Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

in the different relations of time and space: and to represent supersensual things by a story, would be to assume that they moved in a parallel order, similar relations being preserved between them. For default of such a parallel order, we find the allegorist is never able to keep in his allegorical position, but every now and then falls into the actual. Thus in the "Pilgrim's Progress," designed to represent the whole course of a Christian's life, death is allegorised by a stream which the pilgrims have to cross, while in the case of Faithful an actual death is inflicted, and the allegory is dropped: indeed, it seems as though the two lines of allegory and actuality, like mathematical non-parallel lines, must meet in some point or other. Spenser's "Faery Queen" will furnish abundance of illustrative examples.

Even in the scenes in heaven, in Milton's “Paradise Lost," it must strike every one that these are the inferior parts of the work, owing to the impossibility of clothing infinite ideas in a finite shape; and the vulgar decorations of heaven in the first book of Klopstock's "Messiah," are most powerful witnesses of this impossibility: the poet has crowded suns upon suns, rays upon rays, to convey the idea of infinite glory, as if unconscious that every symbol was so utterly imperfect, that a higher elaboration brought with it no approximation, and that his imagination was performing the task of the Danaides.

There is little doubt that in the epic the Christian poet stands on unequal ground with the Greek *; the latter, fully confident of the finity of his ideal, knows that every higher grade of his art will bring him to a closer imitation, while, on the other hand, the former must have the discouraging conviction, that every additional touch will but show his own inability in a stronger light. To a dramatic form of exhibiting Christianity the same considerations will apply.

Far otherwise is it with the lyric; for while the epic and dramatic forms are confined to the telling of a tale, and should be purely objective, the lyric, as the expression of feeling, is subjective, and requires no distinct object to portray. The heart is the seat of the matter of a lyric poem; and inasmuch as the Christian is the heart-religion, by so much the more is the material of the Christian lyrist richer than that of any other. The infinite and eternal are as much the objects of the Christian's heart as of the metaphysician's head: he regards them with faith; and faith is no cold assent arising from the weighing of probabilities, but "worketh by love," is the "evidence of things unseen," because the heart occupies the void which the understanding is unable to fill. For the enunciation of Christianity in a narrative form, the short ballad is best suited, because there is a combination of the epic with the lyric; the very shortness of the story showing that it is selected as the vehicle of some particular feeling, and not for a merely narrative purpose. Thus in Uhland's ballad, "Das Schloss am Meer," it is quite evident, that the death of the king's daughter is rather to exhibit the feeling of the narrator than merely to convey the narrative. The Germans have, perhaps, more purely lyrical poems than any nation; they have Romanzen in the like proportion.

Among modern foreign poets of the Christian school, the names of Lamartine and Hardenberg, or as the latter called himself," Novalis," have

Of course, these remarks will extend to all poets who choose a finite subject.

[ocr errors]

certain points of resemblance which allow of a comparison between them, especially between the “ Premières Méditations" of the Frenchman, and the Hymnen an die Nacht" and " Geistliche Lieder" of the German. Both these collections are the work of very young men; both the authors were impressed with a deep religious feeling; both regretted the departure of the old believing times; both looked beyond the grave as a resting-place from this world; and, consequently, the poems of both are in a great measure the enunciation of similar feelings.

Similar, but not the same. Lamartine, in his "Premières Méditations," stands in the position of a melancholy man, sighing over the present, and longing for the future. In a little Paris edition of 1833, the vignette represents an elegant gentleman, reclining under a tree, and regarding a distant mountain. This conveys partially, but not wholly, our feeling while reading the "Meditations:" we fancy the author reclining on a tombstone in a neat country church-yard, a brook flowing at such a distance as to convey a soft murmuring to his ear; the evening twilight darkening into night; the whole presenting a picture rather fading into indistinctness, but withal perfectly elegant and in good keeping. Hear Lamartine himself, though, by the way, on this occasion he speaks from a mountain :*-

Oft on the mount, beneath some aged tree,
When the sun sets I mournfully recline,
Casting my wandering glance upon the plain,
Whose changing picture at my feet unfolds.
Here the stream murmurs, with its foaming waves,
Winding, it penetrates yon distant shade.
There the still lake its sleeping waters spreads,
Where evening's star is rising in the blue.
On the hill tops with gloomy forests crowned,
Twilight is flinging yet its parting ray.
While in her misty car the queen of shades
Rises and silvers the horizon's edge.

Now dimly forth from yonder gothic spire,
A sacred note is spreading through the air.
The traveller stays his pace-the rustic bell

Mingles its tones with the last sounds of day.

By itself this fragment would prove but little; but those familiar with the other poems will know, that he regards the evening with a feeling fully Christian, as the shutting out of worldly views and occupations, and the leaving of the mind at leisure for higher contemplations; though religious sentiments appear not in the poem itself, the Church, in the fourth stanza, is doubtless, all the way through, the prominent picture in the poet's mind. In all Lamartine's "Premières Méditations," an evening tint may be traced; he may be called the poet of Evening, as Novalis is professedly the poet of Night. Novalis dwells not so long on the soft state of transition: he places himself in the night at once he does not so much wish to observe the world melting away, but he likes to feel that it is cut off-that he stands, as it were, in the region of the infinite.

"Hast thou pleasure in us, dark Night?" he says, in his first hymn

To convey the meaning as closely as possible, rhyme has been avoided, and a blank metre used, as more readable than prose.

to Night: "What hast thou beneath thy mantle, which with invisible power penetrates my soul? Precious balsam drops from thy hand from the bunch of poppies. The heavy wings of my mind * thou liftest up. We feel ourselves moved darkly and inexpressibly. .. .. How poor and childish does the light appear now! How joyous, how blessed the departure of day!"

If ever writings answered to the Irishman's definition of posthumous works, as "works a man writes after he is dead," they are the Hymns of Novalis. They really seem to presume an antecedent death-a death in life, like that prescribed by Socrates, as separating the soul from the body. He is not the poet of death, as Heine calls Arnim, but a death-poet, whose sleep of death is chequered by dreams, with the exception of a tiny thread of life, which binds him to the earth, and which he longs to break, when he thinks of it at all: he is like Dr. Donne preaching his own funeral sermon. He sings to Night as the great abstract from worldly affairs: it shuts out every thing but his own soul; and he feels that he is in a spiritual presence. Not so Lamartine: he never leaves the earth: he perpetually looks up to heaven, but look up he must. Novalis need not look up, he feels he is in a spiritual heaven already. Lamartine is the poet of hope, with here and there a tinge of despair. Novalis the poet of faith, and that so strong that it almost ceases to be faith: his "Geistliche Lieder" seem founded on the words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth;" his heart seems to have a power of grasping spiritual objects, and to afford the poet as rigid a demonstration as the understanding of another.

Lamartine sings to his deceased mistress thus:

No, you have never left my sight,
And when my solitary gaze
Ceased to behold you on the earth,
Again I saw you high in heaven.
And then you still appeared the same,
As you were on that parting day,
When toward your heavenly abode,
You fled away with morning's dawn.
Your pure, your touching beauty still,
Even to the heavens had followed you.

Those eyes, whose life was now extinct,
Beam still with immortality.

This is a lay of hope: for who cannot see that the hope of meeting his mistress in her celestial abode is the feeling, though not ostensibly the subject of these verses? Now let us hear Novalis hymning Night; he requires no visionary mistress to fix his regards; Night alone is enough

for him.

"Now I know when the last morning will arrive: when Light shall be no more scared at Night and Love, when sleep shall be eternal and but one inexhaustible dream. I feel within a heavenly weariness. My pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre is long and tedious; the cross is heavy. That crystal stream which, unperceivable to the common glance, flows in the dark bosom of the hill, at whose foot breaks the river of the earth,-O he that has tasted of that stream, who stands on the mountain-boundary of the world, and looks ever into the new land, into the

The original word is "Gemüth," for which we have no adequate expression.

:

dwelling-place of Night; verily he will not return back to the petty impulses of the world, to the land where light riots in eternal turmoil.

*

"He builds himself a cot above-a cot of peace: he longs, he loves, he looks forward till the most welcome of all hours draws him down to the welling forth of the source. The earthly is cast back by storms, but that which is rendered sacred by the touch of love-that flows, dissolved in secret courses, to the kingdom on the other side, where, like fragrant scents, it mingles with slumbering loves. Still, cheerful Light, you awaken the weary to labour; but from the mossy monument of memory you charm not me. Readily will I bestir my hands in labour, readily will I look round wherever thou hast need of me; I will praise the full splendour of thy radiance; indefatigably will I follow the fair connection of thy artistical work; readily contemplate the course of thy mighty, brilliant clock; fathom the symmetry of thy powers, and the rules that direct the wondrous spectacle of countless times and places. But my secret inner heart remains constant to Night, and to Love, her creative daughter. Canst thou, O Light, show me a heart eternally true? Has thy sun kind eyes, which recognise me? Do thy stars + grasp my longing hand? Do they return the fond word, the gentle pressure? Hast thou bedecked them with colours and a soft outline? Or was it not Night which gave them a higher adornment, a dearer import? What pleasure, what enjoyment does thy life offer, that can outweigh the ecstasies of death? Does not all that inspires us wear the hue of Night? Night bears thee as a mother; and to her thou owest all thy splendour. Thou wouldst be dispersed, be scattered through endless space, did not she hold thee-clasp thee, that thou mightest become warm, and flaming forth produce the world."

Notwithstanding the immense mixture of indistinct images, which would render the above a perfect absurdity, if intended as a descriptive work, who cannot see its value, regarding it as the expression of the feeling of the presence of the Infinite? There is the same glittering indistinctness in the figures of a dream; indeed, the hymn is itself a dream;-a Novalis takes the position of a dreamer.

It might be objected, that the extracts here given are rather calculated to convey the idea of the general relation between the temporal and the eternal, than of any relation as declared by Christianity in particular. The next paper on the subject will exhibit enunciations of a more determined Christian character, which it was necessary these should precede; and, indeed, these few pages are by no means adequate to render the English reader familiar with so extraordinary a genius as Novalis. JOHN OXENFORd.‡

Jenseits denotes, literally, "on the other side;" and hence it was thought best thus to render it, notwithstanding the hardness of the expression. Any addition to these apparently abrupt words would give a greater determination, and consequently remove the requisite abstraction of thought.

The stars of day mean the flowers.

Author of The Idol's Birth-day-A Day Well-spent, and other successful dramas. Thus far is Mr. Oxenford known to the world. The Editor knows him for a profound thinker, capable of grappling with the sublimities of Plato, and the subtleties of Kant.-J. A. H.

62

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD.

Being a benevolent attempt to reconcile Protestants and Romanists. Ar a period when religious contention seems likely to prevail, it is the duty of the philosophic mind, that, by virtue of its character, is free from passion or prejudice, so to discover and display the point of reconciliation in all instances of dispute, as, if possible, to heal up the breach that may have been made, and, at any rate, to prevent it from becoming wider. Nothing could be more distressful to pious sincerity than the differences so long continued between the Rev. J. Breeks, vicar of the parish of Carisbrook in the Isle of Wight, and Mrs. Mary Woolfrey, that have lately found solution in the Arches' Court. The lady, who is a widow, had erected a tombstone, in the church of the parish of Carisbrook, to the memory of her husband, without lawful authority-a point which might have been forgiven, had she not caused to be placed upon it the following inscription :

"Pray for the Soul of Joseph Woolfrey.-It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the Dead.-2 Macc. xii. 46."

Against this inscription the worthy vicar seems to have taken exception, as being of Romish tendency; and more particularly as the epigraph was quoted not from the English, but the Douay, version of the Apocrypha. He seems to have thought both that and the inscription contrary to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, and to the articles, canons, and constitution thereof, and accordingly commenced ecclesiastical proceedings for the removal of the stone.

The main objection, probably, that could be raised to this inscription, was the fact, that the text was not only taken from an apocryphal book— (that is, held to be apocryphal by the Church of England, and not by the Church of Rome)-but also from the Douay-the Romanist-translation of that book,-a translation circulated by the Romish Church, and which differs from the English, not only in the terms of the body of the text, but in the number of the verse. For the chapter in the English falls short of forty-six verses by one, and the text in question is part of the verse numbered 45, and runs in the following words:

"45. And also in that he perceived that there was great favour laid up for them that died godly. (It was a holy and good thought.) Whereupon he made a reconciliation for the dead, that they might be delivered from sin.”

All this, however, only goes to show that the inscription was provided by a Romanist, which is not the point in dispute. As the two opposing Churches of England and Rome hold many doctrines in common, the question arises whether they differ in regard to this. We think that the Vicar of Carisbrook had not sufficiently considered the entire bearings of the question.

Only by a sort of violence could the case, in fact, be brought before the Court of Arches, on the ground of doctrine; namely, as an infringement of the 22d Article of the Church of England, which is against (not prayers for the dead, but) purgatory, and is couched in these terms: The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshipping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »