A POETICAL ADDRESS.
PART I.
Sage W⸺, Royal William’s Tutor,
Thou reverend dilettanti Fluter,
His voice an humble poet raises
To celebrate thy Pupil’s praises;
The lovely Boy and senior Gloster,
Shall condescend my muse to foster
With praise—not pay; for you and I know
Our patron’s not too full of rhino;
You for a paltry pimping payment,
That scarce will find you food and raiment,
Give up your talents, freedom, leisure,
To do the Royal folks a pleasure;
I, for we poets in all ages,
Have scorned to do our work for wages,
Waste pen, wit, rhyme, and why? the cause is
An hungry hope of lean applauses.
...
Now W⸺ swears, so goes the rumour,
These squibs more scandal have than humour.
“Oh! curse the rascal, did I know him, (aside)
“I’d maul him for his doggrel poem[6].”
Yet W⸺, should ill-tempered satire,
Prince William’s character bespatter,
Fret not, but check thy rising choler,
For I’ll defend thy Royal Scholar.
END OF PART I.
The Essay which succeeds was discovered after his decease among the manuscripts of the elegant and accomplished youth, whose character will be found in Vol. I. p. 173, et seq. It is supposed to be descriptive of his own particular situation.
Goodness wounds itself,
And sweet affection proves the spring of woe.
Shakespeare.
The character of Timon of Athens presents a delineation of sudden change in the principles of human action, which, though drawn by the pen of Shakespeare himself, whose knowledge of the heart appears almost intuitive, has been censured as extravagant and unnatural. The glowing generosity, the indefatigable friendship, the expansive openness of soul, which mark the earlier features of the character of Timon, are suddenly, on a change of fortune, which discover treachery in his supposed friends, subverted to their foundation. The whole mental scene, shifting with rapidity and violence, presents in their room the most inveterate and ferocious detestation directed against all mankind. In my mind, the poet has here only afforded another proof of the keenness of that penetration, which, glancing through all the springs and mazes of the human soul, fixes the changing features of the mental portrait, and holds a mirror to nature herself. He perceived that on the ruins of our best feelings the temple of misanthropy is ever erected, the force of this truth he has exemplified by characters stamped with the kindliest affections of nature, containing those propensities on which the fairest structure of human happiness is raised, in which those benefits, so far from tending to their proper end, ill-managed and abused, involve their possessors in delusion and misery, and naturally end in a frame of mind inimical to mankind, and incapable of felicity.
Of these Timon is one; although inconsiderate ostentation forms a striking feature in the delineation of Shakespeare, the violence of misanthropy is to be traced to other causes, and we are led to exclaim, from a thorough knowledge of his character, with the faithful Flavius,
Poor honest Lord, brought low by his own heart;
Undone by goodness.
To follow the general idea of the poet more closely, to apply it more generally to human nature at large, will probably reward our labour. For this purpose, we may call up before our eyes the painful, though too common picture, which the mind, where the glow of fancy triumphs over reason, and the mere impulse of sensibility supersedes reflection and settled principle, exhibits in its progress through the world.
To a mind of high wrought feelings, and heated imagination, the entrance of life is fairy ground. The objects which solicit attention, viewed through the medium of that elevated hope which youth alone inspires, shine with a brilliancy of tint not their own. The face of universal nature impresses the soul with secret influence, a delicious rapture, which gives a new charm to being, and the heart, intoxicated with its own sensations, expands with an unbounded warmth to all existence.
The desert of the world is decorated with the fleeting visions of a raised and glowing fancy, while the eye rests, with unsuspicious wonder, on the splendid prospects which the magic of early expectation calls up on every side. Filled with that strong enthusiasm which elevates whilst it deludes, the mind soon is taught to feel, that in the crowd of pleasures, which court her acceptance, something is still deficient. The finer and more exalted ideas, which stimulate incessantly to action, are still without an object worthy of all their energy. The powers of the soul languish, and are depressed, from the narrowness of the sphere in which they have yet moved, the master strings of the heart are yet untouched, the higher, stronger passions of the breast are to be rouzed before the keenness of expectation can be gratified. The charms of friendship, the delicate and intoxicating sensations which attend the first delicious emotions of the tender passion, rush on the imagination with violence, to which even the energy of youthful ambition is feeble and impotent in comparison. It seems that but a dream of pleasure, a prospect of bliss, has been presented to the view, which friendship and love alone can realize and render perfect.
The enthusiast now looks eagerly around for the objects, which a heart, yet unacquainted with the realities of things, and wound up to its highest pitch, tells him are alone able to fill that void which still aches within the bosom. In the moment of delusion, the connections are formed which are to stamp existence with happiness or misery in the extreme. A blind impulse overpowers deliberation, and the heart expands itself for the reception of inmates, whose value it has not for a moment paused to ascertain. The measure of happiness is now for a moment full. The mind, conscious that the energy of sentiment no longer languishes in inaction, feels those wishes compleated, which the vividity of imagination had before but imperfectly suggested, and yields without reserve to the novel emotions, which begin to make part of its existence. On every side the heart is cheered by the smile of affection, on every side the arms of friendship are expanded with inviting openness.
The wand of deception creates a little world around, where nothing meets the eye but the mutual efforts of emulative exertion, and the smile of beneficence exulting over its own work. And love! sacred love! who that has truly felt thy first pure, and delicious influence, but learns, even if the object be delusion, that the few moments which thy power can confer, are of more value than whole existences unanimated by thy holy and vital flame.
But this rapture is not to last. The time is to come when the prospect which depended on the influence of passion, however noble, and prejudice, however honest, shall melt away from the view. The mind, raised to a pitch of enjoyment above the reality of sublunary happiness, is in danger when the faces of things appear at once in their proper colours, of sinking to a degree equally below it. He, who in the glow of his earlier feelings, feasted his eye with increasing transport, on the gay and captivating scenery, with which the creative power of an ardent imagination had overspread the barrenness of reality, now begins to find a thousand little deceptions wear away. The insipidity and nakedness of many an object, which, at a distance, had attracted his eagerness, and roused the keenness of his passions, press so close upon him, that even prejudice and enthusiasm fail to operate the accustomed delusion.
The little vanity, so often interwoven with the best natures, receives a variety of unexpected and grievous wounds. As the mists which clouded his better judgment retire, on every side he discovers with astonishment, that a dupe to self-deception, he has, like a blind idolator, fallen prostrate before the gaudy images his own hands have formed and decorated. He perceives that he has walked in a world of his own creation, that life and man are still before him to study, and he only recovers his cooler reason to feel the loss of that mental elevation, that brilliant perception of things, which, though ideal, were so dear to him.
But perhaps this is not all, nor does the discovery which scourges vanity, and detects the harmless fallacies of judgment, alone await him. Perhaps the hour of deception has treasured up disappointment more heavy and intolerable. What are his sensations, if the truth he now begins anxiously and fearfully to learn, is brought immediately home to his own bosom, and he is doomed to feel that the exalted and glowing ideas of friendship, which first expanded his soul, shrink even in his view, and leave his breast void and desolate. When in the heart, which his earliest ideas had imaged as the residence of that sacred passion, the trial of experience detects hollowness and falsehood. When it is his bitter lot to mark the progress of alienated affection, to watch the subsidence of cooling attachment, to feel the ties connected in an honest and unsuspicious bosom with all his first enjoyments of happiness, beginning one by one to untwine. When he is to groan under the pang of the heart, which accompanies the tearing out of the thousand little habits of confidence, the innumerable kindly affections, which long custom had rooted in the soul, and made a part of the pleasantness of existence; or when he is to experience the agony of the moment, when he, in whom the bosom fondly trusted, insults the confidence he has cruelly violated, and aggravates by unfeeling mockery the distress his perfidy has excited.
But if this can be borne, perhaps the last and most fearful shock awaits him; the tenderest strings of his soul are to be more cruelly rent, and the wound, which before smarted almost to madness, rendered at once incurable. There are finer and more exalted ties, comprehending the best feelings, the dearest relations of which our natures are capable. Their severing is accompanied by sensations to which the wound of violated friendship itself is feeble, and, to minds of a certain frame, communicates that deadly stroke, to which the power of all other human evils, would have been inadequate. Such are those which unexpected treachery, from that quarter where the soul had gathered up its best and tenderest hope, must call forth, and few are the hearts, round the ruggedness of whose nature so little of the softer feelings are entwined, as not to feel the full keenness of that wound which the tearing of the ties of love inflicts, though its firmness had been inaccessible to the force of common calamities. The distress is more complicated and hopeless from its nature than any other, and the pangs of a thousand discordant passions are crouded and concentrated into that terrible moment which discovers infidelity, where the confiding heart had fondly rested all its prospects of happiness. Under other strokes of calamity the soul gains force and dignity from the greatness of unmerited misfortunes, and rouses every latent power to combat against evil fate.
In the school of distress the energies of the mind are disclosed, and, learning our own powers, we combat against the impression of adversity till we are able to contemn it. But here the sufferer finds himself as it were waked suddenly from a dream of happiness to intolerable misery; with his mind unnerved and weakened by passion, all the resources of fortitude lying dormant, every tender sensation doubly acute, every softening feeling alive. From the object of tenderness and idolatry of one, who was the world to him, he at once finds himself a deserted and despised being; he sees his best and finest feelings blasted for ever, his honest sources of pleasure and peace cut off at one stroke, with the terrible aggravation that the hand to which alone he could look for comfort and healing under the wound of calamity, instead of being stretched out to save him, itself lodges the dagger in his breast.
He is now alone. The ties which bound him to existence, cruelly loosened before, are torn for ever by this last, worst stroke. The prospect which before warmed his heart, is narrowed and darkened on every side. The journey of life is before him dreary and comfortless. The weary path of rugged labour remains to be trodden, when the motives of activity and the rewards of exertion have ceased to exist, when the keenness of expectation can no longer be stimulated, and the spirit of enterprize has subsided into sullen indifference. While he ruminates with agony on the past, he cheerlessly looks forward to a gloomy futurity, and his foreboding mind sees, in the ruin of his first and fondest hopes, the nothingness of the visions of imagination, the destruction of the thousand little schemes and prospects suggested by an honest ambition, which the exultation of an heart untouched by calamity had fondly and fearlessly indulged. The recollection of those delusions, which cheated his unsuspecting youth, whispers for ever that safety is alone compatible with apathy, and cases his heart in impenetrable suspicion. A line of separation is drawn between him and his species.
Deceived, insulted, wounded, from that quarter where his heart had treasured up all hope, where his ideas of human excellence had all concentred confidence in mankind, is in his eyes the weakness of despicable folly, or the extreme of desperate madness. The principles of the soul, already unsettled, are soon shaken to their foundation. The milk of human kindness turns fast to gall; while those very passions, that frame of mind, which operated the first delusion, which stamped the features of unbounded friendship, of enthusiastic beneficence, now all subverted, are applied to exalt the violence of the opposite character. Under this stroke the self-love, which might bear up against the common weight of calamity, receives an incurable and rankling wound, over which the soul gloomily broods. The passions of the misanthrope still flaming with violence, tend, as to a centre, to the aggravation of abhorrence and distrust of his species, and he hates with a keenness and acrimony proportioned to the strength of disappointed feeling which marked his entrance into life.
H⸺
The following Imitations of the Ancients, by Milton and Pope, are printed from a Manuscript of Gilbert Wakefield’s, dated Warrington, April 20, 1783.