Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

Serene-to sow the seeds of peace,
Remembering when he watched the
How sweetly Kidron purled- [fleece,
To further knowledge, silence vice,
And plant perpetual paradise,

When God had calmed the world.

Strong-in the Lord, who could defy
Satan, and all his powers that lie
In sempiternal night;

And hell, and horror, and despair
Were as the lion and the bear'

To his undaunted might.

Constant-in love to God, the Truth,
Age, manhood, infancy, and youth-
To Jonathan his friend
Constant beyond the verge of death;
And Ziba, and Mephibosheth,

His endless fame attend.

Pleasant-and various as the year;
Man, soul, and angel without peer,
Priest, champion, sage, and boy;
In armour, or in ephod clad,
His pomp, his piety was glad:
Majestic was his joy.

Wise-in recovery from his fall,
Whence rose his eminence o'er all,
Of all the most reviled;
The light of Israel in his ways,
Wise are his precepts, prayer, and prise,
And counsel to his child...

O David, scholar of the Lord!
Such is thy science, whence reward,
And infinite degree;

O strength, O sweetness, lasting ripe !
God's harp thy symbol, and thy type
The lion and the bee!

There is but One who ne'er rebelled,
But One by passion unimpelled,

By pleasures unenticed;

He from himself his semblance sent,
Grand object of his own content,
And saw the God in Christ.

'Tell them, I Am,' Jehovah said
To Moses; while earth heard in dread,
And, smitten to the heart,

At once above, beneath, around,
All nature, without voice or sound,
Replied: O Lord, Thou Art.'

THOMAS AND JOSEPH WARTON.

The Wartons, like the Beaumonts, were a poetical race. As literary antiquaries, they were also honourably distinguished. Thomas, the historian of English poetry, was the second son of Dr. Warton of Magdalen College, Oxford, who was twice chosen Professor of Poetry by his university, and who wrote some pleasing verses, half scholastic and half sentimental. A sonnet by the elder Warton is worthy being transcribed, for its strong family likeness:

Written after seeing Windsor Castle.

From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls,
Where Edward's chiefs start from the glowing walls,
To my low cot from ivory beds of state,
Pleased I return unenvious of the great.
So the bee ranges o'er the varied scenes
Of corn, of heaths, of fallows, and of greens,
Pervades the thicket, soars aboye the hill,
Or murmurs to the meadow's murmuring rill:
Now haunts old hollowed oaks, deserted cells,
Now seeks the low vale lily's silver bells;

Sips the warm fragrance of the greenhouse bowers,
And tastes the myrtle and the citron's flowers;

At length returning to the wonted comb,
Prefers to all his little straw-built home.

The poetry-professor died in 1745, aged fifty-eight. His tastes, his love of poetry, and of the university, were continued by his son Thomas (1728-1790). At sixteen, Thomas Warton was entered of Trinity College. He began early to write verses, and his 'Pleasures

of Melancholy,' published when he was nineteen, gave a promise of excellence which his riper productions did not fulfil.

·

Having taken his degree, Warton obtained a fellowship, and in 1757 was appointed Professor of Poetry. He was also curate of Woodstock, and rector of Kiddington, a small living near Oxford. The even tenor of his life was only varied by his occasional publications, one of which was an elaborate Essay on Spenser's Faery Queen.' He also edited the minor poems of Milton, an edition which Leigh Hunt says is a wilderness of sweets, and is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation. Some of the notes are highly poetical, while others display Warton's taste for antiquities, for architecture, superstition, and his intimate acquaintance with the old Elizabethan writers. A still more important work, the History of English Poetry (1774–1778) forms the basis of his reputation. In this history, Warton poured out the treasures of a full mind. His antiquarian lore, his love of antique manners, and his chivalrous feelings, found appropriate exercise in tracing the stream of our poetry from its first fountain-springs, down to the luxuriant reign of Elizabeth, which he justly styled 'the most poetical age of our annals.' Pope and Gray had planned schemes of a history of English poetry, in which the authors were to be arranged according to their style and merits. Warton adopted the chronological arrangement, as giving freer exertion for research, and as enabling him to exhibit, without transposition, the gradual improvement in our poetry, and the progression of our language. The untiring industry and learning of the poet-historian accumulated a mass of materials equally valuable and curious. His work is a vast storehouse of facts connected with our early literature; and if he sometimes wanders from his subject, or overlays it with extraneous details, it should be remembered, as his latest editor, Mr. Price, remarks, that new matter was constantly arising, and that Warton' was the first adventurer in the extensive region through which he journeyed, and into which the usual pioneers of literature had scarcely penetrated.' It is to be regretted that Warton's plan excluded the drama, which forms so rich a source of our early imaginative literature; but this defect has been partly supplied by Mr. Collier's 'Annals of the Stage.'

On the death of Whitehead in 1785, Warton was appointed poetlaureate. His learning gave dignity to an office usually held in small esteem, and which in our day has been wisely converted into a sinecure. The same year he was made Camden Professor of History. While pursuing his antiquarian and literary researches, Warton was attacked with gout, and his enfeebled health yielded to a stroke of paralysis in 1790. Notwithstanding the classic stiffness of his poetry, and his full-blown academical honours, Warton appears to have been an easy companionable man, who delighted to unbend in common society, and especially with boys. 'During his visits to his

brother, Dr. J. Warton-master of Winchester School-the reverend professor became an associate and confidant in all the sports of the school-boys. When engaged with them in some culinary occupation, and when alarmed by the sudden approach of the master, he has been known to hide himself in a dark corner of the kitchen; and has been dragged from thence by the doctor, who had taken him for some great boy. He also used to help the boys in their exercises, generally putting in as many faults as would disguise the assistance.'* If there was little dignity in this, there was something better-a kindliness of disposition and freshness of feeling which all would wish to retain.

The poetry of Warton is deficient in natural expression and general interest, but some of his longer pieces, by their martial spirit and Gothic fancy, are calculated to awaken a stirring and romantic enthusiasm. Hazlitt considered some of his sonnets the finest in the language, and they seem to have caught the fancy of Coleridge and Bowles. The following are picturesque and graceful:

[ocr errors]

Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon.

Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,

By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled

Of painful pedantry, the poring child,

Who turns of these proud domes the historic page,
Now sunk by Time, and Henry's fiercer rage.
Think'st thou the warbling muses never smiled
On his lone hours? Ingenious views engage
His thoughts on themes unclassic falsely styled,
Intent. While cloistered piety displays
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.
Not rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers.

On Revisiting the River Loddon.
Ah! what a weary race my feet have run
Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned,
And thought my way was all through fairy ground,
Beneath the azure sky and golden sun-

When first my muse to lisp her notes begun!

While pensive memory traces back the round

Which fills the varied interval between;

Much pleasure, more of sorrow marks the scene.

Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure,

No more return to cheer my evening road!

Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure

Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed

From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature,
Nor with the muse's laurel unbestowed.

Joseph, the elder brother of Thomas Warton, closely resembled him in character and attainments. He was born in 1722, and was the school-fellow of Collins at Winchester. He was afterwards a com

*Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets.

moner of Oriel College, Oxford, and ordained on his father's curacy at Basingstoke. He was also rector of Tamworth. In 1766 he was appointed head-master of Winchester School, to which were subsequently added a prebend of St. Paul's and of Winchester. He survived his brother ten years, dying in 1800. Dr. Joseph Warton early appeared as a poet, but is considered inferior to his brother in the graphic and romantic style of composition at which he aimed. His ode To Fancy' seems, however, to be equal to all but a few pieces of Thomas Warton's. He published an Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (vol. i. in 1756, vol. ii. 1782), and edited an edition of Pope's works (1797), which was the most complete then published. Warton was long intimate with Johnson, and a member of his literary club.

From the Ode to Fancy.

O parent of each lovely muse!
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide,
To offer at thy turf-built shrine
In golden cups no costly wine,
No murdered fatling of the flock,
But flowers and honey from the rock
O nymph with loosely flowing hair,
With buskined leg and bosom bare,
Thy waist with myrtle-girdle bound,
Thy brows with Indian feathers crowned,
Waving in thy suowy hand,
An all-commanding magic wand,
Of power to bid fresh gardens grow
'Mid cheerless Lapland's barren snow,
Whose rapid wings thy flight convey
Through air, and over earth and sea,
While the various landscape lies
Conspicuous to thy piercing eyes!
O lover of the desert, hail!
Say in what deep and pathless vale,
Or on what hoary mountain side,
'Midst falls of water you reside;
'Midst broken rocks a rugged scene,
With green and grassy dales between;
'Midst forest dark of aged oak,
Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke,
Where never human heart appeared,
Nor e'er one straw-roofed cot was reared,

[ocr errors]

Where nature seemed to sit alone,
Majestic on a craggy throne;

Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell,
To thy unknown sequestered cell,
Where woodbines cluster round the door,
Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor,
And on whose top a hawthorn blows,
Amid whose thickly-woven boughs
Some Nightingale still builds her nest,
Each evening warbling thee to rest;
Then lay me by the haunted stream,
Wrapt in some wild poetic dream,
In converse while methinks I rove
With Spenser through a fairy grove;
Till suddenly awaked I hear
Strange whispered music in my ear,
And my glad soul in bliss is drowned
By the sweetly soothing sound!

When young-eyed Spring profusely
throws

From her green lap the pink and rose;
When the soft turtle of the dale
To Summer tells her tender tale:
When Autumn cooling caverns seeks,
And stains with wine his jolly cheeks;
When Winter, like poor pilgrim old,
Shakes his silver beard with cold;
At every season let my ear

Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear!

THOMAS BLACKLOCK.

A blind descriptive poet seems such an anomaly in nature, that the case of DR. BLACKLOCK (1721-1791) has engaged the attention of the learned and curious in no ordinary degree. We read all concerning him with strong interest, except his poetry, for this is generally tame, languid, and commonplace. He was an amiable and excellent man, son of a Cumberland bricklayer, who had settled in the town of Annan, Dumfriesshire. When a child about six months old, he was

totally deprived of sight by the small-pox; but his worthy father, assisted by his neighbours, amused his solitary boyhood by reading to him; and before he had reached the age of twenty, he was familiar with Spenser, Milton, Pope, and Addison. He was enthusiastically fond of poetry, particularly of the works of Thomson and Allan Ramsay. From these he must, in a great degree, have derived his images and impressions of nature and natural objects; but in after-life the classic poets were added to his store of intellectual enjoyment. His father was accidentally killed when the poet was about the age of nineteen; but some of his attempts at verse having been seen by Dr. Stevenson, Edinburgh, that benevolent gentleman took their blind author to the Scottish metropolis, where he was enrolled as a student of divinity. In 1746, he published a volume of his poems, which was reprinted with additions in 1754 and 1756. He was licensed in 1759, and through the patronage of the Earl of Selkirk, was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright. The parishioners, however, were opposed both to church patronage in the abstract, and to this exercise of it in favour of a blind man, and the poet relinquished the appointment on receiving in lieu of it a moderate annuity. He now resided in Edinburgh, and took boarders into his house. His family was a scene of peace and happiness. To his literary pursuits Blacklock added a taste for music, and played on the flute and flageolet. Latterly, he suffered from depression of spirits, and supposed that his imaginative powers were failing him; yet the generous ardour he evinced in 1786, in the case of Burns, shews no diminution of sensibility or taste. Besides his poems, Blacklock wrote some sermons and theological treatises, an article on Blindness for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and two dissertations, entitled Paraclesis; or Consolations deduced from Natural and Revealed Religion,' one of them original, and the other translated from a work ascribed to Cicero.

Apart from the circumstances under which they were produced, the poems of Blacklock offer little room for or temptation to criticism. He has no new imagery, no commanding power of sentiment, reflection, or imagination. Still, he was a fluent and correct versifier, and his familiarity with the visible objects of nature-with trees, streams, the rocks, and sky, and even with different orders of flowers and plants is a wonderful phenomenon in one blind from infancy. He could distinguish colours by touch; but this could only apply to objects at hand, not to the features of a landscape, or to the appearances of storm or sunshine, sunrise or sunset, or the variation in the seasons, all of which he has described. Images of this kind he had at will. Thus, he exclaims;

Ye vales, which to the raptured eye
Disclosed the flowery pride of May;
Ye circling hills, whose summits high
Blushed with the morning's earlist ray.

« PoprzedniaDalej »