REGINALD HEBER.
Born 1783.—Died 1826.
Reginald Heber, equally distinguished for his talents and for his piety, was born on the 21st of April, 1783, at Malpas, in the county of Chester. From his earliest years religion was the predominant feeling of his mind. His passions, which would seem to have been naturally ardent, he quickly learned to hold in subjection; and was thus happily delivered from those stormy agitations and poignant regrets to which those who are formed of more fiery materials are but too frequently liable. Like most other men who have been remarkable for their attainments in after-life, Heber was strongly addicted, while a boy, to extensive miscellaneous reading. Guicciardini and Machiavelli were among his early favourites. He admired the great Florentine historian for his style, and with a freedom from prejudice which indicated the purity of his mind, ventured to make the discovery, that this much-calumniated advocate of freedom was a far better man than the world was inclined to admit. At the same time his study of the sacred Scriptures was incessant. Even while a child, the principal events which they record were so firmly imprinted on his memory, that his friends used to apply to him, when at a loss where to find the account of any important transaction, or any remarkable passage.
In the year 1800 Heber was entered a student of Brazen Nose College, Oxford, where he exhibited on all occasions the same high sense of religion and primitive piety which had distinguished him in his earlier years. His studies in the mean while were pursued with a passionate ardour, particularly all those which were connected with poetry, for the mind of Heber was eminently imaginative; and although circumstances, which I know not whether to denominate fortunate or unfortunate (since in either case he would, like the divine Founder of his religion, have been employed in doing good), prevented him from devoting himself to the study and building of the “lofty rhyme,” his soul was yet a fountain, as it were, of poetry, which, if possible, cast additional beauty and splendour on his faith. However, as I am not, on the present occasion, engaged in viewing Heber as a poet, or as a divine, it will not be necessary for me to enter minutely into a description of his poetical or theological studies. His “Palestine,” the principal contribution which he has made to our rich poetical literature, was a juvenile performance, written before or soon after he had completed his twentieth year; but the effect which it produced on those who heard it recited in the theatre of the college was more extraordinary, perhaps, than the bare reading of the poem would lead one to conceive; though the judgment of those who then heard it has since been confirmed by the public. “None,” says an able writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, who heard Reginald Heber recite his ‘Palestine’ in that magnificent theatre, “will ever forget his appearance—so interesting and impressive. It was known that his old father was somewhere sitting among the crowded audience, when his universally admired son ascended the rostrum; and we have heard that the sudden thunder of applause which then arose so shook his frame, weak and wasted by long illness, that he never recovered it, and may be said to have died of the joy dearest to a parent’s heart. Reginald Heber’s recitation, like that of all poets whom we have heard recite, was altogether untrammelled by the critical laws of elocution, which were not set at defiance, but either by the poet unknown or forgotten; and there was a charm in his somewhat melancholy voice, that occasionally faltered, less from a feeling of the solemnity and even grandeur of the scene, of which he was himself the conspicuous object—though that feeling did suffuse his pale, ingenuous, and animated countenance—than from the deeply-felt sanctity of his subject, comprehending the most awful mysteries of God’s revelations to man. As his voice grew bolder and more sonorous in the hush, the audience felt that this was not the mere display of the skill and ingenuity of a clever youth, the accidental triumph of an accomplished versifier over his compeers, in the dexterity of scholarship, which is all that can generally be truly said of such exhibitions; but that here was a poet indeed, not only of bright promise, but of high achievement; one whose name was already written in the roll of the immortals. And that feeling, whatever might have been the share of the boundless enthusiasm with which the poem was listened to, attributable to the influence of the ‘genius loci,’ has been since sanctioned by the judgment of the world, that has placed ‘Palestine’ at the very head of the poetry on divine subjects of this age. It is now incorporated for ever with the poetry of England.”
In this eloquent tribute to the memory of Heber there appears to be but one error; it is that which attributes the death of Reginald’s father to the influence of excessive joy on a frame debilitated by illness; a report which we are assured by the widow of our traveller was wholly without foundation. During the same year, Napoleon conceived the insane design of invading England; and thus roused in the ardent breasts of our countrymen a fierce spirit of resistance, which affected even the peaceful college student, who, to use the familiar expression of Heber in describing himself thus engaged, “fagged and drilled by turns.” Neither Napoleon nor his army, however, had been doomed by Providence to lay their bones in English clay, as, had the invasion taken place, they must have done; and our traveller’s military enthusiasm was quickly suffered to cool.
Early in the year 1804, Heber sustained one of the heaviest calamities which men can experience on this side of the grave—the loss of a father; which he bore with that deep but meek sorrow which a youth full of religious hope and untiring resignation to the will of Providence might be naturally expected to feel. In the autumn of the same year he was elected a fellow of All Souls; shortly after which his academical career terminated, and he exchanged the mimic world of the university for that far more arduous scene where many an academical star has grown dim, though Heber, with the happy fortune which usually attends the virtuous, continued even in the great theatre of the world to command the approval and admiration of mankind.
About the middle of the year 1805, he accompanied his early friend, Mr. John Thornton, whose virtues would appear to have been akin to his own, on a tour through the north of Europe. They proceeded by sea to Gottenburg in Sweden, where they experienced the effect of that strangeness and novelty, which is felt once by all persons who travel in a foreign country, but which can never, by any possibility, visit the mind a second time. Here they purchased a carriage, and proceeded through the wildest and most sublime scenery, interspersed with meadows and corn-fields, on a tour among the mountains of Norway. At intervals, dispersed over craggy, desolate heaths, immense numbers of cairns and Runic columns were discovered,—which, with pine forests of sombre hue, large bays of the sea nearly land-locked, and appearing like so many lakes; cascades, rocks, cloud-capped mountains,—produced a series of impressions upon the mind, characterized by so high a degree of solemn grandeur, that even the vast solitudes of the Brenner Alps or Wetterhorn could scarcely inspire a deeper sense of sublimity. Amid those wild landscapes the natives amused themselves with wolf-hunting on sledges, during the winter; but their ferocious game sometimes come out in such multitudes from the woods, that even the most skilled huntsmen were in danger.
At Munkholm, or Monk’s Island, called the Bastille du Nord, Heber saw, among other prisoners, a very old man, who had been confined there for above fifty years, and had lost in a great measure the use of his faculties; they were much moved by his appearance, and the answers which he gave. On being asked how old he was, he answered three hundred years. His crime was variously reported: some said he was sent there by his relations for violent behaviour to his father; others as being a spend-thrift; and M. Leganger said, as being mad. A pretty government this, where a man is shut up for his whole life, and three or four different reasons given for his imprisonment, all equally uncertain! In Norway, as well as in some parts of Hadramaut and the Coromandel coast, the cattle are fed upon the refuse of fish, which fattens them rapidly, but seems, at the same time, totally to change their nature, and render them unmanageably ferocious.
Heber’s stay in Norway was short. He had the talent to describe whatever was presented to his view, but his mild and gentle nature inspired him with no sympathy for the craggy, barren, desolate scenery of the Norwegian mountains; and he appears to have hastened his return to the abodes of civilization from an instinctive perception of this fact. Upon passing from Norway into Sweden, they spent some time at Upsala and the capital; from whence they crossed the Gulf of Bothnia in a fishing-boat, to Abo, in Finland. From hence, however, as it seems to have contained nothing worth seeing, they proceeded with all possible celerity, the approved English mode of travelling, to Petersburg. Notwithstanding the rapidity of their movements, they found time to make one discovery, which, as it is the echo of what most travellers repeat of the countries they visit, I insert for the honour of the Finns and Russians: “In one point,” says he, “both the Finlanders and Russians are unfortunately agreed, I mean in the proverbial knavery of the lower classes. In Sweden every thing was secure from theft, and our carriage, with its harness, cushions, &c., stood every night untouched in the open street. But we soon found how very inferior the Sclavonian race is to the Gothic in honesty, and were obliged to keep a constant watch. I cannot account for this apparently generic difference. If the Russians only had been thieves I should have called it the effects of the slavery of the peasants, but Swedish Finland is just as bad, and the peasants are as free as in England.”
Our travellers remained at St. Petersburg until the 30th of December, amusing themselves with learning the German language, and in seeing sights, and then departed for Moscow, travelling at the same prodigious rate as when they fled thither from Abo. “Our mode of travelling,” says Heber, “deserves describing, both as very comfortable in itself, and as being entirely different from every thing in England. We performed the journey in kabitkas, the carriages usually employed by the Russians in their winter journeys: they are nothing more than a very large cradle, well covered with leather, and placed on a sledge, with a leather curtain in front; the luggage is placed at the bottom, the portmanteaus serving for an occasional seat, and the whole covered with a mattress, on which one or more persons can lie at full length, or sit supported by pillows. In this attitude, and well wrapped up in furs, one can scarcely conceive a more luxurious mode of getting over a country, when the roads are good, and the weather not intense; but in twenty-four or twenty-five degrees of frost (Reaumur), no wrapping can keep you quite warm; and in bad roads, of which we have had some little experience, the jolting is only equalled by the motion of a ship in a storm.”