As innocent a matter, touching the offering him a pair of gloves containing forty pounds, and his taking the first and returning the last, saying he preferred his gloves without lining, hath been made publick with like triumph to his own good fame; but alack! these feathers show which way sets the wind.
WORDSWORTH, BYRON, SCOTT, AND SHELLEY.
William Wordsworth is generally allowed to have exercised a deeper and more permanent influence upon the literature and modes of thinking of our age, than any of the great poets who lived and wrote during the first quarter of the present century. In proportion as his fame was of slower growth, and his poems were longer in making their way to the understanding and affections of his countrymen, so their roots seem to have struck deeper down, and the crown of glory that encircles his memory is of gold, that has been purified and brightened by the fiery ordeal through which it has passed. Tennyson says of the laureate wreath which he so deservedly wears, that it is
Greener from the brows
Of him who uttered nothing base.
And this, which seems at first sight negative praise, is, in reality, a proof of exquisite discernment; for it is just that which constitutes the marked distinction between Wordsworth and the other really original poets who are likely to share with him the honor of representing poetically to posterity the early part of the nineteenth century. In their crowns there is alloy, both moral and intellectual. His may not be of so imperial a fashion; the gems that stud it may be less dazzling, but the gold is of ethereal temper, and there is no taint upon his robe. Weakness, incompleteness, imperfection he had, for he was a mortal man of limited faculties, but spotless purity is not to be denied him—he uttered nothing base. Our readers will anticipate us in ranking with him, as the representative poets of their age, Byron, Scott, and Shelley. Of each of these we shall say a few words, especially in this representative character.
Lord Byron's poems are the actual life-experience of a man whose birth and fortune enabled him to mix with the highest society, and whose character led him to select for his choice that portion of it which pursued pleasure as the main if not the sole object of existence. Under a thin disguise of name, country, and outward incident, they present us with the desires which actuated, the passions which agitated, and the characters which were the ideals of the fashionable men and women of the earlier part of this century. Limited and monotonous as they are in their essential nature, ringing perpetual changes upon one passion and one phase of passion, the brilliance of their diction, the voluptuous melody of their verse, the picturesque beauty of their scenery, well enough represent that life of the richer classes, which chases with outstretched arms all the Protean forms of pleasure, only to find the subtle essence escape as soon as grasped, leaving behind in its place weariness, disappointment, and joyless stagnation. The loftiest joys they paint are the thrillings of the sense, the raptures of a fine nervous organization; their pathos is the regret, and their wisdom the languor and the satiety of the jaded voluptuary. These form the staple, the woof of Lord Byron's poetry, and with it is enwoven all that which gives outward variety and incessant stimulating novelty to the pursuits of an Englishman of fashion. These pursuits are as numerous, as absorbing, and demand as much activity of a kind as those of the student or the man of business. Among them will be found those upon which the student and the man of business are employed, though in a different spirit, and with a different aim. Thus we frequently see among the votaries of pleasure men who are fond of literature, of art, of politics, of foreign travel, of all manly and active enterprise but all these will be pursued, not as duties to be done, in an earnest, hopeful, self-sacrificing spirit, "that scorns delights and lives laborious days," but for amusement, for immediate pleasure to be reaped, as a resource against ennui and vacuity, to which none but the weakest and most effeminate nature will succumb. This difference of object and of motive necessitates a difference in the value of the results. The soil, which is plowed superficially, and for a quick return, will bear but frail and fading flowers; the planter of oaks must toil in faith and patience, and sublime confidence in the future. And so, into whatever field the wide and restless energies of men like Lord Byron carry them, they bring home no treasures that will endure—no marble of which world-lasting statue or palace may be hewn or built—no iron, of which world-subduing machines may be wrought. Poems, pictures, history, science, the magnificence and loveliness of Nature, cities of old renown, adventures of desperate excitement, new manners, languages, and characters, supply them with an ever fresh flow of sensation and emotion, keep the senses and the faculties cognate with sense in a pleasant activity, but no well-based generalization is gained for the understanding; facts are not even carefully observed and honestly studied; pleasant sensation was the object, and that once obtained, there is no more worth in that which produced it, though in it may lie a law of God's manifestation, one of those spiritual facts, to know and obey which would seem the chief purpose of man's existence, to discover and make them known, the noblest glory and highest function of genius. It is in this spirit that Lord Byron has questioned Life: "Oh! where can pleasure be found?" and Life, echo-like, would only answer, "Where!" It is because he put that question more earnestly, lived up to its spirit more fearlessly, and more faithfully and experimentally reported the answer, that he is so eminently a representative poet—representative of what a large and important class in every country actually is, of what a far larger class aspires to be. It is in his fearless attempt at solving the problem of life in his own way, his complete discomfiture, and his unshrinking exhibition of that discomfiture, that the absolute and permanent value of his social teaching consists. For he was endowed with such gifts of nature and of fortune, so highly placed, so made to attract and fascinate, adorned with such beauty and grace, with such splendor of talents, with such quick susceptibility to impressions, with such healthy activity of mind, with such rich flow of speech, with such vast capacity of enjoyment, that no one is likely to make the experiment he made from a higher vantage-ground, with more chances of success. And the result of his experience he has given to the world, and has thrown over the whole the charm of a clear, vigorous, animated style, at once masculine, and easy, and polished, sparkling with beauty, instinct with life, movement, and variety; by turns calm, voluptuous, impassioned, enthusiastic, terse, and witty, and always most prominent that unstudied grace, that Rubens-like facility of touch, which irresistibly impresses the reader with a sense of power, of strength not put fully forth, of resources carelessly flowing out with exhaustless prodigality, not husbanded with timid anxiety, and exhibited with pompous ostentation. It is the combination of these qualities of the artist, with his peculiar fearlessness and honesty of avowal—his plain, unvarnished expression of what he found pleasant, and chose for his good, that will ever give him a high, if not almost the highest place among the poets of the nineteenth century, even with those readers who perceive and lament the worthlessness of his matter, the superficiality and scantiness of his knowledge, the want of purity and elevation in his life and character. Those will best appreciate his wonderful talents who are acquainted with the works of his countless imitators, who have admirably succeeded in re-producing his bad morality, his superficial thoughts, and his characterless portraits, without the fervor of his feeling, the keenness of his sensations, the ease and vigor of his language, the flash of his wit, or the knowledge of the world, and the manly common-sense which redeemed and gave value to what else had been entirely worthless.
If the name of Lord Byron naturally links itself with the fashionable life of great cities; with circles where men and women live mutually to attract and please each other; where the passions are cherished as stimulants and resources against ennui, are fostered by luxurious idleness, and heightened by all the aids that an old and elaborate material civilization can add to the charms of beauty, and the excitements of brilliant assemblies; where art and literature are degraded into handmaids and bondslaves of sensuality; where the vanity of social distinction fires the tongue of the eloquent speaker, wakens the harp of the poet, colors the canvas of the painter, moulds the manners and sways the actions, directs even the loves and the hatreds of all; no less naturally does the name of Sir Walter Scott stand as the symbol and representative of the life and tastes of the country aristocracy, who bear the titles and hold the lands of the feudal barons, and of the country gentlemen whose habits and manners are in such perfect contrast to those of the Squire Westerns to whose places they have succeeded. Possessing in a high degree the active and athletic frame, the robust health, the hardy training, the vigorous nerve, the bold spirit, the frank bearing, and the genial kindness of the gentlemen of the olden time, he could heartily appreciate and unhesitatingly approve all that time and revolution had spared of feudal dominion and territorial grandeur. The ancient loyalty, so happily tempering the firmness of a principle with the fervor of a feeling, never beat higher in the heart of a cavalier of the seventeenth than in that of the Scottish advocate of the nineteenth century. Every one will remember that he refused to write a life of Mary Queen of Scots, because in reference to her conduct, his feelings were at variance with his judgment. And in painting those old times in which his imagination delighted to revel, all that would most have revolted our modern mildness of manners, and shocked our modern sense of justice, was softened down or dropped out of sight, and the nobler features of those ages, their courage, their devotion, their strength and clearness of purpose, their marked individuality of character, their impulses of heroism and delicacy, their manly enterprise, their picturesque costumes and manners of life, were all brought into bold relief, and placed before the reader with such fullness of detail, in such grandeur of outline, in such bright and vivid coloring, as gave even to the unimaginative a more distinct conception of, and a more lively sympathy with the past than they could gain for themselves of the present, as it was whirling and roaring round them, confusing them with its shifting of hues and forms, and stunning them with its hurricane of noises. And apart from the fascination which History, so presented, must have for the descendants of men and classes of historical renown, for the hereditary rulers and the privileged families of a great country, and though probably the creator of the splendid pageantry was definitely conscious of no such purpose, yet there must have mingled with this fascination, and have infused into it a deeper and more personal feeling, the regretful sense that the state of society so glowingly depicted had passed away—a foreboding that even its last vestiges were fast disappearing before the wave of democratic equality, and the uprising of a new aristocracy of wealth and intellect. If at the time those famous verse and prose romances came upon the world in a marvelously rapid succession, all that the public were conscious of was a blind pleasure and unreflecting delight, it is no less true that in an age of revolution they raised up before it in a transformed and glorified life the characters, the institutions, the sentiments and manners of an age of absolute government by the strong arm or by divine right—of an age of implicit belief, inspiring heroic action, sanctioning romantic tenderness, harmonizing and actuating all the virtues that adorn and elevate fallen humanity; and that since then there has arisen in our country a thoughtful reverence and love for the past—a sense of the livingness and value of our history—a desire and a determination to appreciate and comprehend, and so not forfeit, the inheritance of wisdom, forethought, brave action, and noble self-denial, which our ancestors have bequeathed to us. How many false and puerile forms this feeling has taken it does not fall within our present scope to notice. In spite of white waistcoat politics and Pugin pedantries, the feeling is a wise and a noble one—one which is the surety and the safeguard of progress; and that much of it is owing to the interest excited so widely and so deeply by Sir Walter Scott's writings, those will be least disposed to deny who have thought most on the causes which mould a nation's character, and the influences which work out a nation's destiny.
It is in no fanciful or arbitrary spirit of system that, while we assign to Byron the empire over the world of fashion and of pleasure, and seek the mainspring of Scott's popularity in the sway of old historical traditions over a landed aristocracy, and the longing regret with which they look back to a state of society passed or rapidly passing away, we should regard Shelley as the poetical representative of those whose hopes and aspirations and affections rush forward to embrace the great Hereafter, and dwell in rapturous anticipation on the coming of the golden year, the reign of universal freedom, and the establishment of universal brotherhood. By nature and by circumstance he was marvelously fitted for his task—gentle, sensitive, and fervid, he shrank from the least touch of wrong, and hated injustice with the zeal and passion of a martyr; while, as if to point him unmistakably to his mission, and consecrate him by the divine ordination of facts, he was subjected at his first entrance into life to treatment, both from constituted authority and family connection, so unnecessarily harsh, so stupidly cruel, as would have driven a worse man into reckless dissipation, a weaker man into silent despair. "Most men," he says himself,
"Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song."