GEORGE MAC DONALD. Works of Fancy and Imagination. By GEORGE all or most of the different currents of religious tendency which in our own day appear to have put out for the same unfathomable sea, some, if not sufficient, criticism has been expended. Without having read and heard everything it is impossible to affirm that no criticism has yet addressed itself to the task of mapping out these currents all in one view; trying to define common sources, if any; and also to predict certain or probable points of confluence. However, thoughtful minds must somewhere, and perhaps in many places, have at least contemplated such a survey; and those who have made some little way in it, but are hindered by want of leisure, would willingly, we presume, see the work taken up by hands and heads less heavily impawned. Some of these currents float down to us, as they pass, wrecks, broken salvage, and still more painful things; in all of them there is golden sand, and in some much more than that. None is more obvious or more fertile than that which may be roughly called the current of the Humanization of the Divine. On this current have been borne to us products as strangely diverse as the heavy models, plans, and sections of Auguste Comte, who proposed to do everything "sans Dieu," and these flowers from the garden of " a God-intoxicated" man. These flowers-none without some beauty, and many of them exquisite in chiselling, freshness, and odour, though often wanting in colour and firmness of grouping-are "Works of Fancy and Imagination, by George MacDonald," collected into ten volumes, and enclosed in a case with a gilt design upon the face. The distinction between fancy and imagination cannot be made final and decisivethe latter being the same power as the former, "leased by a stronger tenure to a higher and more impassioned service;" but the working difference between the two is well indicated by the design in question, and a pretty plain line of classification may be drawn between. the writings themselves. The order in which the works are arranged is partly chronological, and it may not be unadvisable to begin by giving a short account of them. First, we have "Within and Without," dating, as we see by the dedicatory sonnet to the poet's wife, from 1855. From the title of this, the words "A Dramatic Poem," (which belonged to the first publication) have been withdrawn. Next comes "A Hidden Life." We can find nothing in the subsequent writings of Mr. Mac Donald, of which the substance (by which we mean more than the germ) is not to be grasped in these two poems. Perhaps this may result in some degree from the treatment to which the author has since subjected them; but that is a question beyond the information at our command just now. In the second volume we have "The Disciple," "The Gospel Women," and the "Sonnets Concerning Jesus;" of which the two latter may be taken as studies following upon the point of view supposed to be caught at the last "departure" in the record of spiritual history indicated in the first. Here, also, we have the fine poem "Light," inscribed to the late A. J. Scott. In the third volume are "Violin Songs," "Roadside Poems,' "Poems for Children," &c. The "Violin Songs" include the "Songs of the Seasons," which are familiar to Mr. MacDonald's admirers—an odious word, for which perhaps we might substitute friends of the book-shelf, till his exquisite instinct finds some happier periphrase. The "Roadside Poems " include "The Child-Mother." In the next volume come "Parables, Ballads, and Songs." The parables include "Death and Birth," "The Sangreal," and "Somnium Mystici;" but apparently the chronological order is here broken, for we remember in the volume of miscellanies, published by Longmans many years ago, some poems ("Light," for example) for which we must look elsewhere. As in the first volume we have the substance of all Mr. MacDonald's teaching, so we have in "Somnium Mystici" the most concentrated exhibition of its central ideas. Now we arrive at the works of "Fancy and Imagination" which are not definitely poetic in form. Volumes v. and vi. contain the "faery romance" of "Phantastes;" in volume vii. is "The Portent, Mr. MacDonald's well-known story of "Inner Vision, or Second Sight." The remaining three volumes contain various poetic parables told in prose; many of them fit for children, and all of them childlike in spirit, though their whole scope and meaning are far beyond the range not only of children, but of all persons except those of considerable experience and observation of life, united with respectable culture (high of its kind), and some natural apprehensiveness of truth put into symbols. The "Light Princess" is included in these three volumes. We do not know that the amount and quality of the alterations made in these very varied writings since their first publication are any great concern of the reader, who, it may be said, is bound in honour to take them from the author as he wishes them to be taken, and not inquire too curiously. But we hope few of them have been altered as much as "Death and Birth," in which we miss some most pregnant lines, and some not less pregnant side-notes. Of the latter one word. "The resentment of genius at the thumbscrew of worldly talent," struck us as particularly good. And where is the passage out of which the line, "Kiss me, God, with thy cold kiss!" stands up in our memory, with its marginal quotation, "I dreamt that Allah kissed me, and his kiss was cold?" We cannot remember accurately enough to guess at reasons for such as these and other modifications; nor is this kind of criticism usually very fertile. Sometimes, no doubt, it proves otherwise; as, for example, in Julius Hare's powerful and convincing condemnation of the wretched changes Wordsworth introduced into the last verse of the "Laodamia ;" but though Mr. MacDonald's mind has had, like other people's, a history, it shows no traces of having anywhere returned upon itself, or undergone a chill. If the spiritual ideas which rule in his mind. have by any recent touches in these poems been more firmly outlined or more stringently drawn into the form of a personal confessio fidei, -this was to be expected, and it would be only something more of that of which for ends of pure art, there was always something too much in the poet. We are making no complaint whatever; and are, on the contrary, anxious to empty our mind and the reader's of all personal predilections and mere theories. In estimating the work of another it is first one's duty to see that one's own tastes for this that or the other do not warp the judgment: otherwise, it is as if one condemned this melody because he did not like the timbre of the violin on which it was played, and admired that because it was played upon the flute, an instrument of which the timbre pleased him. Many people do, in fact, judge music in some such way; and still more, books. That a thing suits some mood or need of their own or embodies some fact of their personal history is the secret reason of perhaps most of the literary likings of "general readers." To make some stand against these partialities is the greatest practical use of criticism; but critics, too, must go wildly wrong unless they remember that their canons are partly ex post facto, and that if a new product yields delight it vindicates itself and is entitled to insist on a modification of the canon, In fact, the critic is in the position of the grammarian, to whom the bad forms of yesterday may to-morrow become allowed and effective phraseology. But in each case there is a supreme logic which may not be violated with impunity. If in any particular a · writer whose work is otherwise so exquisite as Mr. MacDonald's should disregard that supreme logic, the effect would be all the more inharmonious. But let us not anticipate. Certain qualities of Mr. MacDonald's writings lie so immediately upon the surface, that it can scarcely be said that you notice them. Upon reflection, you recall them; but it would hardly strike you to say that he is singularly pure, elevated, and tender, or that he wrote beautiful English. Yet, of course, all this is true; and the transparency or lucidity of his style appears to be closely connected with, perhaps, the first peculiarity that an attentive reader can be said to notice. It reminds you of running water; and so, also, does the course of the author's thought. And yet the running water is not the right analogue, nor is the gushing water. "The cistern contains, the fountain overflows," said Blake; but it is not in that sense that Mr. MacDonald's manner reminds you of water. There is an abundant supply, and so far the comparison holds good. But we sometimes feel a little weary of this incessant out-flow or up-flow (if the physicist will permit the latter word), without any apparent will in it; and thus the very utmost spontaneity ends by having an air of arbitrariness. The late Sarah Williams (Sadie) has a remark expressly to the point here, and it is a true one. In the design upon the front of the case which enshrines these volumes, the first letter of the word Imagination shows a pair of wings mounting towards a star. But if there were such a thing as a balloon or kite to the empyrean-the reader will smile, and so do we-that would more truly represent Mr. MacDonald's genius-on the whole. We miss the beating of the wings. It is exceedingly difficult to make this plain, but we believe most readers have already felt it for themselves, and will need no explanation. Nor is the case met by what we took to be Mr. MacDonald's own doctrine of the Imagination, as expounded by him in an article in the British Quarterly Review, which nobody could help at once assigning to its true authorship. The imagination may act ever so spontaneously, but there is a spontaneity of action as well as a spontaneity of receptivity; and the genius of Mr. MacDonald seems so very often as if it merely reflected what came to it, instead of going forth to seek, and gather, and bind, that at last the sense of a personality behind the work almost slips away. The watchful reader will notice how often, how very often, the poet starts from a datum of scene or incident-a datum in the strict sense. You notice it not only, for instance, in the "Violin Songs," but even in "The Disciple," where the author is before us in person, and recounting a personal struggle. His own very states of mind come before us as data, and nothing more. We are referring to this point because it is related to a curious question which arises between Mr. MacDonald's prose and his poetry, and to the question generally of his ordination. When we come to look at his prose writings, there is a change— "A fuller light illumined all, A breeze through all the garden swept, A sudden hubbub shook the hall, And sixty feet the fountain leapt." No, the "light" is not "fuller," it is of necessity more broken; but there is more movement in the air, and this is one reason why loving students of his writings, and good judges too, have set down his prose narratives of real life as his best work. The author's genius is, in them, obviously seeking, gathering, and binding, and the impression of power is proportionately stronger. In the stories of phantasy-notably in "Phantastes" itself—we receive, as in the poetry, a sort of impression that the author's genius is something that only lies or sits and watches a mirror and occasionally longs; and the procession of "sights," to use Macbeth's word, looks too often as if it "couldn't help it." And the farther we get from the sphere of pure poetry, the more does this impression about the product before us weaken. Nevertheless do we adhere to the opinion that Mr. MacDonald is truly and primarily a poet. It is in his poems that we find what perfect work he has done, and in them that we have opened to us the highest and sweetest sources of pleasure. There is a great deal more in "Robert Falconer" than there is in the "Somnium Mystici," "The Child Mother," "The Grace of Grace," or "Light;" but the latter have the unlimited and yet concentrated value that belong to all poetry, and indeed, to all works of high art: in which, by the exclusion |