A swelling and musical close to an anthem. What shall we admire most, then? The variety of the Praise? The ethical wisdom? The genuine love in the selection of the grounds? Or the exquisite skill of the artificer? The "craft of the delicate spirit," who, veiled in humility, has gradually, and as if insensibly, scaled to a station from which he looks upon Monarchs—but from which should they aspire to strike him down, they offend, in violating his right, the majesty of the assembled Gods? In inditing the unhappy passage about the Poet's sole end being to please, I think that Dugald Stewart was beguiled by a prevalent misconception amongst those who have taught the Philosophy of the Fine Arts. The degrading influences are his own. No doubt the Poet draws his poetical being from Pleasure—the great ancestress of his tribe—gentis origo. He worships Pleasure according to the primeval fashion of ancestor-worship. But what is his impulse to compose, to sing? O hear from all the Great Poets since the world began, their answer. They sing because a Spirit is in them. They sing because the muse bids. She pours in thoughts and words; and along with thoughts and words flows in the musical Will. With them it is like the Sybil when invaded by Apollo. The real Poet sings, moved from without or from within. If from without—some fore-shaped or self-shaped subject; if from within, some passion, or some impassioned thought of his own has so deeply and strongly affected him, that he is impelled to seek relief of the burthening emotions and ideas in uttering them. This is the primary cause, and the natural origin of Song. And you may call this, if you choose, an intending of pleasure; but beware how you draw degrading inferences from this first recognition and admission of pleasure. If you weigh the psychological fact, you must look backwards to the attitude of mind which produced the work, and not forwards to the attitude which the work produces. Of the intellective, the moral, the imaginative, the pathetic powers that gave birth to the Iliad—or to the Prometheus Vinctus—to the Knight's Tale—to the Legend of Holiness—to Lear or Othello—or to the Paradise Lost! Who does not instantly feel that he has been summoned to conceive and to contemplate all that is mighty, august, affecting, or terrible in our souls? That he looks into the caverned abyss where the Spirits of Power walk? Even as when, by the side of Anchises, Æneas beholds in pre-existence the assemblage of his kingly descendants, whom their day and the upper air will call to rule the nations with sovereignty, to impose the conditions of peace, to spare the vanquished, and with war to bring down the proud. Lear! The minstrels chanted an ancient rude lay—the infant stage brought a rude drama—to Shakspeare. But long before Minstrel or Theatre—had mother, or grandam, or nurse told to the weeping or shuddering, to the burning or auguring Child, that relique of old memory, that domestic tragedy of the antique British throne—the story attracting and torturing of the Father-king who divided his heart and his realm to the two serpents, who cast out from heart and realm the Dove of his blood—till Time unveiled Truth and Love. Then and there was the seed, the slowly-springing, laid in the deep and kindly soil. From that hour dates the Lear of Shakspeare. Why repeat things that we all know, and have a thousand times said? Because they must be reasserted explicitly, as often as they are implicitly gainsayed; and is it not gainsaying them to affirm that the Poet sings to please, when indeed he sings because this Infinite of knowledges—this accumulation of experiences—this world of sensibilities and sympathies, of affections, passions, emotions, desires of his own and of other men's, inspires him, and will form itself in words? But he looks towards his hoped Auditors with a more direct selfish desire or design. He must have from them the meed of all glorious deeds—the wreath of all glorious doers—Fame. Let Grateful Mankind applaud the Benefactors of Mankind. Ay, he loves life. He would fain live beyond this world, wide as it is, of his own particular bosom—he would live in the bosoms of his contemporaries, and in the bosoms of the generations that are to follow for evermore. Proud as privileged, he asks his due—Recognition. And who that has the ability to render will choose or dare to withhold the tribute? Fame! the nectarean cup—the ambrosial fruit—that confers Immortality! The last best gift that mortals affect to bestow on their fellow-mortals. He who, at some great crisis, achieves a deed which the world shall feel, and whereof the world shall ring—dilates, in consciousness, to comprehend those whom his act shall reach, and those to whom it shall resound. Remember Lord Nelson at Trafalgar—in the moment ere the first gun fires, the word signalled to the awaiting host throughout the Fleet—"England expects." In an instant, the twenty-five millions of compatriot islanders, as if wafted by the winds from their distant homes, are there—spectators of the Fight that yet sleeps, at the next instant to wake, convulsing sea and air—spectators to every single combatant, of his individual heroism. What did that late conqueror of ancient Egypt and what did his fiery warriors understand, when going into battle he said to them—"Forty Centuries look down on you from the summit of yonder Pyramids?" These plains, for four thousand years, have belonged to History. See to it, that the page which you are about adding shall be, for your part, luminous with glory and victory, not
"Black with dishonour, and foul with retreat."
Suppose that he had said, "Forty Centuries to come gaze upon you." The Pyramids seem likely to hold their own in such a reckoning. Perhaps the stretch of time is too long for the imagination of the Gallic Soldier. But surely, so speaking, he had spoken more from his heart and less from his imagination; for he meditated the ages to come, not the ages gone by. To leave a name that shall sound, for good or for ill, loud-echoing from century to century—a name to be heard, when Cæsar, and Alexander, and Hannibal are commemorated—a name insubmergible by the waves of time—inextinguishable by the mists of oblivion—that he desired, and that has he not won? Horace has hung his name too in imagination on the structures of the Cheopses. But how different is the
"Exegi monumentum ære perennius,
Regalique situ Pyramidum altius"
of the Poet! Horace indeed was already safe in pronouncing Homer immortal, with all the heroes upon whom he had conferred the gift. A thousand years! And the portentous strain, with all its Gods and Goddesses, and Kings and Queens, and Men and Women—fresh, bright, vivid, and fragrant, warm and yet reverberating from the Harp—as if the plectrum of the sublime Bard were but that moment withdrawn from the strings—as if the breast that first poured the strain were yet throbbing with quicker emotion—stirred by the pulsating chords and by the words which itself chanted. Horace might well understand the immortality of the Poet. That he claimed it, and judiciously, for himself—he who sung so differently, the sweet, the sprightly, some loftier notes too—but afar from Homer—suggests a reflection upon the nature of durability. The works were born of Love; and by Love they live, for in them the Love lives. Spirat adhuc amor. Those Egyptian, star-contemplating, and star-contemplated Edifices, quarried from the Rock, stand; integral parts of the Planet, immovable—immutable. That is one manner of enduring. Sound is awakened. For an instant it flits through the air and ceases, extinct in silence. Add Love, and you have informed sound with duration—another manner of enduring. The mountain of piled rocks and a touch on the air are become rivals in duration, and we say they will last for ever.
Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Modern State Trials: Revised and Illustrated, with Essays and Notes. By William C. Townsend, Esq., M.A., Q.C., Recorder of Macclesfield. In 2 vols. 8vo. Longman & Co. 1850.
[2] Lord Campbell has made considerable use of Mr Townsend's collection, and publicly acknowledged his obligations, in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Lord Chief-Justices. It is not impossible that we may, before long, present our readers with an extended examination of these two important works of the new Lord Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench.