Chapter XIII (6)

The Glen, you know, is haunted; and sometimes when the green umbrage is beginning to look grey in the still evening, I have more than a glimpse of the Faery Queen.

SEWARD.

Perhaps we intrude on your dreams. Let us retire.

NORTH.

Take your seats. What Book is that, beneath your arm, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

The Volume you bid me bring with me this Evening to the Wren's Nest.

NORTH.

Yes, yes--now I remember. You are here by appointment.

TALBOYS.

Else had we not been here. We had not merely your permission, sir--but your invitation.

NORTH.

I was expecting you--and by hands unseen this our Round Table has been spread for my guests. Pretty coffee-cups, are they not? Ask no questions--there they are--but handle them gently--for the porcelain is delicate--and at rude touch will disappear from your fingers. A Book. Ay, ay--a Quarto--and by a writer of deserved Fame.

SEWARD.

We are dissatisfied with it, sir. Dugald Stewart is hard on the POET, and we desire to hear a vindication from our Master's lips.

NORTH.

Master! We are all pupils Of THE POET. He is the Master of us all. Talboys, read out--and begin at the beginning.

TALBOYS.

"In entering on this subject, it is proper to observe, that the word POET is not here used in that restricted sense in which it is commonly employed; but in its original acceptation of Maker, or Creator. In plainer language, it is used to comprehend all those who devote themselves to the culture of the Arts which are addressed to the Imagination; and in whose minds it may be presumed Imagination has acquired a more than ordinary sway over the other powers of the Understanding. By using the word in such a latitude, we shall be enabled to generalise the observations which might otherwise seem applicable merely to the different classes of versifiers."

NORTH.

That Mr. Stewart should, as a Philosopher, mark the liberal and magnanimous, and metaphysical large acceptation of the Name is right and good. But look at his Note.

TALBOYS.

"For this latitude in the use of the word POET, I may plead the example of Bacon and d'Alembert, the former of whom (_De Aug. Scient._, lib. xi. cap. 1) comprehends under Poetry all fables or fictitious histories, whether in prose or verse; while the latter includes in it painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and their different divisions."

NORTH.

"I may plead the example" appears to me a somewhat pompous expression to signify that you have (very properly) adopted one doctrine of one of the wisest, and another of one of the ablest of men. But he does not seem to know that d'Alembert might have "pleaded the example" of Aristotle in "including painting, sculpture," &c. "Poetry," says the Stagyrite, "consists in imitation, and the imitation may be by pictures, sculpture, and the like." It is ®mimêsis®--and it is Man's nature to rejoice in imitation--®chairein tois mimêmasin®. But a singular and illustrative trait in Mr Stewart's treatment of the subject is, that though he thus, at the outset, enlarges the Poet into the Painter, the Sculptor, &c., yet throughout the whole composition, (I know not if an incidental word may anywhere occur as an exception,) every point of the argument regards the Poet in words and verse! In what frame of understanding could--did he put this Head to these fragments of limbs?

BULLER.

In the name of the Prophet--FIGS!

NORTH.

I am more than half disposed to hint an objection to the use of the words "sway over the other powers." We should have said--and we do say, "predominance amongst the other powers." I see in "sway" two meanings: first, a right meaning, or truth, not well expressed; to wit, in thinking poetically--for his art, whatever it may be--or out of his art--the Poet's other faculties minister to his Imagination. She reigns. They _conform_ their operations to hers. This manner of intellectual action happens in all men, more or less, oftener or seldomer; in the Poet--of what Art soever--upon each occasion, with much more decision and eminence, and more habitually. But secondly, a wrong meaning, or error, is better expressed by the word "sway," to wit, that Imagination in the Poet _illegitimately overbears_ the other intellectual powers, as judgment, attention, reflection, memory, prudence. Now, you may say that every power that is given in great strength, _tends_ to overbear unduly the other powers. The syllogistic faculty does--the faculty of observation does--memory does--and so a power _unbalanced_ may appear as a weakness--as wealth ruins a fool. But in the just dispensation of nature every power is a power, and to the mind which she constitutes for greatness she gives _balanced_ powers. Giving one in large measure--say Imagination--she gives as large the directly antagonistic power--say the Intellective, the Logical; or she balances by a mass of powers. I suspect that the undue over-swaying was in Stewart's mind, and has probably distorted his language. I know that Genius is the combination of ten faculties.

SEWARD.

Our expectations were raised to a high pitch by such grandiloquent announcement: and we have found in the Essay--which is unscientific in form--has no method--makes no progress--and is throughout a jumble,--not one bold or original thought.

BULLER.

Too much occupied with exposure of vulgar errors--and instances beneath the matter in hand. Great part too--_extra thesin_.

SEWARD.

You expect great things from the title--the Idea of the POET. You then see that Mr Stewart after all does not intend this, but only certain influences, moral and intellectual, of characteristic pursuits. This, if rightly and fully done, would have _involved_ the Idea--and so a portraiture indirect and incidental--still the features and their proportion. Instead of the Idea, you find--

BULLER.

I don't know what.

TALBOYS.

The reader is made unhappy, first, by defect, or the absence of principal features--then by degradation, or the low contemplation--and by the general tenor.

NORTH.

Why, perhaps, you had better return the Quarto to its shelf in the Van. Yet 'twould be a pity, too, to do so. I am for always keeping our engagements; and as we agreed to have a talk about the Section this evening, let us have a talk. Read away, Talboys--at the very next Paragraph.

TALBOYS.

"The culture of Imagination does not diminish our interest in human life, but is extremely apt to inspire the mind with false conceptions of it. As this faculty derives its chief gratification from picturing to itself things more perfect than what exist, it has a tendency to exalt our expectations above the level of our present condition, and frequently produces a youth of enthusiastic hopes, while it stores up disappointment and disgust for maturer years. In general, it is the characteristic of a poetical mind to be sanguine in its prospects of futurity--a disposition extremely useful when seconded by great activity and industry, but which, when accompanied, as it too frequently is, with indolence, and with an overweening self-conceit, is the source of numberless misfortunes."

BULLER.

Why, all this is--

NORTH.

Stop. Read on, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

"A thoughtlessness and imprudence with respect to the future, and a general imprudence in the conduct of life, has been often laid to the charge of Poets. Horace represents them as too much engrossed and intoxicated with their favourite pursuits to think of anything else--

BULLER.

Leave out the quotation from old Flaccus--and go on.

TALBOYS.

"This carelessness about the goods of fortune is an infirmity very naturally resulting from their studies, and is only to be cured by years and experience; or by a combination--very rare, indeed--of poetical genius with a more than ordinary share of that homely endowment COMMON SENSE."

BULLER.

Speak louder--yet that might not be easy. I feel the want of an ear-trumpet, for you do drop your voice so at the end of sentences.

TALBOYS.

"A few exceptions"--

BULLER.

Stentor's alive again--oh! that I were head over ears in a bale of cotton.

TALBOYS.

"A few exceptions to these observations may undoubtedly be found, but they are so very few, as, by their singularity, to confirm rather than weaken the general fact. In proof of this, we need only appeal to the sad details recorded by Dr Johnson in his Lives of the Poets."

BULLER.

Skip--skip--skip--

SEWARD.

Skip--skip--skip--

TALBOYS.

May I, sir?

NORTH.

You may.

TALBOYS.

"Considered in its moral effects on the mind, one of the most unfortunate consequences to be apprehended from the cultivation of a poetical talent, is its tendency, by cherishing a puerile and irritable vanity, to weaken the force, and to impair the independence of character. Whoever limits his exertions to the gratification of others, whether by personal exhibition, as in the case of the actor and mimic, or by those kinds of literary composition which are calculated for no end but to please or to entertain, renders himself, in some measure, dependent on their caprices and humours."

BULLER.

Skip--skip--skip--

TALBOYS.

"In all the other departments of literature besides, to please is only a secondary object. It is the primary one of poetry. Hence that timidity of temper, and restless and unmanly desire of praise, and that dependence on the capricious applause of the multitude, which so often detract from the personal dignity of those whose productions do honour to human nature."

NORTH.

I don't quite understand what Mr Stewart means here by "the _culture_ of Imagination." I see three senses of the word. First, the cultivation by the study of written Poetry and the poetical arts, and of the poetry poured through the Universe--to those minds which receive without producing--a legitimate process. Secondly, the cultivation as in Edwin, Beattie's young Minstrel, the destined and self-destining Poet--a legitimate process. And thirdly, the self-indulgence of a mind which, more sensitive than volitive, more imaginative than intellectual, more wilful than lawful, more self-loving than others-loving--turns life into a long reverie--an illegitimate process. Which of these three classes of minds does Stewart speak of? Strong native imagination in a young powerful enthusiastic mind, tutored by poetical studies, but whom the Muse has _not_ selected to the services of her shrine? Or the faculty as in the Poet-born self-tutored, and now rushing into his own predestined work? Or the soft-souled and indolent _fainéant_ Dreamer of life? Three totally distinct subjects for the contemplation of the Philosopher, but that here seem to hover confusedly and at once before our Philosopher.

BULLER.

By his chosen title of the Section, THE POET, he was bound to speak of him according to Bacon, d'Alembert, and Aristotle.

NORTH.

The word _culture_ must, I think, here specifically touch the First Case. Shall we then be afraid of giving a share, and a large share too, to the reading of the Poets, and the regard of the Fine Arts, in a liberal Education? Poetry, History, Science, are the three strands of the cable by which the vessel shall ride--Religion being the sheet-anchor.

SEWARD.

Perhaps it is meant to touch the Second Case too?

NORTH.

It may be meant to do so, but it does not. The word "culture" is dictated by or is proper to the First Case--for culture is deliberate and elective. But in him--the young Poet--the Edwin--in whom imagination is given in the measure assigned by the Muse to her children, the culture proceeds undeliberate and unwilled. Edwin, when he roves "beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine," or sitting to watch the "wide-weltering waves," or is seized from the hint of ballad or tale, or any chance word, with dreams and visions of the more illustrious Past--follows a delight and desire that have the nature and may have the name of a passion. All this is involuntary to the unforeseen result--but afterwards, when he has accepted his art for a vocation, he more than any man deliberately cultivates. Has the Philosopher, then, in mind only the third class, and do the dangers of "the culture of imagination" apply to them only--"the indolent _fainéant_ dreamers of life?" If so, he not only forgets and loses his subject, as announced by himself, but wastes words on one altogether below it. "False conceptions of human life!" Here is an equivocation which must be set right. "Conceptions of human life" are here meant to apply to expectations of the honesty, gratitude, virtue of the persons _in general_ with whom you or I shall come in contact in life. Good. The contemplation of human beings--men and women--_ideally_ drawn by the Poet lifts me too high--tinges hope in me with enthusiasm, and prepares disappointment. So it has been often said, and said truly. This is conception prospective and personal; and more philosophically termed Expectation. But then "conception of human life"--from the lip of a philosopher should mean rather "intelligence of man's life." Now I repeat that only through the Poet have you true intelligence of man's life--either external or internal. In the Actual the Poet sees the Idea--just as a Painter does in respect of the visible man. In the man set before him He sees two men--the man that is and the man of whom at his nativity was given the possibility to be. He reads cause and effect; and sees what has hindered the possible from being. Who, excepting the Poet, does this? And excepting this, what intelligence of man is an intelligence?

SEWARD.

There are two world-Wisdoms. One, to know men, as for the most part they will show themselves--commonly called Knowledge of the World: one, to know them as God made them. I forget what it is called. Possibly it has no name.

NORTH.

Observe, my dear Seward, the precise error of that expectation. It is to believe the good more prevalent than it is. It is no misunderstanding as to the constitution of the good. The good is; and the important point of all is to know it, when you meet it. To be cheated, by not apprehending the ill of a man, is a wound to your purse, and when you at last apprehend, to your heart. To be cheated by not apprehending the good of man is--_death_, which you bear in yourself, and know it not.

SEWARD.

What is desired? Is it that we should go into the world with hope not a whit wider and higher than the dimensions of the reality that we are to encounter? I trow not.

NORTH.

Your hope will elect your own destiny--will shape it--will be it. There are possibilities given of the nobler happinesses, as well as of the nobler services; and your hope, faithful to itself, will reach and grasp them. And only to such hope are they given. Moreover, in all men there is under the mask of evil which the world has shaped on them, the power inextinct which the Creator sowed there; and they may, if they dare to believe in it, and know to call to it, bring it out with a burst. But belief is the main ingredient of the spell, and hope is the mother of belief.

TALBOYS.

The Poet has glorious apprehensions of human existence--visions of men--visions of men's actions--visions of men's destinies. He pitches his theory of the human world above reality--and _that_ he shall, in due season or before it, learn--to his great loss and to his great gain. In the meanwhile do not speak of the temper in him, as if you would upbraid him with it. Do not lay to his charge the splendour of his powers and aspirations. Do not chide and rate him for his virtues.

SEWARD.

"False conceptions!" a term essentially of depreciation and reproach. They are not false, they are true. For they are faithful to the vocation that lies upon the human beings; but they, the human beings, are false, and their lives are false; falling short of those true conceptions.

NORTH.

Well. He--the Poet--comes to the encounter. It is the trial set for him by his stars--as it is the trial set for all great spirits. He finds those who disappoint him, and those who do not. But, grant the disappointment, rather. What shall he do? That which all great spirits do--transfer the grandeur of his hopes, over which fate, fortune, and the winds of heaven ruled, to his own purposes of which he is master.

TALBOYS.

Why did not Mr Stewart say simply that the Poet--and the young enthusiast of Poetry--thinks better of his fellows than they deserve, and brings a faith to them which they will take good care to disappoint? Why harp thus on the jarring string; torturing our ears, and putting our souls out of tune?

NORTH.

Who doubts--who does not know, and admire, and love Hope--in the ardent generous spirit--looking out from within the Eden of Youth into the world into which it shall, alas! fall? What is asked? That the spring-flowering of youth shall be prematurely blighted and blasted by winds frosty or fiery, which the set fruit may bear? Of course we hope beyond the reality, and it is God's gift that we do.

TALBOYS.

And why lay that Imagination which looks into Life with unmeasured ideas to the charge of the Poet alone? Herein every man is a Poet, more or less; and, most, every spirit of power--the hero, the saint, the minister of religion, the very Philosopher. Would we ask, sir, for a new law of nature? Upon the elements, fewer or more, which an anticipated experience gathers, a spirit impelled by the yearnings inseparable from self-conscious power, and mighty to create, works unchecked and unruled. What shall it do but build glorious illusions?

NORTH.

"The culture of Imagination,"--understanding thereby, first, in the Great Poets themselves, the intercourse of their own minds with facts which imagination vivifies, and with ideas which it creates--of humanity; and secondly, in all others, as poets to be or not to be, the reading of the Great Poets, Mr Stewart says--"does not diminish our interest in human life." Does not diminish! Quite the reverse. It extraordinarily deepens and heightens, increases and ennobles. For who are the painters, the authentic delineators and revealers of human life, outer and inner--

BULLER.

Why, the Poets--the Poets to be sure--the Poets beyond all doubt--

NORTH.

"Extremely apt to inspire the mind with false conceptions of it"--and so on. Why, the Faculty is there with a mission. It is its bounden office--its embassy from heaven--to exalt us above our earthly experience--to lift us into the ideal possibility of things. Thereby it is an "angel of Life," the white-winged good genius. The too sanguine hope is an adhering consequence, and the quelling of the hope is one of the penalties which we pay for Adam and Eve's coming through that Eastern Gate into this Lower World.

TALBOYS.

Of course, my dear sir, _every_ power has its dangers--the greater, the profounder, the more penetrating and vital the power, the greater the danger. But is this the way that a Philosopher begins to treat of a power--with hesitation and distrust--inauspiciously auspicating his inquiry? The common--the better--the true order of treatment is by Use and, Abuse--Use first. "Expectations above the level of our present existence!" Of course--that when the heaven on earth fails, we may have _learnt_ "to expect above the level of our present existence," and go on doing so more and more, till Earth shall fade and Heaven open.

SEWARD.

"Frequently produces a youth of enthusiastic hope!" Is this proposed as a perversion and calamity, a "youth" to be deprecated?

NORTH.

I really don't know--it looks almost like it.

SEWARD.

Will you say Wo and Alas! for the City--Wo and Alas! for the Nation--in which princes, and nobles, and the gentle of blood--and the merchants, and the husbandmen, and the peasants, and the artisans, suffer under this endemic and feverous malady--a "youth of enthusiastic hope?" Methinks, sir, you would expect there to find an overflow of Pericles's, and Pindars, and Phidias's, and Shakspeares, and Chathams, and Wolfes--

BULLER.

Stop, Seward--spare us the Catalogue.

SEWARD.

You would say--here is the People that is to lead the world in Arms and in Arts. Only let us use all our endeavours to see that the community produces reason enough in balance of the enthusiasm.

BULLER.

Let us procure Aristotles, and Socrates's, and Newtons, and--

TALBOYS.

What should a Philosopher do or say relatively to any particular power? He expounds an Economy of Nature. Therefore, he says, let us look how Nature deals with such or such a power. She gives it for such and such uses: and such is its fostering, and such are its phenomena. But as every power unbalanced carries the subject in which it inheres _ex orbita_, let us look how nature provides to balance _this_ power which we consider.

NORTH.

That, my dear Talboys, is a magnanimous and a capacious way of inquiry. But how can any man write about a power who has not a full sympathy with it? I have no doubt that Davy, when he wielded Galvanism to make wonderful and beautiful revelations of veiled things, deeply and largely sympathised with Galvanism. You would think it easier to sympathise with Imagination, and yet to Stewart it seems almost more difficult. Go on.

TALBOYS.

How has Nature dealt with her mighty and perilous power--Love. Look at it, where it is raised to its despotism--when a man loves a woman, and that woman that man. It is a power to unhinge a world. Lo! in proof "an old song"--the Iliad!

'Trojanas ut opes et lamentabile regnum
Eruerint Danai!'

Has Nature feared, therefore, to use it? She builds the world with it. And look how she proceeds. To these two--the Lovers as they are called--the Universe is _in_ these two--to each in the other. The rest of the Universe is shut out from their view, or more wonderfully comprehended in their view--seen to each through and relatively to the other--seen transformed in the magical mirror of their love. Can you expect anything less than that they should go by different doors, or by the same door, into Bedlam? Lo! they have become a Father and a Mother! They have returned into the real world--into a world yet dearer than Dreamland! The world in which their children shall grow up into men and women. Sedate, vigilant, circumspect, sedulous, industrious, wise, just--Pater-familias and Mater-familias. So Nature lets down from an Unreal which she has chosen, and knows how to use.

NORTH.

The ground of the Poet, my dear Talboys, is an extraordinary dotation of sensibility--of course, ten thousand dangers. Life is exuberant in him--and if the world lies at all wide about him, the joy of the great and the beautiful. The dearest of all interests to every rational soul is her own coming destiny. The Poet, quick and keen above all men in self-reference, must, among his contemplations and creations, be full of contemplating and creating his own future, and must pour over it all his power of joy, rosy and golden hopes. And that vision, framed with all his power of the Ideal, must needs be something exceedingly different from that which this bare, and blank, and hard earth of reality has to bestow. What follows? A severe, and perhaps an unprepared trial. The self-protection demanded of him is a morally-guarded heart and life. The protection provided for him is--his Art. The visions--the Ideal--the Great and the Fair, which he cannot incorporate in his own straitened existence--the ambitions, at large, of his imagination he localises--colonises--imparadises--in his works. He has two lives; the life of his daily steps upon the hard and bare, or the green, and elastic, and sweet-smelling earth, and the life of his books, papers, and poetical, studious reveries--art-intending, intellectual ecstasies.

BULLER.

What say you, sir, to the charge of "overweening self-conceit and indolence?"

NORTH.

What say you, my Buller?

BULLER.

That I do not quite understand the proposition. Is it, that _generally_ the "sanguine" temperament is apt to make these accompaniments for itself? Or that in the Poet the three elements are often found together? If the former, I see no truth in it. The sanguine temper should naturally inspire activity--and I do not quite know what is here an "overweening conceit." That a sanguine-minded man is apt to have great _self-reliance_ in any project he has in hand--a confidence in his own present views that is not a little refractory to good argument of cooler observers, I understand. But that sort of self-conceit which makes of a man an intellectual fop--gazing in the pocket looking-glass of self-conceit at his own perfections--vain self-contemplation and self-adulation--the sanguine temper is far more likely to carry a man out of himself, to occupy his time, his pleasure, and his passion in works, and withdraw them from himself. I suppose, therefore, that we must look to the Poet alone. I daresay that small poets have a great conceit of themselves. They have a talent that is flattered and admired far beyond its worth. They readily fancy themselves members of the Immortal Family. But a true Poet has a thousand sources of humility. Does he not reverence all greatness, moral and intellectual? Does he not reverence, above all, the mighty masters of song? He understands their greatness--he can measure distances--which your small Poet cannot.

NORTH.

Every soul conscious of power is in danger of estimating the power too highly; but I do not know why the Poet should be so more than another man. Then, what is "overweening?" Is it overvaluing himself relatively to other men? Is it over-measuring his power of achievement--whence disproportionate undertakings, that fail in their accomplishment? I can more easily suppose that all the Sons of Genius "overween" in this direction. They must needs shape enterprises of unattainable magnificence. But some one has said rightly that in attempting the Impossible we accomplish the Possible. But this is a higher and truer and more generous meaning, I fancy, than is intended by the choice of that slighting and scoffing dispraise of "overweening"--a word pointing to a social, or moral, defect that makes an exceedingly disagreeable companion, rather than to any sublime error in the calculations of genius. And I come back upon the small sinner in rhyme, who has been cockered by his friends and cuddled by himself into conceit, till he thinks the world not good enough for him--takes no trouble to satisfy Its reasonable expectations, and finds that It will take none to satisfy his unreasonable ones--_there_ is a source of "numberless misfortunes"--a seedy surtout, a faded vest, and very threadbare inexpressibles.

TALBOYS.

And why should those who are sanguine in hope be "too frequently indolent?" A hopeful temper engender indolence! A desponding temper engenders it; a hopeful one is the very spur of activity. The sanguine spirit of hope taking possession of an active intellect, engenders the Projector--of all human beings the most restless and indefatigable--his undaunted and unconquerable trust in futurity creates for itself incessantly new shapes of exertion--till the curtain falls.

SEWARD.

There is, I suppose, a species of Castle-builder who hopes and does nothing; as if he believed that futurity had the special charge of bringing into existence the children of his wish. But his temper is not properly called sanguine--it is _dreamy_. Neither is his indolence a consequence of his dreams; but as much or more, his dreams, of his indolence. He sits and dreams. Say that Nature has given to some one, as she will from time to time, an active fancy and an indolent humour--a disproportion in one faculty. 'Tis a misfortune: and a reason why his friends should seek out, if possible, the means of stirring him into activity; but it has nothing to do with describing the Idea of the Poetical Character.

TALBOYS.

The Great Poets have not been indolent. They have been working men. The genius of the Poet calls him to his work. Shakspeare was a man of business. Spenser was a state-secretary.

BULLER.

Read Milton's Life.

TALBOYS.

See Cowper drowned in an invincible melancholy, and deliberately choosing a long-lasting and severe task of his Art, as a means of relieving, from hour to hour, the pressure of his intolerable burthen. If he had drooped under his hopeless disease into motionless stupor, you could not have wondered, much less could you have blamed. He fought, pen in hand, year after year, against the still-repelled and ultimately victorious enemy.

BULLER.

Think of Southey!

NORTH.

Yet the Poet is in danger of indolence. For in his younger years joy comes to him unpurchased. To do, takes him out of his dream. To do nothing, is to live in an enchanted world; and with all tenderness be it said, he hath, too, his specific temptation to overmuch self-esteem. Because his specific faculty and habit are to refer every thing that befalls constantly to himself as a contemplative spirit. Herein is the most luminous intuition alone. The perversion is to be quick and keen in referring to the ignobler Self--for as I or you said, and all men may know, the Poet assuredly has two souls. Personal estimation, personal prospects! A sensibility to injury, to fear, to harm, to misprision--a quick jealousy--suspicion--soreness! You do see them in Poets--and in Artists, who after their kind are Poets--for they are Men. As to excessive reflection upon and admiration of their own intellectual powers, while we rightly condemn it, we should remember that the Poet _is_ gifted, and in comparison with most of those with whom he lives, is in certain directions far abler; and more delicate apprehensions he probably has than most or all of them--at least of such apprehensions as come under the Pleasures of Imagination. And when he begins to call auditors to his Harp--then, well-a-day!--then he lives and feeds upon the breath of praise--and upon the glow of sympathy--a flower that opens to the caress of zephyrs and sunbeams, and without them pines. Then comes envy and spiritual covetousness. Others obtain the praise and the sympathy--others who merit them less, or not at all. What a temptation to disparage all others--_alive_! And to the Poet, essentially plunged in the individualities of his own being, how easy! For each of his rivals has a different individuality from his own; and how easy to construe points of difference into points of inferiority! Easy to him whom pain wrings more than it does others--to whom disagreeable things are more disagreeable--

TALBOYS.

Have done, sir, I beseech you, have done--talk not so of the Brotherhood.

NORTH.

I am thinking of some of the most majestic!

SEWARD.

Alas! it is true.

NORTH.

Mr Stewart more than insinuates, with a wavering and equivocating uncertainty of assertion he signifies, that the POET, or poetic mind, is not much endowed with "common sense." Talboys, what say you?

TALBOYS.

I rather think it unusually well-endowed that way, and that it is the opposite class of minds--those that cultivate abstract science--that have, or seem to have, least of it.

SEWARD.

The poetic mind, from its sensibility, is peculiarly ready to sympathise with the general mind, and it is that sympathy that produces common sense. Common sense is instinctive; and in its origin allied to that which in the higher acts of the poet's mind is called Inspiration. Therefore it is native to his mind. It is an inspiration of his mind as much as poetic Imagination.

BULLER.

Has Seward said what you meant to say, Talboys?

TALBOYS.

He has--why did not you? But observe, Buller, common sense is not solely employed upon a man's own conduct: it has all the world besides for its object. The common sense of a Poet in his own case may be disturbed by his sensibilities, which are greater than common; while yet, in all other cases, it may be truer than the magnet.

BULLER.

Good.

TALBOYS.

I will trouble you, if you please, for an Obs.

BULLER.

I have long desired a definition of Common Sense. It seems to me rather a commonplace thing. I suppose it is called Common Sense, as being common to men, so that you may expect it in 9 out of 10, or 99 out of 100.

TALBOYS.

Pretty good.

BULLER.

Common Life seems to be the school of it. It seems a practical faculty, or to respect practice. Obvious relations are its domain--obvious connexions of cause and effect--means and end. A man of common sense effects a plain object, quickly and cheaply, by ready and direct means. High reach of thought is distinguished from common sense on the same side, as downright folly is on the other. Yet the interests dealt with need not be, if they frequently are, low; only the relations obvious. Perhaps the phrase is oftener brought out by its violation than its maintenance. He who wants common sense employs means thwarting his end. I propose that Common Sense is a combination of common understanding and common experience.

TALBOYS.

I asked you, my dear Buller, for an Obs--one single Obs--you have given us a dozen--a Series. Let us take them one by one, and dissect the--

BULLER.

Be hanged if we do! I am afraid that my notion of Common Sense is but a low one. I think that a blacksmith may acquire common sense about shoeing of horses, and a housewife about her kitchen and laundry. _Sound sense_ applicable to high matters is another matter--_une toute autre chose_.

TALBOYS.

Be done, dear Buller.

BULLER.

In a moment. Moreover, I can imagine a strong, clear, sound sense _confined_ to a special _higher_ employment--a lawyer who would manage the most difficult and hazardous cause with admirable discretion, and make a mere fool of himself in marrying.

TALBOYS.

Be done--be done.

BULLER.

In a moment. _I_ am not able to affirm that a Poet of high and sound faculties _must_ have the talent for conducting himself with prudence in the common affairs of life; and really _that_ is what seems to me to be _Common Sense_.

TALBOYS.

Be done now--you cannot better it.

BULLER.

About the Poet what can I say that every body does not know and say in all the weekly newspapers. Why, gentlemen, the Mission of the Poet is to fight the fight of the Spirit against the flesh, and to extend the reign of the Beautiful. Also, he is the Prophet of ®gnôthi seauton®: and the finest of wordmongers. The words that he touches turn all to gold. He is the subtlest of thinkers. _Our_ best discipline of thinking has been from the Poets. Compare Shakspeare and Euclid.

TALBOYS.

From you! Buller, you astonish me.

BULLER.

Astonishment is sometimes proof of a weak mind.

NORTH.

There seem to be two Common Senses. Goldsmith appears to be viewed as an eminent case of wanting it, in conduct--the practical--for his own use. But the theoretical--for judging others--imaginary cases--characterises that immortal work, _The Vicar of Wakefield_: and the theoretical, for judging other men real, existing, and known, his _Retaliation_. The criticism of Burke, for instance, is all exalted Common Sense--

"Who, born for the Universe, narrowed his mind,
And to Party gave up what was meant for Mankind."

That is the larger grasp of common Sense rising into high Sense.

"And thought of convincing while they thought of dining"

is its homelier scope.

SEWARD.

Common Sense is the lower part of complete Good Sense. Shakspeare and Phidias must use Good Sense in governing their whole composition; which Common Sense could not reach; and a man might have good sense in composing a group in marble, yet want it in governing his family. But Phidias executing a Venus with a blunt notched chisel, would want Common Sense.

NORTH.

Wordsworth the Great and Good has said that "the privilege and the duty of Poetry is to describe things not as they are, but as they seem to the senses and the passions;" and when in so saying he claimed further for the works of Poetry law and constancy, he spake heroically and thence well,--up to the mark of the fearless and clear truth. But when he condescended to speak of "one quality that is always favourable to good poetry, namely, good sense," he said that, _without note of reserve_, which should have been guarded. Good sense, if you please, but such good sense as Homer shows when the ®klangê® of the silver bow sounds--when the Mountain-Isle trembles with all her Woods to Neptune stepping along--or the many-folded snowy Olympus to Jupiter giving the one calm, slow, simple, majestic, earth-and-heaven-obliging Nod--or when at the loosed storm of terrestrial and celestial battle on the Scamandrian plain, the Infernal Jove leaps from his throne, and shouts, or yells, or bellows--®meg' iache®--lest the solidly-vaulted Earth rend above and let in sunlight on the Shades. The "good sense" of Shakspeare, when the Witches mingle in the hell-broth "Tartar's lips," and "yew-slips slivered in the Moon's eclipse." Claim the good sense, but claim it in its own kind--separated and high--kingly--Delphic--divine. The good sense of Jupiter--Apollo--the Nine Muses, and the practical Pallas Athene. Or claim WISDOM--and not "good sense;"--"the meed of Poets SAGE!" Lucid intelligence--profound intuitions--disclosed essences--hidden relations laid bare--laws discerned--systems and worlds comprehended--revealed mysteries--prophecy--the "terrible sagacity"--and to all these add the circumspection--the caution--the self-rule--the attentive and skilful prudence of consummate Art, commanding effects which she forecast and willed. Wisdom in choosing his aim--Wisdom in reaching his aim--Wisdom to weigh men's minds and men's deeds--their hopes, fears, interests--to read the leaves of the books which men have written--to read the leaves of the book which the Creating Finger has written--to read the leaves of the book which lies for ever open before the Three Sisters--the leaves which the Storms of the Ages turn over.

TALBOYS.

Coffee, my dear sir? Here's a cup--cool and sweetened to your taste to a nicety.

NORTH.

Thanks, Talboys. I am ready for another spell.

BULLER.

Reflect, sir, breathe awhile. Do, Seward, interpose something between the Master and exhaustion. Quick--quick--else he will be off again--and at his time of Life--

SEWARD.

Oh for the gift denied me by my star--presence of mind!

TALBOYS.

Common sense, in a high philosophical signification, is the sum of human opinions and feelings; or the "Universal Sense" of mankind. That is not homely--and cannot therefore be what Stewart calls that "homely endowment." The apter translation of the place in his Essay is "ordinary sense or understanding"--which seems to suggest _now_ "so much sense or understanding as you ordinarily meet with among men"--and _now_ "sense and understanding applied to ordinary concerns." Only this last makes the quality _homely_. But the tooth of Stewart's insult is in the prior suggestion (in the case of the Gifted, untrue), that they have not as much sense or understanding as you ordinarily meet with. They have ten, twenty, a thousand times as much. Think of Robert Burns! But they have--or may, I do not say must have--the repugnance to apply the winged and "delighted spirit" to considerations and cares that are easily felt as if sordid and servile--imprisoning--odious. They suffer, however, not for the lack of knowing, but of resolution to conform their doing to their knowing. They sin against common sense--and much more against their own. _Hinc illæ lacrymæ._

NORTH.

Gentlemen, the Cardinal Virtue--Prudence--holds her sway, in the world of man, over Action, and, as much as she may, over Event, by the union as if of two Sceptres. For She must reign, at once, in the Understanding and in the Will. Common Sense, as the word is commonly meant and understood, is Intellectual Prudence applied to the more obvious requisitions of the more obvious interests which daily and hourly claim our concern and regard. This Intellectual Prudence, thus applied--that is to say, the clear Intelligence of these requisitions--Common Sense, therefore--one man has, and another has not. The case shall occur that the man, Poet or no Poet, who has it, shall act like a fool; whilst the Poet or no Poet, who has it not, shall act like a Sage. For the man, wise to see and to know, shall have yielded the throne of his Will to some usurping and tyrannising desire--and the other, who either does not possess, or who possessing, has not so applied the Intelligence--some dedicated Mathematician, or Metaphysician, or Mechanician, or Naturalist, or Scholar, or Antiquary, or Artist, or Poet, shall live wisely, because he has brought his heart and his blood under the rule of Moral Necessity. Prudence, or, in her stead, Conscience, has established her reign in his Will. To be endowed with Common Sense is one thing; to _act_ with common sense, or agreeably to her demands, is another. Popular speech--loose, negligent, self-willed, humoursome and humorous--often poetical--easily and gladly confounds the two neighbouring cases. Philosophic disquisition--which this of Dugald Stewart does not--should sedulously hold them apart. You may judge of a man's Common Sense by hearing him criticise the character and conduct of his neighbour. To learn in what hand the Sceptre of the Will is, you must enter his own doors. The proneness of the Poet, easy, kind, frank--except in his Art, artless--compassionate, generous, and, large-thoughted--heaven-aspiring--to neglect, like the lover, (and what else is he but the perpetually enthralled lover of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?) the earthly and distasteful _Cura Peculî_, is to be counteracted mainly on the side of the Will. Simplicity of desire will go far, and this you may expect in him from Nature--indeed it is the first ground of the fault charged. Next, of stronger avail--not perhaps of more dignity--comes that which is indeed the base, if not yet the edified structure of Common Sense, the plain Intelligence of naked Necessity. No great stretch of intellectual power required, surely, for discovering and knowing his own condition in the work-day world! But the goods of fortune--worldly estate--_money_--shall the "heavenly Essence"--the "celestial Virtue"--the "divine Emanation"--for so loftily has Man spoken of Man--that is within us--crouch down and grovel in this dark, chill den--this grave which Mammon has delved to be to it a pitfall and a prison?

BULLER.

Ay--why shall the Poet guard and noose the strings of his purse?

NORTH.

One reason, drawn from the sublimity of his being, stands ever nigh to bow the pliant neck of his Will under the lowly yoke. He _must_--because, according to the manner in which the All-Disposer saw good to order and adjust the constituents and conditions of our human life here below, in him who, of his own will and deed, lays himself under a bond to live by unearned bread, the Moral Soul dies.

SEWARD.

The Poet is not--and he is--improvident. Nothing in his genius binds him to improvidence. Prudence may accompany sensibility--may accompany ample and soaring contemplations--may accompany creative thought--may accompany the diligent observation of human life and manners--may accompany profound insight into the human heart. These are chief constituents of the poetical mind, and have nothing in them that rejects Prudence.

BULLER.

Neither do I believe that the more distinguished Poets generally have been culpably unforethinking--

"Vatis avarus
Non temere est animus!"

I hope so. I should be exceedingly sorry to think that the Bard were apt to give into the most odious of all vices. But the interval is wide from vicious negligence to vicious care: and I hope that somewhere between, and verging from the Golden Mean a little way towards the negligent extreme, might be the proper and earned place of the Poets.

TALBOYS.

We must confess to some negligent tendencies in the Poet. The warm sympathies give advantage to designing beggars of different ranks--and are themselves betraying advisers. The law of the poetical mind to accept Impression, and let it have its way, if it overflow its legitimate channel of poetical study and art, and irregularly lay the conduct of life under water, may leave behind it something else than fertility. The dwelling in pleasure may make the narrow and exact cares of economy irksome. But why shall we _expect_ that a man of high, clear, and strong mind shall not learn how to--cut his coat according to his cloth?

NORTH.

I am afraid that the high faculties of a Poet threaten to endanger his vulgar welfare. The foundation of his poetical being and power, as you well have hinted, Talboys, is the free spontaneity of motion in his own mind--the surrendering of his whole spirit to influxes and self-impulses. The spontaneous movement allies his temperament to common passion, which founds upon this very characteristic. And you sometimes see, accordingly, that the Poet is a victim sacrificed for the benefit of the rest. Not that it need be so--for he has his own means of protection; but powers delicate, sensitive, profound, must walk perilously in a lapsed world.

SEWARD.

Let it be allowed, then, to Dugald, that the poetical temperament is adverse to getting--and to keeping--money--and that a touching picture might be drawn of the conflicts of spirit between a Poet and his false position in a counting-house--or with "poverty's unconquerable bar."

NORTH.

"This carelessness about the goods of fortune," says Mr Stewart, "is an infirmity very naturally resulting from their studies, and is only to be cured by years and experience, or by combination (_very rare indeed_) of poetical genius with a more than ordinary share of that 'homely endowment called _common-sense_.'" And wherefore any infirmity? Why not have portrayed rather--or at least kindly qualified the word--in winning hues, or in lofty shape--the delicious or magnanimous UNWORLDLINESS of the poetical character? That most ennobling, and most unostentatious quality, which dear and great Goddess--in lovingly tempering a soul that from its first inhalation of terrestrial air to the breath in which it escapes home, she intends to follow with her love--commingles in precious and perilous atoms that, in consecrating, destine to sorrow.

SEWARD.

An infirmity? A charm--a grace--and a virtue! Alas! sir, a virtue too suitable to the golden age to be safe in ours.

TALBOYS.

Ay, Seward, a virtue demanding the correction or the protection of some others, which the iron generations countenance or allow--such as Prudence, Justice, Affection for those whose welfare he unavoidably commixes with his own.

NORTH.

Protection! It sometimes happily wins its protection from virtues that love and admiration rouse and arm in other breasts, in its favour--a reverent love--a pitying admiration.

TALBOYS.

He quotes Horace as on his side of the question.

NORTH.

A Poet whose name is amongst the most cited from antiquity, Virgil's illustrious lyrical brother, has rehearsed (not indeed to the lyre, but in the style which he offers for little better than versified prose) modestly and apologetically, the Praises of the Poet--his personal worth, and serviceable function amongst his fellow-men. Singular that in a few words of this passage, and indeed just those which gently allege the _personal virtue_ of the poor bard, the Professor should have helped himself to a weapon for dealing upon that head his unkindest cut of all.

SEWARD.

That flowing Epistle of Horace's to Augustus--which he gives good reason in excellent verse for keeping short, and turns out, notwithstanding, rather unreasonably long--if we look for its method, it rambles--if for the spirit, it is a delicate intercommunion between the least of the Courtiers, the Poet, and his imperial Patron, the Lord of Rome and of Rome's World.

TALBOYS.

A facile, roving, and sketchy--partly historical and partly critical disquisition on Poetry chiefly Roman, presenting, with occasion the virtues and faults of the species--POET.

BULLER.

Let's hear it. In my day Horace was not much read at Oxford--

NORTH.

By you--and other First Class Physical Men. Seward, spout it.

SEWARD.

I will recite the passage.

"Hic error tamen, et levis hæc insania, quantas
Virtutes habeat, sic collige: vatis avarus
Non temere est animus; versus amat, hoc studet unum;
Detrimenta, fugas servorum, incendia ridet;
Non fraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullam
Pupillo; vivit siliquis et pane secundo.
Militiæ quamquam piger et malus, utilis urbi:
Si das hoc, parvis quoque rebus magna juvari.
Os tenerum pueri balbumque poeta figurat;
Torquet ab obscoenis jam nunc sermonibus aurem,
Mox etiam pectus præceptis format amicis,
Asperitatis et invidiae, corrector et iræ;
Recte facta refert; orientia tempora notis
Instruit exemplis, inopem solatur et ægrum.
Castis cum pueris ignara puella mariti
Disceret unde preces, vatem ni Musa dedisset?
Poscit opem chorus, et præsentia numina sentit;
Cælestes implorat aquas, docta prece blandus;
Avertit morbos, metuenda pericula pellit;
Impetrat et pacem, et locupletem frugibus annum.
Carmine Dî Superi placantur, carmine Manes."

BULLER.

Oh! that passage. Why, I have had it by heart for half a hundred. We quote from it at Quarter Sessions.

TALBOYS.

The first grace of the whole composition seems to me its two-fold personality--the free intimacy between the great Protector and the small Protected. It is like Horace's part of a familiar colloquy, where you may fancy, at discretion, interlocutory remark, or answer, or question of Augustus.

NORTH.

True, Talboys. Verse has attracted to the Bard the rays of imperial favour. The Emperor himself is a Verse-maker. How natural and suitable that Horace in verses which vary, to the time of the moment, with inimitable facility, from a conversation-like negligence, or negligent seeming--to sweetness and beauty, to strength and dignity--should win the august ear, tired with the din of arms or of debating tongues, to an hour's chat on the interests of the Muses.

SEWARD.

The praise of the Poet how loving and ingenious! how insinuatingly subdued!

NORTH.

Yet the ground is chosen with a dexterous boldness. The majestic opening Address of the Poem showed Augustus, like a Jupiter, wielding with beneficent power the destinies of the Roman world. And now, confronting the dispenser of welfare to nations, he sets up another benefactor of the State, the Poet, face to face with golden-throned, and purple-vested Octavius Cæsar--poor Horatius Flaccus!

BULLER.

Most awkward of Courtiers! Most crazed of versifiers!

SEWARD.

Beware of rash judgments and half-informations. You familiar with Hory--

BULLER.

You muttered the passage so that you murdered it.

TALBOYS.

You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground, he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He leads to it--he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly--admire the Rhetorician. He will avert jealousy--he will propitiate kindness.

BULLER.

Artful Dodger.

TALBOYS.

He has acknowledged--you might have given us the line--a _fault_. Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers--young and old--and grave and gay--wise and foolish--the skilled and the unskilled--the called and the uncalled.

BULLER.

You write verses well yourself, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive delusion--this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of cupidity--of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion--his bliss, his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies of his last work? 'Tis unlucky--but he laughs. It is not _he_ that speculates upon, or _waylays_, the unguarded trust of his friend or acquaintances--not _he_ that handles with adhesive fingers the gold of his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's--pulse and brown bread.

BULLER.

Very prettily paraphrased indeed!

SEWARD.

And very feelingly. Imagine these ideas sliding into one's heart in the natural verse of--Goldsmith! For it is as if Goldy here described himself--and see if the argument from the Innocence is not artfully placed, for the induction to the argument from the Benefits, that is to follow.

NORTH.

My dear Boys Three, Hory is here painting himself--and not himself. It is the idea of the Poet. He brings the traits and the colours together, as they best suit each other, and his purposes. The meritorious Eremite's fare is not personal to the writer. He has reached a point which imperiously requires another _fault_. Frankly and humorously he takes this from Flaccus himself. The Poet is no soldier--slow to find the way to the field, and too quick to find the way from it. Nevertheless--now for the setting up. He, too, is a profitable servant of the State. And forthwith an imperatively demanded apology--for the purple-robed has smiled a little incredulously at the _utilis urbi_. If, says the Complete Letter-Writer, you will only admit that majestic interests may be served by adminicles of "small regard to see to."

TALBOYS.

And how curiously he hides a pre-eminent power in the very smallest sphere!

NORTH.

How finely! Rome _was_ a republic of ORATORS. Cedant arma togæ--the Toga the war-weed of the Orator!

"Romanos rerum dominos, _gentemque togatam_."

The gowned Lords of the Nations--and, Lords of the Lords, the Orators!

BULLER.

Are you sure that is the right reading?

NORTH.

Let it be so. Observe now--the occultation.

BULLER.

The what?

TALBOYS.

The occultation.

BULLER.

Mille gratias.

NORTH.

The nascent and adolescent Orator is moulded to the power of the word by the greatest masters of the word, the Poets! Tell this, O Poet, in imperial ears! Then speak modestly, withdrawingly, insinuatingly. Hide the boast. It is hidden--and shown. The Poet fashions the tender and stammering mouth of the boy. The rudiments of pronunciation--The Orator nascent. No more. It is pretty and gentle that the Muse herself condescends to the care of moulding the young soft lip to the pure musical utterance of Latium's magnificent Mother-tongue.

BULLER.

Now I see it all. The occultation!

NORTH.