to his. government, after his 
 victories, there is always a genuine soldierly modesty. 
 After the victory at Salamanca, he begins a letter to Earl 
 Bathurst : " I hope that you will be pleased with our 
 battle, of which the despatch contains as accurate an ac- 
 
 * Gurwood, vol. vii. p. 231. Tho odd entry in the Index is to bo 
 f^iuud in tho volume of Selections, published in L851. W. U. K.
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 395 
 
 .jount as I can give you. .There was no mistake; every 
 thing went on as it ought."* 
 
 One other characteristic of these letters has been thus 
 commented on by one of the authors of the " Guesses at 
 Truth :" " Among the heroic features in the character 
 of our great commander, none, except that sense of duty 
 which in him is ever foremost, and throws all things else 
 into the shade, is grander than the sorrow for his com- 
 panions who have fallen, which seems almost to overpower 
 every other feeling, even in the flush of victory. The 
 conqueror of Bonaparte at Waterloo wrote on the day 
 after, the 19th of June, to the Duke of Beaufort : ' The 
 losses we have sustained have quite broken me down ; 
 and I have no feeling for the advantages we have ac- 
 quired.' On the same day, too, he wrote to Lord Aber- 
 deen : < I cannot express to you the regret and sorrow 
 with which I look round me and contemplate the loss 
 I have sustained, particularly in your brother. The glory 
 
 * Letter of July 24, 1812. Selections, p. 614. There is a passage 
 in one of Lord Wellington's letters from India which I am tempted to 
 quote as (so it seems to me) the concentration of practical wisdom. 
 It embodies good counsel for others besides soldiers : "I wish to draw 
 your attention to the secresy of your proceedings. There is nothing 
 more certain than that, out of one hundred affairs, ninety-nine might 
 be posted up at the market-cross without injury to the public 
 service ; but the misfortune is that, when public business is the sub- 
 ject of general conversation, and is not kept secret as a matter of 
 course upon every occasion, it is very difficult to keep it a secret upon 
 that occasion when it is necessary. There is an awkwardness in a 
 secret which enables discerning men (of which description there are 
 always plenty in an army) invariably to find it out ; and it may be 
 depended upon, that, whenever the public service ought to be kept 
 secret, it always suffers when it is exposed to public view.'* Letter of 
 June 2S, 1804. Selections, p. 177. W. B. It.
 
 SU6 LECTUKE TWELFTH. 
 
 resulting from such actions, so dearly bought, is no con- 
 solation to me, and I cannot suggest it as any to you 
 aud his friends; but I hope that it may be expected that 
 this last one has been so decisive as that no doubt remains 
 that our exertions and our individual losses will be re- 
 warded by the early attainment of our just object. It is 
 then that the glory of the actions in which our friends 
 have fallen will be some consolation for their loss.' He 
 who could write thus had already gained a greater victory 
 than that of Waterloo, and the less naturally follows thp 
 greater."* 
 
 An example of the same fine spirit of humanity, of 
 true soldierly gentleness of feeling, will no doubt readily 
 recur to many minds in the letter of condolence on the death 
 of a gallant son addressed to an eminent American states- 
 man by the victor of Buena Vista. As a part of mili- 
 tary literature, the despatches of General Taylor may be 
 spoken of as having received the stamp of history, espe- 
 cially since death has set its seal upon the hero's charac- 
 ter. They stand, unquestionably, among the most re- 
 markable productions of the kind in the language, whe- 
 ther considered simply as specimens of genuine and 
 masterly use of English words, as military narratives, or 
 as illustrations of character. They made the soldier, 
 President of the United States. The battles might have 
 been won, the campaigns completed ; but it was the way 
 in which the story was told, and the character uncon- 
 
 * Hare's Guosses at Truth, Second series, p. 191. There is to 
 this letter a very characteristic ajj-1 business-like postscript abort 
 Colonel Gordon's horse. W. B. 11.
 
 LITERATURE Of LETTER-WRITING. 397 
 
 aciously disclosed through that story, that gained the con- 
 fidence and the heart of the nation.* 
 
 I proceed to the second division of my lecture, to be 
 more briefly disposed of, the subject of familiar letters — 
 that correspondence which, like conversation, is held with 
 the unreserved confidence of private life, and without a 
 purpose of publication. It is worthy of notice that this 
 did slowly and late take a place in English literature — a fact 
 which, if reflected upon, is, in some measure, illustrative 
 of the character of the race, and of some worthy traits 
 in that character. There is a passage in the brief me- 
 moir of the poet Cowley, written by his friend Dr. Sprat, 
 and addressed to another friend, which has a bearing on 
 this subject, and which has often been referred to with 
 complaint. " There was," he says, " one kind of prose 
 wherein Mr. Cowley was excellent ; and that is his letters 
 to his private friends. In those he always expressed the 
 native tenderness and innocent gayety of his mind. I 
 
 * At this time (February, 1855) the world is studying with intense 
 interest the despatches and other letters, public and private, from the 
 new scene of blood in the Crimea. The Anglo-French alliance, cue 
 might imagine, has had its influence on national style. For though 
 the despatches of Lord Raglan and his generals have all the precision 
 and business-like simplicity of his countrymen on such occasions, 
 florid French despatch-writing, with phrases about " the sun of Aus- 
 terlitz"and "conquering a peace," has nearly disappeared. It died with 
 Marshal St. Arnaudat Alma; for General Canrobert writes with the pre- 
 cision and directness of an Englishman. It is very curious, too, to ob- 
 serve the indifference with which, in his letters to his government, he 
 refers to topics which, twenty years ago, a Bonapartist could not think 
 of without fury. In his despatch of 28th November to the Minister 
 of War, speaking of the first onset of the Russians at Inkermann, he 
 says, " Lord Raglan tells me the firing was as severe as at anv 
 time at Waterloo !" W. B. R. 
 
 34
 
 398 LECTUKE TWELFTH. 
 
 think, sir, you and 1 have the greatest collection of this 
 sort. But I know you agree with me that nothing cf 
 this sort should be published ; and herein you have 
 always consented to approve of the modest judgment ot 
 our countrymen above the practice of some of our neigh- 
 bours, and chiefly of the French. I make no manner of 
 question but the English, at this time, are infinitely im- 
 proved in this way above the skill of former ages ; yei 
 they have been always judiciously sparing in printing 
 such composures, while some other witty nations have 
 tired all their presses and readers with them. The truth 
 is, the letters that pass between particular friends, if they 
 are written as they ought to be, can scarce ever be fit to 
 see the light. They should not consist of fulsome com- 
 pliments, or tedious politics, or elaborate elegancies, or gene- 
 ral fancies ; but they should have a native clearness and 
 shortness, a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of 
 familiarity, which can only affect the humour of those for 
 whom they were intended. The very same passages 
 which make writings of this nature delightful among 
 friends, will lose all manner of taste when they come to 
 be read by those that are indifferent. In such letters, 
 the souls of men should appear undressed ; and in that 
 negligent habit they may be fit to be seen by. one or two 
 in a chamber, but not to go abroad in the street." 
 
 This is, indeed, very tantalizing, especially so, for Cow- 
 ley's delightful prose-essays have a savour of what must 
 have made his familiar letters most excelleut of their kind ; 
 the passage described, indeed, the very perfection of such 
 letters in the very reason given for withholding them. 
 However one may dissent from the reasoning, and still 
 more regret the application of it, it is entitled to some
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 399 
 
 respect as having a basis of sound sense, and expressive 
 of a just feeling — that honourable spirit which is, I be- 
 lieve, an element in the character of our race. It was so 
 formerly, more so than now; for that " modest judg- 
 ment," which the biographer of Cowley spoke of as re- 
 straining* the publication of private correspondence, has 
 grown to be old-fashioned ; and the barriers of reserve 
 have been brokeu down by the cupidity of booksellers, 
 the vanity of authors, and the vicious curiosity of readers. 
 If this department of English literature has, in late 
 years, received many and valuable additions, it has not 
 been all clear gain : the sanctities of domestic life and 
 the proprieties of official life have been violated ; the 
 world has intruded where it had no title to enter, and 
 often learned what it had far better remained ignorant 
 of; the happy confidence of social communion has been 
 startled in its security ; and the author can scarce 
 write a familiar note without misgiving of future pub- 
 lication. 
 
 When Pope's correspondence was surreptitiously pub- 
 lished by an unscrupulous bookseller, Dr. Arbuthnot 
 wittily spoke of Curll, the publisher, as a new terror of 
 death.* When the letters of Robert Burns were first 
 
 * Dr. Johnson once remarked that the practice of publishing the 
 letters of literary men had grown so common, that he made it a pfint 
 to put as little as possible in his own. There will be found in the 
 London Quarterly Review, a few years back, an excellent essay on this 
 subject in its relation to official life, on the subject of the posthumous 
 publication of Lord Malmesbury's journals and letters. Our Ameri- 
 can diplomatic subordinates have, of late years, committed the 
 grosser scandal of scribbling for home newspapers. A greater 
 indecorum, and one more detrimental to public interests, can hardly 
 be conceived. W. li. 11.
 
 400 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 given to the world, disclosing the deplorable frailties of 
 his life — not as a wise and feeling biographer might have 
 done, but in the dark colours of the frenzy of genius, 
 conscious of guilt and never wholly divorced from a soul 
 of goodness — a fellow-poet, strong in the might of a life 
 of irreproachable purity, and yet compassionate of his frail 
 brother, protested in earnest prose against the world's right 
 to penetrate into the privacy of an author's life. I refei 
 to a pamphlet of Wordsworth's, in which, among other 
 remarks, he observed that " The Life of Johnson by Bos- 
 well had broken through many pre-existing delicacies, and 
 afforded the British public an opportunity of acquiring 
 experience, which before it had happily wanted." A 
 younger poet, Mr. Tennyson, has also made his protest 
 against the growing evil, in some vigorous stanzas ad- 
 dressed to a friend, and entitled "The Age of Irreve- 
 
 rence :' ? 
 
 " You might have won tho poet's name, 
 If such be worth the winning now, 
 And gained a laurel for your brow, 
 Of sounder leaf than I can claim. 
 
 But you have made the wiser choice; 
 A life that moves to gracious ends, 
 Through troops of unrecording frionds, 
 
 A deedful life, a silent voice. 
 
 And you have missed the irreverent doom 
 Of those that wear the poet's crown ; 
 Hereafter noithor knave nor clown 
 
 Shall hold their orgies at your tomb. 
 
 For now the poet cannot die, 
 Nor leave his music as of old, 
 But round him, ere ho scarce be cold, 
 
 Begins the scandal and the cry : —
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 401 
 
 ' Give out the faults he would not show ! 
 
 Break lock and seal! botray the trust! 
 
 Keep nothing sacred: 'tis but just 
 The many-headed beast should know.' 
 
 Ah, shameless ! for he did but sing 
 A song that pleased us from its worth : 
 No public life was his on earth, 
 
 No blazoned statesman he, nor king. 
 
 lie gave the people of his best : 
 
 His worst he kept, his best he gave. 
 
 My curse upon the clown and knave 
 Who will not let his ashes rest ! 
 
 Who makes it sweeter seem to be, 
 
 The little life of bank and brier, 
 
 The bird that pipes his lone desire, 
 And dies unheard within his tree, 
 
 Than he that warbles long and loud, 
 
 And drops at glory's temple-gates, 
 
 For whom the carrion vulture waits, 
 To tear his heart before the crowd."* 
 
 The volume which is, I believe, the earliest collection 
 of letters, is a singular exception to that old-fashioned 
 English reserve which I have spoken of — the volume 
 
 * On a kindred subject, that of the rash, posthumous publication 
 of private diaries, or rather of the faithful performance of duty to the 
 dead in their suppression, the reader is referred to the conduct of Lady 
 Bute, the daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in the intro- 
 ductory anecdotes pretixed to Lord Wharncliife's edition, p. 21. I may 
 here observe that nothing more clearly shows the popular and cursory 
 character of these lectures, (and this was my brother's view of them,) 
 than that among the poets he does not mention Thomson or Collins, or, 
 among the letter- writers, Lady Mary Wortley Montague. W. B. R. 
 
 34*
 
 «02 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 entitled " Familiar Letters, domestic and foreign, partly 
 historical, political, and philosophical, by James Howell," 
 in the times of Charles the First, and published during 
 the Protectorate. It is the case of a writer setting such 
 esteem upon his own letters as to collect and give them to 
 the world ; and although the volume is now a neglected 
 and rather rare one, the welcome it had is proved by the fact 
 that it went through eleven editions in a century. Howell 
 was a traveller, on the continent and in England was iu 
 intercourse with men of various celebrity : while his let- 
 ters show much curious matter, one cannot help thinking 
 how high a value such a correspondence might have had, 
 if it had given the thoughts of a stronger mind in that 
 momentous period. The Paston Letters, though of much 
 earlier date, were not published until the latter part of 
 the eighteenth century, about three hundred years after 
 they were written. It is the correspondence of the Pas- 
 ton family during the era of the wars of York and Lan- 
 caster, comprehending a curious variety of epistles, from 
 the note of an Eton scholar, with thanks for a box of 
 raisins and figs, to letters following the sad fortunes of 
 that simple and saintly sovereign, Henry the Sixth, aud 
 his heroic queen. When these letters were brought to 
 light, after their long sleep, they had a congenial welcome 
 from Horace Walpole, who said, " The letters of Henry 
 the Sixth's reign are come out, and to me make all other 
 letters not worth reading. I have gone through above 
 one volume, and cannot bear to be writing when I am so 
 eager to be reading."* 
 
 A very pathetic interest attaches to the collection of 
 
 * Letters to L.idy Ogsory, vol, ii. p. 297
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 403 
 
 the Letters of Lady Russel, the memory of her husband's 
 tragic death on the scaffold casting a solemn light over 
 the whole correspondence during a widowhood protracted 
 to extreme old age, and distinguished no less by profound 
 affection to her departed husband than by a widowed 
 mother's untiring duty to her children. Her's was a life 
 of genuine womanly heroism, a life with one awful sorrow 
 in its centre, sustained, if not cheered, by thoughtful 
 Christian piety. The correspondence is the unconsciou? 
 portraiture of such a character, in which were combined 
 the spirit of submission to affliction and an energetic for- 
 titude that shrank from no duty. There is, perhaps, no 
 more touching incident in British annals than that one so 
 well-known on the trial of her husband for treason, when 
 Lord Kussel asked, "May I have somebody to write 
 to help my memory?" The attorney-general answered, 
 "Yes, a servant." The noble prisoner said, "My wife 
 is here." The harshness of the chief justice (Pember- 
 ton) was softened, when, recognising Lady Kussel' s pre- 
 sence, he added, " If my lady please to give herself the 
 trouble." 
 
 It is a transition from letters of the most intense and 
 serious reality to a correspondence the most superficial in 
 feeling and the most artificial in expression, to pass to the 
 letters of Pope; another instance, like Howell's, of the 
 letter-writer making of his letters to his intimates a book 
 for everybody. They were modelled after the French 
 epistolary school of Balzac and Voiture, (before the talent 
 of Madame de Sevigne had given an attractive graceful- 
 ness to French letters,) and vitiated by the ambition, bad 
 enough in any use of speech or writing, but odious, in a 
 familiar letter — the ambition of fine thoughts in fine words,.
 
 404 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 Even j\Ir. Hainan's calm judgment stops not at calling 
 Pope " the ape of Voiture" in his letters to ladies.* And 
 one who so admirably conceived and executed the true 
 idea of a familiar letter, as Cowper did, in shrinking from 
 that applause of his correspondence which Pope was ever 
 coveting, said a "foolish vanity would have spoiled me 
 quite, and made me as disgusting a letter-writer as Pope, 
 who seems to have thought that unless a sentence was 
 well turned, and every period pointed with some conceit, 
 it was not worth the carriage. Accordingly, he is to me, 
 except in very few instances, the most disagreeable maker 
 of epistles that ever I met with. I was willing, therefore, 
 to wait till the impression your commendation had made 
 upon the foolish part of me was worn off, that I might 
 scribble away as usual, and write my uppermost thoughts 
 and those only."-}" 
 
 Of that society identified with Pope's letters, it was 
 well said by the late Hartley Coleridge, "Never was 
 literary band so closely united by harmonious dis- 
 similitude as that which comprised Swift, Pope, Gay, 
 Arbuthnot, and Parnell : they were a perfect co-operative 
 society, and might be said, almost without a metaphor, to 
 feel for each other. But Swift thought for them all : his 
 was the informing mind, and exercised over his associates 
 that supremacy which philosophic power, however per- 
 verted, will always maintain over mere genius, 'though 
 elegant as Pope's — over simple erudition, though extensive 
 as Arbuthnot's Moreover, whenever a limited number 
 of men form a league or union, it is ten to one that tho 
 
 * Literature of Europe, vol. iii. p. 611. 
 t bouthey's CoWper, vol. iv. p. 15.
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER- WRITING. 405 
 
 least amiable will be the most influential."* Swift's 
 masculine power is manifest in his letters, for affectation, 
 unless the affectation of rudeness, came not nigh him . 
 there is, too, in his letters, a sad reality, from the connec- 
 tion with that strange control which his stern nature 
 gained over the affections of two women at the same time; 
 his mysterious marriage with one, and the final heart- 
 breaking of them both. Whenever a letter of Bishop 
 Berkeley's appears, it shows him always the pure, the 
 gentle, and the virtuous, the gentleman and the divine, 
 the most beautiful character of that generation, the moral 
 footprints of whose life are to this day visible on American 
 soil.f 
 
 The letters of Lord Chesterfield are a remarkable 
 instance of celebrity gained unintentionally, and super- 
 seding, in a great measure, other grounds of reputation. 
 For one person acquainted with his character as a states- 
 man, at home and in diplomacy, the rare ability displayed 
 as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the administration of 
 that most unmanageable section of the British empire, 
 and the tradition of his oratory, twenty know of his letters 
 to his son, written in perfect parental confidence, and 
 published years afterwards surreptitiously. I cannot bet- 
 ter or more briefly characterize the letters, than by saying 
 that they make a book of the minor moralities and the 
 major immoralities of life. They profess to deal with 
 nothing higher than those secondary motives which, 
 
 * Hartley Coleridge's Biographia Borealis, p. 115. Note to Life of 
 Bentley. 
 
 f No one that heard them will ever forget Mr. Thackeray's brilliant 
 CT'ticisra on Pope's letters, and his sketches of the society, heartless il 
 may bo, but very fascinating, which they illustrate. W. B. R. 
 2A
 
 406 LKCTURE TWELF1 H. 
 
 though poor and even dangerous substitutes for moral 
 principle, are yet not to be despised in the formation of 
 character — considerations of expediency, reputation, per- 
 sonal advantage; and being addressed to a youth of un- 
 couth manners, they laid that stress upon grace of deport- 
 ment which has given to the name of Chesterfield a pro- 
 verbial use. The letters embody a great deal of sound 
 advice, the result of the large worldly experience of an 
 acute and cultivated nobleman, too acute not to know at 
 least the impolicy of much of the world's wickedness. 
 When they were published, Dr. Johnson pronounced a 
 pithy and coarse sentence of condemnation, which may 
 recur to the minds of some of my hearers, who will recog- 
 nise my restraint in not' repeating it. He afterwards 
 modified his censure, and said, " Take out the immorality, 
 » and the book ought to be in the hands of every young 
 gentleman."* 
 
 It is to another man of the world of Chesterfield's 
 times, and the times of a great many other people, that 
 English literature owes its most voluminous, and, in some 
 respects, most remarkable collection of letters — I need 
 hardly say, I refer to Horace Walpole. His letters count 
 by thousands : about three thousand are in print, and the 
 publication of more is looked for. In one of Scribe's 
 vaudevilles, Madame de Sevigne" is described as the lady 
 
 * The notes to this lecture have been too far multiplied to allow mo 
 room for admiration, as a matter of rhetoric, of Lord Chesterfield. I 
 have often thought that a biography of British statesmen by an Ame- 
 rican, and from ;in American point of view, would bo a most useful and 
 delightful book, and on i.te pages no ono would appear more brightly 
 than Lord Chesterfield. The English of his letters, not written fof 
 publiuatiuii, but in the strictest confidence, is matchless. W. L\ 11.
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 40V 
 
 who used to write letters all the while. Horace Walpole 
 takes the palm ; and has been styled the prince of letter- 
 writers, a title well-earned by the continuity of his labours, 
 or rather his pleasures, in this department of composition 
 during a long life. His letters cover a period of more 
 than threescore years, beginning in 1735, and ending in 
 1797, a few weeks before his death ; thus touching at one 
 end-the times of George the Second, and the Pretenders, 
 and Maria Theresa, and at the other the French Revolu- 
 tion and Republic. With Walpole's large political and 
 social opportunities, his letters are full of the history, and 
 fuller of the gossip, of sixty years — pleasant reading, but 
 uncertain authority. A shrewd, but sometimes malevo- 
 lent commentator on his fellow-men, a witty observer of 
 manners, he sought amusement in the fopperies of a fan- 
 tastic country mansion and the luxury of a private print- 
 ing-press, but his happiness, rather, I think, in the luxu-' 
 rious indulgence of perpetual letter-writing to correspond- 
 ents of both sexes and various ages ; and twelve octavo 
 volumes, with an indefinite series in prospectj are the 
 record of this indulgence. An elegant sefishness, tem- 
 pered with much kindly feeling for his friends, is undis- 
 guised in his letters ; and a self-indulgent frivolity deepens 
 into earnestness only in a fervid indignation, which he 
 was one of the first to utter against the African slave- 
 trade, and when, near the close of life, his imperturbable 
 voluptuousness was startled by the atrocities of the French 
 Revolution. The letters, faithful to the last, bring their 
 story very near to the old man's death — the melancholy 
 conclusion of eighty years of worldliness. It is in his last 
 letter but one to Lady Ossory, that he describes himself as 
 a sort of Methuselah, whom fourscore nephews and nieces*
 
 »0S LECTCRE TWELFTH. 
 
 were annually brought to stare at. The title of Earl of 
 Orford came too late to be welcome; he never took bie 
 place in the House of Lords, and even evaded the dignity 
 by either signing himself "uncle of the late Earl of 
 Orford," or simply with a capital 0, almost as if, with 
 something of bitter self-satire, he meant by the cipher to 
 symbolize the nothingness of his state of being.* 
 
 To turn from Walpole's letters to those of his once 
 friend and travelling companion, the poet Gray, is like 
 passing from the throng of the world of politics or fashion 
 into the calm and cloistered seclusion of a college. That 
 seclusion was connected with both the virtues and the 
 weaknesses of Gray's character, his purity, his gentleness, 
 his studious love of books, and with his dainty and almost 
 effeminate shrinking, not only from active life, but even 
 from the publicity of authorship, and social intercourse 
 with mankind or womankind. Cowper said, " I once 
 thought Swift's letters the best that could be written, 
 but I like Gray's better. His humour, or his wit, or 
 whatever* it is to be called, is never ill-natured or offen- 
 sive, and yet, I think, equally poignant with the Dean's. "f 
 
 * The letters to Lady Ossory are certainly marked by a superior 
 tone of seriousness and dignity, and no solemn moralist can write more 
 genuine words of honest self-reproach, than Walpole did when he said, 
 "When young, I wished for fame, not examining whether I was 
 capable of attaining it, nor considering in what light fame was desi- 
 rable. There are two parts of honest fame; that attendant on the 
 truly great, and that better sort which is due to the good. I fear I did 
 not aim at the latter, nor discover, till too late, that I could not com- 
 pass the former, i Having neglcetod the best road, and having, instead 
 of the other, strolled into a narrow path that led to no goal worth Obtk- 
 ing, I see the idleness of my journey." W. B. R. 
 
 t Southey's Cowper, vol. iv. p. 15.
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 409 
 
 The letters on which I should have been glad to have 
 dwelt the most I must dispose of briefly — Cowper's own ; 
 and I can do so the more safely, in speaking of them as 
 the purest and most perfect specimens of familiar letters 
 in the language. Considering the secluded, uneventful 
 course of Cowper's life, the charm in his letters is won- 
 derful ; and is to be explained, I believe, chiefly by the 
 exquisite light of poetic truth which his imagination shed 
 upon daily life, whether his theme was man, himself or a 
 fellow-being, or books, or the mute creation which he 
 loved to handle with such thoughtful tenderness. His 
 seclusion did not separate him from sympathy with the 
 stirring events of his time ; and, alike in seasons of sun- 
 shine or of gloom, there is in his letters an ever-present 
 beauty of quiet wisdom, and a gentle but fervid spirit. 
 There is, I believe, no long collection of letters which 
 can be continuously read with the same sustained interest, 
 following the writer through cheerfulness and despondency 
 into the cloud, from which he sent forth some words of 
 sadness as it mysteriously closed over him. 
 
 The letters of Sir Walter Scott, in Mr. Lockhart's in- 
 imitable biography, claim the same high praise. There 
 is the same excellent adaptation of the letter to the occa- 
 sion and to the party addressed, which is essential in a 
 true letter. There is also the same power of so expressing 
 the writer's feelings as to move in sympathy with the 
 correspondent, and for the correspondent's pleasure, with- 
 out ever sinking into egotism or vanity. It is this — the 
 mastery of the subjective character of the composition 
 tvhich is at once the difficulty and virtue of the real fa- 
 miliar letter. A child, in its innocence and unreflective- 
 
 ness, toils at so putting its heart into words ; and there 
 
 35
 
 410 LECTURE TWELFTH. 
 
 are those who carry into mature life so much of child- 
 like simplicity of character as to be unfit for letter- 
 writing. The more common fault is, however, in the other 
 direction — a gross or insidious egotism. Scott's style 
 of correspondence has a very high merit in combining a 
 frank expression of his own feelings along with a perpe- 
 tual mindfulness of the feelings of those to whom he 
 writes. 
 
 The letters of Lord Byron displaying, even more than 
 his poems, his command of vigorous English speech — 
 make a perilous display of a morbid egotism, redeemed, 
 indeed, at times, by flashes of kindly feeling, of generous 
 impulse, and healthy opinion, so as to perplex the reader's 
 judgment, or, at least, to plead for his pity to the misery 
 of a soul distempered by nature, and far worse by a life 
 of moral lawlessness; and by that pride which, tempting 
 him often to brave the world's opinion by even affecting 
 worse thoughts and worse deeds than were imputed t<> 
 him, was fatal to the truthfulness of his character and of 
 his writings. 
 
 Of Southey's letters, interwoven with his biography, 
 just completed, it is too soon to sneak otherwise than 
 with a general allusion to the interest of them, without 
 attempting to measure their merits and their faults. 
 
 Charles Lamb's letters resemble his inimitable essays — 
 a quaint wisdom, a fine literary taste, and a loving and 
 a brave heart dwelling together in that humour which 
 was his peculiar gift- 
 Letters of dedication may be merely mentioned in 
 connection with this general subject^ The early dedi- 
 cations abound in noble feeling, fitly expressed, with 
 an eloquence that is midway between oratory and the
 
 LITERATURE OF LETTER-WRITING. 411 
 
 familiarity of a letter. There followed a long period 
 during which they were vitiated by fulsome and ser- 
 vile flattery. Of late years, truth has been restored on 
 tiie dedication page; and many a one, in verse as well as 
 prose, is a record of a genuine feeling of reverence, of 
 admiration, and of love. Let me refer to one for the sake 
 of a thought I wish (in conclusion) to leave in your 
 minds. Charles Lamb dedicated bis earliest volume to 
 his sister — that afflicted sister to whom he devoted all 
 bis days. He consulted Coleridge in a letter in which 
 he said, " I have another sort of dedication in my head 
 for my few things, which I want to know if you approve 
 of. I mean to inscribe them to my sister. It will be 
 unexpected, and it will give her pleasure ; or do you 
 think it will look whimsical at all ? . . . There is a mo- 
 notony in the affections, which people living together (or, 
 as we do now, very frequently seeing each other) are apt 
 to give into ; a sort of indifference in the expression of 
 kindness for each other, which demands that we should 
 sometimes call to our aid the trickery of surprise."* 
 
 * These last words have suggested to ine a dedication of this 
 volume which I had not before designed. In parting with it, it 
 seemed natural and congenial with my feelings to the dead to add 
 a tributo, most deserved and unexpected, to the living. W. B. R. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY L. JODNSOH S 60. 
 PHILADELPHIA.
 
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