You have, here, the thought in its first simplicity. It was not unnatural, after speaking of the body, as a case or tenement of the Soul, the mure that confines it, to say, that as that case wears away and grows thin, life looks through, and is ready to break out.
Daniel, by refining on this sentiment, if by nothing else, shews himself to be the copyist. Speaking of the same Henry, he observes,
And Pain and Grief, inforcing more and more,
Besieg’d the hold that could not long defend;
Consuming so all the resisting store
Of those provisions Nature deign’d to lend,
As that the Walls, worn thin, permit the mind
To look out thorough, and his frailty find.
Here we see, not simply that Life is going to break through the infirm and much-worn habitation, but that the Mind looks through and finds his frailty, that it discovers, that Life will soon make his escape. I might add, that the four first lines are of the nature of the Paraphrase, considered in the last article: And that the expression of the others is too much the same to be original. But we are not yet come to the head of expression. And I choose to confine myself to the single point of view we have before us.
Daniel’s improvement, then, looks like the artifice of a man that would outdo his Master. Though he fails in the attempt: for his ingenuity betrays him into a false thought. The mind, looking through, does not find its own frailty, but the frailty of the building it inhabits. However, I have endeavoured to rectify this mistake in my explanation.
The truth is, Daniel was not a man to improve upon Shakespear. But now comes a writer, that knew his business much better. He chuses to employ this well-worn image, or rather to alter it a little and then employ it, for the conveyance of a very new fancy. If the mind could look through a thin body, much more one that was cracked and battered. And if it be for looking through at all, he will have it look to good purpose, and find, not its frailty only, but much other useful knowledge.
The lines are Mr. Waller’s, and in the best manner of that very refined writer.
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
The Soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light thro’ chinks that time has made.
2. After all, these conceits, I doubt, are not much to your taste. The instance I am going to give, will afford you more pleasure. Is there a passage in Milton you read with more admiration, than this in the Penseroso?
Entice the dewy-feather’d sleep;
And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in airy stream;
Of lively portraiture display’d
Softly on my eye-lids laid.