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conventional Indifference, the full workings, the involuntary, uncontrollable emotions of the heart cease: property is not a poetical, but a practical prosaic idea, to those who possess and clutch it; and cuts off others from cordial sympathy; but nature is common property, the unenvied idol of all eyes, the fairy ground where fancy plays her tricks and feats; and the passions, the workings of the heart (which Mr. Bowles very properly distinguishes from manners, inasmuch as they are not in the power of the will to regulate or satisfy) are still left as a subject for something very different from didactic or mock-heroic poetry. By art and artificial, as these terms are applied to poetry or human life, we mean those objects and feelings which depend for their subsistence and perfection on the will and arbitrary conventions of man and society; and by nature, and natural subjects, we mean those objects which exist in the universe at large, without, or in spite of, the interference of human power and contrivance, and those interests and affections which are not amenable to the human will. That we are to exclude art, or the operation of the human will, from poetry altogether, is what we do not affirm; but we mean to say, that where this operation is the most complete and manifest, as in the creation of given objects, or regulation of certain feelings, there the spring of poetry, i. e. of passion and imagination, is proportionably and much impaired. We are masters of Art, Nature is our master; and it is to this greater power that we find working above, about, and within us, that the genius of poetry bows and offers up its highest homage. If the infusion of art were not a natural disqualifier for poetry, the most artificial objects and manners would be the most poetical: on the contrary, it is only the rude beginnings, or the ruinous decay of objects of art, or the simplest modes of life and manners, that admit of, or harmonize kindly with, the tone and language of poetry. To consider the question otherwise, is not to consider it too curiously, but not to understand it at all. Lord Byron talks of Ulysses striking his horse Rhesus with his bow, as an instar.ce of the heroic in

poetry. But does not the poetical dignity of the instrument arise from its very commonness and simplicity? A bow is not a supererogation of the works of art. It is almost peculiar to a state of nature, that is, the first and rudest state of society. Lord Byron might as well talk of a shepherd's crook, or the garland of flowers with which he crowns his mistress, as images borrowed from artificial life. He cannot make a gentleman-usher's rod poetical, though it is the pink of courtly and gentlemanly refinement. Will the bold stickler for the artificial essence of poetry translate Pope's description of Sir Plume,—

Of amber-headed snuff-box justly vain, And the nice conduct of a clouded cane,

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into the same sort of poetry as Homer's description of the bow of Ulysses? It is out of the question. The very mention of the last has a sound with it like the twang of the bow itself; whereas the others, the snuff-box and clouded-cane, are of the very essence of effeminate impertinence. Pope says, in Spence's Anecdotes, that " lady of fashion would admire a star, because it would remind her of the twinkling of a lamp on a ball-night." This is a much better account of his own poetry than his noble critic has given. It is a clue to a real solution of the difficulty. What is the difference between the feeling with which we contemplate a gas-light in one of the squares, and the crescent moon beside it, but this-that though the brightness, the beauty perhaps, to the mere sense, is the same or greater; yet we know that when we are out of the square, we shall lose sight of the lamp, but that the moon will lend us its tributary light wherever we go; it streams over green valley or blue ocean alike; it is hung up in air, a part of the pageant of the universe; it steals with gradual, softened state into the soul, and hovers, a fairy-apparition, over our existence! It is this which makes it a more poetical object than a patent-lamp, or a Chinese lanthorn, or the chandelier at Covent-garden, brilliant as it is, and which, though it were made ten times more so, would still only dazzle and scorch the sight so much the more; it would not be attended with a mild train of

reflected glory; it would "denote no foregone conclusion," would touch no chord of imagination or the heart; it would have nothing romantic about it. -A man can make any thing, but he cannot make a sentiment! It is a thing of inveterate prejudice, of old association, of common feeling, and so is poetry, as far as it is serious. A "pack of cards," a silver bodkin, a paste buckle, " may be imbued" with as much mock poetry as you please, by lending false associations to it; but real poetry, or poetry of the highest order, can only be produced by unravelling the real web of associations, which have been wound round any subject by nature, and the unavoidable conditions of humanity. Not to admit this distinction at the threshold, is to confound the style of Tom Thumb with that of the Moor of Venice, or Hurlothrumbo with the Doge of Venice. It is to mistake jest for earnest, and one thing for another.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

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The image here is one of artificial life; but it is connected with natural circumstances and romantic interests, with darkness, with silence, with distance, with privation, and uncertain danger: it is common, obvious, without pretension or boast, and therefore the poetry founded upon it is natural, because the feelings are It is not the splendour of the candle itself, but the contrast to the gloom without,-the comfort, the relief it holds out from afar to the benighted traveller, -the conflict between nature and the first and cheapest resources of art, that constitutes the romantic and imaginary, that is, the poetical interest, in that familiar but striking image. There is more art in the lamp or chandelier; but for that very reason, there is less poetry. A light in a watch-tower, a beacon at sea, is sublime for the same cause; because the natural circumstances and associations set it off; it warns us against danger, it reminds us of common calamity, it promises safety and hope it has to do with the broad feelings and circumstances of human life, and its interest does not assuredly turn upon the vanity or pretensions of the maker or proprie tor of it. This sort of art is co-ordi

nate with nature, and comes into the first class of poetry, but no one ever dreamt of the contrary. The features of nature are great leading land-marks, not near and little, or confined to a spot, or an individual claimant; they are spread out everywhere the same, and are of universal interest. The true poet has therefore been described as

Creation's tenant, he is nature's heir.

What has been thus said of the man of genius might be said of the man of no genius. The spirit of poetry, and the spirit of humanity are the same. The productions of nature are not locked up in the cabinets of the curious, but spread out on the green lap of earth. The flowers return with the cuckoo in the spring: the daisy for ever looks bright in the sun; the rainbow still lifts its head above the storm to the eye of infancy or age

So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man,

So shall it be till I grow old and die;

but Lord Byron does not understand this, for he does not understand Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, and we cannot make him. His Lordship's nature, as well as his poetry, is something arabesque and outlandish.— Again, once more, what, we would ask, makes the difference between an opera of Mozart's, and the singing of a thrush confined in a wooden cage at the corner of the street in which we live? The one is nature, and the other is art: the one is paid for, and the other is not. Madame Fodor sings the air of Vedrai Carino in Don Giovanni so divinely, because she is hired to sing it; she sings it to please the audience, not herself, and does not always like to be encored in it; but the thrush that awakes us at day-break with its song, does not sing because it is paid to sing, or to please others, or to be admired or criticised. It sings because it is happy: it pours the thrilling sounds from its throat, to relieve the overflowings of its own breast-the liquid notes come from, and go to, the heart, dropping balm into it, as the gushing spring revives the traveller's parched and fainting lips. That stream of joy comes pure and fresh to the longing sense, free from art and af

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There is this great difference between nature and art, that the one is what the other seems, and gives all the pleasure it expresses, because it feels it itself. Madame Fodor sings, as a musical instrument may be made to play a tune, and perhaps with no more real delight: but it is not so with the linnet or the thrush, that sings because God pleases, and pours out its little soul in pleasure. This is the reason why its singing is (so far) so much better than melody or harmony, than base or treble, than the Italian or the German school, than quavers or crotchets, or half-notes, or canzonets, or quartetts, or any thing in the world but truth and nature!

To give one more instance or two of what we understand by a natural interest ingrafted on artificial objects, and of the principle that still keeps them distinct. Amelia's "hashed mutton" in Fielding, is one that I might mention. Hashed mutton is an article in cookery, homely enough in the scale of art, though far removed from the simple products of nature; yet we should say that this common delicacy which Amelia provided for her husband's supper, and then waited so long in vain for his return, is the foundation of one of the most natural and affecting incidents in one of the most natural and affecting books in the world. No description of the most splendid and luxurious banquet could come up to it. It will be remembered, when the Almanach des Gourmands, and even the article on it in the last Edinburgh Review, are forgotten. Did Lord Byron never read Boccacio? We wish he would learn refinement from him, and get rid of his hard bravura taste, and swashbuckler conclusions. What makes the charm of the story of the Falcon? Is it properly art or nature? The tale is one of artificial life, and elegant manners, and chivalrous pre

tensions; but it is the fall from these, the decline into the vale of low and obscure poverty,—the having but one last loop left to hang life on, and the sacrifice of that to a feeling still more precious, and which could only give way with life itself,-that elevates the sentiment, and has made it find its way into all hearts. Had Frederigo Alberigi had an aviary of Hawks, and preserves of pheasants without end, he and his poor bird would never have been heard of. It is not the expence and ostentation of the entertainment he set before his mistress, but the prodigality of affection, squandering away the last remains of his once proud fortunes, that stamps this beautiful incident on the remembrance of all who have ever read it. We wish Lord Byron would look it over again, and see whether it does not most touch the chords of pathos and sentiment in those places where we feel the absence of all the pomp and vanities of art. Mr. Campbell talks of a ship as a sublime and beautiful object in art. We will confess we always stop to look at the mail-coaches with no slight emotion, and, perhaps, extend our hands after some of them, in sign of gratulation. They carry the letters of friends, of relations; they keep up the communication between the heart of a country. We do not admire them for their workmanship, for their speed, for their livery--there is something more in it than this. Perhaps we can explain it by saying, that we once heard a person observe-" I always look at the Shrewsbury mail, and sometimes with tears in my eyes: that is the coach that will bring me the news of the death of my father and mother." His Lordship will say, the mail-coach is an artificial object. Yet we think the interest here was not founded upon that circumstance. There was a finer and deeper link of affection that did not depend on the red painted pannels, or the dyed garments of the coachman and guard. At least it stikes us so.

This is not an easy subject to illustrate, and it is still more difficult to define. Yet we shall attempt something of the sort. 1. Natural objects are common and obvious, and are imbued with an habitual and

universal interest, without being vulgar. Familiarity in them does not breed contempt, as it does in the works of man. They form an ideal class; their repeated impression on the mind, in so many different circumstances, grows up into a sentiment. The reason is, that we refer them generally and collectively to ourselves, as links and mementos of our various being; whereas, we refer the works of art respectively to those by whom they are made or to whom they belong. This distracts the mind in looking at them, and gives a petty and unpoetical character to what we feel relating to them. When the works of art become poetical, it is when they are emancipated from this state of circumscription and confine," by some circumstance that sets aside the idea of property and individual distinction. The sound of village bells,

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The poor man's only music,*

excites as lively an interest in the mind, as the warbling of a thrush: the sight of a village spire presents nothing discordant with the surrounding scenery.

2. Natural objects are more akin to poetry and the imagination, partly, because they are not our own handywork, but start up spontaneously, like a visionary creation, of their own accord, without our knowledge or connivance.

other; and so does the artificial animal, man: but the poetry of Rumford grates or Dutch ovens, it would puzzle even Lord Byron to explain. Cowper has made something of the "loud-hissing urn," though Mr. Southey, as being one of the more refined 66

naturals," still prefers "the song of the kettle." The more our senses, our self-love, our eyes and ears, are surrounded, and, as it were, saturated with artificial enjoyments and costly decorations, the more the avenues to the imagination and the heart are unavoidably blocked up. We do not say, that this may not be an advantage to the individual; we say it is a disadvantage to the poet. Even "Mine Host of Human Life," has felt its palsying, enervating influence. Let any one (after ten years old) take shelter from a shower of rain in Exeter Change, and see how he will amuse the time with looking over the trinkets, the chains, the seals, the curious works of art. Compare this with the description of Una and the Red Cross Knight in Spenser:

Enforc'd to seek some covert nigh at hand, A shady grove not far away they spied, That promis'd aid the tempest to with

stand:

Whose lofty trees, yclad with summer's pride,

Did spread so broad, that heaven's light did hide,

Not pierceable with power of any star;

The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath, And all within were paths and alleys wide,
And these are of them;-
With footing worn, and leading inward
far;

and farther, they have this advantage over the works of art, that the latter either fall short of their preconceived intention, and excite our disgust and disappointment by their defects; or, if they completely answer their end, they then leave nothing to the imagination, and so excite little or no romantic interest that way. A Count Rumford stove, or a Dutch oven, are useful for the purposes of warmth or culinary dispatch.~ Gray's purring favourite would find great comfort in warming its nose before the one, or dipping its whiskers in the

* Coleridge.

Far harbour that them seems; so in they enter'd are.

And forth they pass, with pleasure forward led,

Joying to hear the birds' sweet harmony, Which therein shrowded from the tem

pest's dread, Seem'd in their song to scorn the cruel sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeral.+

+ Most people have felt the ennui of being detained under a gateway in a shower of rain. Happy is he who has an umbrella, and can escape when the first fury of the storm has abated. Turn this gateway into a broker's shop, full of second-hand furniture-tables, chairs, bedsteads, bolsters, and all the accommodations of man's life,the case will not be mended. On the other hand, convert it into a wild natural

Artificial flowers look pretty in a lady's head-dress; but they will not do to stick into lofty verse. On the contrary, a crocus bursting out of the ground seems to blush with its own golden light" a thing of life." So a greater authority than Lord Byron has given his testimony on this subject: "Behold the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Shakspeare speaks of Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares and take

The winds of March with beauty.

All this play of fancy and dramatic

interest could not be transferred to a description of hot-house plants, regulated by a thermometer. Lord Byron unfairly enlists into the service of his argument those artificial objects, which are direct imitations of nature, such as statuary, &c. This is an oversight. At this rate, all poetry would be artificial poetry. Dr. Darwin is among those, who have endeavoured to confound the distinc tions of natural and artificial poetry, and indeed, he is, perhaps, the only one, who has gone the whole length of Lord Byron's hypercritical and super-artificial theory. Here are some of his lines, which have been greatly admired.

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This is the true false gallop of the sublime. Yet steel is a very useful metal, and doubtless performs all these wonders. But it has not, among so many others, the virtue of amalgamating with the imagination. We might quote also his description of the spinning-jenny, which is pronounced by Dr. Aikin to be as ingenious a piece of mechanism as the object it describes; and, according to Lord Byron, this last is as well suited to the manufacture of verses as of cotton-twist without end.

3. Natural interests are those which are real and inevitable, and are so far contradistinguished from the artificial, which are factitious and affected. If Lord Byron cannot understand the difference, he may find Chaucer's characters and incidents it explained by contrasting some of with those in the Rape of the Lock, for instance. Custance floating in her boat on the wide sea, is different from Pope's heroine,

Launched on the bosom of the silver
Thames.

Griselda's loss of her children, one by one, of her all, does not belong to the same class of incidents, nor of subjects for poetry, as Belinda's loss of her favourite curl. A sentiment that has rooted itself in the heart, and can only be torn from it with life, is not like the caprice of the moment -the putting on of paint and patches, or the pulling off a glove. The inbred character is not like a masquerade dress. There is a difference between the theatrical, and natural, which is important to the deand which has been overlooked by termination of the present question, his Lordship. Mr. Bowles, however, formally insists (and with the best right in the world) on the distinction between passion and manners.

But

cave, and we may idle away whole hours in it, marking a streak in the rock, or a flower that grows on the sides, without feeling time hang heavy on us. The reason is, that where we are surrounded with the works of man-the sympathy with the art and purposes of man, as it were, irritates our own will, and makes us impatient of whatever interferes with it: while, on the contrary, the presence of nature, of objects existing without our intervention and controul, disarms the will of its restless activity, and disposes us to submit to accidents that we cannot help, and the course of outward events, without repining. We are thrown into the hands of nature, and become converts to her power. Thus the idea of the artificial, the conventional, the voluntary, is fatal to the romantic and imaginary. To us it seems, that the free spirit of nature rushes through the soul, like a stream with a murmuring sound, the echo of which is poetry.

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