WHAT IS POETRY?
It is much easier to give a negative than a positive answer to this question. All that we seem to have arrived at is, Poeta nascitur non fit; and that no amount or kind of culture can bestow the divine afflatus. Hesiod, in his “Theogony,” exhibits the Muses in the performance of their highest functions, singing choral hymns to their Heavenly Father, but gives no proper definition of poetry. Aristotle, in his treatise on “The Poetic,” does not explain its essence, but merely its principal forms. Dr. Johnson has attempted to define poetry in these words: “Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the aid of reason.” But it is well known that poetry often unites pleasure to what is not truth. According to Dr. Blair, “Poetry is the language of passion or enlivened imagination, formed most commonly into regular numbers.” This seems a pretty near approach to a true definition. Still it is defective, for there are parts of poetry which are not included either under “passion or enlivened imagination.” Competent critics will admit that a true definition seizes and exhibits the distinctive element and speciality of the thing defined; and tried by this test every definition we are acquainted with fails in doing the very thing required—determining what may be called the “differential mark” of poetry. Perhaps this question, which has so long puzzled the literary world, may be incapable of a categorical answer, but it seems to us essentially to consist of fine thoughts, deeply felt, and expressed in vivid and melodious language. Poets and poetesses see farther than other people, feel more deeply, and utter what they see and feel better. All history testifies that the poetry which has come down to us most deeply stamped with approbation, and which appears most likely to see and glorify the ages of the future, has been penetrated and inspired by moral purpose, and warmed by religious feeling. Our great kings and queens of song, are alike free from morbid weakness, moral pollution, and doubtful speculation. Such only may hope to send their names down, in thunder and in music, through the echoing aisles of the future. All lasting fame must rest on a good foundation.
BIOGRAPHY.
The maiden name of the subject of this sketch was Carolina Oliphant. She was the third daughter and fifth child of Laurence Oliphant, Esq., of Gask, Perthshire, who had espoused his cousin Margaret Robertson, a daughter of Duncan Robertson, of Strowan, and his wife a daughter of the second Lord Nairne. The Oliphants of Gask were cadets of the formerly noble house of Oliphant; whose ancestor, Sir William Oliphant, of Aberdalgie, a powerful knight, acquired distinction in the beginning of the fourteenth century by defending the castle of Stirling, against a formidable siege by the first Edward. Carolina was born in the mansion house of Gask, on the 16th of July, 1766. Her father was so keen a Jacobite, that she, along with other two of his children, were named after Prince Charles Edward. Even the Prayer-Books which he put into his children’s hands had the names of the exiled family pasted over those of the reigning one. He could not bear the name of the “German lairdie and his leddy,” to be mentioned in his presence, and when any of the family read the newspapers to him, the reader was sharply reproved if their majesties were designated anything else than the “K—— and Q——.” The antecedents of the family naturally produced this strong feeling. Carolina’s father and grandfather had borne arms under Prince Charles in the fatal campaign of 1745-6, which crushed for ever the hopes of the Stuarts; and her grandmother had a lock from the hair of the young Chevalier, which was given to her the day it was cut.
The childhood of Carolina Oliphant was thus passed amidst family traditions eminently fitted to stir her warm imagination. Not only so, the natural surroundings of her home were of the kind to nourish the poetic faculty. It was the
“Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,”
where green vales bedeck the landscape with verdure and beauty; farmhouses stand half-way up the braes, shadowed with birches; and old castles frown in feudal dignity. Amid such magic scenes, Miss Oliphant grew into that loving familiarity with nature in all its various moods, which imparts to her verses one of their many charms. She entered eagerly into all the pleasures which the world can afford its votaries. So energetic was she in her gaiety, that “finding at a ball, in a watering-place, that the ladies were too few for the dance, she drove home, and awoke a young friend at midnight, and stood in waiting till she was equipped to follow her to the dance.”
But although no mere selfish, frivolous, fine lady, bent solely upon her own enjoyments, yet it might be said of her, “one thing thou lackest.” That best gift, however, was soon to be hers. The kingdom of heaven was brought near to her, and through grace, unlike the young man in the gospel, she did not turn away because of her possessions. “She was on a visit to the old castle of Murthly, where an English clergyman had also arrived. He was a winner of souls. At morning worship she was in her place with the household, and listened to what God’s ambassador said on the promise, ‘Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.’ That forenoon she was seen no more. When she appeared again her beautiful face was spoiled with weeping. Beneath the eye of faith, how does the aspect of all things change! She had caught a glimpse of the glory of the Son of God, and burned with love to Him of whom she could henceforth say, ‘Whose I am and whom I serve.’ Her pen, her pencil, her harp, as afterwards her coronet, were laid at His feet, to be henceforth used, used up by and for the King.”
Many lovers had sought in vain the hand of Miss Carolina Oliphant, but on June the 6th, 1806, she married her maternal cousin William Murray Nairne, who was Inspector-General of Barracks in Scotland, and held the rank of major in the army. His hereditary title was Baron Nairne, but it was one of the titles attainted by the rebellion.