Literature and Science
REVIEW.
Lectures on the Poets and Poetry if Great Britain, delivered at the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts. By W.A'BECKETT, Esq.—
Sydney. 1839.
THE age of poetry, or rather of poets, is at an end, or nearly so, and an interregnum of criticism has commenced : the two arts, the Poetical and the Critical, have rarely if ever flourished simultaneously. During the last " high and palmy state" of poetry, when the great writers who shed such a glory-light upon the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, were at one and the same time stimulating and satiating, the public appetite with works of the very highest and most varied order of poetic excellence—nothing could be more despicable, more unappreciating, more one-sided, and unartistic, than the current criticism of the periodical Press; for, while the most lavish and undiscriminating praise was bestowed on Byron, Scott,and Moore- the great merit and excellence of whose works were at all events visible on the surface, and therefore required no very " gifted eye" to discover—and while weekly, monthly, and quarterly " intimations of immortality" were discovered and predicated in oracular articles, for the praise-worthy productions of such third, and fourth-rate writers as Milman, Croly, and Montgomery, and a still lower grade of the now " illustrious obscure;"—the calm but lofty intellect, pure feeling, and profound philosophy of Wordsworth—the soaring and expansive imagination of Shelley—the subtle and comprehensive, though sometimes quaint and cloudy, genius of Coleridge—and the tender, delicate, and redundant fancy of the " Boy-Bard," Keats—were " whistled down the wind," ridiculed, reviled, and scoffed at with the most sovereign contempt, and with the most blind, crassid, and ignorant animosity. But, tempora mutantur— nearly all the true poets of our time have disappeared, like planets one after one, from the intellectual hemisphere, and none others have arisen to, supply their place; while Criticism, on the contrary, has "cast off her old skin ," and come forth anew, arrayed in the mantle of a more searching, comprehensive, and Æsthetical philosophy.
Poetry, therefore, Mr. A'Beckett affirms, is on " the decline in public estimation," and he attributes this declension to the rapid spread and growth of the cold philosophy of Utilitarianism, —and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, too, a still higher authority, attributes in icy words this same declension of the public taste to the " freezing spirit of Scientific Enquiry," that benumbs the torpid hearts of these unpoetic times. We, however, are inclined to imagine that this apparent apathy, of the Public, does not arise so much from any decrease or decay of sympathy, or from any want of estimation or capacity in the universal mind to appreciate the fine and humanising influences of that divine art, which, according to Schlegel, " Sheds from its magic mirror the light of a higher interpretation upon all things"—but rather to the absence of any one eminent and original intellect to arouse the imaginative faculties of the public mind from their present lethargic state of "suspended animation," and to direct them into new and unopened sources of inspiration— into other than mere conventional manifestations and modes of development of the infinite and ever-living, but not ever-apparent forms of the Ideal. Besides, it strikes us as not a little unreflective in these learned Lawyers and Litterateurs, to be chanting their Coronachs over the dead spirit of Poetry, when we are even yet but on the confines, as it were, of an Era, emphatically and confessedly the most creative since the illustrous " Elizabethan." For, let us ask, how long is it, since the universal and many-sided mind of the world-renowned Goethe shed the splendour of its "riches countless" upon the literature of Europe, since Schiller breathed new life and being into the nerveless and effete limbs of the Drama,—since the " Ariosto of the North," Scott, roused all hearts, as with the triumphant tones of the trumpet, with his spirit-stirring and chivalric strains;—since Byron bewitched the world with the blended passion, scorn, wit, satire, pathos, and power, of his varied and energetic productions ;—since the spiritual minded and inspired Shelley "fit audience found, though few," to appreciate the high Eschylean abstractions, the lyrical " fragments of most touching melody," the marvellous trains of synchronous imagery, and the glorious word—music of his miraculous compositions;—since that " old man eloquent," Coleridge—the true Poet, the subtle metaphysician, the transcendental philosopher, the ripe and elaborate scholar, the silver-tongued sage, ennobled the hearts, and expanded the intellects of the Pilgrims who were wont to seek the seclusion of his Hermitage at Highgate, to feed upon the honey-dew of his hoarded wisdom?
Alas !
The rapt ones of the god-like forehead,
The heaven-eyed Creatures, sleep in earth.
But yet how few, "brief but few,'' are the years that have elapsed since these "Dead Kings of Melody" cast such a glory upon the earth with their most bright presence. Then why should we so prematurely lament that the Spiritual is dead within us—that the forms of the Ideal flash no longer before us—that the fountains of Poetry are dried up—and that the Earthly, the Actual, and the Mechanical, alone, have dominion over us?
In this country, and among this people indeed, all moral and intellectual life is, and ever hath been, torpid, pulseless, and all but defunct—low, grovelling, sensual, and eminently unspiritual. Our whole souls seem steeped in oil, or wrapped up in wool; we are almost entirely absorbed in calculating the increase of our kine, and the extent of our acres. We live in a pastoral country, and follow pastoral pursuits ; yet have we not, an atom, no, not a jot, of the pure, simple, antique pastoral spirit. Our community is composed of, the most clashing, heterogeneous, and unamalgamating elements. Our habits are unsocial and utterly undomestic; and, moreover, quite uncongenial to the climate. Our Capital inherits all the evils and immorality of a large city in an old country, without any one corresponding or counterbalancing advantage. Our institutions are neither Aristocratic nor Democratic. Our selfmade and mushroom aristocrats, are principally in men who have waxed wealthy on wool, or grown fat on the fisheries; whose modes of life are made up of second-hand imitations of imported manner and style—whose coats of arms have been "found" by Mr. Clint, and are to be seen any day and every day emblazoned on ill appointed equipages, driven by convict coachmen, dressed in dirty drab liveries faced with flaming yellow, and covered with crestless buttons; our Democrats, as a body, are without either, energy, public spirit, or intelligence. Our literature consists of the most common-place disquisitions on colonial politics, and our journals are pungent only when seasoned with the pepper of fierce personality, and violent party invective, enriched with all the affluence of abusive, epithet, and the beautiful flowers of Billingsgate rhetoric. Our religion consists in the correct and rigid observance of all external forms and ceremonies, and of the covert practice of all sensual vices. Our highest conception of practical morality is to "meet our bills" at the Bank, and," keep up our credit." Our aspirations are of "the earth, earthy," our God is Mammon, and our worship, only "the dark idolatry of self."
This is certainly rather a dark drawn picture of our social condition, and will be set down by some as a caricature, by others as an overcharged exaggeration. But is it so in reality? We, of course, think otherwise, and we speak from some observation and experience, and without being actuated by any self-known bias or prejudice. It may, then, be well asked by our readers, " Is this state of 'thought's stagnant chaos' to last for ever ? Are there no indications of the approach of a more advanced stage of refinement? No symptoms of a transition state yet discernible ? And we answer, with hope and confidence Yes; " the time is at hand—the spirit is gone forth ;" the indications are already discernible, faint and imperfect though they be; that we recognize them in the publication of these Lectures of Mr. a'Beckett, in the Poetry of Mr. Halloran, in the projection that has been given to the musical taste of the public by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Dean, in the success that has attended the establishment of the Mechanics' School of Arts, and in the increase of our printing and publishing establishments.
But we must defer what more we have to say on this and other synchronous subjects to some future occasion, and devote the remainder of the space allotted us, to the consideration of Mr a'Beckett's able and eloquent Lectures, admitting, at the same time, that we have made his pamphlet little better than a peg to hang a dissertation on.
The Introductory Lecture contains an eloquent exposition of the general principles of Poetry, its attributes and universality ; illustrates its moral and intellectual utility; assigns its present decline in the estimation of the public to the extension of the utilitarian principles; instances the signal failure of the attempts that have been made in this colony " to direct the public mind into purer channels of thought than politics and money getting," and recommends the cultivation of poetry as a "counteracting influence," not "for the purpose of beguiling the mind with vain chimeras, but of relieving it from the constant contemplation of petty, and sensual cares—of seducing it from the earthly to the heavenly—from the perishable to the immortal—from the transient to the eternal."
The second and third Lectures give a condensed account of the progress of poetry in Great Britain from the time of Chaucer to that of Gay, with sketches of some of the most celebrated authors; but the most ambitious part of the work, and that in which Mr. A'Becket appears to be most in earnest with his subject, and to write con amore, is that in which he discourses on the magnificent productions, Alpine Intellect, and moral character of Milton. Indeed, the tone of high but discriminating enthusiasm (reflected however in some measure from Channing and Chateaubriand), and the glowing and figurative language of this portion of the lecture must, we should imagine, have "told well" in the delivery, and have excited a corresponding enthusiasm even in so matter-of-fact an audience as that of the Mechanics' School of Arts.
Mr. A'Becket, however, is not quite so happy in his account of Spenser and his "Fairie Queen," which, he says, " has all the elegance and seductiveness, without the meretriciousness of Moore— the power and fancy, without the bitterness of Byron—and the truth and philosophy, without the moroseness of Crabbe"—which, to say the least, is very antithetical, vague, and indefinite, and equally applicable to many poets who have no one point in common with Spenser; and moreover, we think it must have appeared some what self-sufficient in our lecturer's stating that he "might safely wager that not a single person present had read through the six books of the Fairie Queen;" when, at the the same time, he acknowledges that he himself, " until lately, had never read a single line of Spenser.
We may also notice, as marks of haste and inconsiderateness of opinion in Mr. A'Beckett, his asking, " what would Italy be, but a history of priests, brigands, and fiddlers, but for Dante, Ariosto and Tasso ?" As if the great musical composers of Italy were mere "Fiddlers—" and Michael Angelo, Machiavelli, Raffaelle, and Canova, &c, were unknown names. Moreover, he quotes Hannah Moore among our "most eminent sacred poets ; and, in his enumeration of the more prominent and imaginative characters of Shakespeare, speaks of "the devoted Juliet, and the gentle Perdita—the jealous Othello—the crazed Lear—the ambitious Richard—'' and the "pensive Hamlet ;" as if " Hamlet the Dane" was a mere love-sick maiden, and Mr. A'Becket was at a loss to find, any more appropriate, and significant epithet to apply to the only philosopher that poetry has hitherto created, than the maudlin and unmeaning one of " pensive."
The Lectures conclude with a brief but well merited compliment to Mr. Halloran—and a somewhat overstrained and exaggerated one on the talented (a vile word, according to Coleridge,) and "energetic muse" of a foster-brother-barrister of Mr. A'Beckett's .
We shall recur to these lectures, and give a more detailed and analytic account of them on their completion, to which we look forward with some interest; and we will now only express our wish that the colony could boast of more men of the same "mark and livelihood "as Mr.aBeckett.
The Colonist 16/3/1839,
Sydney. 1839.
THE age of poetry, or rather of poets, is at an end, or nearly so, and an interregnum of criticism has commenced : the two arts, the Poetical and the Critical, have rarely if ever flourished simultaneously. During the last " high and palmy state" of poetry, when the great writers who shed such a glory-light upon the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, were at one and the same time stimulating and satiating, the public appetite with works of the very highest and most varied order of poetic excellence—nothing could be more despicable, more unappreciating, more one-sided, and unartistic, than the current criticism of the periodical Press; for, while the most lavish and undiscriminating praise was bestowed on Byron, Scott,and Moore- the great merit and excellence of whose works were at all events visible on the surface, and therefore required no very " gifted eye" to discover—and while weekly, monthly, and quarterly " intimations of immortality" were discovered and predicated in oracular articles, for the praise-worthy productions of such third, and fourth-rate writers as Milman, Croly, and Montgomery, and a still lower grade of the now " illustrious obscure;"—the calm but lofty intellect, pure feeling, and profound philosophy of Wordsworth—the soaring and expansive imagination of Shelley—the subtle and comprehensive, though sometimes quaint and cloudy, genius of Coleridge—and the tender, delicate, and redundant fancy of the " Boy-Bard," Keats—were " whistled down the wind," ridiculed, reviled, and scoffed at with the most sovereign contempt, and with the most blind, crassid, and ignorant animosity. But, tempora mutantur— nearly all the true poets of our time have disappeared, like planets one after one, from the intellectual hemisphere, and none others have arisen to, supply their place; while Criticism, on the contrary, has "cast off her old skin ," and come forth anew, arrayed in the mantle of a more searching, comprehensive, and Æsthetical philosophy.
Poetry, therefore, Mr. A'Beckett affirms, is on " the decline in public estimation," and he attributes this declension to the rapid spread and growth of the cold philosophy of Utilitarianism, —and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, too, a still higher authority, attributes in icy words this same declension of the public taste to the " freezing spirit of Scientific Enquiry," that benumbs the torpid hearts of these unpoetic times. We, however, are inclined to imagine that this apparent apathy, of the Public, does not arise so much from any decrease or decay of sympathy, or from any want of estimation or capacity in the universal mind to appreciate the fine and humanising influences of that divine art, which, according to Schlegel, " Sheds from its magic mirror the light of a higher interpretation upon all things"—but rather to the absence of any one eminent and original intellect to arouse the imaginative faculties of the public mind from their present lethargic state of "suspended animation," and to direct them into new and unopened sources of inspiration— into other than mere conventional manifestations and modes of development of the infinite and ever-living, but not ever-apparent forms of the Ideal. Besides, it strikes us as not a little unreflective in these learned Lawyers and Litterateurs, to be chanting their Coronachs over the dead spirit of Poetry, when we are even yet but on the confines, as it were, of an Era, emphatically and confessedly the most creative since the illustrous " Elizabethan." For, let us ask, how long is it, since the universal and many-sided mind of the world-renowned Goethe shed the splendour of its "riches countless" upon the literature of Europe, since Schiller breathed new life and being into the nerveless and effete limbs of the Drama,—since the " Ariosto of the North," Scott, roused all hearts, as with the triumphant tones of the trumpet, with his spirit-stirring and chivalric strains;—since Byron bewitched the world with the blended passion, scorn, wit, satire, pathos, and power, of his varied and energetic productions ;—since the spiritual minded and inspired Shelley "fit audience found, though few," to appreciate the high Eschylean abstractions, the lyrical " fragments of most touching melody," the marvellous trains of synchronous imagery, and the glorious word—music of his miraculous compositions;—since that " old man eloquent," Coleridge—the true Poet, the subtle metaphysician, the transcendental philosopher, the ripe and elaborate scholar, the silver-tongued sage, ennobled the hearts, and expanded the intellects of the Pilgrims who were wont to seek the seclusion of his Hermitage at Highgate, to feed upon the honey-dew of his hoarded wisdom?
Alas !
The rapt ones of the god-like forehead,
The heaven-eyed Creatures, sleep in earth.
But yet how few, "brief but few,'' are the years that have elapsed since these "Dead Kings of Melody" cast such a glory upon the earth with their most bright presence. Then why should we so prematurely lament that the Spiritual is dead within us—that the forms of the Ideal flash no longer before us—that the fountains of Poetry are dried up—and that the Earthly, the Actual, and the Mechanical, alone, have dominion over us?
In this country, and among this people indeed, all moral and intellectual life is, and ever hath been, torpid, pulseless, and all but defunct—low, grovelling, sensual, and eminently unspiritual. Our whole souls seem steeped in oil, or wrapped up in wool; we are almost entirely absorbed in calculating the increase of our kine, and the extent of our acres. We live in a pastoral country, and follow pastoral pursuits ; yet have we not, an atom, no, not a jot, of the pure, simple, antique pastoral spirit. Our community is composed of, the most clashing, heterogeneous, and unamalgamating elements. Our habits are unsocial and utterly undomestic; and, moreover, quite uncongenial to the climate. Our Capital inherits all the evils and immorality of a large city in an old country, without any one corresponding or counterbalancing advantage. Our institutions are neither Aristocratic nor Democratic. Our selfmade and mushroom aristocrats, are principally in men who have waxed wealthy on wool, or grown fat on the fisheries; whose modes of life are made up of second-hand imitations of imported manner and style—whose coats of arms have been "found" by Mr. Clint, and are to be seen any day and every day emblazoned on ill appointed equipages, driven by convict coachmen, dressed in dirty drab liveries faced with flaming yellow, and covered with crestless buttons; our Democrats, as a body, are without either, energy, public spirit, or intelligence. Our literature consists of the most common-place disquisitions on colonial politics, and our journals are pungent only when seasoned with the pepper of fierce personality, and violent party invective, enriched with all the affluence of abusive, epithet, and the beautiful flowers of Billingsgate rhetoric. Our religion consists in the correct and rigid observance of all external forms and ceremonies, and of the covert practice of all sensual vices. Our highest conception of practical morality is to "meet our bills" at the Bank, and," keep up our credit." Our aspirations are of "the earth, earthy," our God is Mammon, and our worship, only "the dark idolatry of self."
This is certainly rather a dark drawn picture of our social condition, and will be set down by some as a caricature, by others as an overcharged exaggeration. But is it so in reality? We, of course, think otherwise, and we speak from some observation and experience, and without being actuated by any self-known bias or prejudice. It may, then, be well asked by our readers, " Is this state of 'thought's stagnant chaos' to last for ever ? Are there no indications of the approach of a more advanced stage of refinement? No symptoms of a transition state yet discernible ? And we answer, with hope and confidence Yes; " the time is at hand—the spirit is gone forth ;" the indications are already discernible, faint and imperfect though they be; that we recognize them in the publication of these Lectures of Mr. a'Beckett, in the Poetry of Mr. Halloran, in the projection that has been given to the musical taste of the public by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Dean, in the success that has attended the establishment of the Mechanics' School of Arts, and in the increase of our printing and publishing establishments.
But we must defer what more we have to say on this and other synchronous subjects to some future occasion, and devote the remainder of the space allotted us, to the consideration of Mr a'Beckett's able and eloquent Lectures, admitting, at the same time, that we have made his pamphlet little better than a peg to hang a dissertation on.
The Introductory Lecture contains an eloquent exposition of the general principles of Poetry, its attributes and universality ; illustrates its moral and intellectual utility; assigns its present decline in the estimation of the public to the extension of the utilitarian principles; instances the signal failure of the attempts that have been made in this colony " to direct the public mind into purer channels of thought than politics and money getting," and recommends the cultivation of poetry as a "counteracting influence," not "for the purpose of beguiling the mind with vain chimeras, but of relieving it from the constant contemplation of petty, and sensual cares—of seducing it from the earthly to the heavenly—from the perishable to the immortal—from the transient to the eternal."
The second and third Lectures give a condensed account of the progress of poetry in Great Britain from the time of Chaucer to that of Gay, with sketches of some of the most celebrated authors; but the most ambitious part of the work, and that in which Mr. A'Becket appears to be most in earnest with his subject, and to write con amore, is that in which he discourses on the magnificent productions, Alpine Intellect, and moral character of Milton. Indeed, the tone of high but discriminating enthusiasm (reflected however in some measure from Channing and Chateaubriand), and the glowing and figurative language of this portion of the lecture must, we should imagine, have "told well" in the delivery, and have excited a corresponding enthusiasm even in so matter-of-fact an audience as that of the Mechanics' School of Arts.
Mr. A'Becket, however, is not quite so happy in his account of Spenser and his "Fairie Queen," which, he says, " has all the elegance and seductiveness, without the meretriciousness of Moore— the power and fancy, without the bitterness of Byron—and the truth and philosophy, without the moroseness of Crabbe"—which, to say the least, is very antithetical, vague, and indefinite, and equally applicable to many poets who have no one point in common with Spenser; and moreover, we think it must have appeared some what self-sufficient in our lecturer's stating that he "might safely wager that not a single person present had read through the six books of the Fairie Queen;" when, at the the same time, he acknowledges that he himself, " until lately, had never read a single line of Spenser.
We may also notice, as marks of haste and inconsiderateness of opinion in Mr. A'Beckett, his asking, " what would Italy be, but a history of priests, brigands, and fiddlers, but for Dante, Ariosto and Tasso ?" As if the great musical composers of Italy were mere "Fiddlers—" and Michael Angelo, Machiavelli, Raffaelle, and Canova, &c, were unknown names. Moreover, he quotes Hannah Moore among our "most eminent sacred poets ; and, in his enumeration of the more prominent and imaginative characters of Shakespeare, speaks of "the devoted Juliet, and the gentle Perdita—the jealous Othello—the crazed Lear—the ambitious Richard—'' and the "pensive Hamlet ;" as if " Hamlet the Dane" was a mere love-sick maiden, and Mr. A'Becket was at a loss to find, any more appropriate, and significant epithet to apply to the only philosopher that poetry has hitherto created, than the maudlin and unmeaning one of " pensive."
The Lectures conclude with a brief but well merited compliment to Mr. Halloran—and a somewhat overstrained and exaggerated one on the talented (a vile word, according to Coleridge,) and "energetic muse" of a foster-brother-barrister of Mr. A'Beckett's .
We shall recur to these lectures, and give a more detailed and analytic account of them on their completion, to which we look forward with some interest; and we will now only express our wish that the colony could boast of more men of the same "mark and livelihood "as Mr.aBeckett.
The Colonist 16/3/1839,
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