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difficulties which the writer seeks to remove; or as if it were not true that the more light men obtain on one side of the region of thought the more they need on other sides; as if greatness and goodness, in their application to men, were not relative terms, and the best and wisest of mortals, that have appeared upon earth, had ever been free from error and imperfection! I should think there is hardly a foolish or evil notion on any subject which might not be screened from attack by such arguments as these. And, even were they not such mere weakness, of what force can they be with those, who take for their motto, as Mr. Coleridge did from first to last: That all men may know the truth, and that the truth may set them free? Religious truth and religion are identified in Scripture, or at least represented as one and inseparable; and how can a man obey the truth or minister to it, except by setting forth, what, after the widest survey of the subject which he is capable of taking, he believes to be the truth?

The suggestion that no man should examine such subjects or call in question prevailing views in religion save one who starts from a high station of holiness and spiritual light, can be of little value unless accompanied by a criterion of holiness, both as to kind and degree, admitted by all men. Prevailing notions are often utterly erroneous, and if none might expose what they believe in their hearts to be wrong and injurious views, till it was proved, even to their adversaries' satisfaction, that they were far advanced in true sanctity, wrong views would be the prevailing ones till the end of time. Providence works by finer means than enter into this sort of philosophy, making imperfection minister to the perfecting of what is good and purifying of what is evil.

Whether or no the views of St. Jerome and other ancient Fathers concerning Inspiration are, as has been affirmed, something far deeper and higher than we, in our inferior state of spirituality, can conceive, I do not presume to decide; but yet I would suggest, that high and spiritual views in general are capable of being set forth in words, and of gradually raising men up to some apprehension of them. They do not remain a light to lighten the possessor, and mere darkness, or a light that closely resembles a shade, to the rest of the world. Things that pertain to reason and the spirit appeal to the rational and spiritual in mankind at large; they tend to elicit the reason and expand the understandings of men; deep calleth unto deep; and if the teaching of Paul and John is now in a wonderful manner apprehended by peasants and children, who hear the Gospel habitually, St. Jerome's notions of Inspiration, if truly divine and evangelical, would by this time be generally apprehended by Christians in the same way, and by the wise and learned would be comprehended more intellectually and systematically.

Whereas, can it be denied, that no consistent scheme of Inspiration has ever been gathered from the teaching of those ancient Fathers? They who believe that such a scheme is contained in their writings, explicitly or implicitly, will do well to unfold it. Merely to talk about such a thing in a style of indefinite grandeur is but to conjure up a mist, by the spell of solemn sounding words, to mock the eyes of men with a cloud castle for a season-a very little season it is during which any such piece of mist-magnificence can remain undispersed in times like the present, except for those who had rather gaze on painted vapors than on realities of a hue to which their eyes are unaccustomed.

I have not been able to obtain any exact account of all my Father's courses of lectures, given after his visit to Germany, but find, from letters and other sources of information, that he lectured in London, before going to Malta, in 1804; on his return from Malta, in 1807; again in 1808; in 1811; in 1814, in which year he also lectured at Bristol; in 1817; and, for the last time, I believe, in 1819. His early lectures at Bristol are mentioned in the biographical sketch.

The poetic or imitative art, an ancient critic has observed, must needs describe persons either better than they are, at the present time, or worse, or as they are exactly. The fact is, however, that in literary fiction individuals can seldom be exhibited exactly such as they are, the subtle interminglings of good and evil, the finely-balanced qualities that exist in the actual characters of men, even those in whom the colors are deepest and the lines most strongly traced, being too fine and subtle for dramatic effect. Indeed it is scarcely possible to present a man as he truly is except in plain narrative; his mind cannot be properly manifested save in and through the very events and circumstances which gave utterance to his individual being and which his peculiar character helped to mould and produce. When taken out of these and placed in the alien framework of the novelist or dramatist it becomes another thing; the representation may convey truth of human nature in a broad way, and seem drawn to the life, if the writer have a lively wit, but as a portrait of a particular person it is often the more a falsehood the more natural it appears.

To poetic descriptions these remarks do not apply. They are, for the most part, mere views of a character in its elevated and poetic aspects -tributes of admiration to its beautiful qualities. Such are the fine stanzas, already quoted, in which the poet Coleridge is described by the great Poet, his Friend and such are some less known, composed by a

poet of a later generation, who never saw my Father face to face. Of these the last four will serve for a conclusion to this sketch. I give them here for the sake of their poetic truth and the earnest sympathy they manifest with the studious poet

Philosopher contemning wealth and death,

Yet docile, childlike full of life and love,

though they are not among the very finest parts of their author's thoughtful and beautiful poetry.

No loftier, purer soul than his hath ever
With awe revolved the planetary page

(From infancy to age)

Of knowledge: sedulous and proud to give her

The whole of his great heart for her own sake;

For what she is; not what she does, or what can make.16

And mighty voices from afar came to him;
Converse of trumpets held by cloudy forms,
And speech of choral storms.

Spirits of night and noontide bent to woo him—
He stood the while, lonely and desolate

As Adam when he ruled a world, yet found no mate.

. His loftiest Thoughts were but like palms uplifted;
Aspiring, yet in supplicating guise-

His sweetest songs were sighs.

Adown Lethean streams his spirit drifted,
Under Elysian shades from poppied bank

With Amaranths massed in dark luxuriance dank.

Coleridge, farewell! That great and grave transition
Which may not Priest or King or Conqueror spare,
And yet a Babe can bear,

Has come to thee. Through life a goodly vision
Was thine; and time it was thy rest to take.

15 Here seems an allusion to an anti-utilitarian maxim of Bacon's, which is very expressive of my Father's turn of mind :-Et tamen quemadmodum luci magnam habemus gratiam, quod per eam vias inire, artes exercere, legere, nos invicem dignoscere possimus, et nihilominus ipsa visio lucis res præstantior est et pulchrior, quam multiplex ejus usus; ita certe ipsa contemplatio rerum, prout sunt, sine superstitione aut impostura, errore aut confusione, in se ipsa magis digna est, quam universus inventorum fructus. Novum Organum, Part of Aph. cxxix.

Soft be the sound ordained thy sleep to break

When thou art waking, wake me, for thy Master's sake! 18.

16 From a volume containing The Search after Proserpine. Recollec tions of Greece and other Poems by Aubrey de Vere, author of The Fall .of Rora.

APPENDIX.

ON THE POETICAL PICTURESQUE.

MR. HALLAM and Mr. Leigh Hunt have both expressed dissent from my Father's remark in the Remains, i., pp. 93-4, that Spenser's descriptions are not in the true sense of the word picturesque; but are composed of a wondrous series of images, as in our dreams." Whether or not "the true sense of the word picturesque" is what my Father meant, I do not pretend to determine, but I think that what he meant is true of Spenser, and indicates a characteristic difference between his painting and that of Dante, Pindar, and more or less of many other poets. Lessing gives the widest definition of the poetical picturesque; he says that a poet writes picturesquely, not when his words furnish matter for a material painting; many writers do this whose writing is not picturesque ;-but when they have the same effect as a material painting in bringing a sensuous object vividly before the mind. Paradise Lost, as Martin's illustrations have proved, is not very picturable. Who can paint such universalities as he deals with in his world-poem? Who could show on canvas how

Vernal airs

Breathing the smell of field and grove attune
The trembling leaves, while Universal Pan;
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on th' eternal Spring,-~~?

or how

as earth, so he the world

Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide
Crystalline Ocean, and the loud misrule

Of Chaos far removed-?

Yet no one will deny the truth of Milton's language, and that every sight, sound, and other sensation which he speaks of is faithfully imaged

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