AMERICAN LITERATURE—DR. CHANNING
Vol. i.] [October 1829.
Of the later American writers, who, besides Dr. Channing, have acquired some reputation in England, we can only recollect Mr. Washington Irving, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Cooper. To the first of these we formerly paid an ample tribute of respect; nor do we wish to retract a tittle of what we said on that occasion, or of the praise due to him for brilliancy, ease, and a faultless equability of style. Throughout his polished pages, no thought shocks by its extravagance, no word offends by vulgarity or affectation. All is gay, but guarded,—heedless, but sensitive of the smallest blemish. We cannot deny it—nor can we conceal it from ourselves or the world, if we would—that he is, at the same time, deficient in nerve and originality. Almost all his sketches are like patterns taken in silk paper from our classic writers;—the traditional manners of the last age are still kept up (stuffed in glass cases) in Mr. Irving’s modern version of them. The only variation is in the transposition of dates; and herein the author is chargeable with a fond and amiable anachronism. He takes Old England for granted as he finds it described in our stock-books of a century ago—gives us a Sir Roger de Coverley in the year 1819, instead of the year 1709; and supposes old English hospitality and manners, relegated from the metropolis, to have taken refuge somewhere in Yorkshire, or the fens of Lincolnshire. In some sequestered spot or green savannah, we can conceive Mr. Irving enchanted with the style of the wits of Queen Anne;—in the bare, broad, straight, mathematical streets of his native city, his busy fancy wandered through the blind alleys and huddled zig-zag sinuosities of London, and the signs of Lothbury and East-Cheap swung and creaked in his delighted ears. The air of his own country was too poor and thin to satisfy the pantings of youthful ambition; he gasped for British popularity,—he came, and found it. He was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: the national politeness owed him some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us; and, if his notions were sometimes wrong, yet it was plain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice every thing to obtain a smile or a look of approbation. It is true, he brought no new earth, no sprig of laurel gathered in the wilderness, no red bird’s wing, no gleam from crystal lake or new-discovered fountain, (neither grace nor grandeur plucked from the bosom of this Eden-state like that which belongs to cradled infancy); but he brought us rifaciméntos of our own thoughts—copies of our favourite authors: we saw our self admiration reflected in an accomplished stranger’s eyes; and the lover received from his mistress, the British public, her most envied favours.
Mr. Brown, who preceded him, and was the author of several novels which made some noise in this country, was a writer of a different stamp. Instead of hesitating before a scruple, and aspiring to avoid a fault, he braved criticism, and aimed only at effect. He was an inventor, but without materials. His strength and his efforts are convulsive throes—his works are a banquet of horrors. The hint of some of them is taken from Caleb Williams and St. Leon, but infinitely exaggerated, and carried to disgust and outrage. They are full (to disease) of imagination,—but it is forced, violent, and shocking. This is to be expected, we apprehend, in attempts of this kind in a country like America, where there is, generally speaking, no natural imagination. The mind must be excited by overstraining, by pulleys and levers. Mr. Brown was a man of genius, of strong passion, and active fancy; but his genius was not seconded by early habit, or by surrounding sympathy. His story and his interests are not wrought out, therefore, in the ordinary course of nature; but are, like the monster in Frankenstein, a man made by art and determined will. For instance, it may be said of him, as of Gawin Douglas, ‘Of Brownies and Bogilis full is his Buik.’ But no ghost, we will venture to say, was ever seen in North America. They do not walk in broad day; and the night of ignorance and superstition which favours their appearance, was long past before the United States lifted up their head beyond the Atlantic wave. The inspired poet’s tongue must have an echo in the state of public feeling, or of involuntary belief, or it soon grows harsh or mute. In America, they are ‘so well policied,’ so exempt from the knowledge of fraud or force, so free from the assaults of the flesh and the devil, that in pure hardness of belief they hoot the Beggar’s Opera from the stage: with them, poverty and crime, pickpockets and highwaymen, the lock-up-house and the gallows, are things incredible to sense! In this orderly and undramatic state of security and freedom from natural foes, Mr. Brown has provided one of his heroes with a demon to torment him, and fixed him at his back;—but what is to keep him there? Not any prejudice or lurking superstition on the part of the American reader: for the lack of such, the writer is obliged to make up by incessant rodomontade, and face-making. The want of genuine imagination is always proved by caricature: monsters are the growth, not of passion, but of the attempt forcibly to stimulate it. In our own unrivalled Novelist, and the great exemplar of this kind of writing, we see how ease and strength are united. Tradition and invention meet half way; and nature scarce knows how to distinguish them. The reason is, there is here an old and solid ground in previous manners and opinion for imagination to rest upon. The air of this bleak northern clime is filled with legendary lore: Not a castle without the stain of blood upon its floor or winding steps: not a glen without its ambush or its feat of arms: not a lake without its Lady! But the map of America is not historical; and, therefore, works of fiction do not take root in it; for the fiction, to be good for any thing, must not be in the author’s mind, but belong to the age or country in which he lives. The genius of America is essentially mechanical and modern.
Mr. Cooper describes things to the life, but he puts no motion into them. While he is insisting on the minutest details, and explaining all the accompaniments of an incident, the story stands still. The elaborate accumulation of particulars serves not to embody his imagery, but to distract and impede the mind. He is not so much the master of his materials as their drudge: He labours under an epilepsy of the fancy. He thinks himself bound in his character of novelist to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Thus, if two men are struggling on the edge of a precipice for life or death, he goes not merely into the vicissitudes of action or passion as the chances of the combat vary; but stops to take an inventory of the geography of the place, the shape of the rock, the precise attitude and display of the limbs and muscles, with the eye and habits of a sculptor. Mr. Cooper does not seem to be aware of the infinite divisibility of mind and matter; and that an ‘abridgment’ is all that is possible or desirable in the most individual representation. A person who is so determined, may write volumes on a grain of sand or an insect’s wing. Why describe the dress and appearance of an Indian chief, down to his tobacco-stopper and button-holes? It is mistaking the province of the artist for that of the historian; and it is this very obligation of painting and statuary to fill up all the details, that renders them incapable of telling a story, or of expressing more than a single moment, group, or figure. Poetry or romance does not descend into the particulars, but atones for it by a more rapid march and an intuitive glance at the more striking results. By considering truth or matter-of-fact as the sole element of popular fiction, our author fails in massing and in impulse. In the midst of great vividness and fidelity of description, both of nature and manners, there is a sense of jejuneness,—for half of what is described is insignificant and indifferent; there is a hard outline,—a little manner; and his most striking situations do not tell as they might and ought, from his seeming more anxious about the mode and circumstances than the catastrophe. In short, he anatomizes his subjects; and his characters bear the same relation to living beings that the botanic specimens collected in a portfolio do to the living plant or tree. The sap does not circulate kindly; nor does the breath of heaven visit, or its dews moisten them. Or, if Mr. Cooper gets hold of an appalling circumstance, he, from the same tenacity and thraldom to outward impressions, never lets it go: He repeats it without end. Thus, if he once hits upon the supposition of a wild Indian’s eyes glaring through a thicket, every bush is from that time forward furnished with a pair; the page is studded with them, and you can no longer look about you at ease or in safety. The high finishing we have spoken of is particularly at variance with the rudeness of the materials. In Richardson it was excusable, where all was studied and artificial; but a few dashes of red ochre are sufficient to paint the body of a savage chieftain; nor should his sudden and frantic stride on his prey be treated with the precision and punctiliousness of a piece of still life. There are other American writers, (such as the historiographer of Brother Jonathan,) who carry this love of veracity to a pitch of the marvellous. They run riot in an account of the dishes at a boarding-house, as if it were a banquet of the Gods; and recount the overturning of a travelling stage-waggon with as much impetuosity, turbulence, and exaggerated enthusiasm, as if it were the fall of Phaeton. ’ In the absence of subjects of real interest, men make themselves an interest out of nothing, and magnify mole-hills into mountains. This is not the fault of Mr. Cooper: He is always true, though sometimes tedious; and correct, at the expense of being insipid. His Pilot is the best of his works; and truth to say, we think it a masterpiece in its kind. It has great unity of purpose and feeling. Every thing in it may be said
——‘To suffer a sea-change
Into something new and strange.’
His Pilot never appears but when the occasion is worthy of him; and when he appears, the result is sure. The description of his guiding the vessel through the narrow strait left for her escape, the sea-fight, and the incident of the white topsail of the English man-of-war appearing above the fog, where it is first mistaken for a cloud, are of the first order of graphic composition; to say nothing of the admirable episode of Tom Coffin, and his long figure coiled up like a rope in the bottom of the boat. The rest is common-place; but then it is American common-place. We thank Mr. Cooper he does not take every thing from us, and therefore we can learn something from him. He has the saving grace of originality. We wish we could impress it, ‘line upon line, and precept upon precept,’ especially upon our American brethren, how precious, how invaluable that is. In art, in literature, in science, the least bit of nature is worth all the plagiarism in the world. The great secret of Sir Walter Scott’s enviable, but unenvied success, lies in his transcribing from nature instead of transcribing from books.
Anterior to the writers above mentioned, were other three, who may be named as occupying (two of them at least) a higher and graver place in the yet scanty annals of American Literature. These were Franklin, the author (whoever he was) of the American Farmer’s Letters, and Jonathan Edwards.
Franklin, the most celebrated, was emphatically an American. He was a great experimental philosopher, a consummate politician, and a paragon of common sense. His Poor Robin was an absolute manual for a country in leading-strings, making its first attempts to go alone. There is nowhere compressed in the same compass so great a fund of local information and political sagacity, as in his Examination before the Privy Council in the year 1754. The fine Parable against Persecution, which appears in his miscellaneous works, is borrowed from Bishop Taylor. Franklin is charged by some with a want of imagination, or with being a mere prosaic, practical man; but the instinct of the true and the useful in him, had more genius in it than all the ‘metre-ballad-mongering’ of those who take him to task.
The American Farmer’s Letters, (published under a feigned name[[30]] a little before the breaking out of the American war,) give us a tolerable idea how American scenery and manners may be treated with a lively, poetic interest. The pictures are sometimes highly coloured, but they are vivid and strikingly characteristic. He gives not only the objects, but the feelings, of a new country. He describes himself as placing his little boy in a chair screwed to the plough which he guides, (to inhale the scent of the fresh furrows,) while his wife sits knitting under a tree at one end of the field. He recounts a battle between two snakes with an Homeric gravity and exuberance of style. He paints the dazzling, almost invisible flutter of the humming-bird’s wing: Mr. Moore’s airiest verse is not more light and evanescent. His account of the manners of the Nantucket people, their frank simplicity, and festive rejoicings after the perils and hardships of the whale-fishing, is a true and heartfelt picture. There is no fastidious refinement or cynical contempt: He enters into their feelings and amusements with the same alacrity as they do themselves; and this is sure to awaken a fellow-feeling in the reader. If the author had been thinking of the effect of his description in a London drawing-room, or had insisted on the most disagreeable features in the mere littleness of national jealousy, he would have totally spoiled it. But health, joy, and innocence, are good things all over the world, and in all classes of society; and, to impart pleasure, need only be described in their genuine characters. The power to sympathize with nature, without thinking of ourselves or others, if it is not a definition of genius, comes very near to it. From this liberal unaffected style, the Americans are particularly cut off by habitual comparisons with us, or upstart claims of their own;—by the dread of being thought vulgar, which necessarily makes them so, or the determination to be fine, which must for ever prevent it. The most interesting part of the author’s work is that where he describes the first indications of the breaking out of the American war—the distant murmur of the tempest—the threatened inroad of the Indians like an inundation on the peaceful back-settlements: his complaints and his auguries are fearful. But we have said enough of this Illustrious Obscure; for it is the rule of criticism to praise none but the over-praised, and to offer fresh incense to the idol of the day.
It is coming more within canonical bounds, and approaching nearer the main subject of this notice, to pay a tribute to the worth and talents of Jonathan Edwards; the well-known author of the Treatise on the Will, who was a Massachusetts divine and most able logician. Having produced him, the Americans need not despair of their metaphysicians. We do not scruple to say, that he is one of the acutest, most powerful, and, of all reasoners, the most conscientious and sincere. His closeness and candour are alike admirable. Instead of puzzling or imposing on others, he tries to satisfy his own mind. We do not say whether he is right or wrong; we only say that his method is ‘an honest method:’ there is not a trick, a subterfuge, a verbal sophism in his whole book. Those who compare his arguments with what Priestley or Hobbes have written on the same question, will find the one petulant and the other dogmatical. Far from taunting his adversaries, he endeavours with all his might to explain difficulties; and acknowledges that the words Necessity, Irresistible, Inevitable, &c., which are applied to external force, acting in spite of the will, are misnomers when applied to acts, or a necessity emanating from the will itself; and that the repugnance of his favourite doctrine to common sense and feeling, (in which most of his party exult as a triumph of superior wisdom over vulgar prejudice,) is an unfortunate stumbling-block in the way of truth, arising out of the structure of language itself. His anxiety to clear up the scruples of others, is equal, in short, to his firmness in maintaining his own opinion.
We could wish that Dr. Channing had formed himself upon this manly and independent model, instead of going through the circle of reigning topics, to strike an affected balance between ancient prejudice and modern paradox; to trim to all opinions, and unite all suffrages; to calculate the vulgar clamour, or the venal sophistry of the British press, for the meridian of Boston. Dr. Channing is a great tactician in reasoning; and reasoning has nothing to do with tactics. We do not like to see a writer constantly trying to steal a march upon opinion without having his retreat cut off—full of pretensions, and void of offence. It is as bad as the opposite extreme of outraging decorum at every step; and is only a more covert mode of attracting attention, and gaining surreptitious applause. We never saw any thing more guarded in this respect than Dr. Channing’s Tracts and Sermons—more completely suspended between heaven and earth. He keeps an eye on both worlds; kisses hands to the reading public all round; and does his best to stand well with different sects and parties. He is always in advance of the line, in an amiable and imposing attitude, but never far from succour. He is an Unitarian; but then he disclaims all connexion with Dr. Priestley, as a materialist; he denounces Calvinism and the Church of England; but to show that this proceeds from no want of liberality, makes the amende honorable to Popery and Popish divines;—is an American Republican and a French Bourbonist—abuses Bonaparte, and observes a profound silence with respect to Ferdinand—likes wit, provided it is serious—and is zealous for the propagation of the Gospel and the honour of religion; but thinks it should form a coalition with reason, and be surrounded with a halo of modern lights. We cannot combine such a system of checks and saving clauses. We are dissatisfied with the want not only of originality of view, but of moral daring. And here we will state a suspicion, into which we have been led by more than one American writer, that the establishment of civil and religious liberty is not quite so favourable to the independent formation, and free circulation of opinion, as might be expected. Where there is a perfect toleration—where there is neither Censorship of the press nor Inquisition, the public take upon themselves the task of surveillance, and exercise the functions of a literary police, like so many familiars of the Holy Office. In a monarchy, or mixed government, there is an appeal open from the government to the people; there is a natural opposition, as it were, between prejudice, or authority, and reason: but when the community take the power into their own hands, and there is but one body of opinion, and one voice to express it, there can be no reaction against it; and to remonstrate or resist, is not only a public outrage, but sounds like a personal insult to every individual in the community. It is differing from the company; you become a black sheep in the flock. There is no excuse or mercy for it. Hence the too frequent cowardice, jesuitism, and sterility, produced by this republican discipline and drilling. Opinions must march abreast—must keep in rank and file, and woe to the caitiff thought that advances before the rest, or turns aside! This uniformity, and equal purpose on all sides, leads (if not checked) to a monstrous Ostracism in public opinion. Whoever outstrips, or takes a separate path to himself, is considered as usurping an unnatural superiority over the whole. He is treated not with respect or indulgence, but indignity.
We like Dr. Channing’s Sermons best; his Criticisms less; his Politics least of all. We think several of his Discourses do great honour to himself and his profession, and are highly respectable models of pulpit-composition. We would instance more particularly, and recommend to the perusal of our readers, that On the Duties of Children. The feeling, the justness of observation, the tenderness, and the severity, are deserving of all praise. The author here appears in a truly amiable and advantageous light. This composition alone makes us believe, that he is a good, and might, with proper direction and self-reliance, have been even a great man. We shall give a long extract with the more pleasure, as we are assuredly actuated by no ill-will towards the reverend author, and only wish to point out how very considerable ability, and probable uprightness of intention, may be warped and injured by a wrong bias, and candidateship for false and contradictory honours.
‘First, You are required to view and treat your parents with respect. Your tender, inexperienced age requires that you think of yourselves with humility, and conduct yourselves with modesty; that you respect the superior age, and wisdom, and improvements of your parents, and observe towards them a submissive deportment. Nothing is more unbecoming you; nothing will render you more unpleasant in the eyes of others, than froward or contemptuous conduct towards your parents. There are children, and I wish I could say there are only a few, who speak to their parents with rudeness, grow sullen at their rebukes, behave in their presence as if they deserved no attention, hear them speak without noticing them, and rather ridicule than honour them. There are many children at the present day who think more highly of themselves than of their elders; who think that their own wishes are first to be gratified; who abuse the condescension and kindness of their parents, and treat them as servants rather than superiors. Beware, my young friends, lest you grow up with this assuming and selfish spirit. Regard your parents as kindly given you by God, to support, direct, and govern you in your present state of weakness and inexperience. Express your respect for them in your manner and conversation. Do not neglect those outward signs of dependence and inferiority which suit your age. You are young, and you should therefore take the lowest place, and rather retire than thrust yourselves forward into notice. You have much to learn, and you should therefore hear, instead of seeking to be heard. You are dependent, and you should therefore ask instead of demanding what you desire, and you should receive every thing from your parents as a favour, and not as a debt. I do not mean to urge upon you a slavish fear of your parents. Love them, and love them ardently; but mingle a sense of their superiority with your love. Feel a confidence in their kindness; but let not this confidence make you rude and presumptuous, and lead to indecent familiarity. Talk to them with openness and freedom; but never contradict with violence; never answer with passion or contempt.
‘Secondly, You should be grateful to your parents. Consider how much you owe them. The time has been, and it was not a long time past, when you depended wholly on their kindness,—when you had no strength to make a single effort for yourselves,—when you could neither speak nor walk, and knew not the use of any of your powers. Had not a parent’s arm supported you, you must have fallen to the earth, and perished. Observe with attention the infants which you often see, and consider that a little while ago you were as feeble as they are: you were only a burden and a care, and you had nothing with which you could repay your parents’ affection. But did they forsake you? How many sleepless nights have they been disturbed by your cries! When you were sick, how tenderly did they hang over you! With what pleasure have they seen you grow up in health to your present state; and what do you now possess which you have not received from their hands? God, indeed, is your great parent, your best friend, and from him every good gift descends; but God is pleased to bestow every thing upon you through the kindness of your parents. To your parents you owe every comfort: you owe to them the shelter you enjoy from the rain and cold, the raiment which covers, and the food which nourishes you. While you are seeking amusements, or are employed in gaining knowledge at school, your parents are toiling that you may be happy, that your wants may be supplied, that your minds may be improved, that you may grow up and be useful in the world. And when you consider how often you have forfeited all this kindness, and yet how ready they have been to forgive you, and to continue their favours, ought not you to look upon them with the tenderest gratitude? What greater monster can there be than an unthankful child, whose heart is never warmed by the daily expressions of parental solicitude; who, instead of requiting his best friend by his affectionate conduct, is sullen and passionate, and thinks his parents will do nothing for him, because they will not do all he desires? Consider how much better they can decide for you than you can for yourselves. You know but little of the world in which you live. You hastily catch at every thing which promises you pleasure; and unless the authority of a parent should restrain you, you would soon rush into ruin, without a thought or a fear. In pursuing your own inclinations, your health would be destroyed, your minds would run to waste, you would grow up slothful, selfish, a trouble to others, and burdensome to yourselves. Submit, then, cheerfully to your parents. Have you not experienced their goodness long enough to know, that they wish to make you happy, even when their commands are most severe? Prove, then, your sense of this goodness by doing cheerfully what they require. When they oppose your wishes, do not think that you have more knowledge than they. Do not receive their commands with a sour, angry, sullen look, which says, louder than words, that you obey only because you dare not rebel. If they deny your requests, do not persist in urging them, but consider how many requests they have already granted you. Do not expect that your parents are to give up every thing to you, but study to give up every thing to them. Do not wait for them to threaten, but when a look tells you what they want, fly to perform it. This is the way in which you can best reward them for all their pains and labours. In this way you will make their house pleasant and cheerful. But if you are disobedient, perverse, and stubborn, you will make home a place of contention, noise, and anger, and your best friends will have reason to wish that you had never been born. A disobedient child almost always grows up ill-natured and disobliging to all with whom he is connected. None love him, and he has no heart to love any but himself. If you would be amiable in your temper and manner, and desire to be beloved, let me advise you to begin your life with giving up your wills to your parents.
‘Again, You must express your respect for your parents, by placing unreserved confidence in them. This is a very important part of your duty. Children should learn to be honest, sincere, open-hearted to their parents. An artful, hypocritical child is one of the most unpromising characters in the world. You should have no secrets which you are unwilling to disclose to your parents. If you have done wrong, you should openly confess it, and ask that forgiveness which a parent’s heart is so ready to bestow. If you wish to undertake any thing, ask their consent. Never begin any thing in the hope you can conceal your design. If you once strive to impose on your parents, you will be led on, from one step to another, to invent falsehoods, to practise artifice, till you will become contemptible and hateful. You will soon be detected, and then none will trust you. Sincerity in a child will make up for many faults. Of children, he is the worst who watches the eyes of his parents, pretends to obey as long as they see him, but as soon as they have turned away, does what they have forbidden. Whatever else you do, never deceive. Let your parents learn your faults from your own lips, and be assured they will never love you the less for your openness and sincerity.’—(Sermons and Tracts, p. 233.)
The whole discourse is prettily turned, and made out with great simplicity and feeling. There is a want neither of heart nor head. Dr. Channing here does well, for he trusts to his own observations and convictions. We may also give what he says in answer to Fenelon, on the subject of self-annihilation, as another favourable specimen of free enquiry, and of a higher or more philosophical cast.
‘We have said that self-crucifixion and love to God are, in Fenelon’s system, the two chief constituents, or elements, of virtue and perfection. To these we will give separate attention, although in truth, they often coalesce, and always imply one another. We begin with self-crucifixion, or what is often called self-sacrifice, and on this we chiefly differ from the expositions of our author. Perhaps the word self occurs more frequently than any other in Fenelon’s writings, and he is particularly inclined to place it in contrast with, and in opposition to, God. According to his common teaching, God and self are hostile influences or attractions, having nothing in common; the one the concentration of all evil, the other of all good. Self is the principle and the seat of all guilt and misery. He is never weary of pouring reproach on self; and, generally speaking, sets no limits to the duty of putting it to a painful death. Now, language like this has led men to very injurious modes of regarding themselves and their own nature, and made them forgetful of what they owe to themselves. It has thrown a cloud over man’s condition and prospects. It has led to self-contempt, a vice as pernicious as pride. A man, when told perpetually to crucify himself, is apt to include under this word his whole nature; and we fear that, under this teaching, our nature is repressed, its growth stinted, its free movements chained, and, of course, its beauty, grace, and power impaired. We mean not to charge on Fenelon this error of which we have spoken, or to hold him responsible for its effects. But we do think that it finds shelter under his phraseology; and we deem it so great, so pernicious, as to need a faithful exposition. Men err in nothing more than in disparaging and wronging their own nature. None are just to themselves. The truth on this great subject is indeed so obscured, that it may startle as a paradox. A human being, justly viewed, instead of being bound to general self-crucifixion, cannot reverence and cherish himself too much. This position, we know, is strong; but strong language is needed to encounter strong delusion. We would teach that great limitations must be set to the duty of renouncing or denying ourselves, and that no self-crucifixion is virtuous but that which concurs with, and promotes self-respect. We will unfold our meaning, beginning with positions which we presume will be controverted by none.’
Dr. Channing, after showing that the mind, the body, and even self-love, are parts of our nature which cannot well be dispensed with, thus proceeds:—
‘Now, it is not true that self-love is our only principle, or that it constitutes ourselves any more than other principles; and the wrong done to our nature by such modes of speech, needs to be resisted. Our nature has other elements or constituents, and vastly higher ones, to which self-love was meant to minister, and which are at war with its excesses. For example, we have reason or intellectual energy given us for the pursuit and acquisition of truth; and this is essentially a disinterested principle, for truth, which is its object, is of a universal, impartial nature. The great province of the intellectual faculty is to acquaint the individual with the laws and order of the divine system; a system, which spreads infinitely beyond himself, and of which he forms a small part; which embraces innumerable beings equally favoured by God, and which proposes, as its sublime and beneficent end, the ever-growing good of the whole. Again, human nature has a variety of affections, corresponding to our domestic and most common relations; affections, which in multitudes overpower self-love, which make others the chief object of our care, which nerve the arm for ever-recurring toil by day, and strengthen the wearied frame to forego the slumbers of the night. Then there belongs to every man the general sentiment of humanity, which responds to all human sufferings—to a stranger’s tears and groans, and often prompts to great sacrifices for his relief. Above all, there is the moral principle, that which should especially be called a man’s self; for it is clothed with a kingly authority over his whole nature, and was plainly given to bear sway over every desire. This is evidently a disinterested principle. Its very essence is impartiality. It has no respect of persons. It is the principle of justice, taking the rights of all under its protection, and frowning on the least wrong, however largely it may serve ourselves. This moral nature especially delights in, and enjoins a universal charity, and makes the heart thrill with exulting joy, at the sight or hearing of magnanimous deeds, of perils fronted, or death endured in the cause of humanity. Now, these various principles, and especially the last, are as truly ourselves as self-love. When a man thinks of himself, these ought to occur to him as his chief attributes. He can hardly injure himself more than by excluding these from his conception of himself, and by making self-love the great constituent of his nature.
‘We have urged these remarks on the narrow sense often given to the word self, because we are persuaded that it leads to degrading ideas of human nature, and to the pernicious notion that we practise a virtuous self-sacrifice in holding it in contempt. We would have it understood, that high faculties form this despised self, as truly as low desires; and we would add, that when these are faithfully unfolded, this self takes rank among the noblest beings in the universe. To illustrate this thought, we ask the reader’s attention to an important, but much-neglected, view of virtue and religion. These are commonly spoken of in an abstract manner, as if they were distinct from ourselves—as if they were foreign existences, which enter the human mind, and dwell there in a kind of separation from itself. Now, religion and virtue, wherever they exist, are the mind itself, and nothing else. A good man’s piety and virtue are not distinct possessions; they are himself, and all the glory which belongs to them, belongs to himself. What is religion? Not a foreign inhabitant—not something alien to our nature, which comes and takes up its abode in the soul. It is the soul itself, lifting itself up to its Maker. What is virtue? It is the soul listening to, and revering and obeying a law which belongs to its very essence—the law of duty. We sometimes smile when we hear men decrying human nature, and in the same breath extolling religion to the skies, as if religion were any thing more than human nature acting in obedience to its chief law. Religion and virtue, as far as we possess them, are ourselves; and the homage which is paid to these attributes, is in truth a tribute to the soul of man. Self-crucifixion, then, should it exclude self-reverence, would be any thing but virtue.
‘We would briefly suggest another train of thought leading to the same result. Self-crucifixion, or self-renunciation, is a work, and work requires an agent. By whom, then, is it accomplished? We answer, by the man himself, who is the subject of it. It is he who is summoned to the effort. He is called by a voice within, and by the law of God, to put forth power over himself, to rule his own spirit, to subdue every passion. Now, this inward power, which self-crucifixion supposes and demands, is the most signal proof of a high nature which can be given. It is the most illustrious power which God confers. It is a sovereignty worth more than that over outward nature. It is the chief constituent of the noblest order of virtues; and its greatness, of course, demonstrates the greatness of the human mind, which is perpetually bound and summoned to put it forth. But this is not all; self-crucifixion has an object, an end. And what is it? Its great end is to give liberty and energy to our nature. Its aim is not to break down the soul, but to curb those lusts and passions which “war against the soul,” that the moral and intellectual faculties may rise into new life, and may manifest their divine original. Self-crucifixion, justly viewed, is the suppression of the passions, that the power and progress of thought, and conscience, and pure love, may be unrestrained. It is the destruction of the brute, that the angel may unfold itself within. It is founded on our godlike capacities, and the expansion and glory of these is the end. Thus the very duty, which by some is identified with self-contempt, implies and imposes self-reverence. It is the belief and the choice of perfection, as our inheritance and our end.’
This is extremely well meant, and very ably executed. There is a primâ philosophiâ view of the subject, which is, we think, above the ordinary level of polemical reasoning in our own country. In the line of argument adopted by our author, there is a strong reflection of the original and masterly views of the innate capacity of the soul for piety and goodness, insisted on in Bishop Butler’s Sermons—a work which has fallen into neglect, partly because of the harshness and obscurity of its style, but more because it contains neither a libel on human nature, nor a burlesque upon religion. There is much in the above train of thought silently borrowed from this profound work. Dr. Channing’s argument is, we think, good and sound against the misanthropes in philosophy, and the cynics in religion, who alike maintain the absolute falsity of all human virtue; but the Bishop of Cambray might say, that, with respect to him, it was not a practical answer, so much as a verbal evasion; neither meeting his views nor removing the source of his complaints. Fenelon assuredly, in wishing to annihilate self, did not wish to extirpate charity and faith, but to crush the old serpent, the great enemy of these. There is no doubt of the capacity of the soul for good and evil; the only question is, which principle prevails and triumphs. The satirist and the man of the world laugh at the pretension to superior sanctity and disinterestedness; the pious enthusiast may then be excused if he weeps at the want of them.
How far does that likeness to God, and sympathy with the whole human race, which Fenelon deprecates the want of, and Dr. Channing boasts of, as the inseparable attribute and chief ornament of man, really take place or not in the present state of things, and as a preparation for another and infinitely more important one? If we regard the moral capacity of man, self is a unit that counts millions. Its essence and its glory, says our optimist, is to comprehend the whole human race in its benevolent regards. Does it do so? The understanding runs along the whole chain of being; the affections stop, for the most part, at the first link in the chain. Sense, appetite, pride, passion, engross the whole of this self, and leave it nearly indifferent, if not averse, to all other claims on its attention. In order that the moral attainments should keep pace with the vaunted capacity of man, knowledge should be identified with feeling. We know that there are a million of other beings of as much worth, of the same nature, made in the image of God like ourselves. Have we the same sympathy with every one of these? Do we feel a million times more for all of them put together, than for ourselves? The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings. Fenelon laments bitterly and feelingly this disparity between duty and inclination, this want of charity, and eating of self into the soul. What is the consequence of the disproportionate ratios in which the head and the heart move? This paltry self, looking upon itself as of more importance than all the rest of the world, fancies itself the centre of the universe, and would have every one look upon it in the same light. Not being able to sympathize with others as it ought, it hates and envies them; is mad to think of its own insignificance in the general system; cannot bear a rival or a superior; despises and tramples on inferiors, and would crush and annihilate all pretensions but its own, that it might be all in all. The worm puts on the monarch, or the god, in thought and in secret; and it is only when it can do so in fact, and in public, and be the tyrant or idol of its fellows, that it is at ease or satisfied with itself. Fenelon was right in crying out (if it could have done any good) for the crucifying of this importunate self, and putting a better principle in its stead.
Dr. Channing’s Essays on Milton and Bonaparte are both done upon the same false principle, of making out a case for or against. The one is full of common-place eulogy, the other of common-place invective. They are pulpit-criticisms. An orator who is confined to expound the same texts and doctrines week after week, slides very naturally and laudably into a habit of monotony and paraphrase; is not allowed to be ‘wise above what is written;’ is grave from respect to his subject, and the authority attached to the truths he interprets; and if his style is tedious or his arguments trite, he is in no danger of being interrupted or taken to task by his audience. Such a person is unavoidably an advocate for certain received principles; often a dull one. He carries the professional license and character out of the pulpit into other things, and still fancies that he speaks ‘with authority, and not as the scribes.’ He may be prolix without suspecting it; may lay a solemn stress on the merest trifles; repeat truisms, and apologize for them as startling discoveries; may play the sophist, and conceive he is performing a sacred duty; and give what turn or gloss he pleases to any subject,—forgetting that the circumstances under which he declares himself, and the audience which he addresses, are entirely changed. If, as we readily allow, there are instances of preachers who have emancipated themselves from these professional habits, we can hardly add Dr. Channing to the number.
His notice of Milton is elaborate and stately, but neither new nor discriminating. One of the first and most prominent passages is a defence of poetry:—
‘Milton’s fame rests chiefly on his poetry; and to this we naturally give our first attention. By those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading, Milton’s eminence in this sphere may be considered only as giving him a high rank among the contributors to public amusement. Not so thought Milton. Of all God’s gifts of intellect, he esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, after something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man’s immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes farther towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what we have now said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those sacred recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigour, and wings herself for her heavenward flight. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, powers of original and ever-growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it “makes all things new” for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendours of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colours which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those moods of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendour, beauty, and happiness, for which it was created.’
There is much more to the same purpose: The whole, to speak freely, is a laboured and somewhat tumid paraphrase on Lord Bacon’s definition of poetry, (which has been often paraphrased before,) where he prefers it to history, ‘as having something divine in it, and representing characters and objects not as they are, but as they ought to be.’ This is the general feature of our author’s writings; they cannot be called mere common-place, but they may be fairly termed ambitious common-place: That is, he takes up the newest and most plausible opinion at the turn of the tide, or just as it is getting into vogue, and would fain arrogate both the singularity and the popularity of it to himself. He hits the public between what they are tired of hearing, and what they never heard before. He has here, however, put the seal of orthodoxy on poetry, and we are not desirous to take it off. If he is inclined to stand sponsor to the Muses, and confirm their offspring at the Fount, he is welcome to do so. It is curious to see strict Professors for a long time denouncing and excommunicating Poetry as a wanton, and then, when they can no longer help it, clasping hands with her as the handmaid of truth; and instead of making her the daughter of ‘the father of lies,’ identifying her with the vital spirit of religion and our happiest prospects.
Dr. Channing is aware, however, that poetry is sometimes liable to abuse, and has given a handle to the ungodly; and as a set-off and salvo to this objection, has a fling at Lord Byron, as the demon who scatters ‘poison and death;’ while Sir Walter Scott is the beneficent genius of poetry, unfolding and imparting new energies and the most delightful impulses to the human breast. In pronouncing the latter sentence, he bows to popular opinion; in the former he considers just as properly what he owes to his profession.
The bulk of the account of Milton, both as a poet and a prose-writer, is, we are constrained to say, mere imitation or amplification of what has been said by others. He observes, ex cathedrâ, and with due gravity, that the forte of Milton is sublimity—that the two first books of Paradise Lost are unrivalled examples of that quality. He then proceeds to show, that he is not without tenderness or beauty, though he has not the graphic minuteness of Cowper or of Crabbe; he next praises his versification in opposition to the critics—dwells on the freshness and innocence of the picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise—maintains that our sympathy with Satan is nothing but the admiration of moral strength of mind—acknowledges the harshness and virulence of Milton’s controversial writings, but blames Dr. Johnson for doing so. All this we have heard or said before. We are not edified at all, nor are we greatly flattered by it. It is as if we should convey a letter to a friend in America, and should find it transcribed and sent back to us with a heavy postage.
We do not, then, set much store by our author’s criticisms, because they sometimes seem to be, in a great measure, borrowed from our own lucubrations. We set still less store by his politics, for they are borrowed from others. We have no objection to the most severe or caustic probing of the character of the late ruler of France; but we do object, in the name both of history and philosophy, to misrepresentations and falsehoods, as the groundwork of such remarks. When England has exploded them, half in shame, and half in anger, the harpy echo lingers in America. The ugly mask has been taken off; but Dr. Channing chooses to lecture on the mask in preference to the head. It would serve no useful purpose, however, to follow him in the details of his Analysis of the Character of Bonaparte. But we shall extract one of his most elaborate passages, in which he favours us with his opinion of the victors at Waterloo and Trafalgar:—
‘The conqueror of Napoleon, the hero of Waterloo, undoubtedly possesses great military talents; but we have never heard of his eloquence in the senate, or of his sagacity in the cabinet; and we venture to say, that he will leave the world without adding one new thought on the great themes, on which the genius of philosophy and legislature has meditated for ages. We will not go down for illustration to such men as Nelson, a man great on the deck, but debased by gross vices, and who never pretended to enlargement of intellect. To institute a comparison, in point of talent and genius, between such men and Milton, Bacon, and Shakspeare, is almost an insult to these illustrious names. Who can think of these truly great intelligences; of the range of their minds through heaven and earth; of their deep intuition into the soul; of their new and glowing combinations of thought; of the energy with which they grasped and subjected to their main purpose the infinite materials of illustration which nature and life afford; who can think of the forms of transcendent beauty and grandeur which they created, or which were rather emanations of their own minds; of the calm wisdom, and fervid, impetuous imagination which they conjoined; of the dominion which they have exercised over so many generations, and which time only extends and makes sure; of the voice of power, in which, though dead, they still speak to nations, and awaken intellect, sensibility, and genius, in both hemispheres;—who can think of such men, and not feel the immense inferiority of the most gifted warriors, whose elements of thought are physical forces and physical obstructions, and whose employment is the combination of the lowest class of objects on which a powerful mind can be employed?’
We are here forcibly reminded of Fielding’s character of Mr. Abraham Adams. ‘Indeed, if this good man had an enthusiasm, or what the vulgar call a blind side, it was this: he thought a Schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest of all schoolmasters, neither of which points he would have given up to Alexander the Great at the head of his army.’ So Dr. Channing very gravely divides greatness into different sorts, and places himself at the top among those who talk about things—commanders at the bottom among those who only do them. He finds fault with Bonaparte for not coming up to his standard of greatness; but in order that he may not, raises this standard too high for humanity. To put it in force would be to leave the ancient and modern world as bare of great names as the wilds of North America. To make common sense of it, any one great man must be all the others. Homer only sung of battles, and it was honour enough for Alexander to place his works in a golden cabinet. Dr. Channing allows Bonaparte’s supremacy in war; but disputes it in policy. How many persons, from the beginning of the world, have united the two in a greater degree, or wielded more power in consequence? If Bonaparte had not gained a single battle, or planned a single successful campaign; if he had not scattered Coalition after Coalition, but invited the Allies to march to Paris; if he had not quelled the factions, but left them to cut one another’s throats and his own; if he had not ventured on the Concordat, or framed a Code of Laws for France; if he had encouraged no art or science or man of genius; if he had not humbled the pride of ‘ancient thrones,’ and risen from the ground of the people to an equal height with the Gods of the earth,—showing that the art and the right to reign is not confined to a particular race; if he had been any thing but what he was, and had done nothing, he would then have come up to Dr. Channing’s notions of greatness, and to his boasted standard of a hero! We in Europe, whether friends or foes, require something beyond this negative merit: we think that Cæsar, Alexander, and Charlemagne, were ‘no babies;’ we think that to move the great masses of power and bind opinions in a spell, is as difficult as the turning a period or winding up a homily; and we are surprised that stanch republicans, who complain that the world bow to birth and rank alone, should turn with redoubled rage against intellect, the instant it became a match for pride and prejudice, and was the only thing that could be opposed to them with success, or could extort a moment’s fear or awe for human genius or human nature.
Dr. Channing’s style is good, though in general too laboured, formal, and sustained. All is brought equally forward,—nothing is left to tell for itself. In the attempt to be copious, he is tautological; in striving to explain every thing, he overloads and obscures his meaning. The fault is the uniform desire to produce an effect, and the supposition that this is to be done by main force.
In one sermon, Dr. Channing insists boldly and loudly on the necessity that American preachers should assume a loftier style, and put forth energies and pretensions to claim attention in proportion to the excited tone of public feeling, and the advances of modern literature and science. He reproaches them with their lukewarmness, and points out to them, as models, the novels of Scott and the poetry of Byron. If Dr. Channing expects a grave preacher in a pulpit to excite the same interest as a tragedy hero on the stage, or a discourse on the meaning of a text of Scripture to enchain the feelings like one of the Waverley Novels, it will be a long time first. The mere proposal is putting the will for the deed, and an instance of that republican assurance and rejection of the idea of not being equal to any person or thing, which convinces pretenders of this stamp that there is no reason why they should not do all that others can, and a great deal more into the bargain.