family of mirth!) should be witnessed again on earth! "Comic Annuals" there mark the still procession of the years? The death of a "Alas! poor Yorick. Where now thy humorist, as the first serious epoch in his squibs!thy quiddities?-thy flashes history, is a very sad event. In Hood's that wont to set the table in a roar? case, however, we have this consolation: Quite chopfallen ?" The death of a man a mere humorist he was not, but a sinof mirth has to us a drearier significance cere lover of his race-a hearty friend to than that of a more sombre spirit. He their freedom and welfare-a deep sympasses into the other world as into a re-pathiser with their sufferings and sorrows; gion where his heart had been translated and, if he did not to the full consecrate long before. To death, as to a nobler his high faculties to their service, surely birth, had he looked forward; and when his circumstances as much as himself it comes his spirit readily and cheerfully were to blame. Writing, as we are, in yields to it, as one great thought in the Dundee, where he spent some of his soul submits to be displaced and dark- early days, and which never ceased to ened by a greater. To him death had possess associations of interest to his lost its terrors, at the same time that mind; and owing, as we do, to him a life had lost its charms. But " can a debt of much pleasure, and of some feelghost laugh or shake his gaunt sides?"-ings higher still, we cannot but take leave is there wit any more than wisdom in the of his writings with every sentiment of adgrave?-do puns there crackle?—or do miration and gratitude. ROBERT POLLOK. OUR readers are aware that there once taking up one of our old hymn-books, existed a strong prejudice against what and comparing it, in its pert jingle and was called religious poetry. The causes impudent familiarities, to the strains of this feeling were long to tell and weari- which once did sweet in Zion glide," to some to trace. Not the least of them was our own rough but manly version of the the authority of Dr Johnson, who, though Psalms, or to the later hymns of Cowper enamoured of the sanctimonious stupidity and Montgomery. It is like a twopenny of Blackmore, had yet an inveterate pre- trump, or a musical snuff-box, beside the judice against religious poetry per se, and lyre of David, or the organ of Isaiah. was at the pains to enshrine this "folly And just when the splendid success of of the wise" in some of the tersest and Cowper, Montgomery, and others, had most energetic sentences which ever wiped out this bad impression of redropped from his authoritative pen. An- ligious poetry, and when the oracular other cause lay, we think, in the supreme dogma of the lexicographer was dying badness of the greater part of the soi- into echo, a new source of prejudice was disant poetry which professed to be opened in the uprise of a set of prereligious. Lumbering versions of the tended pious poets, or poetasters-who winged words of inspired men of God-approaching the horns of the altar, not verses steeped in maudlin sentiment, only held, but tugged with all their when not touched into convulsive life by might-who treated divine things with fanaticism-hymns, how different from the utmost coolness of familiarity-rushthose of Milton or of the Catholic li-ing within the hallowed circle of Scriptany, full of sickly unction, or of babyish | ture truth to snatch a selfish excitement prattle;—such was, during the eighteenth-passing their own tame thoughts across century, the staple of our sacred song, the flame of the sanctuary, if they might If any one thinks our statement over- thus kindle them into life; and doing all charged, let him put it to the test, by in their power to render the great little, the reverend ridiculous, and the divine mental training, or even formed the first disgusting. These mock Miltons, though vague dream of a magnum opus, his was they had established a railway communi- resolved, revolved, rolled over in his mind cation with the lower regions, and took for years, written, re-written, published, monthly "Descents into hell," were quite praised, and the author himself was intimate with the angel Gabriel, and away! Was not this much? And whatconflagrated the creation as coolly as you ever malignity may say or "shriek,” the would set up a rocket-made no very mere unbounded and unequalled podeep impression upon the public mind. pularity of the book does prove a little Dismay and disgust, dying into laughter, more. We, indeed, look upon the ninewere the abiding feeling with which they teenth century as a very young century were regarded. And we know no better in the world's history-as but a babe in proof of Robert Pollok's essential su- leading-strings. Still we do not think periority, than the fact, that his poem, so little of it, after all, as to deem that amid the general nausea of such things, a tissue of wordy worthlessness would has retained its place; that the sins of run like wildfire-pass through some his imitators have not been visited on his head; and that, while their tiny tapers have been all eclipsed, his solemn star shines on undimmed, reminding us, in its sombre splendour, of Mars, that dark red hermit of the heavens. score of editions in less than eighteen years, and take its place, if not with the "Paradise Lost," with which it ought never to be named, yet certainly near the "Grave" and the "Night Thoughts." Let those who, in the face of the general estimate of a tolerably enlightened public, In examining Pollok's character as a deny the "Course of Time" any merit, poet, we are greatly helped by the com- be, as De Quincey says on another ocpact unity of his actual achievement. casion, "choked with their own bile!" When we speak of Pollok, we mean the There were, indeed, we admit, certain "Course of Time." He did not, like circumstances which, in some measure, many of greater mark, fritter down his explained the popularity of the poem powers in fugitive effusions. He is not apart altogether from its intrinsic merit. remembered or forgotten as the author First of all, it was a religious poem, and of literary remains, occasional essays, or this at once awakened a wide and warm posthumous fragments. He has incon-interest in its favour. Galled by the testably written a book aspiring to com- godless ridicule of Byron, and chagrined pleteness, of proud pretensions, hewn out by what they thought the vague and of the quarry of his own soul, begun mystic piety of the Lakers, the religious early, prosecuted with heroic persever-community hailed the appearance of a ance, and cemented by his own life's- new and true poet, who was ashamed of blood. Whatever we may think of the none of the peculiarities of one of the design or the execution, of the taste or straitest of all their sects, with a tuthe style, honour to the man who, in mult of applause. It was besides, a poem this age of fragments, and fractions of by a Dissenter. And between the gentle fragments, and first drafts, and tentative but timid genius of Michael Bruce, and and tantalising experiments, has written the far more energetic song of Pollok, no an undeniable book! Nor let us forget poetry deserving the name had been prothe age of the writer. The fact, that duced among them. It was natural, a youth so impressed, by one effort of therefore, that when, at length, a brilhis mind, many, who were not straight-liant star broke forth in their firmament, way deemed insane, as to draw forth the they should salute its arrival with lawdaring of equalling him with Milton, and ful and general pride. A few, indeed, of his work with "Paradise Lost," speaks the more malignant of those who found much in its favour. Ere the majority themselves eclipsed, felt hatred, and preof educated men have completed their tended to feel contempt, for the poem. But the principal cause of its popularity | berate daubings, there was, nevertheless, was the premature death of the poet. a soul in the entire picture an Eye This lent instantly a consecrating magic looking forth from it which followed, to its every line passed over it like a pierced, and detained you. Another pitying hand, hiding its bulky faults-striking quality was its truth. Here caused the poisoned arrows of many an was an honest, earnest man, talking to intended critic to fall powerless from his you, in solemn tones, of the most solemn grasp aroused a tide of universal sym- things, and believing every word which pathy, and sympathy is akin to applause he uttered. The awful truths of our -put, in a word, the copestone on its faith had made, early, a profound imprestriumph. Still the book had much merit sion upon his mind. The doctrine of of its own. It was, in the first place, on future punishment, especially, had seized the whole, an original production. There hold on his imagination, as with iron were, it is true, as in all youthful works, talons, and had found a fit commentary traces of resemblance, and even imitation in the wild and desolate scenery where of favourite authors. Here Milton's ma- his infancy was nurtured. He never, for jestic tones and awful sanctity were emu- a moment, falters in pronouncing the tidlated; there, a shadow of a shade of ings of wo against transgressors: he is Dante's terrible gloom was caught. In full of the terrors of the Lord; and, with another place, the epigrammatic turns of prophetic earnestness, and prophetic seYoung were less successfully mimicked. verity, he voices them fearlessly forth, Many passages resembled Blair's "Grave," and we seem to hear the thunder talking in their rough vigour of style and unspar- to us of the eternal decrees, and describing anatomy of human feelings and foibles. ing to us the everlasting burnings. His Cowper's sarcasm and strong simplicity descriptions of hell show a man who had had also been studied to some pur-long brooded over the overwhelming pose. Nor had the author feared to thought-who had rolled the red idea in sharpen his holy weapons at the forge of the furnace of his mind, till it was roundByron-that Philistine, who had come ed into fearful distinctness of shape and forth to defy the armies of the living symmetry-who had studied the scenery God. Of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and of Pandemonium, under the canopy of Shelley, he seemed to know little, else, the thunder-cloud, in lone and wizard perhaps, his tone had been more ethereal, glens, in desolate moors, in sullen tarns, and his verse more harmonious. And miniatures of the "last lake of God's yet, notwithstanding such resemblances, wrath," in midnight dream, and drearier and conscious or unconscious imitations, midnight wakefulness on his own pillow. you felt, from the first, that you had to And all such dark broodings he has coldo with a man who thought, and looked, lected and condensed into the savage and wrote for himself. A strong and figures which he has sculptured on the searching intellect looked out on you wall of the dwelling-place of the second from the whole poem. And, scattered death. And his pictures of punishment, throughout, in nooks and corners of its though often tasteless, exaggerated, and scathed surface, were gleams of genuine unideal, are redeemed by their intense genius-touches of natural pathos - and burning sincerity. There is, indeed, strange and wild imaginings-rays of around the whole poem, what we may strong truthfulness in moral sentiment call a flush of hectic truth; and you fancy -lines memorable as if written in red mind and body crumbling down a step characters, which, even more than its further to the tomb, in every succeeding long and laboured passages, "gave the syllable of the sepulchral work. We find world assurance of a man." And thus, the same quality in a work of far more though the design was somewhat clumsy, artistic though fragmentary merit—writand the painting coarse, and some parts ten, too, by a dying hand (namely, "Hyof the execution little better than deli-perion")-where the splendours are all -- hectic, and the power projected forward tone of some of its authors. We attrifrom eternity. bute in part the prejudice which exThe next quality we find in the "Course ists against religion, to the severe and of Time" is its gloomy cast and tone. sombre light in which many of its poets Save the "Night Thoughts," and still constantly represent that gospel, which more the "Inferno," it is the most mourn-means, "News that it is well." A few, ful of books. A load of darkness lies by the infused blackness of their own upon the whole. In vain he struggles to bile, have turned the fountain of the smile: his smiles remind you of those water of life into a Marah-the river of which hideously disguise the tortures of salvation into an Acheron-and have cast the wrack-writhen victim. His sarcasms the shadow of their own disappointment, are searing; his invectives Tartarean; and, or disquiet, or disgust, upon the crystal to our minds, the enumeration of the transparency of the Sea of Glass and the pleasures of earth, in the fifth book, is golden pavement of the City of Glory! the most melancholy passage of the poem. Thus has Dante carried the gloom of GeIt is a cold forced labouring against the henna with him into the heaven of heagrain. It is a collection of dead joys, vens, and dared to darken with his frown pumped up artificially, not welling freely the throne of the universe. Thus has forth from a glad soul. How different Young breathed up his own personal sorfrom "L'Allegro," or even Byron's enu- row upon the midnight sky, and seen the meration of sweets. So faded and forlorn stars, those bright milestones on the way are the pleasures he recounts, that you to immortality, through the mist of his hardly wonder that he introduces among own burning tears. Thus has Cowper them a description of a sister's death-bed. seen little in Scripture save the grim reAnd when he tries, at the close, to sing flection of his own mania, and read it the millennial glory, his harp seems to chiefly as the charter of his perdition. refuse its office; and, as if prophetically And thus has Pollok discoloured the long conscious of the after-arrear of woes, it is track of millennial day by the shadow "turned into mourning, and into the of his personal melancholy, leaving the voice of those that weep." The poet's "Pleasures of Piety" to be sung by a far fingers seem paralysed-able only to take feebler minstrel. down a large geography, whence to trans- The book, again, is remarkable for its cribe the names of the nations who shall lofty and daring tone. Perhaps, indeed, come to its light, but not to roll out this is a blemish rather than a beauty. the full diapason of a world's joy. The Milton was lofty, because he could not gloom of Pollok's poetry is evidently, like help it. Sublimity is the shadow of his Dante's, indigenous. The darkness of soul. It falls off gigantic from all his moMilton's mind sprung from excess of tions. He was daring, because in his glolight; Blair's was the result of subject; rious blindness the veil between heaven Young's of circumstances; Cowper's of and earth was dropped. The medium of nervous disease; whereas Pollok's is flung the interjacent universe was removed. from the forehead of his soul. It is no Heaven became his mind's home, and he acquired or affected melancholy: like one might be said to "lie in Abraham's bosom of the stars described by Origen, he "rays all the year." Dante's daring is that of a out darkness" from the central gloom of wounded and desperate spirit, treading his own heart; and not only the flowers upon terrible thoughts as upon burning of earth, but the splendours of heaven, ploughshares; with frightful accuracy and crossed by the wind of his spirit, "darken minuteness, writing the diary, and belike water in the breeze." Now, we re- coming the De Foe of Perdition. In all gret exceedingly that he had not done the calm of disgust and hopelessness, he more justice to the bright side of the pic-treads alike the marvellous light of heature. Christianity has been considerably ven, the twilight of purgatory, and the injured by the melancholy and miserable gloom of that "other place." About Pol lok's loftiness, there lies an air of effort; revolving round the throne of God, and and about his daring, a slight taint of the other in Scott's "Christian Life" (a presumption. A youth, though of "great book much in favour with Pollok), where religious soul, retired in voluntary lone- all things evil and abhorred are described liness, and dipping oft his pen to write as "pressing down by necessity of their immortal things," may not be permitted own nature," in search of some hidden the privileges of an old demigod of song, magnet. How many efforts has the huwhose sole sun was the Schekinah, and man mind made to figure to itself that whose only stars were the eyes of angels vastitude of material existence which is looking in upon his holy darkness; or of above, and below, and around it! And a deep-browed, eagle-eyed Italian, who, how few even approach to the grandeur after his poem appeared, was pointed out of the subject! Orreries are contempin the streets as the "man who had been tible; at best pretty playthings. Worse in hell." Still, if overdaring, he is ori- still the image of a vast machine, as if ginal in his aspirings. His hell is not space were only an enormous factory. Milton's hell, nor Quevedo's, nor Dante's, Somewhat better the image of an imnor Bunyan's. It is Pollok's own; and mense book-the stars letters, the concame to him in the night visions of his stellations words, and the firmaments own spirit. We envy him not his pro- leaves of glory. Better still, the fine perty in the two terrible figures on the thought of Campbell, if it indeed origiwall of the place. These are miscrea-nated with him. Another, partly sugtions; spasmodic beyond the worst of gested by the old Scandinavian idea, Michael Angelo's. How far inferior to came forcibly on us once while riding that one inscription in Dante, "Who through dark fir woods in a moonlight enters here leaves hope behind." Sub- autumn night: why not call the creation stantially the two (the Worm that dieth a tree, its root the throne, its leaves the not, and Eternal Death) are the same stars, earth one withered leaf amid the thing; and yet, after describing at full green constellations, growing upwards tolength the first, he says of the second, wards boundless, measureless perfection, as if it were worse, "For ever unde- and the music of the spheres just the scribed let it remain." Both, neverthe- waving of the eternal boughs, in the one less, are the product of his own mind. windlike spirit which pervades them all? His heaven, too, is the building of his So, streaming up from the uncreated root own genius; and his conception of wastes which we call the First cause, does creation and wildernesses existing even there is germinate, and for ever grow! Pollok's one of the finest in the poem: one gifted book, too, is remarkable in general for its spirit we know loved it for nothing else. clearness and simplicity of thought and His angels and devils play no conspi- style; so much so, that we almost long cuous or important part. Perhaps the for a little more of that fine German first are too prying and curious to be mysticism, without which it is, perhaps, sublime: the others too hateful to excite after all, impossible to speak of the our sympathies. His pictures of earth, deepest and the loftiest-of eternity, its scenery, and its characters, are too space, night, infinitude. This element dark to be true. His conception of the is too rare for Pollok's wing. When he universe, as possessed of two centres tries to be obscure and profound, his the one drawing up its subject orbs in fluttering is, to use his own term, "unthe direction of heaven, and the other earthly." Nay, sometimes, like Satan sucking down sinners to where "attrac- in the war of chaotic elements, he plumps tion turns the other way, and all things down, fathoms and fathoms more, into a to some infernal centre tend”—is com- vague, void, and unimaginative darkness. pounded of two images or theories, one Many of Milton's lines he might have occurring in Campbell's "Pleasures of written; but how far above the path of Hope," where the creation is represented his genius were such words as these, |