CONTENTS.
PART I. | |
PAGE | |
THE POET’S DREAM | |
PART II. | |
CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE PAST ANDPRESENT | |
PART III. | |
VOICES OF HOPE ANDWARNING | |
PART IV. | |
ASSOCIATIONS, SECULAR ANDSACRED | |
PART V. | |
BENEFICIAL RESULTS, PROBABLE ANDPOSSIBLE | |
PART VI. | |
LESSONS, PERTINENT ANDPRACTICAL | |
PART I.
THE POET’S DREAM.
“The bard beholds the work achieved,
And, as he sees the shadow rise
Sublime before his wondering eyes,
Starts at the image his own mini conceived.”Kirke White.
Five centuries ago there might have been seen in the streets of old London, one of those gifted mortals who are now and then sent into the world by the Father of spirits, to stamp their name upon the age in which they live, and to enshrine its memory amidst the splendours of their own genius. With a deep and luminous insight into the scenes of nature, the works of art and the ways of men, did there look forth from those large bright eyes of his a poetic soul of an order high and rare. As he passed along the highways of his native city, to which he tells us he had “more kindly love, and fuller appetite than to any other place on earth,” he was gathering materials for a living picture of his times; or rather forming a photograph representation of men around, catching in the magic mirror of his verse the evanescent forms and colours, lights and shades, of our Proteus-like humanity, and there retaining them in stedfast imagery for ever.
Chaucer, though unhappily as a writer not free from moral blemishes, was, like Hogarth, the great historic painter of his age, sketching not armies in battle, or parliaments in conclave, but a people in their costume and intercourse, their business and pastime, their private habits and daily life. In turning over the black-letter volume of his works, we see and hear our ancestors, and talk with them. It is as if the very glance of the eye, the quivering of the lip, and the tones of the voice, had by some strange process been preserved by this wonder-working artist.
But Chaucer often passed beyond the sphere of contemporary realities. The lore of chivalry he was accustomed to weave into a rich tapestry of verse; and ideal realms, and groups of visionary beings, he was wont to sketch with the power and beauty of a Fuseli. It was in one of the playful flights of his untiring fancy, that he touched on scenes and objects strangely associated with the occasion of this little book;—it occurs in a poem, well known as “Chaucer’s Dream.” Throughout the wild revellings of his genius, which he has recorded in that production, it would be beside our present purpose to follow him. The general plot and machinery of the tale are in the extravagantly symbolic spirit of the age,—utterly unlike what could happen at any period, and not at all entering within the range of our conceptions now. In the nineteenth century a poet’s strangest vision would not be like his. But amidst associations out of all congruity with modern times did the bard we have described fashion out a picture, almost the counterpart of what we have lived to witness embodied in the actual work of men. He “had a dream which was not all a dream.” He imagined, standing on an island, a structure, whose wall and gate were “all of glass:”
“And so was closed round about,
That leaveless none came in or out—
And of a suit were all the towers,
Subtilly carven, after flowers
Of uncouth colours, during aye—
That never been, or seen, in May.”
This island of the Crystal Palace he represents under the sovereignty of a beautiful lady, who becomes wedded to a royal knight, and he describes a festival celebrated in tents on a large plain, by
“The Prince, the Queen, and all the rest,”