For their love’s sake, which now no earthly thought
May shake or trouble with its own unrest,
Though the past haunt me as a spirit—yet
I ask not to forget.’
“The whole train of emotion and thought in these verses is of a character wholly unknown to the classic days of Greece and Rome. To imagine any thing corresponding to it in the work of an ancient poet, is to bring together conceptions the most incongruous.
“Here it may be worth while, in order to prevent ourselves from being misunderstood, to observe, that we do not mean to depreciate the value of the study of the ancient poets. After those inquiries by which the truths of religion are established, there are none of more interest or importance than such as relate to the mind and heart of man, and open to us a knowledge of what he has been, and what he may be on earth. But, to attain this knowledge, we must acquaint ourselves with the moral and intellectual character of our race, as it has existed, and exists, under influences and forms of society very unlike each other. In this research, no period can be compared in interest with a few centuries in the history of Athens and Rome, which have left traces still so deeply impressed upon the civilised world. Thus, in studying the history of human nature, the Grecian and Roman poets furnish some of our most important materials. We may discover in them a source of sentiments and opinions that still affect men’s minds. Homer carries us back to remote Pagan antiquity, on which his writings shed a light afforded by no other; and, at the same time, having been regarded as the undisputed master-poet by his countrymen, (for this Plato himself does not question,) he shows us what were the topics by which their imaginations were most affected during the period of their greatest civilisation. The dramatic poets of Athens reflect the Athenian character; and in Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, we find the lineaments of the Augustan age. But the value which thus attaches to their works is not to be confounded with the absolute value of those works as poems adapted through their intrinsic beauties to give delight at the present day. In estimating their naked worth, we must likewise separate from them the interest connected with their antiquity, and all those accidental associations that have been gathering round them for many centuries. We must even put out of view the native genius of the writer, if this genius have been exerted under circumstances so unfavourable as to render it ineffectual to produce what may give pleasure to a pure and highly-cultivated mind. Not-withstanding the traditionary enthusiasm that has existed on the subject, it may well be doubted whether their power of giving vivid pleasure merely as poetical compositions, forms a principal recommendation of the study of the ancient poets. They were not acquainted with the richest realms of mind. It is a mistake to address them as ‘bards illustrious, born in happier days.’ But, to return to our immediate subject.
“After the revival of letters, the forms of what was called Christianity, both among Catholics and Protestants, were in many respects so abhorrent to reason, or feeling, or both, that they could combine in no intimate union with our higher nature, however they might operate on men’s passions or fears. Religious truth was, however, sometimes contemplated in greater purity by minds of the better class; and we early begin to find in poetry some expressions of true religious sentiment. But what advance had been actually made even in the seventeenth century, we may learn from the great work of Milton. It is based on a system of mythology more sublime than the Pagan, and less adapted to degrade the moral feelings, but scarcely less offensive to reason, and spreading all but a Manichæan gloom and blight over the creation of God. Putting forth his vast genius, he struggles with it as he can, moulding it into colossal forms that repel our human sympathies, and lavishing upon it gorgeous treasures of imagination; but even his powers yield and sink at times before its intrinsic incongruity and essential falsehood. Whoever rightly apprehends the character of God, or contemplates as he ought the invisible world, will turn to but few pages of the Paradise Lost, with the hope of finding expressions correspondent to his thoughts and emotions. We feel with pain the inappreciable contrast between the genius displayed in the poetical execution of the work, and the absurdity of its prose story. It is the opposition which this story presents to the most ennobling truths, even more than ‘the want of human interest,’ on which Johnson remarks, that gives to the poem the unattractive character of which he speaks, and which we believe is felt by almost all its readers.
“Doubtless pure religious sentiment breaks out in this and in the other poems of Milton. The concluding line of his Sonnet on his Blindness—
‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’
and numerous other passages of similar beauty, have, we may believe, found an answering feeling in many hearts. But in speaking of those causes which have given a new character to the poetry of later times, it is not our purpose to trace their influence historically. Going back to the days of Grecian and Roman civilisation, we shall take only a few illustrations that may serve to show more clearly the contrast produced by their absence on one hand, or their operation on the other.