Chapter X: Front Matter (10)

The main duty of those who care for the young is to secure their wholesome, their entire growth, for health is just the development of the whole nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the blade--then the ear--then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, "not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge." If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this always before one's mind, that the young "idea" is in a young body, and that healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be cared for than what is vainly called accomplishment. We are preparing him to run his race, and accomplish _that_ which is one of his chief ends; but we are too apt to start him off at his full speed, and he either bolts or breaks down--the worst thing for him generally being to win. In this way a child or boy should be regarded much more as a mean than as an end, and his cultivation should have reference to this; his mind, as old Montaigne said, should be forged, as well as--indeed, I would say, rather than--furnished, fed rather than filled,--two not always coincident conditions. Now exercise--the joy of interest, of origination, of activity, of excitement--the play of the faculties,--this is the true life of a boy, not the accumulation of mere words. Words--the coin of thought--unless as the means of buying something else, are just as useless as other coin when it is hoarded; and it is as silly, and in the true sense as much the part and lot of a _miser_, to amass words for their own sakes, as to keep all your guineas in a stocking and never spend them, but be satisfied with every now and then looking greedily at them and making them chink. Therefore it is that I dislike--as indeed who doesn't?--the cramming system. The great thing with knowledge and the young is to secure that it shall be their own--that it be not merely external to their inner and real self, but shall go _in succum et sanguinem_; and therefore it is, that the self-teaching that a baby and a child give themselves remains with them forever--it is of their essence, whereas what is given them _ab extra_, especially if it be received mechanically, without relish, and without any energizing of the entire nature, remains pitifully useless and _wersh_. Try, therefore, always to get the resident teacher _inside the skin_, and who is forever giving his lessons, to help you and be on your side.

Now in children, as we all know, _he_ works chiefly through the senses. The quantity of accurate observation--of induction, and of deduction too (both of a much better quality than most of Mr. Buckle's); of reasoning from the known to the unknown; of inferring; the nicety of appreciation of the like and the unlike, the common and the rare, the odd and the even; the skill of the rough and the smooth--of form, of appearance, of texture, of weight, of all the minute and deep philosophies of the touch and of the other senses,--the amount of this sort of objective knowledge which every child of eight years has acquired--especially if he can play in the lap of nature and out of doors--and acquired for life, is, if we could only think of it, marvellous beyond any of our mightiest marches of intellect. Now, could we only get the knowledge of the school to go as sweetly and deeply and clearly into the vitals of the mind as this self-teaching has done, and this is the paradisiac way of it, we should make the young mind grow as well as learn, and be in understanding a man as well as in simplicity a child; we should get rid of much of that dreary, sheer endurance of their school-hours--that stolid lending of ears that do not hear--that objectless looking without ever once seeing, and straining their minds without an aim; alternating, it may be, with some feats of dexterity and effort, like a man trying to lift himself in his own arms, or take his head in his teeth, exploits as dangerous, as ungraceful, and as useless, except to glorify the showman and bring wages in, as the feats of an acrobat.

But you will ask, how is all this to be avoided if everybody must know how far the sun is from _Georgium Sidus_, and how much of phosphorus is in our bones, and of ptyalin and flint in human spittle--besides some 10,000 times 10,000 other things which we must be told and try to remember, and which we cannot prove not to be true, but which I decline to say we _know_.

But _is_ it necessary that everybody should know everything? Is it not much more to the purpose for every man, when his turn comes, to be able to _do_ something; and I say, that other things being equal, a boy who goes bird-nesting, and makes a collection of eggs, and knows all their colors and spots, going through the excitements and glories of getting them, and observing everything with a keenness, an intensity, an exactness, and a permanency, which only youth and a quick pulse, and fresh blood and spirits combined, can achieve,--a boy who teaches himself natural history in this way, is not only a healthier and happier boy, but is abler in mind and body for entering upon the great game of life, than the pale, nervous, bright-eyed, feverish, "interesting" boy, with a big head and a small bottom and thin legs, who is the "captain," the miracle of the school; dux for his brief year or two of glory, and, _if he live_, booby for life. I am, of course, not going in for a complete _curriculum_ of general ignorance; but I am for calling the attention of teachers to drawing out the minds, the energies, the hearts of their pupils through their senses, as well as pouring in through these same apertures the general knowledge of mankind, the capital of the race, into this one small being, who it is to be hoped will contrive to forget much of the mere words he has unhappily learned.

For we may say of our time in all seriousness, what Sydney Smith said in the fulness of his wisdom and his fun, of the pantologic master of Trinity--Science is our _forte_; omniscience is our _foible_. There is the seed of a whole treatise, a whole organon in this joke; think over it, and let it simmer in your mind, and you will feel its significance and its power. Now, what is _science_ so called to every 999 men in 1000, but something that the one man tells them he has been told by some one else--who may be one among say 50,000--is true, but of the truth of which these 999 men (and probably even the teaching thousandth man) can have no direct test, and, accordingly, for the truth or falsehood of which they, by a law of their nature, which rejects what has no savor and is superfluous, don't care one fig. How much better, how much dearer, and more precious in a double sense, because it has been bought by themselves,--how much nobler is the knowledge which our little friend, young Edward Forbes, "that marvellous boy," for instance--and what an instance!--is picking up, as he looks into everything he sees, and takes photographs upon his retina--the _camera lucida_ of his mind--which never fade, of every midge that washes its face as a cat does, and preens its wings, every lady-bird that alights on his knee, and folds and unfolds her gauzy pinions under their spotted and glorious lids. How more real is not only this knowledge, but this little knowledger in his entire nature, than the poor being who can maunder amazingly the entire circle of human science at second, or it may be, twentieth hand!

There are some admirable, though cursory remarks on "Ornithology as a Branch of Liberal Education," by the late Dr. Adams of Banchory, the great Greek scholar, in a pamphlet bearing this title, which he read as a paper before the last meeting of the British Association in Aberdeen. It is not only interesting as a piece of natural history, and a touching cooeperation of father and son in the same field--the one on the banks of his own beautiful Dee and among the wilds of the Grampians, the other among the Himalayas and the forests of Cashmere; the son having been enabled, by the knowledge of his native birds got under his father's eye, when placed in an unknown country to recognize his old feathered friends, and to make new ones and tell their story; it is also valuable as coming from a man of enormous scholarship and knowledge--the most learned physician of his time--who knew Aristotle and Plato, and all those old fellows, as we know Maunder or Lardner--a hard-working country surgeon, who was ready to run at any one's call--but who did not despise the modern enlightenments of his profession, because they were not in Paulus Agineta; though, at the same time, he did not despise the admirable and industrious Paul because he was not up to the last doctrine of the nucleated cell, or did not read his Hippocrates by the blaze of Paraffine; a man greedy of all knowledge, and welcoming it from all comers, but who, at the end of a long life of toil and thought, gave it as his conviction that one of the best helps to true education, one of the best counteractives to the necessary mischiefs of mere scientific teaching and information, was to be found in getting the young to teach themselves some one of the natural sciences, and singling out ornithology as one of the readiest and most delightful for such a life as his.

I end these intentionally irregular remarks by a story. Some years ago I was in one of the wildest recesses of the Perthshire Highlands. It was in autumn, and the little school supported mainly by the Chief, who dwelt all the year round in the midst of his own people, was to be examined by the minister, whose native tongue, like that of his flock, was Gaelic, and who was as awkward and ineffectual, and sometimes as unconsciously indecorous, in his English, as a Cockney is in his kilt. It was a great occasion: the keen-eyed, firm-limbed, brown-cheeked little fellows were all in a buzz of excitement as we came in, and before the examination began every eye was looking at us strangers as a dog looks at his game, or when seeking it; they knew everything we had on, everything that could be known through their senses. I never felt myself so studied and scrutinized before. If any one could have examined them upon what they thus mastered, Sir Charles Trevelyan and John Mill would have come away astonished, and, I trust, humble. Well then, the work of the day began; the mill was set a-going, and what a change! In an instant their eyes were like the windows of a house with the blinds down; no one was looking out; everything blank; their very features changed--their jaws fell, their cheeks flattened, they drooped and looked ill at ease--stupid, drowsy, sulky--and getting them to speak, or think, or in any way to energize, was like trying to get any one to come to the window at three of a summer morning, when, if they do come, they are half awake, rubbing their eyes and growling. So with my little Celts. They were like an idle and half asleep collie by the fireside, as contrasted with the collie on the hill and in the joy of work; the form of dog and boy are there--he, the self of each, was elsewhere (for I differ from Professor Ferrier in thinking that the dog _has_ the reflex ego, and is a very knowing being.) I noticed that anything they really knew roused them somewhat; what they had merely to transmit or pass along, as if they were a tube through which the master blew the pea of knowledge into our faces, was performed as stolidly as if they were nothing but a tube.

At last the teacher asked where Sheffield was, and was answered; it was then pointed to by the dux, as a dot on a skeleton map. And now came a flourish. "What is Sheffield famous for?" Blank stupor, hopeless vacuity, till he came to a sort of sprouting Dougal Cratur--almost as wee, and as glegg, and as tousy about the head, as my own Kintail terrier, whom I saw at that moment through the open door careering after a hopeless rabbit, with much benefit to his muscles and his wind--who was trembling with keenness. He shouted out something which was liker "cutlery" than anything else, and was received as such amid our rapturous applause. I then ventured to ask the master to ask small and red Dougal what cutlery was; but from the sudden erubescence of his pallid, ill-fed cheek, and the alarming brightness of his eyes, I twigged at once that _he_ didn't himself know what it meant. So I put the question myself, and was not surprised to find that not one of them, from Dougal up to a young strapping shepherd of eighteen, knew what it was.

I told them that Sheffield was famous for making knives, and scissors, and razors, and that cutlery meant the manufacture of anything that cuts. Presto! and the blinds were all up, and eagerness, and _nous_, and brains at the window. I happened to have a Wharncliffe, with "Rodgers and Sons, Sheffield," on the blade. I sent it round, and finally presented it to the enraptured Dougal. Would not each one of those boys, the very boobiest there, know that knife again when they saw it, and be able to pass a creditable competitive examination on all its ins and outs? and wouldn't they remember "cutlery" for a day or two! Well, the examination over, the minister performed an oration of much ambition and difficulty to himself and to us, upon the general question, and a great many other questions, into which his Gaelic subtilty fitted like the mists into the hollows of Ben-a-Houlich, with, it must be allowed, a somewhat similar tendency to confuse and conceal what was beneath; and he concluded with thanking the Chief, as he well might, for his generous support of "this aixlent CEMETERY of aedication." Cemetery indeed! The blind leading the blind, with the ancient result; the dead burying their dead.

Now, not greater is the change we made from that low, small, stifling, gloomy, mephitic room, into the glorious open air, the loch lying asleep in the sun, and telling over again on its placid face, as in a dream, every hill and cloud, and birch and pine, and passing bird and cradled boat; the Black Wood of Rannoch standing "in the midst of its own darkness," frowning out upon us like the Past disturbed, and far off in the clear ether, as in another and a better world, the dim Shepherds of Etive pointing, like ghosts at noonday, to the weird shadows of Glencoe;--not greater was this change, than is that from the dingy, oppressive, weary "cemetery" of mere word-knowledge to the open air, the light and liberty, the divine infinity and richness of nature and her teaching.

We cannot change our time, nor would we if we could. It is God's time as well as ours. And our time is emphatically that for achieving and recording and teaching man's dominion over and insight into matter and its forces--his subduing the earth; but let us turn now and then from our necessary and honest toil in this neo-Platonic cavern where we win gold and renown, and where we often are obliged to stand in our own light, and watch our own shadows as they glide, huge and misshapen, across the inner gloom; let us come out betimes with our gold, that we may spend it and get "goods" for it, and when we can look forth on that ample world of daylight which we can never hope to overrun, and into that overarching heaven where, amid clouds and storms, lightning and sudden tempest, there is revealed to those who look for them, lucid openings into the pure, deep empyrean, "as it were the very body of heaven in its clearness;" and when, best of all, we may remember Who it is who stretched out these heavens as a tent to dwell in, and on whose footstool we may kneel, and out of the depths of our heart cry aloud,--

_Te Deum veneramur,
Te Sancte Pater!_

we shall return into our cave, and to our work, all the better of such a lesson, and of such a reasonable service, and dig none the worse.

Science which ends in itself, or still worse, returns upon its maker, and gets him to worship himself, is worse than none; it is only when it makes it more clear than before who is the Maker and Governor, not only of the objects, but of the subjects of itself, that knowledge is the mother of virtue. But this is an endless theme. My only aim in these desultory hints is to impress parents and teachers with the benefits of the _study_, the personal engagement--with their own hands and eyes, and legs and ears--in some form or another of natural history, by their children and pupils and themselves, as counteracting evil, and doing immediate and actual good. Even the immense activity in the Post-Office-stamp line of business among our youngsters has been of immense use in many ways, besides being a diversion and an interest. I myself came to the knowledge of Queensland, and a great deal more, through its blue twopenny.

If any one wishes to know how far wise and clever and patriotic men may occasionally go in the way of giving "your son" a stone for bread, and a serpent for a fish,--may get the nation's money for that which is not bread, and give their own labor for that which satisfies no one; industriously making sawdust into the shapes of bread, and chaff into the appearance of meal, and contriving, at wonderful expense of money and brains, to show what can be done in the way of feeding upon wind,--let him take a turn through certain galleries of the Kensington Museum.

"Yesterday forenoon," writes a friend, "I went to South Kensington Museum. It is really an absurd collection. A great deal of valuable material and a great deal of perfect rubbish. The analyses are even worse than I was led to suppose. There is an ANALYSIS OF A MAN. First, a man contains so much water, and there you have the amount of water in a bottle; so much albumen, and there is the albumen; so much phosphate of lime, fat, haematin, fibrine, salt, etc., etc. Then in the next case so much carbon; so much phosphorus--a bottle with sticks of phosphorus; so much potassium, and there is a bottle with potassium; calcium, etc. They have not bottles of oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, etc., but they have cubical pieces of wood on which is written 'the quantity of oxygen in the human body would occupy the space of 170 (_e. g._) cubes of the size of this,' etc., etc." What earthly good can this do any one?

No wonder that the bewildered beings whom I have seen wandering through these rooms, yawned more frequently and more desperately than I ever observed even in church.

So then, cultivate observation, energy, handicraft, ingenuity, _outness_ in boys, so as to give them a pursuit as well as a study. Look after the blade, and don't coax or crush the ear out too soon, and remember that the full corn in the ear is not due till the harvest, when the great School breaks up, and we must all dismiss and go our several ways.

VAUGHAN'S POEMS, &c.

{Hosa esti prosphile--tauta logizesthe}.--ST. PAUL.

"What do you think of Dr. Channing, Mr. Coleridge?" said a brisk young gentleman to the mighty discourser, as he sat next him at a small tea-party. "Before entering upon that question, sir," said Coleridge, opening upon his inquirer those 'noticeable gray eyes,' with a vague and placid stare, and settling himself in his seat for the night, "I must put you in possession of my views, _in extenso_, on the origin, progress, present condition, future likelihoods, and absolute essence of the Unitarian controversy, and especially the conclusions I have, upon the whole, come to on the great question of what may be termed the philosophy of religious difference." In like manner, before telling our readers what we think of Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, or of "V.," or of Henry Ellison, the Bornnatural, or of E. V. K., it would have been very pleasant (to ourselves) to have given, _in extenso_, our views _de Re Poetica_, its nature, its laws and office, its means and ends; and to have made known how much and how little we agreed on these points with such worthies as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter, Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Huetten and Boileau, Hurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his famous uncle, Burke and "John Buncle," Montesquieu and Sir Philip Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus and Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt and Quinctilian, or Tacitus (whichever of the two wrote the Dialogue _De Oratoribus_, in which there is so much of the best philosophy, criticism, and expression), Lords Bacon and Buchan and Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart and John Dryden, Charles Lamb and Professor Wilson, Vinet of Lausanne and John Foster, Lord Jeffrey and the two brothers Hare, Drs. Fuller and South, John Milton and Dr. Drake, Dante and "Edie Ochiltree," Wordsworth and John Bunyan, Plutarch and Winkelman, the Coleridges, Samuel, Sara, Hartley, Derwent, and Henry Nelson, Sir Egerton Bridges, Victor Cousin and "the Doctor," George Moir and Madame de Stael, Dr. Fracastorius and Professor Keble, Martinus Scriblerus and Sir Thomas Browne, Macaulay and the Bishop of Cloyne, Collins and Gray and Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt and John Ruskin, Shakspeare and Jackson of Exeter, Dallas and De Quincey, and the six Taylors, Jeremy, William, Isaac, Jane, John Edward, and Henry. We would have had great pleasure in quoting what these famous women and men have written on the essence and the art of poetry, and to have shown how strangely they differ, and how as strangely at times they agree. But as it is not related at what time of the evening our brisk young gentleman got his answer regarding Dr. Channing, so it likewise remains untold what our readers have lost and gained in our not fulfilling our somewhat extensive desire.

It is with poetry as with flowers or fruits, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, we would all rather have them, and smell them, and taste them, than hear about them. It is a good thing to know all about a lily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany, its archaeology, its aesthetics, even its anatomy and "organic radicals," but it is a better thing to look at itself, and "consider" it how it grows--

"White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure."

It is one thing to know what your peach is, that it is the fruit of a rosal exogen, and is of the nature of a true drupe, with its carpel solitary, and its style proceeding from the apex,--that its ovules are anatropal, and that its _putamen_ separates _sponte sua_ from the sacrocarp; to know, moreover, how many kinds of peaches and nectarines there are in the world, and how happy the Canadian pigs must be of an evening munching the downy odoriferous drupes under the trees, and what an aroma this must give to the resulting pork,[44]--it is another and a better thing to pluck the peach, and sink your teeth into its fragrant flesh. We remember only one exception to this rule. Who has ever yet tasted the roast pig of reality which came up to the roast pig of Charles Lamb? Who can forget "that young and tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as yet of the style, with no original speck of the _amor immunditiae_--the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest, and which, when prepared aright, is, of all the delicacies in the _mundus edibilis_, the most delicate--_obsoniorum facile princeps_--whose fat is not fat, but an indefinable sweetness growing up toward it--the tender blossoming of fat--fat cropped in the bud--taken in the shoot--in the first innocence, the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food--the lean not lean, but a kind of animal manna--_coelestis_--_cibus ille angelorum_--or rather shall we say, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosial result." But here, as elsewhere, the exception proves the rule, and even the perusal of "Original" Walker's delicious schemes of dinners at Lovegrove's, with flounders water-zoutched, and iced claret, would stand little chance against an invitation to a party of six to Blackwall, with "Tom Young of the Treasury" as Prime Minister.

[44] We are given to understand that peach-fed pork is a poor
pork after all, and goes soon into decomposition. We are not
sorry to know this.

Poetry is the expression of the beautiful--by words--the beautiful of the outer and of the inner world; whatever is delectable to the eye or the ear, the every sense of the body and of the soul--it presides over _veras dulcedines rerum_. It implies at once a vision and a faculty, a gift and an art. There must be the vivid conception of the beautiful, and its fit manifestation in numerous language. A thought may be poetical, and yet not poetry; it may be a sort of mother liquor, holding in solution the poetical element, but waiting and wanting its precipitation,--its concentration into the bright and compacted crystal. It is the very blossom and fragrancy and bloom of all human thoughts, passions, emotions, language; having for its immediate object--its very essence--pleasure and delectation rather than truth; but springing from truth, as the flower from its fixed and unseen root. To use the words of Puttenham in reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, poetry is a lofty, insolent (unusual) and passionate thing.

It is not philosophy, it is not science, it is not morality, it is not religion, any more than red is or ever can be blue or yellow, or than one thing can ever be another; but it feeds on, it glorifies and exalts, it impassionates them all. A poet will be the better of all the wisdom, and all the goodness, and all the science, and all the talent he can gather into himself, but _qua_ poet he is a minister and an interpreter of {to kalon}, and of nothing else. Philosophy and poetry are not opposites, but neither are they convertibles. They are twin sisters;--in the words of Augustine:--"PHILOCALIA _et_ PHILOSOPHIA _prope similiter cognominatae sunt, et quasi gentiles inter se videri volunt et sunt. Quid est enim Philosophia? amor sapientiae. Quid Philocalia? amor pulchritudinis. Germanae igitur istae sunt prorsus, et eodem parente procreatae._" Fracastorius beautifully illustrates this in his "_Naugerius, sive De Poetica Dialogus_." He has been dividing writers, or composers as he calls them, into historians, or those who record appearances; philosophers, who seek out causes; and poets, who perceive and express _veras pulchritudines rerum, quicquid maximum et magnificum, quicquid pulcherrimum, quicquid dulcissimum_; and as an example, he says, if the historian describe the ongoings of this visible universe, I am taught; if the philosopher announce the doctrine of a spiritual essence pervading and regulating all things, I admire; but if the poet take up the same theme, and sing--

"_Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentes
Lucentemque globum lunae, titaniaque astra,
Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet._"

"_Si inquam, eandem rem, hoc pacto referat mihi, non admirabor solum, sed adamabo: et divinum nescio quid, in animum mihi immissum existimabo._"

In the quotation which he gives, we at once detect the proper tools and cunning of the poet: fancy gives us _liquentes campos_, _titania astra_, _lucentem globum lunae_, and fantasy or imagination, in virtue of its royal and transmuting power, gives us _intus alit_--_infusa per artus_--and that magnificent idea, _magno se corpore miscet_--this is the _divinum nescio quid_--the proper work of the imagination--the master and specific faculty of the poet--that which makes him what he is, as the wings make a bird, and which, to borrow the noble words of the Book of Wisdom, "is more moving than motion,--is one only, and yet manifold, subtle, lively, clear, plain, quick, which cannot be letted, passing and going through all things by reason of her pureness; being one, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new."

The following is Fracastorius' definition of a man who not only writes verses, but is by nature a poet: "_Est autem ille natura poeta, qui aptus est veris rerum pulchritudinibus capi monerique; et qui per illas loqui et scribere potest_;" and he gives the lines of Virgil,--

"_Aut sicuti nigrum
Ilicibus crebris sacra nemus accubat umbra,_"

as an instance of the poetical transformation. All that was merely actual or informative might have been given in the words _sicuti nemus_, but fantasy sets to work, and _videte, per quas pulchritudines, nemus depinxit; addens_ ACCUBAT, ET NIGRUM _crebris ilicibus et_ SACRA UMBRA! _quam ob rem, recte Pontanus dicebat, finem esse poetae, apposite dicere ad admirationem, simpliciter, et per universalem bene dicendi ideam_. This is what we call the _beau ideal_, or {kat' exochen} the ideal--what Bacon describes as "a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul, and the exhibition of which doth raise and erect the mind by submitting _the shows of things_ to the desires of the mind." It is "the wondrous and goodly paterne" of which Spenser sings in his "Hymne in honour of Beautie:"--

"What time this world's great Workmaister did cast
To make al things such as we now behold,
_It seems that he before his eyes had plast_
_A goodly Paterne_, to whose perfect mould
He fashioned them, as comely as he could,
That now so faire and seemly they appeare,
As nought may be amended any wheare.

"That wondrous Paterne wheresoere it bee,
Whether in earth layd up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see
With sinfull eyes, for feare it to deflore,
_Is perfect Beautie_, which all men adore--
_That is the thing that giveth pleasant grace_
_To all things fair._

"For through infusion of celestial powre
_The duller earth it quickneth with delight,_
_And life-full spirits privily doth powre_
_Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight_
_They seeme to please._"

It is that "loveliness" which Mr. Ruskin calls "the signature of God on his works," the dazzling printings of His fingers, and to the unfolding of which he has devoted, with so much of the highest philosophy and eloquence, a great part of the second volume of "Modern Painters."

But we are as bad as Mr. Coleridge, and are defrauding our readers of their fruits and flowers, their peaches and lilies.

Henry Vaughan, "Silurist," as he was called, from his being born in South Wales, the country of the _Silures_, was sprung from one of the most ancient and noble families of the Principality. Two of his ancestors, Sir Roger Vaughan and Sir David Gam, fell at Agincourt. It is said that Shakspeare visited Scethrog, the family castle in Brecknockshire; and Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell in with the word "Puck." Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-Pooky, or Pwcca, the Goblin's valley, which belonged to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on a milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely personage, one would think, to say,--

"I go, I go; look how I go;
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow."

[45] We confess to being considerably affected when we look at
this odd little fellow, as he sits there with his innocent
upturned toes, and a certain forlorn dignity and meek
sadness, as of "one who once had wings." What is he? and
whence? Is he a surface or a substance? is he smooth and
warm? is he glossy, like a blackberry? or has he on him "the
raven down of darkness," like an unfledged chick of night?
and if we smoothed him, would he smile? Does that large eye
wink? and is it a hole through to the other side? (whatever
that may be;) and is that a small crescent moon of darkness
swimming in its disc? or does the eye disclose a bright
light from within, where his soul sits and enjoys bright
day? Is he a point of admiration whose head is too heavy, or
a quaver or crotchet that has lost his neighbors, and fallen
out of the scale? Is he an aspiring Tadpole in search of an
idea? What have been and what will be the fortunes of this
our small Nigel (_Nigellus_)? Think of "Elia" having him
sent up from the Goblin Valley, packed in wool, and finding
him lively! how he and "Mary" would doat upon him, feeding
him upon some celestial, unspeakable _pap_, "sweeter than
the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the
brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made
to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first
bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the
"rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not
deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his
sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," their
"dim Speck."

We can more easily imagine him as one of those Sprites--

"That do run
By the triple Hecat's team,
From the presence of the Sun,
Following darkness like a dream."

Henry, our poet, was born in 1621; and had a twin-brother, Thomas. Newton, his birthplace, is now a farm-house on the banks of the Usk, the scenery of which is of great beauty. The twins entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1638. This was early in the Great Rebellion, and Charles then kept his Court at Oxford. The young Vaughans were hot Royalists; Thomas bore arms, and Henry was imprisoned. Thomas, after many perils, retired to Oxford, and devoted his life to alchemy, under the patronage of Sir Robert Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, himself addicted to these studies. He published a number of works, with such titles as "_Anthroposophia Theomagica_, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man, and his State after Death, grounded on his Creator's Proto-chemistry;" "_Magia Adamica_, with a full discovery of the true _Coelum terrae_, or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter of all things."

Henry seems to have been intimate with the famous wits of his time: "Great Ben," Cartwright, Randolph, Fletcher, &c. His first publication was in 1646:--"Poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished, by Henry Vaughan, Gent." After taking his degree in London as M. D., he settled at his birthplace, Newton, where he lived and died the doctor of the district. About this time he prepared for the press his little volume, "Olor Iscanus, the Swan of Usk," which was afterwards published by his brother Thomas, without the poet's consent. We are fortunate in possessing a copy of this curious volume, which is now marked in the Catalogues as "_Rariss_." It contains a few original poems; some of them epistles to his friends, hit off with great vigor, wit, and humor. Speaking of the change of times, and the reign of the Roundheads, he says,--

"Here's brotherly Ruffs and Beards, and a strange sight
Of high monumental Hats, tane at the fight
Of eighty-eight; while every Burgesse foots
The mortal Pavement in eternall boots."

There is a line in one of the letters which strikes us as of great beauty:--

"Feed on the vocal silence of his eye."

And there is a very clever poem _Ad Amicum Foeneratorem_, in defiance of his friend's demand of repayment of a loan.

There is great beauty and delicacy of expression in these two stanzas of an epithalamium:--

"Blessings as rich and fragrant crown your heads,
As the mild heaven on roses sheds,
When at their cheeks (like pearls) they weare
The clouds that court them in a tear.

"Fresh as the houres may all your pleasures be,
And healthfull as Eternitie!
Sweet as the flowre's first breath, and close
As th' unseen spreadings of the Rose
When she unfolds her curtained head,
And makes her bosome the Sun's bed!"

The translations from Ovid, Boece, and Cassimir, are excellent.

The following lines conclude an invitation to a friend:--

"Come then! and while the slow isicle hangs
At the stifle thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs
Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us
Mid noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse.
This portion thou wert born for. Why should we
Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie?
An age that thus hath fooled itself, and will,
Spite of thy teeth and mine, persist so still.
Let's sit then at this fire; and, while wee steal
A revell in the Town, let others seal,
Purchase, and cheat, and who can let them pay,
Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day.
Innocent spenders wee! a better use
Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse
Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best
Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest!"

When about thirty years of age, he had a long and serious illness, during which his mind underwent an entire and final change on the most important of all subjects; and thenceforward he seems to have lived "soberly, righteously, and godly."

In his Preface to the "_Silex Scintillans_," he says, "The God of the spirits of all flesh hath granted me a further use of mine than I did look for in the body; and when I expected and had prepared for a message of death, then did he answer me with life; I hope to his glory, and my great advantage; that I may flourish not with leafe only, but with some fruit also." And he speaks of himself as one of the converts of "that blessed man, Mr. George Herbert."

Soon after, he published a little volume, called "_Flores Solitudinis_," partly prose and partly verse. The prose, as Mr. Lyte justly remarks, is simple and nervous, unlike his poetry, which is occasionally deformed with the conceit of his time.

The verses entitled "St. Paulinus to his wife Theresia," have much of the vigor and thoughtfulness and point of Cowper. In 1655, he published a second edition, or more correctly a re-issue, for it was not reprinted, of his _Silex Scintillans_, with a second part added. He seems not to have given anything after this to the public, during the next forty years of his life.

He was twice married, and died in 1695, aged 73, at Newton, on the banks of his beloved Usk, where he had spent his useful, blameless, and, we doubt not, happy life; living from day to day in the eye of Nature, and in his solitary rides and walks in that wild and beautiful country, finding full exercise for that fine sense of the beauty and wondrousness of all visible things, "the earth and every common sight," the expression of which he has so worthily embodied in his poems.

In "The Retreate," he thus expresses this passionate love of Nature--

"Happy those early dayes, when I
Shin'd in my Angell-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, Celestiall thought;
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded Cloud or flowre
My gazing soul would dwell an houre,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My Conscience with a sinfule sound,
Or had the black art to dispence
A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sence,
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
O how I long to travell back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plaine,
Where first I left my glorious traine;
From whence th' Inlightned spirit sees
That shady City of Palme trees."

To use the words of Lord Jeffrey as applied to Shakspeare, Vaughan seems to have had in large measure and of finest quality, "that indestructible love of flowers, and odors, and dews, and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight, which are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion which is its essence and its vivifying power."

And though what Sir Walter says of the country surgeon is too true, that he is worse fed and harder wrought than any one else in the parish, except it be his horse; still, to a man like Vaughan, to whom the love of nature and its scrutiny was a constant passion, few occupations could have furnished ampler and more exquisite manifestations of her magnificence and beauty. Many of his finest descriptions give us quite the notion of their having been composed when going his rounds on his Welsh pony among the glens and hills, and their unspeakable solitudes. Such lines as the following to a Star were probably direct from nature on some cloudless night:--

"Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below
Attracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow,
And winde and curle, and wink and smile,
Shifting thy gate and guile."

He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature subjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure by Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.

We shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the _Silex_ by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made very free use.

THE TIMBER.

"Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers
Past o'er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings,
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.

"And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies;
While the low Violet thriveth at their root.

"But thou beneath the sad and heavy Line
Of death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.

"And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent,
Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,
Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent,
Before they come, and know'st how near they be.

"Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath
Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;
But this thy strange resentment after death
Means only those who broke in life thy peace."

This poem is founded upon the superstition that a tree which had been blown down by the wind gave signs of restlessness and anger before the coming of a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall. It seems to us full of the finest fantasy and expression.

THE WORLD.

"I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd."

There is a wonderful magnificence about this; and what a Bunyan-like reality is given to the vision by "_the other night_"!

MAN.

"Weighing the stedfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date
And Intercourse of times divide,
Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs,
Early as well as late,
Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs:

"I would, said I, my God would give
The staidness of these things to man! for these
To His divine appointments ever cleave,
And no new business breaks their peace;
The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine,
The flowres without clothes live,
Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.

"Man hath still either toyes or Care;
He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,
But ever restless and Irregular
About this Earth doth run and ride.
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;
He says it is so far,
That he hath quite forgot how to go there.

"He knocks at all doors, strays and roams:
Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have,
Which in the darkest nights point to their homes
By some hid sense their Maker gave:
Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest
And passage through these looms
God order'd motion, but ordain'd no rest."

There is great moral force about this; its measure and words put one in mind of the majestic lines of Shirley, beginning

"The glories of our earthly state
Are shadows, not substantial things."

COCK-CROWING.

"Father of lights! what Sunnie seed,
What glance of day hast thou confin'd
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busie Ray thou hast assign'd;
Their magnetisme works all night,
And dreams of Paradise and light.

"Their eyes watch for the morning-hue,
Their little grain expelling night
So shines and sings, as if it knew
The path unto the house of light.
It seems their candle, howe'er done,
Was tinn'd and lighted at the sunne."

This is a conceit, but an exquisite one.

PROVIDENCE.

"Sacred and secret hand!
By whose assisting, swift command
The Angel shewd that holy Well,
Which freed poor Hagar from her fears,
And turn'd to smiles the begging tears
Of yong distressed Ishmael."

There is something very beautiful and touching in the opening of this on Providence, and in the "yong distressed Ishmael."

THE DAWNING.

"Ah! what time wilt thou come? when shall that crie,
The Bridegroome's Comming! fill the sky?
Shall it in the Evening run
When our words and works are done?
Or will thy all-surprizing light
Break at midnight,
When either sleep, or some dark pleasure
Possesseth mad man without measure?
Or shall these early, fragrant hours
Unlock thy bowres?
And with their blush of light descry
Thy locks crown'd with eternitie?
Indeed, it is the only time
That with thy glory doth best chime;
All now are stirring, ev'ry field
Full hymns doth yield;
The whole Creation shakes off night,
And for thy shadow looks the light."

This last line is full of grandeur and originality.

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.

"Lord, when thou didst on _Sinai_ pitch,
And shine from _Paran_, when a firie Law,
Pronounc'd with thunder and thy threats, did thaw
Thy People's hearts, when all thy weeds were rich,
And Inaccessible for light,
Terrour, and might;--
How did poore flesh, which after thou didst weare,
Then faint and fear!
Thy Chosen flock, like leafs in a high wind,
Whisper'd obedience, and their heads inclin'd."

The idea in the last lines, we may suppose, was suggested by what Isaiah says of the effect produced on Ahaz and the men of Judah, when they heard that Rezin, king of Syria, had joined Israel against them. "And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, _as the trees of the wood are moved by the winds_."

HOLY SCRIPTURES.

"Welcome, dear book, soul's Joy and food! The feast
Of Spirits; Heav'n extracted lyes in thee.
Thou art life's Charter, The Dove's spotless nest
Where souls are hatch'd unto Eternitie.

"In thee the hidden stone, the Manna lies;
Thou art the great Elixir rare and Choice;
The Key that opens to all Mysteries,
The Word in Characters, God in the Voice."

This is very like Herbert, and not inferior to him.

In a poem having the odd mark of "¶," and which seems to have been written after the death of some dear friends, are these two stanzas, the last of which is singularly pathetic:--

"They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit lingring here!
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.

"He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown;
But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown."

Referring to Nicodemus visiting our Lord:--

THE NIGHT. (JOHN iii. 2.)

"Most blest believer he!
Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes
Thy long expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise;
And, what can never more be done,
Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

"O who will tell me where
He found thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallow'd solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower;
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fulness of the Deity?

"No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works, did my Lord hold
And lodge alone;
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

"Dear night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb;
The day of Spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ's[46] progress and his prayer time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

"God's silent, searching flight:
When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
His still, soft call;
His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch,
When spirits their Fair Kindred catch.

"Were all my loud, evil days,
Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent,
Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice
Is seldom rent;
Then I in Heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here."

[46] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37.

At the end he has these striking words--

"There is in God, some say,
_A deep but dazzling darkness_----"

This brings to our mind the concluding sentence of Mr. Ruskin's fifth chapter in his second volume--"The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; _it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea_." Plato, if we rightly remember, says--"Truth is the body of God, light is His shadow."

DEATH.

"Though since thy first sad entrance
By just Abel's blood,
'Tis now six thousand years well nigh,
And still thy sovereignty holds good;
Yet by none art thou understood.

"We talk and name thee with much ease,
As a tryed thing,
And every one can slight his lease,
As if it ended in a Spring,
Which shades and bowers doth rent-free bring.

"To thy dark land these heedless go,
But there was One
Who search'd it quite through to and fro,
And then, returning like the Sun,
Discover'd all that there is done.

"And since his death we throughly see
All thy dark way;
Thy shades but thin and narrow be,
Which his first looks will quickly fray:
Mists make but triumphs for the day."

THE WATER-FALL.

"With what deep murmurs, through time's silent stealth,
Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide and call,
As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid
Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid."

THE SHOWER.

"Waters above! Eternal springs!
The dew that silvers the Dove's wings!
O welcome, welcome to the sad!
Give dry dust drink, drink that makes glad.
Many fair Evenings, many flowers
Sweetened with rich and gentle showers,
Have I enjoyed, and down have run
Many a fine and shining Sun;
But never, till this happy hour,
Was blest with such an evening shower!"

What a curious felicity about the repetition of "drink" in the fourth line.

"Isaac's Marriage" is one of the best of the pieces, but is too long for insertion.

"THE RAINBOW"

has seldom been better sung: