as What can heaven show more?" "Thrones, and imperial powers, offspring of Ethereal virtues, or these titles now Princes of hell?" character of cach-to do this, in spite | terranean riches of hell, have asked the of the dignified and somewhat unwieldy questioncharacter of his style-to avoid insipidity of excellence in his seraphs, and inOr who but Beelzebub, the Metternich sipidity of horror in his fiends-to keep of Pandemonium, would have commenced them erect and undwindled, whether in his oration with such grave, terrific irony the presence of Satan on the one side, or of Messiah on the other-was a problem requiring skill as well as daring, dramatic as well as epic powers. No mere mannerist could have succeeded in it. Yet, what vivid portraits has he drawn of Michael, Raphael (how like, in their difference from each other, as well as in Shakspere could have done a similar their names, to the two great Italian feat, by creating five men, all husbands, painters!), Abdiel, Uriel, Beelzebub, Mo- all black, and all jealous of their white loch, Belial, Mammon-all perfectly dis- wives; or else, five human fiends, all tinct-all speaking a leviathan language, white, all Italian, and all eager to throw which in all, however, is modified by the salt and gunpowder on the rising flame character of each, and in none sinks into of jealousy, and yet each distinct from mannerism. If Milton had not been the our present Othello and Iago; and this greatest of epic poets, he might have Shakspere might have done, and done been the second of dramatists. Macau- with ease, though he did it not. lay has admirably shown how, or rather, Perhaps, to settle the place and comthat Shakspere has preserved the distinc-parative merit of the "Paradise Lost," is tion between similar characters, such as an attempt which appears more difficult Hotspur and Falconbridge; and conced- than it really is. Milton himself may ed even to Madame d'Arblay a portion have, and has, a considerable number of of the same power, in depicting several competitors, and, in our judgment, two individuals, all young, all clever, all superiors-Shakspere and Dante. His clergymen, all in love, and yet all unlike work can be compared properly to but each other. But Milton has performed two others-the "Iliad" and the "Dia much more difficult achievement. He has represented five devils, all fallen, all eloquent, all in torment, hate, and hell, and yet all so distinct that you could with difficulty interchange a line of the utterances of each. None but Satan, the incarnation of egotism, could have said "My sentence is for open war." vina Comedia." These are the first three among the productions of imaginative genius. Like Ben Nevis, Ben Macdhui, and Cairntoul, still contesting, it is said, the sovereignty of Scotland's hills (now rising above, and now sinking below, each other, like three waves of the sea), seem those surpassing masterpieces. We cannot, in our limits, even enter into a field so wide as the discussion of all the grounds on which we prefer the English poem. It is not because it is of later date than both, and yet as original as either. Time should never be taken into None but Belial-the subtle, far-re-account when we speak of an immortal volving fiend-could have spoken of "Those thoughts that wander through eternity." None but Mammon, the down-looking demon, would ever, alluding to the sub work; what matters it whether it was written in the morning, in the evening, or at noon? It is not that it was written amid danger and darkness-who knows how Homer fared as he rhapsodised the "Iliad?" or who knows not that Dante found in his poem the escape of im- installed in cathedrals and illustrated by measurable sorrow? It is not (Warton old martyrdoms-he threw himself, the notwithstanding) that it has borrowed so flower of elegance, on the side of the much from Scripture: such glorious span- reeking conventicle- the side of hugles we are ready to shear off, and deduct, manity, unlearned and unadorned." It in our estimate of the poen's greatness. was a life of labour and toil; labour and It is not that it bears unequivocal traces toil unrewarded, save by the secret sunof a higher path of genius, or that it shine of his own breast, filled with the is more highly or equally finished. But consciousness of divine approbation, and it is that, begun with a nobler purpose, hearing from afar the voice of universal and all but equal powers, it has called future fame. It was a life of purity. down, therefore, a mightier inspiration. Even in his youth, and in the countries Homer's spur to write or rhapsodise was of the South, he seems to have remained that which sends the war-horse upon the entirely unsullied. Athough no anchospears; and the glory of the "Iliad" is rite, he was temperate to a degree, saying, that of a garment rolled in blood. In with John Elliot, "Wine is a noble, geDante, the sting is that of personal an-nerous liquor, and we should be thankful guish, and the acmé of his poem is in for it, but water was made before it.” the depth of hell-a hell which he has Rapid in his meals, he was never weary replenished with his focs. Milton, in of the refreshment of music; his favourfact, as well as in figure, wrote his work ite instrument, as might have been exto vindicate the "ways of God to men;" pected, being the organ. It was a life and this purpose never relinquished-not perfect: there were spots on his fame, penetrating the whole poem straight as acerbities of temper, harshness of lana ray passing through an unrefracting guage, which proved him human, and medium, gathering around it every severe grappled him with difficulty to earth, magnificence and beauty, attracting from like a vast balloon recalled ere it takes on high, from the very altar of celestial its bound upwards. It was in some incense, burning coals of inspiration-becomes at last the poem's inaccessible and immortal crown. measure a complete life, not a tantalising fragment, nor separated segment; but it evolved as gradually and certainly as a Let us glance for a moment, ere we piece of solemn music. It was the life close, at what was even finer than Mil- of a patriot, faithful found among the ton's transcendent genius-his character. faithless, faithful only he; and Abdiel, His life was a great epic itself; Byron's that dreadless angel, is just Milton translife was a tragi-comedy; Sheridan's was ferred to the skies. It was, above all, a brilliant farce; Shelley's was a wild, the life of a Christian-yes, the life of a mad, stormy tragedy, like one of Nat Christian, although the Evangelical AlLee's; Keats' life was a sad, brief, beau- liance would now shut its door in his tiful lyric; Moore's has been a love-song; face. It was a life of prayer, of faith, of Coleridge's was a Midsummer Night's meek dependence, of perpetual communDream;" Schiller's was a harsh, difficult, ing with Heaven. Milton's piety was wailing, but ultimately victorious war- not a hollow form, not a traditional ode, like one of Pindar's; Goethe's was cant, not a bigotry, not the relict merely a brilliant, somewhat melodramatic, but of youthful impression, as of a fall refinished novel; Tasso's was an elegy; but ceived in childhood: it was founded on Milton, and Milton alone, acted as well personal inquiry; it was at once sincere as wrote an epic complete in all parts and enlightened, strict and liberal; it high, grave, sustained, majestic. His was practical, and pressed on his every life was a self-denied life. "Suscep- action and word, like the shadow of an tible," says one, "as Burke, to the at- unseen presence. Hence was his soul tractions of historical prescription, of cheered in sorrow and blindness, the rovalty, of chivalry, of an ancient church, more as he lived in daily, hourly ex pectation of Him whom he called "the be preserved in celestial archives, as speshortly-expected King," who, rending the cimens and memorials of extinguished heavens, was to, and shall yet, give him worlds; and, if such there be, surely one a house from heaven, where they that look of them must be the "Paradise Lost." out at the windows are not darkened. In fine, we tell not our readers to imiThus faintly have we pictured John tate Milton's genius-that may be too Milton. Forgive us, mighty shade! wher- high a thing for them; but to imitate his ever thou art, mingling in whatever choir life-the patriotism, the sincerity, the of adoring spirits, or engaged in whatever manliness, the purity, and the piety of exalted ministerial service above, or whe- his character. When considering him ther present now among those "millions and the other men of his day, we are of spiritual creatures which walk the tempted to say, "There were giants in earth," forgive us the feebleness, for the those days,” while we have fallen on the sake of the sincerity, of the offering; and days of little men; nay, to cry out with reject it not from that cloud of incense her of old, "I saw gods ascending from which, with enlarging volume and deepen- the earth, and one of them is like to an ing fragrance, is ascending to thy name old man whose face is covered with a from every country and in every language! mantle." In these days of rapid and uniWe say, with enlarging volume, for the versal change, what need for a spirit so fame of Milton must not only continue, pure, so wise, so sincere, and so gifted, but extend. And perhaps the day may as his! and who will not join in the lancome, when, after the sun of British em-guage of Wordsworth: pire is set, and Great Britain has become as Babylon and as Tyre, and even after its language has ceased to be a living tongue, the works of Milton and of Shakspere shall alone preserve it; for these belong to no country and to no age, but to all countries and all ages-to all ages of time, to all cycles of eternity. Some books may survive the last burning, and Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour. England hath need of thee. She is a fen Thy soul was like a star; and dwelt apart; BURNS.* THIS is, if not by any means the ablest, | demur, and to say, "Coram haud judice,” yet perhaps, on the whole, the most com- or in plainer Latin, "Ne sutor ultra creplete, satisfactory, and impartial life of pidam." Burns. We say life; for while admit- Burns' biographers, like those of Napoting the general faithfulness of its details, leon, might form quite a gallery by themwe do not, by any means, subscribe to it selves. There was first the amiable, senas a final estimate of his genius or cha-sible, and accomplished Currie-a man racter. As long as Mr Chambers details with considerable mind, and a still larger facts, and sifts evidence, we listen to heart-who loved Burns, if he did not him-reputed author of the "Vestiges" thoroughly know him; and whose verathough he be-with respect and confidence; but when he analyses poetry, or tries to form a comprehensive verdict on genius or morale, we are often compelled to * Complete Works and Life of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers. city, as the recording angel of his errors, has been at length, in the main, confirmed. There was next the unfortunate Heron, a cleverish scamp; the Richard Savage, or Edgar Poe of Scotland-without equal power-whom Burns had ad More interesting than even the professed biographies, have been the criticisms which men of genius, in more countries than one, have written on Burns. Scarce one of his biographers can be compared for a moment in genius to such critics as Jeffrey, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Wilson, Carlyle, and Thomas Aird, all of whom have, in their different dialects, and from their different points of view, written ably on the Scottish poet. Jeffrey's criticism is rather cold and captious, and not what it would have been had he met with the bright-eyed bard, instead of simply seeing him once on the Edinburgh streets. mitted to some of his guilty confidences, | this, Gilbert Burns had edited an edition of and who felt a very natural desire to pull his poems, and had called in James Gray the Scottish poet down entirely to his and Findlater to defend the poet's characown level-an attempt not successful; ter. In 1843 the prurient taste of the for although Burns was often a great fool public was gratified by the publication of and a great sinner, his genius and his the letters of Burns and Clarinda; a colpride combined to preserve him from be- lection which reflected little credit upon coming the monstrous mixture of habi- either party. And now Robert Chambers tual folly, vice, improvidence, and vanity, seems to have gathered up in these four which drowned the little gift which was baskets the remainder of all that can be in Heron. Then came our old friend published of the poetry, prose, or incidents Josiah Walker, one of the most amiable in the life of Robert Burns. and kindly of men, as all who knew him, as their Humanity professor in Glasgow College, can testify; accomplished, too, and learned, but who committed two great blunders in his life-first of all, he published a bad poem, and secondly, he wrote a middling life of a good poet. The "Defence of Order" was mercilessly and somewhat heartlessly mangled by Brougham, then the hangman of the "Edinburgh Review," and his life of Burns has more recently quivered under the knout of Christopher North. Both were in different measures too severe. Walker was in every way a most respectable man, wrote elegantly, and was animated by a most kindly feeling toward the memory of the Scottish bard. Hogg, too, if we are not greatly mistaken, and we think also Galt, who wrote on everything, both perpetrated lives of Burns, which we never read, and which are totally forgotten by the world. Lockhart's life came forth in "Constable's Miscellany," and excited great expectation. He was limited, however, in space, and perhaps in time. He does not seem to have taken the trouble of much personal investigation; and the work thus became rather a thick and vigorous inscription than a full or conclusive life, and is chiefly now remembered for some striking passages, and because it formed a text to Carlyle's celebrated critique in the "Edinburgh." Allan Cunningham contributed next an interesting, rambling, hairum-scairum sort of biography, containing a number of new facts in Burns' history, and written in an easy style, as if the author had been recounting the incidents of a comedy, and not of deep and painful tragedy. Previous to a He He is right in finding not only coarseness, but vulgarity, in Burns' letters and conduct; but wrong in not admitting the powerful plea which his circumstances and education present in his behalf. had never learned to hold the pen so gracefully as he held the sickle. On the riggs of corn, or "following his plough upon the mountain-side," he was one of God's gentlemen-it was otherwise in the factitious and heated saloons of fashionable society. Jeffrey was too much of an artificial, and an Edinburgh man, to appreciate the genius of Burns; and his critique might be called "Edinburgh's last kick at the lion whom she first spoiled, and then spurned." Hazlitt has some beautiful remarks on the poet in his lectures. Wordsworth wrote a long and ingenious apology for his conduct in a letter to James Gray. Wilson's tribute, hovering between a life, a criticism, and an apology, is one of the most splendid pieces of panegyric in the world. It gushes on like a great river, now gliding at its own sweet will, now sporting in shal lows, and now rushing, red with poetic fury, would have led to fixed purpose; and had Purpose come, a high and noble life had succeeded. Principle may be called the root, Purpose the trunk, and a true Life the flower of the tree of man. Wanting firm moral or religious principle, it became Burns' great object to gratify the two main desires of his nature, which were till Corra Linn is deafened, and Foyers cries for quarter in the fell uproar. It is by no means, however, a just and impartial estimate of the character of the man. Carlyle has gone to his task in a graver and more plaintive spirit; and his paper is the true monody for poor Burns. Aird has often, in his "Old Bachelor" and first, to be distinguished; and, second, elsewhere, touched with the most tender to indulge his pleasure-seeking passions. truthfulness on points in Burns' history "God gave him what he sought," for a and poems; and his defence of the Burns season; but "sent leanness to his soul." Festival, transferred from his paper to Even when a mere youth, his wit and Blackwood," was worth all the speeches genius made him the "crack of the counat that entertainment together. Even try-side;" the oracle of smithies, roups, after all this splendid deluge of criticism, churchyards between sermons, not to we could have wished that Campbell had speak of balls, mason-lodges, and dancenlarged his estimate, or at least finished ing-assemblies. Early, too, the grim more highly the miniature he has drawn; Hypochondria, destined afterwards to and that Charles Lamb and Coleridge had blacken so many of his hours, began, atgiven us in full their mind of the Ayrshire tended probably, too, by the hell-dogs of ploughman. Remorse, to assail him. Through this incipient darkness, and above those selfish ob Coming after such reapers, it were vain to expect more than a few stray glean-jects, there shone, indeed, ever and anon, ings in the field. We would in our future remarks speak, first, of Burns as a man; secondly, of his general powers, and his place as a writer; thirdly, of his poems and prose writings individually; and, fourthly, of the influence he has exerted, and is exerting, on Scotland and the world. In all this our great aim is perfect impartiality. noble gleams of enthusiasm. He warmly loved nature then as ever; and it is singular to think of a feeling so pure surviving in the company of black and polluting passions in his bosom to the last. How he hung over the yellow broom; how he joyed as at eve he listed the linnet, or the cushat, or the corncraik; and how his soul rose beside the groaning trees of Burns' great want, as a man, was that a wind-swept plantation to Him that of fixed principle. He had a warm heart, "walketh on the wings of the wind!" a generous disposition, pity and com- His patriotic enthusiasm also was inpassion "soft as sinews of the new-born tense; and it, as he had prophesied, conbabe," wide and trembling sympathies, tinued to "boil on in his bosom till the and impulses of higher mood, which gave flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." the early promise, not only of wisdom, In poetry, and all the books within his but of piety. He was also a sincerely reach, he revelled with sincere and exhonest and truehearted man; and as quisite delight; and never was there one brave as he was sincere. But he pos- who loved literature more warmly, or sessed, besides all this, passions and ima- more for its own sake. Pure, too, in ginative tendencies more than commen- general, was the love that beat in his surate with his good qualities of heart manly breast; and many of his meetings and his powerful faculties of mind; and at the trysting-tree were as blameless as in which deep dangers lurked, like lions the assignations of spirits. Nevertheless, "slumbering near a fount." To counter- all this was only the bright foam; the act these, or rather to subdue them into current below ran deeply toward the peaceful harmony with his better and point of self-seeking-the seeking of aghigher nature, Principle was the one grandisement for his pride, and of pleathing needful. Had it been present, it sure for his senses. |