Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

There is one splendid and

which there is no seeing the man. truthful expression, however relative to the latter; Gilfillan says, "He seems to be staring himself blind at the sun of absolute truth." Indeed our author is very frequently happy in this way. Some of the smartest things that we have ever read are to be found among his diffuse and flowery paragraphs. The essay on Wordsworth is discriminating, and that on Robert Pollok, the author of the "Course of Time," is perhaps the best piece of criticism in the book.

"Charles Lamb" is treated in a fair and kindly spirit, and "Allan Cunningham and the Rural Poets," somewhat too leniently. The article on "Ebenezer Elliott " is exquisite, and that on "John Keats" equally so.

[ocr errors]

As a specimen of Mr. Gilfillan's powers of writing in a vein quite different to that in which the essay on Carlyle is written, we will make a short extract for our readers' appreciation. As preface to his review of Keats' works, he says,

"A great deal of nonsense has been written about the morale of men of genius. A nervous temperament has been ascribed to them, to which, as causes of unhappiness, are added indolence, vanity, irritability, insulation, and poverty. D'Israeli, in his Calamities of Authors,' has taken up the doleful Jeremiad, and made a book of it. He could have made just about as large a book about the calamities of cadgers. Our own experience of men of genius, and we have known not a few, is, that they are very much like their neighbours in the qualities and circumstances referred to. Let us try the point by a brief induction of facts, ere proceeding to the unfortunate child of genius whose name heads the sketch. And, first, as to indolence. Homer seems to have been as active as most balladsingers; and, verily, their trade is no sinecure. Eschylus was a tragedian, a leader of armies, and a writer of ninety plays. Demosthenes talked perpetually; and to talk at his pitch for a lifetime was something. Pindar added the activity of an Olympic jockey to the fury of a Pythoness. Virgil polished away all his life, and the labour of the file is no trifle. On what subject has Cicero not written? and an encyclopædiast is not thought the most indolent of animals. Horace, we admit, was indolent; not so Lucretius, who, besides other things, was at the pains of building up an entire system of the universe, in a long and lofty poem. Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and all the great painters of Italy, worked without ceasing. Dante was far too fierce and restless a spirit to be indolent. Erasmus made a book while on a journey. Shakspere wrote thirty plays ere he was fifty. Milton felt himself ever in his 'great task-master's eye:' need we add that he laboured? Dryden is one of the most voluminous of writers. Pope wrote much and polished more. Daniel De Foe was one of the most active men of the age. Goldsmith had too much writing vanity to remain at repose. Johnson and Thomson were, indeed, indolent; but, in the former, it sprang from disease, and it prevented neither from doing great things. Cowper was indolent

only when the fit of derangement was upon him. Alfieri might be called the galloping genius, and clearing thousands of miles, and writing tragedies by the dozen, are no despicable affairs. Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber, were never done with their graceful labours. Byron had all the activity of a scalded fiend. Wordsworth has been called indolent. He has, however, written "The Recluse ;' and it is long since Jeffrey sought for a 'powerful calculus' to compute its colossal magnitude. Southey was the most regularly industrious man of the day. Coleridge was of an indolent constitution; and yet, besides talking incessantly, he wrote a great deal. Shelley gave himself no rest till his glorious eyes were shut, and his warm heart had hushed in death. He had drank poison and he slept no more. The names of Scott, Goethe, Godwin, Schiller, Richter, and Chalmers, need only be mentioned. We might just as easily dispose of the charges of vanity, irritability, insulation, and all that sort of thing. As to poverty, Leigh Hunt, in an exquisite paper which appeared in the New Monthly, many years ago, has knocked this vulgar error effectually on the head. And, with respect to happiness, we may give a few instances to show that men of genius are made of a ' mingled yarn,' like the rest of the poor sons of Adam. We begin with Homer. Of his private life we know nothing. We must judge of him by the spirit of his works. It may be said, indeed, that this is scarcely fair, as a book is often a bad index of circumstances, and a worse of character, we are convinced, however, that the tone of a work is, generally, a fair mirror of a man's happiness. It gives, at least, an indefinite impression about it, against which it is vain to struggle. Exceptions may be named; and, among others, the levity of Don Juan. Alas! that is a ghastly gaiety. It is forced and frantic, the smile of a galvanized corpse. The pervading tone of the Iliad and Odyssey is very different. They are the healthiest of works. There are, in them, no fits, no sullenness, no querulous complaints, not one personal allusion. Homer must have been a happy man. Eschylus

was a darker spirit, but it was the darkness of elevation and grandeur, not of wretchedness, that surrounded him. His soul dwelt too much in the wilderness of the universe; but there he would seem, nevertheless, to have had a lage measure of enjoyment. His excitements are recorded to have been tremendous. No one had more of the Pythonic inspiration and rapture. Anacreon was as happy as a good nature and a pampered imagination could make him. Virgil seems to have had much quiet and tranquil enjoyment. To this, his being pathetic is no objection; for there is such a thing as the joy of grief.' And no miserable man could have counterfeited that serene grandeur and cheerful majesty that distinguish all his writings. Horace, again, is all careless hilarity. He runs over his subject with an ease and a grace quite peculiar to himself, and denoting anything but wretchedness. He is, in fact, Anacreon, with a deeper dash of lyric rapture and enthusiasm. Those who deny happiness to genius, must prove that Shakspere was miserable. What an onus probandi! What dire work must they have to accomplish it! There is not a morbid line in all his writings. He has never (except, perhaps, in 'Timon') cast one

shadow on a human spirit. His pathos melts, but never crushes; and how easy and beautiful the bound from his deepest scenes of tragedy to the gaiety of his comedies! In fact, there is little known about Shakspere but that he was a cheerful man. Spenser seems to have passed his existence in a delightful dream. Refined luxury is, indeed, the element of 'The Faery Queen.' Though he had dined on ambrosia, and sojourned in Elysium, he could not have written with a more intense feeling of the soft, the lovely, and the ecstatic. Considering all Milton's circumstances, is it wonderful that a shade of sorrow lies lightly on the pages of the 'Paradise Lost;' that the sunny spirit of the L'Allegro and the Comus is not there? It is in these earlier productions that we are to look for the real tendencies and dispositions of his being. And where, except in Shakspere, shall we find more geniality and true cheerfulness? A vein of wit, sometimes darkening into sarcasm, but more frequently venting itself in light sallies, is not the least wonderful thing about his prose compositions. The 'Areopagitica' appears to be an index at once to his intellect and his dispositions; and amid all its excellencies, its sublimity, its depth, its completeness, the deep organ tones' of its diction, nothing strikes us so much as its sustained, cheerful, and majestic calmness. It is as 'thunder mingled with clear echoes.' And the many-folded' shell of Prometheus himself never discoursed more soothing and eloquent music."

Our author then proceeds in an able manner to speak of the works of John Keats, "the hapless Apothecary's boy."

Next he proceeds to "Thomas Babington Macaulay," "Thomas Aird," a contributor to Blackwood, who is not so well known as he deserves to be, "Robert Southey," and "John Gibson Lockhart." All these are much upon a par in point of excellence, with the exception perhaps of the essay on Macaulay, which is exceedingly pithy, and, to a considerable extent, original.

We have now gone through the book, and, to do it justice, we must state that it is the most pleasing work of this kind in existence. With regard to the author we would earnestly encourage him to the cultivation of his intellect and powers of composition. There is much room for improvement, particularly in his style. It is too exuberant. We would advise him to write carefully, and retain what he writes for sometime, until the freshness of the matter has gone off. On re-perusal he will find much to correct and a chastened tone will be given to his productions, which will widely extend their beneficial influence. George Gilfillan, you are gifted with great talents. Consider the high responsibility attached to you, and work on!-With all our heart WE wish you God speed!

CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES:
By THOMAS CARLYLE.

Chapman and Hall, Strand.

THESE two volumes contain a large number of the letters and speeches of one of the most extraordinary beings that ever

labored on this land; with a variety of elucidations, ejaculations and commentaries by the quaintest writer and most original thinker of our time. Since the days of Cowley, Cromwell has not had such a thorough appreciator as is that earnest truth-seeker, Thomas Carlyle. During the last and present centuries Oliver has been, almost universally, deemed a hypocrite; and as such, the perfect representative of a race of un

principled, crafty fanatics, who, having all to gain and nothing to lose, destroyed a king and a monarchy for their own personal aggrandizement. They calculated, it is thought, by the multiplication-table of mammon; and measured not their actions by the broad scale of eternity. Our friend Thomas thinks otherwise-looks on matters in a totally different light, and talks thus: "We have wandered far away from the ideas which guided us in that (the seventeenth) century. We have wandered very far, and must endeavour to return and connect ourselves therewith again. The Christian doctrines which then dwelt alive in every heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts, very mournful to behold; and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay, more still, the cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting that it is cant; in which fatal intermediate state the eternal sacredness of this Universe itself, of this Human Life itself, has fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that too a Cant and a Creed. Thus the old names suggest new things to us, not august and divine, but hypocritical, pitiable, detestable. The old names and similitudes of belief still circulate from tongue to tongue, though now in such a ghastly condition: not as commandments of the Living God, which we must do or perish eternally; alas! no, as something very different from that! Here lies properly the grand unintelligibility of the seventeenth century for us. From this source has proceeded our maltreatment of it, our miseditings, mis-writings, and all the other avalanche of human stupidity' wherewith we have allowed it to be overwhelmed. Puritanism is not of the nineteenth century, but of the seventeenth.

All puritanism has grown inarticulate; its fervent

[graphic]

preachings, prayings, pamphleteerings are sunk into one moaning hum, mournful as the voice of subterranean winds. The age of the Puritans is not extinct only and gone away from us, but it is as if fallen beyond the capabilities of memory herself; it is grown unintelligible, what we may call incredible. Its earnest purport awakens now no resonance in our frivolous hearts. We understand not even in imagination, one of a thousand of us, what it ever would have meant. Not the body of heroic puritanism (which was bound to die), but the soul of it also, which was and should have been, and yet shall be immortal, has for the present passed away." Believing all this, our author has collected, with labour very praiseworthy, the authentic utterances of the "Man Oliver;" and he records that it becomes more and more apparent that "Oliver Cromwell was, as the popular fancy represents him, the soul of the puritan revolt, without whom it had never been a revolt transcendently memorable, and an epoch in the world's history; that in fact he, more than is common in such cases, does deserve to give his name to the period in question, and have the puritan revolt considered as a Cromwelliad, which issue is already very visible for it. And then farther, altogether contrary to the popular fancy, it becomes apparent that this Oliver was not a man of falsehoods, but a man of truths; whose words do carry a meaning with them, and above all others of that time are worth considering. And Thomas, the recorder, trusts that his endeavors to make known his conviction will be appreciated, and that such conviction will gain the attention and reflective consideration of a "few serious readers." We trust so too; and will endeavor, as far as in us lay, to bring about so desirable a

[ocr errors]

consummation.

After some well merited paragraphs of condemnation bestowed on all previous pseudo-biographies and histories of the great Revolutionist, our author proceeds to give an account of Oliver and his family, preparatory to the introduction of the 'writings and sayings' or letters and speeches themselves.

Our hero was born at Huntingdon on the 25th of April, 1599 -nearly two hundred and fifty years ago. His paternal grandfather was a knight, and his maternal grandfather an opulent man.' His mother it is stated was 'indubitably descended from the royal family of Scotland.' His grandfather, from his luxurious style of living, was termed the 'golden_knight.' In fact, Oliver was in all respects well connected, every member of his family being well to do in the world, a great virtue then, as now among this money-loving nation, and one which his calumniators very industriously kept in the dark, making him the son of a mere masher of malt and hops. On

D

« PoprzedniaDalej »