"Such perusal of her faceAs they would draw it."
"Such perusal of her faceAs they would draw it."
And often must she be sick of the Curious Impertinents. But a Curious Impertinent are not we—if ever there was onebeneath the skies, a devout worshipper of Nature; and though we often seem to heed not her shrine—it stands in our imagination, like a temple in a perpetual Sabbath.
It was poetically and piously said by the Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes, that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. Take Summer, which early in our soliloquy we abused in good set terms. Its weather was broken, but not bad; and much various beauty and sublimity is involved in the epithet "broken," when applied to the "season of the year." Commonplace people, especially town-dwellers, whoflitinto the country for a few months, have a silly and absurd idea of Summer, which all the atmospherical phenomena fail to drive out of their foolish fancies. They insist on its remaining with us for half a year at least, and on its being dressed in its Sunday's best every day in the week as long as they continue in country quarters. The Sun must rise, like a labourer, at the very earliest hour, shine all day, and go to bed late, else they treat him contumeliously, and declare that he is not worth his meat. Should he retire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems most natural and reasonable for one to do who lives so much in the public eye, why, a whole watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfied expostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is the Sun? Are we never to have any Sun?" They also insist that there shall be no rain of more than an hour's duration in the daytime, but that it shall all fall by night. Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and is shining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred green parasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in his chariot. Abrokensummer for us. Now and then a few continuous days—perhaps a whole week—but, if that be denied, now and then,
"Like angels' visits, few and far between,"
"Like angels' visits, few and far between,"
one single Day—blue-spread over heaven, green-spread over earth—no cloud above, no shade below, save that dove-coloured marble lying motionless like the mansions of peace, and that pensive gloom that falls from some old castle or venerable wood—the stillness of a sleeping joy, to our heart profounder than that of death, in the air, in the sky, and resting on our mighty mother's undisturbed breast—no lowing onthe hills, no bleating on the braes—the rivers almost silent as lochs, and the lochs, just visible in their aerial purity, floating dream-like between earth and sky, imbued with the beauty of both, and seeming to belong to either, as the heart melts to human tenderness, or beyond all mortal loves the imagination soars! Such days seem now to us—as memory and imagination half restore and half create the past into such weather as may have shone over the bridal morn of our first parents in Paradise—to have been frequent—nay, to have lasted all the Summer long—when our boyhood was bright from the hands of God. Each of those days was in itself a life! Yet all those sunny lives melted into one Summer—and all those Summers formed one continuous bliss. Storms and snows vanished out of our ideal year; and then morning, noon, and night, wherever we breathed, wefelt, what now we butknow, the inmost meaning of that profound verse of Virgil the Divine—
"Devenere locos lætos, et amœna viretaFortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.Largior hîc campos æther et lumine vestitPurpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt."
"Devenere locos lætos, et amœna viretaFortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.Largior hîc campos æther et lumine vestitPurpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt."
Few—no such days as those seem now ever to be born. Sometimes we indeed gaze through the face into the heart of the sky, and for a moment feel that the ancient glory of the heavens has returned on our dream of life. But to the perfect beatitude of the skies there comes from the soul within us a mournful response, that betokens some wide and deep—some everlasting change. Joy is not now what joy was of yore; like a fine diamond with a flaw is now Imagination's eye; other motes than those that float through ether cross between its orb and the sun; the "fine gold has become dim," with which morning and evening of old embossed the skies; the dewdrops are not now the pearls once they were, left on
"Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers,"
"Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers,"
by angels' and by fairies' wings; knowledge, custom, experience, fate, fortune, error, vice, and sin, have dulled, and darkened, and deadened all things; and the soul, unable to bring over the Present the ineffable bliss and beauty of the Past, almost swoons to think what a ghastly thunder-gloom may by Providence be reserved for the Future!
Nay—nay—things are not altogether so bad with us as this strain—sincere though it be as a stream from the sacred mountains—might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy abrokenSummer. It would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the Highland hills,sansgreat-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the thermometer keeps ranging between 60° and 70°, three times a-day. What refreshment in the very sound—Soaking! Old bones wax dry—nerves numb—sinews stiff—flesh frail—and there is a sad drawback on the Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the approach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizens of heaven; how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee are streaming, and gleaming athwart the sunny mountain-gloom, while ever as they descend on earth, lift up the streams along the wilderness louder and louder a choral song. Look now at the heather—and smile whenever henceforth you hear people talk ofpurple. You have been wont to call a gold guinea or a sovereignyellow—but if you have got one in your pocket, place it on your palm, and in the light of that broom is it not adirty brown? You have an emerald ring on your finger—but how grey it looks beside thegreenof those brackens, that pasture, that wood! Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, sir, for the first time in your life. Widening and widening over your head, all the while you have been gazing on the heather, the broom, the bracken, the pastures, and the woods, have the eternal heavens been preparing for you a vision of the sacredBlue. Is not that an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn that mercantile and manufacturing image, steal that blue from the sky, and let the lady of your love tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and a saintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as she beseeches Heaven to bless thee in her prayers! Set slowly—slowly—slowly—O Sun of Suns! as may be allowed by the laws of Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunk behind those mountains into the sea, will that celestialROSY-REDbe tabernacled in the heavens!
Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have so soaked and steeped our old crazy carcass in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of youth, that we should not be surprised were we to outlive that raven croaking in puregaieté du cœuron the cliff. Threescore and ten years! Poo—'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers—for twenty years more keep to the Highland fling—and at the close of other twenty, jig it into the grave to that matchless strathspey, the Reel of Tullochgorum!
Having thus made our peace with last Summer, can we allow the Sun to go down on our wrath towards theAutumn, whose back we yet see on the horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season, and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener and greener—reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill, with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, and with unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dream of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvest treading on the heels of Christmas,
"And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"
"And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"
when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions of foolish and false prophets, came rustling from all the airts, far, far and wide over the rain-drenched kingdom, the great armament of the Autumnal Winds! Groaned the grain, as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its head, and knew that again the Sun was in Heaven. Death became life; and the hearts of the husbandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the reapers brandished their sickles in the breezy light, and every field glittered with Christian crescents. Auld wives and bits o' weans mingled on the rig—kilted to the knees, like the comely cummers, and the handsome hizzies, and the lo'esome lassies wi' their silken snoods—among the heather-legged Highlandmen, and the bandy Irishers, brawny all, and with hook, scythe, or flail, inferior to none of the children of men. The scene liesin Scotland—but now, too, is England "Merry England" indeed, and outside passengers on a thousand coaches see stooks rising like stacks, and far and wide, over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields now—but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or stony soil—are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, but some stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, as the huge wains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by the gates they hide, and then, crested perhaps with laughing boys and girls,
"Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings,"
"Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings,"
no—not rings—for Beattie, in that admirable line, lets us hear a cart going out empty in the morning—but with acheerful dullsound, ploughing along the black soil,the clean dirtalmost up to the axletree, and then, as the wheels, rimmed you might always think with silver, reach the road, macadamised till it acts like a railway, how glides along downhill the moving mountain! And see now, the growing Stack glittering with a charge of pitchforks! The trams fly up from Dobbin's back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the mire. Up they go, tossed from sinewy arms like feathers, and the Stack grows before your eyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, without line or measure, but shaped by the look and the feel, true almost as the spring instinct of the nest-building bird. And are we not heartily ashamed of ourselves, amidst this general din of working mirthfulness, for having, but an hour ago, abused the jovial and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven that he was dead? Let us retire into the barn with Shoosy, and hide our blushes.
Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore for one paragraph let us compareAutumnwithSpring. Suppose ourselves sitting beneath$1of Windermere! Poets call Spring Green-Mantle—and true it is that the groundwork of his garb is green—even like that of the proud peacock's changeful neck, when the creature treads in the circle of his own splendour, and the scholar who may have forgotten his classics, has yet a dream of Juno and of her watchful Arguswith his hundred, his thousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, like that of Joseph, is a coat of many colours. Call it patch-work if you choose,
"And be yourself the great sublime you draw."
"And be yourself the great sublime you draw."
Some people look on nature with a milliner's or a mantua-maker's eye—arraying her in furbelows and flounces. But use your own eyes and ours, and from beneathThe Sycamorelet us two, sitting together in amity, look lovingly on theSpring. Felt ever your heart before, with such an emotion of harmonious beauty, the exquisitely delicate distinctions of character among the lovely tribes of trees! That isBelle Isle. Earliest to salute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of green gentle as its own, is the lake-lovingAlder, whose home, too, is by the flowings of all the streams. Just one degree fainter in its hue—or shall we rather say brighter—for we feel the difference without knowing in what it lies—stands, by the Alder's rounded softness, the spiralLarch, all hung over its limber sprays, were you near enough to admire them, with cones of the Tyrian dye. That stem, white as silver, and smooth as silk, seen so straight in the green sylvan light, and there airily overarching the coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy might picture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant as is her life on that Fortunate Isle, is yet said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadness to unsorrowing things—to belong to a Tree thatweeps,—though a weight of joy it is, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses theBirch'spendent beauty, till it droops—as we think—like that of a being overcome with grief! Seen standing all along by themselves, with something of a foreign air, and an exotic expression, yet not unwelcome or obtrusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, twinkling to the touch of every wandering wind, and restless even amidst what seemeth now to be everlasting rest, we cannot choose but admire that somewhat darker grove of columnar LombardyPoplars. How comes it that someSycamoresso much sooner than others salute the Spring? Yonder are some but budding, as if yet the frost lay on the honey-dew that protects the beamy germs. There are others warming into expansion, half-budded and half-leaved, with a various light of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly from afar. And in that nook of the still sunnier south, trending eastward, a few are almost in their full summer foliage, and soon will thebees be swarming among their flowers. AHorse Chestnuthas a grand oriental air, and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yellowing in the light—that shows he belongs to the line of the Prophet.Elmsare then most magnificent—witness Christ-Church walk—when they hang over head in heaven like the chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are the august—and methinks "a dim religious light" is in that vault of branches just vivifying to the Spring, and though almost bare, tinged with a coming hue that ere long will be majestic brightness. Those oldOaksseem sullen in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their power, like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. But they, too, are relaxing from their wonted sternness—soon will that faint green be a glorious yellow; and while the gold-laden boughs stoop boldly to the storms with which they love to dally, bounds not the heart of every Briton to the music of his national anthem,
"Rule, Britannia,Britannia rules the waves!"
"Rule, Britannia,Britannia rules the waves!"
TheAshis a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; and yonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in the docks of Liverpool. Yet like the town of Kilkenny
"It shines well where it stands;"
"It shines well where it stands;"
and the bare grey-blue of the branches, apart but not repulsive, like some cunning discord in music, deepens the harmony of the Isle of Groves. Contrast is one of the finest of all the laws of association, as every philosopher, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment, it brings, by the bonds of beauty, though many glades intervene, close beside that pale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-greenPineClan, whose "leaf fadeth never," a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in the English woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seest thatBelle Isleis not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt all over—bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, some tree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns, on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, and gifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty of nature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substance purer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night on the mountain-top! Trees arethey—fruit-trees—TheWild Cherry, that grows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood—and can that be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of old in the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens into pink—yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purity of the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virgin lips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a glad fond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his arms open to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smiles that are almost tears, within her father's bosom.
"As when to those who sailBeyond the Cape of Hope, and now are pastMozambic, off at sea north-east winds blowSabæan odours from the spicy shoreOf Araby the Blest; with such delayWell pleased they slack their course, and many a league,Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."
"As when to those who sailBeyond the Cape of Hope, and now are pastMozambic, off at sea north-east winds blowSabæan odours from the spicy shoreOf Araby the Blest; with such delayWell pleased they slack their course, and many a league,Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."
Shut your eyes—suppose five months gone—and lo!Belle Islein Autumn, like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frost in the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still as midnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand Robin Redbreast—God bless him!—is warbling on the copestone of that old barn gable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct the clank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on its slow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of the Queen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness, yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and how close together seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two opposite shores! But we wish you to look atBelle Isle, though we ourselves are almost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that we know will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured.—Could you not think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the Isle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yet they burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, as in a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, and reigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all the canopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hungwith the richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forth in gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in the air of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of these Palaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living and dying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration, with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No names of trees are remembered—a glorious confusion comprehends in one the whole leafy race—orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are all seen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is aye felt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishable in earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trance goes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takes down all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment with less of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses each one of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less and less glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all the happiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoples the melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may return never more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in the dust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips have declared—melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets—till the pensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac and foreboding hymns—as is the Race of Leaves—now old Homer speaks—so is the Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be any creature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those mysterious misgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysterious still, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God, and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these—the earthly, in its sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:—
"But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"
"But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"
Have we not been speaking of all the Seasons as belonging to the masculine gender? They are generally, we believe, in this country, painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, as may be daily seen in the pretty prints that bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns. Spring is always there represented as a spanker in a blue symar, very pertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, in a style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of that shamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She holds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, or primrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubt does look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood of the Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey,in puris naturalibus, meant to image Musidora, or the Medicean, or rather the Hottentot Venus.
"So stands the statue that enchants the world!"
"So stands the statue that enchants the world!"
She seems, at the very lightest, a good round half hundred heavier than Spring; and, when you imagine her plunging into the pool, you think you hear a porpus. May no Damon run away with her clothes, leaving behind in exchange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dogdays, and should one "imparadise himself in form of that sweet flesh," there will be a cry in the woods that will speedily bring to her assistance Pan and all his Satyrs. Autumn is a motherly matron, evidentlyenceinte, and, like Love and Charity, who probably are smiling on the opposite wall, she has a brace of bouncing babies at her breast—in her right hand a formidable sickle, like a Turkish scymitar—in her left an extraordinary utensil,bearing, we believe, the heathenish appellation of cornucopia—on her back a sheaf of wheat—and on her head a diadem—planted there by John Barleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as ugly a customer as a lonely man would wish to encounter beneath the light of a September moon. On her feet are bauchles—on her legs huggers—and the breadth of her soles, and the thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own conjectures. Her fine bust is conspicuous in an open laced boddice—and her huge hips are set off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket that she seems to have picked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from a long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated with frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained in iciness, and an old stump, half buried in the drift. Poor old, miserable, cowering crone! One cannot look at her without unconsciously putting one's hand in his pocket, and fumbling for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in the picture, especially while, on turning round your head, you behold a big blockhead of a vulgar bagman, with his coat-tails over his arms, warming his loathsome hideousness at a fire that would roast an ox.
Such are the Seasons! And though we have spoken of them, as mere critics on art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always no inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, or prose-works, that—pardon our tautology—are popular with the people. The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations of persons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the old masters; so that, though the conception is good, the execution is, in general, far from perfect. Yet many a time, when lying at our ease in a Wayside Inn, stretched on three wooden chairs, with a little round deal-table before us, well laden with oatmeal cakes and cheese and butter, nor, you may be sure, without its "tappit hen"—have we after a long day's journey—perhaps the longest day—
"Through moors and mosses many, O,"
"Through moors and mosses many, O,"
regarded with no imaginative spirit—when Joseph and his brethren were wanting—even such symbols of the Seasons as these—while arose to gladden us many as fair an image as ever nature sent from her woods and wildernesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimage to her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop his head below the lowest lintel, and held all men his equal who earned by honest industry the scanty fare which they never ate without those holy words of supplication and thanksgiving, "Give us this day our daily bread!"
Our memory is a treasure-house of written and unwritten poetry—the ingots, the gifts of the great bards, and the bars of bullion—much of the coin our own—some of it borrowed mayhap, but always on good security, and repaid with interest—a legal transaction, of which even a not unwealthy man has no need to be ashamed—none of it stolen, nor yet found where the Highlandman found the tongs. But our riches are like those that encumbered the floor of the Sanctum of the Dey of Algiers, not very tidily arranged; and we are frequently foiled in our efforts to lay our hand, for immediate use or ornament, on a ducat or a diamond, a pistole or a pearl, a sovereign, or only his crown. We feel ourselves at this moment in that predicament, when trying to recollect the genders of Thomson's "Seasons"—
"Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,While music wakes around, veil'd in a showerOf shadowing roses, on our plains descend!"
"Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,While music wakes around, veil'd in a showerOf shadowing roses, on our plains descend!"
That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination, and there is not a syllable about sex—though "ethereal mildness," which is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a Virgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that dwell between heaven and earth must love. Never to our taste—but our taste is inferior to our feeling and our genius—though you will seldom go far wrong even in trusting it—never had a poem a more beautiful beginning. It is not simple—nor ought it to be—it is rich, and even gorgeous—for the Bard came to his subject full of inspiration; and as it was the inspiration, here, not of profound thought, but of passionate emotion, it was right that music at the very first momentshould overflow the page, and that it should be literally strewed with roses. An imperfect Impersonation is often proof positive of the highest state of poetical enthusiasm. The forms of nature undergo a half humanising process under the intensity of our love, yet still retain the character of the insensate creation, thus affecting us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, blended emotion that scarcely belongs to either separately, but to both together clings as to a phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, because only the soul of genius can give it a presence—though afterwards all eyes dimly recognise it, on its being shown to them, as something more vivid than their own faint experience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually one and the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understand and feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarest genius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break their harps, and go drown themselves in Helicon.
"From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,Child of the Sun, refulgentSummercomes,In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:He comes attended by the sultry hours,And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;While, from his ardent look, the turning SpringAverts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."
"From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,Child of the Sun, refulgentSummercomes,In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:He comes attended by the sultry hours,And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;While, from his ardent look, the turning SpringAverts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."
Here the Impersonation is stronger—and perhaps the superior strength lies in the words "child of the Sun." And here in the words describing Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other passage—averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine; and 'tis a jewel of a picture—for ladies should always avert their blushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed, elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks of his mistress,—
"From the keen gaze her lover turns away,Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sickWith sighing languishment."
"From the keen gaze her lover turns away,Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sickWith sighing languishment."
This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as delicate as it is natural; but for our own simpleand single selves, we never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we cannot deny—if we did, the most credulous would not credit us—much agitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixing upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her affianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all our long lives got we absolutelysick—nor evensqueamish—never were we obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth—but, on the contrary, we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring for a few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals. However, we are not now writing our Confessions—and what we wished to say about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented as turning away the face from that of the other, which may be all natural enough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and, had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would have read better in poetry. But for Spring to averthisblushful face from the ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasons seem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness," was unquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to the toe," and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed his boyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of his own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful of cold water.
"Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,Comes jovial on," &c.,
"Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,Comes jovial on," &c.,
is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'er the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature—and descriptive of thegrowing and ripening or ripened harvest—whereas it is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is not obscurity—or indistinctness—which, as we have said before, is often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a contradiction—and therefore indefensible on any ground either of conception or expression.
"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle of Indolence"—for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration to thought—and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, became celestial as an angel's song.
"See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'dIn the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,Till through the lucid chambers of the southLook'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"
"See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'dIn the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time,Till through the lucid chambers of the southLook'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"
Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read by the bedside of a dying lover of nature, might
"Create a soulUnder the ribs of death!"
"Create a soulUnder the ribs of death!"
What in the name of goodness makes us suppose that a mean, and miserable November day, even while we are thus Rhapsodising, is drizzling all Edinburgh with the worst of all imaginable Scottish mists—an Easterly Haur? We know that he infests all the year, but shows his poor spite in its bleakest bitterness in March and in November. Earth and heaven are not only not worth looking at in an Easterly Haur, but the Visible is absolute wretchedness, and people wonder why they were born. The visitation begins with a sort of characterless haze, waxing more and more wetly obscure, till you know not whether it be rain, snow, or sleet, that drenchesyour clothes in dampness, till you feel it in your skin, then in your flesh, then in your bones, then in your marrow, and then in your mind. Your blinking eyes have it too—and so, shut it as you will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, though looking blue, are not puddled, and the dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is no eavesdropping—no gushing of waterspouts. To say it rained would be no breach of veracity, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy fact. The truth is, thatthe weather cannot rain, but keeps spit, spit, spitting, in a style sufficient to irritate Socrates—or even Moses himself; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, and authentic Rain could not—or if he could would not—so thoroughly soak you and your whole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day to do it, as that shabby imitation of a tenth-rate shower, in about the time of a usual sized sermon. So much cold and so much wet, with so little to show for it, is a disgrace to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the sunniest the weather can afford to wipe off. But the stores of sunniness which it is in the power of Winter in this northern latitude to accumulate, cannot be immense; and therefore we verily believe that it would be too much to expect that it ever can make amends for the hideous horrors of this Easterly Haur. The Cut-throat!
On such days suicides rush to judgment. That sin is mysterious as insanity—their graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh! the brain and the heart of man! Therein is the only Hell. Small these regions in space, and of narrow room—but haunted may they be with all the Fiends and all the Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul despair or bliss. At the touch of something—whence and wherefore sent, who can say—something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars—she soars up into life and light, just as you may have seen a dove suddenly cleave the sunshine—or down she dives into death and darkness, like a shot eagle tumbling into the sea!
Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should mortals, whom conscience tells that they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon the dust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dust dies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not that spirit its immortality in each sacred thought? When did ever religious soul fear annihilation? Or shudder to think that, having once known, it could ever forget God? Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternal death. Therefore is eternal death impossible to us who can hold communion with our Maker. Our knowledge of Him—dim and remote though it be—is a God-given pledge that He will redeem us from the doom of the grave.
Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with Coleridge, in his beautiful poem of the "Nightingale," that
"In Nature there is nothing melancholy,"
"In Nature there is nothing melancholy,"
not even November. The disease of the body may cause disease in the soul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful—not the less strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which is within us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like an earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead. Heaven seems to have placed a power in our Will as mighty as it is mysterious. Call it not Liberty, lest you should wax proud; call it not Necessity, lest you should despair. But turn from the oracles of man—still dim even in their clearest responses—to the Oracles of God, which are never dark; or if so, but
"Dark with excessive bright"
"Dark with excessive bright"
to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain the splendour. Bury all your books, when you feel the night of scepticism gathering around you—bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spells to illuminate the unfathomable—open your Bible, and all the spiritual world will be as bright as day.
The disease of the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Some rapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingering death;—some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence life worse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of the grave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of meaning that ever was written, is—
"Mens sana in corpore sano."
"Mens sana in corpore sano."
When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, what unutterable gladness bathes the spirit in that one feeling of—health! Then the mere consciousness ofexistence is like that emotion which Milton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Paradise—
"Vernal delight and joy, able to driveAll sadness but despair"
"Vernal delight and joy, able to driveAll sadness but despair"
It does more—for despair itself cannot prevail against it. What a dawn of bliss rises upon us with the dawn of light, when our life is healthful as the sun! Then
"It feels that it is greater than it knows."
"It feels that it is greater than it knows."
God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and at the uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in upon the spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if the enjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, and her absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over the ethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disordered matter!—from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the last scowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed the fatal fetters upon them—they see even that a link may be open, and that one effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery, and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a sudden sunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence is changed, and they see the very vanishing of their most dismal and desperate dream.
"Somewhat too much of this"—so let us strike the chords to a merrier measure—to a "livelier lilt"—as suits the variable spirit of our Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes their very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation, which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will these dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with the proceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worst comes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escape the galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like a criminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from handto hand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of the most impatient of men—and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, the most patient of men and women—we often stand shut up in that sentry-looking canvass box, dexterously and sinistrously fingering the string, perhaps for five shrinking, and shuddering, andgrueingminutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down upon ourselves the rushing waterfall! Soon as the agony is over, we bounce out the colour of beetroot, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with an amazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as fresh as when we first experienced it,
"In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."
"In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."
By-and-by we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that has leapt out of the pan—and then, seeming for a while to be an emblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we sober down into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside into our own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back upon ourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, reminds us of that line in Cowper descriptive of the November Moon—
"Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"
"Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"
Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed—we feel strong as the horse in Homer—a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self—not self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world from selfishness—elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of which every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the dogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot than Grimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficulties seem now—what they really are—facilities of which we are by far too much elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to appear appalling are felt now to be lulling securities—obstacles, like mountains, lying in our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus, we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and we kick them aside like an old footstool. Let the countryask us for a scheme to pay off the national debt—there she has it; do you request us to have the kindness to leap over the moon—here we go; excellent Mr Blackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article is in his hand, promotive of the sale of countless numbers of "my Magazine," and of the happiness of countless numbers of mankind. We feel—and the feeling proves the fact—as bold as Joshua the son of Nun—as brave as David the son of Jesse—as wise as Solomon the son of David—and as proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopolazzar. We survey our image in the mirror—and think of Adam. We put ourselves into the posture of the Belvidere Apollo.