Adopting these views, and anxious that others should adopt them, we are sanguine enough to believe, that a statesman will yet arise to dispense the treasures of knowledge through national institutions, and fulfil the prediction of the poet, that Science "Shall be a precious visitant; and then, Whate'er we feel, by agency direct Or indirect, shall tend to feed and nurse Of moral strength, and raise to loftier heights Edited by ART. VII.-Poetical Works of William Cowper. IT is a favourite saying in the present day, that "the tendencies of the age are essentially prosaic." The precise meaning which these words are intended to convey may not be very clearly understood by the majority of those who utter them; but they seem to embody a general idea of the unpoetical character of the times. There is a confused notion in men's minds, that the Practical and the Ideal not only cannot associate, but cannot co-exist one with the other-that the voice of Fact must bellow down the voice of Fiction-that the clangings of our iron must drown the harpings of our bards-that because we can travel on a straight road, at the rate of forty miles an hour, the excursions of the imagination and the wanderings of Fancy must be disregarded for evermore-that the generation which has tunnelled Box-hill can never care to climb Parnassus. All this is in effect so often repeated, in one form or another, that its truth has been taken for granted by multitudes of men who echo and re-echo the cry; and still we are told that the age is unpoetical, and that the present generation is a generation of worshippers at the great shrine of Matter-of-Fact. But what, after all, is the meaning of the cry? Does it mean, that given up as we are to materialities-laying down iron roads by hundreds of miles; spanning immense rivers with arches of stone; flashing messages along electric wires with the speed of the lightning; covering the seas with magic fire-ships; multiplying by the same mysterious agency textile fabrics not wrought by hands, of a beauty and a splendour such as Solomon in all his glory never dreamt of-the intelligence and the inventiveness of the age expend themselves upon projects of utilitarianism, and intent upon the palpable realities before us, we have neither eyes to "glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," nor wings to bear us up in illimitable space; that whilst we are coining one metal into another, the brain-coinage of that great ideal currency, which is more enduring than iron and stone, must necessarily be suspended? Does it mean that the aliment of poetry is vanishing from off the face of the earth-that external and internal beauty, are both ceasing to be-that inanimate nature is more formal and the human mind more prosaic; that the seasons do not alternate, nor men's hearts pulse as they were wont; that mechanism has usurped the world, and gross VOL. XXII. NO. XLIII. P wefahnews the people-in a word, that the sources of imaginative inspiration are utterly tried op! Is it Or if it meant, that although the few my made poetry, the many will L'A read it: that our misvis barnessed as it were, in a go-cart of one utilitarian pursuit or another, have no sympathy with anything of which the answer to the run bon lies not lie upon the surface; that we have by cue consent adopted the Benthamite doctrine that Poetry Eas to greater claims than Push-pin upon mankind, and in this money-making are," arrived generally at a conclusion that it does not pay. meant that we have too much to do with the literature of factthat what with our Blae Books and Statisties, our Mark-Lane Expresses, our Railway, our Mining, and our Balling Journais, our Associations for the advancement of Science, our Sanitary Commissions, and our enless official reports on every conceivable subject, we have no time to read anything that is not designed primarily to teach us to make money or to take care of ourselves? Is it meant that all iron has so eaten its way upon earth, that the sublimest and the sweetest hymnings of the bard cannot rouse in the breasts of the many one sympathetic emotion? In whichever direction the interpretation of the popular aphorism is to be found, we pronounce it without a misgiving, to be a rank and offensive fallacy. The smoke of a steam-vessel may sometimes obscure the sun from the loiterers upon deck; but all the steam in the world, or the material tendencies of which it is the representative, could as readily put out the sun as they could put out poetry. As long as there is sunshine: as long as there are moon and stars; sky and cloud; green fields and sweet flowers; the changing ocean, and the human heart which contains the likeness of them all, the few will sing and the many will listen. To us, indeed, this would seem to be a truism scarcely worth uttering, if it had not been in effect so often contradicted. We are utterly at a loss for a reason why it should be otherwise. There is room enough in the world both for Poetry and Steam. A man is not less likely to be endowed with "the vision and the faculty divine," or less likely to admire its manifestations in others, because his father goes up to London every day, with a "season ticket" in his pocket, from the fair hills of Surrey or the green woods of Berkshire, instead of travelling in the Brixton or Clapham omnibus along the old high road; or because he himself can rush from the smoke and din of the metropolis in a few hours, "To see the children sporting on the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore ;" to bury himself deep in a mighty wood, or to ascend the rugged mountain side until he steeps himself in the clouds. If there be anything in poetical education, anything in the effect of external influences upon the poetical temperament, surely the agency which brings a man most readily within their reach-within the reach of all the beauties and benignities of Nature-is to be regarded as one of the best aids to the development of the Divine faculty, and in no sense an obstruction to it. It is not one, indeed, of the least benefits which Steam has conferred upon the age, that it brings the country-sea and shore, hill and valley, wood and plain, the yellow corn-fields, the winding river, the mossy turf, the fragrant wild-flowers, the song of the lark, the tinkling of the sheep-bell-within the reach of the anxious town; almost as it were, to the very doors of dwellers in the heart of our cities.* Let those who talk about our iron roads marring the beauty of the country, because here and there may be seen an unsightly embankment, consider that there are thousands and thousands amongst us, who but for these iron roads, would never see the country at all. The Rail is, indeed, the great open-sesame of Nature. It is the key that unlocks her choicest treasures to the over-worked clerk and the toil-worn mechanic, and brings all sweet sounds and pleasant sights and fragrant scents within the reach of men who else would know of nothing that is not foul, unsightly, and obstreperous. What is this but to say that the Rail is a great teacher, educating both head and heart, preparing the few to utter, and the many to appreciate the utterances of Poetry. All this may be conceded; and yet it may still, perhaps, be alleged that the age is essentially a prosaic one. An increasing addiction, it may be said, to the study of the exact sciences is as much an effect as a cause of all those great material improvements which are the growth and the characteristic of the civilisation of the nineteenth century. And it is assumed that Science and Poetry are the antagonists, not the help-meets and handmaids of each other. But most true is it of our civilisation, that "Science and Poetry and Thought Are its lamps-They make the lot So serene they curse it not." * Coleridge said, apologetically, "I was reared In the great city... And saw nought lovely, but the sky and stars." Contrast this with Wordsworth's well-known lines, "The tall cliff Was my delight, the sounding cataract They do not enter the cottage, or the mansion, to jostle and to wrestle with, but to aid, encourage, and to support each other. They may rarely find expression through the same oracular mouth-piece. But their influences upon the generation at large are conjoint and co-extensive.* The well-known, often quoted Baconian passage, setting forth that the same age which is fertile in men of action, as warriors and statesmen, is fertile also in men of thought, as poets and philosophers, might have both a more general and a more particular application. The age which produces giants of one kind produces giants of another. The same influences which operating upon one order of intelligence generate great mechanics, operating upon another will generate great poets. As with the body of an individual man, so with the body of men in the concrete, there is a sympathy between its different parts. Those salutary influences which strengthen one organ seldom fail to strengthen another. At all events, nothing can be more preposterous than to affirm that because one part thrives another must languish. The healthiness of the age manifests itself in the general development of intellectual power of all kinds. We see it alike "In the steam-ship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind;" the progress of the nineteenth century is, in a word, catholic. But after all, the best reply to the vulgar assertion, that the tendencies of the age are essentially prosaic, is to be found in the simple material fact of the large amount of poetry that is written, and the large amount that is read. It is true that much poetry, or much that presumes to call itself poetry, is written, but never read. The volumes of poetry which issue from the press, never to be read, but by friends and critics,—and by them sparingly-are past counting. Of this phenomenon there are two noticeable things to be said. Firstly, that very much of this unread poetry would once have been largely read. Unread poetry is not always unreadable poetry. Many a poet, doomed in this nineteenth century to taste all the bitterness of neglect, would at the close of the eighteenth have made for himself a great reputation. There have been worse versifiers included in editions of standard British poets than those, which week after week are now dismissed by our periodical critics in a few faint sentences of feeble praise. And, secondly, that poetry must, to a considerable number of people, be its own exceeding great reward, or so much would not be written for the mere pleasure of writing it. Every allowance being made for the deluding ope It may be remarked, too, that men of science were never more poetical, nor poets more scientific, than at the present time. |