Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

by John Wilson

"Throngs of celestial visages,
Darkening like water in the breeze,
A holy sadness shared."

Never since the day on which the wondrous edifice, in its consummate glory, first saluted the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneeling saint a thought so sad and so sublime—a thought beyond the reaches of the soul of him whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adornments so far from earth, that the silent company seem sometimes, as light and shadow moves among them, to be in ascension to heaven. But the Sun begins again to look like the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyful light from that awful trance, delights to behold

"Town and Tower,
The Vineyard and the Olive Bower,
Their lustre re-assume;"

and "breathes there a man with soul so dead," that it burns not within him as he hears the heart of the husband and the father breathe forth its love and its fear, remembering on a sudden the far distant whom it has never forgotten—a love and a fear that saddens, but disturbs not, for the vision he saw had inspired him with a trust in the tender mercies of God? Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who may some time or other be a traveller over the wide world, the sacred stanzas that bring the Poem to a close—and it will not fail to comfort thee when sitting all alone by the well in the wilderness, or walking along the strange streets of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnight afloat on far-off seas.

"O ye, who guard and grace my Home
While in far-distant lands we roam,
Was such a vision given to you?
Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes,
Did sullen mist hide lake and skies
And mountains from your view?

"I ask in vain—and know far less,
If sickness, sorrow, or distress
Have spared my Dwelling to this hour;
Sad blindness! but ordained to prove
Our faith in Heaven's unfailing love,
And all-controlling power."

Let us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James Montgomery is truly a religious poet. His popularity, which is great, has, by some scribes sitting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been attributed chiefly to the power of sectarianism. He is, we believe, a sectary; and, if all sects were animated by the spirit that breathes throughout his poetry, we should have no fears for the safety and stability of the Established Church; for in that self-same spirit was she built, and by that self-same spirit were her foundations dug in a rock. Many are the lights—solemn and awful all—in which the eyes of us mortal creatures may see the Christian dispensation. Friends, looking down from the top of a high mountain on a city-sprinkled plain, have each his own vision of imagination—each his own sinking or swelling of heart. They urge no inquisition into the peculiar affections of each other's secret breasts—all assured, from what each knows of his brother, that every eye there may see God—that every tongue that has the gift of lofty utterance may sing His praises aloud—that the lips that remain silent may be mute in adoration—and that all the distinctions of habits, customs, professions, modes of life, even natural constitution and form of character, if not lost, may be blended together in mild amalgamation under the common atmosphere of emotion, even as the towers, domes, and temples, are all softly or brightly interfused with the huts, cots, and homesteads—the whole scene below harmonious because inhabited by beings created by the same God—in his own image—and destined for the same immortality.

It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, in an invidious sense, any of Montgomery's fame to any such cause. No doubt many persons read his poetry on account of its religion, who, but for that, would not have read it; and no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. But so, too, do many persons read Wordsworth's poetry on account of its religion—the religion of the woods—who, but for that, would not have read it; and so, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. So is it with the common-manners-painting poetry of Crabbe—the dark-passion-painting poetry of Byron—the high-romance-painting poetry of Scott—and so on with Moore, Coleridge, Southey, and the rest. But it is to the mens divinior, however displayed, that they owe all their fame. Had Montgomery not been a true poet, all the Religious Magazines in the world could not have saved his name from forgetfulness and oblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholy Poppy—melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness; but as it is, he is like the Rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, planted on the banks of "that river whose streams make glad the city of the Lord."

Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conceived in the spirit of a most exclusive sectarianism, may not be of a very high order, and powerfully impressive on minds whose religious tenets are most irreconcilable and hostile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being unduly concentrated, are not thereby necessarily enfeebled—on the contrary, often strengthened; and there is a grand austerity which the imagination more than admires—which the conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, the conviction from which that austerity grows, is in itself right; for it is a feeling—a conviction of the perfect righteousness of God—the utter worthlessness of self-left man—the awful sanctity of duty—and the dreadfulness of the judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe till the seals have been broken, and the Archangel has blown his trumpet. A religion planted in such convictions as these, may become dark and disordered in its future growth within the spirit; and the tree, though of good seed and in a strong soil, may come to be laden with bitter fruit, and the very droppings of its leaves may be pernicious to all who rest within its shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast than the trunk of a dead faith; and such food, unwholesome though it be, is not so miserable as famine to a hungry soul.

Grant, then, that there may be in Mr Montgomery's poetry certain sentiments, which, in want of a better word, we call Sectarian. They are not necessarily false, although not perfectly reconcilable to our own creed, which, we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, we may be made much the better and the wiser men by meditating upon them; for while they may, perhaps (and we are merely making a supposition), be too strongly felt by him, they may be too feebly felt by us—they may, perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of his poetry than of his faith—and if, in some degree, offensive in the composition of a poem, far less so, or not at all, in that of a life.