Harmonious numbers.’
Poetry is the music of language, expressing the music of the mind. Whenever any object takes such a hold on the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in love, or kindling it to a sentiment of admiration;—whenever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, to the sounds that express it,—this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought and feeling is the sustained and continuous also. Whenever articulation passes naturally into intonation, this is the beginning of poetry. There is no natural harmony in the ordinary combinations of significant sounds: the language of prose is not the language of music, or of passion: and it is to supply this inherent defect in the mechanism of language—to make the sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself—to mingle the tide of verse, ‘the golden cadences of poesy,’ with the tide of feeling, flowing, and murmuring as it flows—or to take the imagination off its feet, and spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses, without being stopped or perplexed by the ordinary abruptnesses, or discordant flats and sharps of prose—that poetry was invented.
As Mr. C. has suppressed his Disquisition on the Imagination as unintelligible, we do not think it fair to make any remarks on the 200 pages of prefatory matter, which were printed, it seems, in the present work, before a candid friend apprised him of this little objection to the appearance of the Disquisition itself. We may venture, however, on one observation, of a very plain and practical nature, which is forced upon us by the whole tenor of the extraordinary history before us.—Reason and imagination are both excellent things; but perhaps their provinces ought to be kept more distinct than they have lately been. ‘Poets have such seething brains,’ that they are disposed to meddle with everything, and mar all. Mr. C., with great talents, has, by an ambition to be everything, become nothing. His metaphysics have been a dead weight on the wings of his imagination—while his imagination has run away with his reason and common sense. He might, we seriously think, have been a very considerable poet—instead of which he has chosen to be a bad philosopher and a worse politician. There is something, we suspect, in these studies that does not easily amalgamate. We would not, with Plato, absolutely banish poets from the commonwealth; but we really think they should meddle as little with its practical administration as may be. They live in an ideal world of their own; and it would be, perhaps, as well if they were confined to it. Their flights and fancies are delightful to themselves and to every body else; but they make strange work with matter of fact; and, if they were allowed to act in public affairs, would soon turn the world upside down. They indulge only their own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make idols or bugbears of what they please, caring as little for ‘history or particular facts,’ as for general reasoning. They are dangerous leaders and treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them into all sorts of extravagances; and their habitual effeminacy gets them out of them at any price. Always pampering their own appetite for excitement, and wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to produce a dramatic effect, one way or other—to shock or delight their observers; and they are as perfectly indifferent to the consequences of what they write, as if the world were merely a stage for them to play their fantastic tricks on.—As romantic in their servility as in their independence, and equally importunate candidates for fame or infamy, they require only to be distinguished, and are not scrupulous as to the means of distinction. Jacobins or Antijacobins—outrageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness, or flaming apostles of persecution—always violent and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies of their youth by the heartless vices of their advancing age. None so ready as they to carry every paradox to its most revolting and nonsensical excess—none so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature of an audacious and insane philosophy:—In their days of innovation, indeed, the philosophers crept at their heels like hounds, while they darted on their distant quarry like hawks; stooping always to the lowest game; eagerly snuffing up the most tainted and rankest scents; feeding their vanity with the notion of the strength of their digestion of poisons, and most ostentatiously avowing whatever would most effectually startle the prejudices of others. Preposterously seeking for the stimulus of novelty in truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition in pure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last became disgusted with their own pursuits, and that, in consequence of the violence of the change, the most inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments have rushed in to fill up the vacuum produced by the previous annihilation of common sense, wisdom, and humanity.
This is the true history of our reformed Antijacobin poets; the life of one of whom is here recorded. The cant of Morality, like the cant of Methodism, comes in most naturally to close the scene: and as the regenerated sinner keeps alive his old raptures and new-acquired horrors, by anticipating endless ecstasies or endless tortures in another world; so, our disappointed demagogue keeps up that ‘pleasurable poetic fervour’ which has been the cordial and the bane of his existence, by indulging his maudlin egotism and his mawkish spleen in fulsome eulogies of his own virtues, and nauseous abuse of his contemporaries[[10]]—in making excuses for doing nothing himself, and assigning bad motives for what others have done.—Till he can do something better, we would rather hear no more of him.
LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE
Vol. xxxi.] [December 1818.
Horace Walpole was by no means a venerable or lofty character:—But he has here left us another volume of gay and graceful letters, which, though they indicate no peculiar originality of mind, or depth of thought, and are continually at variance with good taste and right feeling, still give a lively and amusing view of the time in which he lived. He was indeed a garrulous old man nearly all his days; and, luckily for his gossiping propensities, he was on familiar terms with the gay world, and set down as a man of genius by the Princess Amelia, George Selwyn, Mr. Chute, and all persons of the like talents and importance. His descriptions of court dresses, court revels, and court beauties, are in the highest style of perfection,—sprightly, fantastic and elegant: And the zeal with which he hunts after an old portrait or a piece of broken glass, is ten times more entertaining than if it were lavished on a worthier object. He is indeed the very prince of Gossips,—and it is impossible to question his supremacy, when he floats us along in a stream of bright talk, or shoots with us the rapids of polite conversation. He delights in the small squabbles of great politicians and the puns of George Selwyn,—enjoys to madness the strife of loo with half a dozen bitter old women of quality,—revels in a world of chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, boxes, turrets, stands, old printing, and old china,—and indeed lets us loose at once amongst all the frippery and folly of the last two centuries, with an ease and a courtesy equally amazing and delightful. His mind, as well as his house, was piled up with Dresden china, and illuminated through painted glass; and we look upon his heart to have been little better than a case full of enamels, painted eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, vases and rock-crystals. This may in some degree account for his odd and quaint manner of thinking, and his utter poverty of feeling:—He could not get a plain thought out of that cabinet of curiosities, his mind and he had no room for feeling,—no place to plant it in, or leisure to cultivate it. He was at all times the slave of elegant trifles; and could no more screw himself up into a decided and solid personage, than he could divest himself of petty jealousies and miniature animosities. In one word, every thing about him was in little; and the smaller the object, and the less its importance, the higher did his estimation and his praises of it ascend. He piled up trifles to a colossal height—and made a pyramid of nothings ‘most marvellous to see.’
His political character was a heap of confusion: but the key to it is easy enough to find. He united an insufferable deal of aristocratical pretension with Whig professions,—and, under an assumed carelessness and liberality, he nourished a petty anxiety about court movements and a degree of rancour towards those who profited by them, which we should only look for in the most acknowledged sycophants of Government. He held out austere and barren principles, in short, to the admiration of the world,—but indemnified himself in practice by the indulgence of all the opposite ones. He wore his horse-hair shirt as an outer garment; and glimpses might always be caught of a silken garment within. He was truly ‘of outward show elaborate; of inward less exact.’ But, setting his political character—or rather the want of it—and some few private failings, and a good many other questionable peculiarities, aside,—we find Walpole an amusing companion, and should like to have such a chronicler of small matters every fifty or sixty years;—or it might be better, perhaps, if, like the aloe, they should blossom but once in a century. With what spirit does he speak of the gay and noble visitors at Strawberry Hill! How finely does he group, in his letters, the high-born and celebrated beauties of the court, with whom it was his fortune and his fancy to associate!
‘Strawberry Hill is grown a perfect Paphos; it is the land of beauties. On Wednesday, the Dutchesses of Hamilton and Richmond, and Lady Ailesbury, dined there; the two latter staid all night. There never was so pretty a sight as to see them all sitting in the shell. A thousand years hence, when I begin to grow old, if that can ever be, I shall talk of that event, and tell young people how much handsomer the women of my time were than they will be. Then I shall say, “Women alter now: I remember Lady Ailesbury looking handsomer than her daughter the pretty Dutchess of Richmond, as they were sitting in the shell on my terrace, with the Dutchess of Richmond, one of the famous Gunnings,” &c. &c. Yesterday, t’other famous Gunning dined there. She has made a friendship with my charming niece, to disguise her jealousy of the new Countess’s beauty: there were they two, their Lords, Lord Buckingham, and Charlotte. You will think that I did not choose men for my parties so well as women. I don’t include Lord Waldegrave in this bad election.’
All the rest is in the same style: and lords and ladies are shuffled about the whole work as freely as court cards in a party at Loo. Horace Walpole, to be sure, is always Pam: but this only makes the interest greater, and the garrulity more splendid. He is equally sprightly and facetious, whether he describes a King’s death and funeral, or a quirk of George Selwyn; and is nearly as amusing when he recounts the follies and the fashions of the day, as when he affects to be patriotic, or solemnizes into the sentimental. His style is not a bit less airy when he deals with ‘the horrid story of Lord Ferrers’s murdering his steward,’ than when it informs us that ‘Miss Chudleigh has called for the council books of the subscription concert, and has struck off the name of Mrs. Naylor.’ He is equally amusing whether he records the death of the brave Balmerino, or informs us that ‘old Dunch is dead.’