Whether this be the best or most usual training for the poet may well be doubted, but it is quite indubitable that such discipline will soonest open a man's eyes to the evils of existing institutions, and the vices of old societies; and will lend to his invectives that passion which raises them above satire—to his schemes, that enthusiasm which redeems them from being crotchets; will turn his abstract abhorrence of oppression into hatred against the oppressors—his loathing of corruption into a withering scorn and contempt for tyrants and their tools, the knaves and hypocrites who use holy names and noble offices to promote their selfish ends, and to fetter and enslave their brother men. And so it happened with Shelley. The feelings of poignant anguish and bitter indignation, which had been roused in him by cruelty and injustice toward himself, colored all his views of society, and at once sharpened his hostility to the civil and religious institutions of his country, and lent more glowing colors to the rainbow of promise that beamed upon him from the distance, through the storm of bloodshed and revolution. Add to to this, that his mind was ill-trained, and not well furnished with facts; that he reveled with the delight of an eagle on the wing in the most audacious speculations, and was drawn on by the force of mental gravitation toward the boldest and most startling conclusions; that he was at once pure and impassioned—sensuous and spiritual; that he could draw from form, color, and sound a voluptuous enjoyment, keener and more intense than the grosser animal sensations of ordinary men; that his intellect hungered and thirsted after absolute truth, after central being, after a living personal unity of all things. Thus he united in himself many of the mightiest tendencies of our time—its democratic, its skeptical, its pantheistic, its socialistic spirit; and thus he has become the darling and the watchword of those who aim at reconstructing society, in its forms, in its principles, and in its beliefs—who regard the past as an unmitigated failure, as an entire mistake—who would welcome the deluge for the sake of the new world that would rise after the subsidence of the waters. Nor has their affectionate admiration been ill-bestowed. With one exception, a more glorious poet has not been given to the English nation; and if we make one exception, it is because Shakspeare was a man of profounder insight, of calmer temperament, of wider experience, of more extensive knowledge; a greater philosopher, in fact, and a wiser man; not because he possessed more vital heat, more fusing, shaping power of imagination, or a more genuine poetic impulse and inspiration. After the passions and the theories, which supplied Shelley with the subject-matter of his poems have died away and become mere matters of history, there will still remain a song, such as mortal man never sung before, of inarticulate rapture and of freezing pain—of a blinding light of truth and a dazzling weight of glory, translated into English speech, as colored as a painted window, as suggestive, as penetrating, as intense as music.
We have assigned to three great poets of our age the function of representing three classes, distinct in character, position, and taste. But as these classes intermingle and become confused in life, so that individuals may partake of the elements of all three, and, in fact, no one individual can be exactly defined by his class type, so the poets that represent them have, of course an influence and a popularity that extend far beyond the classes to whose peculiar characteristics and predominant tastes we have assumed them to have given form and expression. Men read for amusement, to enlarge the range of their ideas and sympathies, to stimulate the emotions that are sluggish or wearied out: and thus the poet is not only the interpreter of men and of classes to themselves, but represents to men characters, modes of life, and social phenomena with which they are before unacquainted, excites interest, and arouses sympathy, and becomes the reconciler, by causing misunderstandings to vanish, as each man and each class comprehends more fully the common humanity that lies under the special manifestation, the same elemental passions and affections, the same wants, the same desires, the same hopes, the same beliefs, the same duties. It is thus especially that poets are teachers, that they aid in strengthening and civilizing nations, in drawing closer the bonds of brotherhood.
Wordsworth has said of himself, "The poet is a teacher. I wish to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing." If we are asked wherein lay the value of his teaching, we reply, that it lay mainly in the power that was given him of unfolding the glory and the beauty of the material world, and in bringing consciously before the minds of men the high moral function that, belonged in the human economy to the imagination, and in thereby redeeming the faculties of sense from the comparatively low and servile office of ministering merely to the animal pleasures, or what Mr. Carlyle has called "the beaver inventions." That beside, and in connection with this, he has shown the possibility of combining a state of vivid enjoyment, even of intense passion, with the activity of thought, and the repose of contemplation. He has, moreover, done more than any poet of his age to break down and obliterate the conventional barriers that, in our disordered social state, divide rich and poor into two hostile nations; and he has done this, not by bitter and passionate declamations on the injustice and vices of the rich, and on the wrongs and virtues of the poor, but by fixing his imagination on the elemental feelings, which are the same in all classes, and drawing out the beauty that lies in all that is truly natural in human life. Dirt, squalor, disease, vice, and hard-heartedness, are not natural to any grade of life; where they are found, they are man's work, not God's; and the poet's business is not with the misery of man's making, but with the escape from that misery revealed to those that have eyes to see, and ears to hear—we mean, that no true poet will be merely a painter of that which is low, deformed, essentially inhuman, as his ultimate and highest aim, though, as means, he may, as the greatest poets have done, use them to move and rouse the sleeping soul. This, we say, in answer to those that asserted that Wordsworth was not a true painter of manners and character from humble life: we say he was, for that he painted, as minutely as served his aim, that which was essential to its occupations and its general outward condition—that which it must be, if Christian men are to look upon the inequalities of wealth and station as a permanent element in society. And all this which he taught in his writings, he taught equally by his life. And furthermore, he manifested a deep sense of the sacredness of the gift of genius, and refused to barter its free exercise for aught that the world could hold out to him, either to terrify or to seduce; and he lived to prove, not only that the free exercise of poetic genius is its own exceeding great reward, bringing a rich harvest of joy and peace, and the sweet consciousness of duty well discharged, and God's work done; but, what was quite as much needed in our time, he showed that for the support and nourishment of poetic inspiration, no stimulants of social vanity, vicious sensuality, or extravagant excitement, were requisite, and that it could flourish in the highest vigor on the simple influence of external nature, and the active exercise of the family affections.
THE LAST DAYS OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.
[Translated from the French of Alexandre Dumas with omissions and additions, by Miss Jane Strickland.]
The knowledge of an extensively organized conspiracy embittered the last years of the Emperor Alexander, and increased his constitutional melancholy. His attachment to Tzarsko Zelo made him linger longer at his summer palace than was prudent in a man subject to erysipelas. The wound in his leg re-opened with very unfavorable symptoms, and he was compelled to leave his favorite residence in a closed litter for St. Petersburgh; and the skill and firmness of Mr. Wyllie, his Scotch surgeon, alone saved the diseased limb from amputation. As soon as he was cured, he returned again to Tzarsko Zelo, where the spring found him as usual alone, without a court or chamberlain, only giving audience to his ministers twice a week. His existence resembled rather that of an anchorite weeping for the sins of his youth, than that of a great emperor who makes the happiness of his people.
He regulated his time in the following manner: in summer he rose at five, and in winter at six o'clock every morning, and as soon as the duties of the toilet were ended, entered his cabinet, in which the greatest order was observed.
He found there a cambric handkerchief folded, and a packet of new pens. He only used these pens in signing his name, and never made use of them again. As soon as he had concluded this business, he descended into the garden, where, notwithstanding the report of a conspiracy which had existed two years against his life and government, he walked alone, with no other guards than the sentinels always stationed before the palace of Alexander. At five he returned, to dine alone, and after his solitary meal was lulled to sleep by the melancholy airs played by the military band of the guard regiment on duty. The selection of the music was always made by himself, and he seemed to sink to repose, and to awake, with the same sombre dispositions and feelings which had been his companions throughout the day.
His empress, Elizabeth, lived like her consort, in profound solitude, watching over him like an invisible angel. Time had not extinguished in her heart the profound passion with which the youthful Czarowitz had inspired her at first sight, and which she had preserved in her heart, pure and inviolate. His numerous and public infidelities could not stifle this holy and beautiful attachment, which formed at once the happiness and misery of a delicate and sensitive woman.