How far does that likeness to God, and sympathy with the whole human race, which Fenelon deprecates the want of, and Dr. Channing boasts of, as the inseparable attribute and chief ornament of man, really take place or not in the present state of things, and as a preparation for another and infinitely more important one? If we regard the moral capacity of man, self is a unit that counts millions. Its essence and its glory, says our optimist, is to comprehend the whole human race in its benevolent regards. Does it do so? The understanding runs along the whole chain of being; the affections stop, for the most part, at the first link in the chain. Sense, appetite, pride, passion, engross the whole of this self, and leave it nearly indifferent, if not averse, to all other claims on its attention. In order that the moral attainments should keep pace with the vaunted capacity of man, knowledge should be identified with feeling. We know that there are a million of other beings of as much worth, of the same nature, made in the image of God like ourselves. Have we the same sympathy with every one of these? Do we feel a million times more for all of them put together, than for ourselves? The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings. Fenelon laments bitterly and feelingly this disparity between duty and inclination, this want of charity, and eating of self into the soul. What is the consequence of the disproportionate ratios in which the head and the heart move? This paltry self, looking upon itself as of more importance than all the rest of the world, fancies itself the centre of the universe, and would have every one look upon it in the same light. Not being able to sympathize with others as it ought, it hates and envies them; is mad to think of its own insignificance in the general system; cannot bear a rival or a superior; despises and tramples on inferiors, and would crush and annihilate all pretensions but its own, that it might be all in all. The worm puts on the monarch, or the god, in thought and in secret; and it is only when it can do so in fact, and in public, and be the tyrant or idol of its fellows, that it is at ease or satisfied with itself. Fenelon was right in crying out (if it could have done any good) for the crucifying of this importunate self, and putting a better principle in its stead.
Dr. Channing’s Essays on Milton and Bonaparte are both done upon the same false principle, of making out a case for or against. The one is full of common-place eulogy, the other of common-place invective. They are pulpit-criticisms. An orator who is confined to expound the same texts and doctrines week after week, slides very naturally and laudably into a habit of monotony and paraphrase; is not allowed to be ‘wise above what is written;’ is grave from respect to his subject, and the authority attached to the truths he interprets; and if his style is tedious or his arguments trite, he is in no danger of being interrupted or taken to task by his audience. Such a person is unavoidably an advocate for certain received principles; often a dull one. He carries the professional license and character out of the pulpit into other things, and still fancies that he speaks ‘with authority, and not as the scribes.’ He may be prolix without suspecting it; may lay a solemn stress on the merest trifles; repeat truisms, and apologize for them as startling discoveries; may play the sophist, and conceive he is performing a sacred duty; and give what turn or gloss he pleases to any subject,—forgetting that the circumstances under which he declares himself, and the audience which he addresses, are entirely changed. If, as we readily allow, there are instances of preachers who have emancipated themselves from these professional habits, we can hardly add Dr. Channing to the number.
His notice of Milton is elaborate and stately, but neither new nor discriminating. One of the first and most prominent passages is a defence of poetry:—
‘Milton’s fame rests chiefly on his poetry; and to this we naturally give our first attention. By those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading, Milton’s eminence in this sphere may be considered only as giving him a high rank among the contributors to public amusement. Not so thought Milton. Of all God’s gifts of intellect, he esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, after something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man’s immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes farther towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what we have now said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those sacred recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigour, and wings herself for her heavenward flight. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, powers of original and ever-growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it “makes all things new” for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendours of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colours which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those moods of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendour, beauty, and happiness, for which it was created.’
There is much more to the same purpose: The whole, to speak freely, is a laboured and somewhat tumid paraphrase on Lord Bacon’s definition of poetry, (which has been often paraphrased before,) where he prefers it to history, ‘as having something divine in it, and representing characters and objects not as they are, but as they ought to be.’ This is the general feature of our author’s writings; they cannot be called mere common-place, but they may be fairly termed ambitious common-place: That is, he takes up the newest and most plausible opinion at the turn of the tide, or just as it is getting into vogue, and would fain arrogate both the singularity and the popularity of it to himself. He hits the public between what they are tired of hearing, and what they never heard before. He has here, however, put the seal of orthodoxy on poetry, and we are not desirous to take it off. If he is inclined to stand sponsor to the Muses, and confirm their offspring at the Fount, he is welcome to do so. It is curious to see strict Professors for a long time denouncing and excommunicating Poetry as a wanton, and then, when they can no longer help it, clasping hands with her as the handmaid of truth; and instead of making her the daughter of ‘the father of lies,’ identifying her with the vital spirit of religion and our happiest prospects.
Dr. Channing is aware, however, that poetry is sometimes liable to abuse, and has given a handle to the ungodly; and as a set-off and salvo to this objection, has a fling at Lord Byron, as the demon who scatters ‘poison and death;’ while Sir Walter Scott is the beneficent genius of poetry, unfolding and imparting new energies and the most delightful impulses to the human breast. In pronouncing the latter sentence, he bows to popular opinion; in the former he considers just as properly what he owes to his profession.
The bulk of the account of Milton, both as a poet and a prose-writer, is, we are constrained to say, mere imitation or amplification of what has been said by others. He observes, ex cathedrâ, and with due gravity, that the forte of Milton is sublimity—that the two first books of Paradise Lost are unrivalled examples of that quality. He then proceeds to show, that he is not without tenderness or beauty, though he has not the graphic minuteness of Cowper or of Crabbe; he next praises his versification in opposition to the critics—dwells on the freshness and innocence of the picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise—maintains that our sympathy with Satan is nothing but the admiration of moral strength of mind—acknowledges the harshness and virulence of Milton’s controversial writings, but blames Dr. Johnson for doing so. All this we have heard or said before. We are not edified at all, nor are we greatly flattered by it. It is as if we should convey a letter to a friend in America, and should find it transcribed and sent back to us with a heavy postage.
We do not, then, set much store by our author’s criticisms, because they sometimes seem to be, in a great measure, borrowed from our own lucubrations. We set still less store by his politics, for they are borrowed from others. We have no objection to the most severe or caustic probing of the character of the late ruler of France; but we do object, in the name both of history and philosophy, to misrepresentations and falsehoods, as the groundwork of such remarks. When England has exploded them, half in shame, and half in anger, the harpy echo lingers in America. The ugly mask has been taken off; but Dr. Channing chooses to lecture on the mask in preference to the head. It would serve no useful purpose, however, to follow him in the details of his Analysis of the Character of Bonaparte. But we shall extract one of his most elaborate passages, in which he favours us with his opinion of the victors at Waterloo and Trafalgar:—
‘The conqueror of Napoleon, the hero of Waterloo, undoubtedly possesses great military talents; but we have never heard of his eloquence in the senate, or of his sagacity in the cabinet; and we venture to say, that he will leave the world without adding one new thought on the great themes, on which the genius of philosophy and legislature has meditated for ages. We will not go down for illustration to such men as Nelson, a man great on the deck, but debased by gross vices, and who never pretended to enlargement of intellect. To institute a comparison, in point of talent and genius, between such men and Milton, Bacon, and Shakspeare, is almost an insult to these illustrious names. Who can think of these truly great intelligences; of the range of their minds through heaven and earth; of their deep intuition into the soul; of their new and glowing combinations of thought; of the energy with which they grasped and subjected to their main purpose the infinite materials of illustration which nature and life afford; who can think of the forms of transcendent beauty and grandeur which they created, or which were rather emanations of their own minds; of the calm wisdom, and fervid, impetuous imagination which they conjoined; of the dominion which they have exercised over so many generations, and which time only extends and makes sure; of the voice of power, in which, though dead, they still speak to nations, and awaken intellect, sensibility, and genius, in both hemispheres;—who can think of such men, and not feel the immense inferiority of the most gifted warriors, whose elements of thought are physical forces and physical obstructions, and whose employment is the combination of the lowest class of objects on which a powerful mind can be employed?’
We are here forcibly reminded of Fielding’s character of Mr. Abraham Adams. ‘Indeed, if this good man had an enthusiasm, or what the vulgar call a blind side, it was this: he thought a Schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest of all schoolmasters, neither of which points he would have given up to Alexander the Great at the head of his army.’ So Dr. Channing very gravely divides greatness into different sorts, and places himself at the top among those who talk about things—commanders at the bottom among those who only do them. He finds fault with Bonaparte for not coming up to his standard of greatness; but in order that he may not, raises this standard too high for humanity. To put it in force would be to leave the ancient and modern world as bare of great names as the wilds of North America. To make common sense of it, any one great man must be all the others. Homer only sung of battles, and it was honour enough for Alexander to place his works in a golden cabinet. Dr. Channing allows Bonaparte’s supremacy in war; but disputes it in policy. How many persons, from the beginning of the world, have united the two in a greater degree, or wielded more power in consequence? If Bonaparte had not gained a single battle, or planned a single successful campaign; if he had not scattered Coalition after Coalition, but invited the Allies to march to Paris; if he had not quelled the factions, but left them to cut one another’s throats and his own; if he had not ventured on the Concordat, or framed a Code of Laws for France; if he had encouraged no art or science or man of genius; if he had not humbled the pride of ‘ancient thrones,’ and risen from the ground of the people to an equal height with the Gods of the earth,—showing that the art and the right to reign is not confined to a particular race; if he had been any thing but what he was, and had done nothing, he would then have come up to Dr. Channing’s notions of greatness, and to his boasted standard of a hero! We in Europe, whether friends or foes, require something beyond this negative merit: we think that Cæsar, Alexander, and Charlemagne, were ‘no babies;’ we think that to move the great masses of power and bind opinions in a spell, is as difficult as the turning a period or winding up a homily; and we are surprised that stanch republicans, who complain that the world bow to birth and rank alone, should turn with redoubled rage against intellect, the instant it became a match for pride and prejudice, and was the only thing that could be opposed to them with success, or could extort a moment’s fear or awe for human genius or human nature.