literature that succeeded him. The most noted, and perhaps the most original, of present poets, bears more analogy to him than to any other writer, and their brotherhood has been well recognised, in the words of a critic, himself a man of redundant fancy, and of the widest perception of what is true and beautiful, lately cut off from life by a destiny as mysterious as that which has been here recounted. Mr. Sterling writes;" Lately I have been reading again some of Alfred Tennyson's second volume, and with profound admiration of his truly lyric and idyllic genius. There seems to me to have been more epic power in Keats, that fiery, beautiful meteor; but they are two most true and great poets. When we think of the amount of recognition they have received, one may well bless God that poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind or left alone in its own magic hermitage."*
And this is in truth the moral of the tale. In the life which here lies before us, as plainly as a child's, the action of the poetic faculty is most clearly visible: it long sustains in vigour and delight a temperament naturally melancholy, and which, under such adverse circumstances, might well have degenerated into angry discontent: it imparts a wise temper and a courageous hope to a physical constitution doomed to early decay; and it confines within manly affections and generous passion a nature so impressible that sensual pleasures and sentimental tenderness might easily have enervated and debased it. There is no defect in the picture which the exercise of this power does not go far to remedy, and no excellence which it does not elevate and extend.
One still graver lesson remains to be noted. Let no man, who is anything above his fellows, claim, as of right, to be valued or understood the vulgar great are comprehended and adored, because they are in reality in the same moral plane with those who admire; but he who deserves the higher reverence must himself convert the worshipper. The pure and lofty life; the generous and tender use of the rare creative faculty; the brave endurance of neglect and ridicule; the strange and cruel end of so much genius and so much virtue; these are the lessons by which the sympathies of mankind must be interested, and their faculties educated, up to the love of such a character and the comprehension of such an intelligence. Still the lovers and scholars
* Sterling's Essays and Tales, p. 168.
will be few still the rewards of fame will be scanty and ill-proportioned no accumulation of knowledge or series of experiences can teach the meaning of genius to those who look for it in additions and results, any more than the numbers studded round a planet's orbit could approach nearer infinity than a single unit. The world of thought must remain apart from the world of action; for, if they once coincided, the problem of Life would be solved, and the hope, which we call heaven, would be realised on earth. And therefore men
"Are cradled into poetry by wrong:
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”
[FROM THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE DUNCIAD.]
Now crowds on crowds around the goddess press,
Each eager to present the first address.
Dame scorning dame beholds the next advance,
But fop shows fop superior complaisance.
When, lo! a spectre rose, whose index-hand
Held forth by virtue of the dreadful wand;
His beaver'd brow a birchen garland wears,
Dropping with infant's blood, and mother's tears.
O'er every vein a shuddering horror runs ;
Eton and Winton shake through all their sins.
All flesh is humbled, Westminster's bold race
Shrink, and confess the genius of the place:
The pale boy-senator yet tingling stands,
And holds his breeches close with both his hands.
Then thus, since man from beast by words is known,
Words are man's province, words we teach alone.
When Reason doubtful, like the Samian letter,
Points him two ways, the narrower is the better.
Placed at the door of Learning, youth to guide,
We never suffer it to stand too wide.
To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence,
As fancy opens the quick springs of sense,
We ply the memory, we load the brain,
Blind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain,
Confine the thought, to exercise the breath:
And keep them in the pale of words till death.
Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind:
A poet the first day, he dips his quill;
And what the last ?- -a very poet still.
Pity! the charm works only in our wall,
Lost, lost too soon in yonder house or hall.
There truant Windham every muse gave o'er,
There Talbot sunk, and was a wit no more!
How sweet an Ovid, Murray, was our boast!
How many Martials were in Pulteney lost!
Else sure some bard, to our eternal praise,
In twice ten thousand rhyming nights and days,
Had reach'd the work, the all that mortal can;
And South beheld that masterpiece of man.
Oh (cried the goddess) for some pedant reign!
Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
To stick the Doctor's chair into the throne,
Give law to words, or war with words alone,
Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule,
And turn the council to a grammar school!
For sure, if dulness sees a grateful day,
"Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway.
Oh! if my sons may learn one earthly thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a king;
That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain
Which, as it dies or lives, we fall or reign:
May you, my Cam, and Isis, preach it long,
"The right divine of kings to govern wrong."
Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll
Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal:
Thick and more thick the black blockade extends,
A hundred head of Aristotle's friends.
Nor wert thou, Isis! wanting to the day,
(Though Christ Church long kept prudishly away.)
Each staunch Polemic, stubborn as a rock,
Each fierce Logician, still expelling Locke,
Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin and thick
On German Crouzaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck.
As many quit the streams that murmuring fall
To lull the sons of Margaret and Clare Hall,
Where Bentley late tempestuous wont to sport
In troubled waters, but now sleeps in port.
Before them march'd that awful Aristarch;
Plough'd was his front with many a deep remark ;
His hat, which never veil'd to human pride,
Walker with reverence took, and laid aside.
Low bow'd the rest: He, kingly, did but nod;
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
Mistress! dismiss that rabble from your throne:
Avaunt is Aristarchus yet unknown?
The mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains.
Turn what they will to verse, their toil is vain,
Critics like me shall make it prose again.
Roman and Greek grammarians! know your better:
Author, or something yet more great than letter;
While tow'ring o'er your alphabet like Saul,
Stands our Digamma, and o'ertops them all.
'Tis true, on words is still our whole debate,
Disputes of Me or Te, or Aut or At,
To sound or sink in cano O or A,
To give up Cicero to C or K.
Let Freind affect to speak as Terence spoke,
And Æsop never but like Horace joke:
For me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny,
Manilius or Solinus shall supply:
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek,
I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek.
In ancient sense if any needs will deal,
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal;
What Gellius or Stobæus hash'd before,
Or chew'd by blind old scholiasts o'er and o'er,
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit:
How parts relate to parts or they to whole;
The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burman, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a flea.
Ah, think not, Mistress! more true dulness lies
In Folly's cap than Wisdom's grave disguise.
Like buoys, that never sink into the flood,
On Learning's surface we but lie and nod;
Thine is the genuine head of many a house,
And much divinity without a Noũẹ.
Nor could a Barrow work on every block,
Nor has one Atterbury spoil'd the flock.
See! still thy own, the heavy Canon roll,
And metaphysic smokes involve the Pole.
For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read:
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, goddess, and about it:
So spins the silkworm small its slender store,
And labours, till it clouds itself all o'er.
What though we let some better sort of fool
Thread ev'ry science, run through every school?
Never by tumbler through the hoops was shewn
Such skill in passing all, and touching none.
He may, indeed (if sober all this time),
Plague with Dispute, or persecute with Rhyme.
We only furnish what we cannot use,
Or wed to what he must divorce-a muse:
Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a Genius to a Dunce :
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