The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles Vol. 2
MEMOIR AND CRITICISM ON THE WORKS OF THE REV. W. L. BOWLES
The poetry of each age may be considered as vitally connected with, and as vividly reflective of, its character and progress, as either its politics or its religion. You see the nature of the soil of a garden in its tulips and roses, as much as in its pot-herbs and its towering trees. We purpose, accordingly, to compare briefly the poetry of the past and of the present centuries, as indices of some of the points of contrast between the two, and to show also how, and through what causes, the one grew into the other. This will be a fitting introduction to a consideration of the life and writings of the first of the poets of this century included in our series, the more as he was in a measure the father of modern poetry.
It is impossible to take up a volume of the poetry of the eighteenth century, such as, for instance, Churchill's, or Pope's, or Johnson's, and to compare it with some of the leading poetical works of the present, such as the poems of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron, and not to feel as if you were reading the productions of two different races of beings – so different are the style, the sentiments, the modes of thought, the imagery, the temperament, and the spirit of the poets and the poetry. It is like stepping, we will not say from the frigid, but from the temperate into the torrid zone. In the one class of authors you find the prevalence of strong sense, flanked by wit and by fancy, but without much that can be called imaginative or romantic. In the other, imagination or fancy is the regnant faculty; and if wit and sense are there too, they are there as slaves, the "Slaves of the lamp," to the imperious imaginative power. The style of the one is clear, masculine, sententious, and measured; that of the other is bold, unmeasured, diffuse, fervid, and sometimes obscure. The one style may be compared to a clear crescent; the other to a full, but partially eclipsed, moon. The sentiment of the one is chiefly the sublimation of passion: bitter contempt, noble indignation, a proud, stern patriotism, sometimes united with a sombre, but manly melancholy, are the principal feelings expressed; that of the other, although occasionally morbid, is far more varied, more profound, purer, on the whole, and more poetical. The thought of the one is acute and logical; that of the other aspires to the deep, if not to the mystical and the transcendental. The subjects of the poets of the eighteenth century are generally of a dignified cast (except in the case of satirical productions), such as "The Temple of Fame," "The Pleasures of Imagination," "The Traveller," "London," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The subjects of the other class are as varied as their mode of treatment is often daringly peculiar. The leech-gatherer on his lonely moor, the pedlar on his humble rounds, the tinker linked by a "fellow-feeling" to the animal he beats and starves, a mad mariner, a divorced wife, a wandering roué – such characters as these have called forth the utmost stretch of the powers of our best modern poets. The images of the former race of poets are limited to what are called classical subjects – including in this term the ancient mythologies, the incidents in Grecian and Roman story, the more beautiful objects of nature, and the more popular productions of art. Those of modern poets acknowledge no boundary – from the firmament to the fungus, from Niagara to the nearest puddle, from the cold scalp of Mont Blanc to the snowball of the schoolboy – all things are free and open to the step of their genius, which, like the moonbeam, touches and beautifies every object on which it rests. The temperament of the two races is as distinct as their sentiment and style; that of the one seeming somewhat curbed, if not cold, while that of the other is ardent always, and often enthusiastic and rapturous. Different also their spirit; the one being confined and sectarian, alike in politics, in literature, and in religion; the other, in some of their number, being liberal to latitudinarianism, and genial to a vice.
We are not at present seeking to settle the precedence of these two schools of poetry. We love and honour much in both, and think the criticism small and captious which can be blind to the peculiar merits of either – to the terseness, condensation, force of single lines, vigour of logical thought, and general correctness of the one; or to the boldness, brilliant diffusion, breadth, and variety of mood and music, of subject and of treatment, which distinguish the other. It is more specially our object at present to show how each sprang naturally and inevitably out of the different ages when they appeared.
Poetry is an age in flower; and the poetry of the nineteenth century has been a more gorgeous and more tropical flower, because warmer suns have shone on it, warmer winds blown on it, and larger rains watered its roots. Indeed, it is almost a wonder that the first half, at least, and the middle of the eighteenth century, produced so much and such good poetry. That age was, on the whole, a stagnant and uninteresting one. There was nothing very deeply to rouse the passions and imaginations of men. There was, indeed, the usual amount of political squabbles; but when a Bolingbroke was the most eloquent and admired of parliamentary orators, what moral grandeur could be expected? There was a Jacobite faction, perpetually undermining and sometimes breaking out into open rebellion; but their enthusiasm, save in Scotland, was mingled with no poetical elements, although there certainly it produced many exquisite strains of ballad poetry. Twice or thrice the popular passions broke forth, and reared up an idol for themselves in the shape of a private man, exalted for the nonce into a hero; but it is significant to remember that the two principal of these idols were calves– Sacheverel, namely, and Jack Wilkes. The wars in that age were almost entirely destitute of imaginative interest; those of Marlborough, such as Blenheim and Ramilies, were just large games of chess, played on a blood-red board – who now ever thinks or talks about the battles of Fontenoy or Minden? – some tolerable sea-fights, indeed, there were; on the heights of Abraham a brave man expired in the arms of victory, and a glory still lingers on the field of Prestonpans and on the bloody plains of Culloden; but there was no Trafalgar, no Waterloo, and no Inkermann. The manners of the age were not only dissolute, but grossly and brutally so. In England, there was no Burns to cast a gleam of poetry even on the orgies of dissipation; all was as coarse as it was corrupt; it was a drunken dance of naked satyrs: and disgust at this state of things, we believe, principally made Burke, contrasting the Continent with England, to utter the paradox, that vice, by losing all its grossness, lost half its evil. Foreigners were then, as they are still, more depraved in morals and filthier in personal habits than we; but they had, and have, a grace, a politeness, a reticence, and an ease, which gilded, if they did not lessen, the abominations. The religion of the country was reduced to a very low point of depression; the churches were filled with drowsy divines, drowsily reading what they never wrote, to yet drowsier congregations; many of the upper classes, and of the literary men, were avowed infidels; till the rise of Methodism, religious enthusiasm in any class did not exist – even in Scotland the load of patronage had nearly extinguished the old fires of Covenanting zeal – the state of the lower classes was deplorable, so far, at least, as mental culture and morality were concerned; cock-fighting, grinning through collars, bull-baiting, and hard drinking, were their main amusements; the hallowing and spiritualising influences of the Sabbath-day were scarcely known; and the upper ranks had no feeling that they were in some measure responsible for the ignorance and the vice of the lower, and were bound to circulate education and religion amidst their masses; indeed, how could they be expected, since they themselves had little education and less religion to circulate? In science, philosophy, and general literature, there prevailed a partial syncope and pause. Newton was dead, and had left no successor; Locke was dead, and had left no successor. The wits of Queen Anne's reign, Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Steele, and Addison, were dropping off one by one, and for a season none arose adequate to supply their place. It had altogether become an age of mediocrity; neither an age of stern conflict, like that of the Puritans, nor even a fiercely lawless and riotous age, like that of Charles the Second, nor a transition age, like that of the Revolution, but an age of a negative and slumbrous character; its only positive qualities were a generally diffused laxity of principle and corruption of practice; but its vices, as well as its virtues, were small; it had not virtue to be greatly good, nor daring to be greatly wicked.
All this told on its poetry; and our wonder, we repeat, is, that it did not tell more. That it did not, was probably owing to the continued prevalence of the power of classical literature. That, increased by the influence of the universities and the great schools, and by the translations made of its masterpieces by Dryden and Pope, contributed to produce and maintain purity of taste, in the midst of general depravation
