{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_68066/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_68066","id":"gutenberg_68066","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68066","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Poetry","Nature in literature","Poetry -- History and criticism"],"text":"ON\n                          POETIC INTERPRETATION\n                                OF NATURE\n\n                                   BY\n                          J. C. SHAIRP, LL. D.\n\n    PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR AND ST. LEONARD,\n                               ST. ANDREWS\n\n                             [Illustration]\n\n                           BOSTON AND NEW YORK\n                      HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY\n                     The Riverside Press, Cambridge\n                                  1900\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThis small book is the result of some lectures which I had occasion to\ngive to a large popular audience more than a year ago. I have since\nre-written and re-cast them into their present shape. Yet the book still\nbears the impress of the peculiar object with which the lectures were\ncomposed, and of the circumstances under which they were delivered.\nThat object was to add a kind of literary supplement to several longer\nand more systematic courses of lectures on physical subjects, such as\nChemistry, Geology, and Physiology, which were delivered at the same\ntime by Professors who are my colleagues in this College. It seemed to\nme that some good might be done, if I could succeed in bringing before\nour hearers the truth that, while the several physical sciences explain\neach some portion of Nature\u2019s mysteries, or Nature considered under one\nspecial aspect, yet that after all the physical sciences have said their\nsay, and given their explanations, there remains more behind\u2014another\naspect of Nature\u2014a further truth regarding it, with which, real and\ninteresting though it is, Science does not intermeddle. The truth on\nwhich especially I wished to fix attention is the relation which exists\nbetween Nature and the sensitive and imaginative soul of man, and the\nresult or creation which arises from the meeting of these two. That is\na true and genuine result, which it does not fall within the province\nof Science to investigate, but which it is one peculiar function of\nPoetry to seize, and, as far as may be, to interpret. That the beauty\nwhich looks from the whole face of Nature, and is interwoven with every\nfibre of it, is not the less, because it requires a living soul for its\nexistence, as real a truth as the gravitation of the earth\u2019s particles\nor the composition of its materials,\u2014that careful noting and familiar\nknowledge of this beauty reveals a new aspect of the world, which will\namply repay the observer,\u2014and that the Poets are, in a special way,\nkindlers of sensibility, teachers who make us observe more carefully, and\nfeel more keenly the wonders that are around us: these are some of the\ntruths which I wished to bring before my hearers, and which, if I could\nin any measure succeed in doing so, would, I felt sure, not be without\nmental benefit.\n\nAs the audience whom I addressed consisted mainly of young persons whose\nchief employments lay elsewhere than in libraries, I felt that I had no\nright to reckon on any wide acquaintance with English literature. This\nwill account for the occurrence in the later chapters of many well-known\npassages of English Poetry, which to persons at all conversant with\nletters may seem too familiar even for quotation. If, however, the\npassages quoted served to illustrate the views I wished to impress, I was\nnot desirous to travel beyond well-worn paths.\n\nIn treating of a subject which has in recent years engaged the thoughts\nof many distinguished men, it could not but be that I should often come\nacross and use the thoughts of others. No doubt it is not easy always\nto discriminate between thoughts that have risen spontaneously to one\u2019s\nown mind, and those which have been suggested by other writers. Whenever\nI have been aware that I was using thoughts not my own, I have tried\nto make due acknowledgment of this in the text. At the same time I\nwould wish to acknowledge here more expressly how much I am conscious\nof obligation to three living writers,\u2014to Canon Mozley of Oxford, for\nsuggestions received from his sermon on \u201cNature,\u201d and incorporated in\nmy chapter on \u201cthe mystical side of Nature;\u201d to Mr. Stopford Brooke for\nsuggestive generalizations contained in his \u201cTheology in the English\nPoets;\u201d and to Mr. Leslie Stephen for some true and new thoughts in his\nrecent Essay on Wordsworth\u2019s Ethics; some thoughts derived from the two\nlatter writers I have tried to interweave into the last chapter of my\nbook.\n\nAs to the book itself, I am well aware how small a portion of how vast\na subject it has even attempted to deal with. But, as the original\nlectures were written, so this book is meant, mainly for the young. If,\nhowever, it should induce any of these to look on the outward world with\nmore heedful and thoughtful eyes, and to win thence for themselves finer\nobservations, and deeper delight, it will have served a good end.\n\n    ST SALVATOR\u2019S COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS,\n            _June 12, 1877_.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                                      PAGE\n\n                               CHAPTER I.\n\n    THE SOURCES OF POETRY                                               11\n\n                               CHAPTER II.\n\n    THE POETIC FEELING AWAKENED BY THE WORLD OF NATURE                  32\n\n                              CHAPTER III.\n\n    POETIC AND SCIENTIFIC WONDER                                        46\n\n                               CHAPTER IV.\n\n    WILL SCIENCE PUT OUT POETRY?                                        57\n\n                               CHAPTER V.\n\n    HOW FAR SCIENCE MAY MODIFY POETRY                                   64\n\n                               CHAPTER VI.\n\n    THE MYSTICAL SIDE OF NATURE                                         77\n\n                              CHAPTER VII.\n\n    PRIMEVAL IMAGINATION WORKING ON NATURE\u2014LANGUAGE AND MYTHOLOGY       87\n\n                              CHAPTER VIII.\n\n    SOME OF THE WAYS IN WHICH POETS DEAL WITH NATURE                   102\n\n                               CHAPTER IX.\n\n    NATURE IN HEBREW POETRY, AND IN HOMER                              136\n\n                               CHAPTER X.\n\n    NATURE IN LUCRETIUS AND VIRGIL                                     153\n\n                               CHAPTER XI.\n\n    NATURE IN CHAUCER, SHAKESPEARE, AND MILTON                         170\n\n                              CHAPTER XII.\n\n    RETURN TO NATURE BEGUN BY ALLAN RAMSAY AND THOMSON                 193\n\n                              CHAPTER XIII.\n\n    NATURE IN COLLINS, GRAY, GOLDSMITH, COWPER, AND BURNS              205\n\n                              CHAPTER XIV.\n\n    WORDSWORTH AS AN INTERPRETER OF NATURE                             235\n\n\n\n\nTHE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE SOURCES OF POETRY.\n\n\nPoetry, we are often told, has two great objects with which it deals,\ntwo substances out of which alone it weaves its many-colored fabric\u2014Man\nand Nature. Yet such a statement seems hardly adequate. For is there not\nin all high Poetry, whether it deals with Nature or with Man, continual\nreference, now latent, now expressed, to something which is beyond and\nabove both? This reference has taken many shapes, and uttered itself\nin many ways, according to the belief and civilization of each age and\ncountry. But by whatever mists and obstructions it has been colored and\nrefracted, it has never been wholly absent from true Poetry, and has\nbeen working itself clearer, and making itself more powerfully felt, as\nthe world grows older. The Higher Life encompassing the life both of Man\nand of Nature; the deeper Foundation on which both ultimately repose;\nthe omnipresent Power which binds both together, and makes them work in\nunison toward some further end,\u2014this has been a truth ever present in the\nhighest Poetry, to which great Poets have always witnessed. Therefore,\neven in the most summary view of the domain of Poetry, we must not omit\nthis invisible but most powerful element. To express it clearly, we must\nsay that Poetry has three objects, which in varying degrees enter into\nit,\u2014Man, Nature, and God. The presence of this last pervades all great\nPoetry, whether it lifts an eye of reverence directly towards Himself,\nor whether the presence be only indirectly felt, as the centre to which\nall deep thoughts about Man and Nature ultimately tend. Regarded in this\nview, the field over which Poetry ranges becomes coextensive with the\ndomain of Philosophy, and indeed of Theology. Dissimilar, often opposed,\nas is the procedure of Poetry, of Philosophy, and of Theology, different\nas are the faculties which each calls into play, and the mode in which\nthese faculties deal with their objects, yet the hinges on which all\nalike turn, the cardinal conceptions on which their eye is fixed, are\nfundamentally the same. While Philosophy and Theology, in their striving\nto attain distinct conceptions, are forced to deal with these great\nideas separately, and to keep them systematically apart, Poetry, on the\nother hand, under the fusing and blending power of imagination, is, in\nits highest mood, pervaded by a continual reference to all the three at\nonce, and will at times combine and flash them all at once upon the soul\nin one inspired line.\n\nIt is, however, of only one of these three main objects of Poetry that\nI now propose to treat\u2014the action of Poetry on external Nature, the way\nin which the poets deal with the outward world. In doing this it will\nappear at a glance, and will become more clear in the sequel, that it\nis impossible to isolate this one aspect of Poetry; that, even when the\npoet\u2019s regards are mainly turned toward the outward world, the sense\nof God and of man is not far away. But even when we do our best to\nlimit the subject as far as may be, it is so vast in itself and in its\nramifications, that, far from hoping to exhaust it in these few pages,\nI shall be well content if, when they are finished, it is found that a\nfew avenues of thought have been opened up, a few glimpses obtained into\ntruths which are real and suggestive.\n\nBefore going farther, let me say what I mean by Nature, for there is\nno word which more needs definition. There is none, except perhaps its\ncounterpart, Reason, which is used in more various, often conflicting,\nmeanings, or with more shades of meaning, each passing into the other.\nBy Nature, then, I understand the whole sum of appearances which reach\nus, which are made known to us, primarily through the senses. It includes\nall the intimations we have through sense of that great entity which\nlies outside of ourselves, but with which we have so much to do. For\nmy present purpose I do not include Man, either his body or his mind,\nas part of Nature, but regard him rather as standing out from Nature,\nand surveying and using that great external entity which encompasses and\nconfronts him at every turn, he being the contemplator, Nature the thing\ncontemplated.\n\nThe same external Nature which Poetry works on supplies the staple or\nraw material with which all the Physical Sciences deal, and which they\nendeavor to reduce to exact knowledge, subduing apparent confusion and\nmultiplicity into unity, law, and order. Each of the Physical Sciences\nattempts to explain the outward world in one of its aspects, to interpret\nit from one point of view. And the whole circle of the Physical Sciences,\nor Physical Science in its widest extent, confines itself to explaining\nthe appearances of the material world by the properties of matter, and\nto reducing what is complex and manifold to the operation of a few\nsimple but all-pervading laws. But besides those aspects of Nature which\nPhysical Science explains, over and above those laws which the Sciences\ndiscover, there are other sides or aspects of Nature which come to us\nthrough other than scientific avenues, and which, when they do reach us,\nbring home to us new truth, and raise us to noble contemplations. This\nordered array of material appearances, these marshaled lines of Nature\u2019s\nsequences, wonderful and beautiful though they be, are not in themselves\nall. No reasonable being can rest in them. Inevitably he is carried out\nof and beyond these, to other inquiries which no Physics can answer:\nHow stand these phenomena to the thinking mind and feeling heart which\ncontemplates them? how came they to be as they are? are they there of\nthemselves, or is there a Higher Centre from which they proceed? what is\ntheir origin? what the goal toward which they travel? Inquiries such as\nthese, which are the genuine product of Reason, lead us for their answer,\nnot to the Physics of the Universe, but to another order of thought,\nto Poetry, to Philosophy, and to Theology. And the light thrown from\nthese regions on this marvelous outward framework, while it contradicts\nnothing in the body of truth which Science has made good, permeates the\nwhole with a higher meaning, and transfigures it with a splendor which is\nDivine.\n\nPhilosophy and Theology we must for the present leave alone, and ask\nonly what is that aspect of Nature, that truth of the External World,\nwith which Poetry has more immediately to do. To put it in the simplest\nway: it is Beauty, that strange and wonderful entity with which all\ncreation is clothed as with a garment, or rather I should say pervaded\nand penetrated as by a subtle essence, inwrought into its inmost fibre.\nThe Poet is the man to whom is given the eye that sees this more\ninstinctively, the heart that feels it more intensely, than other\nmen do; and who has the power to express it and bring it home to his\nfellow-men. But if I were to confine myself to this I should not be\nsaying much. For the question would at once be asked, \u201cPray, what is\nBeauty?\u201d And it might be further asked, \u201cIs it not as much the business\nof the Painter as of the Poet to seize and express the visible beauty of\nwhich you speak?\u201d\n\nAny attempt to answer the first question, and to explain what is Beauty,\nwould involve a long discussion, perhaps not a very profitable one. At\nany rate it would lead me far from my present purpose. This only may be\nsaid in passing. Light, as physicists inform us, is not something which\nexists in itself apart from any sentient being. The external reality\nis not light, but the motion of certain particles, which, when they\nimpinge on the eye, and have been conveyed along the visual nerve to the\nbrain, are felt by the mind as light,\u2014result in the perception of light.\nLight, therefore, is not a purely objective thing, but is something\nproduced by the meeting of certain outward motions with a perceiving\nmind. Again, certain vibrations of the air striking on the drum of the\near, and communicated by the nerve of hearing to the brain, result in\nthe perception of sound. Sound, therefore, is not a purely objective\nentity, but is a result that requires to its production the meeting of\nan outward vibration with a hearing mind; it is the result of the joint\naction of these two elements. In a similar way, certain qualities of\noutward objects, certain combinations of laws in the material world, when\napprehended by the soul through its \u00e6sthetic and imaginative faculties,\nresult in the perception of what we call Beauty. Therefore Beauty,\nneither wholly without us nor wholly within us, is a product resulting\nfrom the meeting of certain qualities of the outward world with a\nsensitive and imaginative soul. The combination of both of these elements\nis requisite to its existence. It is no merely mental or subjective\nthing, born of association, and depending on individual caprice, as the\nScotch philosophers so long fancied. When the two elements necessary\nto the perception of it have met, it is a reality as inevitable and as\nveritable as the law of gravitation, or any law which science registers.\nAnd when, either through our own perception, or through the teaching of\nthe poets, we learn to apprehend it\u2014when it has found entrance into us,\nthrough eye and ear, imagination and emotion, we have learnt something\nmore about the world in which we dwell than Physics have taught us,\u2014a new\ntruth of the material universe has reached us through the imagination,\nnot through the scientific or logical faculty.\n\nIf, then, Beauty be a real quality interwoven into the essential texture\nof Creation, and if Poetry be the fittest human expression of the\nexistence of this quality, it follows that Poetry has to do with truth\nas really as Science has, though with a different order of truth. This\nis perhaps not the common view of the matter. An old Scotch gentleman I\nonce knew, one of the most sagacious and wise of his generation, who,\nwhenever anything was propounded which was more than usually extravagant\nand absurd, used to dismiss it with a wave of his hand, saying: \u201cOh, that\nis Poetry.\u201d Yet he was one who could see in the outlines of his native\nhills, and feel in all human relations, whatever was most beautiful.\nThere are, I dare say, a good many sensible people who share my friend\u2019s\nview, to whom Poetry is only another name for what is fanciful,\nfantastic, unreal\u2014only, as one called it, a convenient way of talking\nnonsense. To these I would say, If this be so, if Poetry be not true, if\nit have not a real foundation in the nature of things, if genuine Poetry\nbe not as true a form of thinking as any other, indeed one of the highest\nforms of human thought, then I should not recommend any one to waste time\non it, but to have done with it, and turn to more solid pursuits. It is\nbecause I have a quite opposite conviction, because I believe Poetry to\nhave a true and noble place in this order of things, a place not made by\nthe conceit of man, but intended by the Maker of this order, because I\nhold Poetry to be, what Wordsworth has called it, \u201cthe breath and finer\nspirit of all knowledge\u201d\u2014to be \u201cimmortal as the heart of man,\u201d it is\nbecause of these convictions that there is claimed for it the serious\nregard of reasonable men, and that it seems worth our while to dwell for\na little on one, though only one, aspect of this many-sided study.\n\nThe real nature and intrinsic truth of Poetry will be made more apparent,\nif we may turn aside for a moment to reflect on the essence of that\nstate of mind which we call the poetic, the genesis of that creation\nwhich we call Poetry. Whenever any object of sense, or spectacle of the\nouter world, any truth of reason, or event of past history, any fact of\nhuman experience, any moral or spiritual reality; whenever, in short,\nany fact or object which the sense, or the intellect, or the soul, or\nthe spirit of man can apprehend, comes home to one so as to touch him to\nthe quick, to pierce him with a more than usual vividness and sense of\nreality, then is awakened that stirring of the imagination, that glow\nof emotion, in which Poetry is born. There is no truth cognizable by\nman which may not shape itself into Poetry. It matters not whether it\nbe a vision of Nature\u2019s ongoings, or a conception of the understanding,\nor some human incident, or some truth of the affections, or some moral\nsentiment, or some glimpse into the spiritual world; any one of these\nmay be so realized as to become fit subjects for poetic utterance. Only\nin order that it should be so, it is necessary that the object, whatever\nit is, should cease to be a merely sensible object, or a mere notion\nof the understanding, and pass inward,\u2014pass out of the coldness of\nthe merely notional region into the warm atmosphere of the life-giving\nImagination. Vitalized there, the truth shapes itself into living\nimages which kindle the passion and affections, and stimulate the whole\nman. This is what has been called the real apprehension of truths, as\nopposed to the merely notional assent to them. There is no quality in\nwhich men more differ than in this intensity of mental nature, this\npower of vividly realizing whatever a man does lay hold of. It is an\nessential\u2014indeed a primary\u2014ingredient in the composition of the Poet;\nbut is not confined to him. It is shared by all men who are powerful in\nany line of thought or action. This mental energy, this intensity of\nrealizing power, is the stuff out of which are made all who in any way\nreally move their fellow-men. It creates, as has been well said, \u201cHeroes\nand saints, great leaders, statesmen, preachers, and reformers, the\npioneers of discovery in science, visionaries, fanatics, knight-errants,\nand adventurers.\u201d In these and such like, the men of abounding energy,\nwho have revolutionized states and moved the world, the process had begun\nwith the vivid realization of some truth through the imagination; but\nit has not stopped there. It has gone on from the imagination to the\naffections. It has stirred the hopes, the fears, the loves, the hates of\nthe soul, enkindling them and driving them with full force on the will,\nand propelling the man into action. In the Poet, on the other hand, the\nprocess not only begins, but continues in the imagination, kindling,\nno doubt, a real glow of emotion, but not leading him, as poet, to any\noutward action, save the one action of giving vent to what he feels, of\nfinding poetic expression for the vision with which his imagination is\nfilled.\n\nIn this we see the distinction between the Poet and those other men of\nintense soul, who share with him the power of vivid apprehension, of\nmaking real through the imagination whatever truths they see at all.\nThey carry that truth which they have imaginatively apprehended into\nthe region of the passions and the will, and rest not till they have\ncondensed it into outward action. He keeps the truths which he sees\nwithin the confines of imagination, and is impelled by his peculiar\nnature to seek a vehicle for it, not in action but in song, or in some\nother form of artistic expression. And hence the practical danger which\nbesets the Poet, and indeed all \u00e6sthetic and literary men, of becoming\nunreal, if that truth which they see and cultivate for artistic purposes\nthey never try to embody in any form of practical action, any common\npurpose with their fellow-men.\n\nIf then it be asked what are the proper objects of Poetry, what is the\nproper field for the exercise of the Poet\u2019s art, the answer, supposing\nwhat I have said to be true, is, the whole range of existence; wherever\nthe sensations, thoughts, feelings of man can travel, there the Poet may\nbe at his side, and find material for his faculties to work on. The one\ncondition of his working is, that the object pass out of the region of\nmere dry fact, or abstract notion, into the warm and breathing realm of\nimagination. What the mental process is by which objects cease to be mere\ndead facts, informations, and become imaged into living realities, I stay\nnot to inquire. The whole philosophy of Imagination is a subject on which\nthe metaphysicians have as yet said little that is helpful.\n\nWith regard to the working of Imagination and other so-called faculties,\nPhilosophers, I rather think, have cut and carved our mental nature with\ntoo keen a knife. They have \u201cmurdered to dissect.\u201d Our books lay it down,\nfor instance, as an axiom, that a definite act of the pure understanding\nmust needs precede every movement of the affections, that we must form\na distinct conception of a thing as pleasant before we can desire it,\nthat we must first judge a character to be noble, before admiration of\nit can be awakened. I am not sure that this is the true account of the\nmatter, am not convinced that the understanding unmixed with feeling, the\npure intelligence untouched by sentiment, must first decide before the\naffections can be moved. Is it so clear that in all cases we can separate\nknowledge from affection? Is there not a large field of truth\u2014namely,\nmoral truths, in which we cannot do so\u2014into which the affections must\nactively enter before any judgment can be formed? For, as has been\nsaid,[1] \u201cThe affections themselves are a kind of understanding; we\ncannot understand without them. Affection is a part of insight; it is\nrequired to understand the facts of the case. The moral affections, _e.\ng._, are the very instruments by which we intellectually apprehend good\nand high human character. All admiration is affection\u2014the admiration of\nvirtue, the admiration of nature. Affection itself then is a kind of\nintelligence, and we cannot separate the feeling in our nature from the\nreason. Feeling is necessary for comprehension, and we cannot know what\nembrace particular instance of goodness is, we cannot embrace the true\nconception of goodness in general, without it.\u201d\n\nIf this be true of moral apprehension, if in this intelligence and\naffection are so coincident, so interpenetrate each other, that we cannot\nsay which is first, which last, where the one ends, the other begins,\nthe same truth holds good in imaginative apprehension. Here, too, there\nis not first a cut-and-dry intellectual act, and then a succeeding\nemotion. From the first, in every act of the imagination, these two\nelements are present simultaneously; though it is true that in time the\nemotional element tends to grow stronger than the intellectual, sometimes\neven overpowers it. Imagination in its essence seems to be, from the\nfirst, intellect and feeling blended and interpenetrating each other.\nThus it would seem that purely intellectual acts belong to the surface\nand outside of our nature,\u2014as you pass onward to the depths, the more\nvital places of the soul, the intellectual, the emotional, and the moral\nelements are all equally at work,\u2014and this in virtue of their greater\nreality, their more essential truth, their nearer contact with the centre\nof things. To this region belong all acts of high imagination\u2014the region\nintermediate between pure understanding and moral affection, partaking of\nboth elements, looking equally both ways.\n\nBut it is not with the philosophy of the process, but with the results\nthat we have now to do. All men possess this power of vitalizing\nknowledge in some measure. The mental qualities which go to make the\nPoet have nothing exclusive or exceptional in them. They differ nothing\nin kind from those of other men\u2014only in degree. As one well entitled to\nspeak for the Poets has told us,\u2014the Poet, the man of vivid soul shares\nthe same interests, sympathies, feelings as other men, only he has them\nmore intensely. \u201cHe is distinguished from other men, not by any peculiar\ngifts, but by greater promptness and intensity in thinking and feeling\nthose things which other men think and feel, and by a greater power of\nexpressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him.\u201d[2]\n\nI have said that the range of Poetry is boundless as the universe.\nWhenever the soul comes into living contact with fact and truth, whenever\nit realizes these with more than common vividness, there arises a thrill\nof joy, a glow of emotion. And the expression of that thrill, that\nglow, is Poetry. The range of poetic emotion may thus be as wide as the\nrange of human thought, as existence. It does not follow from this that\nall objects are alike fit to awaken poetry. The nobler the objects the\nnobler will be the poetry they awaken, when they fall on the heart of\na true poet. But though this be so, yet poetry may be found springing\nup in the most unlikely places, among what seem the driest efforts\nof human thought, just as you may see the intense blue of the Alpine\nforget-me-not[3] lighting up the darkest crevices, or the most bare and\ninaccessible ledges of the mountain precipice.\n\nIn illustration of this, let me give an anecdote which I lately read in\none of Canon Liddon\u2019s sermons in St. Paul\u2019s:\u2014\u201cWhy do you sit up so late\nat night?\u201d was a question put to an eminent mathematician. \u201cTo enjoy\nmyself,\u201d was the reply. \u201cBut how can that be? I thought you spent your\ntime in working out problems.\u201d \u201cSo I do, and that is my enjoyment,\u201d\nanswered the mathematician. \u201cDepend upon it,\u201d he added, \u201cthose lose a\nform of enjoyment too keen and sweet to be described, who do not know,\nafter long effort, what is the joy of recognizing the agreement between\ntwo mathematical formul\u00e6.\u201d If, in such moments of profound satisfaction,\nour mathematician had added to his other powers the power adequately to\nutter the joy of his \u201ceureka,\u201d the expression of it would, no doubt,\nhave been a high poem. \u201cPoetry is the blossom and fragrancy of all human\nknowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language,\u201d[4] or it\nis the fine wine that is served at the banquet of human life. And what is\ntrue of mathematical is still more true of other forms of truth. Whenever\na soul comes into vivid contact with it, there springs up that emotion\nwhich is the essence of Poetry. And that this contact is so delightful,\nthat all truth and the human soul are so akin, that when they recognize\neach other, the immediate result is this thrill of joy, this pure and\nhigh emotion, what does not this fact hint of the nature of the soul and\nits origin?\n\nWe now then say that as Physical Science explains the appearances of\nthe material world solely by the properties of matter, and it is its\nbusiness to do so, so Poetry seizes the relation of outward objects to\nthe soul and expresses this, and it is its business to do so. Physical\nScience deals with the outward object alone. Poetry has to do with the\nobject _plus_ the soul of man. Or, to put it otherwise: from the meeting\nand combined action of these two forces, the outward object and the\nsoul, there arises a creation, or emanation, different from either, but\npartaking of the nature of both. And it is the business of true poetry\nto express this. Any real object, vividly apprehended, we thus see, will\nawaken in an intelligent and emotional being a response which is the\nbeginning of poetry. The depth and breadth and volume of that response\nwill, of course, be proportioned to the nobility of the object which\nevokes it, and to the responsive capacity of the mind to which it makes\nits appeal. And if it be asked, How are we to estimate the nobility of\nany object? we may say that its measure will be the variety and strength\nand elevation of the emotions which it has the power of evoking in those\nspirits which are most finely touched. The deeper, the larger, the higher\nthe object presented to a soul fitted to receive it, the greater will be\nthe body of emotion with which that soul will respond to it, the finer\nwill be the poetry which is the expression of that emotion.\n\nAll delight we know on earth arises, as the wise Bishop Butler has told\nus, \u201cfrom a faculty having its proper object,\u201d and the perfection of\nhappiness would consist \u201cin all the faculties having found their full\nand adequate object.\u201d If then those partial objects, those shadows of\nperfection, which are the highest objects vouchsafed to us here, awaken\nin us a keen responsive thrill of emotion, whose fittest utterance is\nsong, what shall it be for a human soul to be admitted to the vision of\nHim \u201cwho alone is an object, an infinitely more than adequate object to\nour most exalted faculties\u2014an adequate supply to all the capacities of\nour souls, a subject to the understanding, an object to the affections.\u201d\nIn the contemplation of this truth long pondered, the deep heart of the\nphilosophic Bishop breaks forth into a strain of meditation in which the\nconflict between intense feeling and his habitual self-restraint seems\nalmost to overpower him. And what a view does this give of the essential\npermanence of Poetry, how in the essence it must be eternal as the soul\nof man! It seems to open a glimpse into the meaning of the mysterious\nimagery of the Apocalypse, and to hint how it will be that the joy of the\nRedeemed before the Throne can utter itself only in that new song which\nnone can learn but they.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThus far I have spoken only of the feeling or emotion which generates\nPoetry. Little or nothing has been said of that other side\u2014the expression\nof the feeling in words. The mathematician of whom I have spoken was\nnot, for all his joy, a poet. Why? Because though he had the material of\npoetry within him in the intense joy, he had not the power of putting\nit forth, of making it audible. He kept all the delight to himself, and\ncould not by utterance impart it to others. He was at best but a dumb\npoet\u2014a poet \u201cin posse,\u201d not a poet \u201cin esse,\u201d as the Schoolmen speak.\nAnd the question arises, Is not a dumb Poet a contradiction in terms? is\nit not of the very essence of a poet that he should be vocal? Is it not\nin this, his power of voicing his emotion, rather than in his power of\nfeeling it, that he is distinguished from common men? Here we come on a\ngreat controversy on which I shall not venture to dogmatize. Wordsworth,\nwe all remember, held that\n\n        \u201cMany are the poets that are sown\n    By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts,\n    The vision and the faculty divine;\n    Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.\u201d\n\nBut Goethe and many others with him hold that without the power of poetic\nexpression there can be no poet; that as well might you speak of a\nchild being born which was a mind without a body, as of poetry existing\nin the soul which does not embody itself in language; that, if we are\nto divide Poetry into essence and expression, the garment of musical\nwords is indeed the more essential of the two\u2014or rather, that Poetry\nis non-existent till it has clothed itself in words; that in the true\npoet the emotion and the expression of it come into being at once, and\nare one. To this side Coleridge, I believe, would lean, for we find him\nsaying\u2014\u201cThe sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is\na gift of imagination, and ... may be cultivated and improved, but can\nnever be learned.\u201d\n\nOn the whole, then, without deciding whether the essence of the poetic\nnature lies in the capacity of feeling the emotion, and brooding over the\nshaping thought, or in the power of projecting it in words, this may be\nsaid:\u2014Even if the potential poet may be silent, the actual poet must add\nthe power of embodying his emotion in melodious words. And this from no\nconventional artifice of literature; but because, before the existence of\nany literature, the natural expression of strong emotion is a chant, a\nsong. There is an essential kinship between the waves of excited feeling\nwithin the breast, the heaving of the soul under the power of emotion,\nand a corresponding rhythmical cadence in the words which utter it. Song\nor chant and emotion are as intrinsically allied as word and thought.\nThe poet is the man whose emotions, intenser than those of other men,\nnaturally find a vent for themselves in some form of harmonious words,\nwhether this be the form of metre or of balanced and musical prose. The\nrhythmical vibrations of his soul long to project themselves into some\nsonorous medium. And for poetry to lie as it does dead in our printed\nbooks, to be read merely by the eye, or, if uttered aloud, to be read as\none would a newspaper, is as unnatural, as emptying to it of its meaning,\nas it is for the lovely wild-flower to be seen dried and colorless within\nthe leaves of a herbarium. Not of lyrical poetry only, though of it\npre\u00ebminently, but of all high poetry, may it be said, that it is only\nthen fitly uttered when it is chanted, not read, and so it is with a\nchant that most poets have recited their own poetry. As Wordsworth tells\nus, \u201cThough the accompaniment of a musical instrument be dispensed with,\nthe true poet does not therefore abandon his privilege distinct from that\nof the mere proseman;\n\n    \u201cHe murmurs near the running brooks,\n      A music sweeter than their own.\u201d\n\nIt is a sad divorce that has long been made between poetry and song. We\nshall never know the full power of Poetry till she has wandered back to\nher original home, and found there her long-severed sister, Music. Only\nthen, if they could find each other again, and come forth to the world in\nblended might, should we know the full compass of that marvelous creation\nwhich we call Poetry.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE POETIC FEELING AWAKENED BY THE WORLD OF NATURE.\n\n\nIf the view taken in the former chapter of the genesis of Poetry be\ntrue, if any existence keenly realized may awaken it, must not that\nmaterial framework which encompasses us from the cradle to the grave\nenter most intimately into our earliest and most permanent feelings,\nand color all the poetry which expresses them? For are not the visible\nearth and skies the storehouse from which imagination furnishes herself\nwith her earliest forms, and draws her broadest as well as most delicate\nresemblances? Are these not the substance round which the affections\ntwine many of their first and finest tendrils? Next to the household\nfaces, is not the visible world the earliest existence that we know, the\nlast we lose sight of in our earthly sojourn? All his life long man is\nencompassed with it, and never gets beyond its reach. He lies an infant\nin the lap of Nature before he has awakened to any consciousness. When\nconsciousness does awaken within him, the external world is the occasion\nof the awakening, the first thing he learns to know at the same time\nthat he learns his mother\u2019s look and his own existence. For the growing\nboy she is the homely nurse that, long before schools and school-masters\nintermeddle with him, feeds his mind with materials, pouring into him\nalike the outward framework of his thought and the colors that flush\nover the chambers of his imagery. The expressive countenance of this\nearth and of these heavens, glad or pensive, stern or dreary, sublime\nor homely, is looking in on his heart at every hour and mingling with\nhis dreams. Nature is wooing his spirit in manifold and mysterious ways,\nto elevate him with her vastness and sublimity, to gladden him with her\nbeauty, to depress him with her bleakness, to restore him with her calm.\nThis quick interchange of feeling between the world without and the\nworld within, this vast range of sympathy, so subtle, so unceasing, so\nmysterious, is a fact as certain and as real as the flow of the tides or\nthe motion of the earth. Yet, though truth it be, it is one which Science\ncannot recognize, and which she has left wholly to the poet. It is his\nto witness to the fact of this intimacy\u2014kinship, I might say\u2014between the\nmovements of Nature and the heart of Man, to represent the relation and\ninterpret it. And though he may never be able fully to compass or exhaust\nall the import of these relations, or to penetrate to the bottom of the\nsecret, yet it is one chief office of the poet to express it, to get it\nrecognized, to keep alive the sense of among his fellow-men, and to\ninterpret to them, as best he may, those enduring yet tender intimacies\nthat exist between their hearts and the wide world of eye and ear that\nsurrounds him.\n\nThis mighty process of influencing man, not only through his corporeal\nneeds, but in the more delicate recesses of the heart, the outward world,\nit is clear, must have been carrying on unremittingly since the earliest\nappearance of man on the earth. But what may have been the phases of\nit in primeval times, before history finds man, is a question I do\nnot propose to enter on. No doubt, even in the most remote eras, when\nsavage men dwelt naked in caves, or cowered in abject worship before the\nblind forces of Nature, and lived in terror of wild beasts, or of each\nother, even then there must have been moments when their hearts were\nimaginatively touched, as either the hurricane or the thunder awed them,\nor Nature looked on them more benignly through the sunset or the dawn. In\nthat later stage, when the Aryan family had reached their mythologizing\nera, and owing to the weakness of their abstracting powers and the\nstrength of untutored imagination, were weaving the appearances of earth\nand sky into their hierarchies of gods, Nature and Imagination were face\nto face, and were all in all.\n\nThe other intellectual powers of man were as yet comparatively dormant.\nHe had not yet learned consciously to disengage the thoughts of\nhimself and of God from the visible appearances in which they were\nstill entangled. But to trace the movements of Imagination through that\nprimeval time forms no part of my present task. Even without attempting\nthis, there is more than enough to detain our thoughts, if we attempt to\ntrace, even in outline, some of the ways in which the human and poetic\nimagination has worked on the outward world in that later stage when\nthe three great entities, God, Man, and Nature, were in thought clearly\ndistinguished. Though in studying our present subject it may be necessary\nfor clearness\u2019s sake, in some measure to isolate Nature in thought from\nthe other two great objects of contemplation, with which in reality it\nis so closely interwoven, we must never conceive of it as if it were\nreally a separate and independent existence. However we may for a moment\nregard Nature by herself, we must not forget that in reality we can never\ncontemplate it apart from the other two entities on which it depends;\nthat Nature as mere isolated appearance, without a mind to contemplate\nand a power to support it, is meaningless; that all the three objects\nof knowledge coexist at every moment, interpenetrate and modify each\nother at every turn of thought; and that it is to the light reflected on\nNature from the other two that she owes large part of her meaning, her\ntenderness, her suggestiveness, her sublimity.\n\nThe tendency to isolate Nature and to regard it as a self-subsisting\nthing cut off from other existence, has been strong ever since man came\nto be clearly conscious of his own distinctness from the world. In this,\nas in every other realm of thought, progress is slow; it requires long\nages to get to the right mental attitude. Among the ethnic races, at\nleast, there were first the two periods already noticed\u2014one in which man\ncrouched in blind abject terror in presence of the elements; another\nmarked by that brighter Nature-worship embodied in the Aryan mythology,\nwhich, though past its prime, was still surviving when the Homeric poems\nwere composed. Then succeeded the time when, on the one hand, the mind of\nman separated itself from the world and asserted its distinct existence;\nand when, on the other, the thought of Deity, under the guidance of\nreflection and philosophy, gradually extracted itself from the visible\nappearances in which it had been so long imbedded.\n\nWhen this great change had made itself felt, and when, at the same time,\nout-of-door life gave place to life in cities, Nature in a great measure\nlost its hold on man\u2019s regards, and retired into the background as a\nlifeless mechanical thing, without interest or beauty or any intimacy\nwith man. The material world, indeed, had still its utilitarian value.\nIt ministered to man\u2019s bodily wants in the thousand ways that immemorial\nusage handed down, and which science in recent times has so greatly\nmultiplied. If the refreshing presence of Nature still blended unawares\nwith the animal spirits of men, and cheered them when they were weary,\nyet the multitudes cast on it no imaginative regards, and cared nothing\nfor the poetry which mediates between the eye and the heart. This seems a\ntrue account of the mental attitude of the great civilized communities,\ndown even to recent times. And, notwithstanding the great movement toward\nNature which is said to characterize this modern era, one may well doubt\nwhether the sentiment has really penetrated the hearts of even the most\ncultivated men. Such things must always be difficult to gauge. Yet one\ncannot but sometimes wonder, if from the modern love of Nature, and\nthe much talk about it, there could be deducted all that may be set\ndown to love of change, imitation, fashion, and the desire to meet the\nexpectations of refined society, how much would remain of feeling that\nwas native, genuine, and spontaneous.\n\nA few, we may believe, there have been in every age, and more perhaps in\nthis than in former ages, to whom, in spite of the prosaic atmosphere\nthat surrounded them, Nature was something more than a dead machine,\nsomething even worthy of affection. Poets, too, were born from age to\nage, favorite children of\n\n    \u201cGaudentes rure Cam\u0153n\u00e6,\u201d\n\nwho had their hearts opened in a pre\u00ebminent degree to receive the love\nof Nature themselves, and to awaken it in other hearts by the music\nwhich they lent to it. Yet neither the poets, nor the few apprehensive\nspirits who sympathized with them, could do much to make head against\nthe prosaic ways of thinking by which they were surrounded. It was only\nwith furtive and occasional glances that even the poets of past ages were\nallowed to look at Nature as they would, only by a kind of sufferance\nthat they were allowed to express the tender love they felt for her. The\nfeelings which they had in her presence were put down to imagination,\nwhich was a faculty of falsehood, and the words which they used regarding\nher were supposed to be tropes and hyperboles that had no meaning. The\nscience and the philosophy, as well as the common belief which surrounded\nthem, had settled it, that Nature was as inanimate as any piece of man\u2019s\nmanufacture. And what were a few poets, with their weak singing, a few\ndreamers, with their flimsy fancies, that they could withstand the tyrant\ntradition, even though, half unconsciously, all their highest inspiration\nwitnessed against it? The instinctive faith of the poet cannot be\nvindicated till, not in Poetry only, but by Science and Philosophy also,\nthe unity and the life that is in Nature are fully recognized,\u2014till the\nwhole visible world, not in trope and figure, but in literal truth, is\nfelt to be the embodied thought of a mind which is in Nature and above\nit, and which fills the Universe. Not till this conviction has come home\nto man as a sober truth of reason, can we feel that Nature is intended\nto minister no furtive, but a legitimate delight to the eye, to furnish\nan interest to the understanding, beauty and suggestiveness to the\nimagination, calm and restoration to the heart. Otherwise she becomes,\nnone the less for all her beauty, to those who fain would love her, a\ncruel and all-devouring Sphinx.\n\nNot, however, that the poet busies himself with the question as to the\nessential nature of the material world, or inquires whether there can\nbe found in matter any ultimate and permanent element. The analytic\nscrutiny of appearances is no part of his concern; this he willingly\nleaves to the physicist and the metaphysician to settle between them.\nWhether matter be ultimately resolvable into indestructible atoms out\nof which all visible forms are composed, or whether all that impinges\non our senses be not at bottom one only force manifesting itself in\ninfinite change, or whether in the last resort matter may be only \u201ca\npermanent possibility of sensation,\u201d or whether all force may not be\nregarded as the direct and immediate action of the Divine Will,\u2014all these\nare questions with which, as poet, he does not intermeddle, though his\nknowledge that such questions can be asked may quicken his sense of the\nmystery of Creation which he contemplates. When poets have ventured to\nmake such abstract questions the subject of their poetry, they have not\ngenerally succeeded. The poetic strength of Lucretius is not seen in his\nexpositions, able though they are, of the atomic philosophy, but in his\nvivid representation of the manifold appearances of Nature, and in his\nbroad and profound sense of the one universal life that pervades them\nall. The poet is in his proper place, not when he scrutinizes nature as\nan analyst, but when he unreservedly accepts all her concrete appearances\nas they come to him. Forms and colors are given him through the eye;\nsounds as they reach him through the ear; fragrances as wafted to his\nsense of smell. On this side of analysis there is enough, and more than\nenough, for him. The outward appearances he feels more intensely, and\nrenders into words more graphically than ordinary men,\u2014no other describes\nthem so to the quick,\u2014yet he does not rest in them, but passes with them\ninward and brings them into relation with his own being, or rather with\nthe universal heart of man. The ethereal blue of the sky on a fine spring\nday delights every man, and something of the delight is no doubt due to\nthe mere eye, to the adaptation of the object to the visual organ; but\nhow much more\u2014who shall say?\u2014is due to the endless suggestiveness of the\nsight, even though of its manifold meaning nothing may shape itself into\nwords. But it is the poet\u2019s privilege not only to describe the outward\nimage, but to draw out some of the many meanings that lie hid in it,\nand so render them as to win response from his fellow-men. It matters\nnot, therefore, if it be true, that all men can know of Nature is the\nsensations it produces in himself. Even if this be all, it is enough\nfor the poet. Leaving to others to deal with its physical uses as the\nfeeder and supporter of the body, it is his to note how it exhilarates\nthe animal spirits; how it passes into the imagination and there becomes\nrich in suggestiveness; how it entwines itself round the affections;\nhow fruitful it is in resemblances and contrasts to human destiny; what\nlarge contemplations and high truths it presents to the reason; how even\nfor conscience, though it contains no direct teaching of moral law, it\nsupplies in its order and harmony the best visible images thereof. In\nfact, quite endless is the wealth of meaning that lies hid in Nature, the\ninterchange of appeal and response that is possible between the world\nwithout and the world within. There is in Nature just as much, or as\nlittle, as the soul of each can see in her. And in order to see, the soul\nmust have been trained for it both by habitual converse with the outward\nworld, and also by converse with other regions of being, with other\nteachers. For other teachers are not less necessary than the beauty which\nlies in the face of Nature.\n\nPoetry, we saw, is the emanation, the golden exhalation, as it were,\nwhich arises from the close and vivid meeting of the soul and the outward\nobject. If this be so, the soul must needs contribute to the result not\nless than the object which appeals to it. What then must be the power\nand quality of that soul which is capable of taking in and making full\nand harmonious response to the whole appeal which Nature is continually\nmaking? There must be in the first place an eye to observe accurately\nwhat it sees, combined with the power to describe this faithfully in\nwords uncolored and undeflected; in the first instance, by feelings or\nhabits of thought which may be peculiar to the observer. There must be\nbesides a sensibility to all outward appearances, as keenly alive to the\nvast as to the minute in Nature; to the great movements of the heavens\nand the breadths of light and shadow which they cast, not more than to\nthe delicate veinings that are in the tiniest leaf, to the sighings\nthat are among the reeds, and to the silent openings of the daisy and\nthe celandine. These two qualities are mostly found among those whose\nchildhood has passed in the country, who have known Nature as a household\nfriend that has entwined itself among their first affections. No doubt\nthere are cases of city-bred poets, such as Keats, who, having been shut\nout from free access to Nature till they were full-grown men, have then\ntaken to it with an instinctive passion.[5] But even in these rare cases\nthere will generally be felt in their descriptions something exaggerated,\nthat shows the want of habitual familiarity with the ways of Nature,\nand makes us feel that it has been approached rather on set purpose\nas an object of artistic study, than known with the easy intimacy of\nearly friendship. If to these two qualities we add imagination; even as\npenetrative as that of Keats, which went to the core of all it saw, even\nthis outfit of qualities would not be sufficient adequately to render all\nthat Nature contains of high and noble.\n\nSuch sensuous enjoyment of Nature, quickened by imagination, but\nunbalanced by deeper qualities, has led more than one, and especially\nin our own day, to an attempted revival of vanished Paganism, which, if\nmade the key-note of any Poetry, is destructive of true manliness and of\nthe highest human worth. By such a sensuous temperament, the forms and\ncolors and fragrancies of the outward world may be deliciously enjoyed\nand vividly rendered. But this is all. The deeper tones that lie in the\nsilences of Nature will be all inaudible, unless the ear be overhearing\nat the same time the deep music of the heart.\n\nFor the soul to apprehend all that Nature contains of meaning, there must\nbe present not only the eye keenly observing, and tenderly sensitive\nto natural beauty, but behind this must be a heart feelingly alive\nto all that is most affecting in human life, sentiment, and destiny.\nAnd not only this, but in all survey of created things the upward\nlook, unexpressed it may be, yet ever present, toward the Uncreated.\nIt cannot but affect even the poet\u2019s feeling about the most common\nmaterial things, what may be his regards toward that Unseen Presence\non which, not Nature only, but the spirit of man reposes. As he looks\non the face of earth, sea, and sky, the thought, whence come these\nthings, whither tend they, what is their origin and their end, must\nhabitually enter in and color that which the eye beholds. It can hardly\nbe but that a man\u2019s inner thoughts about these things will find their\nway out and color the observation of his eye. Even the ethereal beauty\nof Shelley\u2019s descriptions\u2014his perception of the motion of clouds and\nshadows and sunbeams\u2014his delight in all skyey and evanescent things\ntoo delicate for grosser eyes,\u2014you cannot read them long without being\ncrossed by some breath blown from his own distempered moral atmosphere.\nThe \u201csky-cleaving\u201d crags suggest to him heaven-defying minds, and\nhis mountains have a voice \u201cto repeal large codes of fraud and woe.\u201d\nByron,\u2014though his later poetry contains noble passages on mountain\nscenery, even the high Alps are hardly strong enough to lure him into\ntemporary forgetfulness of his own unhappy self, and his quarrel with\nmankind. In fact, so closely and deeply united are all the parts of the\nuniverse, that no one can apprehend the full compass of its manifold\nharmonies, whose own heart is not filled with that central harmony which\nsets it right with God and man.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nPOETIC AND SCIENTIFIC WONDER.\n\n\nBut same one may ask, Is not imagination generally at war with reason and\ntruth? Is not the quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy as old as the\ndays of Plato? Did not he feel this so keenly that he banished poets as\nfalse teachers from his well-ordered State?\n\nLuckily we have not to answer this question in all its breadth and\ncomplexity; we are not now called to defend the truth of Poetry in its\ndelineations of human character and emotions. Our subject confines us\nto that simpler aspect of the question which concerns the action of\nimagination on the external world. When the eye rests on the ranging\nlandscape, and the heart responds to the beauty of it, the emotion which\nis evoked is as true and as rational as is the action of any law of\nNature. This kindling of heart in the presence of Nature may be said\nto be \u201canother aspect of reason.\u201d It is not confined to any one order\nof men or stage of civilisation, but belongs alike to the child, the\npeasant, and the philosopher, if only the heart be natural and unspoiled.\nNo doubt the imaginative frame of mind differs in each according to\ndifference of mental habits, but in all alike it is essentially one.\nIt is a spontaneous and unconscious acknowledgment of the beauty of\nthe Universe\u2014a proof to those who think about it that the Universe was\nmade for the soul of man, and the soul for the Universe, that there is\nbetween them a wonderful harmony, the one answering to the other as the\nharp-strings to the hand of the musician.\n\nTake instances of this feeling, not from past times, but as it may\nexist in our own day. The Yarrow shepherd, as he goes forth at dawn\nand sees morning spread on the hills of the Forest, feels a momentary\nelevation of heart for which he has no words, and of which he may be but\nhalf-conscious; but in this feeling he has within him the first stirrings\nof that which, when the poet fashions it into fitting words, becomes\nan immortal song. His grandfather, a hundred years ago or less, when\nhe saw the first streaks of dawn strike some lonely peak, or the early\npencilings of light falling down into some hidden dell, embodied his\nfeelings of that beauty in the imagination of Fairies retiring from their\nmoonlight dances into the green knolls where they made their homes. The\nEttrick Shepherd, in his childhood, was perhaps among the last who had a\ngenuine feeling and belief of these symbols. They passed with him, but\nthough the symbols have vanished the same appearances remain, and awaken\nthe old feeling, and the feeling still needs a language.\n\nSo too was it with that Westmoreland dalesman who, as he walked with\nthe poet Wordsworth by the side of a brook, suddenly said to him, with\ngreat spirit and a lively smile, \u201cI like to walk where I can hear the\nsound of a beck.\u201d Beck is the Westmoreland word for what in England\nis called a brook, in Scotland a burn. \u201cI cannot but think,\u201d adds the\npoet, \u201cthat this man, without being conscious of it, has had many devout\nfeelings connected with the appearances which presented themselves to\nhim in his employment as a shepherd, and that the pleasure of his heart\nwas an acceptable offering to the Divine Being.\u201d This is Wordsworth\u2019s\nreflection. I shall but add that his liking to hear the sound of a beck\nwas a proof that the outward sound had ceased to be a mere commonplace to\nhim, and passing inward, had awakened an imaginative echo which is the\nbirth of poetry.\n\nOr take another instance\u2014that youth, a shepherd lad, but more poet and\nphilosopher than shepherd, whom Wordsworth describes watching the sunrise\non the Highland mountains:\u2014\n\n                  \u201cFor the growing youth,\n    What soul was his, when from the naked top\n    Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun\n    Rise up, and bathe the world in light. He looked\u2014\n    Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth,\n    And ocean\u2019s liquid mass, beneath him lay\n    In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,\n    And in their silent faces did he read\n    Unutterable love. Sound needed none,\n    Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank\n    The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form\n    All melted into him; they swallowed up\n    His animal being; in them did he live,\n    And by them did he live; they were his life.\n    In such access of mind, in such high hour\n    Of visitation from the living God,\n    Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.\n    No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request;\n    Rapt into still communion which transcends\n    The imperfect offices of prayer and praise,\n    His mind was a thanksgiving to the power\n    That made him; it was blessedness and love.\u201d\n\nAs we read such a passage, the thought involuntarily arises, What if the\nsaid youth, instead of being a nursling of nature among the hills of\nAtholl, had been college-bred, and crammed with all the _\u2019ologies_ which\nPhysical Science now teaches, would he still have had the same elevated\njoy in presence of that spectacle? It is the old question which Plato\nasked, and which many since have asked down to our own time. In 1842\nHaydon wrote to Wordsworth, recalling a dinner-party which took place\nmany years before at the painter\u2019s house: \u201cDon\u2019t you remember Keats\nproposing \u2018Confusion to the memory of Newton,\u2019 and upon your insisting\non an explanation before you drank it, his saying, Because he destroyed\nthe poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism?\u201d Suppose the Atholl\nshepherd lad had been an optician, and understood all the laws of light\nby which the effulgent hues of sunrise were elicited; suppose, further,\nthat he had been an astronomer, and as he saw the sunrise had begun to\nreflect, It is not the sun that I see rising, but it is the earth that\nis rotating on her own axis, and now turning her side toward the sun,\nthat causes all that I now see; and that axis is not vertical, but slants\nobliquely to the plane of its orbit,\u2014supposing these, and a hundred other\ntruths, which Physical Astronomy teaches, had come into his mind, would\nhe still have had that sublime joy?\n\nOr suppose, again, he had been a geologist, and, as he gazed over the\nmountain ridges, had begun to think of them as a record of commotions\nthat took place in far-back geological eras, and to reflect how the\nstratified layers of which these mountains are composed had been formed\nby the slime deposited at the bottom of a long since vanished sea; how\nthey had been upheaved by the action of subterranean forces; how some\nof the great depressions which we call valleys, or those rents in the\nmountains, now filled by sea-lochs, had been caused by the cracking of\nthe earth\u2019s crust, while it was still a heated mass, glowing from the\nprimeval fires; how other lesser glens and corries had been sculptured\nout of the solid earth by Nature\u2019s graving tools, ice-wedges, glaciers,\nrain, and rivers,\u2014in the presence of such scientific thoughts as these,\nwhat would become of the boy\u2019s imaginative and devout ecstasy?\n\nIn answer, it may be said that whether the scientific man shall feel\nthis spontaneous glow in the presence of the great spectacles of Nature\nor not, depends not on his scientific knowledge, but on his natural\ntemperament, on the amount of soul there is in him, underlying his\nattainments. If he be so entirely the man of science, if the intellect\nhas so entirely absorbed his being that he never gets beyond analyzing,\ncomparing, and reasoning on the appearances he sees, then he will look\nwithout emotion on the grandest ongoings of Nature; he will see in them\nonly a subject for investigation\u2014nothing more. But if, as has often been\nthe case, the physicist be a man not only of wide and accurate knowledge,\nbut of large soul,\u2014if his knowledge has become a part of him, has melted\ninto his being, then his heart will be free to kindle and rejoice at the\ngreat things of Nature which he sees, as genuinely as the unreflecting\nchild, the thoughtful peasant, or the most spontaneous poet.\n\nAs genuinely, but with a difference: the eye of the imaginative man of\nscience will take in all that these others do, and more. His admiration\nwill be fuller, larger, more instructed. The knowledge that has been\ngradually lodged in his mind, and become a part of it, will pass into his\neye, and enable him to see, on whatever side of the Universe he looks,\nmore complicated marvels, more wonderful correspondences.\n\n\u201cIn Wonder,\u201d says Coleridge, \u201call Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends:\nand Admiration fills up the interspace.\u201d The last clause I should change\nthus,\u2014and Investigation fills up the interspace. In the first Wonder and\nin the last the Philosopher and the Poet are akin to each other. Both\nwonder, both admire what they see, but this incipient wonder tends to\ndifferent results. The unscientific poet, just like the child and the\nthoughtful peasant, wonders at the beauty that is in the face of Nature,\nand at its mystery, seeks no physical explanations of it, but reads its\nmoral and spiritual meaning, and tries to utter it. The man of science\nequally begins with wonder at what he sees, but his wonder leads him on\nto seek for an explanation, to search for the laws which regulate the\nappearances, if haply he may find them.\n\nThen comes the long interspace of toilsome labor, of painful analysis,\nof rigorous induction. Experiment, analysis, deductive and inductive\nreasoning, by which chiefly Science works, are intellectual acts quite\ndistinct from imaginative intuition and emotion, and, in some degree,\nopposed to them. It cannot be that these distinct processes can be\ncombined in one intellectual act. They can hardly go on in one mind at\nthe same time. While a man is immersed in these scientific processes,\nthey preclude the poetic vision for the time. For many men they scare\naway poetry from the world forever.\n\nNot so with the largest, most sovereign minds of Science. Lesser men\nof dry or narrow minds may be so entangled in the meshes of their own\nunderstanding as never to escape from them, or may find more delight in\nthe cleverness of their own explanations than in the wonderful things\nwhich they explain. But the larger minds, when they have done their work,\nemerge in time from the study and the laboratory, and look abroad with\nexpanded vision and profounder reverence on that Universe, some small\npart only of which it has been given them to understand. Kepler, after\nhe had discovered so far the laws of planetary motion, said that all\nthat he had been able to do was to read a few of the thoughts of God. A\nshort time before his death, Newton is reported to have said, and I give\nthe oft-told story in the authentic words, \u201cI do not know what I may\nappear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy\nplaying on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding\na smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great\nocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.\u201d[6] A lesson surely to all\nfuture investigators, and, as his latest biographer has said, \u201cto those\nespecially who have never even found the smoother pebble or the prettier\nshell.\u201d These great men, so feeling, are in the attitude of philosophic\nwonder\u2014wonder both at part of the ways of God which it has been given\nthem to see, and at that vaster part which they feel to lie beyond their\nvision. These laws which they have discovered, what are they? whence come\nthey? They know that they themselves did not make them, only attained to\ncatch sight of them. They know too that the laws did not make themselves.\nThey are beautiful in themselves and in their benign operation; they\nare wonderful in their origin and continuance. This is what those great\ndiscoverers felt. And when they stood on the utmost verge of their\nscientific knowledge, and looked from what they had been allowed to see\nout upon the great beyond, they were rapt into that mood of wonder, akin\nto awe, which is the very essence of Poetry. Had they, in addition to\ntheir great scientific insight, been endowed with the gift of poetic\nutterance to express the wonder which they felt, they might have left to\nthe world a poem of scientific truth transfigured by the imagination,\nsuch as has never yet been uttered.\n\nThus we see there is a poetic glow of wonder and emotion before Science\nbegins its work; there is a larger, deeper, more instructed wonder when\nit ends. And either of these may naturally express itself in poetry,\nthough the earlier wonder has done so far more frequently than the later.\nThat the contemplation of the Universe does awaken this wonder in minds\nof the highest scientific order appears in the instances of Kepler and\nNewton. It has been shown in the case of an original discovery nearer our\nown day than either of these\u2014I mean in that of Faraday. The following\naccount of the imaginative delight which he felt in his scientific\ninvestigations I venture to quote from a very suggestive lecture of Mr.\nStopford Brooke.\n\n\u201cNature and her contemplation, says Professor Tyndall, produced in him a\nkind of spiritual exaltation: his delight in a sunset or a thunderstorm\namounted to ecstasy. Our subjects are so glorious, he says himself,\nthat to work at them rejoices and encourages the feeblest, delights and\ncontents the strongest. In this delight and enchantment he was always\nin the temper of the poet, and, like the poet, he continually reached\nthat point of emotion which produces poetic creation. Once, after long\nbrooding on the subject of force and matter, he saw, and I am sure\nsuddenly, as a poet sees a song from end to end before he writes it\ndown,\u2014he saw, as if lit by a stream of sudden light, the whole of the\nUniverse traversed by lines of force, and these lines in their ceaseless\ntremors producing light and radiant heat; and dashing forward on the\ntrail of his ideas, and thrilled into creation by the emotion which he\nfelt, declared that these lines were the lines of gravitating force, and\nthat the gravitating force itself constituted matter; that is, he made\nforce identical with matter. It was a speculation which abolished at a\nstroke the atomic theory and the notion of an ether. Of the possibility\nof the truth of this I am no judge,\u201d says Mr. Stopford Brooke. \u201cFaraday\nhimself calls it the shadow of a speculation. But who does not see that\nit proceeded after the manner of poetry; that in it poetry and philosophy\nwent hand in hand? It was one of those inspired, sudden guesses which\ncome to the poet who writes of the soul, coming to the philosopher who\nwrites of the universe. In the midst of unremitting work at details\nsuddenly a vision of the glory of the sum of things flashed upon his\nsight.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nWILL SCIENCE PUT OUT POETRY?\n\n\nHere an interesting question suggests itself: What if the discoveries\nof Newton and Faraday were to become no longer the exclusive possession\nof the learned, but were to pass into the daily thoughts of the people?\nWould Poetry then be any longer possible? Were the scientific view of the\nUniverse to become the popular one, were all men to regard the sight of\nthe heavens and the earth, not with natural spontaneous eyes, but as the\nchemist, the astronomer, and the geologist teach us to regard them,\u2014were\nscientific truth, in short, to supersede surface appearance,\u2014would it\nbe any longer possible to feel, as we look on the face of things, that\nfree and intuitive delight out of which Poetry has hitherto been born?\nIn a word, to express the fear which many hearts have felt, must not the\nmarch of Science trample out Poetry? Is not Poetry destined to disappear\nin this modern time, like many other things, once beautiful, but now\nantiquated?\n\nTo this the reply is, There is no fear that it will, as long as human\nnature remains what it is. If the view already taken of the genesis of\nPoetry be true, if man is so made that the vivid contact of his soul\nwith reality or existence of any kind must generate that glow of emotion\nwhich is poetry, then it cannot be that any enlargement for him of the\ndomain of reality which Science may effect shall be the death of Poetry.\nFor, like Religion, to which it is akin, Poetry is thus seen to be a\nperennial and necessary growth, having its root, not only in the heart of\nman, but in the constitution of things, and in the adaptation of these,\nthe one to the other. Science, however, though it can never eradicate\nthe poetic feeling, may modify its nature, or rather may enlarge its\nrange. But let it be clearly understood how it may do this. The processes\nof Science and of Poetry are radically distinct, and cannot be blended\nwithout confusion and injury to both. Experiment, analysis, reasoning\ninductive and deductive, these are the means by which Science makes its\nadvances, and with these Poetry cannot rightly intermeddle. Imaginatively\nto contemplate the spectacle of the world is possible before Science\nhas begun, it is possible, also, after it has completed its work. But\nit is not possible to combine imaginative contemplation and scientific\ninvestigation at the same time, and in one mental act. Only after\nanalysis and reasoning have done their work and secured their results\nis the man of science free to look abroad on Nature with a poetic eye.\nAnalysis and experimentalizing cannot by any possibility be made poetic,\nbut their results may. Every new province of knowledge which Science\nconquers, Poetry may in time enter into and possess. But this can only\nbe done gradually. Before imagination can take up and mould the results\nof Science, these must have ceased to be difficult, laborious, abstruse.\nThe knowledge of them must have become to the poet himself, and in some\nmeasure to his audience, familiar, habitual, spontaneous. And here we\nsee how finely Science and Poetry may interact and minister each to the\nother. If it be the duty of Science beneath seeming confusion to search\nfor order, and its happiness to find it everywhere,\u2014an order more vast,\nmore various, more deeply penetrating, more intimate and minute than\nuninstructed men ever dreamed of,\u2014wherever it reveals the presence of\nthis, does it not open new fields for the imagination to appropriate?\nFor what is order but the presence of thought, the ground of all beauty,\nthe witness to the actual nearness of an upholding and moving Spirit?\nThis is the vast new domain which Science is unveiling and spreading out\nbefore the eye of Poetry. And Poetry, receiving this large benefit, may\nrepay the debt by using her own peculiar powers to familiarize men\u2019s\nthoughts with the new regions which Science has won for them. If there\nis any office which Imagination can fulfill, it is this. She can help\nto bring home to the mind things which, though true, are yet strange,\ndistant, perhaps distasteful. She can mediate between the warm, household\nfeelings and the cold and remote acquisitions of new knowledge, and make\nthe heart feel no longer \u201cbewildered and oppressed\u201d among the vast extent\nand gigantic movements of the Universe, but at home amongst them, soothed\nand tranquillized. Not, however, out of her own resources alone can\nImagination do this. She must bring from the treasure-house of Religion\nmoral and spiritual lights and impulses, and with these interpenetrate\nthe cold, boundless spaces which the telescope has revealed. Some\nbeginning of such a reconciling process we may see here and there in\nthose poems of \u201cIn Memoriam\u201d in which the Poet-Laureate has finely\ninwrought new truths of Science into the texture of yearning affection\nand spiritual meditation. Even where the views of Science are not only\nstrange, but even at first crude and repulsive, Imagination can soften\ntheir asperity and subdue their harsher features. Just as when a railway\nhas been driven through some beautiful and sequestered scene, outraging\nits quiet and scarring its loveliness, we see Nature in time return,\nand \u201cbusy with a hand of healing,\u201d cover the raw wounds with grass, and\nstrew artificial mounds and cuttings with underwood and flowers. It\nseems then that while Science gives to Poetry new regions to work upon,\nPoetry repays the debt by familiarizing and humanizing what Science has\ndiscovered. Such is their mutual interaction.\n\nMr. Stopford Brooke has told us that if on the scientific insight of\nFaraday could be engrafted the poetic genius of Byron, the result would\nbe a poem of the kind \u201cfor which the world waits.\u201d For \u201cto write on the\nuniversal ideas of Science,\u201d he says, \u201cthrough the emotions which they\nexcite, will be part of the work of future poets of Nature.\u201d Likely\nenough it may be so. For if Poetry were to leave large regions of new\nthought unappropriated, being thus divorced from the onward march of\nthought, it would speedily become obsolete and unreal. But let us well\nunderstand what are the conditions of such poetry, the conditions on\nwhich alone Imagination can wed itself to scientific fact. The poet who\nshall sing the songs of Science must first be perfectly at home in all\nthe new truths, must move among them with as much ease and freedom as\nordinary men now do among the natural appearances of things. And not the\npoet only, but his audience must move with ease along the pathways which\nScience has opened. For if the poet has first to instruct his readers\nin the facts which he wishes imaginatively to render, while he expounds\nhe will become frigid and unpoetic. Just as Lucretius is dull in those\nparts of his poem in which he has to argue out and to expound the Atomic\nTheory, and only then soars when, exposition left behind, he can give\nhimself up to contemplate the great elemental movements, the vast life\nthat pervades the sum of things. For in order that any truth or view of\nthings may become fit material for poetry, it must first cease to live\nexclusively in the study or the laboratory, and come down and make itself\npalpable in the market-place. The scientific truths must be no longer\nstrange, remote, or technical. If they have not yet passed into popular\nthought, they must at least have become the habitual possession of the\nmore educated before the poet can successfully deal with them. This is\nthe necessary condition of their poetic treatment. Wordsworth, in one\nof his Prefaces, has stated so clearly the truth on this subject that I\ncannot do better than give his words. \u201cIf the time should ever come,\u201d he\nsays, \u201cwhen what is now called Science becomes familiarized to men, then\nthe remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, the mineralogist,\nwill be as proper objects of the poet\u2019s art as any upon which it can be\nemployed. He will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, he\nwill be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects\nof Science itself. The poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the\ntransfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and\ngenuine inmate of the household of man.\u201d\n\nScience therefore may in some measure modify Poetry, may enlarge its\nrange, may reveal new phases of it, but can never supersede it. The\nimaginative view of things which Poetry expresses is not one which can\ngrow obsolete. It is not the child of any one particular stage of\nknowledge or civilization, which can be put aside when a higher stage has\nbeen reached. Any state of knowledge can give scope to it. Any aspect\nof the world, that seen by the savage as well as that of the sage, can\nawaken that imaginative glow of mind, that thrill of emotion, which,\nexpressed in fitting words, is called Poetry. Only, as has been said\nabove, before any aspect of nature, or fact of life, or truth of science,\nmay be capable of poetic treatment, it must have become habitual and easy\nto the mind of the poet, and in some measure to that of his audience. In\nthe poet\u2019s mind, at least, it must have passed out of the region of mere\nhead-notions into the warmer atmosphere of imaginative intuition, and,\nvitalized there, must have bodied itself into beautiful form and flushed\ninto glowing color. For, to repeat once again what has been said at the\noutset, Poetry originates in the vivid contact of the soul\u2014not of the\nunderstanding merely, but of the whole soul\u2014with reality of any kind; and\nit is the utterance of the joy that arises, of the glow that is felt,\nfrom such soul-contact with the reality of things. When that reality has\npassed inward, and kindled the soul to \u201ca white heat of emotion,\u201d then it\nis that genuine Poetry is born.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nHOW FAR SCIENCE MAY MODIFY POETRY.\n\n\nIt may be worth while to dwell a little longer on the way in which Poetry\nand Science respectively deal with external Nature, noticing in what\nrespects their methods agree, in what they differ, wherein they seem to\nmodify each other, and how each aims at a separate and distinct end of\nits own.\n\nThe first thing to remark is, that in the presence of Nature the poet and\nthe man of science are alike observers. But in respect of time the poet\nhas the precedence. Long before the botanist had applied his microscope\nto the flower, or the geologist his hammer to the rock, the poet\u2019s eye\nhad rested upon these objects, and noted the beauty of their lineaments.\nThe poets were the first observers, and the earliest and greatest poets\nwere the most exact and faithful in their observations. In the Psalms\nof Israel and in the Poems of Homer how many of the most beautiful and\naffecting images of Nature have been seized and embalmed in language\nwhich for exactness can not be surpassed, and for beauty can never grow\nobsolete! Indeed, fidelity to the truth of Nature, even in its minutest\ndetails, may be almost taken as a special note of the higher order of\npoets. It is not Homer but Dryden who to express the silence of night\nmakes the drowsy mountains nod. It is a vulgar error which supposes that\nit is the privilege of imagination to absolve the poet from the duty\nof exact truth, and to set him free to make of Nature what he pleases.\nTrue imagination shows itself by nothing more than by that exquisite\nsensibility to beauty which makes it love and reverence Nature as it is.\nIt feels instinctively that \u201cHe hath made everything beautiful in his\ntime;\u201d therefore it would not displace a blade of grass nor neglect the\nveining of a single leaf. Of course, from the touch of a great poet,\nthe commonest objects acquire something more than exactness and truth\nof detail; they become forms of beauty, vehicles of human sentiment and\nemotion. But before they can be so used, fidelity to fact must first be\nsecured. They cannot be made symbols of higher truth unless justice has\nfirst been done to the truth of fact concerning them. Hence it is that\nthe works of the great poets of all ages are very repositories in which\nthe features and ever-changing aspects of the outward world are rendered\nwith the most loving fidelity and \u201cvivid exactness.\u201d This is one very\ndelicate service which genuine poets have done to their fellow-men. They\nhave by an instinct of their own noted the appearance of earth and sky,\nand kept alive the sense of their beauty during long ages when the world\nwas little heedful of these things. How many are there who would own that\nthere are features in the landscape, wild-flowers by the way-side, tender\nlights in the sky, which they would have passed forever unheeded, had not\nthe remembered words of some poet awakened their eye to look on these\nthings and to discern their beauty! Who ever now sees the \u201cwee, modest,\ncrimson-tipped flower,\u201d and notes the peculiar coloring of the petals,\nwithout a new feeling of beauty in the flower itself, and of the added\nbeauty it has received since the eye of Burns dwelt so lovingly upon it!\n\nThe observation of the world around them in those early poets, clear and\ntransparent, was instinctive, almost unconscious. It proceeded not by\nrules or method, but was spontaneous, prompted by love. What Mrs. Hemans\nfinely says of Walter Scott among his own woods at Abbotsford, may be\nsaid of all the great poets in their converse with Nature\u2014\n\n    \u201cWhere every tree had music of its own,\n    To his quick ear of knowledge taught by love.\u201d\n\nLikely enough it will be said, that spontaneous, child-like kind\nof observation was all well enough in the pre-scientific era. But\nnow, in this day of trained observation and experiment, have not the\nmagnifying-glass of the botanist and the crucible of the chemist quite\nput out the poet\u2019s vocation as an observer of natural things? Have\nnot these taught us truth about Nature, so much more close, exact,\nand penetrating, as to have discredited altogether that mere surface\nobservation which is all that is possible to the poet? In the presence\nof this newer, more sifting investigation, can the imagery of the poets\nany longer live? Has not the rigorous analysis of modern times, and the\nknowledge thence accruing, abolished the worth and meaning of that first\nrandom information gathered by the eye?\n\nIn reply, may it not be said the observations of the poet have real\nmeaning and truth, but it is a different kind of truth which the poet and\nthe man of science extract from the same object? The poet, in as far as\nhe is an observer at all, must be as true and as accurate in the details\nhe gives as the man of science is, but the end which each seeks in his\nobservation is different. In examining a flower, the botanist, when he\nhas noted the number of stamens and petals, the form of the pistil, the\ncorolla, the calyx, and other floral organs,\u2014when he has registered\nthese, and so given the flower its place in his system, his work is done.\nThese things, too, the poet observes, and in his descriptions, if he\ndoes not give them a place, he must at least not contravene them; but he\nobserves them as means to a further end. That end is to see and express\nthe loveliness that is in the flower, not only the beauty of color and\nof form, but the sentiment which, so to speak, looks out from it, and\nwhich is meant to awaken in us an answering emotion. For this end he\nmust observe accurately, since the form and hues of the flower discerned\nby the eye are a large part of what gives it relation and meaning to the\nsoul. The outward facts of the wild-flowers he must not distort, but\nreverently observe them; but, when observed, he must not rest in them,\nbut see them as they stand related to the earth out of which they grow,\nto the wood which surrounds them, to the sky above them, which waits on\nthem with its ministries of dew, rain, and sunshine,\u2014indeed, to the whole\nworld, of which they are a part, and to the human heart, to which they\ntenderly appeal.\n\nOn this wide subject, the bearing of scientific on poetic truth, I know\nnot where can be found truer and more suggestive teaching than that\ncontained in Mr. Ruskin\u2019s great work on Modern Painters. Each volume\nof that work, which has influenced so powerfully the painting of our\ntime, has much to teach to the poet and to the student of Poetry. In the\nPreface to the Second Edition many of the principles expanded throughout\nthe work are condensed. From that Preface I venture to quote one or two\npassages which throw much light on the subject of our discussion:\u2014\n\n\u201cThe sculptor is not permitted to be wanting either in knowledge or\nexpression of anatomical detail.... That which to the anatomist is the\nend is to the sculptor the means. The former desires details for their\nown sake; the latter that by means of them he may kindle his work\nwith life, and stamp it with beauty. And so in landscape: botanical\nor geological details are not to be given as a matter of curiosity or\nsubject of search, but as the ultimate elements of every species of\nexpression and order of loveliness.\u201d\n\nAgain: \u201cDetails alone, and unreferred to a final purpose, are the sign of\na tyro\u2019s work.... Details perfect in unity and contributing to a final\npurpose are the sign of the production of a consummate master. It is not\ndetails sought for their own sake ... which constitute great art,\u2014they\nare the lowest, most contemptible art; but it is detail referred to a\ngreat end, sought for the sake of the inestimable beauty which exists in\nthe slightest and least of God\u2019s works, and treated in a manly, broad,\nand impressive manner. There may be as much greatness of mind, as much\nnobility of manner, in a master\u2019s treatment of the smallest features, as\nin his management of the more vast; and this greatness of manner chiefly\nconsists in seizing the specific character of the object, together with\nall the great qualities of beauty which it has in common with the higher\norders of existence.\u201d\n\nOnce more: \u201cThis is the difference between the mere botanist\u2019s knowledge\nof plants and the great poet\u2019s or painter\u2019s knowledge of them. The\none notes their distinctions for the sake of swelling his herbarium,\nthe other that he may render them vehicles of expression and emotion.\nThe one counts the stamens, affixes a name, and is content; the other\nobserves every character of the plant\u2019s color and form; considering each\nof its attributes as an element of expression, he seizes on its lines of\ngrace or energy, rigidity or repose, notes the feebleness or the vigor,\nthe serenity or tremulousness of its hues; observes its local habits,\nits love or fear of peculiar places, its nourishment or destruction by\nparticular influences; he associates it in his mind with all the features\nof the situations it inhabits and the ministering agencies necessary to\nits support. Thenceforward the flower is to him a living creature, with\nhistories written on its leaves and passions breathing in its motion. Its\noccurrence in his picture is no mere point of color, no meaningless spark\nof light. It is a voice rising from the earth, a new chord of the mind\u2019s\nmusic, a necessary note in the harmony of his picture, contributing alike\nto its tenderness and its dignity, nor less to its loveliness and its\ntruth.\u201d\n\nIf in the observation of Nature the ends which the poet has in view\nand the effects which he brings out are different from those aimed at\nby the man of science, not less distinct are the mental powers which\neach brings into play. The man of science investigates that he may\nreach rigid accuracy of fact, and this he does by the exercise of the\ndry understanding, and by the use of the analytic method. The poet\ncontemplates the single objects or the vast spectacle of Nature, in\norder that he may discern the beauty that pervades both the parts and\nthe whole, and that he may apprehend the intimations\u2014the great thoughts,\nI might call them\u2014which come to him through that beauty, and which make\ntheir appeal to the power of imaginative sympathy within him. Nature,\nwhether in detail or as a whole, he regards in the relation it bears,\nwhether of likeness or of contrast, to the soul, the emotions, and the\ndestiny of man. But this relation he must seize, not by neglecting or\nsetting aside facts, but by noting them with all the fidelity consistent\nwith his main purpose.\n\nBut it may be well to mark more definitely some of the ways in which the\nextension of natural science in modern times has reacted on the work of\nthe poet.\n\n_1st._ It had fallen in with, though it has not originated, that\nremarkable change in the mental attitude in which modern times stand\ntoward Nature, a change of which more will have to be said presently,\nbut which it is enough here to allude to. For that ardent, sensitive,\nreverent regard which the modern time turns on Nature, recent\nresearch may be said to have furnished a rational basis, a sufficient\njustification. Not that Science created this mental attitude, this\nnew-born sentiment; it is due to other, more subtle and hidden causes.\nIndeed, it may be that the two great contemporaneous influences, the\nincreased activity of physical discovery working by scientific analysis,\nand the enlarged and heightened admiration of Nature as seen through the\nimagination, are but opposite sides of the one great current of modern\nthought. Shelley speaks of the \u201cintense and comprehensive imagery which\ndistinguishes the modern literature of England,\u201d and this, though by no\nmeans a product of physical science, is in keeping with its revelations,\nthough it goes beyond and supplements them.\n\n_2d._ Again: the greatest of the early poets, as we have seen, were\ninstinctive lovers of Nature, and faithful delineators of its forms. But\nin presence of the unresting scrutiny and careful exactness of Science,\nmodern poets are stimulated to still closer, more minute observation.\nIndeed, there may be danger lest this tendency in Poetry go too far, and\nmake it too microscopic and forgetful of that higher function which,\nwhile seeing truly, ever spiritualizes what it sees. However this may be,\nit is clear that Science by its contagion has stimulated the observing\npowers of the modern poet, and made him more than ever a heedful\n\n                \u201cWatcher of those still reports\n    Which Nature utters from her rural shrine.\u201d\n\n_3d._ Again: since the progress of modern Science has let in on the\nmental vision whole worlds of new facts and new forces,\u2014a height and a\ndepth, a vastness and minuteness in Nature, as she works all around us,\nalike in the smallest pebble on the shore, and \u201cin the loftiest star\nof unascended heaven,\u201d\u2014it cannot be but that all this now familiar\nknowledge should enter into the sympathetic soul of the poet, and color\nhis eye as he looks abroad on Nature. When the eye, for instance, from\nthe southern beach of the Moray Firth passes over to its northern shore,\nand rests on the succession of high plateaux and precipiced promontories\nwhich form the opposite coast, and observes how the whole landscape\nhas been shaped, moulded, and rounded into its present uniformity of\nfeature by the glaciers that untold ages since descended from Ben Wyvis\nand his neighboring altitudes, and wore and ground the masses of old\nred sandstone into the outlines of the bluffs he now sees,\u2014who can look\non such a spectacle without having new thoughts awakened within him,\nof Nature working with her primeval wedges of frost, ice, and flood,\nto carve the solid rock into the lineaments before him, and of the\nstill higher power behind Nature that directs and controls all these\nher movements to ulterior and sublimer ends! When, in addition to these\nthoughts, the gazer calls to mind that these are the native headlands\nwhich first arrested the meditative eye of the great northern mason, more\nthan any other, geologist and poet in one, and fed the fire of his young\nenthusiasm, does not the geologic charactery that is scrawled upon these\nrocks receive a strange enhancement of human interest?\n\nAgain: the huge gray bowlders strewn here and there on the top of those\npromontories, and all about the dusky moors, when we learn that they have\nbeen floated to their present stations from leagues away by long vanished\nglaciers, no doubt their gaunt shapes become wonderfully suggestive. And\nyet, perhaps, nothing that geology can teach regarding them will ever\ninvest them with a more imaginative aspect than that which they wore to\nthe poet\u2019s eye, when, caring little enough for scientific theories, it\nshaped them into this human phantasy\u2014\n\n    \u201cAs a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie\n    Couched on the bald top of an eminence;\n    Wonder to all who do the same espy\n    By what means it hath hither come, and whence;\n    So that it seems a thing endued with sense;\n    Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf\n    Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.\u201d\n\nBut no doubt the truths of geology, if known to a poet, will in some\nmeasure enter into his description of scenery. For as the geological\nstructure of a country powerfully moulds and determines its features,\nthe knowledge of this, if possessed, must enter into the poet\u2019s eye as\nit ranges over the landscape. How powerfully geological causes are to\nmodify scenery is well set forth in a passage of the same Preface of Mr.\nRuskin\u2019s from which I have already quoted.\n\nThe new light which the discovery of these fads throws upon scenery\ncannot now well be neglected by the poet. And it is impossible to divine\nhow many new facts and farther vistas into the recesses of Nature future\ndiscovery may open up, which, when they have passed into the educated\nmind, poets must in their own way find expression for. But one thing\nis clear, the poet, however he may avail himself of scientific truth,\nmust not himself merge the Poet in the investigator or analyst. That\nfunction he must leave to the physicist, and be content to employ the\nmaterial with which the physicist furnishes him to enrich and enlarge\nhis vision of beauty. Moreover, the scientific facts he uses must not\nbe those which are still abstruse and difficult, but those with which\neducated men at least have already become familiar. But, above all, the\npoet, if he is not to abdicate his function, must retain that freshness\nof eye, that childlikeness of heart, which looks forth with ever-young\ndelight and wonder and awe on the great spectacle which Nature spreads\nbefore him. Most men have lost this gift, their spirits being crushed\nbeneath the dead weight of custom. Our boasted civilization and education\nhave done their best to destroy it; so that now it has come about that\nto the dull mechanic mind this marvelous earth is but a black ball of\nmud, painted here and there with some streaks of green and gold. To\nthe drily scientific mind, which fancies itself educated, it is merely\na huge piece of mechanism, like some great mill or factory, worked by\nforces which he proudly tabulates and calls Laws of Nature. But to\nthe true poet the earth and sky have not yet lost all their original\nbrightness. His eye still sees them with the dew upon them, in inspired\nmoments still catches sight of the visionary gleam. His gift it is, his\npeculiar function, seeing this himself, to make others see and feel it,\nto make his fellow-men sharers in his perceptions and in the joy they\nbring. He purges our dulled eyes as with euphrasy and rue, and opens\nthem to partake of the vision which he himself beholds. For after all\nthe sciences have said their say, and propounded their explanations of\nthings, as far as they go, the poet feels that there is in this visible\nUniverse, and the spectacle it presents, something more than all the\nsciences have as yet grasped or ever will grasp\u2014feels that there is in\nand through and behind all Nature a mysterious life, which he \u201ccannot\ncompass, cannot utter,\u201d but which he must still bear witness to. This\ngreat truth which lay at the bottom of the old mythologies, which\ngives meaning to many forms of mysticism, but which our dull mechanic\nphilosophies have long discredited, still haunts the soul of the poet,\nand, feeling it profoundly himself, he longs to express and make others\nfeel it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE MYSTICAL SIDE OF NATURE.\n\n\n_4th._ The mystical feeling which the contemplation of Nature has\nawakened in poets of every age, but which our own day has so greatly\nexpanded, while it is not directly suggested by Science, yet finds\nsupport from its disclosures. That great spectacle which from earliest\nages has thrilled the poet\u2019s soul with rapture and awe we know now to\nbe produced by recognized laws, to be interpenetrated by numberless\nwell-ordered forces, which, are indeed but thought localized, reason made\nvisible. The intuitive wonder which the earliest poet felt is more than\njustified by the latest discoveries of Science.\n\nAnd yet, be it observed, whatever support the truths of Science may give\nto the poet\u2019s instinctive perceptions, it is not on the physical causes\nand operations revealed by Science that his eye chiefly dwells. He has\nan object of contemplation which is distinct from these and peculiar\nto himself, and that is the Beauty which he sees in the face of the\nUniverse. Over and above the physical laws which uphold and carry on this\nframework of things, beyond all the uses which this mechanism subserves,\nthere is this further fact, this additional result, that all these laws\nand forces in their combination issue in Beauty. This Beauty, while it is\ncreated by the collocation and harmonious working of the physical laws,\nis a thing distinct from them and their operation. It is an aspect of\nthings with which the physicist as such does not intermeddle, but it is\nas real and as powerful over the minds of men as any force which Science\nhas disclosed. Modern discovery may have enlarged and intensified it, but\nhas in no way originated it. In this Beauty the poet from the first has\nfound his favorite field, the main region of his energy. For ages the\nvision of this beauty has haunted, riveted, fascinated him. And if he\nis no longer as of old its sole guardian, he is still, whether speaking\nthrough verse or prose, its best and truest interpreter. This truth, that\nthe Beauty of Nature is something in thought distinct, though in fact\ninseparable from the machinery of Nature, has been brought out and dwelt\non with remarkable power by Canon Mozley in his most suggestive sermon on\n\u201cNature.\u201d And he further insists with great force on the truth that it is\nthis spectacle of beauty produced by the useful laws which is the special\nprovince of the poet:\u2014\n\n\u201cHe fixes his eye upon the passive spectacle, upon Nature as an\nappearance, a sight, a picture. To another he leaves the search and\nanalysis; he is content to look, and to look only; this, and this alone,\nsatisfies him; he stands like a watcher or sentinel, gazing on earth,\nsea, and sky, upon the vast assembled imagery, upon the rich majestic\nrepresentation on the canvas.\u201d[7]\n\nIt is then the spectacle of beauty produced by the combination of\nphysical laws, this beauty, and not the physical laws which produce\nit, on which the poet fixes his gaze. In the presence of it the\npoet\u2019s first mental attitude is one of pure receptivity. As the clear\nwindless lake, spread out on a still autumn day, takes into its steady\nbosom every feature of the surrounding mountains, every hue of the\noverhanging sky, so is his soul spread out to receive into itself the\nwhole imagery of Nature. When this wise passiveness has been undergone,\nwhat images, sentiments, thoughts the poet will give back depends on\nthe capaciousness, the depth, the clearness of soul within him. The\nhighest poetry of Nature is that which receives most inspiration from\nthe spectacle, which extracts out of it the largest number of great and\ntrue thoughts. And a thought or idea, as Mr. Ruskin has taught us, \u201cis\ngreat in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind,\nand as it more fully occupies and, in occupying, exercises and exalts the\nfaculty by which it is received.\u201d\n\nThere are no doubt poets who are mainly taken up with the forms and\ncolors of things, and yet no poet can rest wholly in them, for this,\nif for no other reason, that in the power of rendering them his art\nnecessarily falls so far below that of the painter. Even those poets who\ndeal most humbly with Nature must, when they endeavor to make us feel its\nvisible beauty, link the outward forms and colors to some simple thoughts\nof animal delight, or of comfort, or of childhood, or of home affection.\nThis much he must do, if only to make them vivid, to bring them home to\nus. But he who does not go beyond this has not attained to those higher\nsecrets of Nature, which are open to the meditative imagination. When a\nreflective man comes on some sudden beauty of scenery in the wilderness\nwhere no man is, how often has the thought arisen that all this beauty\ncannot be wasted on vacancy, that though man comes not that way to see\nit, there must be other eyes that behold the spectacle,\u2014one Eye at least\nby which it is not unseen.\n\nWhether we regard the beauty as something wholly external to us, as lying\noutside of us on the face of Nature, or as a creation resulting from the\ncombination of certain external qualities, and of an intelligent mind\nwhich perceives them, whichever of these views we take, the beauty is\nthere, no mere dream or phantasy, but something to whose existence the\nsoul witnesses, as truly as the eye does to the existence of light or\nof those motions which perceived are light. What is it, whence comes\nit, what means it? It is not something we can reason from as we can\nfrom marks of contrivance and design. It will not lend itself to any\nsyllogism. But notwithstanding this, or perhaps owing to this, it awakens\ndeeper thoughts, it carries the mind farther than any mere proofs of\ndesign can do. The beautiful aspect of the outward world, and the delight\nwhich it inspires, are no doubt proofs of a goodness somewhere which\nsupports these, just as food and air are proofs of it. But they are more:\nthey have a mystic meaning, they are hints and intimations of something\nmore than eye, or ear, or mere intellect discover. If the outward world\nand the mind of man are so constructed that they fall in with, and answer\nto, each other,\u2014if mere physical qualities, such as height, depth,\nexpansion, silence, solitude, sunshine, shadow, gloom, affect the soul\nin certain well-known ways, awakening in us emotions of awe and wonder,\nof peace, gladness, sadness, and solemnity,\u2014we naturally ask ourselves,\nafter being thus moved, why is it we were so affected, what is it in the\noutward world which awakens these emotions? It is a natural question for\nthose who have felt the strange impulses from the changeful countenance\nof the world. It was not mere shape or color that so affected them: these\nfeelings did not come by chance, they were not without meaning; they\npoint to something outside of themselves, something inherent in the truth\nof things. When the spirit within them was so stirred, they felt that\nthat which so addressed them, though it came through physical things,\nwas more than physical, was spiritual. For it carried their thoughts and\nfeelings quite out of the natural and physical appearances, till they\nfound themselves in commune with something akin to their own spirits,\nthough higher and vaster. The beauty which came to them through eye, ear,\nand imagination, they felt to belong to the same order as that which more\ndirectly addresses their moral heart and conscience. It was the Great\nBeing behind the veil who comes to us directly through the conscience,\ncoming more indirectly, but not less really, through the eye and ear. Not\notherwise can we account for the intense love which the sights and sounds\nof Nature have awakened in the best and purest of men, and the more so as\nthey grew in maturity and serenity of soul.\n\nIt is a true instinct when men are led to regard the beauty of the world\nthat comes to them through the eye, and the moral light which shines\nfrom behind upon the soul, as coming from one centre, and leading upward\nto the thought of one Being who is above both. In this way all visible\nbeauty becomes a hint and a foreshadowing of something more than itself.\nBut if Nature is to be the symbol of something higher than itself, to\nconvey intimations of Him from whom both Nature and the soul proceed,\nman must come to the spectacle with the thought of God already in his\nheart. He will not get a religion out of the mere sight of Nature,\nneither from the uses it subserves as indicating design, nor from\nthe beauty it manifests as hinting at character. No doubt beauty is a\nhalf-way element, mediating between the physical laws and the moral\nsentiments, partaking more of the latter than of the former, as being\nitself a spiritual perception. No doubt it does in some measure act as a\nreconciler between those two elements which so often seem to stand out\nin contrast irreconcilable. But if it is to do this, if it is really to\nlead the soul upward, man must come to the contemplation of it with his\nmoral convictions clear and firm, and with faith in these as connecting\nhim directly with God. Neither morality nor religion will he get out\nof beauty taken by itself. If out of the splendid vision spread before\nhim\u2014the sight of earth, sea, and sky, of the clouds, the gleams, the\nshadows\u2014man could arrive directly at the knowledge of Him who is behind\nthem, how is it that in early ages whole nations, with these sights\ncontinually before them, never reached any moral conception of God? how\nis it that even in recent times many of the most gifted spirits, who have\nbeen most penetrated by that vision, and have given it most magnificent\nexpression, have been in revolt against religious faith? It is because\nthey sought in Nature alone, that which alone she was never intended to\ngive. It is because the spectacle of the outward world, however splendid,\nif we begin with it, and insist on extracting our main light from it, is\npowerless to satisfy our human need, to speak any word which fits in to\nman\u2019s moral yearning. Nay, Nature taken alone will often appear no benign\nmother at all, no dwelling-place of a kindly spirit, but an inexorable\nand cruel Sphinx, who rears children and makes them glad a little while,\nonly that she may the more relentlessly destroy them.\n\nBut he who takes the opposite road, who, instead of looking to visible\nNature for his first teaching, begins with the knowledge of himself, of\nhis need, his guilt, his helplessness, and listens to the voice that\ntells of a strength not his own, and a redemption not in him but for\nhim, he will learn to look on Nature with other and calmer eyes, and to\ndiscern a meaning in it which taken by itself it cannot give. Man may\nthen find in the beauty which he sees a hint and intimation of a higher\nbeauty which he does not see\u2014a something revealed to the eye which\ncorresponds to the religious truth revealed to the heart, harmonizing\nwith it and confirming it. He can regard the glory of Nature, not only\nin itself and for its own sake, but as the foreshadow and prophecy\nof a higher glory yet to be. And so the sight of Nature, instead of\nintoxicating, maddening, and rousing to rebellion, soothes, elevates,\nspiritualizes, chiming in unison with our best thoughts, our purest\naspirations.\n\nCanon Mozley, in his sermon on \u201cNature\u201d already alluded to, has dwelt\nvery powerfully on this, as the use which the highest Poetry makes of\nNature, and has shown that it is at once in accordance with the teaching\nand practice of Scripture, and true to our human instincts. He shows how\nsight, the noblest of our senses here, is made the pattern and type of\nthe highest attitude of the soul hereafter. For heaven is represented\nas \u201ca perfected sight,\u201d and he who attains to it is to be a beholder.\nIt is not mere self-rapt thought or inward contemplation, but a future\nvision of God which is promised. Meanwhile Nature and her works are\nemployed in Scripture, not only as proofs of goodness in God, but also\nas symbols representative of what He has in keeping for them who shall\nattain. Out of the storehouse of Nature are taken the materials\u2014the light\nthe rainbow, the sapphire, and the sea of glass\u2014to set forth, as far as\ncan be set forth, the things that shall be,\u2014sight, the noblest sense\nhere, made the type of the highest mental act hereafter; and Nature the\nspectacle given to employ sight now, and to adumbrate the things that\nshall be in heaven:\u2014this is the high function assigned by Scripture to\nsight and to Nature.\n\nWhen, therefore, in the light of these thoughts we study Nature in this,\nher highest poetic aspect, we may well feel that we are engaged in no\ntrivial employment, but in one befitting an immortal being. Even the most\ncommon acts of minutely observing Nature\u2019s handiwork may in this way\npartake of a religious character. How much more when the great spectacle\nof Nature lends itself to devout imagination, and becomes as it were the\nsteps of a stair ascending toward the Eternal!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nPRIMEVAL IMAGINATION WORKING ON NATURE\u2014LANGUAGE AND MYTHOLOGY.\n\n\nThe thought with which the last chapter closed opens up views which are\nboundless. Through the imaginative apprehension of outward Nature, and\nthrough the beauty inherent in it, we get a glimpse into the connection\nof the visible world with the realities of morality and of religion. The\nvivid feeling of Beauty suggests, what other avenues of thought more\nfully disclose, that the complicated mechanism of Nature which Science\ninvestigates and formulates into physical law is not the whole, that\nit is but the case or outer shell of something greater and better than\nitself, that through this mechanism and above it, within it, and beyond\nit, there lie existences which Science has not yet formulated\u2014probably\nnever can formulate\u2014a supersensible world, which, to the soul, is more\nreal and of higher import than any which the senses reveal. It is\napprehended by other faculties than those through which Science works,\nyet it is in no way opposed to science, but in perfect harmony with it,\nwhile transcending it. The mechanical explanation of things\u2014of the\nUniverse\u2014we accept as far as it goes, but we refuse to take it as the\nwhole account of the matter, for we know, on the testimony of moral and\nspiritual powers, that there is more beyond, and that that which is\nbehind and beyond the mechanism is higher and nobler than the mechanism.\nWe refuse to regard the Universe as only a machine, and hold by the\nintuitions of faith and of Poetry, though the objects which these let in\non us cannot be counted, measured, or weighed, or verified by any of the\ntests which some physicists demand as the only gauges of reality. This\nideal but most real region, which the visible world in part hides from\nus, in part reveals, is the abode of that supersensible truth to which\nconscience witnesses,\u2014the special dwelling-place of the One Supreme Mind.\nThe mechanical world and the ideal or spiritual are both actual. Neither\nis to be denied, and Imagination and Poetry do their best work when they\nbody forth those glimpses of beauty and goodness which flash upon us\nthrough the outer shell of Nature\u2019s mechanism.\n\nBut\n\n                      \u201cDescending\n    From these imaginative heights,\u201d\n\nwe must turn to the humbler task of showing by a few concrete examples\nhow Imagination has actually worked on the plastic stuff supplied by\nNature. To this the readiest way would be to turn to the works of the\ngreat poets, and see how they, as a matter of fact, have dealt with the\noutward world. Before doing so, however, a few words may be given to the\nmarks which Imagination has impressed on Nature in the prehistoric and\npreliterary ages. The record of this process lies imbedded in two fossil\ncreations, Language and Mythology.\n\n_Language._\u2014In the very childhood of the race, long before regular\npoetry or literature were thought of, there was a time when Imagination,\nworking on the appearances of the visible world, was the great weaver of\nhuman speech, the most powerful agent in forming the marvelous fabric of\nlanguage. It has long been well known to all who have given attention\nto the subject, that Metaphor has played a large part in the original\nformation of language. But how large that part is has only been recently\nmade evident by the researches of Comparative Philology. Metaphor, as\nall know, means \u201cthe transferring of a name from the object to which it\nproperly belongs to other objects which strike the mind as in some way\nresembling the first object.\u201d Now this is the great instrument which\nworks at the production of a large portion of language. And Imagination\nis the power which creates metaphor, which sees resemblances between\nthings, seizes on them, and makes them the occasion of transferring the\nname from the well known original object to some other object resembling\nit, which still waits for a name. Even in our own day newly-invented\nobjects are often named by metaphor, but metaphors thus consciously\nformed belong to a later age. Long before such metaphors were formed,\nImagination had been silently and unconsciously at work, naming the\nwhole world of mental and spiritual existences by metaphors taken from\nvisible and tangible things. It is quite a commonplace that the whole\nvocabulary by which we name our souls, our mental states, our emotions,\nabstract conceptions, invisible and spiritual realities, is woven in the\nearliest ages by the Imagination from the resemblances which it seemed\nto perceive between the subtle and still unnamed things of mind, and\nobjects or aspects of the external world. This is not so easily seen in\nthe English language, because owing to our having borrowed almost all\nour words expressive of mental things from other languages, the marks of\nmetaphor are to our eyes obliterated. In fact all our words for mental\nand spiritual things are like coins which, having passed through many\nhands, have had the original image and superscription nearly quite worn\nout. None the less these are still to be traced by those who have their\neyes exercised to it by reason of use. But it is manifest in German,\nwhich has spun a large part of its philosophical vocabulary out of native\nroots. It may be seen, in some measure, in Latin, but much more in Greek\nphilosophical language.\n\nThis whole subject has been so well handled and so amply illustrated\nby Professor Max M\u00fcller in the Second Series of his Lectures on \u201cthe\nScience of Language,\u201d and in Archbishop Trench\u2019s instructive and\ndelightful volumes on \u201cWords,\u201d that I can but refer to these works and\nmake here a few excerpts from them as examples of the general principle\nof thought to which I have adverted. Locke, as Professor M\u00fcller shows,\nlong ago asserted that in all languages \u201cnames which stand for things\nwhich fall not under our senses have had their first rise from sensible\nideas.\u201d\n\nOur word \u201cspirit\u201d comes from the Latin _spiritus_, the breath, and\n_spiro_, to breathe; so _animus_, the soul, a seat of the affections, and\n_anima_, the living principle, are connected with the Greek \u1f04\u03bd\u03b5\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2, wind.\nIndeed, _anima_ is sometimes used in Latin for a breeze, as readers of\nHorace will remember, and all are connected with the Greek verb \u1f04\u03c9, to\nblow. \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1, the Greek word used in Scripture to express spirit and a\nspiritual being, originally means wind and breath, from the verb \u03c0\u03bd\u03ad\u03c9, to\nblow and to breathe. Again, \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03ae, life and soul, is connected with \u03c8\u03cd\u03c7\u03c9,\nwhich in Homer means to breathe, to blow. So that in all these cases we\nsee that men, when they first became aware of an invisible and spiritual\nprinciple within themselves, named it by an act of imagination from the\nmost impalpable entity their senses perceived,\u2014the wind, or the breath.\nAgain, take our word \u201cideal.\u201d It comes from the Greek \u1f30\u03b4\u03ad\u03b1, from \u1f30\u03b4\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd,\nto see, originally a word of sight, expressing the look or appearance\nof a thing, which Plato in time employed to express the most spiritual\nentities, the supersensible pattern of all created things. Again, our\nwords \u201cimagination\u201d and \u201cimaginative,\u201d how have they been formed? The\nLatin word _imaginatio_ occurs but rarely; more frequently the verb\n_imaginor_, to picture to one\u2019s self; more frequent still is _imago_,\nas if _imitago_, from _imitor_, to imitate. This last is connected with\nthe Greek verb \u03bc\u03b9\u03bc\u03ad\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9, meaning also to imitate; and the original of\nthese, and all the cognate words, both Latin and Greek, is the Sanscrit\nroot _m\u00e2_, to measure. So from this very palpable process of measuring\nthe land, there have been spun all the subtle and delicate words that\nexpress the working of imagination. So the mental processes expressed by\n\u201capprehend,\u201d \u201ccomprehend,\u201d and \u201cconceive,\u201d are all derived from bodily\nprocesses, and mean respectively to grasp at a thing with the hand,\nto grasp a thing together, to take and hold together. Again, the word\n\u201cperceive,\u201d from the Latin _percipere_, was in the language of husbandry\nused for the farmer gathering in the fruits of his fields and storing\nthem in his garner. Was then the mind conceived of as a husbandman who\ngathers in the notices of sense from the outer world, and stores them in\nan invisible garner? To \u201cinculcate:\u201d here is another mental word borrowed\nfrom husbandry. It means to tread or stamp firmly in with the heel, and\nwas used of the farmer, who, with his foot or some instrument, carefully\npressed home into the earth the seed which he had sown. We see how well\nthe metaphor can be transferred to the process of careful teaching\u2014to the\nclergyman, for instance, who inculcates religious truth. These are but a\nfew obvious and well-known samples of a process which has gone on in all\nlanguages, and has furnished forth our whole stock of names for mental\noperations and spiritual truths. And Imagination has been the power which\nhas presided over the process, the interpreter mediating between two\nworlds, and naming the unseen realities of the inner world by analogies\nwhich she perceives in them to the sensible objects of the outer.\nDisciples of the Hume philosophy will see in these facts of language a\nconfirmation of their master\u2019s dictum that all ideas and thoughts are but\nweak and faded copies of the more vivid impressions first stamped on the\nsenses. But those who have been learners in another school, to whom the\nworld of thought has more power and reality than the world of sense, they\nwill read in these facts a different lesson, that He has made all things\ndouble, the one over against the other, and that the thought by which\nboth are pervaded is one.\n\nTruly then has it been said, \u201cLanguage is fossil poetry.\u201d And any one\nwho will set himself to spell out those fossils, and the meanings they\ncontain, will find a wonderful record of the way in which the mind of\nman has wrought in their formation. This record will lead him down into\nlayers of thought as varied as any which the geologist deciphers, filled\nwith more subtle and marvelous formations than any animal or vegetable\nfossils. For full exposition and illustration of the mental processes by\nwhich so large a portion of language has been created, the reader should\nturn to Professor M\u00fcller\u2019s volume, to which I have already referred.\n\nWholly different from this primeval process of naming things by\nunconscious metaphors is the modern metaphor, as we find it in the poets.\nWhen Shelley speaks of the moon as\n\n    \u201cThat orb\u00e8d maiden with white fire laden,\n      Whom mortals call the Moon,\u201d\n\nhe is using a metaphor, and a very fine one, but he does so with perfect\nconsciousness that it is a metaphor, and there is not the least danger of\nthe poet, or any one else, confounding the moon with any maiden, earthly\nor heavenly.\n\nAgain, when Mrs. Hemans addresses the moaning night-winds as\n\n    \u201cWild, and mighty, and mysterious singers!\n      At whose tones my heart within me burns,\u201d\n\nthere is no likelihood of any confusion between the winds and mortal\nsingers, no chance of the metaphor ever growing into mythology.\n\nOnce more: to return to Shelley\u2014\n\n    \u201cWinter came; the wind was his whip\n    One choppy finger was on his lip:\n    He had torn the cataracts from the hills,\n    And they clanked at his girdle like manacles,\n    His breath was a chain that without a sound\n    The earth, and the air, and the water bound;\n    He came, fiercely driven in his chariot-throne\n    By the ten-fold blasts of the arctic zone.\u201d\n\nHere is not only metaphor, but personification so strong and vivid\nthat it is only kept from passing into mythology by the conscious and\nreflective character of the age in which it was created.\n\n_Mythology._\u2014The other great primitive creation wrought by the action\nof the human imagination, in its attempts to name and explain the\nappearances of visible Nature, was ancient mythology. That huge\nunintelligible mass of fable which we find imbedded in the poets of\nGreece and Rome has long been a riddle which no learning could read.\nBut just as modern telescopes have resolved the dim masses of nebul\u00e6\ninto distinct stars, so the resources of that modern scholarship called\nComparative Philology seems at last on the way to let in light on the\nhitherto impenetrable secret of the origin of religious myths. It has\ngradually been made probable that the Olympian gods, whatever capricious\nshapes they afterward assumed, were in their origin but the first feeble\nefforts of the human mind to name the unnamable, to give local habitation\nand expression to the incomprehensible Being who haunted men\u2019s inmost\nthoughts, but was above their highest powers of conception. In making\nthis attempt, the religious instinct of our Aryan forefathers wrought,\nnot through the abstracting or philosophical faculty, but through the\nthought-embodying, shaping power of imagination, by which in later ages\nall true poets have worked, that in the dim foretime fashioned the whole\nfabric of mythology. It was the same faculty of giving a visible shape to\nthought.\n\nAs soon as man wakes up to think of himself, what he is, how he is\nhere, he feels that he depends not on himself, but on something other\nthan and independent of himself; that there is One on whom \u201cour dark\nfoundations rest.\u201d \u201cIt is He that made us, and not we ourselves;\u201d this\nis the instinctive cry of the human heart when it begins to reflect\nthat it is here, and to ask how it came here. This consciousness of\nGod, which is the dawn of all religion, is reached not as a conclusion\nreasoned out from premises, not as a law generalized from a multitude\nof facts, but as a first instinct of intelligence, a perception flashed\non the soul as directly as impressions are borne in upon the sense,\na faith which may be afterward fortified by arguments, but is itself\nanterior to all argument.[8] When this thought awoke, when men felt the\nreality of \u201cthat secret thing which they see by reverence alone,\u201d how\nwere they to conceive of it, how name it? for a name was necessary to\nretain any thought as a permanent possession, much more this thought,\nthe highest of all thoughts. The story of the well-known Dyaus, or the\nformation of this name for the Supreme God, has been told so often of\nlate by Professor M. M\u00fcller, in his various works, that I should not have\nventured to repeat it after him once again, had it not been necessary for\nthe illustration of my present subject. It has been proved that in almost\nall the Aryan languages\u2014Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Celtic\u2014the\nname for the Highest, the Supreme Being, has sprung from one root. \u201cThe\nHighest God received the same name in the ancient mythology of India,\nGreece, Italy, Germany, and retained the name whether worshiped on the\nHimalayan mountains or among the oaks of Dodona, or in the Capitol of\nRome, or in the forests of Germany.\u201d The Sanscrit Dyaus, the Greek Zeus,\nthe Latin Jupiter (Jovis), the Teutonic Tiu (whence our Tuesday), are\noriginally one word, and spring from one root. That root is found in\nSanscrit, in the old word _dyu_, which originally meant sky and day.\nDyaus therefore meant the bright heavenly Deity. When men began to think\nof the incomprehensible Being who is above all things, and comprehends\nall things, and when they sought to name Him, the name must be taken from\nsome known visible thing, and what so natural as that the bright, blue,\nboundless, all-embracing, sublime, and infinite vault, which contains man\nand all that man knows, should be made the type and symbol to furnish\nthat name?\n\nWhen the old Aryan people, before their dispersion, thus named their\nthought about the Supreme as the Shining One, Professor M\u00fcller does not\nthink that it was any mere personification of the sky, or Nature-worship,\nor idolatry that led to their so naming Him. Rather he thinks that that\nold race were still believers in one God, whom they worshiped under\nthe name Heaven-Father. This inquiry, however, lies beyond our present\npurpose. What it more concerns us now to note is that it was a high\neffort of thought to make the blue, calm, all-embracing sky the type\nand symbol of the Invisible One, and that the power which wrought out\nthat first name for the Supreme was Imagination working unconsciously,\nwe might almost say involuntarily\u2014the same power which in its later\nconscious action, under control of the poet\u2019s will, has found a vent for\nitself in Poetry.\n\nIn the same way Comparative Philology accounts for all the stories about\nthe beautiful youth Ph\u0153bus Apollo, Athene, and Aphrodite.\n\n\u201cI look,\u201d Professor M\u00fcller says, \u201con the sunrise and sunset, on the daily\nreturn of night and day, on the battle between light and darkness, on\nthe whole solar drama in all its details that is acted every day, every\nmonth, every year, in heaven and in earth, as the principal subject of\nearly mythology. I consider that the very idea of Divine powers sprang\nfrom the wonderment with which the forefathers of the Aryan family\nstared at the bright (_deva_) powers that came and went no one knew\nwhence or whither, that never failed, never faded, never died, and were\ncalled immortal, _i. e._, unfading, as compared with the feeble and\ndecaying race of man. I consider the regular recurrence of phenomena\nan almost indispensable condition of their being raised, through the\ncharms of mythological phraseology, to the rank of immortals: and I give\na proportionably small place to the meteorological phenomena, such as\nclouds, thunder, and lightning, which, although causing for a time a\nviolent commotion in nature and in the heart of man, would not be ranked\ntogether with the immortal bright beings, but would rather be classed\ntogether as their subjects or as their enemies.\u201d\n\nIn this eloquent passage Professor M\u00fcller expresses his well-known \u201cSolar\nTheory\u201d of mythology. At the close of the passage he alludes to a counter\ntheory which has been called the Meteoric, which makes mythology find\nits chief field, not in the calm and uniform phenomena of the sun\u2019s\ncoming and going, and of day and night, but in the occasional and violent\nconvulsions of storm, thunder, and earthquake. Not what is fixed and\nuniform, but what is sudden and startling, most arrests the imagination,\naccording to this latter theory. But it does not concern us here to\ndiscuss the claims of these rival views, but rather to remark that in\nboth alike it is the imagination in man to which the aspects of heaven,\nwhether uniform or occasional, calm or turbulent, make their appeal,\nand that when, according to that tendency of language noted by Professor\nM\u00fcller, words assume an independent power and dominate over the mind\ninstead of being dominated by it, it is Imagination which throws itself\ninto the tendency, and takes occasion from it to weave its many-tissued,\nmany-colored web of mythologic fable.\n\nBut however adequate such theories may be to people the whole Pantheon\nof Olympus, they seem quite out of place when brought to account for the\ninhabitants of this lower world. Nothing can seem less likely than that\nthe conceptions of Achilles and Hector can have arisen from myths of the\ndawn. Characters that stand out so firmly drawn, so human and so natural,\nin the gallery of human portraiture, can hardly have been shaped out\nof such skyey materials. One could as readily believe that Othello or\nMacbeth had such an origin.\n\nIt is easy to laugh at those early fancies which men dreamed in the\nchildhood of the world, and took for truth; and to congratulate ourselves\nthat we, with our modern lights of Science, have long outgrown those\nmythic fables; but with the exacter knowledge of the world\u2019s mechanism\nwhich Science has taught us, is there not something we have lost?\nWhither has gone that fine wonder with which the first men gazed on\nthe earth and the heavens from the plains of Iran and Chaldea? It lies\nburied beneath the mass of second-hand thought and information which\nScience has heaped upon us. Would it not be well if we could win back\nthe truth, of which a dull mechanical or merely logical way of thinking\nhas long robbed us, that the outward world, with all its movements, is\nnot a mere dead machine, going by ropes and pulleys and cog-wheels, but\nan organism full of a mysterious life, which defies our most subtle\nanalysis, and escapes us when placed in the crucible? This feeling, that\nthings are alive and not dead, rests at the bottom of all mythology, the\none root of truth underlying the huge mass of fable. How to regain this\nperception of something divine in Nature, more than eye and ear discover,\nand to do this in harmony with all the facts and laws which Science has\nascertained, this is a problem reserved for thoughtful men in the future\ntime.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nSOME OF THE WAYS IN WHICH POETS DEAL WITH NATURE.\n\n\nThose who have not given attention to the subject are apt to imagine that\nthe chief creators of mythological fables were the poets, and especially\nHomer. They suppose that the early poets, by sheer power of imagination,\ninvented those stories to adorn their poems, and so gave them currency\namong the people. It was not so. Even Homer, the earliest poet whom we\nknow, belonged to an era when the myth-creating instinct was past its\nprime, and already on the wane. The fables of the gods, their loves and\ntheir quarrels, as these appear in his poems, there is no reason to\nsuppose that he created them or imagined them for the first time. It\nwould rather seem that they had been long current in popular belief,\nand that he only used and gave expression to stories which he found\nready-made. Here and there in Homer you may still detect some traces\nof the mythologizing tendency still lingering, and catch the primitive\nphysical meaning of the myth shining through the anthropomorphic covering\nwhich it afterward assumed. Such glimpses we get in Zeus, when he\ngathers the clouds in the sky, when he rouses himself to snow upon men\nand manifests his feathery shafts, when he rains continuously, when he\nbows the heavens and comes down upon the peaks of Ida. Or again, when\nPoseidon, the earth-encompassing, the earth-shaker, yokes his car at\nHege\u00e6 and drives full upon the Trojan strand: I take the passage from Mr.\nCordery\u2019s translation of the Iliad:\u2014\n\n                                  \u201cHe entered in,\n    And there beneath his chariot drew to yoke\n    Fast-flying horses, maned with flowing gold,\n    Hooved with bright brass; and girt himself in gold,\n    Took golden goad, and sprang upon the car;\n    So forth upon the billows, round whose path\n    Huge monsters gamboled, gathering from the depth\n    Afar, anear, and joyous knew their lord;\n    Ocean for gladness stood in sunder cloven,\n    Whilst lightly flew the steeds, nor \u2019neath the car\n    The burnished axle moistened with the brine:\u2014\n    Thus tow\u2019rd the fleet his coursers bore the god.\u201d\n\nHere we have, half-physical, half-mythological, like Milton\u2019s\nhalf-created lion, the fore part perfect, the hinder part still clay,\na well-known natural appearance. After the storm-winds are laid, but\nwhile the sea still feels their power, it is thus that the high-crested\nbreakers may be seen racing shorewards with their white manes backward\nstreaming, and glorified with rainbow hues from a bright dawn or a\nsplendid sunset poured upon them from the land.\n\nBut for the most part, even Homer, early poet though he was, has quite\nforgotten that original aspect of Nature out of which each god was\nshaped, and has invested them with entirely human attributes, even with\nhuman follies and vices, which have no connection at all with the primary\nfact, but are the wildest freaks of extravagant fancy. If then even Homer\nhas so much forgotten the physical origin of his mythic gods, how must\nit be with the tragic poets! \u00c6schylus and Sophocles we see have entirely\nput aside the immoral fables about them, and are anxious to find the\ntruth which lies at the root of the popular belief, and to moralize the\nwhole conception of the gods. When we come down to the Latin poets, we do\nnot find even this effort; but the gods they have borrowed from Greece\nare used as mere poetic machines, with as little of either physical or\nmoral meaning as a modern romance-writer might use fairies, gnomes, or\nhobgoblins.\n\nAlthough in the more imaginative of modern poets, modes of conceiving\nNature, and expressions every here and there crop out, which in an\nearlier age would certainly have flowered into mythology, it is\nnevertheless true that, ever since the literary age set in, poets in\ngeneral have viewed Nature with a more familiar eye, and described it in\nlanguage which ordinary speech would not disown. I shall now endeavor to\nclassify the several ways in which Nature is dealt with by the poets,\nthe several aspects of it which enter most prominently into Poetry. It\nwill be enough for my present purpose merely to generalize, under a few\nheads, the most obvious of these forms, without attempting to analyze\nthem or to account for them.\n\n\nI.\n\nThe first form I shall notice is the expression of that simple,\nspontaneous, unreflecting pleasure which all unsophisticated beings feel\nin free open-air life. We all know how children feel when they are let\nloose to wander at will in green fields, or by a burn-side, or under\nthe budding woods when the primroses and anemones first appear. The\nfull-grown man, too, the man of business or letters, knows how\u2014when his\nnerves have been over-strung and his heart fretted by worldly things\u2014a\nday abroad under a blue sky, with a soft southwest blowing, restores and\nharmonizes him. Old persons, we may have observed, who have seen and\nsuffered much, from whom the world and its interests are receding: what a\nsense of peace and refreshment comes over them as they gaze in quiet over\na distant landscape with the sunlight upon it!\n\nThis delight, which children, busy men, and weary age alike find in\nout-of-door life, may be said to be merely physical, a thing of the\nnerves and animal spirits. It is so, no doubt, but it is something\nmore. Along with pleasure to the senses, there enters in something\nmore ethereal, not the less real because it may be undefinable. This\nfresh child-like delight in Nature has found expression abundantly in\nthe poets, especially in those of the early time. Chaucer, before all\nothers, is full of it. As one sample out of many, take this. In the\nPrologue to \u201cThe Legend of Good Women,\u201d he tells that he has such love to\nthe daisy that\u2014\n\n            \u201cWhen comen is the May,\n    Then in my bed there daweth me no day\n    That I n\u2019am up and walking in the mead,\n    To see this flower against the sunn\u00e9 spread,\n    When it upriseth early in the morrow;\n    That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow;\n    So glad am I when that I have pres\u00e9nce\n    Of it, to doen it all reverence,\n    As she that is of all flow\u2019rs the flow\u2019r.\u201d\n\nThen he goes on to describe himself kneeling down on the sod to greet the\ndaisy when it first opens:\u2014\n\n    \u201cAnd down on knees anon right I me set,\n    And as I could this fresh\u00e9 flow\u2019r I grette,\n    Kneeling always till it unclosed was\n    Upon the small, and soft, and sweet\u00e9 gras.\u201d\n\nSo we see Chaucer has been beforehand with Burns, not to say Wordsworth,\nin tender affection for the daisy.\n\nThe same transparent expression of delight in the open-air world comes\nin unexpectedly in some of the old ballads, which are concerned with far\nother matters. Thus:\u2014\n\n    ...\n\n    \u201cWhen leaves be large and long\n    It\u2019s pleasant walking in good greenwood\n      To hear the small birds\u2019 song.\n    The woodweel sang and would not cease,\n      Sitting upon the spray,\n    So loud he wakened Robin Hood,\n      In greenwood where he lay.\u201d\n\nSuchlike utterances of ballad-writers and early poets might be\nmultiplied without number. It is a penalty we have to pay for our late\nand over-stimulated civilization that such direct and unreflecting\nexpressions of gladness in the face of Nature seem hardly any\nlonger possible for a poet. If he will be listened to by our jaded,\nsophisticated ears, it is not enough for him to utter once again the\nspontaneous gladness that human hearts feel, and always will feel, in the\npleasant air and the sunshine; he must say something about it which shall\nbe novel, and out of the way, something subtle or analytic, or strongly\nstimulative. And yet it cannot but be that a poet who has a heart keenly\nsensitive to the common sights of earth and sky, and who describes these\nwith the direct freshness which feeling heart and clear eye always give,\nmay still do much to win back men from over-subtilizing, and to make them\nfeel as if they have never felt before\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe simple, the sincere delight,\n    The habitual scene of hill and dale,\n    The rural herds, the vernal gale,\n    The tangled vetches\u2019 purple bloom,\n    The fragrance of the bean\u2019s perfume.\u201d\n\n\nII.\n\nThe second method I shall mention is that of using Nature as a background\nor setting to human action or emotion,\u2014just as we see Raphael and other\nold masters, in their pictures of a Holy Family, bring in behind the\nhuman groups a far-off mountain line, with a piece of blue sky or some\nstreaks of sunset above it.\n\nThis is the way in which Nature is very frequently used by Homer in the\nIliad, and, especially, in the Odyssey. It is as a frame or setting to\nhis pictures of human action and character. And closely allied to this\nis the way of illustrating the actions, the feelings, sometimes the\nsufferings, of men, by striking similes taken from the most obvious\nappearances of the outward world, or from the doing of wild creatures in\nNature. This is a use of Nature in which the Iliad of Homer especially\nabounds, although all poets down to our own day have freely employed it.\nIn the Iliad there is little or no description of the scenes in which the\nbattles are fought. The features are hinted at by single epithets, such\nas many-fountained Ida, windy Ilion, deep-whirlpooled Scamander, and the\npresence of Nature you are made to feel by images fetched straight from\nevery element,\u2014from the clouds, the mountain-top, the woody crag, the\nforest, the sea darkening under the western breeze, the midnight sky with\nthe moon and the stars shining in its depths.\n\nBut there is in the Iliad no dwelling on the features of the scenes\nthrough which the heroes pass, such as you find in the Odyssey and in\nthe \u00c6neid. In these last, more than in the Iliad, Nature is used as the\nregular framework in which human actions are set. I cannot now stay to\nquote passages. We shall in the sequel see how large a place is filled,\nhow much of Nature is let in upon the reader by Homer in his similes,\nwhich are almost all taken from common occurrences in Nature or from the\nworking of man with Nature. Sometimes, however, we are made to feel the\npresence of Nature by other methods than that of simile. In the thick of\nthe great battle in the 11th Book of the Iliad, just before Agamemnon\nbreaks forth in his splendid charge, how the mind is relieved by this\nglance aside from the heat and hurry of the battle to the cool and quiet\nof this woodland scene:\u2014\n\n    \u201cAll through the dawn, and as the day grew on\n    From either side the shafts were showered amain,\n    And fast the people fell. But at the hour\n    When the lone woodman in the mountain glens\n    Prepares his noonday meal, for that his arms\n    Are weary with long labor, and his heart\n    Had had its fill of felling the tall treen,\n    And craving for sweet food comes over him;\n    Just at that hour the Danai by sheer might\n    Broke through their foemen\u2019s ranks, each shouting loud\n    To cheer his comrade on. First from the van\n    Forth-leaping, Agamemnon slew a chief,\n    Bienor,\u201d\n\nand then he presses on through the Trojan host, to slay, and slay, and\nslay.\n\n\nIII.\n\nAkin to this, and yet distinct from it, is the way of regarding Nature\nthrough the light of the human and especially the historic events which\nit has witnessed, and with which some particular spots have become\nindelibly associated. This, which I may call the historic coloring of\nNature, has been, of course, the slow accretion of the ages, and only in\nquite modern times is it a prominent feature in the poets. The poets of\nGreece and Rome, proud as they were of the deeds of their countrymen, do\nnot seem to have visited their great battle-fields nor to have hung on\nthe scenery that surrounded them with that romantic interest which modern\npoets do. Marathon, Thermopyl\u00e6, Salamis, names of glory as they were, and\noften on their lips, became to the Greek imagination names for deeds,\nabstractions of national achievement, rather than actual localities to\nbe visited and gazed on for their own sakes and for the memories they\nenshrined. It is an English, not a Greek, poet who seizes the great\nfeatures of the immortal plain, and sings\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe mountains look on Marathon,\n    And Marathon looks on the sea.\u201d\n\nThe same, too, who, alluding to the great sea-fight, gives the scenery\nalso:\u2014\n\n    \u201cA king sat on the rocky brow\n    That looks o\u2019er sea-born Salamis,\n    And ships in thousands lay below,\n    And men in nations all were his.\n    He counted them at break of day,\n    And when the sun set where were they?\u201d\n\nPerhaps of all modern poets, Walter Scott is the one who has looked\non the earth most habitually as seen through the coloring with which\nhistoric events and great historic names have invested it. It is not\nonly that he has in his romantic epics described the actual features of\nthe fields of Flodden and of Bannockburn with a minuteness foreign to\nthe genius of the ancients. He has done this. But, besides, wherever\nhe set his foot in his native land\u2014not in a battle-field alone, but by\nruined keep or solitary moor, or rocky sea-shore or western island\u2014there\nrose before his eye the human forms either of the heroic past or of\nthe lowlier peasantry, and if no actual record hung among them, his\nimagination supplied the want, and peopled the places with characters\nappropriate, which shall remain interwoven with the very features of the\nscenes while the name of Scotland lasts.\n\n    \u201cFor thou upon a hundred streams,\n      By tales of love and sorrow.\n    Of faithful love, undaunted truth,\n      Hast shed the power of Yarrow.\u201d\n\nIn some men, not wanting in imagination, the only aspect in which scenery\ninterests them is when it is linked to history. This is conspicuously\nseen in Lord Macaulay. Of him his biographer writes:\u2014\u201cThe leading\nfeatures of a tract of country impressed themselves rapidly and indelibly\non his observation; all its associations and traditions swept at once\nacross his memory; and every line of good poetry which its fame or its\nbeauty had inspired rose almost involuntarily to his lips. But compared\nwith the wealth of phrase on which he could draw at will when engaged on\nthe description of human passions, catastrophes, and intrigues, his stock\nof epithets applicable to mountains, seas, and clouds was singularly\nscanty, and he had no ambition to enlarge it. When he had recorded the\nfact, that the leaves were green, the sky blue, and the plain rich, and\nthe hills clothed with wood, he had said all he had to say, and there was\nan end of it.\u201d\u2014That is, Macaulay\u2019s imagination was confined to human and\nhistoric things, and was irresponsive to the direct touch of Nature.\n\nBut it is not only by such localized history or romance as Scott has\ngiven, that this human coloring passes into the impassive earth. There is\nanother more subtle way in which it works, and it is this:\u2014Wherever men\nhave been upon the earth, even when they have done no memorable deeds,\nand left no history behind them, they have lived and they have died,\nthey have joyed and they have sorrowed; and the sense that men have been\nthere and disappeared leaves a pathos on the face of many a now unpeopled\nsolitude.\n\nThose will know what I mean who ever have wandered alone through moors\nor glens in the Highlands, where once the old clansmen had their homes,\nbut in whence they have long departed. Have they not felt, as they\ngazed on these wildernesses, where perhaps not even a weathered gable\nnow tells of man, that the outlines of Nature\u2019s lineaments were touched\nwith pensiveness indescribable by the atmosphere of foregone humanities\nthat overspread them? Such are the feelings that are awakened as, far up\nin the lap of the highest Bens, you come on the green spots where the\nformer Celtic people had their summer shielings. In Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cTour in\nScotland\u201d[9] it is noticed feelingly, as we might expect:\u2014\n\n\u201cAt the top of a mountain encircled by higher mountains at a distance,\nwe were passing without notice a heap of scattered stones, round which\nwas a belt of green grass\u2014green, and as it seemed rich\u2014where all else was\neither poor heather or coarse grass, or unprofitable rushes and spongy\nmoss. The Highlander made a pause, saying, \u2018This place is much changed\nsince I was here twenty years ago.\u2019 He told us that the heap of stones\nhad been a hut, where a family was then living, who had their winter\nhabitation in the valley, and brought their goats thither in the summer\nto feed on the mountains, and that they were used to gather them together\nat night and morning to be milked close to the door, which was the reason\nwhy the grass was yet so green near the stones. It was affecting in that\nsolitude to meet with this memorial of manners passed away. We looked\nabout for some other traces of humanity, but nothing else could we find\nin that place.\u201d\n\nAgain: \u201cWe came to several deserted mountain huts or shiels, and rested\nfor some time beside one of them, upon a hillock of its green plot of\nmonumental herbage. The spot of ground where we sat was even beautiful,\nthe grass being uncommonly verdant, and of a remarkably soft and silky\ntexture.\u201d The poet, his sister tells, then felt how fitting a subject for\npoetry there was in those affecting \u201crelics of human society found in\nthat grand and solitary region.\u201d\n\n\nIV.\n\nAnother way in which poets and others deal with Nature is when the heart,\nunder the stress of some strong emotion, colors all Nature with its own\nhues, sees all things in sympathy with its own mood, making\n\n    \u201cAll melodies an echo of that voice,\n    All colors a suffusion from that light.\u201d\n\nThis feeling has been expressed in a very natural way by Sir Walter\nScott:\u2014\n\n      \u201cWho says, that when the Poet dies\n    Mute Nature mourns her worshiper,\n      And celebrates his obsequies;\n    Who says, tall cliff and cavern lone\n    For the departed Bard make moan;\n    That mountains weep in crystal rill;\n    That flowers in tears of balm distill;\n    Through his loved groves that breezes sigh,\n    And oaks in deeper groans reply;\n    And rivers teach their rushing wave\n    To murmur dirges round his grave.\u201d\n\nThis view of Nature has been philosophically condensed into a single\nstanza of Coleridge\u2019s ode on Dejection. He says, that in looking at the\noutward world\n\n                \u201cWe receive but what we give,\n    And in our life alone doth Nature live;\n    Ours is the wedding garment, ours the shroud.\u201d\n\nAnd then he goes on to say that if in Nature we would see\n\n                \u201cAught of higher worth\n      From the soul itself must issue forth\n    A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist\n      Enveloping the Earth.\n    And from the soul itself must there be sent\n      A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,\n    Of all sweet sounds the life and element.\u201d\n\nNow the thought here expressed, false if taken as an adequate explanation\nof our whole attitude towards Nature, is eminently true of certain moods\nof mind when we are under strong excitement. It is not true that Nature\nis a blank or an unintelligible scroll, with no meaning of its own but\nthat which we put into it from the light of our own transient feelings.\nBut it is most true that we are often so absorbed in our own inward moods\nthat we cannot for the time see anything in the outward world but that\nwhich our eye, colored by the emotion, sends into it.\n\nOn this subject Mr. Ruskin discourses eloquently and subtly in a chapter\nin the third volume of his \u201cModern Painters,\u201d to which I would refer\nthose interested in these matters. He calls the tendency to make Nature\nsympathize with our own present feelings \u201cThe Pathetic Fallacy.\u201d His\nview of the matter is this: \u201cthat the temperament which is subject to\nthe Pathetic Fallacy is that of a mind and body overborne by feeling,\nand too weak (for the time) to deal fully and truthfully with what is\nbefore them or upon them.\u201d He points out that \u201cthis state is more or\nless noble according to the force and elevation of the emotion which has\ncaused it; but at its best, if the poet is so overpowered as to color his\ndescriptions by it, then it is morbid and a sign of weakness. For the\nemotions have vanquished the intellect.\u201d It is, he says, \u201ca higher order\nof mind, in which the intellect rises and asserts itself along with the\nutmost tension of passion, and when the whole man can stand in an iron\nglow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating;\neven if he melts, losing none of his weight.\u201d Mr. Ruskin further says\n(p. 164), \u201cThere are four classes of men\u2014the men who feel nothing, and\ntherefore see truly. [He might rather have said, and therefore see\nnothing.] The men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly\n(second order of poets). The men who feel strongly, think strongly,\nand see truly (first order of poets). And the men who, strong as human\ncreatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they,\nand see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above\nthem.\u201d This last he calls \u201cthe usual condition of prophetic inspiration.\u201d\n\nIt will be conceded to Mr. Ruskin that it is not the highest order of\npoet who, as he looks out on Nature, is so overmastered by his emotions\nas to be continually coloring it with his own mental hues. It is higher\nto feel intensely and still think truly, than merely to feel intensely\nwithout true thought. But Mr. Ruskin would allow that for the poet,\nwhether dramatic, epic, or other, to represent his characters as coloring\nthe world with their own excited feelings, is neither falsity nor\nweakness, but is merely keeping true to a fact of human nature. Numerous\ninstances of this will occur to every one. Take one from Shakespeare\u2019s\ndelineations of character. Ariel, breaking through the elements and\npowers of Nature, quickens the remorse of Alonso, king of Naples, for a\ncrime committed twelve years before, till the sounds of Nature become the\nvoice of conscience\u2014\n\n    \u201cMethought the billows spoke and told me of it;\n    The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,\n    That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced\n    The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass,\n    Therefore my son i\u2019 the ooze is bedded, and\n    I\u2019ll seek him deeper than e\u2019er plummet sounded,\n    And with him there lie mudded.\u201d\n\n\nV.\n\nConnected with this last mode of treating Nature, but connected in the\nway of contrast, is what I may call the Inhuman and Infinite side of\nNature\u2014that side which yields no response to man\u2019s yearnings, and refuses\nto make itself plastic under even the strongest power of emotion. For as\nI have elsewhere said,[10] outside of and beyond man, aloof from his warm\nhopes and fears, his joy and sorrow, his strivings and aspirations, there\nlies the vast immensity of Nature\u2019s forces, which pays him no homage and\nyields him no sympathy. This aspect of Nature may be seen even in the\ntamest landscape, if we look to the clouds or the stars above us, or to\nthe ocean-waves that roar around our shores\u2014\n\n    \u201cThose clouds that far above us float and pause,\n    Whose pathless march no mortal may control,\n    Those ocean-waves that, wheresoe\u2019er they roll,\n    Yield homage only to eternal laws.\u201d\n\nBut nowhere is it so borne in upon man as in the wilderness where no man\nis, in the presence of the great mountains which seem so impassive and\nunchangeable. Their strength and permanence so contrast with man, of few\nyears and full of trouble\u2014they are altogether heedless of his feelings\nor his destiny. He may smile or weep, he may live or die; they care not.\nThey are the same in all their ongoings, come what may to him. They\nrespond to the sunrises and the sunsets, but not to his emotions. All the\nsame they fulfill their mighty functions, careless though no human eye\nshould ever look on them. Man\u2019s heart may be full of gladness, yet Nature\nfrowns; he goes forth from the death-chamber, and Nature affronts him\nwith sunshine and the song of birds\u2014\n\n    \u201cNature, an infinite, unfeeling power\n    From some great centre moving evermore,\n    Keepeth no festal-day when man is born,\n    And hath no tears for his mortality.\u201d\n\nIt seems as though she marched on, having a purpose of her own\ninaccessible to man; she keeps her own secret, and drops no hint to him.\nThis side of things, whether philosophically or imaginatively regarded,\nseems to justify the saying that \u201cthe visible world still remains without\nits divine interpretation.\u201d And though inexplicable, perhaps for its\nvery inexplicability, this mysterious silence, this inexorable deafness,\nthis inhuman indifference of Nature, has oppressed the imagination of\nsome of the greatest poets with a vague but sublime awe. The sense of it\nlay heavy on Lucretius and Shelley, sometimes on Wordsworth, and drew\nout of their souls some of the profoundest music. At the present time,\nperhaps from the increased scientific knowledge of Nature\u2019s processes,\nthis contrast between the warm and tender human heart, and the cold and\nimpassive, almost relentless, elements, more than ever before dominates\nthe imaginations of men.\n\n\nVI.\n\nA sixth mode of poetically treating Nature is that which we meet with\nin purely descriptive poetry. In Hesiod, in Theocritus, in the Georgics\nof Virgil, among the ancients, we have examples of pure description\ninterwoven in didactic and idyllic poetry; but it is in modern times\nthat this kind of poetry has chiefly asserted itself. The most striking\nexample of it is Thomson\u2019s \u201cSeasons.\u201d There we find that man is quite\nsubordinate, and only comes in to set off Nature and its appearances,\nwhich form the main object of the poem. As it may seem to be one of the\nsimplest ways of treating Nature, merely to describe it,\u2014to picture what\nthe eye sees and the ear hears,\u2014faithfully to reproduce the forms and\ncolors of things, the movements and the sounds which pervade them\u2014perhaps\nsome may think it should have been the earliest method. But as a fact,\nthis kind of poetry, which seems so simple, is the product only of a\nlate age. Early poets hardly ever handle Nature except to interweave it\nwith human action and emotion, and as set-off against the life of man.\nTo regard it by itself, and as existing apart from man, is the mental\nattitude of a late and cultivated time, even though the descriptions may\nseem to be plain and unadorned.\n\nSince writing these sentences, I have read in Mr. Stopford Brooke\u2019s\nadmirable \u201cEnglish Literature Primer\u201d a passage in which he attributes\nthe earliest efforts at poetry of natural description to Scotch poets,\nand among these especially to Gawain Douglas, early in the sixteenth\ncentury; and then he, in another place, points out how, when this kind of\npoetry came prominently forward in more modern times, it was a Scottish\npoet who led the way in it. This is what he says:\u2014\n\n\u201cNatural scenery had been hitherto only used as a background to the\npicture of human life. It now (that is, in the first thirty years of the\neighteenth century) began to take a much larger place in poetry, and,\nafter a time, grew to occupy a distinct place of its own apart from man.\nThe best natural description we have before the time of Pope is that of\ntwo Puritans, Marvell and Milton. But the first poem devoted to natural\ndescription appeared while Pope was yet alive, in the very midst of a\nvigorous town poetry. It was the \u201cSeasons,\u201d 1726-30; and it is curious,\nremembering what I have said about the peculiar turn of the Scotch for\nnatural description, that it was the work of James Thomson, a Scotchman.\nHe described the scenery and country-life of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and\nWinter. He wrote with his eye upon their scenery, and, even when he wrote\nof it in his room, it was with \u201ca recollected love.\u201d The descriptions\nwere too much like catalogues, the very fault of the previous Scotch\npoets; and his style was always heavy, and often cold, but he was the\nfirst poet who led the English people into that new world of nature in\npoetry, which has moved and enchanted us in the works of Wordsworth,\nShelley, Keats, and Tennyson, but which was entirely impossible for Pope\nto understand. The impulse Thomson gave was soon followed.\u201d\n\nIn our own day such poetic descriptions of Nature have burst the bonds\nof metre altogether, and filled many a splendid page of poetic or\nimaginative prose. Many instances of this will occur to every one.\nPre\u00ebminent among these are Mr. Ruskin\u2019s elaborate word-pictures of\nnatural scenery.\n\nBut of all poetic description of Nature, it may be said that if it is to\nreach any high level it cannot proceed calmly and unexcitedly after the\nmanner of an inventory. No eye can see deeply into the meaning of Nature\nunless it has also looked as deeply into the recesses of the human heart,\nand felt the full gravity of man\u2019s life and destiny. It is only when seen\nover against these that Nature renders back her profounder tones.\n\n\nVII.\n\nThere is another way in which the poet deals with the external\nworld,\u2014when he enters into the life and the movement of Nature by a kind\nof imaginative sympathy, and brings it home to us by one stroke, flashing\nupon our hearts by one touch, one inspired line, a sense of the inner\nlife of things, and a conviction that he has been allowed for a moment to\npenetrate into their secret. This, which has been called, in a special\nway, the interpretative power of Poetry, is that in which it reaches its\nhighest function, and exercises one of its finest offices of mediation\nbetween the soul of man and Nature.\n\nNo one, as far as I know, has seen this aspect of Poetry more truly, or\nexpressed it so felicitously, as my friend Mr. Matthew Arnold. If he has\nnot been the first to notice it, he has certainly dwelt on it with more\nemphasis than any previous writer, as far as I know. For his views on\nthis subject I would refer to his delightful Essay on Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin,\nin his volume entitled \u201cEssays on Criticism.\u201d\n\nAs it is well to give a good thought in its best possible form, Mr.\nArnold will, I know, forgive me if I quote at length his own words. He\nsays:\u2014\n\n\u201cThe grand power of Poetry is its interpretative power, by which I mean,\nnot the power of drawing out in black and white an explanation of the\nmystery of the Universe, but the power of so dealing with things as to\nawaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of\nour relations with them. When this sense is awakened in us as to objects\nwithout us, we feel ourselves to be in contact with the essential nature\nof those objects, to be no longer bewildered and oppressed by them, but\nto have their secret, and to be in harmony with them; and this feeling\ncalms and satisfies us as no other can.... Poetry indeed interprets in\nanother way besides this; but one of its two ways of interpreting is by\nawakening this sense in us. The interpretations of Science do not give us\nthis intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of Poetry give it;\nthey appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man.\u201d\n\nAgain Mr. Arnold says:\u2014\n\n\u201cPoetry interprets in two ways: it interprets, by expressing with\nmagical felicity the physiognomy and movement of the outward world, and\nit interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and\nlaws of the inward world of man\u2019s moral and spiritual nature. In other\nwords, Poetry is interpretative by having natural magic in it, and by\nhaving moral profundity. In both ways it illuminates man; it gives him\na satisfying sense of reality; it reconciles him with himself and the\nUniverse. The greatest poets unite in themselves the faculty of both\nkinds of interpretation, the naturalistic and the moral. But it is\nobservable that in the poets who unite both kinds, the latter (the moral)\nusually ends by making itself the master. In Shakespeare the two kinds\nseem wonderfully to balance each other; but even in him the balance\nleans; his expression tends to become too little sensuous and simple, too\nmuch intellectualized. The same thing may be yet more strongly affirmed\nof Lucretius and of Wordsworth.\u201d\n\nIt is not, however, with moral but with naturalistic interpretation that\nwe have now to do. And in this faculty of naturalistic interpretation,\nperhaps no poet\u2014certainly no modern poet\u2014equals Keats. In him, as Mr.\nArnold says, \u201cthe faculty is overpoweringly predominant. The natural\nmagic is perfect; when he speaks of the outward world he speaks almost\nlike Adam naming, by Divine inspiration, the creatures; his expression\ncorresponds with the thing\u2019s essential reality.\u201d\n\nDoes not Keats thus bring home to us the meaning\u2014the inner secret\u2014of the\nocean, and the impression it makes on the human heart, when he speaks of\n\n    \u201cThe voice mysterious, which whoso hears\n    Must think on what will be, and what has been?\u201d\n\nIt is he that interprets the meaning of the summer midnight among the\nwoods, when he says\u2014\n\n            \u201cUpon a tranced summer night\n    Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,\n    Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,\n    Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,\n    Save from one gradual solitary gust\n    Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,\n    As if the ebbing air had but one wave.\u201d\n\nOr take one more instance. All know the stern, almost grim, feeling of\nsolitude about some little crag-engirdled lochan or tarn far up the heart\nof a Highland mountain. Who has given this feeling of grim solitude,\nso death-like that any living thing or sound startles you there, as\nWordsworth, by these two strokes?\u2014\n\n    \u201cThere sometimes doth a leaping fish\n      Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;\n    The crags repeat the raven\u2019s croak\n      In symphony austere.\u201d\n\nOr again, who has not felt as though he had a new revelation made to him\nabout the starry sky and the mountain-stillness after reading for the\nfirst time these two well-known lines?\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe silence that is in the starry sky,\n    The sleep that is among the lonely hills.\u201d\n\nOr once more: who has so called up the impression produced by the sound\nof waters heard among the mountains as Wordsworth, when he thus speaks?\u2014\n\n                        \u201cIn mute repose\n    To lie and listen to the mountain-flood\n    Murmuring from Glaramara\u2019s inmost caves.\u201d\n\nBut I have dwelt too long on this aspect of Poetry, its penetrating power\nof naturalistic interpretation when the poet,\n\n    \u201cWith an eye made quiet by the power\n    Of harmony and the deep power of joy,\u201d\n\nis given to see into the life of things, and seeing, makes us share his\ninsight, makes us partakers for a moment at least in\n\n                    \u201cThat blessed mood\n    In which the burthen of the mystery,\n    In which the heavy and the weary weight\n    Of all this unintelligible world\n    Is lightened.\u201d\n\nEven if it be but a transient glance, a momentary lightening of the\nburden that he lends us, it is one of the most intimate and delicate\nservices\u2014one of the highest and rarest functions which the poet or any\nman can perform.\n\n\nVIII.\n\nOnce more: the last and highest way in which Nature ministers to the soul\nand spirit of man is when it becomes to him a symbol translucent with the\nlight of the moral and spiritual world. Or, in other words, the highest\nuse to which Imagination can put this visible world is, to gather from it\nsome tidings of the world invisible.\n\nThis use is seen when the sights and sounds of Nature, coming in through\neye and ear to the soul, hint at and foreshow \u201ca higher life than this\ndaily one, a brighter world than that we see.\u201d It is Coleridge who has\nsaid that \u201cit has been the music of gentle and pious minds in all ages,\nit is the poetry of all human life, to read the book of Nature in a\nfigurative sense, and to find therein correspondences and symbols of the\nspiritual world.\u201d That this is no mere fanciful use to make of Nature,\nthat in cultivating the habit of thus reading it we are cultivating a\npower which is grounded in reason and the truth of things, can hardly be\ndoubted, if we believe that the things we see, and the mind that sees\nthem, have one common origin, come from one Universal Mind, which gives\nbeing to and upholds both alike. This seeing of spiritual truths mirrored\nin the face of Nature rests not on any fancied, but in a real analogy\nbetween the natural and the spiritual worlds. They are, in some sense\nwhich Science has not ascertained, but which the vital and religious\nimagination can perceive, counterparts the one of the other The highest\nauthority for this belief, as well as its truest exemplification, we have\nin the Parables of our Lord. It was on this truth that He grounded a\nlarge part of his teaching.\n\nI need but allude to what is so familiar; only let us, before we pass\non, think of what is implied in this teaching, which we have all known\nfrom our childhood,\u2014the growth of the Divine life in the soul represented\nby the growth of the corn seed in the furrow, the end of the world or\nof this \u00e6on set forth by the reapers and the harvest. Simple as this\nteaching is, level to the child\u2019s capacity, it yet involves a truth that\nlies deeper than any philosopher has yet penetrated, even the hidden bond\nthat connects things visible with things invisible.\n\nArchbishop Trench has said well on this subject:[11]\u2014\u201cOn this rests\nthe possibility of a real and not a merely arbitrary teaching by\nParables\u2014that the world of Nature is throughout a witness for the world\nof spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the same\nroot, and constituted for that very end. All lovers of truth readily\nacknowledge these mysterious harmonies. To them the things on earth are\ncopies of the things in heaven. They know that the earthly tabernacle is\nmade after the pattern of things seen in the Mount, and the question of\nthe Angel in Milton often forces itself on their meditations\u2014\n\n                            \u2018What if earth\n    Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein\n    Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?\u2019\u201d\n\nBut to leave these heights of inspired teaching, we find everywhere the\nmore meditative poets deriving from visible Nature hints at that which\neye has not seen nor ear heard. One of the simplest and most child-like\ninstances of this that occurs to me is that beautiful thought of Isaac\nWalton:\u2014\n\n    \u201cHow joyed my heart in the rich melodies\n    That overhead and round me did arise!\n    The moving leaves\u2014the waters\u2019 gentle flow\u2014\n    Delicious music hung on every bough.\n    Then said I, in my heart, If that the Lord\n    Such lovely music on the earth accord;\n    If to weak sinful man such sounds are given\u2014\n    Oh! what must be the melody of Heaven!\u201d\n\nSomething of the same thought comes out in a more reflective way in many\nof the poems of Henry Vaughan,[12] a writer of the same age as Walton,\nand one, like him, now less known and read than he deserves to be. Take\nthe following, in which Vaughan speaks of the vivid insight of his\nchildhood in a strain in which some have thought that they overheard the\nfirst note of that tone which Wordsworth has sounded more fully in his\n\u201cOde on the Intimations of Immortality\u201d. It is thus Vaughan speaks of his\nchildhood:\u2014\n\n    \u201cHappy those early days when I\n    Shined in my angel-infancy;\n    When yet I had not walked above\n    A mile or two from my first love,\n    And looking back, at that short space,\n    Could see a glimpse of _His_ bright face\n    When on some gilded cloud or flower\n    My gazing soul would dwell an hour,\n    And in those weaker glories spy\n    Some shadows of eternity;\n    And feel through all this fleshly dress\n    Bright shootes of everlastingness.\u201d\n\nSuch thoughts may be deemed by some to be fanciful and not practical.\nCertainly they are not much in vogue at the present time. But as one has\nsaid, \u201cI cannot conceive a use of our knowledge more practical than to\nmake it connect the sight of this world with the thought of another.\u201d\nNor can any be more needed by us, or more consolatory. For is it not the\nexperience of each individual as he grows more thoughtful, as well as the\nexperience of the race, that the visible, the outward, cannot satisfy?\nIs it not the very best element in man that makes him feel forever after\nsomething higher, deeper, more enduring than the things he sees? If we\nturn aside from this tendency, and seek to quench it, we do so at the\ncost of destroying that which is the best, the noblest inheritance of our\nhumanity,\u2014the piece of divinity in us.\n\nThis suggestive power of Nature, and its unsufficingness, have been felt\nby all men who have any glimpse of the ideal in them; by none has it been\nmore deeply felt, or more adequately expressed, than by him, the great\npreacher\u2014poet as well as preacher\u2014of our age. I mean, Dr. Newman. As the\nprose words in which he expresses this feeling are in the highest sense\npoetry, I cannot, I think, do better than give the thought in his own\nperfect language. He is speaking in the opening of Spring:\u2014\n\n\u201cLet these be your thoughts, especially in this Spring season, when the\nwhole face of Nature is so rich and beautiful. Once only in the year yet\nonce, does the world which we see show forth its hidden powers, and in a\nmanner manifest itself. Then there is a sudden rush and burst outwardly\nof that hidden life which God has lodged in the material world. Well,\nthat shows you, as by a sample, what it can do at his command, when He\ngives the word. This earth which now buds forth in leaves and blossoms,\nwill one day burst forth into a new world of light and glory. Who would\nthink, except from his experience of former Springs all through his\nlife, who could conceive two or three months before that it was possible\nthat the face of Nature, which then seemed so lifeless, should become so\nsplendid and varied? How different is a prospect when leaves are on it,\nand off it! How unlikely it would seem before the event that the dry and\nnaked branches should suddenly be clothed with what is so bright and so\nrefreshing! Yet in God\u2019s good time leaves come on the trees. The season\nmay delay, but come it will at last.\n\n\u201cSo it is with the coming of that eternal Spring for which all Christians\nare waiting. Come it will, though it delay. Therefore we say day by day,\nThy kingdom come; which means, O Lord, show thyself\u2014manifest thyself. The\nearth that we see does not satisfy us; it is but a beginning; it is but\na promise of something beyond it; even when it is gayest, with all its\nblossoms on, and shows most touchingly what lies hid in it, yet it is not\nenough. We know much more lies hid in it than we see.... What we see is\nthe outward shell of an eternal kingdom, and on that kingdom we fix the\neyes of our faith.... Bright as is the sun and sky and the clouds, green\nas are the leaves and the fields, sweet as is the singing of the birds,\nwe know that they are not all, and we will not take up with a part for\nthe whole. They proceed from a centre of love and goodness, which is God\nhimself, but they are not his fullness; they speak of heaven, but they\nare not heaven; they are but as stray beams and dim reflections of his\nimage; they are but crumbs from the table. We are looking for the coming\nof the day of God, when all this outward world, fair though it be, shall\nperish.... We can bear the loss, for we know it will be but the removing\nof a veil. We know, that to remove the world which is seen will be the\nmanifestation of the world which is not seen. We know that what we see is\na screen hiding from us God and Christ, and his saints and angels; and we\nearnestly desire and pray for the dissolution of all that we see, from\nour longing after that which we do not see.\u201d\n\nSuch are the thoughts and longings which the sight of the vernal earth\ncan awaken in a spiritual mind well used to heavenly meditations.\n\nIf some of us are so sense-bound that such thoughts seem fantastic and\nunreal to them, all that can be said is, The more\u2019s the pity. Even the\nbest among us will probably not venture to appropriate such thoughts\nas if these were our habitual companions, but they may have in some\nbrighter moments known them. At all events they know what they mean, and\nare assured that as they themselves grow in spirituality, the beauty\nthat clothes this visible world, while it soothes, does not suffice, but\nbecomes more and more the hint and prophecy of a higher beauty which\ntheir heart longs for.\n\nAnd now, in looking back on these several ways in which poets have\nhandled Nature, two thoughts suggest themselves:\u2014\n\n1. The ways I have noted are far from exhausting all the possible or even\nactual modes in which poets deal with Nature, or, in other words, in\nwhich Nature lends itself to the poet\u2019s service. They are but a few of\nthe most prominent and obvious. It may interest some to look for others,\nand to add them to the classification here given.\n\n2. Though one mode may be more prominent in one poet, and one in another,\nyet no poet is limited to only one, or even two, of these several ways\nof adapting Nature to his purposes. In the works of the greatest poets,\nthose of largest and most varied range, perhaps every one of these modes,\nand more besides, may be found. To find out and arrange under heads all\nthe ways in which say Shakespeare and Milton deal with Nature, would be\nan interesting study for any one who is young, and has leisure for it.\n\nWith one reflection I close this part of my subject. Any one who has\never been brought to meditate on the relation which the abstractions\nof mathematics bear to the Laws of Nature must have felt how exceeding\nwonderful it is. A system of thought evoked out of pure intelligence has\nbeen found reflected and, as it were, embodied in the actual movements of\nthe heavenly bodies, and bringing the whole Physical Cosmos within the\npower of man\u2019s thought\u2014\n\n    \u201cFrom star to star, from kindred sphere to sphere,\n    From system on to system, without end.\u201d\n\nSuch a one, I say, must have been filled with wonder at this marvelous\nadaptation and correspondence between the mind of transitory man and the\nvast movements of the most remote and permanent of material things.\n\nA like, though a different, wonder must arise when we reflect how,\nin the various modes above noted, and no doubt in many more, outward\nNature lends itself to be the material in which so many of man\u2019s highest\nthoughts and emotions can work and embody themselves.\n\nOf the poets and this visible world we may truly say,\u2014\n\n    \u201cThey took the whole earth for their toy,\n      They played with it in every mood;\n    A cell for prayer, a hall for joy,\n      They treated Nature as they would.\u201d\n\nHe who has once perceived the wonderful adaptation which exists between\nthe mind of man and the external world\u2014how exquisitely the individual\nmind, as well as the mind of the race, is fitted to the world, and the\nexternal world fitted to the mind,\u2014if he has once vividly felt the\nreality of this adaptation, he must have paused in wonder at himself,\nand at the world that encompasses him, and become penetrated with an\nimmediate conviction, deeper than all arguments can reach, that the\nreasonable soul within him, and the material world without him, which on\nso many sides is seen to be the embodiment of reason, and which yields up\nits secret to man\u2019s intelligence, and is so plastic to his imagination\nand emotions,\u2014that these two existences so answering to each other,\nand so strangely communing with each other, are both rooted in the one\nCentral and Universal Intelligence which embraces and upholds both Nature\nand Man.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nNATURE IN HEBREW POETRY, AND IN HOMER.\n\n\nThe method pursued in this book has been, beginning with some general\nviews, from these to descend to special illustrations, in order to\nexemplify what has been said of Poetry in a general way, by pointing to\nthe several methods which the poets have actually followed in delineating\nNature and her aspects.\n\nIt will be but to carry out somewhat more in detail the same procedure\nif I now adduce a few samples of the way in which some of the greatest\npoets of each age and country have in their works shown their feeling\ntowards Nature. To exhaust this subject would require a large treatise.\nA chapter or two is all that can here be afforded to it. In glancing\nthus, which is all we can do, at a few of the great mountain-summits of\nsong, many a lesser elevation in the long line of poetry, that might well\nrepay attention, must needs be passed in silence. I shall begin with the\nearliest poets we know, and come down to those near our own time. In\nsuch a survey it is to the East that the eye naturally turns, and there\nespecially to the singers of Israel; for, as to the view of Nature which\nthe Hindu Vedas may contain, this is a subject on which I do not venture,\nsince at best I could but repeat at second-hand what others have said.\n\nIn considering the views of Nature presented by Hebrew poetry, it is not\nto the account of the creation in Genesis that we turn, but to the many\npassages in the Psalms, the Prophets, and the Book of Job, in which the\naspects of the outward world, as they appeared to those old seers, are\ndelineated. Humboldt and many others have remarked that the description\nby the Hebrew Poets of the material world everywhere reflects their faith\nin the unity of God, and in his immediate presence in all creation. The\nworld is described, not so much in detail, but as a whole, in its vast\nexpanses and great movements; or, if individual objects are dwelt on, as\nin the Book of Job, it is as the visible witnesses to the transcendent\npower of the Invisible One. Nature is nowhere spoken of as an independent\nand self-subsistent power, but rather as the outer chamber of an Unseen\nPresence\u2014a garment, a veil, which the Eternal One is ever ready to break\nthrough. These characteristics, which pervade the entire poetry of the\nOld Testament, are perhaps nowhere seen so condensed as in that crowning\nhymn of the visible creation, the 104th Psalm.\n\nThis Psalm presents, as has often been remarked, a picture of the entire\nUniverse, which for completeness, for breadth, and for grandeur, is\nunequaled in any other literature. Where else, in human language, shall\nwe find the whole Universe, the heavens and the earth, and the ongoings\nof man in the midst of them, sketched, as here, in a \u201cfew bold strokes\u201d?\u2014\n\n\u201cThe Lord covereth himself with light as with a garment. He hath\nstretched the heavens like a canopy. He laid the foundation of the round\nworld that it should not be removed forever. The waters springing in the\nmountains descend into the valleys, unto the places which the Lord hath\nappointed for them, that they may never pass the bounds which He hath\nset them. He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the\nhills, to give drink to every beast of the field, for the wild asses\nto quench their thirst.... Beside them the birds of the air sing among\nthe branches.\u201d The fruits of the field, too, are there; grass and green\nherb; the labors of man, wine and oil of olive; all the creatures, the\nconies, the wild goats, the lions roaring after their prey, and seeking\ntheir meat from God. There, too, is the great and wide sea, and the\nwondrous creatures it contains, and the heavenly bodies are rounding in\nthe whole. And then that touching contrast between the moving life of\nthe elements and the quiet yet laborious life of man, encompassed by\nthese vast movements,\u2014\u201cMan goeth forth unto his work and his labor until\nthe evening.\u201d And all this picture of the Universe contained within\nthirty-five short verses! Besides this, the special Psalm of the visible\ncreation, there is the 65th Psalm, and many another passage in the\nPsalms, which describe so touchingly the way in which God deals with the\nearth through natural processes.\n\nAgain, I need hardly refer to the Book of Job, especially from the 37th\nto the 41st chapters, where both single appearances of the world and the\narrangement of the whole are depicted in language which has graven itself\non the heart of all nations: \u201cThe Lord walks on the heights of the sea,\non the ridges of the towering waves heaped up by the storm.\u201d Or again:\n\u201cThe morning dawn illumines the border of the earth, and moulds variously\nthe canopy of clouds as the hand of man moulds the ductile clay.\u201d\n\nOr turn again to the great poet-prophet Isaiah. Here you find no detailed\ndescriptions, but all Nature fused and molten before the intense fire,\nnow of his indignation, now of his adoring awe, now of his spiritual joy;\none moment lifting his eyes to the midnight heavens as the proof and\nwitness of the Divine Omnipotence; another, in his soul\u2019s exultation over\nGod\u2019s redemptive mercy, calling aloud to the heavens to sing, and the\nlower parts of the earth to shout for joy, \u201cBreak forth into singing, ye\nmountains, O forest and every tree therein.\u201d\n\nBut this transport comes from no mere love of Nature. It has a deeper\norigin. It is for that Jehovah hath comforted his people, and will have\nmercy upon his afflicted. This is the solemn spiritual joy in which he\ncalls on the heavens and the earth to sympathize.\n\nThe following seem to be some of the chief notes of Hebrew poetry in its\ndealing with Nature:\u2014\n\n1. Nature, as we have seen, is never represented as an independent power\nor as resplendent with her own beauty, but as the direct creation,\none might almost say, the garment of the great Jehovah. In fact it is\nremarkable that the word Nature, in the sense we now use it in, never\noccurs in the Bible. Neither the word nor the thing, as a separate\nentity, seems ever to have been present to the Hebrew mind. In everything\nthey saw or heard God himself as immediately present, ready as it were to\nrend the veil and manifest himself.\n\n2. The sober, truthful estimate of all things in the external world.\nThey are spoken of exactly as they are. There is no temptation to make\ntoo much of them; for He who is behind them and who made them is so\nmuch greater, so much more present to thought, that reverence for Him\nprecludes exaggeration. The accuracy of the Bible descriptions of these\nthings is quite unexampled in other literature.[13] This faithfulness to\nfact, this veneration for natural truth, this feeling that things are too\nsacred to be exaggerated or distorted, or in any way trifled with, comes\ndirectly from the habit of regarding all visible Nature as created and\ncontinually upheld by One Omnipresent God. Habitual reverence for Him\nfrom whom they come sobers the writers and makes them truthful.\n\n3. Connected with this is the absence of all tendency to theorize or\nframe hypotheses about Nature\u2019s ongoings. This of course comes from\nthe pervading habit of referring all effects directly to the Divine\nwill; and yet there is no want of philosophic wonder, for, as Humboldt\nremarks, the Book of Job proposes many questions about natural things\n\u201cwhich modern science enables us to propound more formally, and to clothe\nin more scientific language, but not to solve satisfactorily.\u201d Lastly,\nthere is a deep-hearted pathos, \u201ca yearning pensiveness,\u201d as it has been\ncalled, in the Hebrew poetry, over man\u2019s mortal condition, as when in\nimages straight from Nature it describes his life here as \u201ca wind that\npasseth away and cometh not again,\u201d or \u201cas a flower of the field so he\nflourisheth, for the wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place\nthereof shall know it no more.\u201d Simple images, yet how true for all\ngenerations!\n\n\nHOMER.\n\nWhen we turn from the Hebrew to the Greek poetry, as represented by\nthe father of it, Homer, we find ourselves in another atmosphere. It\nis not merely that in the regard which the great poet casts on Nature,\nmythology, a fading and only half-alive mythology, still lingered. It\nis not this only, but it is that in his thoughts of Nature there is not\nthe same awful reverence, the same profound pathos; but there is more of\nthe artistic sense of beauty, that artistic sense which is only fully\ndeveloped when the profounder feelings are comparatively laid asleep.\n\nNo land known to the ancients, perhaps I might say no land ever known\nto men, has supplied such visual stimulus to the imagination as\nGreece;\u2014scenery so richly diversified, a land beyond all others various\nin features and elements, mountains with their bases plunged into the\nsea, valleys intersected by great rivers, rich plains and meadows inlaid\nbetween the hill-ranges, deeply indented shores, promontories wood-clad\nor temple-crowned looking out on the many-islanded, \u00c6gean;\u2014around it, on\nevery side, seas so beautiful, above it such a canopy of sky, changing\nthrough every hour and every season, and calling forth from sea and land\nevery color which sunlight and gloom can elicit.\n\nIf of all nations the Greeks were endowed with the keenest sensibility to\nbeauty, and if Homer was their chief and representative poet, it could\nhardly be but that scenery so varied should melt into his imagination and\nreflect itself in his poetry. And so it is. Homer lived most probably\non the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, where he had ever before his eye the\nisland-studded \u00c6gean, behind him the rich valleys opening down to the\ncoast, and eastward the great mountain ranges where these rivers are\ncradled; could it be that of all this his poetry should give no sign?\nI cannot agree with Mr. Ruskin\u2019s criticism of the Homeric scenery. You\nwill find it in the third volume of his \u201cModern Painters,\u201d chapter xiii.,\non Classical Landscape. Like everything which Mr. Ruskin writes, it is\ninteresting and suggestive, but I cannot think it adequate or wholly\ntrue. Of the Greeks he says: \u201cThey shrank with dread or hatred from\nall the ruggedness of lower nature\u2014from the wrinkled forest bark and\nthe jagged hill-crest, and irregular inorganic storm of sky, looking\nto these for the most part as adverse powers, and taking pleasure only\nin such portions of the lower world as were at once conducive to the\nrest and health of the human frame, and in harmony with the laws of its\ngentler beauty.\u201d Again he says: \u201cAs far as I recollect, without a single\nexception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed\nof a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove.\u201d Again: \u201cIt is sufficiently\nnotable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells\ndelightedly on all the flat bits; and so I think invariably the\ninhabitants of mountainous countries do; but the inhabitants of the\nplains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains.\u201d\n\nNow, in this passage, the general assertion seems to be much too\nsweeping, and, in the special instance of Homer, I think it is not true.\nMr. Ruskin backs his position by reference to various passages in the\nOdyssey which seem to bear him out, but in any fair estimate we must take\nin the Iliad as well as the Odyssey.\n\nIn the Iliad the descriptions of Nature are not so detailed as in the\nOdyssey. Indeed, they occur almost entirely in similes; but these the\npoet fetches from every realm and feature of Nature\u2014from the mountain,\nthe forest, the sea, especially as seen darkening under the coming of\nthe western breeze; from the cloudy and the midnight sky; from all kinds\nof wild animals, the lion, the fawn, the hawk, and the boar. In his\nbattle-scenes it is to all the sterner and fiercer aspects of Nature,\nand habits of wild beasts, that he has recourse for his comparisons. And\nwould he have so often invoked the aid of these wild forces and creatures\nof his imagination had not he delighted in them?\n\nSo when Teucer slays Mentor, it is thus, as rendered by Lord Derby:\u2014\n\n                        \u201cDown he fell,\n    As by the woodman\u2019s axe, on some high peak\n    Falls a proud ash, conspicuous from afar,\n    Leveling its tender leaves upon the ground.\u201d\n\nIt is thus the charge of Hector is described when he beat back the Greeks\nand penned them at their ships:\u2014\n\n    \u201cOn poured the Trojan masses; in the van\n    Hector straight forward drove in full career.\n    As some huge bowlder, from its rocky bed\n    Detached, and by the wintry torrent\u2019s force\n    Hurled down the steep cliff\u2019s face, when constant rains\n    The massive rock\u2019s firm hold have undermined;\n    With giant bounds it flies; the crashing wood\n    Resounds beneath it; still it hurries on,\n    Until, arriving at the level plain,\n    Its headlong impulse checked, it rolls no more.\u201d\n\nOr take another similitude drawn from the sea. When the poet wishes to\ndescribe how the Ach\u00e6an phalanxes come on to battle, this is the image he\nemploys:\u2014\n\n    \u201cAnd as a goatherd from his watch-tower crag\n    Beholds a cloud advancing o\u2019er the sea\n    Beneath the west wind\u2019s breath; as from afar\n    He gazes, black as pitch, it sweeps along\n    O\u2019er the dark face of ocean, bearing on\n    A hurricane of rain; he, shuddering, sees\n    And drives his flock beneath the sheltering cave.\n    So thick and dark about the Argives stirred,\n    Impatient for the war, the stalwart youths,\n    Black masses, bristling close with spear and shield.\u201d\n\nOr again, when, after Agamemnon has retired wounded from the battle,\nHector comes forth and slips his Trojans on the Ach\u00e6an host, as some\nhunter slips his white-teethed hounds on a wild boar or a lion, and\nhimself\n\n    \u201cFell on their battle, as some roaring storm\n    Leaps down and heaves the sleeping violet sea.\u201d\n\nOne after another he lays low the chiefs, and their names fill three\nhexameters.\n\n                      \u201cOf the leaders these\n    He slew, then on the nameless people fell\n    As when with hurricane deep the west wind smites\n    White summer clouds high piled by the clear south,\n    And volumed wave on wave comes shoreward rolled,\n    And the white flying foam is scattered high\n    Before the loud blast of far-wandering wind.\u201d\n\nLet me now give one instance of Homer\u2019s feeling for the aspect of the\nnightly heavens. It shall be taken from the place of the Iliad where the\nTrojans, after a day of successful battle, having driven back the Greeks,\nrest for the night. And here I shall quote, not, as in the above passage,\nfrom Lord Derby\u2019s translation, but from a rendering of the passage by\nthe Poet-Laureate. It is the only passage of Homer in which we have the\nLaureate\u2019s handiwork:\u2014\n\n    \u201cSo Hector said, and sea-like roared his host,\n    Then loosed their sweating horses from the yoke,\n    And each beside his chariot bound his own,\n    And oxen from the city, and goodly sheep\n    In haste they drove, and honey-hearted wine\n    And bread from out their houses brought, and heaped\n    Their firewood, and the winds from off the plain\n    Rolled the rich vapor far into the heaven.\n    And there all night upon the bridge of war\n    Sat glorying, many a fire before them blazed;\n    As when in heaven the stars about the moon\n    Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,\n    And every height comes out, and jutting peak\n    And valley, and the immeasurable heavens\n    Break open to their highest, and all the stars\n    Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart;\n    So many a fire between the ships and stream\n    Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy.\n    A thousand on the plain; and close by each\n    Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;\n    And champing golden grain the horses stood\n    Hard by their chariots waiting for the dawn.\u201d\n\nThese few samples of the similes scattered thick throughout the Iliad\nshow that Homer laid all the appearances of Nature under contribution,\nand the wildest and grandest not less than those that are home-like.\n\nTrue it is that Homer in the Iliad nowhere stops to paint scenery for\nits own sake. He does this less than Virgil or most later epic poets.\nHe is so full of business and of human action that he cannot stay for\ndescription. But in such passages as the Catalogue of the Grecian Host\nin the second book, there are brief but fine touches of geographical\nlandscape, as he tells of the many lands whence they came; or again in\nhis fixed but most suggestive epithets of places, as \u201cthe windy Ilion,\u201d\n\u201cmany-fountained Ida,\u201d and the deep-whirlpooled Scamander; Laced\u00e6mon in\nthe hollow of the hills; Messe, haunt of wild doves; vine-clad Epidaurus;\nwindy Enerpe; Orchomenus rich in flocks.\n\nI would that I could linger over this subject and quote some more\npassages, such as that where Achilles, long absent, returns to the\nconflict, and the immortal gods come down to range themselves, some with\nthe Greeks, some on the side of Troy; and heaven and earth, the mountains\nand the rivers and the sea and the nether world beneath, all are moved to\ntake part in the great issue.\n\nBut I must pass on to the scenery of the Odyssey. No doubt this poem\ncontains much more description of landscape than the Iliad, and in that\ndescription, as Mr. Ruskin says, there seems to be a preference for\nthe tame and domestic rather than for the wild in Nature. But is there\nnot enough in the subject and circumstance of the two poems to account\nfor such difference? Ulysses, the much-traveled, much-suffering man,\nwho had endured so many things by land and sea, his home-sick heart is\nyearning for his native Ithaca. That his heart should be weary of the sea\nand the mountains and all wild untractable things is only too natural.\nIt is quite in keeping with and as a set-off against this feeling of\nhome-weariness that the poet, in describing such a wanderer, should dwell\nwith peculiar emphasis on all that is warm and comfortable and home-like\nin scenery.\n\nLet me give one or two samples from Worsley\u2019s translation of the\nOdyssey, which I am disposed to think is the best poetic translation of\nany classical poet that we have in English. Mr. Worsley rendered the\nhexameters of Homer into the Spenserian stanza, and he so perfectly\ncaught the whole rhythm and cadence of Spenser, and this answers so well\nto the spirit of the Odyssey, the most romantic of Greek poems, that I\nknow no more delightful reading than those picturesque and melodious\nstanzas.\n\nHere is one sample. Ulysses, having left Calypso\u2019s island on a raft, is\nshipwrecked in mid-seas, and this is the description of his coming to\nland on the island of Ph\u00e6acia:\u2014\n\n    \u201cTwo nights and days in the tumultuous swell\n    He wandered. Often did his heart forebode\n    Utter extinction in the yawning hell,\n    But when the fair-haired Dawn arising glowed,\n    And in the eastern heaven the thin light showed,\n    Came a calm-deepening day, windless and clear.\n    Then when Odysseus on a tall wave rode,\n    And his keen eyes along the heaving mere\n    Stretched in extreme desire, he saw the land rise near.\n\n    \u201cAs when a father, on the point to die,\n    Who for long time in sore disease hath lain,\n    By the strong Fates tormented heavily,\n    Till the pulse faileth for exceeding pain,\n    Feels the life stirring in his bones again;\n    While glad at heart his children smile around,\n    He also smiles\u2014the gods have loosed his chain;\n    So welcome seemed the land with forest crowned,\n    And he rejoicing swam, and yearned to feel the ground.\n\n    \u201cBut now within a voice-throw of the rocks\n    The sound of waters did his ears appall.\n    Full on the coast the great waves\u2019 thunder-shocks\n    Roll, and afar the wet foam-vapors fall.\n    No roadstead there, no haven seemed at all,\n    Nor shelter where a ship might rest at ease;\n    But from the main-earth darted a wild wall\n    Of headlands. Then Odysseus\u2019 heart and knees\n    Were loosened; and his soul thus spake in the deep seas.\u201d\n\nThen follows a fine description of his struggle with the breakers, and\nhow his flesh was torn and his skin peeled against the sharp rocks:\u2014\n\n    \u201cHe from the echoing breakers swam right fain,\n    Skirting the coast; if chance his eyes explore\n    Or far or near some haven of the main,\n    Or mild declivity of shelving shore.\n    But when he came the river-month before,\n    And his gaze rested on the long white gleam,\n    By rocks unchafed and windless evermore,\n    Here to his thought best landing-place did seem,\n    And in his soul he prayed, feeling the calm sweet stream.\u201d\n\nThen the landing and climbing up into the wood, and hiding himself under\na mound of gathered leaves:\u2014\n\n                \u201cWhere o\u2019er his weary head,\n    Athene all night long pain-healing slumber shed.\u201d\n\nBut I recommend every one to read the last hundred lines of the fifth\nbook of the Odyssey. It is one of the most natural and beautiful\ndescriptions of sea-coast scenery, heightened in its interest by the\npresence of man in strife with the waters, that is to be found in any\npoet.\n\nThe whole of this passage is commented on by Mr. Ruskin at length, but I\nthink his comments are one-sided and overdone. No doubt the shipwrecked\nman kisses the corn-growing land when at last he reaches it, and gladly\ncovers himself with the dead leaves. But it is not, as Mr. Ruskin says,\nthat the Greek mind shrank from wild things, and took pleasure only in\nthings subservient to human use. It is because it was the action natural\nto a shipwrecked man just escaped from the hateful sea to hug the land he\nhad so much toil to reach; and it was natural for a poet, when describing\nhis hero tossed and drenched for days amid the hungry foam, to bring\nout in strong contrast all the warmth and comfort of the dry cheerful\nearth.[14]\n\nOne sample of Homer\u2019s home-painting must be given, where we see\u2014\n\n            \u201cAll things are in order stored\u2014\n            A home of ancient peace;\u201d\u2014\n\n    \u201cOutside the court-yard stretched a planted space\n    Of orchard, and a fence environed all the place.\n\n    \u201cThere, in full prime, the orchard-trees grew tall,\n    Sweet-fig, pomegranate, apple fruited fair,\n    Pear and the healthful olive. Each and all\n    Both summer droughts and chills of winter spare.\n    All the year round they flourish. Some the air\n    Of zephyr warms to life, some doth mature,\n    Apple grows old on apple, pear on pear,\n    Fig follows fig, vintage doth vintage lure;\n    Thus the rich revolution doth for age endure.\n\n    \u201cWith well-sunned floor for drying, there is seen\n    The vineyard. Here the grapes they cull, there tread.\n    Here falls the blossom from the clusters green,\n    There the first blushings by the suns are shed.\n    Last, flowers forever fadeless, bed by bed;\n    Two streams: one waters the whole garden fair;\n    One through the court-yard, near the house is led,\n    Whereto with pitcher all the folk repair.\n    All these the God-sent gifts to King Alcinous were.\u201d\n\nI might go on to quote the description of Calypso\u2019s cave, and many\nanother landscape with which this Greek romance abounds. Indeed, it would\ntake a summer day to exhaust the passages descriptive of Nature in the\nOdyssey and the Iliad alone, before we could arrive at an adequate idea\nof the Homeric view of Nature. This only I will say and pass on\u2014that\nin the Odyssey you do find that the scenes most lovingly depicted are\nhome scenes of order, comfort, and repose. But this is not because, as\nMr. Ruskin says, the Greek mind abhorred the wildness of nature, but\nbecause, with such a character to describe as Ulysses, battered by the\nstrokes of doom, travel-weary and home-sick, the natural framework to\nsuch a human figure, that which gives at once contrast and relief, is a\nsetting taken from the reposeful side of Nature. Of storm and trouble\nyou have had enough in the human character. Nature here must furnish the\nbackground of repose. But in the Iliad, if we look at the similes, we\nfind them taken from every form and aspect of Nature\u2014the wild and vast\nas well as the homely and the minute. The poet gathers images from every\nelement, earth, sky, and sea, mountain and meadow; but all are used, not\nfor their own sakes, not to dwell on themselves alone, but to bring out\nby similitude the force of the human passions and actions, which are the\nsubstance of the epic. But the poet who could so use Nature, making her a\nstorehouse of images whence he drew at will, must have lived familiarly\nin the eye of Nature, loving her in all her aspects with a true though\nunconscious love.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nNATURE IN LUCRETIUS AND VIRGIL.\n\n\nWhen from the representations of Nature in Homer, and indeed in all\nthe Greek poets, we turn to the rural descriptions of the Roman poets,\nwe feel that we have passed into a wholly different atmosphere. If\nthere were no other there is at least this cardinal distinction between\nthem:\u2014The Greeks had no antiquity behind them, at least no earlier\nliterature to come between them and the open face of things. They saw at\nfirst hand with their own eyes, felt with their own hearts, described\nin their own words. The Romans, those at least of the literary age,\nbefore they wrote a line that has come down to us, had received the whole\nHellenic learning and poetry poured in upon them, so that the very air of\nItaly was colored with the hues of Greece. This makes it so difficult, in\nstudying the productions of any Roman poet\u2014their descriptions of Nature\nnot less than other things\u2014to be sure that you have the features of\nItalian scenery pure and uncolored, and that they have not been tinged\nand refracted by the Hellenic medium of associations and language through\nwhich they were habitually beheld. No doubt the Romans originally were\nand never ceased to be a country-loving people. The pictures that have\ncome down to us of Cincinnatus, and of other worthies of the early\nRepublic, represent even their greatest generals and dictators as living\non paternal farms in rural thrift and simplicity. But there remains no\npoetry coeval with that primitive time. Before we reach their poets the\nday of small estates and patrician life in the fields is over, all Italy\nis held in vast domains by rich senators who themselves lived in the\ncity, and committed the care of their lands to a bailiff with hordes of\nslaves.\n\nIn the last half-century of the Republic, to which belong the earliest\nRoman poets who describe Nature, the town life, varied by retirement to\nthe Tiburtine or Sabine villa, was universal among the poets and their\nassociates. Some of them had passed their childhood in the rustic life of\ndistant provinces, and the remembrance of that life still lives in their\npoetry, as in Catullus, and more distinctively in Virgil. The earliest\npictures of Nature that occur in any Roman poetry are to be found not\nin pastoral or idyl, but in the great philosophic poem that expounds an\nelaborate system of Nature. Lucretius was too earnest a preacher of his\nAtomic Philosophy to linger over descriptions of scenery for their own\nsake. Nevertheless, his wearisome expositions of materialistic system are\nrelieved by many a beautiful illustration drawn directly from the Nature\nwhich his own eyes had seen, and portrayed with a clearness of outline\nand a startling vividness, in which, as Professor Sellar has truly said,\nhe is unrivaled in antiquity save by Homer. The rigorous dogmatism of\na mechanical philosophy is in him combined with the keenest eye to all\nthe appearances of the outer world, minute as well as vast. Evidently he\nhad lived much in the open air, had been a haunter of all waste places,\nwild mountain ranges, dripping caves, solitary sea-shores. He had noted\nall the sights, listened to the sounds and the silences, and observed\nthe ways of the wild creatures that dwell there. His impressions he has\nstamped in many a noble line, that comes in with delightful freshness to\nillustrate his prolix argument. His eye was upon the smallest and most\nsequestered appearances, as the many-colored shells on the shore, and\nthe dripping of water over moss-covered rocks; but still more familiarly\ndid his imagination move with the great elemental movements of Nature,\nand when the storms and winds were up, he found himself \u201cone among the\nmany there.\u201d According to the philosophy he had adopted, and earnestly\npropounded, all the most beautiful and mysterious aspects of things were\nthe mere products of dead mechanic forces. But the genius of the poet\nat times shook itself free from the trammels of his creed, and rose to\nthe contemplation, not of a dead mechanic world, but of one informed by\na vast life, which moves through all material things, and makes them\ninstinct with unity.\n\nIn the language of the philosophers, while consciously he taught only a\n_Natura naturata_, his imagination and sympathy grasped, in spite of him,\na _Natura naturans_. It is impossible that any great poet, however his\nunderstanding may be caught in the meshes of mere materialism, can in\nhis hours of inspiration rest contented with that. Assuredly Lucretius\ndid not. Accordingly, we find him here and there breaking out into the\nearliest utterance of that mystical Pantheistic feeling about the life of\nNature, which we shall find reappearing in Virgil, and which has recurred\nso powerfully in modern poetry.\n\nCatullus, the poet contemporary with Lucretius, is too much absorbed in\nlove and friendship, finds too exciting an interest in the society of\nman, to give much time to Nature. In his most original poems, or at least\nthose in which he most speaks out his feelings, Nature holds little,\nalmost no place. Two poems refer to his villa at Tibur, with, however,\nlittle mention of any rural pleasures connected with it.\n\nThe well-known lines on his return to his home at Sirmio, on the Lago\ndi Garda, for all their wonderful charm, breathe more of the love of\nhome and rest after long voyaging than of enjoyment in Nature for her\nown sake. His more elaborate and artistic poems contain some beautiful\nnatural images and similes, expressed with that unstudied felicity and\nclear sense of beauty which distinguished him. But they do not come to\nmore than side glances by the way, as he hurries on to his human theme.\nIt has, however, been remarked, that while to Lucretius, to Horace, even\nto Virgil, the sea is a thing of dread rather than of admiration, from\nwhich they shrank as a treacherous creature, Catullus felt the grandeur\nof its immensity, and rejoiced in the laughter of the waves in calm, and\nin their changing colors beneath the storm.\n\nGermans have written learned books, some to maintain, others to deny,\nthat the ancient Greeks and Romans had any feeling for Nature, or, as\nthe phrase goes, were inspired by the sentiment of Nature. Schiller has\ngone as far as to deny that Homer had any more caring for Nature than\nhe had for the garment, the shield, the armor, which he describes with\nequal relish. In the face of such an assertion we have but to read a few\npassages from Homer above cited, and innumerable others like them. No\ndoubt the ancients had not that intimate, delicate, dwelling sympathy\nfor Nature which we call the modern feeling. But there is hardly a tone\nof sentiment which Nature in modern times has evoked, of which some\nfaint prelude at least might not be found among them. Passages from the\ndialogue, and especially from the choruses, of Sophocles and Euripides,\nmight, had we time, have been cited, which speak of natural objects with\nalmost as much fondness as though they had been written yesterday.\n\nOne side of this feeling, which is dwelt on as peculiarly a birth of\nrecent times, is the passion for mountains. And no doubt the feeling of\nthe Latin poets as they thought of them was for the most part shuddering\nand affright. Yet Virgil, though he generally speaks the same language,\nseems at times to catch something of their free and far delight, as\nwhen he speaks of Father Apennine roaring with all his holm-oaks, and\nrejoicing to heave his snow-white summit into the sky. In such a passage\nit would seem as though the power of hills was for a moment on him, and\nhe caught a prophetic glimpse of that mountain-rapture which was reserved\nfor this century at last adequately to express. Quinctilian, however,\nrepresents the current feeling of his countrymen when he says, \u201cSpecies\nmaritimis, planis, am\u0153nis,\u201d\u2014Beauty belongs to countries that lie beside\nthe sea, level and pleasant.\n\nBut granting that the feeling for Nature among the Romans was thus\nlimited, if one wished to prove that it was real, one would be content to\npoint to Virgil alone. His pre\u00ebminence as a poet of the country was early\nrecognized by his friend and contemporary, Horace:\u2014\n\n                  \u201cMolle atque facetum\n    Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Cam\u0153n\u00e6,\u201d\u2014\n\nTo Virgil the Muses of the country gave the gift of delicacy and artistic\nskill. When Horace thus wrote of his friend only the Eclogues had as yet\nappeared. But the two greater poems which Virgil afterwards produced,\namong their other merits, elevate him, as a lover and describer of\nnatural scenes, to a place which his earlier poems alone would not have\nwon for him.\n\nWith regard to the Eclogues, the purely imitative and conventional\ncharacter of their language, personages, and sentiment, is well known.\nBut for long it was believed that their scenery at least was real,\nborrowed from Mantua and the banks of his native Mincio. But later\ncritics have shown that imitation penetrated even here, and that as\nthe sentiments and substance of the Eclogues are all borrowed from\nTheocritus, not less is the framework of scenery in which these are\nset. The vine-clad cave in which the shepherd reclines, the briery crag\nfrom which he sees his goats hanging, the mountains that cast long\nshadows toward evening, these, it is said, are nowhere to be seen in the\nneighborhood of Mantua, but belong entirely to Sicily. Some even assert\nthat neither the ilex, the chestnut, nor the beech grows anywhere near\nthe banks of the Mincio. Yet even amid the prevailingly Sicilian scenery\nthere are touches here and there, where he reverts to what his own eyes\nhad seen, as where he describes his farm as covered with bare stones and\nslimy bulrushes, and the Mincio as weaving for his green banks a fringe\nof tender reeds.\n\nEven though the imagery of the Eclogues may be borrowed from the Sicilian\npoet, yet here, as every where, Virgil is no mere translator, but proves\nby the tender grace of the language in which he clothes the borrowed\nimagery his feeling for original Nature. In the fifth Eclogue, when two\nshepherds have been playing each his finest strain, partly to please,\npartly to emulate the other, at the close, Menalcas says to Mopsus:\u2014\n\n    \u201cSuch is thy song to me, O singer divine!\n    As is sleep upon the grass to weary men, as in summer heat,\n    Thirst to slake with pleasant water from the leaping brook.\u201d\n\nAnd then when Menalcas has sung his strain this is the reply of Mopsus:\u2014\n\n    \u201cWhat gifts, what shall I render thee for such a song?\n    For not so delightful to my ear is the sighing of the coming south\n      wind,\n    Nor the beating of billows upon the shore,\n    Nor the sound of streams down-falling through the rocky glens.\u201d\n\nOf these and such-like images the first hints may have been from\nTheocritus, but assuredly they have won a new charm in their passage\nthrough the mind of Virgil.\n\nBut if the scenery of the Eclogues partakes in some measure of the\nconventional mould in which the whole of the poems are cast, the\n_Georgics_ are poetry in earnest, dealing with a real subject, and\ndescribing, in many places at least, real landscapes. Doubtless here,\ntoo, as everywhere, Virgil is the learned poet; his mind comes to his\nsubject laden with the spoils of all antiquity. As he describes natural\nobjects, all the associations which ancient Mythology and Greek poetry\nhad thrown around them use spontaneously before him. Thus he would\noften seem to look at things not at first-hand with his own eyes, but\nthrough the media which former poets had fashioned for him. But this, if\nwe think of it, is one element of the consummate art of the Georgics.\nThe poet had to raise a homely subject above the dust of commonplace,\nto add dignity to objects and processes which in themselves might seem\nundignified, or even vulgar. Therefore he takes the husbandman back to\nearlier times, and invests his toils with all the veneration and sanctity\nwhich primeval tradition has shed around them, and teaches him to feel\nthat in his pursuits he is one with the first forefathers of the race.\nThis archaic coloring, richly yet delicately suffused, invests the poem\nwith a peculiar charm. Just so a modern poet, wishing to throw around the\nlife of shepherd and husbandman, even in our own days, an air of ancient\nreverence, might still revert to Bible stories of the patriarchs\u2014to Jacob\nand Rachel meeting by the well, to Ruth in the corn-field, and David\namong the sheep-cotes of Bethlehem. But making full allowance for all\nthat is archaic and mythological in the allusions to distant ages and\nEastern lands, there remains a large background of landscape in which the\nplains of Mantua and Campania lie spread before us, and the intense skies\nof Italy bend overhead.\n\nSuch a passage as the following is surely the work of one who had\nwatched and loved the alternations of the Italian summer:\u2014\n\n    \u201cBut when glad summer at the west winds\u2019 call\n    Shall send the flocks to woods and pastures free,\n    Then \u2019neath the star of dawn on the cool fields\n    Let browse thy sheep and goats, while morn is young,\n    And the fresh dew lies hoary on the grass\u2014\n    The dew on tender blade, to cattle dear.\n    When the fourth hour of day brings parching thirst,\n    And in the trees cicadas\u2019 notes are loud,\n    Then bid the herd at wells and deep clear pools\n    Drink the stream running from full oaken troughs.\n    But in the deep noon heat a shady vale\n    Seek, if perchance some oak of antique bulk\n    There spread his giant boughs; or some grove dark\n    With many a holm-oak\u2019s gloom reposeth nigh\n    In hallowed shadow. Then at set of sun\n    Once more supply clear streams and drive afield\n    Thy flock, when eventide cools all the air,\n    And the moon dewy-moist repairs the lawns\n    With freshness, while the shores with halcyon notes\n    Resound, the copses with the goldfinch song.\u201d\n\nIt has generally been held that one of the most prominent notes\nof Virgil\u2019s genius was his sympathy with Nature. To this the late\nProfessor Conington, whose opinion on whatever concerned Virgil deserves\nall respect, used to demur, and to maintain rather that his chief\ncharacteristic lay in an elaborate and refined culture, manifesting\nitself in the most consummate delicacy and grace. But though Virgil was\nbefore all things the poet of learned culture and artistic beauty, this\ndid not hinder, rather prompted him, to turn on Nature a sympathetic\nand loving eye. The perception of a sympathy between the feelings and\nvicissitudes of man and the world that surrounds him appears nowhere so\nstrongly as in his latest poem, the \u00c6neid. It may have been that as his\nsubject led him much into battles and adventures, alien to his taste, he\nseized all the more eagerly every opportunity of reverting to that Nature\nwhich had been his earliest delight.\n\nWhatever be the cause, the pictures of Nature, whether in description\nor in simile, are more frequent, more intimate, more tender, than in\neither of his earlier productions. It has been noticed, for instance,\nthat at the beginning of the sixth book, as the Sibyl draws nigh, the\nearth rumbles, the mountains quake, as if sharing the human dread at her\napproach; and that throughout the fourth book there is maintained a fine\nsympathy between the aspects of the outer world and the passions which\nagitate the human actors.\n\nIt is thus he sets off the tumult in the soul of the lovelorn and wronged\nqueen in contrast with the calm and silence of night:\u2014\n\n    \u201cNow night it was, and everything on earth had won the grace\n    Of quiet sleep; the woods had rest, the wildered waters\u2019 face:\n    It was the tide when stars roll on amid their courses due,\n    And all the tilth is hushed, and beasts, and birds of many a hue,\n    And all that is in waters wide, and what the waste doth keep\n    In thicket rough, amid the hush of night tide lay asleep,\n    And slipping off the load of care forgat their toilsome part.\n    But ne\u2019er might that Ph\u0153nician queen, that most unhappy heart,\n    Sink into sleep, or take the night into her eyes and breast,\n    Her sorrows grow, and love again swells up with all unrest.\u201d\n\nIs not the feeling here what would be called quite modern? For its tone,\nmight it not have been written yesterday? This contrast between Nature\u2019s\nrepose and the tumult of the human heart, thus consciously felt and\nexpressed, belong to a late and self-conscious age. In Homer you may see\nsuch contrasts, as when Helen, looking from the walls of Troy, misses her\ntrue brothers from among the Achaian host, and says that they kept aloof\nfrom the war, fearing the reproach which she had brought on herself and\nthem. And the poet adds:\u2014\n\n    \u201cSo spake she, but them already the life-giving earth covered\n    In Laced\u00e6mon there, in their dear native land.\u201d\n\nHere the contrast is only half consciously felt, hinted at obliquely,\nnot brought into prominence. To emphasize and dwell on the contrast, as\nVirgil does, is modern, one of the many points in which the Latin poet\u2019s\nfeeling is like that of our own day.\n\nMany more passages might be cited where Virgil turns aside from his epic\nnarrative to dwell over natural scenes. The elaborate description of the\nstorm in the first book; the sail through the Ionian Islands; the night\npassed on the Sicilian coast with \u00c6tna heard thundering overhead through\nthe dark, in the third book; the island, in the fifth book, which is made\nthe goal round which the racing-boats row; the fleet entering the mouth\nof the Tiber while the calm morning lies ruddy on the sea;\u2014these are a\nfew which come to mind.\n\nBut it is in the many similes scattered throughout the \u00c6neid that the\nVirgilian grace and tenderness is seen at its best. It has been the\nfashion with the commentators to trace back every one of Virgil\u2019s similes\nto Homer or some other Greek poet. And the two I shall now give have not\nwholly escaped this imputation, though there seems small foundation for\nit in their case.\n\nIn the boat-race, when Mnestheus, having run his boat into a narrow and\nsheltered passage among rocks, has with difficulty scraped through and\nshot again into open sea, this is Virgil\u2019s comparison:\u2014\n\n    \u201cAs a dove scared suddenly from a cave,\n    Where she has her home and dear nestlings in the crannied rock,\n    Hurries fieldward in her flight, and with flurried pinions\n    Loudly flaps the roof\u2014soon gliding in calm air\n    Skims her smooth way, sailing aloof on moveless wings.\u201d\n\nAgain, when \u00c6neas, led by the Sibyl, descends to the nether world, and\narrives at the shores of the river Styx, the ghosts of the dead come\nflocking round him in crowds:\u2014\n\n    \u201cNumerous as the leaves in the woods that at first touch of autumn\u2019s\n      cold\n    Gliding fall; or numerous as the birds that flock together shoreward\n      from the deep,\n    When wintry weather drives them across the sea, and sends them into\n      sunny lands.\u201d\n\nThe full beauty, however, of passages like these cannot be felt when\nthey are detached from the whole scene, in which they are inlaid. \u00c6neas\ntraveling far into the nether gloom, through Pluto\u2019s empty halls and\nghastly realms of the dead, is a picture almost too dismal. But how\nexquisitely does Virgil relieve his own heart and that of the reader, by\nletting in on that sad world these glimpses of a land still gladdened by\nthe sun!\n\nIf you compare Virgil with Homer, where they describe the same natural\nobjects, or even where the Latin poet borrows his similes directly from\nthe Greek, you cannot but feel how wide is the difference between them.\nThere is no more the entire outwardness, the self-forgetting serenity of\nHomer\u2019s descriptions, the colorless transparency as of a mountain range,\nwhose every stone and blade of grass lies reflected in the clear depths\nof an unmoving lake. Received into Virgil\u2019s heart the outward world\nbecomes colored with some of the melancholy of the poet and his time. Not\nthat to Virgil\u2019s eye there was any sadness in Nature herself, but in his\nhands Nature becomes so humanized, it so lends itself to human joys and\nsorrows, that these cast their own gleams, and still more their shadows,\non that, in itself, unimpassioned countenance. This sympathy between man\nand Nature Virgil apprehended more feelingly than any other Roman poet;\nand in this, as in so many other things, we find in him an anticipation\nof the modern time. As compared with Lucretius, Virgil deals with Nature\nin a less sublime, but more human way. Lucretius demands the explanation\nof Nature and her processes, Virgil seeks to enter into her feeling, to\ncatch her sentiment. As a French author has expressed it: \u201cLucretius is\nnot so much arrested by the beauty of Nature, as roused by its mystery,\nto extort the secret of it. I admire thee, he seems to say, but on\ncondition that I may investigate and understand thee.\u201d In Lucretius man\nand Nature stand over against each other, observer and observed: they do\nnot meet and interpenetrate each other. Between Virgil and the outward\nworld there is no such philosophic barrier; his feelings flow freely\nforth to it, and there find more or less satisfaction,\u2014satisfaction\nas from a familiar companion; whether familiar by the associations of\nchildhood or through the cherished learning of later years.\n\nLucretius had, as we know, a philosophic faith about Nature, which\nsatisfied his understanding, if it did not satisfy what was deeper in him\nthan understanding\u2014that high imagination and poetic instinct which at\ntimes craved a more spiritual interpretation. Virgil, on the other hand,\nhad no consistent theory regarding that Nature which he apprehended so\nfeelingly. In general he acquiesced in the orthodox mythology which he\nhad received from the tradition of the poets. And yet, while he accepted\nit for poetic, or even patriotic reasons, he must, when he thought of\nit, have felt strange misgivings. For the mythologic faith had entirely\nceased, to be real to himself or to his educated countrymen. That he\nlonged at times to penetrate the secret of Nature, and to know the\ncauses of things, he himself assures us. But there is no evidence in\nhis poetry that he ever rose to as clear a conception of one all-ruling\nDivine Power as even Cicero had probably reached. There are, however, two\nwell-known passages, one in the fourth Georgic, the other in the sixth\n\u00c6neid, in which Virgil expresses a mystic and pantheistic theory as to\nan all-pervading life of the world, which, if it cannot be called his\nphilosophic belief, seems to have been to him at least more than a mere\npoetic fancy. Lucretius, impelled by the craving of his imagination for\nlife, not death, had in the opening of his poem and elsewhere allowed\nsuch a feeling, as it were, to escape him, but had never recognized\nit as an article of his faith. In Virgil it approaches more nearly to\na consciously held belief, or at least to a possible solution of the\nmystery of Nature. It has been reserved for modern times to give fuller\nexpression to the same tendency of thought, sometimes as a mere feeling,\nsometimes as a conviction. But however such a view may have expressed\npassing phases, either of thought or feeling, it has never, either now or\nin ancient times, approached to be a solution which can satisfy at once\nreason, heart, and conscience.\n\nSince these remarks on Virgil were in the press, Professor Sellar\u2019s work\non Virgil has appeared. If I could have read it before writing the above\npages, I should probably have said more of Virgil\u2019s treatment of Nature,\nor less. As it is, I have allowed what I had said to remain unchanged.\nThose who wish to see this and every other aspect of Virgil\u2019s poetry\ntreated in the most thorough and instructive way, will be amply rewarded\nby the study of Professor Sellar\u2019s book.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nNATURE IN CHAUCER, SHAKESPEARE, AND MILTON.\n\n\nTo pass from the Virgilian view of Nature to that of our earliest\nEnglish poet, though it brings us nearer our own age in time, is really\nto recede from it in feeling to a remote and primitive antiquity. No\npoet ever loved Nature more than Chaucer did; but it was with a simple,\nunreflective, child-like love. The Morning Star of English Song, as he\nhas been called, man of the world and skilled in affairs, at home in\ncourts and with the great, conversant with the ways of all men, high\nand low, could turn aside from the gorgeous imagery that filled his\npoetic vision, from the profusion of medi\u00e6val ceremonies and cavalcade,\nof high processions with soldiers in armor, caparisoned horses and\nbedizened ladies, from gallant knights with lordly manners, and homely\ncountry-people, from sights and stories fetched from many lands,\u2014to dwell\ntenderly on the plain sights and sounds of external nature, and to sing\nof them with the transparency and sweetness of a child. It was Nature in\nher \u201cfirst intention,\u201d her most obvious aspects, that attracted him.\nOnce, indeed, in the \u201cAssembly of Foules,\u201d he speaks of \u201cthat noble\nGoddesse of Nature.\u201d This, however, is not his usual language, but rather\na conventional way of speaking caught from the Latin poets he had read.\nAgain, in a more serious strain, the same poem speaks thus:\u2014\n\n    \u201cNature, the vicare of the Almightie Lord;\u201d\n\nbut it is not on Nature as a great whole, much less as an abstraction,\nthat his thought usually dwells. It is the outer world in its most\nconcrete forms and objects, with which he delights to interweave his\npoetry\u2014the homely scenes of South England, the oaks and other forest\ntrees, the green meadows, quiet fields, and comfortable farms, as well\nas the great castles where the nobles dwelt. One associates him with\nthe green lanes and downs of Surrey and Kent, their natural copsewoods\nand undulating greenery. I know not that the habitual forms of English\nlandscape, those which are most rural and most unchanged, have ever\nsince found a truer poet, one who so brings before the mind the scene\nand the spirit of it uncolored by any intervention of his own thought\nor sentiment. And his favorite season\u2014it is the May-time. Of this he is\nnever tired of singing. When there comes a really spring-like day in May,\nthe east wind gone, and the west wind blowing softly, the leaves coming\nout, and the birds singing, at such a season one feels instinctively this\nis the Chaucer atmosphere and time. One passage has been cited in a\nformer chapter in which Chaucer speaks of the daisy very lovingly. Other\npassages might be cited in which he turns again and again to the same\nflower, proving that it was a favorite with one poet before either Burns\nor Wordsworth.\n\nLet me give one more passage which gives the characteristic landscape of\nChaucer and his feeling about it:\u2014\n\n    \u201cWhen shour\u00e9s sote of rain descended soft,\n    Causing the ground fel\u00e9 times and oft\n    Up for to give many a wholesome air,\n    And every plain\u00e9 was y-clothed fair\n\n    \u201cWith new\u00e9 green, and maketh small\u00e9 flow\u2019rs\n    To springen here and there in field and mead\n    So very good and wholesome be the show\u2019rs,\n    That they renewen that was old and dead\n    In winter time, and out of every seed\n    Springeth the herb\u00e9, so that every wight\n    Of this seas\u00f3n waxeth right glad and light.\n\n    ...\n\n        \u201cUp I rose three hour\u00e9s after twelfe\n    About the springing of the gladsome day,\n    And on I put my gear and mine array,\n    And to a pleasant grove I \u2019gan to pass\n    Long ere the bright\u00e9 sun uprisen was;\n\n    \u201cIn which were oak\u00e9s great, straight as a line,\n    Under the which the grass so fresh of hue\n    Was newly sprung; and an eight foot or nine\n    Ev\u00e9ry tree well from his fellow grew,\n    With branches broad laden with leav\u00e9s new,\n    That sprungen out against the sunn\u00e9 sheen,\n    Some very red, and some a glad light green,\n\n    \u201cWhich (as me thought) was a right pleasant sight;\n    And eke the bird\u00e9s song\u00e9s for to hear\n    Would have rejoic\u00e9d any earthly wight;\n    And I, that could not yet in no mannere\n    Hearen the nightingale of all the year,\n    Full busily heark\u2019ned with heart and ear.\n    If I her voice perceive could anywhere.\u201d\n\nThis is exactly the Chaucer landscape. The forest trees are described\neach after their kind; even the varieties of color of oak leaves in\nspring-time he notes, some coming out \u201cvery red,\u201d some of a golden green\nhue\u2014a fact not noticed, as far as I remember, by any other poet; the soft\ngreen grass, as soft as velvet under foot, he is never done praising;\nthe note of each song-bird he knows and delights in. These, with here\nand there a quaint old garden described, such is the scenery in which\nhis human portraits are inlaid. He is altogether one of the most amply\ndescriptive of English poets till we arrive at quite recent times. And it\nis one sign of the permanence and stability of England, even amidst all\nchange, that among the copsewoods of Kent and the lanes of Surrey just\nsuch scenes may be seen any spring-day now as Chaucer loved to describe\nnearly five hundred years ago. This unchanged landscape is everywhere in\nhis poetry blended with the medi\u00e6val manners and costumes that have long\nsince passed, as a modern poet, in phrase like Chaucer\u2019s own, has well\nsung:\u2014\n\n                \u201cHe listeneth to the lark,\n    Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark\n    Of painted glass, in leaden lattice bound,\n    He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,\n    Then writeth in a book like any clerk.\u201d\n\n\nSHAKESPEARE.\n\nThe drama is the last form of poetry to which we would turn in hope\nof finding rural objects and scenery described. Yet it is astonishing\nhow much of this kind can be culled from a careful search through\nShakespeare\u2019s plays. Indeed it has been remarked how much of out-of-doors\nlife there is in Shakespeare\u2019s dramas, how much of the action is carried\non under the open sky. No doubt the pressure of human action and emotion\nis too absorbing to admit of detailed description\u2014in most cases of more\nthan passing allusions. Yet engrossed though he is with stirring events\nand thrilling emotions and powerful human characters, it is wonderful how\nmany are the side-glances that he and his characters cast at the Nature\nthat surrounds them. And these glances are like everything else in him,\nrapid, vivid, and intense. As has been said, natural scenes \u201che so paints\nby occurrences, by allusions, by the emotions of his characters, that we\nseem to see them before our eyes, and to live in them.\u201d There is hardly\none of his plays in which the season and the scene is not flashed upon\nthe mind by a single stroke more vividly than it could be by the most\nlengthened description:\u2014\n\n    \u201cLady! by yonder silver moon I swear,\n    That tips with silver all the fruit-tree tops.\u201d\n\nHow these few words shed round us all the loveliness of the Italian\nnight! Or that other where the moonshine of the warm summer night\nbrightens the last scenes of the \u201cMerchant of Venice,\u201d and calls up,\nas only moonlight can, all wild and fascinating memories of legend and\nromance:\u2014\n\n    \u201c_Lorenzo._ The moon shines bright: In such a night as this,\n                 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,\n                 And they did make no noise; in such a night\n                 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls,\n                 And sigh\u2019d his soul toward the Grecian tents,\n                 Where Cressid lay that night.\n\n    \u201c_Jessica._                            In such a night\n                 Did Thisbe fearfully o\u2019ertrip the dew;\n                 And saw the lion\u2019s shadow ere himself,\n                 And ran dismay\u2019d away.\n\n    \u201c_Lorenzo._                     In such a night\n                 Stood Dido with a willow in her hand\n                 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love\n                 To come again to Carthage.\u201d\n\nA recent critic has spoken of the Poet-Laureate\u2019s \u201cwonderful skill in\ncreating a perfectly real and living scene\u2014such as always might, and\nperhaps somewhere does, exist in external nature\u2014for the theatre of the\nfeeling he is about to embody, and yet a scene every feature of which\nhelps to make the emotion more real and vivid.\u201d Careful students of\nShakespeare know how truly these words apply to almost every one of his\nplays. He leaves not only the impression of each character deeply graven\non your memory; but the season and the scenery which encompassed them,\nthough perhaps not above a line or two are given to them, rise before us\nalmost as indelibly. To take one sample out of many. In \u201cMacbeth,\u201d for\ninstance, how does the scenery at every turn answer to the action and the\nemotion! For the first appearance of the witches there is the blasted\nheath, the thunder and lightning; then, as the key-note to Lady Macbeth\u2019s\nfell purpose, there is\u2014\n\n          \u201cThe raven himself is hoarse\n    That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan\n    Under my battlements.\u201d\n\nBut when King Duncan himself, with his retinue, appears, the whole aspect\nof things is changed, and the gracious disposition of the old king comes\nout very naturally in the view he takes of the castle in which he was so\nsoon to meet his doom:\u2014\n\n    \u201cThis castle has a pleasant seat; the air\n    Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself\n    Unto our gentle senses.\u201d\n\nBanquo replies:\u2014\n\n                    \u201cThis guest of summer,\n    The temple-haunting martlet, does approve\n    By his loved mansionry that the heaven\u2019s breath\n    Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,\n    Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird\n    Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle;\n    Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,\n    The air is delicate.\u201d\n\nThe castle, with its buttresses and battlements, its high gables and\noverhanging towers, lends itself as readily to the pleasant humor of the\nkindly king that calm afternoon, as it will do to the horror and the\ngloom of the morrow. Then the night in which the murder was done is\nquite such a night as often comes in dead winter, yet fits in so well\nwith the deed and the feeling it awakened in men\u2019s hearts.\n\n    \u201c_Lennox._ The night has been unruly: where we lay\n             Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,\n             Lamentings heard i\u2019 the air; strange screams of death\n             And other prodigies.\n\n    _Macb._ \u2019Twas a rough night.\n\n    _Len._   My young remembrance cannot parallel\n             A fellow to it.\u201d\n\nThis is the talk that passes just before the murder is known. And after\nit is known, this is the kind of day that follows:\n\n                \u201cBy the clock, \u2019tis day,\n    And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp.\u201d\n\nAgain, as twilight brings on, the night which is to see Banquo taken out\nof the way, Macbeth exclaims\u2014\n\n                \u201cCome, seeling night,\n    Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;\n    And, with thy bloody and invisible hand,\n    Cancel, and tear to pieces, that great bond\n    Which keeps me pale!\u2014Light thickens, and the crow\n    Makes wing to the rooky wood;\n    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,\n    While night\u2019s black agents to their prey do rouse.\u201d\n\nBut why go on quoting passages, which all remember, to show how exactly\nall through this or the other dramas the face of Nature answers to the\ndeeds and the emotions of the human agents, and how a line\u2014sometimes a\nword in the midst of a rapid dialogue\u2014lets in the open air, and all\nthe surrounding nature, more tellingly than pages of description could\nhave done. But between Shakespeare and a modern poet there is this great\ndifference, that, while in the latter this correspondence is attained\nby careful study and elaborate forethought, in Shakespeare we may well\nbelieve that the white heat of imagination which created and moulded the\ncharacters in all their throng of emotion struck off, at the same moment,\nalmost unconsciously, the aspects of external nature which were proper to\nthem.\n\nThe forest was evidently with Shakespeare a favorite resort, bringing\nback to him, as it would, recollections of his youthful deer-huntings.\nIn his day the forest was not far off or strange, but still a familiar\nplace, as we are told, coming up very close to the gates of the country\ntown. From Stratford-on-Avon he had not far to go before he found himself\nin the midst of the forest of fine oaks, the survivors of which are still\nseen all about in the parks and lanes of Warwickshire. So when he would\nspend the summer night in the most extravagant mirth and drollery, it is\nout to the wild wood that he leads his company; when he would surround\nthe grave thoughts of the exiled Duke and the melancholy of Jaques with a\ncongenial background, he places them in the Forest of Arden, where free\nNature fits into the mood, and brings soothing to their mental maladies.\n\n    \u201cHath not old custom made this life more sweet\n    Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods\n    More free from peril than the envious court?\u201d\n\nIn how many ways throughout these plays are the aspects of human life set\nforth by their resemblances in Nature!\n\n    \u201c_Jul._ The current that with gentle murmur glides,\n            Thou know\u2019st, being stopp\u2019d, impatiently doth rage;\n            But, when his fair course is not hindered,\n            He makes sweet music with the enameled stones,\n            Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge\n            He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;\n            And so by many winding nooks he strays\n            With willing sport, to the wild ocean.\n            Then let me go, and hinder not my course,\n            I\u2019ll be as patient as a gentle stream,\n            And make my pastime of each weary step,\n            Till the last step have brought me to my love;\n            And then I\u2019ll rest, as, after much turmoil,\n            A blessed soul doth in Elysium.\u201d\n\nShakespeare, whether from watching the sea from the shore, or from\nsailing on it, was evidently at home in describing it.\n\nThe sea storm in \u201cPericles\u201d (Act iii. Scene 1) is full of life and\nmovement, made all the more terrible by the death of the queen on\nshipboard when the tempest is at its height. They are off the coast of\nTharsus, and the ship is driving in upon it unmanageably, and will not\nanswer to the helm:\u2014\n\n    \u201c_1st Sailor._\u2014Slack the bolins there; thou wilt not, wilt\n    thou? Blow and split thyself.\n\n    _2d Sailor._\u2014But sea room, an the brine and cloudy billow\n    kiss the moon, I care not.\n\n    _1st Sailor._\u2014Sir, your queen must overboard; the sea works\n    high, the wind is loud, and will not lie till the ship be cleared of\n    the dead.\u201d\n\nThe human situation and the conflict of the elements combine each\nto heighten to the utmost the terror and despair of the other. The\nconjunction is no doubt finely imagined. But when a modern poet writes:\n\u201cNo poetry of shipwreck and the sea has ever equaled the great scene of\n\u2018Pericles,\u2019 no such note of music was ever struck out of the clash and\ncontention of tempestuous elements,\u201d one cannot but feel that he indulges\nin exaggeration.\n\nFor coast scenery the description of Dover cliffs stands almost alone.\n\nBut while with the forest and the sea-coast Shakespeare\u2019s early life\nhad made him familiar, he had not, as far as we know, had much, if any,\nexperience of mountains. Of Nature, as of man, he painted for the most\npart what he had seen and known\u2014idealizing it of course, but having\ncaught the first hint from reality. And mountains formed no part of the\nWarwickshire or indeed of the England which he knew. Therefore while we\nfind many notices of the fields, the forest, and the sea, and of the way\nthey affect human imaginations, there is no allusion to the effect of\nmountain scenery. It could not have been said of him:\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe power of hills is on thee.\u201d\n\nOn this fact Mr Ruskin has this characteristic reflection, that\nShakespeare having been ordained to take a full view of total human\nnature, to be perfectly equal and universal in his portraiture of man,\ncould be allowed no mountains, nor even supreme natural beauty. For had\nhe been reared among mountains they would have overbalanced him, have\nlaid too powerful a grasp on his imagination, have made him lean too much\ntheir way, and so would have marred his universality. Whether we take\nthis view of it or not, it is certain that the power of the mountains\nis not expressed in that poetry which expresses almost every other\nconceivable thing, and that the mountain rapture had to lie dumb for two\nmore centuries before it found utterance in English song.\n\nIn \u201cCymbeline\u201d the two noble youths are brought up in caves among the\nmountains, but from this their characters receive no touch of freedom or\ngrandeur, but are enhanced only by having taken no taint of degradation\nfrom so base a dwelling-place. \u201cThe only thing belonging to the hills,\u201d\nsays Mr. Ruskin, \u201cthat Shakespeare seems to feel as noble, was the\npine-tree, and that was because he had seen in Warwickshire clumps of\npine occasionally rising on little sandstone mounds above the lowland\nwoods.\u201d He touches on this tree fondly again and again.\n\n                                  \u201cAs rough\n    Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud\u2019st wind,\n    That by his top doth take the mountain pine,\n    And make him stoop to the vale.\u201d\n\nAgain:\u2014\n\n    \u201cYou may as well forbid the mountain pines\n    To wave their high tops, and to make no noise\n    When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven.\u201d\n\nAnd again:\u2014\n\n    \u201cBut when from under this terrestrial bank\n    He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.\u201d\n\nHe knew little then of the mountains by experience; but had he known them\nmore, though they might have added some sternness to his genius, some awe\nto his thoughts about life, they might perhaps have narrowed his range\nand made his view of men less universal and serene. So Mr. Ruskin thinks.\nAnd yet perhaps it is hardly safe so to speculate about Shakespeare. For\ncould not the mind which took in and harmonized so many things, have made\nroom for this other influence, without deranging its proportions and\nmarring its universality?\n\nThough Shakespeare sometimes describes, in a general way, countries\nhe had never seen, as in that exquisite description of Sicily in the\n\u201cWinter\u2019s Tale,\u201d\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe climate\u2019s delicate, the air most sweet,\n    Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing\n    The common praise it bears\u201d\u2014\n\nyet whenever he descends to details of country life and scenery, as he\nso often does, every word bears the stamp of having been brought, not\nfrom books, but from what his own eyes had seen in the neighborhood of\nStratford-upon-Avon. How familiar he was with the garden and all its\nprocesses is seen by many a metaphor and allusion, perhaps nowhere more\nnotably than in the 4th Scene of the 3d Act of \u201cRichard II.,\u201d where in\nthe Duke of York\u2019s garden at Langley the discourse of the gardener and\nhis men on the management of fruit-trees is turned to political meaning.\nA disordered state is a neglected and unweeded garden, the pruning and\nbleeding of fruit-trees are the restraining great and growing men in the\nstate, and all the operations are so described and applied as only an\nadept in gardening could do; or again, there is the well-known metaphor\nin Wolsey\u2019s speech where he likens his blushing honors to blossoms nipt\nby frost. The process of grafting furnishes many a metaphor for human\ndoings. All the ordinary forest trees, the oak, the elm, the pine, the\nwillow, come in with the easy handling of one who knew them from boyhood.\nEvery bird, the rook, the chough, the throstle, the ousel-cock or\nblackbird, the nightingale,\n\n    \u201cThe finch, the sparrow, and the lark,\n    The plain-song cuckoo gray\u201d\u2014\n\nall find familiar notice; and perhaps of these we might select the lark\nas his favorite, to judge by the frequency of allusion to it.\n\nThough garden flowers\u2014such garden flowers as were cultivated in his\ntime\u2014are not passed over, yet much more noteworthy is the loving way in\nwhich Shakespeare dwells, or rather makes his characters dwell, on the\nfield-flowers. Almost every wild-flower that is to be found at this day\nin the meadows and woods by Avon side looks out from some part of other\nof his poetry. But this love for flowers, it has been noted, he puts in\nthe mouth, not of his strong heroic characters, his Henry V. or Othello,\nbut in the lips of his more feminine ones. It is the sentimental Duke in\n\u201cTwelfth Night\u201d who exclaims\u2014\n\n    \u201cThat strain again; it had a dying fall.\n    Oh! it came o\u2019er my ear like the sweet south,\n    That breathes upon a bank of violets,\n    Stealing, and giving odor\u201d\u2014\n\njust such a bank as may be seen any April day under the Warwickshire\nhedge-rows. Every one remembers poor Ophelia and her flowers, the flowers\nwith which Arviragus promises to sweeten the sad grave of Fidele; and,\nabove all, the wonderful scene in the \u201cWinter\u2019s Tale\u201d where Perdita\npresiding at the sheep-shearing feast sorts the flowers according to the\nage of the guests, \u201cflowers of winter, rosemary and rue,\u201d to the elders,\nto men of middle age flowers of middle summer\u2014\n\n    \u201cHot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,\n    The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,\n    And with him rises weeping.\u201d\n\nAnd for her fairest friend\u2014\n\n    \u201cI would I had some flowers o\u2019 the spring that might\n    Become your time of day;\n    Daffodils, violets, and pale primroses.\u201d\n\nLastly, the song which winds up \u201cLove\u2019s Labor Lost,\u201d\u2014with what lyric\nsweetness it condenses how much of flowery spring and of nipping winter\ninto a few easy lines! In this as in all other mentions of wild-flowers\nin Shakespeare, it has been remarked how true he is to time and season,\ngiving to each flower its proper season and haunt, and sorting them\nall with the careless ease of one to whom they were among the most\nfamiliar things. In this he contrasts with the artistic but not accurate\nassortment of flowers in the well-known passage of \u201cLycidas,\u201d where\nMilton groups in one posy flowers belonging to different seasons.\n\nOn the whole, though Shakespeare never set himself formally to study or\ndescribe external Nature, yet his dramas are full of her presence and her\nworks\u2014not taken from books or daintily tricked out by art, but idealized\nfrom his memory well stored with country scenes. Again, these are given,\nnot in elaborate descriptions, but in rapid strokes, and side-glances,\nvivid, penetrating, intense, thrown off from the heat of an imagination\nbrooding mainly over human interests and emotions. And perhaps after all\nthat view of Nature is the truest, healthiest, manliest, which does not\npore or moralize over her appearances, but keeps them in the background,\nputting man into the foreground and making him the central object. As Man\nand Nature stand over against each other, and are evidently made each\nfor each, it may be that not apart from Man, with his emotions and his\ndestiny, can Nature be rightly conceived and portrayed.\n\n\nMILTON.\n\nWhen we pass from the images of Nature that abound in Chaucer and in\nShakespeare to those which Milton furnishes, the transition is much the\nsame as when we pass from the scenery of Homer to that of Virgil. The\ncontrast is that between natural free-flowing poetry, in which the beauty\nis child-like and unconscious, and highly cultured artistic poetry, which\nproduces its effects through a medium of learned illustration, ornate\ncoloring, and stately diction. In the one case Nature is seen directly\nand at first hand, with nothing between the poet and the object except\nthe imaginative emotion under which he works. In the other, Nature\nis apprehended only in her \u201csecond intention,\u201d as logicians speak,\nonly as she appears through a beautiful haze, compounded of learning,\nassociations of the past, and carefully selected artistic colors. With\nMilton, Nature was not his first love, but held only a secondary place in\nhis affections. He was in the first place a scholar, a man of letters,\nwith the theologian and polemic latent in him. A lover of all artistic\nbeauty he was, no doubt, and of Nature mainly as it lends itself to\nthis perception. And as is his mode of apprehending Nature, such is the\nlanguage in which he describes her. When he reached his full maturity\nhe had framed for himself out of the richness of his genius and the\nresources of his learning a style elaborate and splendid, so that he\nstands unique among English poets, \u201cour one first-rate master in the\ngrand style.\u201d As an eminent living French writer says,\u2014\u201cFor rendering\nthings he has the unique word, the word which is a discovery,\u201d and\n\u201che has not only the image and the word, he has the period also, the\nlarge musical phrase, somewhat laden with ornaments and intricate with\ninversions, but bearing all along with it in its superb undulation. Above\nall, he has something indescribably serene and victorious, an unfailing\nlevel of style, power indomitable.\u201d This admirable description of M.\nScherer applies mainly to Milton\u2019s style, as it was fully elaborated\nin his great epic. And the thought has sometimes occurred, whether\nthis magnificently elaborated style can be a fit vehicle for rendering\ntruly the simplicity, the refreshingness of Nature,\u2014whether the poet\u2019s\nart, from its very opulence, must not color too much the clearness and\ntransparency of the external world. However this may be, it is certain\nthat it is not to his maturer poems, with their grandeur of style, that\nwe look for his most vivid renderings of scenery, but to those early\npoems, which had more native grace of diction and less of artistic\nelaboration. Nowhere has Milton shown such an eye for scenery as in\nthose first poems, \u201cL\u2019Allegro,\u201d \u201cIl Penseroso,\u201d \u201cLycidas,\u201d and \u201cComus,\u201d\ncomposed before he was thirty, just after leaving Cambridge, while he\nwas living under his father\u2019s roof at Horton, in Buckinghamshire.\nDuring the five years of country life, the most genial of all his\nyears, amid his incessant study of the Greek and Latin poets, and other\nself-improvement, his heart was perhaps more open than at any other time\nto the rural beauty which lay around him. \u201cComus\u201d and \u201cLycidas\u201d both\ncontain fine natural imagery, yet somewhat deflected by the artistic\nframework in which it is set. In the latter poem, in which Milton,\nadapting the idyllic form of Virgil, fills it with a mightier power,\nclassical allusion and mythology are strangely, yet not unharmoniously,\nblended with pictures taken from English landscape. Every one remembers\nthe splendid grouping of flowers which he there broiders in. Of this\ncatalogue it has been observed that, beautiful as it is, it violates the\ntruth of nature, as it places side by side flowers of different seasons\nwhich are never seen flowering together. It is in his two \u201cdescriptive\nLyrics\u201d that we find the clearest proofs of an eye that had observed\nNature at first hand and for itself. In the poem descriptive of mirth,\nit has been observed that the mirth is of a very sedate kind, not\nreaching beyond a \u201ctrim and stately cheerfulness.\u201d The mythological\npedigrees attached both to mirth and to melancholy strike us now as\nsomewhat strange, if not frigid; but, with this allowance, Milton\u2019s\nrichly sensuous imagination bodies forth the cheerfulness, as he wished\nto portray it, in a succession of images unsurpassed for beauty. In the\nlines descriptive of these images, Art and Nature appear perhaps more\nthan in any other of Milton\u2019s poems in perfect equipoise. The images\nselected are the aptest vehicles of the sentiment; the language in which\nthey are expressed is of the most graceful and musical; while the natural\nobjects themselves are seen at first hand, set down with their edges\nstill sharp, and uncolored by any tinge of bookish allusion. Aspects of\nEnglish scenery, one after another, occur, which he was the first poet to\nnote, and which none since could dare to touch, so entirely has he made\nthem his own. The mower whetting his scythe,\u2014who ever hears that sound\ncoming from the lawn in the morning without thinking of Milton? \u201cThe\ntanned haycock in the mead;\u201d the cottage chimney smoking betwixt two aged\noaks; the moon\n\n              \u201cAs if her head she bowed,\n    Stooping through a fleecy cloud;\u201d\n\nthe shower pattering\n\n            \u201cOn the ruffling leaves,\n    With minute drops from off the eaves;\u201d\n\nthe great curfew-bell heard swinging \u201cover some wide watered\nshore;\u201d\u2014these are all images taken straight from English landscape which\nMilton has forever enshrined in his two matchless poems.\n\nOf these two poems, describing the bright and the thoughtful aspects of\nNature, my friend Mr. Palgrave, in his exquisite collection of English\nLyrics, \u201cThe Golden Treasury,\u201d has observed that these are the earliest\npure descriptive lyrics in our language, adding that it is a striking\nproof of Milton\u2019s astonishing power that these are still the best, in a\nstyle which so many great poets have since his time attempted.\n\nWhen, after a poetic silence of nearly thirty years, Milton, old, blind,\nand fallen, as he thought, on evil days, addressed himself again to\npoetry, in his two Epics, and in his Classic Drama, he gave vent to all\nthat was lofty and sublime in his severe nature, but he returned no more\nto rural description. Immense scholarship, experience of men and of\naffairs, ripe meditation on things human and divine,\u2014all these he brought\nto his later work; but the simple love of Nature, such as it was in his\nearlier poems, has disappeared, or is overlaid by his learning.[15] The\ndescription of the garden of Eden, in the fourth book of \u201cParadise Lost,\u201d\nis magnificent, but vague. The pomp of language and profusion of images\nleaves on the imagination no definite picture. You have, it is true,\n\u201cin narrow room Nature\u2019s whole wealth,\u201d but it does not satisfy, as\nmany a humbler but real scene described with a few strokes satisfies.\nSuch landscapes in poetry, entirely projected by the imagination and\nanswering to no scene on earth, are, like the composition pictures,\nwhich some painters delight in, only splendid failures.\n\nThere is, however, another use made of Nature in those later poems, which\nmay be called the geographical use of it, in which Milton has no rival.\nHis vast reading enabled him to bring together similes and illustrations\nfrom every land\u2014from China, India, Tartary, Cape of Good Hope; nor from\nthese only, but from old Rome, Greece, Syria, Babylon. Such images from\nmany lands, so rich, varied, and grandly worded, form one of the most\npermanent attractions of \u201cParadise Lost\u201d and \u201cParadise Regained.\u201d The\none real inspired creation of scenery, if scenery it can be called,\nwhich \u201cParadise Lost\u201d contains, is the description of Hell. The primeval\nelements of the world are drawn upon, the unmeasurable abyss of fire,\nthe frozen cataract, every thing vast that is to be found on earth is\nhere. From things of earth too are drawn the images that set forth the\nappearance of the inhabitants\u2014the fallen angels like scathed oaks or\npines on a blasted heath\u2014Satan himself like leviathan \u201cslumbering on the\nNorway foam,\u201d and many another image from Nature taken to shadow forth\nthings supernatural or infernal.\n\nBut if we wish to find in Milton the pure breath of the country, the\nfragrance of the fields, it is to his early poems we must return. In\nthese, scholar and man of letters though he was, learning and art had\nnot excluded Nature, but with his eye still resting on actual sights of\nthe country, he describes them with a native lightness and grace which\nhis classic style only makes more expressive. During the life of Milton,\nother though lesser poets had given expression to the love of Nature.\nSuch were William Browne, author of \u201cBritannia\u2019s Pastorals,\u201d and Andrew\nMarvell, whose \u201cPoems in the Country\u201d contain here and there graceful\nexpression of rural things.\n\nBut after Milton died (1674), rural life and Nature, for more than half a\ncentury, disappeared from English poetry.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nRETURN TO NATURE BEGUN BY ALLAN RAMSAY AND THOMSON.\n\n\nThe divorce from Nature and country life which marked the Poetry of the\nclosing seventeenth and opening eighteenth centuries, has often been\nsubject of comment, and need not detain us now. Whatever the causes of\nthis divorce may have been, it is beside our present purpose to inquire\ninto them. Enough to note the fact that during the latter part of Charles\nII.\u2019s reign, and during the succeeding reigns of William, Queen Anne, and\nthe first George, poetry retired from the fields, and confined herself\nto the streets of London. If she ever ventured into the country at all,\nshe did not wander beyond the Twickenham villa or Richmond Hill. While\nfirst Dryden and then Pope were in the ascendant, the subjects of poetry\nwere those to be found in city life and in social man. Nature, Passion,\nImagination, as has been said, were dismissed; politics, party spirit and\nargument, wit and satire, criticism and scientific inquiry, took their\nplace.\n\nWhen after this long absence Poetry once more left the suburbs and\nwandered back to the fields, she took with her this great gain,\u2014the\npower to describe the things of nature in a correcter diction and more\nbeautiful style than England had before known, save only in Milton\u2019s\ndescriptive lyrics. It was in the Scottish poet Allan Ramsay that the\nsense of natural beauty first reappeared. Since his day Nature, which,\neven when felt and described in earlier English poetry, had held a place\naltogether subordinate to man, has more and more claimed to be regarded\nin poetry as almost coequal with man. Ramsay, whose \u201cGentle Shepherd\u201d was\nfirst published in 1725, drew his inspiration in large measure from the\nsongs and ballads of his native country, which, while full of the pathos\nof human incident and affection, are hardly less sensitive to the looks\nof earth and sky, whether stern or lovely. It was from his knowledge\nof rustic life and his love of the popular song that his inspiration\nwas drawn. But his genuine and natural instincts were overlaid by some\nknowledge and relish of the artificial literature of his age. The result\nis a kind of composite poetry, in which Scotch manners, feeling, and\nlanguage are strangely intermingled with a sort of Arcadian veneer,\nbrought from the Eclogues of Virgil, or from English imitations of these.\nThis is most seen in Ramsay\u2019s songs, where, instead of preserving the\nprecious old melodies, he has replaced them by insipid counterfeits\nof his own, in which Jock and Jenny are displaced by Damon and Chloe.\nThough some traces of false taste do crop out here and there, even in\nthe dialogue of the \u201cThe Gentle Shepherd,\u201d yet these are far fewer than\nin the songs. The feelings of our age may be now and then offended by a\nfreedom of speech that borders on coarseness, but that the texture of the\npoem is stirring and human-hearted is proved by the hold it still retains\non the Scottish peasantry. If here and there a false note mars the truth\nof the human manners, as when Scotch Lowland shepherds talk of playing on\nreeds and flutes, the scenery of \u201cThe Gentle Shepherd\u201d is true to Nature\nas it is among the Pentland Hills:\u2014\n\n    \u201cGae farder up the burn to Habbie\u2019s How,\n    Where a\u2019 the sweets o\u2019 spring and summer grow:\n    Between twa birks, out o\u2019er a little linn\n    The water fa\u2019s an\u2019 mak\u2019s a singin\u2019 din;\n    A pool breast-deep, beneath as clear as glass,\n    Kisses, wi\u2019 easy whirls, the bordering grass.\n    We\u2019ll end our washing while the morning\u2019s cool.\n    And when the day grows het we\u2019ll to the pool,\n    There wash oursels\u2014it\u2019s healthfu\u2019 now in May,\n    And sweetly cauler on so warm a day.\u201d\n\nA pool in a burn among the Lowland hills could hardly be more naturally\ndescribed.\n\nAgain, one of the shepherds thus invites his love\u2014\n\n    \u201cTo where the saugh-tree shades the mennin-pool,\n    I\u2019ll frae the hill come doun, when day grows cool.\n    \u2014Keep tryst, and meet me there.\u201d\n\nThe alder-tree shading the minnow pool\u2014there is a real piece of Lowland\nscenery brought from the outer world for the first time into poetry.\nThese are but a few samples of the scenery of Scottish rural life with\nwhich \u201cThe Gentle Shepherd\u201d abounds. Burns, who lived in the generation\nthat followed Ramsay, and always looks back to him as one of his chief\nforerunners and masters in the poetic art, fixes on Ramsay\u2019s delineations\nof Nature as one of his chief characteristics. Burns asks, Is there none\nof the moderns who will rival the Greeks in pastoral poetry?\u2014\n\n    \u201cYes! there is ane; a Scottish callan\u2014\n    There\u2019s ane; come forrit, honest Allan!\n    Thou need na jouk behint the hallan,\n                  A chiel sae clever;\n    The teeth o\u2019 Time may gnaw Tantallan,\n                  But thou\u2019s forever!\n\n    \u201cThou paints auld Nature to the nines,\n    In thy sweet Caledonian lines;\n    Nae gowden stream thro\u2019 myrtles twines,\n                  Where Philomel,\n    While nightly breezes sweep the vines,\n                  Her griefs will tell!\n\n    \u201cIn gowany glens thy burnie strays,\n    Where bonnie lasses bleach their claes;\n    Or trots by hazelly shaws and braes\n                  Wi\u2019 hawthorns gray,\n    Where blackbirds join the shepherd\u2019s lays\n                  At close o\u2019 day.\u201d\n\nIt may well be that when we turn to Scottish poetry the burns and braes\nshould sing and shine through almost every song. For there is no feature\nin which Scottish scenery more differs from English than in the clear and\nliving northern burns, compared with the dead drumlie ditches called\nbrooks in the Midland Counties.\n\n\nTHOMSON.\n\nThe return to Nature, begun by Ramsay in his \u201cGentle Shepherd,\u201d was\ncarried on by another Scot, though hardly a Scottish poet\u2014Thomson, who a\nfew years later (1728-30) published his poem of \u201cThe Seasons.\u201d In this\nwork, descriptive of scenery and country life through the four seasons,\nThomson, it is alleged, was but working in a vein which was native to\nScottish poets from the earliest time. Two centuries before, Gawain\nDouglas, in the prologues to his translation of the \u00c6neid, abounds in\ndescription of rural things. I should hardly venture to say it myself, in\ncase it might seem national prejudice, but a writer who is not a Scot,\nMr. S. Brooke, has remarked that there is \u201ca passionate, close, poetical\nobservation and description of natural scenery in Scotland, from the\nearliest times, such as we do not possess in English poetry till the time\nof Wordsworth.\u201d In choosing his subject, therefore, and in the minute\nloving way in which he dwells upon it, Thomson would seem to have been\nworking in the spirit of his country. But there the Scottish element in\nhim begins and ends. Neither in the kind of landscape he pictures, in\nthe rural customs he selects, nor in the language or versification of\nhis poem, is there much savor of Scottish habits or scenery. His blank\nverse cannot be said to be a garment that fits well to its subject.\nIt is heavy, cumbrous, oratorical, over-loaded with epithets, full\nof artificial invocations, \u201cpersonified abstractions,\u201d and insipid\nclassicalities. It is a composite style of language formed from the\nrecollection partly of Milton, partly of Virgil\u2019s Georgics.\n\nYet in spite of all these obstructions which repel pure taste and natural\nfeeling, no one can read the four books of the \u201cSeasons\u201d through, without\nseeing that Thomson, for all his false style, wrote with his eye upon\nNature, and laid his finger on many a fact and image never before touched\nin poetry. In the first few lines of \u201cSpring\u201d he notes how, at its\napproach, the plover and other birds which have wintered by the sea leave\nthe shores and set far inland to their summer haunts in moors and hills.\nWhilst the season is still hanging uncertain between winter and spring,\nhe notes how\n\n                                  \u201cScarce\n    The bittern knows his time, with bill ingulfed\n    To shake the sounding marsh; or, from the shore,\n    The plovers when to scatter o\u2019er the heath,\n    And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.\u201d\n\nHow true to nature this picture! how happily rendered! Then you have the\nplowman and his oxen beginning their work\u2014\n\n    \u201cCheered by the simple song and soaring lark.\u201d\n\nAgain,\u2014\n\n    \u201cFrom the moist meadow to the withered hill,\n    Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs.\u201d\n\nThat \u201cwithered hill!\u201d Who that has ever looked on the mountains in\nMarch, just before the first finger of Spring has touched them, but will\nrecognize the appropriateness of that epithet for their wan, bleached,\ndecayed aspect!\n\nThen you have the whole process of trout-fishing, in the \u201cmossy-tinctured\nstream,\u201d where \u201cthe dark brown water aids the grilse,\u201d showing that, as\nThomson wrote, his thoughts reverted from Richmond to the streams of the\nMerse; you have also the song-birds piping each from its proper haunt,\nthe linnet from \u201cthe flowering furze,\u201d\u2014the various places where each bird\nbuilds his nest, given with an accuracy that every bird-nesting boy will\nrecognize; and the scent of the bean-fields, noticed for the first time,\nas far as I know, in poetry.\n\nAs one longer example of Thomson\u2019s close observation and peculiar manner,\ntake the description of a spring shower:\u2014\n\n                                      \u201cAt last\n    The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,\n    And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool\n    Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow\n    In large effusion o\u2019er the freshened world;\n    The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard\n    By such as wander through the forest walks,\n    Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.\n\n    ...\n\n    \u201cThus all day long the full-distended clouds\n    Indulge their genial stores, and well-showered earth\n    Is deep enriched with vegetable life;\n    Till in the western sky the downward sun\n    Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush\n    Of broken clouds, gay shifting to his beam,\n    The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes\n    The illumined mountain; through the forest streams;\n    Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,\n    Far smoking o\u2019er the interminable plain,\n    In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.\n    Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.\n    Full swell the woods, their every music wakes,\n    Mixed in wild concert, with the warbling brooks\n    Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,\n    And hollow lows responsive from the vales,\n    Whence, blending all, the sweetened zephyr springs.\u201d\n\nThese are but a few samples from \u201cSpring\u201d showing the minute faithfulness\nwith which Thomson had observed\n\n    \u201cThe negligence of Nature, wide and wild.\u201d\n\nHere are appearances of Nature, each accurately observed, and their\nsuccession truthfully rendered, but the whole is so overlaid with tawdry\ndiction that it is hard to pierce below the enamel and feel the true\npulse of Nature beating under it. And yet it does beat there, and in many\nanother description in the \u201cSeasons\u201d now little heeded, because of their\nold-fashioned garb. And yet he who will read the \u201cSeasons\u201d through will\nfind many a phrase true to Nature, many a felicitous expression cropping\nout from the even roll of his solemn pompous monotone. Thomson has been\ncalled the Claude of poets. And his way of handling Nature stands to\nthat of Wordsworth or Tennyson much as Claude\u2019s landscapes do to those\nof Turner or some of the other modern painters. It may be added that\nThomson\u2019s somewhat vapid digressions about Amelia and Lavinia have not\nmore meaning than the conventional lay figures and the classic temples\nwhich Claude introduces into the foreground of his landscapes.\n\nAs to the sentiment which animates the \u201cSeasons,\u201d it is a revolt from\nthe life of town and court to the simplicity and truth of rural life and\nfeeling. It is almost the first time this revolt finds expression in\nEnglish poetry, if we except some of the sylvan scenes in Shakespeare.\nAs the French critic well says, \u201cThirty years before Rousseau, Thomson\nhad expressed all Rousseau\u2019s sentiments, almost in the same style. Like\nhim, he painted the country with sympathy and enthusiasm. Like him he\ncontrasted the golden age of primitive simplicity with modern miseries\nand corruption. Like him he exalted deep love, conjugal tenderness, the\nunion of souls, paternal affection, and all domestic joys. Like him, he\ncombated contemporary frivolity and compared the ancient republics with\nmodern states. Like Rousseau, he praised gravity, patriotism, liberty,\nvirtue; rose from the spectacle of Nature to the contemplation of God....\nLike him, too, he marred the sincerity of his emotion and the truth of\nhis poetry by sentimental vapidities, by pastoral billing and cooing,\nand by an abundance of epithets, personified abstractions, pompous\ninvocations, and oratorical tirades.\u201d This passage gives truly, if with\nsome exaggeration, the spirit with which the \u201cSeasons\u201d and all their\noutward imagery are informed. But while Thomson watched the ever-changing\nappearances and recorded them, what, it may be asked, was his thought\nabout the Power which originates and upholds them? what did he conceive\nto be the relation of the things we see to the things we do not see?\nEverywhere his poem breathes a spirit of naturalistic piety. But if there\nis nothing in the \u201cSeasons\u201d inconsistent with Christian truth, there is\nlittle or nothing that directly affirms it. In \u201cWinter\u201d he breathes this\nprayer\u2014\n\n    \u201cFather of light and life! thou Good Supreme!\n    Oh teach me what is good! teach me thyself!\n    Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,\n    From every low pursuit! and feed my soul\n    With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,\n    Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!\u201d\n\nThere is nothing in his amiable and placid life to throw doubt on the\nsincerity of that prayer. And yet Thomson\u2019s piety seems to us now of that\nkind which is easily satisfied and thoughtlessly thankful!\n\nThere are many at the present day, and those the most thoughtful, who\n\u201cnot only see through but (as has been said) feel a strong revulsion\nagainst the well-meant but superficial attempt to describe the world as\nhappy, and to see in God, as the Governor of it, only a sort of easy and\nshallow goodness.\u201d They cannot be satisfied with such a view. \u201cThey have\na complaining within\u2014a sense of imperfection in and around them which\nrebels against so easy-going a view and demands another solution. It is\nnot merely a benevolent God that they long for, but a God who sympathizes\nwith man, and who in some way, of which only revelation can fully inform\nus, makes out of man\u2019s misery and imperfection the way to something\nbetter for him.\u201d\n\nThomson\u2019s religion, no doubt, could hardly have escaped the infection\nof the Deism that was all around him in the literary and philosophic\natmosphere of his time. In his beautiful \u201cHymn,\u201d which may be regarded\nas the climax of the \u201cSeasons,\u201d and as summing up the devoutest thoughts\nwhich these suggested to him, there is nothing that goes beyond such a\nview:\u2014\n\n    \u201cThese, as they change, Almighty Father, these\n    Are but the varied God. The rolling year\n    Is full of thee\u201d\u2014\n\nunless perhaps in that more Christian strain where, hearing the bleating\non the hills and the lowings in the vale, he breaks forth\u2014\n\n                      \u201cFor the Great Shepherd reigns,\n    And his unsuffering Kingdom yet will come.\u201d\n\nThe prevailing spirit of the Hymn, as of most of his other addresses to\nthe Deity, is that of optimism and the reign of universal benevolence:\u2014\n\n                              \u201cI cannot go\n    Where Universal Love smiles not around,\n    Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns,\n    From seeming evil still educing good.\u201d\n\nThere is much benevolence in his poetry, much feeling for the miseries\nand wrongs of mankind, but no perception of that deeper mystery\u2014that\nthe whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, waiting for a\ndeliverance. Neither is there any sense of the relation of the creation\nto the Creator other than that which the somewhat mechanical conception\nof a maker and a machine supply. Perhaps it is not to be wondered at that\nThomson does not seem to feel the inadequacy of this conception, for we\nin our own day, who have got to feel so profoundly its inadequacy, have\nnot as yet gone far to supply its place with a worthier. Yet whatever\nmay be his shortcomings, all honor to the poet of the \u201cSeasons\u201d! Genuine\nlover of the country as he was, he was the first English poet who led\npoetry back into the fields, and made her once more free of her own\nnative region.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\nNATURE IN COLLINS, GRAY, GOLDSMITH, AND BURNS.\n\n\nCOLLINS.\n\nWhen Thomson was laid in Richmond Church, another poet chanted over him a\ndirge breathing the very pathos of Nature herself:\u2014\n\n    \u201cIn yonder grave a Druid lies,\n      Where slowly winds the stealing wave,\n    The year\u2019s best sweets shall duteous rise\n      To deck its poet\u2019s sylvan grave.\n\n    \u201cRemembrance oft shall haunt the shore,\n      When Thames in summer wreaths is drest,\n    And oft suspend the dashing oar\n      To bid his gentle spirit rest.\u201d\n\nAbout that ode of the gentle and pensive Collins (born 1721, died 1759)\nthere is a sweet pathetic tone which the grander strains of later English\npoetry have never surpassed. In the \u201cDirge over Fidele\u201d the same strain\nof pensive beauty is renewed. Collins was the first poet since Milton\nwrote his early lyrics who brought to the description of rural things\nthat perfection of style, that combined simplicity and beauty, which\nMilton had learned from the classic poets There is another poem of\nCollins\u2019s which, if not so perfect in expression as the two just named,\nis interesting as almost the earliest inroad by an English poet into the\nwild and romantic world which the Highlands of Scotland contain, unless\nwe except Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cMacbeth.\u201d This is Collins\u2019s ode on the \u201cPopular\nSuperstitions of the Highlands of Scotland.\u201d It seems that in the autumn\nof 1749, Home, the author of the tragedy of \u201cDouglas,\u201d had, when on a\nvisit to London, during his brief stay made the acquaintance of Collins,\nand kindled his imagination with tales of the Highlands and the Hebrides.\nCollins seems to have deepened this interest by the perusal of Martin\u2019s\ncurious book on the Western Isles, and on Home\u2019s return to Scotland\nCollins addressed to him the ode, in which the English poet entered with\na deeper, more imaginative insight into the weird and wild superstitions\nof the Gael than any Scottish poet had as yet shown. After describing\nwith great force and truthfulness the second sight, the wraith, the\nwater-kelpie, and many such-like things, he closes with this apostrophe:\u2014\n\n    \u201cAll hail! ye scenes that o\u2019er my soul prevail!\n    Ye splendid friths and lakes, which, far away,\n    Are by smooth Annan filled, or pastoral Tay,\n    Or Don\u2019s romantic springs, at distance hail!\n    The time shall come, when I, perhaps, may tread\n    Your lowly glens, o\u2019erhung with spreading broom;\n    Or, o\u2019er your stretching heaths, by fancy led;\n    Or, o\u2019er your mountains creep, in awful gloom.\u201d\n\nPoor Collins: this hope was never fulfilled. A deeper gloom than any\nthat rests on the Highland mountains too soon gathered over him. The ode\nitself does not seem to have received the notice it deserves, both for\nits own excellence and as the first symptom of a new and enlarged feeling\nabout Nature entering into English poetry. In the above extract the word\n\u201cglen\u201d occurs. Is there any earlier instance of its use in English poetry\nor prose? The Scottish poets, except the ballad-writers, were afraid to\nuse it till the time of Scott. Macpherson in his translations of Ossian,\ntwelve years later than this ode, uniformly renders the Gaelic \u201cgleann\u201d\nby the insipid \u201cvale.\u201d\n\nBut the most perfect and original poem of Collins, as well as the most\nfinely appreciative of Nature, is his Ode to Evening. No doubt evening is\npersonified in his address as \u201cmaid composed,\u201d and \u201ccalm votaress,\u201d but\nthe personification is so delicately handled, and in so subdued a tone,\nthat it does not jar on the feelings, as such personifications too often\ndo:\u2014\n\n    \u201cIf aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,\n    May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,\n            Like thy own solemn springs,\n            Thy springs and dying gales,\n\n    \u201cO nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun\n    Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,\n            With brede ethereal wove,\n            O\u2019erhang his wavy bed:\n\n    \u201cNow air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat\n    With short, shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing;\n            Or where the beetle winds\n            His small but sullen horn,\n\n    \u201cAs oft he rises \u2019midst the twilight path,\n    Against the pilgrim borne in needless hum\n            Now teach me, maid composed,\n            To breathe some softened strain.\n\n    ...\n\n    \u201cThen lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake\n    Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile,\n            Or upland fallows gray\n            Reflect its last cool gleam.\n\n    \u201cBut when chill, blustering winds, or driving rain,\n    Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut,\n            That from the mountain\u2019s side,\n            Views wilds, and swelling floods,\n\n    \u201cAnd hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires,\n    And hears the simple bell, and marks o\u2019er all,\n            Thy dewy finger draw\n            The gradual dusky veil.\u201d\n\nThere is about the whole ode a subdued twilight tone, a remoteness\nfrom men and human things, and a pensive evening musing, all the more\nexpressive, because it does not shape itself into definite thoughts,\nbut reposes in appropriate images. And, as the Aldine biographer\nobserves,\u2014\u201cThe absence of rhyme leaves the even flow of the verse\nunbroken, and the change at the end of each stanza into shorter lines, as\nif the voice of the reader dropped into a lower key, contributes to the\neffect.\u201d\n\nIn Thomson there was probably an observation of the facts of Nature\nwider and more varied, but in Collins there is an intermingling of human\nfeeling with Nature\u2019s aspects which is at once more delicate and deep.\n\nThe increased sensibility to Nature which in English poetry appeared in\nThomson, was carried on through the eighteenth century to its close by\nCollins, Gray, Goldsmith, and Cowper, and manifested itself in each of\nthese poets in a way characteristic of himself.\n\n\nGRAY.\n\nIn Collins we have seen Nature described with a perfect grace of language\nand a penetrating of the forms and colors of things with human sentiment,\nthat far outwent the minute and faithful descriptions of Thomson. This\nsame movement was maintained, I cannot say advanced, by Gray. That he\nhad a fine feeling for Nature is apparent in his letters, which show\nmore minute observation and greater descriptive power than his poetry.\nIn these the beautiful scenery around the Westmoreland Lakes finds the\nearliest notice.\n\nIn dealing with scenery, as with other things, Nature without Art, and\nArt without Nature, are alike inadequate. To hit the balance is no easy\ntask. To let in Nature fully upon the heart, by means of an art which is\ncolorless and unperceived\u2014this English poetry was struggling toward, and\nGray helped it forward, though he himself only attained partial success.\nOften the art is too apparent; a false classicism is sometimes thrust in\nbetween the reader and the fresh outer world. Wordsworth has laid hold\nof a sonnet of Gray\u2019s as a text to preach against false poetic diction.\nAnd yet Gray, notwithstanding his often too elaborate diction, deserves\nbetter of lovers of English poetry than to have his single sonnet thus\ngibbeted, merely because, instead of saying the sun rises, it makes\n\n    \u201cReddening Ph\u0153bus lift his golden fire.\u201d\n\nIn the ode on Spring, it is \u201cthe rosy-bosomed hours, fair Venus\u2019 train,\u201d\nwhich bring spring in. Venus is thrust between you and the advent of\nspring, much as Adversity is made \u201cthe daughter of Jove.\u201d For the\nnightingale we have \u201cthe Attic warbler,\u201d as in another ode, for the\nyellow corn-fields we have \u201cCeres\u2019 golden reign.\u201d It is needless to say\nhow abhorrent this sort of stuff is to the modern feeling about Nature.\nAnd yet, notwithstanding these blemishes, Gray did help forward the\nmovement to a more perfect and adequate style, in which Nature should\ncome direct to the heart, through a perfectly transparent medium of art.\nWhen he is at his best, as in the Elegy, Nature and human feeling so\nperfectly combine that the mind finds in all the images satisfaction and\nrelief. There is in the Elegy no image from Greece or Rome, no intrusive\nheathen deity, to jar upon the feeling. From the common English landscape\nalone is drawn all that is needed to minister to the quiet but deep\npathos of the whole.\n\nThe line of poets who carried on the description of Nature during the\nlast century, Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, and Cowper, much as they differ,\nhave this in common. Their style, though each had his own, was in all\nformed by a more or less intimate study of the classic poets. And they\nregarded Nature, all more or less, in a meditative moralizing way. They\nwere all thoughtful, cultivated men, with convictions and sentiments of\ntheir own\u2014sentiments mainly of a grave cast,\u2014they saw Nature through the\nlight of these sentiments, and sought out those scenes and images in\nNature which suited their habitual mood. None of them are born children\nof Nature, knowing her face before they could read or write. They were\nlovers of books before they became lovers of the country. Hence there is\nin them no rapture in the presence of Nature. For that we shall have to\nlook elsewhere than to those scholarly gentlemen.\n\n\nGOLDSMITH.\n\nThe amiable and versatile Goldsmith looks at Nature, as he passes along,\nwith a less moralizing eye than the sombre-minded Gray. In his earliest\nlong poem, \u201cThe Traveller,\u201d published in 1765, though he surveys many\nlands, his eye dwells on man and society rather than on the outward\nworld. In remarkable contrast to more recent English poets, though\nhe passes beneath the shadow of the Alps, he looks up to them with\nshuddering horror rather than with any kindling of soul. The mountain\nglory had not yet burst on the souls of men. The one thought that strikes\nhim is the hard lot of the mountaineers. Such conventional lines as these\nare all that he has for the mountains themselves:\u2014\n\n    \u201cNo vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,\n    But winter lingers in the lap of May;\n    No zephyr fondly sues the mountain\u2019s breast,\n    But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.\u201d\n\nIt is only when he thinks of the Switzer\u2019s love for them that they become\ninteresting:\u2014\n\n    \u201cDear is the shed to which his soul conforms,\n    And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;\n    And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,\n    Clings close and closer to his mother\u2019s breast,\n    So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind\u2019s roar,\n    But bind him to his native mountains more.\u201d\n\nThis poem, however, is remarkable as the first expression in English\nverse of that personal interest in foreign scenes and people which has\nkindled so many a splendid strain of our more recent poetry. But it is\nin \u201cThe Deserted Village,\u201d his best known poem, that he has most fully\nshown the grace and truthfulness with which he could touch natural\nscenes. Lissoy, an Irish village where the poet\u2019s brother had a living,\nis said to have been the original from which he drew. In the poem, the\nchurch which crowns the neighboring hill, the mill, the brook, the\nhawthorn-tree, are all taken straight from the outer world. The features\nof Nature and the works of man, the parsonage, the school-house, the\nale-house, all harmonize in one picture, and though the feeling of\ndesolation must needs be a melancholy one, yet it is wonderfully varied\nand relieved by the uncolored faithfulness of the pictures from Nature\nand the kindly humor of those of man. It is needless to quote from a poem\nwhich every one knows so well. The verse of Pope is not the best vehicle\nfor rural description, but it never was employed with greater grace and\ntransparency than in \u201cThe Deserted Village.\u201d In that poem there is fine\nfeeling for Nature, in her homely forms, and truthful description of\nthese, but beyond this Goldsmith does not venture. The pathos of the\noutward world in its connection with man is there, but no reference to\nthe meaning of Nature in itself, much less any question of its relation\nto the Divine Being and a supersensible world.\n\n\nCOWPER.\n\nThough Collins, Gray, and Goldsmith, each in his own way, turned their\neye on rural scenery, and took beautiful pictures and images from it into\ntheir poetry, yet it was none of these, but a later poet, Cowper, who, as\nthe true successor of Thomson, carried on the descriptive work which he\nbegan. It was in 1730 that the first complete edition of the \u201cSeasons\u201d\nappeared. \u201cThe Task\u201d was published in 1785. This is the poem in which\nCowper most fully put forth his power as a rural poet. In the first\nbook, \u201cThe Sofa,\u201d he thus quaintly makes the first plunge from indoor to\noutdoor life, to which many a time ere the long poem is ended he returns:\u2014\n\n                                  \u201cThe Sofa suits\n    The gouty limb, \u2019tis true; but gouty limb,\n    Though on a sofa, may I never feel:\n    For I have loved the rural walk through lanes\n    Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep,\n    And skirted thick with intertexture firm\n    Of thorny boughs; have loved the rural walk\n    O\u2019er hills, through valleys, and by river\u2019s brink,\n    E\u2019er since, a truant boy, I passed my bounds,\n    To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames;\n    And still remember, nor without regret,\n    Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared,\n    How oft, my slice of pocket-store consumed,\n    Still hungering, penniless, and far from home,\n    I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws,\n    Or blushing crabs, and berries that emboss\n    The bramble, black as jet, or sloes austere.\u201d\n\nThis, the first rural passage in the \u201cTask,\u201d strikes the note of\ndifference between Cowper\u2019s way of describing Nature and Thomson\u2019s;\nCowper unhesitatingly introduces the personal element, describes actual\nand individual scenes as he himself saw them in his morning or evening\nwalk. Or when rural scenes are not thus personally introduced, they\neverywhere come in as interludes in the midst of the poet\u2019s keen interest\nin human affairs, his quiet and delicate humor, his tender sympathy\nwith the poor and the suffering, his indignation against human wrong,\nhis earnest brooding over human destiny, and his forward glances to a\ntime when visible things will give place to a higher and brighter order.\nThomson, on the other hand, describes Nature as seen by itself, separate\nand apart from human passion, or relieved only by some vapid episodes of\na false Arcadianism. Hence, great as is Thomson\u2019s merit for having, first\nof his age, gone back to Nature, the interest he awakes in it is feeble,\nbecause with him Nature is so divorced from individuality and from man.\nIt is Nature in the general rather than the individual scene which he\ndescribes\u2014Nature aloof from rather than combined with man. But her full\ndepth and tenderness she never reveals except to the heart that throbs\nwith human interest.\n\nBut though Cowper sees the outer world as set off against his own\npersonal moods and the interests of man, yet he does not allow these to\ndiscolor his scenes or to blur the exactness of their outlines. Fidelity,\nabsolute veracity, characterize his descriptions. He himself says that he\ntook nothing at second-hand, and all his pictures bear witness to this.\nHomely, of course, flat, tame, was the country he dwelt in and described.\nBut to this day that Huntingdonshire landscape, and the flats by the\nsluggish Ouse, in themselves so unbeautiful, acquire a charm to the eye\nof the traveler from the remembered poetry of the \u201cTask\u201d and for the sake\nof him who wrote it. By that poetry it may be said that he\n\n    \u201cFor scenes not beautiful did more\n    Than beauty for the fairest scenes can do.\u201d\n\nAs one out of many landscapes described, take this:\u2014\n\n    \u201cHow oft upon yon eminence our pace\n    Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne\n    The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,\n    While admiration, feeding at the eye,\n    And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.\n    Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned,\n    The distant plow slow-moving, and beside\n    His laboring team, that swerved not from the track,\n    The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!\n    Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain\n    Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o\u2019er,\n    Conducts the eye along his sinuous course\n    Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,\n    Stand, never overlooked, our favorite elms,\n    That screen the herdsman\u2019s solitary hut;\n    While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,\n    That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,\n    The sloping land recedes into the clouds;\n    Displaying, on its varied side, the grace\n    Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,\n    Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells\n    Just undulates upon the listening ear,\n    Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.\n    Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed,\n    Please daily, and whose novelty survives\n    Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.\n    Praise justly due to those that I describe.\u201d\n\nAn ordinary prospect, you say, described in very ordinary poetry. Yes,\nbut the scene is a real scene, one of England\u2019s veritable landscapes,\nand the lines which describe it are genuine poetry,\u2014exact, transparent,\nlingering lovingly over the scene which the eye rests on. And for its\nbeing ordinary description, no doubt it flows easily and naturally\nalong, but let any one try to describe as common a prospect in verse,\nand he will find that this is not ordinary verse, but instinct with that\nunobtrusive grace which only true poets attain.\n\nThen how frequently the commonest country sights awaken Cowper\u2019s touch of\nnative humor. Here is what he says of the mole and his work: we\u2014\n\n                              \u201cFeel at every step\n    Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft,\n    Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil.\n    He, not unlike the great ones of mankind,\n    Disfigures earth, and, plotting in the dark,\n    Toils much to earn a monumental pile\n    That may record the mischiefs he has done.\u201d\n\nIn Keble\u2019s \u201cEssay on Sacred Poetry\u201d I lately read the following\ncomparison between Cowper and Burns as descriptive poets. \u201cCompare,\u201d\nhe says, \u201cthe landscapes of Cowper with those of Burns. There is, if\nwe mistake not, the same sort of difference between them, as in the\nconversation of two persons on scenery, the one originally an enthusiast\nin his love of the works of Nature, the other, driven by disappointment\nor weariness to solace himself with them as he might.... The one\nall-overflowing with the love of Nature, and indicating at every turn,\nthat whatever his lot in life, he could not have been happy without\nher; the other visibly and wisely soothing himself, but not without\neffort, by attending to rural objects in default of some more congenial\nhappiness, of which he had almost come to despair. The latter, in\nconsequence, laboriously sketching every object that came in his way;\nthe other, in one or two rapid lines which operate, as it were, like a\nmagician\u2019s spell, presenting to the fancy just that picture which was\nwanted to put the reader\u2019s mind in unison with the writer\u2019s.\u201d And then\nKeble quotes, in illustration of the difference, the description of\nEvening in the fourth book of the \u201cTask,\u201d set over against the truly\npastoral chant of \u201cDainty Davie.\u201d I cannot regard this estimate of\nthe two poets as altogether true. The passage which Keble quotes from\nCowper is not one of his happiest. \u201cEvening\u201d is there personified in\nconventional fashion, as \u201cwith matron-step slow moving,\u201d with night\ntreading \u201con her sweeping train.\u201d If the two poets are to be compared at\nall, let it be when both are at their best. Again, is it quite fair to\ncontrast poetry of description with the poetry of lyric passion, and to\nreject the former because it does not possess the vivid glow that belongs\nto the latter? Moreover, the country which Cowper had before him suited\nbetter a sober and meditative than an impassioned strain. There can be no\ndoubt that Cowper turned to Nature as a relief and solace from too sad\nthoughts rather than with the rapture of a fresh heart and a youthful\nlove. But Keble surely would have been the last to deny that this is a\nlegitimate use to make of Nature. He, before most men, would have felt\nthat that is one of the finest ministries of Nature which Cowper thus\nexpresses:\u2014\n\n    \u201cOur groves were planted to console at noon\n    The pensive wanderer in their shades, at eve\n    The moonbeam, sliding softly in between\n    The sleeping leaves is all the light they wish,\n    Birds warbling all the music.\u201d\n\nIf it be one of Nature\u2019s offices to make the young and the happy happier,\nit is her no less genuine and beneficent work to lighten, by her glad or\nreposeful looks, aged hearts that may be world-weary or desponding.\n\nHow exact, faithful, and literally true in his record of the appearances\nof Nature Cowper is, we have seen. It remains to ask whether he had any\nphilosophy of Nature, and if so, what it was. It could not be that one so\ndevout could look habitually on the face of Nature without asking himself\nhow all this visible vastness stands related to the Invisible One whom\nhis heart held commune with. All remember his well-known line,\u2014\n\n    \u201cGod made the country, but man made the town,\u201d\n\nand this thought echoes through all his praises of the country, and\nenhances his pleasure in it. But it is not only by incidental allusion\nthat Cowper lets us know his thoughts on these things. The \u201cTask\u201d\ncontains two long passages, one in the \u201cWinter Morning Walk,\u201d from line\n733 to 906, and another in \u201cThe Winter Walk at Noon,\u201d from line 181 to\n254, in which his feelings on this subject find full utterance, opening\nwith the noble words,\u2014\n\n    \u201cHe is the freeman whom the Truth makes free,\n    And all are slaves beside.\u201d\n\nIn the former passage, of the man whose heart is set free with this\nheavenly freedom he says, in words well known,\n\n    \u201cHe looks abroad into the varied field\n    Of Nature, and ...\n    Calls the delightful scenery all his own.\n    His are the mountains, and the valleys his,\n    And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy\n    With a propriety that none can feel,\n    But who, with filial confidence inspired,\n    Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,\n    And smiling say, \u2018My Father made them all.\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd so throughout this whole passage he continues in a strain akin to\nthat of Thomson\u2019s Hymn, but more intimate and devout, his acknowledgment\nof Him whom he calls \u201cThe only just Proprietor\u201d of Nature. It is He who\nalike\n\n        \u201cGives its lustre to an insect\u2019s wing,\n    And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds.\u201d\n\nWhen He has enlightened the eye and touched the mortal ear\u2014\n\n    \u201cIn that blest moment, Nature throwing wide\n    Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile\n    The Author of her beauties, who, retired\n    Behind his own creation, works unseen\n    By the impure, and hears his word denied.\n\n    ...\n\n    \u201cBut, O thou bounteous Giver of all good,\n    Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown!\n    Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor,\n    And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.\u201d\n\nA finer strain of rapturous piety could not be, but yet in it all there\nis no advance beyond the old conception of a dead mechanical world,\nwhich God, himself removed aloof, moves entirely from without. There is\nno hint that Nature is alive with a life received from God himself, and\nmysteriously connected with Him.\n\nBut in the second passage alluded to his thought about Nature takes a\nhigher reach. Speaking of the revival of the earth under the touch of\nspring, he teaches that\n\n                        \u201cThere lives and moves\n    A soul in all things, and that soul is God.\u201d\n\nThen, alluding to the view, entertained by many, then as now, that what\nwe call Nature\u2019s operations are upheld and carried forward by fixed laws,\nwhich spare the Maker all further trouble, he asserts that all things are\nimpelled\n\n    \u201cTo ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,\n    And under pressure of some conscious cause.\n    The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused,\n    Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.\n    Nature is but a name for an effect\n    Whose cause is God.\u201d\n\nNor does he step at this merely theistic view. He goes on to the\ndistinctly Christian teaching of St. John and St. Paul, so easy to\nassert, so hard to take home to the feelings and imagination, that it is\nthe Eternal and Incarnate Word who is the Creator and Sustainer of this\nvisible universe.\n\n    \u201cAll are under One. One Spirit\u2014his\n    Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows\u2014\n    Rules universal Nature. Not a flower\n    But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,\n    Of his unrivaled pencil.\u201d\n\nNo doubt Cowper held and believed this firmly, and it may be at times\nhad keen intuition of its truth. But it cannot be said that he attained\nto make it felt in his ordinary descriptions of the every-day landscape.\nHe does not describe Nature as if he habitually saw it as a living being\nplastic to an overruling and informing spirit. Rather he beheld her more\nas common eyes behold her, as a mechanism, with fixed features and a\ndefinite outline, which do not spontaneously, and without an exertion\nof thought, lend themselves as vehicles of spiritual reality. If he had\nbeen more possessed with the mystical vision he might have been a higher\npoet for the few. He would not have been what he has been called, the\nbest of our descriptive poets for every-day wear, the familiar companion\nof every quiet English household. But though Cowper\u2019s \u201cTask\u201d is full of\nscenery, it is not purely, or even mainly, descriptive poetry. More than\nits rural character is its deep, tender, universal human-heartedness.\nMan and his interests are paramount, as paramount as in Pope or any other\ncity poet. Only it is not the conventional, not the surface part of man,\nbut that which is permanent in him and universal. In his indignation\nagainst injustice and oppression, his hatred of slavery, his large sense\nof universal brotherhood, and his revolt against all that hinders it, we\nalready hear in his poetry the not far-off murmur of the Revolution, and\nof the new era it was bringing in. His denunciation of the Bastile but\nfour years before it fell\u2014\n\n    \u201cYe horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts,\n    Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair,\n    There\u2019s not an English heart that would not leap\n    To hear that ye were fallen at last,\u201d\u2014\n\nis a fitting prelude to that prayer of thanksgiving which Wordsworth\nraised a few years afterward from Morecombe Sands when he first heard of\nthe fall of Robespierre. It is because Cowper\u2019s poetry throbs with this\ndeep and universal human sympathy that its background of landscape, plain\nas it is, and untransfigured by passion, comes in with such graceful and\nrefreshing relief. Of Cowper\u2019s descriptions may be said what Wordsworth\nsays of his own, there is always\n\n                    \u201cSome happy tone\n    Of meditation slipping in between\n    The beauty coming and the beauty gone.\u201d\n\nAnd this it is that gives them their peculiar charm.\n\n\nBURNS.\n\nThe rural descriptions and the reflections on the outer world contained\nin the poetry of Cowper, mark the highest limit which the feeling for\nNature had reached in England at the close of last century. But the\nstream of natural poetry in England, which up to that time had been fed\nfrom purely native sources, and which had flowed on through all last\ncentury with ever increasing volume, received toward the close of the\ncentury affluents from other regions, which tinged the color and modified\nthe direction of its future current. Of these affluents the first and\nmost powerful was the poetry of Burns. It is strange to think that Cowper\nand he were singing their songs at the same time, each in his own way\ndescribing the scenery that surrounded him, and yet that they hardly knew\nof each other\u2019s existence.\n\nBurns not only lived in a world of nature, of society, and of feeling,\nwholly alien to that of Cowper, but he took for his models far different\npoets. These models were the Scottish rhymers, Allan Ramsay, Ferguson,\nand the unknown singers of the native ballads, and especially of the\npopular songs, of his country. Proud and self-reliant as Burns was, he\neverywhere speaks of Ramsay and Ferguson as his models and superiors.\nFrom these he took the forms of his poems, though into these forms he\npoured a new and stronger inspiration. Burns\u2019s \u201cHalloween\u201d is framed\non a model of Ferguson\u2019s poem called \u201cLeith Races,\u201d and \u201cThe Cottar\u2019s\nSaturday Night\u201d is evidently suggested by Ferguson\u2019s \u201cFarmer\u2019s Ingle;\u201d\nbut poor Ferguson\u2019s very mundane view of happiness is, at least in the\n\u201cCottar\u2019s Saturday Night,\u201d by Burns, transfigured by a purer and nobler\nsentiment. Besides these Burns knew the English poets, such as Pope and\nShenstone, but well for the world that he did not come too early under\ntheir influence, else we had probably lost much of what is most native\nand original in him. Somewhere in his later years he marvels at his own\naudacity in having ventured to use his native Scotch as the vehicle for\npoetry, and speaks as if, had he earlier known more English literature,\nhe would not have dared to do so. Yet when he does essay to write pure\nEnglish his poetry becomes only of third or fourth-rate excellence, just\nas nothing can be more mawkish and vapid than Ferguson, when he makes\nDamon and Alexis discourse in his purely English pastorals. Only in one\npoem, written in pure English, does Burns attain high excellence, and\nthat one is the \u201cLines to Mary in Heaven.\u201d Perhaps in nothing, except\nit may be in humorous or pathetic feeling, is the Scottish dialect\nmore in place than in describing the native scenery. For, in truth,\nthe features of every county, if possible of each district, ought to\nbe rendered in the very words by which they are known to the natives.\nWhen instead of this they are transferred into the literary language,\nthey have lost I know not how much of their life and individuality. If\nin Scottish scenery, for instance, you speak of a brook and a grove,\ninstead of a burn or a shaw or wood, you have really robbed the locality\ndescribed of all that belongs to it. The same thing holds still more of\nmountain scenery, in which, unless you adopt the words which the country\npeople apply to their own hills, you had better leave them undescribed.\nThis feeling has at last forced both poets, and all who attempt to\nrender Highland scenery, to use the Celtic words by which the mountain\nlineaments are described. We must, if we would name these features\nat all, speak of the \u201ccorrie,\u201d the \u201clochan,\u201d the \u201cballoch,\u201d and the\n\u201cscreetan\u201d or \u201csclidder,\u201d for the book-English has no words for these\nthings. Hence it is that Scottish Lowland scenery is never so truly and\nvividly described, as when Burns uses his own vernacular. And yet Burns\nwas no merely descriptive poet. It would be difficult to name one of\nhis poems in which description of Nature is the main object. Everywhere\nwith him, man, his feelings and his fate, stand out in the front of his\npictures, and Nature comes in as the delightful background\u2014yet Nature\nloved with a love, beheld with a rapture, all the more genuine, because\nhis pulses throbbed in such intense sympathy with man. Every one can\nrecall many a wonderful line, sometimes whole verse, in his love-songs,\nin which the surrounding landscape is flashed on the mind\u2019s eye. In that\nlonger poem, so full of sagacious observation on life and character, \u201cThe\nTwa Dogs,\u201d how graphically rendered is the evening with which the poem\ncloses!\u2014\n\n    \u201cBy this, the sun was out o\u2019 sight,\n    An\u2019 darker gloamin brought the night:\n    The bum-clock humm\u2019d wi\u2019 lazy drone,\n    The kye stood rowtin i\u2019 the loan;\n    When up they gat, an\u2019 shook their lugs,\n    Rejoiced they were na men but dogs;\n    An\u2019 each took aff his several way,\n    Resolved to meet some ither day.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe kye stood rowting in the loan,\u201d what a picture is that of an\nold-fashioned Lowland farm, with the loane or lane, between two dikes,\nleading up to the out-field or moor! All who have known the reality will\nat once recognize the truth of the picture, in which the kye, as they\ncome home at gloamin\u2019, stop and low, ere they enter the byre: to others\nit is uncommunicable.\n\nOr take that description in \u201cHalloween\u201d of the burn and the adventure\nthere:\u2014\n\n    \u201cWhyles owre a linn the burnie plays,\n      As thro\u2019 the glen it wimpl\u2019t;\n    Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays\n      Whyles in a wiel it dimpl\u2019t;\n    Whyles glitter\u2019d to the nightly rays,\n      Wi\u2019 bickering, dancing dazzle;\n    Whyles cookit underneath the braes\n      Below the spreading hazel,\n                  Unseen that night.\n\n    \u201cAmang the brachens on the brae,\n      Between her an\u2019 the moon,\n    The Deil, or else an outler Quey,\n      Gat up an\u2019 gae a croon:\n    Poor Leezie\u2019s heart maist lap the hool;\n      Near lav\u2019rock-height she jumpit,\n    But mist a fit, an\u2019 in the pool\n      Out-owre the lugs she plumpit,\n                  Wi\u2019 a plunge that night.\u201d\n\nWould any one who can feel the force of that description allow that it\ncould be expressed in literary English without losing much of its charm?\n\nI have said that Burns\u2019s glances at Nature are almost all incidental,\nand, by the way, and this enhances their value. There is, however, a\npassage in an Epistle to William Simpson, in which he addresses Nature\ndirectly, and speaks out more consciously the feeling with which she\ninspired him:\u2014\n\n    \u201cO, sweet are Coila\u2019s haughs an\u2019 woods,\n    When lintwhites chant amang the buds,\n    And jinkin hares, in amorous whids,\n                  Their loves enjoy,\n    While thro\u2019 the braes the cushat croods\n                  Wi\u2019 wailfu\u2019 cry!\n\n    \u201cEv\u2019n winter bleak has charms to me\n    When winds rave thro\u2019 the naked tree;\n    Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree\n                  Are hoary gray;\n    Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee,\n                  Dark\u2019ning the day!\n\n    \u201cO Nature a\u2019 thy shews and forms\n    To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms!\n    Whether the summer kindly warms\n                  Wi\u2019 life an\u2019 light,\n    Or winter howls, in gusty storms,\n                  The lang, dark night!\n\n    \u201cThe Muse, nae Poet ever fand her,\n    Till by himsel he learn\u2019d to wander,\n    Adown some trottin burn\u2019s meander,\n                  An\u2019 no think lang;\n    O sweet, to stray an\u2019 pensive ponder\n                  A heart-felt sang!\u201d\n\nThree things may be noted as to the influence of Burns on men\u2019s feeling\nfor Nature.\n\nFirst, he was a more entirely open-air poet than any first-rate singer\nwho had yet lived, and as such he dealt with Nature in a more free,\nclose, intimate way than any English poet since the old ballad-singers.\nHe did more to bring the hearts of men close to the outer world, and\nthe outer world to the heart, than any former poet. His keen eye looked\ndirectly, with no intervening medium, on the face alike of Nature and\nof man, and embraced all creation in one large sympathy. With familiar\ntenderness he dwelt on the lower creatures, felt for their sufferings,\nas if they had been his own, and opened men\u2019s hearts to feel how much\nthe groans of creation are needlessly increased by the indifference or\ncruelty of man. In Burns, as in Cowper, and in him perhaps more than\nin Cowper, there was a large going forth of tenderness to the lower\ncreatures, and in their poetry this first found utterance, and in no poet\nsince their time, so fully as in these two.\n\nSecondly, his feeling in Nature\u2019s presence was not, as in the English\npoets of his time, a quiet contemplative pleasure. It was nothing short\nof rapture. Other more modern poets may have been thrilled with the same\ndelight, he alone of all in last century expressed the thrill. In this,\nas in other things, he is the truest herald of that strain of rejoicing\nin Nature, even to ecstasy, which has formed one of the finest tones in\nthe poetry of this century.\n\nThirdly, he does not philosophize on Nature or her relation to man; he\nfeels it, alike in his joyful moods and in his sorrowful. It is to him\npart of what he calls \u201cthe universal plan,\u201d but he nowhere reasons about\nthe life of Nature as he often does so trenchantly about that of man.\n\n\nTHE BALLADS.\n\nBut another affluent to the growing sentiment, besides Burns, was\nthe ballad-poetry rediscovered, we may say, towards the end of last\ncentury. The most decisive mark of this change in literary taste was the\ncollection by Bishop Percy of the \u201cReliques of Ancient Poetry\u201d in 1765;\nand this production did much to deepen and expand the taste out of which\nitself arose. The impulse which began with Bishop Percy may be said to\nhave culminated when Scott gave to the world his \u201cMinstrelsy of the\nScottish Border,\u201d in the opening years of the present century.\n\nThe ballads of course are mainly engaged with human incidents, heroic\nand legendary. Yet they contain many side-glances at Nature, as it\ninterwove itself with the actions or the sufferings of men, which are\nvery affecting. This is the way that the sight of Ettrick Forest struck\nthe king and his men as they marched against the outlaw who \u201cwon\u201d there\u2014\n\n    \u201cThe king was cuming thro\u2019 Caddon Ford,\n      And full five thousand men was he;\n    They saw the derke Foreste them before,\n      They thought it awsome for to see.\u201d\n\nOr take again the impression made on the traveling knight as he comes on\nClyde in full flood:\u2014\n\n    \u201cAs he gaed owre yon high high hill\n      And doun yon dowie den,\n    There was a roar in Clyde water,\n      Had fear\u2019d a hundred men.\u201d\n\nOr that other gentler pathetic touch, where the maiden says\u2014\n\n    \u201cYestreen I dreamed a dolefu\u2019 dream\n      I fear there will be sorrow,\n    I dreamed I pu\u2019d the heather green\n      Wi\u2019 my true love, on Yarrow.\n\n    \u201cO gentle wind, that bloweth south,\n      From where my love repaireth,\n    Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,\n      And tell me how he fareth!\u201d\n\nIn verses such as these, which abound throughout the popular ballads and\nsongs, we see the outer world, not as it appeared to the highly educated\npoet, seeking to express it in artistic phrase, but as it showed itself\nto the eyes and hearts of country-people, living quite familiarly among\nits sights and sounds. Much more might be said of the natural imagery\nof the ballads, and of the feeling toward the outer world indicated by\nit. Suffice it to note that the simplicity and pathos, both of sentiment\nand of expression, which the ballads contained, entering, with other\ninfluences, into the minds of the young generation which first welcomed\nthem, called up another view of Nature than that which the literary poets\nhad expressed, and affected most deeply both the feeling and the form of\nthe new poetry of Nature which this century brought in.\n\n\nOSSIAN.\n\nOne more poetic influence, born of last century, must be noticed before\nwe close. I mean the Celtic or Ossianic feeling about Nature.\n\nI am not going now to discuss whether Macpherson composed the Gaelic\npoems which still pass for Ossian\u2019s, or whether he only collected songs\nwhich had been floated down by tradition from a remote antiquity.\nWhichever view we take, it cannot be questioned that the appearance of\nthis poetry gave to the English-speaking mind the thrill of a new and\nstrange emotion about mountain scenery. Whether the poetry was old,\nor the product of last century, it describes, as none other does, the\ndesolation of dusky moors, the solemn brooding of the mists on the\nmountains, the occasional looking through them of sun by day, of moon and\nstars by night, the gloom of dark cloudy Bens or cairns, with flashing\ncataracts, the ocean with its storms as it breaks on the West Highland\nshores or on the headlands of the Hebrides. Wordsworth, though an\nunbeliever in Ossian, felt that the fit dwelling for his spirit was\n\n    \u201cWhere rocks are rudely heaped and rent\n    As by a spirit turbulent,\n    Where sights are rough and sounds are wild\n    And everything unreconciled,\n    In some complaining dim retreat,\n    For fear and melancholy meet.\u201d\n\nAnd such are the scenes which the Ossianic poetry mainly dwells on. Here\nis a description of a battle\u2014\n\n    \u201cAs hundred winds \u2019mid oaks of great mountains,\n    As hundred torrents from lofty hills,\n    As clouds in darkness rushing on,\n    As the great ocean tumbling on the shore,\n    So vast, so sounding, dark and stern,\n    Met the fierce warriors on Lena.\n    The shout of the host on the mountain height\n    Was like thunder on a night of storms,\n    When bursts the cloud on Cona of the glens,\n    And thousand spirits wildly shriek\n    On the waste whirlwind of the hills.\u201d\n\nAnd yet, though this is the prevailing tone, it is broken at times by\ngleams of tender light\u2014\n\n    \u201cPleasing to me are the words of songs,\n    Pleasing the tale of the time that is gone;\n    Soothing as noiseless dew of morning mild\n    On the brake and knoll of roes,\n    When slowly rises the sun\n    On the silent flank of hoary Bens\u2014\n    The loch, unruffled, far away,\n    Lies calm and blue on the floor of the glens.\u201d[16]\n\nWhatever men may now think of them, there cannot be a doubt but these\nmountain monotones took the heart of Europe with a new emotion, and\nprepared it for that passion for mountains which has since possessed it.\n\nCowper, Burns, the Ballads, Ossian, all these had entered into the\nminds that were still young when this century opened, and added each a\nfresh element of feeling, and opened a new avenue of vision into the\nlife of Nature. When the great earthquake of the Revolution had shaken\nmen\u2019s souls to their centre, and brought up to the surface thoughts and\naspirations for humanity never known till then, the deepened and expanded\nhearts of men opened themselves to receive Nature into them in a way they\nhad never done before, and to love her with a new passion. But original\nas this impulse in the present century has been, we must not forget how\nmuch it owed, both in itself and in its manifold forms of expression, to\nthe poetry of Nature which the eighteenth century bequeathed. Of that\npoetry there were two main streams, a literary and a popular. Of these\nthe popular one was probably the most powerful in moulding the Poetry\nthat was about to be.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\n\nWORDSWORTH AS AN INTERPRETER OF NATURE.\n\n\nThere are at least three distinct stages in men\u2019s attitude towards the\nexternal world. First comes the unconscious love of children\u2014of those at\nleast whose home is in the country\u2014for all rural things, for birds and\nbeasts, for the trees and the fields. The next stage is that of youth and\nearly manhood, which commonly gets so absorbed in trade, and business,\npolitics, literature, or science,\u2014that is, in the practical world of man,\nthat the early caring for Nature disappears from the heart, perhaps never\nagain to revisit it. The third and last stage is that of\u2014some at least,\nperhaps of many\u2014men, who, after much intercourse with the world, and\nafter having, it may be, suffered in it, return to the calm, cool places\nof Nature, and find there a solace, a refreshment, something in harmony\nwith their best thoughts, which they have not discovered in their youth,\nit may be because they then less needed it.\n\nSomething like this takes place in the history of the race. Not to\nmention the savage state, men in the primeval era, when history first\nfinds them, are affected by the visible world around them much as we\nsee children and boys now are. Nature is almost everything to them.\nThey use the forces, and receive the influences of it, if not in a\nwholly animal way, yet in a quite unconscious, unreflecting way. Then\nadvancing civilization creates city life and affairs, in which man, with\nhis material, social, and mental interests, takes the place of Nature,\nwhich then retires into the background. The love of it either wholly\ndisappears or becomes a very subordinate matter. So it has been, so it\nstill is, with whole populations, which know nothing beyond the purlieus\nof great cities. But probably the intensest feeling for Nature is that\nwhich is engendered out of the heart of the latest, perhaps over-refined,\ncivilization. Ages that have been over-civilized turn away from their\ntoo highly-strung interests, their too feverish excitements, to find a\npeculiar relish in the calm, the coolness, the equability of Nature.\nVinet has well said that \u201cthe more the soul has been cultivated by social\nintercourse, and especially the more it has suffered from it, the more,\nin short, society is disturbed and agonized, the more rich and profound\nNature becomes,\u201d\u2014mysteriously eloquent for the one who comes to her from\nout the ardent and tumultuous centre of civilization.\n\nTowards the end of last century Europe had reached this third stage. In\nall the foremost nations it showed itself by this as one among many new\nsymptoms, that there was an awakening to the presence of Nature, and\nto the power of it, with an intimacy and vividness unknown before. Men\nbecame aware of the presence of the visible world, and, almost startled\nby it, they asked what it meant. What was so old and familiar came home\nto them as if it were now for the first time discovered. Here and there\nwere men who, having had their fevered pulses stimulated almost to\nmadness by the throes that preceded or accompanied the Revolution, turned\ninstinctively to find repose in the eternal freshness that is in the\nouter world. This tendency showed itself in different ways in different\ncountries, and expressed itself variously, according to the nature of\nthe men who were the organs of it. In France this new passion for Nature\nfound a representative in Rousseau, as early as 1759, in whose writings,\nin spite of their mawkish sentiment, their morbid \u201cself-torturing,\u201d their\nfalse politics and distorted morality, all men of taste have felt the\nfascination of their eloquence and the picturesqueness with which the\nshores of the Leman Lake are described. Later in the century, Goethe,\nin Germany, expressed the same feeling with all the difference there is\nbetween the Teutonic and the Gallic genius. More than any poet before\nhim, or any since, he combined the scientific with the poetic view of\nNature, or rather he studied the facts and laws of Nature with the eye\nof a physicist, and saw the beauty that is in these with the eye of\na poet. It has been said of him that he worshiped God in Nature. It\nwould be more true to say, that perceiving intelligently the unity that\npervades all things, he felt intensely the beauty of that unity, he\ndelighted in the wide views of the Universe which science had recently\nunfolded. But as the moral side of things, as duty and self-surrender\nhardly entered into his thoughts, it is misleading to speak of merely\nscientific contemplation and \u00e6sthetic delight as worship or devotion.\nWorship implies a personal relation to a personal being, and this was\nhardly in Goethe\u2019s thoughts at all. But whatever may be the true account\nof his ultimate views, he is the German representative of the great wave\nof feeling of which I speak.\n\nIt was a fortunate thing for England that when the time had come when she\nwas to open and expand her heart towards Nature, as she had never before\ndone, the function of leading the new movement and of expressing it was\ncommitted to a soul like Wordsworth\u2019s,\u2014a soul in which sensibility, far\nhealthier than that of Rousseau, and deeper than that of Goethe, was\nbased on a moral nature, simple, solid, profound. It is the way in all\ngreat changes of every kind. When the change is to come, the man who is\nby his nature predestined to make it comes too. So it was in history and\nin art. Contemporary with Wordsworth\u2019s movement, a change in these was\nneeded. Men ever since the Reformation had got so absorbed in the new\norder of things, that they had quite forgotten the old, and had become\nignorant of and unsympathetic to the past. So history, art, architecture,\nand many other things, had become meagre and starved. Men\u2019s minds, in\nthis country at least, had to be made aware that there had lived brave\nmen before Cromwell, good men before Luther and Knox. And Walter Scott\nwas born into the world to teach it this lesson, and to let in the\nsympathies of men in full tide on the buried centuries. The change which\nScott wrought in men\u2019s way of apprehending history was not greater than\nthat which Wordsworth wrought in their feelings towards the world of\nNature, with which, not less than with the world of History, their lives\nare encompassed. If Scott taught men to look with other eyes on the\ncharacters of the past, Wordsworth not the less taught them to do the\nsame towards the present earth around them, and the heavens above them.\nThis was indeed but half of Wordsworth\u2019s function. For he had moral truth\nto communicate to his generation, not less than naturalistic truth. It\nis, however, with the latter order of truth that we have now to do. Yet\nin him each kind of truth was so interpenetrated with the other, they\nwere balanced in such harmony, that it is not possible in any study of\nhim to dissever them.\n\nThus it seems that two poets were the chief agents in letting in on\nmen\u2019s minds two great bodies of sentiment, the one historical, the other\nnaturalistic, which have leavened all modern society, and even visibly\nchanged the outward face of things. Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, at the Scott\nCentenary, remarked that the mention of any spot by Scott, in his poems\nor romances, has increased the market value of the surrounding acres\nmore than the highest farming could do. And there is not an inn or small\nfarm-house in all the Lake country which does not reap every summer in\nhard coin the results of Wordsworth\u2019s poetry. Can even the stoutest\nutilitarian, seeing these things, say that Poetry is mere sentimental\nmoonshine, with no power on men\u2019s lives an actions?\n\nTo understand what Wordsworth did as an interpreter of Nature, we must\nbear in mind the experience through which he passed, the natural gifts\nand the mental discipline which fitted him to be so. He was sprung from a\nhardy North of England stock that had lived for generations in Yorkshire,\nafterwards in Cumberland, in a social place intermediate between the\nsquires and the yeomen, and from both his parents he had received the\ninheritance of a moral nature that was healthy, frugal, and robust. Early\nleft an orphan, with three brothers and one sole sister, his childish\nrecollections attached themselves rather to school than to home. At the\nage of eight he went with his brothers to Hawkshead, \u201can antique village,\nstanding a little way to the west of Windermere, on its own lake of\nEsthwaite, and possessing an ancient and once famous grammar school.\u201d\nThere he boarded with a humble village dame, and attended the school by\nday; but it was a school in which our modern high-pressure system was\nunknown, and which left the boys ample leisure to wander late and early\nby the lake-margins, through the copses, and on the mountain-sides.\nOf the village dame under whose roof he lodged he has left a pleasing\nportrait in \u201cThe Prelude.\u201d The early and not the least beautiful part\nof that poem, and many of his most delightful shorter poems, refer to\nthings seen and felt at that time. For, as the late Arthur Clough has\ntruly said, \u201cit was then and there beyond a doubt, that the substantive\nWordsworth was formed; it was then and there that the tall rock and\nsounding cataract haunted him like a passion, and that his genius and\nwhole being united and identified itself with external Nature.\u201d From\nthis primitive village school, he passed like other north-country lads,\nto Cambridge, where he spent three years, the least profitable years\nof his life, if any years are unprofitable to a man like him. More\nprofit he got from summer visits to his own country, Hawkshead, and his\nmother\u2019s relations, and especially from a walking tour through France,\nSwitzerland, and the Italian lakes,\u2014regions then but little trod by\nEnglishmen. After graduating at Cambridge he gladly left it in 1791 to\nplunge headlong into the first fervor of the French Revolution.\n\nThe high hopes which that event awoke in him, as in many another\nenthusiast, the dreams that a new era was about to dawn on down-trodden\nman, these things are an oft-told tale. When the revolutionary frenzy\nculminated in bloodshed and the Reign of Terror, Wordsworth\u2019s faith\nin it remained for long unshaken and unchanged. On the scenes which\nappalled others he looked undismayed, and even seriously pondered himself\nbecoming a leader in the business. Luckily for himself and the world,\nhe was recalled from France towards the close of 1792 by some stern\nhome-measures, probably the cutting short of his always scanty supplies.\nIn 1793 he published an \u201cApology for the French Revolution,\u201d in which\nhe rails against all the most cherished institutions of England, and\nrecommends the Utopia of absolute democracy as the one remedy for all the\nills which afflict the world. Not even the murder of Louis XVI., nor the\nbloodshed and horrors which followed, shook him. The fall of Robespierre\nin July, 1794, gave him new heart to believe that his golden dreams would\nyet be realized. But when from the struggle he saw emerge, not freedom,\npeace, and universal brotherhood, but the First Consul with his armies,\nhis high hopes at last gave way. Despairing of the destinies of mankind,\nhe wandered about the country aimless, dejected, almost in despondency.\nPublic affairs never appear so dark as when a man\u2019s own private affairs\nare getting desperate. And such was Wordsworth\u2019s case at that time. He\nhad no profession, no aim in life, was almost entirely destitute of\nfunds. From absolute want he was relieved in 1795 by the bequest of\nnine hundred pounds left to him by his friend Raisley Calvert. This\nenabled his sister\u2014a soul hardly less gifted, and altogether as noble\nas himself\u2014from whom he had been much separated, to take up house with\nhim, and to minister not only to his bodily but much more to his mental\nneeds. Seeing that his office on earth was to be a poet, she turned him\naway from brooding over dark social and moral problems, and led him to\nlook once more on the open face of Nature, and to mingle familiarly with\nhumble men. They made themselves a home, first in Dorsetshire, then in\nSomersetshire, where Coleridge joined them. Then it was that, warmed by\nthe society of his sister and his poet friend, and wandering freely among\nthe hills of Quantock, the fountain of his poetic heart was opened, which\nwas to flow on for years. Soon followed the final settlement, in the last\ndays of last century, in the small cottage at the Townhead of Grasmere,\nwhich became their home for more than eight years, and will forever\ncontinue to be identified with the most splendid era of Wordsworth\u2019s\ngenius. For it was during the years immediately preceding Grasmere, and\nduring the eight Grasmere years, that he attained to embody in one poem\nafter another the finest effluence of his spirit.\n\nIt was almost entirely at Grasmere, between the years 1800 and 1805,\nthat he composed \u201cThe Prelude,\u201d an autobiographic poem on the growth\nof his own mind. It is for the purpose of better understanding this\npoem that I have given the foregoing brief framework of the outward\nfacts of Wordsworth\u2019s life on which \u201cThe Prelude\u201d comments from within.\nThe poem consists of fourteen books in blank verse, probably the most\nelaborate biographic poem ever composed. Readers of Lord Macaulay\u2019s\nLife may perhaps remember his remarks on it: \u201cThere are,\u201d he says, \u201cthe\nold raptures about mountains and cataracts; the old flimsy philosophy\nabout the effects of scenery on the mind; the old crazy mystical\nmetaphysics; the endless wildernesses of dull, flat, prosaic declamations\ninterspersed.\u201d No one need be astonished at this estimate by Lord\nMacaulay. We see but as we feel. To him, being such as he was, it was\nnot given to feel or to see the things which Wordsworth most cared for.\nNo wonder, then, that to him the poem that spoke of these things was\na weariness. Doubtless much may be said against such a subject for a\npoem\u2014the growth of a poet\u2019s mind from childhood to maturity: much too\nagainst the execution, the sustained self-analysis, the prolixity of\nsome parts, the verbosity and sometimes the vagueness of the language.\nBut after making full deduction for all these things, it still remains a\nwonderful and unique poem, most instructive to those who will take the\ntrouble required to master such a work. If after a certain acquaintance\nwith Wordsworth\u2019s better-known and more attractive poems, a person will\nbut study \u201cThe Prelude,\u201d he will return to the other poems with a new\ninsight into their meaning and their truth.\n\nHow highly Coleridge esteemed it those know who remember the poem in\nwhich he describes the impression made on himself by hearing Wordsworth\nread it aloud for the first time after its completion:\u2014\n\n                          \u201cAn Orphic song indeed,\n    A song divine, of high and passionate thoughts,\n    To their own music chanted.\u201d\n\nThis poem, read to Coleridge in 1805, was not given to the world till\nJuly, 1850, a few months after the author\u2019s death. The reason why I\nshall now dwell on it at some length is because no other production of\nWordsworth\u2019s gives us so deep and sustained a view of his feeling about\nNature, and of the relation which he believed to exist between Nature and\nthe soul of man.\n\nIn Wordsworth\u2019s mental history two periods are especially prominent. The\nfirst was his school-time at Hawkshead, by Esthwaite Lake, eight years\nin all. The second was the mental crisis through which he passed after\nhis return from France till he settled with his sister in the south\nof England, and ultimately at Grasmere. The first was the spring-time\nof his soul\u2014a fair spring-time, in which all the young impulses and\nintuitions were first awakened, when the colors were laid in and deeply\nengrained into every fibre of his being. The second was the trial time,\nthe crisis of his spirit, in which all his early impulses, impressions,\nintuitions, were brought out into distinct consciousness, questioned\nand tested\u2014vindicated by reason, and embraced by will as his guiding\nprinciples for life\u2014in which, as one may say, all that had hitherto\nexisted inwardly in fluid vapor was gathered up, condensed, solidified\ninto deliberate substance and permanent purpose.\n\nA healthful, happy, blissful school-time was that which Wordsworth spent\nby Esthwaite Lake\u2014natural, blameless, pure, as ever boy spent. School\nrules were few, discipline was light, school hours were short, and, these\nover, the boys were free to roam where they willed, far or near, high and\nlow, early and late, sometimes far into the frosty starlight. Then it was\nthat Nature first\n\n    \u201cPeopled his mind with forms sublime and fair,\u201d\n\ncame to him like instincts unawares, as he went about his usual sports\nwith his companions. Rowing on the lake, snaring woodcocks among the hill\ncopses by night, skating by starlight on the frozen lake, climbing crags\nto harry the raven\u2019s nest, scudding on horseback over Furness Sands:\u2014\n\n    \u201cFrom week to week, from month to month, we lived\n    A round of tumult.\u201d\n\nIn all this there was not anything lackadaisical, nor any maundering\nabout Nature, but only the life you might expect in a hardy mountain-bred\nboy, with robust body and strong animal spirits. These things he shared\nwith other boys. There was nothing special in them. But what was\npeculiar, eminently his own, was this\u2014the feelings that sometimes came\nto him in the very midst of the wild hill sports\u2014in the pauses of the\nboisterous games. There were times when, detached from his companions,\nalone in lonely places, he felt from within\n\n    \u201cGleams like the flashing of a shield, the earth\n    And common face of Nature spake to him\n    Rememberable things.\u201d\n\nDuring his later school years he tells us that he would walk alone under\nthe quiet stars, and\n\n            \u201cFeel whate\u2019er there is of power in sound\n    To breathe an elevated mood, by form\n    Or image unprofaned, and I would stand,\n    In the night blackened with a coming storm,\n    Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are\n    The ghostly language of the ancient earth,\n    Or make their dim abode in distant winds,\n    Thence did I drink the visionary power.\u201d\n\nHe speaks, too, of a morning when he had stolen forth before even the\nbirds were astir,\n\n                    \u201cAnd sate among the woods\n    Alone upon some jutting eminence,\n    At the first gleam of dawnlight, when the vale,\n    Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude.\n    How shall I seek the origin? where find\n    Faith in the marvelous things which then I felt?\n    Oft in these moments such a holy calm\n    Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes\n    Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw\n    Appeared like something in myself, a dream,\n    A prospect in the mind.\u201d\n\nThese were his supreme moments of existence, when the vision first dawned\nupon his soul, when without knowing it he was baptized with an effluence\nfrom on high, consecrated to be the poet-priest of Nature\u2019s mysteries.\nThe light that then came to him was in after years \u201cthe master-light of\nall his seeing,\u201d the fountain-head of his highest inspirations. From this\nwas drawn that peculiar ethereal gleam which rests on his finest after\nproductions\u2014the ode to the Cuckoo, the poems on Matthew, Tintern Abbey,\nthe Intimations of Immortality, and many another poem. Not that he knew\nin these accesses of soul what he was receiving. He felt them at the\ntime, and passed on. Only long afterwards, when\n\n    \u201cThe eagerness of infantine desire\u201d\n\nwas over, in hours of tranquil thought, the remembrance of those bright\nmoments recurred, with a sense of distance from his present self so\nremote, that\n\n                      \u201cOften did he seem\n    Two consciousnesses, conscious of himself,\n    And of some other being.\u201d\n\nThe Prelude contains nothing more beautiful Of instructive than the whole\naccount of that Hawkshead school-time. It portrays the wonderful boyhood\nof a wonderful boy, though neither he himself nor others then thought\nhim the least wonderful. Reflecting on it long afterwards, Wordsworth\nsaw, and every student of his poetry will see, that in that time lay the\nsecret of his power, by the impulses then received his whole philosophy\nof life and of poetry was determined. Natural objects, he tells us, then\ncame home to him primarily through the human affections and associations\nof which they are the outward framework,\u2014just as the infant when he\nfirst comes to know sensible objects, learns to associate them with the\ninterventions of the touch, the look, the tenderness of its mother.\nGradually, even before school-time was past, Nature had come to have a\nmeaning and an attraction for him, by herself, without the need of such\nintervening agents.\n\nFurther, he tells us, that while for him at that time each individual\nrock, tree, and flower, had an interest of its own, he came deeply to\nfeel the great living whole which Nature is. All his thoughts, he says,\nwere steeped in feeling.\n\n                      \u201cI was only then\n    Contented, when with bliss ineffable\n    I felt the sentiment of being spread\n    O\u2019er all that moves, and all that seemeth still;\n    O\u2019er all that lost beyond the reach of thought\n    And human knowledge, to the human eye\n    Invisible, yet liveth to the heart;\n    O\u2019er all that leaps, and runs, and shouts, and sings,\n    Or beats the gladsome air; o\u2019er all that glides\n    Beneath the wave, yea, in the wave itself\n    And mighty depth of waters. Wonder not\n    If high the transport, great the joy I felt,\n    Communing in this sort through earth and heaven\n    With every form of creature, as it looked\n    Towards the Uncreated with a countenance\n    Of adoration, with an eye of love.\u201d\n\n\u201cTowards the Uncreated,\u201d\u2014the looking thitherward through both Nature\nand his own moral being, so as to find both based on one Divine order,\nwitnessing to one Eternal Being, this is one of Wordsworth\u2019s deepest\ntendencies. This is his teaching in many forms, emphatically in the \u201cOde\nto Duty,\u201d of which, after recognizing duty as the law of his own being,\nhe exclaims,\n\n    \u201cThou dost preserve the stars from wrong;\n    And the eternal heavens through thee are fresh and strong.\u201d\n\nThe passage last quoted from \u201cThe Prelude\u201d has the same meaning, and\ntestifies that from and through his communing with Nature he had learnt,\neven in boyhood, a true and real natural religion\u2014had felt his soul\ncome into contact with Him who is at once the author and upholder of\nNature and of man. Not perhaps that, in his school days, he was fully\naware of what he then learnt. He felt at the time, he learnt to know\nwhat he felt afterwards. At Cambridge, when surrounded by trivial and\nuncongenial interests, he became aware that he had brought with him from\nthe mountains powers to counterwork these\u2014\n\n                    \u201cIndependent solaces,\n    Incumbencies more awful, visitings\n    Front the Upholder of the tranquil soul.\u201d\n\nWhat then was the spiritual nutriment he had gathered from that boyhood\npassed in Nature\u2019s immediate presence? He had felt, and after reflection\nhad made the feelings a rooted and habitual conviction, that the world\nwithout him, the thing we call Nature, is not a dead machine, but\nsomething all pervaded by a life\u2014sometimes he calls it a soul; that this\nliving Nature was a unity; that there was that in it which awoke in\nhim feelings of calmness, awe, and tenderness; that this infinite life\nin Nature was not something which he attributed to Nature, but that it\nexisted external to him, independent of his thoughts and feelings, and\nwas in no way the creation of his own mind; that, though his faculties\nin nowise created those qualities in Nature, they might go forth and\naspire towards them, and find support in them; that even when he was\nwithdrawn from the presence of that Nature and these qualities, yet\nthat they subsist quite independent of his perceptions of them. And\nthe conviction that Nature there was living on all the same, whether\nhe heeded her or not, imparted to his mind kindred calm and coolness,\nand fed it with thoughts of majesty. This, or something like it, is\nthe conviction which he tries to express in \u201cThe Prelude.\u201d Those vague\nemotions, those visionary gleams which came to him in the happier moments\nof boyhood, before which the solid earth was all unsubstantialized\nand transfigured\u2014these he held to be, though he could not prove it,\nintimations coming to his soul direct from God. In one of these moments,\na glorious summer morning, when he was spending a Cambridge vacation\nby the Lakes, he for the first time consciously felt himself to be a\ndedicated spirit, consecrated to truth and purity and high unworldly\nendeavor.\n\nAgain, the invisible voice that came to him through the visible universe\nwas not in him, as has often been asserted, a Pantheistic conception.\nAlmost in the same breath he speaks of\n\n    \u201cNature\u2019s self, which is the breath of God,\u201d\n\nand\n\n    \u201cHis pure word by miracle revealed.\u201d\n\nHe tells us that he held the speaking face of earth and heaven to be an\norgan of intercourse with man,\u2014\n\n    \u201cEstablished by the sovereign intellect\n    Who through that bodily image hath diffused,\n    As might appear to the eye of fleeting time,\n    A deathless spirit.\u201d\n\nAnd again, he says that even if the earth was to be burnt up and to\ndisappear,\n\n    \u201cYet would the living Presence still subsist\n    Victorious.\u201d\n\nTo assert this, whatever it may be, is not to preach Pantheism. It is\nonly to make the earth not a mere piece of mechanism but a vital entity,\nand to regard it as in living and intimate relation with Him who made and\nupholds it, and speaks to man more or less distinctly through it.\n\nI pass now to the second stage, the great turning point in Wordsworth\u2019s\nmental history, which lay between his residence in France and his\nsettlement at Grasmere, that is, between the years 1793 and 1800.\n\nThe three years he had spent at Cambridge, from 1787 till the end of\n1790, if they did nothing else for him, had begun to draw out his social\nfeelings. The order of his interests had been this. In early boyhood\nanimal activity and trivial pleasures had engrossed him. In due time\nthese had retired, and, before school-time was over, Nature stood out\npre\u00ebminent, almost alone, in his affections. Up to his twenty-second\nyear, man had been to him a quite subordinate object. What Cambridge\nbegan, residence in France had perfected,\u2014his interest in man for his own\nsake, and in all the great problems, practical and speculative, connected\nwith man. These problems, present, more or less, to every age, had by\nthe revolutionary fervor been quickened into feverish intensity, and\ndriven on to new and far-reaching issues. Smitten to the core with the\ncontagion of the time, Wordsworth began to meditate feelingly on man,\nhis sufferings, his artificial restraints, his aspirations, his destiny.\nHe pondered long and deeply the questions of government, and the best\nforms of it,\u2014of society, of morality and its grounds, of man\u2019s perfection\nand its possibility. Even when for a time under the Reign of Terror\nhis immediate hopes from the Revolution faded, yet he did not cease to\nponder the questions which recent events had brought to the surface. The\nfall of Robespierre and his \u201catheist crew\u201d revived his hopes. Though none\nof the public acts of France pleased him, yet his faith in the people was\nstill strong; no external blunders, he believed, would take \u201clife from\nthe young Republic.\u201d\n\nFor a while he dreamed on his golden dreams about a perfected humanity.\nStill for a time to him\n\n                  \u201cThe whole earth\n    The beauty wore of promise.\u201d...\n    \u201cBliss was it in that dawn to be alive,\n    But to the young was heaven.\u201d\n\nBut when Britain declared war against France, and France changed a\nwar of self-defense for one of aggression, then came disgust with\nhis own country, disappointment and vexation with France, despair of\nher promoting the cause of Liberty. Still he clung stubbornly to his\nold tenets, and even strained them farther. At last, when he saw the\nEmperor crowned by the Pope, this was too much for him. It was the last\nopprobrium, the final blow to his republican ardor. He had seen a people\nfrom whom he hoped all things, a nation which erewhile had looked up in\nfaith to heaven for manna, take a lesson from the dog returning to his\nvomit. Then for a time the whole fabric of his hope and faith gave way.\nHe fell into distrust, not only of nations, but of himself. The faiths,\nintuitions, aspirations which he had hitherto lived by, failed him. He\ncross-questioned all fundamental principles, and if they could not\nvindicate themselves by formal proof, rejected them. At last, losing all\nhold on conviction, wearied out with endless perplexities, he doubted all\nmoral truth, and gave it up in despair. With his hopes for man, and his\nfaith in man\u2019s destiny, the poetic vision of Nature, which had hitherto\nbeen with him, disappeared, and his immediate converse with Him who\nthrough Nature spoke to him was for a time eclipsed. Under the tyranny\nof the logical and analyzing faculty, his intelligence was no longer\nan organ which transmitted clearly the light from without to the light\nwithin him, but, entangled in the meshes of the finite understanding,\nhe could for a time see or receive nothing which he could not verify by\nlogic. He looked on the outer world no more in a free imaginative way as\nof old, but compared scene with scene, and judged and criticised them by\nartificial rules.\n\n                              \u201cTo the moods\n    Of time and season, to the moral power,\n    The affections and the spirit of the place\n    Insensible.\u201d\n\nThis to one like Wordsworth, more than to most men, was abnegation of his\nhigher self, was in fact moral death. It was the lowest depth into which\nhe sank, the climax of what he himself calls \u201chis degradation.\u201d\n\nBut as his faith in man and his love of Nature had suffered shipwreck\ntogether, it was by the same influence they were restored. From the\ntemporary obscuration of the master vision, the laying asleep of his\ninner faculties, the first thing to arouse him was the influence of human\naffection, and that came to him through the presence of his sister,\nhis \u201csole sister.\u201d When after his return from France he was wandering\nabout aimless and dejected, she saw and understood his mental malady.\nShe made a home for him, and became his hourly companion. If he had\nlabored zealously to cut off his heart from all the sources of his former\nstrength, she by her influence and sympathy maintained for him, as he\nexpresses it, \u201ca saving intercourse with his true self.\u201d She saw that his\ntrue vocation was to be a poet, and a teacher of men through poetry, and\nbade him seek in that alone \u201chis office upon earth.\u201d She took him once\nmore to lonely and beautiful places, till Nature again found access to\nhim, and, combining with his sister\u2019s human ministry,\n\n                                  \u201cLed him back\n    To those sweet counsels between head and heart,\n    Whence groweth genuine knowledge fraught with peace.\u201d\n\nThus began that sanative process which in time restored him to his true\nself, to \u201chis natural graciousness of mind,\u201d and made him that blessing\nto the world he was destined to become.\n\nBut there was not a restoration only, but there came through that\nsame sister an accession of new emotions, an opening of his heart to\ninfluences heretofore disregarded. His nature was originally, he tells\nus, somewhat austere and unbending. She opened his eyes to perceive\nin Nature minute lovelinesses formerly unnoticed, his heart to feel\nsympathies and tendernesses for human things hitherto uncared for. In her\ncompany, whether they wandered about the country or dwelt in a settled\nhome, his former delight in Nature returned. He felt once again, like the\nbreath of spring, visitings of the imaginative power come to him; the\noverflowings of \u201cthe impassioned life\u201d that is in Nature streamed in upon\nhim, and he stood in her presence once more\n\n    \u201cA sensitive being, a creative soul.\u201d\n\nThe restoration, the sanative process I speak of, showed itself in two\ndirections, as regards his feeling towards man and towards Nature.\n\nFirst as to man: his interests and sympathies, stimulated to excess by\nthe political convulsions he had passed through, now found healthier\nobjects in the laboring poor whom he conversed with in the fields, and in\nthe vagrants he met on lonely roads. These became his daily schools. In\nmany an exquisite poem he has embalmed the incidents and characters he\nsaw or heard of at that time. His early upbringing combined with after\nexperience and reflection to make him esteem simple and humble life\nmore than artificial. The homely ways of the people he had spent his\nboyhood with\u2014village dames, hardy dalesmen and shepherds\u2014concurred with\nhis own native bias to make him love and esteem what is permanent, not\nwhat is accidental in human life, the inner, not the outer man of men,\nthe essential soul, not its trappings of birth, fortune, and position.\nThis native bias had been deepened by all he had seen, felt, and thought\nduring the revolutionary ferment, and now became the fixed habit and\npurpose of his mind, part of his permanent self. For in humble men, when\nnot wholly crushed or hardened by penury, he seemed to see the primary\npassions and elementary feelings of human nature existing as it were in\ntheir native bed\u2014freer, stronger, more unalloyed than in men of so-called\nposition and education, who, as he thought, were often overlaid by\nartifice and conventionality. The formalities which pass by the name of\neducation he thought have little to do with real feeling and just sense,\nand intercourse with the talking world does little to improve men. He\ntherefore turned away from artificial to natural man, and resolved to let\nthe world know what he had seen and found in men and women whose outside\nwas least attractive.\n\n    \u201cOf these, said I, shall be my song, of these\n    Will I record the praises, making verse;\n    Deal boldly with substantial things, in truth\n    And sanctity of passion, speak of these\n    That justice may be done, obeisance paid\n    Where it is due.\u201d\n\nMuch more might be said of his views of man, as they ultimately became,\nfor his insight into the heart and its workings, though confined to\ncertain lines, and reflective, not dramatic, was within these lines true\nand deep.\n\nBut we must now turn to consider, secondly, what were his views about\nNature, when they were fully matured. He now came to hold with conscious\nconviction, what formerly he had only felt, hardly knowing that he felt\nit, that Nature had\n\nA self-subsistence, existing outside of man\u2019s thoughts and feelings, and\nwholly independent of them;\n\nA unity of life and power pervading it through all its parts, and binding\nthem together into a living whole;\n\nA true life of her own, which streamed through and stimulated his life\u2014a\nspirit which, itself invisible, spoke through visible things to his\nspirit.\n\nThat this life had qualities inherent in it:\u2014\n\nCalmness, which stilled and refreshed man;\n\nSublimity, which raised him to noble and majestic thoughts;\n\nTenderness, which, while stirring in the largest and loftiest things,\ncondescends to the lowest, is with the humblest worm and weed as much as\nin the great movements of the elements and of the stars.\n\nAbove all, Nature he now saw to be the shape and image of right reason,\nreason in the highest sense, embodied and made visible in order, in\nstability, in conformity to eternal law. The perception of these\nsatisfied his intellect, calmed and soothed his heart.\n\nThus the powers and impulses which converse with these qualities, as they\nexist in the external work, had quickened within his boyish mind, now\nonce more in this reviving time asserted themselves, and filled him with\na happiness which, if soberer, was sanctioned by his mature reason. The\nUniverse therefore was to him no mere reverberation of his own voice, no\nmere reflection of hues cast from his own changeful moods. It was not\na thing to practice the pathetic fallacy on. It was not true that, as\nColeridge dreamed,\n\n    \u201cOurs is the wedding garment, ours the shroud.\u201d\n\nNot this at all, but an existence independent of us and our moods,\nstable, equable, serene. And our wisdom is to receive her native impulses\nwithout imposing on her our caprices. Hence it is that Nature is to man a\nsupporting, calming, cooling, and invigorating power. So it was that at\nthis time he felt both emotion and calmness come to him from Nature, from\nthe one energy to seek the truth, from the other that happy stillness\nwhich fits the mind to receive truth when it comes unsought. With clearer\nconviction than ever, he now saw in Nature a power, which is the shape\nand image of right reason\u2014reason, in its highest sense, embodied and\nmade visible. The order, the stability, \u201cthe calm obedience to eternal\nlaw,\u201d\u2014these, as I have just said, which are the image of right reason,\nsatisfied his intellect, calmed and soothed his feelings. From Nature\u2019s\ncalmness, and from her slow and steadily-working processes, he received\nan admonition to cease from hoping to see man regenerated by sudden and\nviolent convulsions, and yet to esteem and reverence what is permanent in\nhuman affection, and in man\u2019s moral being, and to build his hope on the\ngradual expansion and purification of these. All these perceptions about\nNature had been more or less present to him from boyhood, only now what\nwere before but vague emotions came out as settled convictions.\n\nBut there was a further step, which he now made. He discovered that\nin order to attain the highest and truest vision of Nature, the soul\nof man must not be altogether passive, but must act along with and in\nunison with Nature, must send from itself abroad an emanation, which,\nmeeting with natural objects, produces something better than either the\nsoul itself or Nature by herself could generate. This creation is, as\nhas been observed, \u201cpartly given by the object, partly by the poet\u2019s\nmind,\u201d is neither wholly mind, nor wholly object, but something, call it\naspect, effluence, emanation, which partakes of both. It is the meeting\nor marriage of the life that is in the soul with the life that is in the\nUniverse, which two are akin to each other, that produces the truest\nvision and the highest poetry. This view Wordsworth illustrates by the\nmarvelous effect produced on a landscape by a change in the atmosphere,\na clearing of the clouds, a sudden flood of moonlight let down into the\ndarkness of mountain abysses, such as that he saw at midnight while\nascending Snowdon. A like power he thinks the mind can exercise on\noutward things\u2014what he calls\n\n                      \u201cAn ennobling interchange\n    Of action from without and from within.\n    The excellence, pure function, and best power,\n    Both of the object seen and eye that sees.\u201d\n\nWhen his mind thus put forth its higher power on the actual familiar\nworld, on life\u2019s every-day appearances, he seemed to gain clear sight\nof a new world, not hitherto reflected in books, but worthy to be so\nreflected, and made visible to other eyes. This he set himself to\naccomplish, and the result still lives in many a pure and deathless\ncreation. That combined action of the object seen and of the eye that\nsaw, above spoken of, is especially embodied in such poems as \u201cThe\nYew-Trees of Borrowdale,\u201d \u201cStepping Westward,\u201d \u201cThe Leech-Gatherer,\u201d and\n\u201cTo the Cuckoo.\u201d In all these, and many more, the poet, letting his own\nspirit pass forth into the scene before him, and become identified with\nit, has caught the inner spirit of the place and of the hour, brought it\nout, and interpreted it as no mere outward description could have done.\nA few strokes, giving one or two of the most characteristic features, as\nseen by a keenly-observant eye, and then he glides into that which no eye\ncan see, but only the living power of a deep and sympathetic imagination.\nAnd though few other imaginations could have penetrated so deeply into\nthe secret of Nature, and given articulate voice to her silences, yet\nevery true imagination feels at once that he had gone to the quick, and\ntruly rendered the invisible but not unfelt presence that dwells there.\nIt is in this way that he has gathered up into himself the sleep that\nfrom oldest time has brooded over those Westmoreland mountains, and\nuttered it in his own perfect and melodious language. This has been done\nby him for that region once for all, and no other poet need attempt to\nrepeat it, any more than a sculptor need essay another Apollo Belvedere,\nor a painter a new Transfiguration.\n\nOn many of the poems descriptive of Nature that followed his recovery\nfrom despondency,\u2014that is, those composed between the years 1796 and\n1808,\u2014there rests an ethereal gleam, something of\n\n    \u201cThe light that never was on sea or land,\u201d\n\nwhich gives to these a peculiar charm, but which is less present in\nhis later productions. This idealizing light was drawn either from\nremembrances of that dream-like vividness and splendor above noticed,\nwhich in childhood he saw resting on all things, or from occasional\nreturns of the same vivid emotion and quick flashings from within, which\nhis restored happiness in Nature for a time brought back. This peculiar\nlight culminates in the \u201cOde on Immortality,\u201d though there it is rather\na remembrance of something gone than a present possession. Perhaps the\nlast powerful recurrence of this visionary gleam which he felt is that\nrecorded in the lines composed upon \u201cAn Evening of Extraordinary Beauty\nand Splendor,\u201d seen from the little mount in front of his Rydal home in\nthe year 1818.[17]\n\nBut these high instincts, and all the impulses akin to them, what are\nthey, what is their worth and meaning, what are we to think about them?\nAre they merely erratic flashes, garnishing for a moment our sky in early\nyears, soon to be lost forever in the gray light of common day? This is\nthe way in which most poets have regarded them, and so they have sung\nmany a sad depressing strain over the vanished illusions of youth. But\nthis was not the way with Wordsworth. Mr. Leslie Stephens, in a recent\nessay of great value, has admirably pointed out how his whole philosophy\nis based on \u201cthe identity between the instincts of our childhood and\nour enlightened reason,\u201d and is busied with expounding the process by\nwhich \u201cour early intuitions may be transformed into settled principles\nof feeling and action.\u201d Those vague instincts, Wordsworth believed,\ncome to man from a divine source, and are given to him not merely for\npleasure\u2019s sake, but that he may condense them into permanent principles\nby thought, by the faithful exercise of the affections, by contemplation\nof Nature, and by high resolve. The outer world was best and most truly\nseen when viewed, not as a solitary existence apart from man, but as the\nbackground of human life, and looked at through the human emotions of\nawe, reverence, and love. Thus, though those early ideal lights might\ndisappear, something else, as precious and more permanent, would be\nwrought into character as the vague emotions became transmuted into what\nhe calls \u201cintellectual love,\u201d \u201cfeeling intellect,\u201d \u201chopeful reason,\u201d all\nof which are but different names for that state of consciousness which he\nheld to be the organ or eye that sees all highest truth.\n\n    \u201cThis spiritual love acts not nor exists\n    Without imagination, which, in truth,\n    Is but another name for absolute power\n    And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,\n    And reason in her most exalted mood.\u201d\n\nIt may be said, perhaps, This philosophy is all well enough for those\nwho have in childhood known such ideal experiences in the presence of\nNature. But these are the few; most men know nothing of them. Be it\nso. But to these, too, this philosophy has a word to speak. If the many\nhave been insensible to Nature, most surely they have known the first\nhome affections, to father and mother, to brother and sister. In early\nyouth they have felt the warm glow of friendship, and later in life the\nfirst domestic affections may have revived more deeply when manhood has\nmade for itself a second home. Of these emotions time must needs make\nmany of them past experiences. Are they then to be no more than fond\nmemories without influence on our present selves? Wordsworth teaches, and\nall wise men agree with him, that if we allow these to pass from us, as\nsunbeams from a hill-side, the character is lowered and worsened; if they\nare retained in thought and melted into our being, they become the most\nfruitful sources of ennobled character. The firm purpose not to\n\n    \u201cBreak faith with those whom he has laid\n    In earth\u2019s dark chambers,\u201d\n\n\u2014to how many a man has this become the chief incentive to perseverance in\nhigh endeavor!\n\nThis is a philosophy which will wear. It suits not only the visionary\nin his solitude, but is fitted as well for the counting-house and the\nmarket-place.\n\nAgain, it may be said, This way of looking at Nature and life may suit a\nman in the heyday of life, when his nerves are strong, his hopes high,\nand all things wear their summer mood. In such a time he may well sing\n\n    \u201cNaught shall prevail against us or disturb\n    Our cheerful faith that all which we behold\n    Is full of blessings.\u201d\n\nNo doubt, through \u201cThe Prelude,\u201d and through all Wordsworth\u2019s poetry\ncontemporary with it, that is, all his poetry composed before the age of\nthirty-five, there runs a vein of Optimism. But a man\u2019s views of life\nare not complete at that age. Though he never expressly recanted any of\nthe views expressed in \u201cThe Prelude,\u201d yet he added to them new elements\nwhen time and grief showed him other sides of life. Hitherto, human\nsorrow had been to him but a \u201cstill sad music\u201d far away. But when, in\n1805, Nature, with her night and tempest, drove his favorite brother\u2019s\nship on the Shambles of Portland Head, and wrecked the life he greatly\nloved, then he learned that she was not always serene, but could be stern\nand cruel. Then sorrow came home to him, and entered into his inmost\nsoul. In that bereavement we find him writing\u2014\u201cWhy have we sympathies\nthat make the best of us afraid of inflicting pain and sorrow, which yet\nwe see dealt about so lavishly by the Supreme Governor? Why should our\nnotions of right towards each other, and to all sentient beings within\nour influence, differ so widely from what appears to be his notion and\nrule, if everything were to end here? Would it not be blasphemous to say\nthat ... we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought\nis monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition\nof another and a better world, I do not see.\u201d This is not the language\nof a pantheist, as he has been often called, nor of an optimist, one\nblind to the dark side of the world, as his poetry would sometimes make\nus fancy him. From that time on, the sights and sounds of Nature took\nto Wordsworth a soberer hue, a more solemn tone. The change of mood is\ngrandly expressed in the \u201cElegiac Stanzas on a Picture of Peele Castle,\u201d\nwhere he says that he now could look no more on\n\n    \u201cA smiling sea, and be what I have been.\u201d\n\nYet he gives way to no weak or selfish lamentation, but sets himself to\ndraw from the sorrow fortitude for himself, sympathy and tenderness for\nothers:\u2014\n\n    \u201cThen welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,\n      And frequent sights of what is to be borne;\n    Such sights, or worse, as are before me here;\u2014\n      Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.\u201d\n\nThat is manly and health-giving sorrow. It was his happiness, more than\nof most men, to use all that came to him for the end it was meant for.\nEarly ideal influences from Nature, the first home affections, sorrows of\nmature manhood\u2014none of them were lost. All melted into him, and did their\npart in educating his heart to a more feeling and tender wisdom. But they\ncould not have done this, they could not have so deepened and purified\nhim, had they not been received into a spirit based in firm faith on God,\nfrom whom all these things came, whose purpose for himself and others\nthey subserved. This discipline of sorrow was increased when, a few years\nafter the loss of his brother, he laid in Grasmere church-yard two infant\nchildren. Those trials of his home affections sank deep into him,\u2014more\nand more humanized his spirit, and made him feel more distinctly the\npower of those Christian faiths which, though never denied by him, were\npresent in his early poems rather as a latent atmosphere of sentiment\nthan as expressed beliefs. It cannot be denied that in his pure, but\nperhaps too confident youth, the Naturalistic spirit, so to call it, is\nstronger in his poetry than the Christian. He expected more from the\nteaching of Nature, combined with the moral intuitions of his soul, than\nthese in themselves, and unaided, can give. He did not enough see that\nman needs other supports than these for the trials he has to endure. This\nis not a matter of positive assertion or of positive denial,\u2014rather of\ncomparative emphasis and proportion. We may say that the Christian view\nof life and Nature does not at first receive the prominence which is its\ndue. But under the pressure of sorrow, and the sense of his own weakness,\nhe more and more turned to the Christian consolations. This change was\na very gradual one, and he has left no direct record of it. Only it is\nperceptible here and there in his later poems, and, what is most to our\npurpose, it colors the eye with which he looked on Nature. This cannot,\nperhaps, better be illustrated than by comparing two poems composed in\nthe same region at an interval of thirty years. In 1803, in his buoyant\nyouth, during an evening walk by the shores of Loch Katrine, with his\nface toward a glowing sunset, he composed the exquisite lines \u201cStepping\nWestward,\u201d in which the scene around him and a chance word addressed to\nhim suggested\n\n                              \u201cThe thought\n    Of traveling through the world that lay\n    Before me in my endless way.\u201d\n\nIn the autumn of 1831, when he was in his sixty-second year, he again\npassed through the Trossachs, and this was the sentiment that then arose\nwithin him. It may, as he himself suggests, have been colored by the\nremembrance of his recent parting with Sir Walter Scott and the thought\nof his decay, but it is altogether in keeping with his own habitual mood\nat that time\u2014\n\n    \u201cThere\u2019s not a nook within this solemn Pass,\n    But were an apt confessional for one\n    Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone,\n    That life is but a tale of morning grass\n    Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase\n    That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes\n    Feed it, \u2019mid Nature\u2019s old felicities,\n    Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass\n    Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy quest.\n    If from a golden perch of aspen spray\n    (October\u2019s workmanship to rival May),\n    The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast,\n    That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay,\n    Lulling the year, with all its cares, to rest.\u201d\n\nThere is another poem of the same date, 1831, which, though it is\nseldom quoted, shall be given here in full, since it well illustrates\nWordsworth\u2019s later phase of feeling about natural objects. It is entitled\n\u201cThe Primrose of the Rock,\u201d and refers to a rock which stands on the\nright hand, a little way up the middle road leading from Rydal to\nGrasmere:\u2014\n\n    \u201cA Rock there is whose homely front\n      The passing traveler slights;\n    Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,\n      Like stars, at various heights;\n    And one coy Primrose to that Rock\n      The vernal breeze invites.\n\n    \u201cWhat hideous warfare hath been waged,\n      What kingdoms overthrown,\n    Since first I spied that Primrose-tuft,\n      And marked it for my own;\n    A lasting link in Nature\u2019s chain\n      From highest heaven let down!\n\n    \u201cThe flowers, still faithful to the stems,\n      Their fellowship renew;\n    These stems are faithful to the root\n      That worketh out of view;\n    And to the rock the root adheres\n      In every fibre true.\n\n    \u201cClose clings to earth the living rock\n      Though threatening still to fall;\n    The earth is constant to her sphere;\n      And God upholds them all:\n    So blooms this lonely Plant, nor fears\n      Her annual funeral.\n\n    \u201cHere closed the meditative strain,\n    But air breathed soft that day,\n      The hoary mountain-heights were cheered.\n    The sunny vale looked gay,\n      And to the Primrose of the Rock\n    I gave this after-lay.\n\n    \u201cI sang\u2014Let myriads of bright flowers,\n      Like thee, in field and grove\n    Revive unenvied; mightier far,\n      Than tremblings that reprove\n    Our vernal tendencies to hope\n      Is God\u2019s redeeming love;\n\n    \u201cThat love which changed\u2014for wan disease,\n      For sorrow that had bent\n    O\u2019er hopeless dust\u2014for withered age\u2014\n      Their moral element,\n    And turned the thistles of a curse\n      To types beneficent.\n\n    \u201cSin-blighted though we are, we too,\n      The reasoning Sons of Men,\n    From our oblivious winter called\n      Shall rise, and breathe again,\n    And in eternal summer lose\n      Our threescore years and ten.\n\n    \u201cTo humbleness of hearts descends\n      This prescience from on high\n    The faith that elevates the just,\n      Before and when we die,\n    And makes each soul a separate heaven,\n      A court for Deity.\u201d\n\nIs not this more in keeping with the whole of Nature, more true to human\nlife in all its aspects, than poetry which dwells merely on the bright\nand cheerful side of things? If Nature has its vernal freshness, and\nits \u201chigh midsummer pomps,\u201d has it not as well autumnal decay, bleakness\nof winter, and dreary visitations of blighting east wind? What are we to\nmake of these? Are not suffering and death forever going on throughout\nanimated creation? What meaning are we to attach to this? As for man, if\nhe has his day of youth and strength and success, what are we to say of\nfailure, disappointment, bereavement, and life\u2019s swift decay? This last,\nthe dark and forlorn side of things, is as real as the bright side. How\nare we to interpret it? Surely, without attempting any theory which will\nexplain it, nothing is more in keeping with these manifold and seemingly\nconflicting aspects of life than the faith that He who made and upholds\nthe Universe does not keep coldly aloof, gazing from a distance on the\nsufferings of his creatures, but has himself entered into the conflict,\nhas himself become the great Sufferer, the great Bearer of all wrong, and\nis working out for his creatures some better issue through a redemptive\nsorrow which is Divine. Such a faith, though it does not explain the ills\nof life, gives them another meaning, and helps men to bear them as no\nother can. This view of suffering, latent in much of Wordsworth\u2019s poetry,\nif not fully uttered, at last found full expression in these, which are\namong his latest lines.\n\nNo doubt this, and the few other meditative poems, composed in the same\nstrain at that later day, have not the magic charm, the ethereal beauty,\nof those songs sung in buoyant youth, when before the transfiguring power\nof his imagination the earth appeared to be\n\n    \u201cAn unsubstantial faery place.\u201d\n\nThat passed with youth, and could not return; but another sedater, more\nmoralizing, yet sweetly gracious mood came on,\u2014a mood which is in keeping\nwith that earlier, its natural product representative in one, whose days\nand whose moods were as he himself wished them to be, \u201clinked each to\neach by natural piety.\u201d As there is in character a grace that becomes\nevery age, so there is a poetry. And Wordsworth\u2019s later expressions about\nNature and life are, I venture to think, as becoming in an old man,\nmatured by much experience and by sorrow, as his earlier more ideal poems\nbecame a young man just restored from a great mental crisis, but still\nwith youth on his side. If the poems of the maturer age lost something\nthat belonged to the earlier ones, they also gained new elements,\u2014they\ncontain words which are a support amid the stress of life, and a\nbenediction for its decline.\n\nThere were many who knew Wordsworth\u2019s poetry well while he was still\nalive, who felt its power, and the new light which it threw on the\nmaterial world. But though they half-guessed they did not fully know the\nsecret of it. They got glimpses of part, but could not grasp the whole\nof the philosophy on which it was based But when, after his death, \u201cThe\nPrelude\u201d was published, they were let into the secret, they saw the\nhidden foundations on which it rests, as they had never seen them before.\nThe smaller poems were more beautiful, more delightful, but \u201cThe Prelude\u201d\nrevealed the secret of their beauty. It showed that all Wordsworth\u2019s\nimpassioned feeling towards Nature was no mere fantastic dream, but based\non sanity, on a most assured and reasonable philosophy. It was as though\none who had been long gazing on some building grand and fair, admiring\nthe vast sweep of its walls, and the strength of its battlements, without\nunderstanding their principle of coherence, were at length to be admitted\ninside by the master builder, and given a view of the whole plan from\nwithin, the principles of the architecture, and the hidden substructures\non which it was built. This is what \u201cThe Prelude\u201d does for the rest of\nWordsworth\u2019s poetry.\n\nFor all his later phases of thought, all that followed the republicanism\nof \u201cThe Prelude,\u201d Wordsworth, I know, has been well abused. Shelley\nbemoaned him, Mr. Browning has flouted him, and following these all the\nsmaller fry of Liberalism have snarled at his heels. But all his changes\nof thought are self-consistent, and if fairly judged, the good faith\nand wisdom of them all can well be justified. For a few years during\nthe Revolution he had hoped for a sudden regeneration from that great\ncatastrophe. He found himself deceived, and gradually unlearnt the\nfallacies whence that deception had sprung. He ceased to look for the\nimprovement of mankind from violent convulsions. Neither did he expect\nmuch from gradual political change, nor from those formalities which\nwe nickname education, not from a revised code and payment by results,\nnot from these nor from any outward machinery. But he hoped much from\nwhatever helps forward the growth, the expanding, and the deepening, in\nall the grades of men, of the \u201cfeeling soul,\u201d by which they may become\nmore sensitive to the face of Nature, more sensitive towards their\nfellow-men and the lower creatures, and more open to influences which\nare directly divine. In these things he believed, for these he wrought\nconsistently, till his task was done.\n\nI have dwelt thus fully on the growth of Wordsworth\u2019s character, the\nmoral discipline through which he passed, and the ultimate maturity of\nsoul to which he attained, in order that we may understand his doctrine\nregarding Nature. He held that it was only through the soul that the\nouter world is rightly apprehended\u2014only when it is contemplated through\nthe human emotions of admiration, awe, and love. This he held all his\nlife through. But yet in his way of dealing with Nature, taken as a\nwhole, we shall not be wrong if we note two different, though not\nconflicting, phases. In his earlier poetic period he was mainly absorbed\nin the unity and large livingness of Nature\u2014in feeling and interpreting\nthe life that is in each individual thing, as well as in the whole, in\nsubstituting for a mere machine,\u2014a universe of death,\u2014one which\n\n            \u201cMoves with light, and light informed,\n    Actual, divine, and true.\u201d\n\nIn doing this it is not too much to say that his poetry is the most\npowerful protest which English literature contains against the views\nof the world engendered by a mechanical deism\u2014the best witness to the\nspiritual element that exists both in Nature and in man. Nor less is it\nour surest antidote to the exclusively analytic and microscopic view of\nNature, so tyrannous over present thought, the end of which is universal\ndisintegration. This was the work he did when he worked more in his\nearlier, what has been called, his naturalistic vein.\n\nIn his later period the moral tendency became predominant, not that it\nhad ever been absent from his thought. Even at a comparatively early time\nhe had been wont to take the sights and sounds of the sensible world\nas symbols and correspondences of the invisible. In 1806, hearing the\ncuckoo\u2019s voice echo from Nab-scar, as he walked on the opposite side of\nRydal Mere, he exclaimed:\u2014\n\n    \u201cHave not we too? yes, we have\n      Answers and we know not whence\n    Echoes from beyond the grave,\n      Recognized intelligence!\n\n    \u201cOften as thy inward ear\n      Catches such rebounds, beware\u2014\n    Listen, ponder, hold them dear;\n      For of God\u2014of God they are.\u201d\n\nAgain, in that Evening ode composed in 1818, to which reference has been\nalready made, as he gazes on\n\n          \u201cThe silent spectacle\u2014the gleam\u2014\n    The shadow\u2014and the peace supreme,\u201d\n\nhe exclaims\u2014\n\n    \u201cCome forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad,\n    And see to what fair countries ye are bound!\u201d\n\nIn his latest phase, as seen in the two poems of 1831, quoted above, the\nmoral has so overpowered the naturalistic mood that this spiritualizing\nof all Nature into symbols of things unseen is rather obviously obtruded\nthan delicately hinted. However this may be, to do this, to treat Nature\nin this way, so to interpret it that it shall touch the moral heart of\nthe most thoughtful and apprehensive men\u2014this is one of the two highest\nfunctions of inspired Poetry. And in the exercise of this function, too,\nWordsworth has taught us much.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt would be interesting to continue this investigation, and to trace\nthe different phases of the great movement towards Nature, as it\nmanifests itself in the poets who were Wordsworth\u2019s contemporaries,\nByron, Shelley, Keats, Scott, and Keble; and in the poets of the present\ngeneration, and in other writers still living, who in prose works\nhave treated of \u00e6sthetics. But to do so would require at least another\nvolume. With Wordsworth, however, as the great leader of that movement,\none may, with propriety, pause for the present. For however various and\ninteresting have been the aspects of Nature that have been presented by\nhis contemporaries, or by more recent poets, none of them has rendered\nthose aspects he has essayed more truly, broadly, and penetratingly. And\nWordsworth alone, adding the philosopher to the poet, has speculated\nwidely and deeply on the relation in which Nature stands, to the soul\nof man, and on the truths suggested by this relation. In that relation,\nand along the lines of thought that radiate from it, is to be found the\ntrue interpretation of Nature\u2014that interpretation which man still craves,\nafter Science has said its last word. This interpretation, however, is\na truth which can only be apprehended by the moral imagination, that\nis, the imagination filled with moral light, and which will commend\nitself only to the most thoughtful men in their most feeling moods. It\nis not likely ever to be vindicated by logical processes, or tabulated\nin scientific registers. Not the less for that is it a vital truth,\nattesting itself, as all vital truths do, by the harmony it brings into\nall our thoughts\u2014by the response it finds in the inner man.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] _Quarterly Review_, October, 1870, pp. 143, 144.\n\n[2] Wordsworth, Preface to Second Edition of _Lyrical Ballads_.\n\n[3] Myosotis Alpestris.\n\n[4] S. T. Coleridge, _Lit. Biog._ vol. ii. p. 23.\n\n[5] Since writing the above passage, I have been pleased to find in\nMr. Hamerton\u2019s _Sylvan Year_, the following passage, which expresses\nmore fully the same thought. He speaks (page 68) of \u201cthe delight of the\ncitizen in green leaves, and the intensity of sensation about Nature\nwhich we find in poets who were bred in towns; whilst those who have\nlived much in the country, though they know and observe more, seem to\nfeel more equably, and to go to Nature with less of sensuous thirst and\nexcitement.\u201d\n\n[6] _Life of Sir Isaac Newton_, by Sir David Brewster, vol. ii. pp. 407,\n408.\n\n[7] Mozley\u2019s _University Sermons_, p. 141.\n\n[8] See M\u00fcller\u2019s _Lectures on Language_, 2d series, pp. 435, 436.\n\n[9] Miss Wordsworth, p. 228.\n\n[10] Essay on Keble.\n\n[11] _Trench on Parables_, p. 13.\n\n[12] Born 1621, died 1695.\n\n[13] Dawson, _Nature and the Bible_, pp. 23, 24.\n\n[14] Odyssey, B. vii. 112; Worsley, B. vii. 17th stanza.\n\n[15] To this assertion I must make one exception. Since these remarks\nwere written, my attention has been kindly drawn by Professor Campbell of\nSt. Andrews to a passage in the ninth book of _Paradise Lost_, in which\nMilton for a moment reverts to the old rural freshness in something of\nthe manner of his youth. It is the place where the Tempter first catches\nsight of Eve:\u2014\n\n    \u201cMuch he the place admired, the person more.\n    As one who long in populous city pent,\n    Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,\n    Forth issuing on a summer\u2019s morn to breathe\n    Among the pleasant villages and farms\n    Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,\n    The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,\n    Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;\n    If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,\n    What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,\n    She most, and in her look seems all delight:\n    Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold\n    This flowery flat, the sweet recess of Eve\n    Thus early, thus alone.\u201d\n\n[16] From Dr. Clerk\u2019s new translation of Ossian.\n\n[17] How greatly to be desired is an edition of Wordsworth\u2019s entire\nworks, in which the poems should be printed in the exact chronological\norder of their composition, along with those notes on them which the\npoet dictated late in life. Such an arrangement of them is absolutely\nessential to a right understanding of their meaning, and those who desire\nto attain such an understanding are obliged to make the chronological\narrangement for themselves, at great trouble, and at best very\nimperfectly. The time when such an edition can be made, with the fullest\nmeans for accuracy, is fast passing, if it is not already past. Is there\nno hope that those in whose hands the thing lies will still render this\ngreat and much-needed service to the great poet\u2019s memory?","title":"On poetic interpretation of nature","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":65664}