From Hogg's Instructor.
THE LATE D. M. MOIR.
BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.
Pleasant and joyous was the circle wont to assemble now and then (not every night, as the public then fondly dreamed) in Ambrose's, some twenty-five years ago: not a constellation in all our bright sky, at present, half so brilliant. There sat John Wilson, "lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye," his hair somewhat thicker, and his eye rather brighter, and his complexion as fresh, and his talk as powerful, as now. There Lockhart appeared, with his sharp face, adunco naso, keen poignant talk, and absence of all enthusiasm. There Maginn rollicked and roared, little expecting that he was ever destined to stand a bankrupt and ruined man over Bunyan's dust, and cry, "Sleep on, thou Prince of Dreamers!" There De Quincey bowed and smiled, while interposing his mild but terrible and unanswerable "buts," and winding the subtle way of his talk through all subjects, human, infernal, and divine. There appeared the tall military form of old Syme, alias Timothy Tickler, with his pithy monosyllables, and determined nil admirari bearing. There the Ettrick Shepherd told his interminable stories, and drank his interminable tumblers. There sat sometimes, though seldom, a young man of erect port, mild gray eye, high head, rich quivering lips, and air of simple dignity, often forgetting to fill or empty his glass, but never forgetting to look reverently to the "Professor," curiously and admiringly to De Quincey, and affectionately to all: it was Thomas Aird. There occasionally might be seen Macnish of Glasgow, with his broad fun; Doubleday of Newcastle, then a rising litterateur; Leitch, the ventriloquist, (not professionally so, and yet not much inferior, we believe, to the famous Duncan Macmillan); and even a stray Cockney or two who did not belong to the Cockney school. There, too, the "Director-general of the Fine Arts," old Bridges, (uncle to our talented friend, William Bridges, Esq. of London,) was often a guest, with his keen black eye, finely-formed features, rough, ready talk, and a certain smack audible on his lips when he spoke of a beautiful picture, a "leading article" in "Maga," or of some of the queer adventures (quorum pars fuit) of Christopher North. And there, last, not least, was frequently seen the fine fair-haired head of Delta, the elegant poet, the amiable man, and the author of one of the quaintest and most delightful of our Scottish tales, "Mansie Wauch."
That brilliant circle was dissolved long ere we knew any of its members. We question if it was ever equalled, except thrice: once by the Scriblerus Club, composed of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Bolingbroke; again by the "Literary Club," with its Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Beauclerk, Gibbon, and Fox: and more recently by the "Round-table," with its Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, and their minor companions. It is now, we need not say, entirely dissolved, although most of its members are yet alive, and although its doings and sayings have been of late imitated in certain symposia, reminding us, in comparison with the past, of the shadowy feasts of the dead beside real human entertainments. The "nights" of the North are diviner than the "days."
From this constellation, we mean, at present, to cut out one "bright, particular star," and to discourse of him. This is Delta, the delightful. We have not the happiness of Dr. Moir's acquaintance, nor did we ever see him, save once. It was at the great Edinburgh Philosophic Feed of 1846, when Macaulay, Whately, and other lions, young and old, roared, on the whole, rather feebly, and in vulgar falsetto, over their liberal provender. Delta, too, was a speaker, and his speech had two merits, at least, modesty and brevity, and contrasted thus well with Whately's egotistical rigmarole, Macaulay's labored paradox, and Maclagan's inane bluster. He was, we understood afterwards, in poor health at the time, and did not do justice to himself. But we have been long familiar with his poems in "Blackwood" and the "Dumfries Herald," to which he occasionally contributed. We remember well when, next to a paper by North, or a poem by Aird, we looked eagerly for one by Delta in each new number of "Ebony;" and we now cheerfully proceed to say a few words about his true and exquisite genius.
We may call Delta the male Mrs. Hemans. Like her, he loved principally the tender, the soft, and the beautiful. Like her, he excelled in fugitive verses, and seldom attempted, and still more seldom succeeded, in the long or the labored poem. Like her, he tried a great variety of styles and measures. Like her, he ever sought to interweave a sweet and strong moral with his strains, and to bend them all in by a graceful curve around the Cross. But, unlike her, his tone was uniformly glad and genial, and he exhibited none of that morbid melancholy which lies often like a dark funeral edge around her most beautiful poems: and this, because he was a masculine shape of the same elegant genus.
Delta's principal powers were cultured sensibility, fine fancy, good taste, and an easy, graceful style and versification. He sympathized with all the "outward forms of sky and earth, with all that was lovely, and pure, and of a good report" in the heart and the history of humanity, and particularly with Scottish scenery, and Scottish character and manners. His poetry was less a distinct power or vein, than the general result and radiance of all his faculties. These exhaled out of them a fine genial enthusiasm, which expressed itself in song. We do not think, with Carlyle, that it is the same with all high poets. He says—"Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility, and a certain vague tunefulness of nature, is no separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the rest, or disjoined from them, but rather the result of their general harmony and completion." Now, 1st, Carlyle is here grossly unjust to Keats. Had the author of Hyperion nothing but maudlin sensibility? If ever man was devoured, body and soul, by that passion for, and perception of, the beauty and glory of the universe, which is the essence of poetry, it was poor Keats. He was poetry incarnate—the wine of the gods poured into a frail earthy vessel, which split around it. Nor has Burns, of whom Carlyle is here writing, left any thing to be compared, in ideal qualities, in depth, and massiveness, and almost Miltonic magnificence, with the descriptions of Saturn, and the Palace of the Sun, and the Senate of the Gods in "Hyperion." Burns was the finest lyrist of his or any age; but Keats, had he lived, would have been one of the first of epic poets. 2dly, We do not very well comprehend what Carlyle means by the words "no organ, which can be superadded to, or disjoined from the rest." If he means that no culture can add, or want of it take away, poetic faculty, he is clearly right. But, if he means that nature never confers a poetic vein distinct from, and superior to, the surrounding faculties of the man, we must remind him of certain stubborn facts. Gay and Fontaine were "fable-trees," Goldsmith was an "inspired idiot." Godwin's powerful philosophic and descriptive genius seemed scarcely connected with the man; he had to write himself into it, and his friends could hardly believe him the author of his own works! Even Byron was but a common man, except at his desk, or "on his stool" as he himself called it. He had to "call" his evil spirit from the vasty deep, and to lash himself very often into inspiration by a whip of "Gin-twist." And James Hogg was little else than a haverer, till he sat down to write poetry, when the "faery queen" herself seemed to be speaking from within him. Nay, 3dly, we are convinced that many men, of extraordinary powers otherwise, have in them a vein of poetry as distinct from the rest as the bag of honey in the bee is from his sting, his antennæ, and his wings, and which requires some special circumstance or excitement to develop it. Thus it was, we think, with Burke, Burns, and Carlyle himself. All these had poetry in them, and have expressed it; but any of them might have avoided, in a great measure, its expression, and might have solely shone in other spheres. For example, Burke has written several works full, indeed, of talent, but without a single gleam of that real imagination which other of his writings display. What a contrast between his "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," or his "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," (an essay containing not one sublime, and not two beautiful sentences in it all,) and the "rare and regal" rhetorical and poetic glories of his "Essay on the French Revolution," or his "Letters on a Regicide Peace!" Burns might have been a philosopher of the Dugald Stewart school, as acute and artificially eloquent as any of them, had he gone to Edinburgh College instead of going to Irvine School. Carlyle might have been a prime-minister of a somewhat original and salvage sort, had it been so ordered. None of the three were so essentially poetical, that all their thoughts were "twin-born with poetry," and rushed into the reflection of metaphor, as the morning beams into the embrace and reflection of the lake. All were stung into poetry: Burke by political zeal and personal disappointment, Burns by love, and Carlyle by that white central heat of dissatisfaction with the world and the things of the world, which his temperament has compelled him to express, but which his Scottish common sense has taught him the wisdom of expressing in earnest masquerade and systematic metaphor. But, 4thly, there is a class of poets who have possessed more than the full complement of human faculties, who have added to these extensive accomplishments and acquirements, and yet who have been so constituted, that imaginative utterance has been as essential to their thoughts as language itself. Such were Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, &c., and such are Wilson, Bailey, Aird, and Yendys. These are "nothing, if not poetical." All their powers and acquisitions turn instinctively toward poetic expression, whether in verse or prose. And near them, although on a somewhat lower plane, stood Delta.
Poetry, with Delta, was rather the natural outflow of his whole soul and culture combined, than an art or science. His poetry was founded on feelings, not on principles. Indeed, we fancy that little true poetry, in any age, has been systematic. It is generally the work of sudden enthusiasm, wild and rapid ecstasy acting upon a nature prefitted for receiving the afflatus, whether by gift or by accomplishment, or by both united. Even the most thoroughly furnished have been as dependent on moods and happy hours as the least. The wind of inspiration bloweth where it listeth. Witness Milton and Coleridge, both of whom were masters of the theory of their art, nay, who had studied it scientifically, and with a profound knowledge of cognate sciences, and yet both of whom could only build up the lofty rhyme at certain seasons, and in certain circumstances, and who frequently perpetrated sheer dulness and drivel. The poetry of Homer, of Eschylus, of Lucretius, of Byron, of Shelley, of Festus—in short, the most of powerful poetry—has owed a vast deal more to excitement and enthusiasm than to study or elaborate culture. The rhapsodists were the first, have been the best, and shall be the last of the poets. And with what principles of poetic art were the bards of Israel conversant? And what systems of psychology or æsthetics had Shakspeare studied? And in what college were trained the framers of the ballad-poetry of the world—the lovers who soothed with song their burning hearts—the shepherds who sang amid their green wildernesses—the ploughmen who modulated to verse the motion of their steers—the kings of the early time who shouted war-poetry from their chariots—the Berserkars whose long hair curled and shook as though life were in it, to the music of their wild melodies—and the "men of sturt and strife," the rough Macpherson-like heroes, whose spirits sprang away from the midst of flood and flame, from the gallows or the scaffold, on whirlwinds of extempore music and poetry? Poetry, with them, was the irresistible expression of passion and of imagination, and hence its power; and to nothing still, but the same rod, can its living waters flow amain. Certain fantastic fribbles of the present day may talk of "principles of art," and "principles of versification," and the necessity of studying poetry as a science, and may exhaust the resources of midnight darkness in expressing their bedrivelled notions; but our principle is this—"Give us a gifted intellect, and warm true heart, and stir these with the fiery rod of passion and enthusiasm, and the result will be genuine, and high, and lasting poetry, as certainly as that light follows the sun."
It may, perhaps, be objected, besides, that Delta has left no large or great poem. Now, here we trace the presence of another prevalent fallacy. Largeness is frequently confounded with greatness. But, because Milton's Paradise Lost is both large and great, it does not follow that every great poem must be large, any more than that every large poem must be great. Pollok's Course of Time is a large and a clever, but scarcely a great poem. Hamlet and Faust may be read each in an hour, and yet both are great poems. Heraud's Judgment of the Flood is a vast folio in size, but a very second-rate poem in substance. Thomas Aird's Devil's Dream covers only four pages, yet who ever read it without the impression "this is a great effort of genius." Lalla Rookh was originally a quarto, but, although brilliant in the extreme, it can hardly be called a poem at all. Burns's Vision of Liberty contains, in the space of thirty-two lines, we hesitate not to say, all the elements of a great poem. Although Delta's poems be not large, it is not a necessary corollary that they are inferior productions. And if none of them, perhaps, fill up the whole measure of the term "great," many of them are beautiful, all are genuine, and some, such as Casa Wappy, are exquisite.