INDEX. Cecilia Alford, being No. 8, se. Census of Foreign Literature- Charles Fourier and Socialism 137 218 . 386 ... 170 We have resolved on reviewing this poem at length, as the most fitting service we can render to the religious and political necessities of the present times. Advocating the most extreme principles, the author of this work is a poet of the highest rank, and of the deepest piety. What Shelley did in the republican style of versewriting, was nullified by his professed (though misnamed) Atheism. He condemned himself, and destroyed the influence of his production by the title that he assumed; but the author of the poem before us is thoroughly Miltonic in sentiment and opinion, both political and religious. Like Milton, he errs, in expecting that mere naked principle can be carried out in the social state, and that it is possible, without ultimate damage, for a society to revert to the first elements of its constitution. From such decomposition, not life, but death will ensue. And even if we grant, that in societies, as in individuals, the soul survives the dissolution of the body; we contend that it will not reanimate the same body. It will either exist as a separate spirit, or, if it should indeed be the psychological law that souls transmigrate, it will enliven another people in another land, and not the people and the land that it has once left. Both socially and individually, it is a truth, never enough however asserted, that organisation is the result of life-that the constitution of society, as we have it, is the result of a specific life; that if once dissolved, there is no re-constitution of it, as life will not supervene on organisation as a result, but precedes and pervades it in every part as a cause. Ages are required for the growth and developement of an organised social body; nor has any people at any time the power of producing a new one in a day, a week, a month, or a year, simply by an effort of will, and the promulgation of a decree. Legislative assemblies themselves, whether ordinary or extraordinary, whether old Parliament, or new National Convention, are but parts of the body, not its soul, much less its author. The writer before us, would of course be undeserving of our consideration, were it not evident, that, like Milton, he is both a poet and divine, as well as a republican; and that in his latter character, * Ernest, or Political Regeneration, in Twelve Books; London: printed for the Author, by R. Gadsden, Upper St. Martin's Lane, 1839. [unpublished.] |