CHAPTER XIII THE LITERATURE OF GLOOM "The literature of melancholy must certainly be considered an important factor in the beginnings of Romanticism. In its subjective tone, in its vague aspiration, fondness for solitude and gloomy meditation, it was quite different from the tone of Augustan literature; and its master was none other than Milton."1) This is an admirable summary of an important side of eighteenth century romanticism. The conclusion that Milton was the master of this literature, will however scarcely bear detailed investigation. If the funereal poetry of the century can be said at all to have had any masters, those masters were Shakespeare, Steele and Addison rather than Milton. In many instances the form and in some the diction of the poems of Gloom was based on Milton, but the gloom itself, the "last day", the "grave" and the "melancholy" owe little to Milton. The literature of Gloom, which flourished in the eighteenth century, divides itself into three different types, according as it dwelt on "Immortality" and "The Last Day", on “The Grave", or on "pleasing Melancholy". Of course, these three types frequently blend; yet their origins are different. The first reaches its culmination in Young's "Night Thoughts" (1742-5), the second in Blair's "Grave" (1743), the most characteristic poem of the whole school. The last of the three types, which was powerfully aided by 1) W. L. Phelps. The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement. the first two, spread all over Europe and developed, towards the end of the eighteenth century and in the early years of the nineteenth century, into"worldweariness" or "Weltschmerz". The theme of the immortality of the soul is as old as poetry itself. Poems on this subject were frequently written both before and after the Restoration. We shall refer to three of the most influential works. Sir John Davies (1569—1626), who was a member of the English and Irish Houses of Commons and held various legal offices, published in 1599 his celebrated poem on the immortality of the soul, of which the full title is: "Nosce Teipsum. This Oracle expounded in two Elegies 1. Of Human Knowledge. 2. Of the Soule of Man, and the Immortality thereof". The eighteenth century knew this long poem in elegiac stanzas and ranked it high. The note prefixed to the edition of 1773 says of it: "This poem is, without dispute, except Spenser's 'Fairy Queen', the best that was written in Queen Elizabeth's or even in King James I's reign". It is one of the earliest philosophical poems in English and joins great condensation of thought to smoothness of versification. Reference has already been made to Henry More, the Spenserian, whose immense "Psychodia Platonica; or a Platonicall Song of the Soul" appeared in 1742. It was republished in 1747, as "Philosophical Poems". Here are two stanzas about the soul and the body from this poem so popular in the second half of the seventeenth century: Like to a light fast locked in lanthorn dark, And when we've passed the peril of the way, The naked light how clearly doth it ray, And spread its joyful beams as bright as summer's day. 204 HENRY MORE; JOHN NORRIS Even so the soul, in this contracted state, More dull and narrowly doth operate; At this hole hears, the sight must ray from thence, She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear. Henry More's fellow-mystic and friend John Norris (1657-1711), whose "Discourse concerning the Immortality of the Soul" appeared in 1708, exercised a great influence on the literature of Gloom through his "Collection of Miscellanies" (1687), of which the tenth edition came out in 1730. This collection of poems, essays, discourses and letters carried into the eighteenth century much of the spirit of Henry More and even something of the mood of Crashaw and Vaughan. Many poets of the eighteenth century borrowed from Norris, notably Blair and Campbell 1). We quote a few parallel passages from Norris and Blair: Like angel visits short and bright; Norris: "Parting". "Like those of angels, short and far between" "You warn us of approaching death, and why "I've heard that souls departed have sometimes Forewarned men of their death: 1) See Grosart's edition in Vol. III of the "Fuller Worthies Library" (1871). JOHN PHILIPS AND YOUNG 205 Honour, that too officious ill, Norris: "Seeing a great person lying in State". Honour, that meddlesome officious ill, Pursues thee even to death, nor there stops short; Is no protection from rude sufferance," "The Grave", l. 179 ff. 1) On the spiritual side, Blair's "Grave", the most influential example of the literature of Gloom, owed much to a poet who may largely be looked upon as a belated Elizabethan. There may be some relation between the publication of Norris's "Discourse concerning the Immortality of the Soul" (1708) and John Philips' resolve in the same year to write a poem on the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment. The execution of this plan was frustrated by Philips' death, but a few years later the subject was taken up by Edward Young, who as early as 1713 published at Oxford: "A Poem on the Last Day". Young had probably read Edmund Smith's elegy on his friend (1709), in which the poet regrets that Philips had not been able to sing the Last Day. In Young's poem we occasionally find the "charnelhouse" motif in which Blair and his imitators revelled: "Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all Fragments of bodies in confusion fly 1) For a number of borrowings from Norris by Blair see C. Müller, Robert Blair's Grave. Diss. Jena, 1909. |