ESSAY ON THE GENIUS OF COWLEY, DONNE AND CLIEVELAND. COWLEY owes more of his poetical fame to his metaphysical acuteness, than to any display of original poetical genius. The fire and enthusiasm of poetry are no where to be met with in his writings. His language is not the language of feeling. He has neither the sublimity of Milton, the pathos of Shakspeare, the copiousness of Dryden, the delicacy of Pope, the naivete of Shenstone, or the truth and nature of Goldsmith. He excites no affection: he commands no sympathy. He is so replete with exaggeration, hyperbole and catachrestical decorations, that he is frequently monstrous and disgusting. Cowley was neither a philosopher, a metaphysician, an orator, nor a poet: for though his acquired knowledge embraced, perhaps, all the philosophy and metaphysics of his age, he never aimed at improving the stock which he possessed; and instead of applying himself to the discovery of new truths, he exercised himself in debasing the value of the old. He seldom ventures to think for himself; but having taken up some common-place thought, or philosophic dogma, which had been a thousand times discussed in the schools; he repeats it over again, that he may have an opportunity of displaying his wit, by viewing it in the character of a harlequin, and not of a philosopher. He has, therefore, no originality of thought, though, like every other harlequin, he is original enough in the views which he takes of the thoughts of others, but instead of using them to some noble end, he only brings them into contempt by the littleness of the purposes to which he applies them. In the following absurd plication, for instance, of the doctrine of personal identity to love, how puerile, how unpoetical, is the use to which he applies his metaphysical knowledge: ap Five years ago (says story) I loved you, For what you call me most inconstant now; Pardon me, Madam, you mistake the man, For I am not the same that I was then; 1 From whence these take their birth were, which now are here, If, then, this body love what th' other did, 'Twere incest which by nature is forbid. It This is neither poetry, philosophy, ley intended nothing more than a nor common sense; for though Cowshadow of excuse for inconstancy in love, we have not, in this passage, even the shadow of a shade, necessarily ends with one, as it is commences with a contradiction, and web texture. If the person writing all one thought, spun out into a cobthose lines was not the person who loved the lady five years before, he should not have written,-" Five years ago I loved you," as he maintains himself, that it was not he that loved her, but another person. It should, therefore, have been, he loved, and not I loved, for to write I loved, is to admit that he was still the same person. The same absurdity is more glaringly manifest in the line, For I am not the same that I was then. for if he was not really the same, why not write, For I am not the same that he was then. If the reasoning, however, were even true, the application of philosophy poetry; and if some choose to call to poetry, is neither philosophy nor it wit, I have only to say, that wit always appears more natural in prose soul-moving language of poetry than in poetry. The pathetic and should never be prostituted to the purposes of wit. Addison very justly censures a passage in the "Paradise Lost," which represents the evil spirits rallying the angels upon the success of their new-invented artillery. "This passage," he says, I look upon to be the most exceptionable in the whole poem, as being nothing else but a string of puns. Of Cowley, however, it may be said, that the spirit of punning exercises a perpetual and predominant influence over his pen, and that it can be traced even where his subject requires of him to be plain and natural. Where can a pun be so unnatural and monstrous as in the language of love, or the description of ardent passion; and yet Cowley thus describes absent love: By every wind that comes this way, As shall themselves make winds to more This disgusting hyperbole is still Cowley has devoted a great portion of his muse to the charms of woman; but no poet was worse calculated to praise her in such a manner as would secure her esteem. Indeed, the woman who would not spurn his compliments, and hunt him from her society, must have been as destitute of true feeling, or, in other words, of natural feeling, as he was himself. Every man's experience informs him, that the real beauties of objects fall infinitely short of those which imagination "leads forth;" but how ill-timed, how cold, how insipid, how unpoetic, how unphilosophic, how contrary to every precept of delicacy, to every feeling of nature, to apply this truth to the beloved object of our affections. Yet Cowley has no hesitation to compliment his mistress on charms, which, according to his metaphysical and unimpassioned feelings, could not properly belong to her. In fact, the following lines evidently tell her, that his attachment is not credited by any charms which she actually possesses, but by those which are figured in his own imagination, than which, we cannot conceive a greater insult to female delicacy: Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand, Than woman can be plac'd by nature's hand; And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be, To change thee as thou'rt there for very thee. Cowley wrote in an age when the English nation had advanced half her course from barbarism to civilization. It might therefore be thought that the writers of the time would have been more under the dominion of natural feeling than the writers of the present day, because they had not removed so far as we have done from the state of nature, a term which is generally applied to the savage state. We find, however, that every thing in Cowley and in most of his contemporaries is artificial; that the spontaneous feelings of nature are scarcely ever recognized in their writings; and that in fact, if we were to judge of them by their works, we should conclude them destitute of these feelings altogether. This phenomenon has not been hitherto accounted for; and it appears to me that Lord Kames would have found it more worthy of investigation, and more properly forming a part of the subject of his " Elements of Criticism," than many of the tedious and trivial distinctions into which he has entered, and on which he lays an importance to which they are not certainly entitled. As the question cannot be more properly investigated than in the treating of the genius of Cowley, I shall attempt to place it in the clearest possible light. Before we can venture to resolve this question, it is necessary to ascertain whether the want of natural feeling which characterizes the writers, and particularly the poets who flourished at the commencement of the seventeenth century, arose from the circumstance of their being placed midway between the extremes of the state of nature and that of the most polished refinement; for if it arose from any other cause, our present enquiry would be vain, for we should not only be tracing an effect to a wrong cause, but all our arguments would be necessarily erroneous, as they would be formed on an erroneous assumption: If the want of natural feeling in the poets of the seventeenth century resulted from the stage which they had reached in the career of science, the same cause must have produced the same effect in all countries; and, wherever science has traversed half her course, we shall find the predominance of art and the extention of nature characterize the poetry of the age. The thing to be ascertained then is, whether this be a fact or not: whether the poetry of every country present the same as rations of intellect. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before." The character, which who flourished in England at the commencement of the seventeenth century, is the character of the writers of every country in the middle stage of science; but though the Doctor treats at considerable length of the promi nent features, which characterize the poetry of this class of writers; though he shews them destitute of all true feeling, he assigns no reason for so remarkable a feature in the poetry of the age. Let us endeavour to explain it. pect in the same stage of intellectual here gives of the write Johnson improvement I believe it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of literature to discover, that the fact is what I have stated it to be, and that every nation is more or less under the dominion of art, by which I here mean false feeling and false perceptions of beauty, in proportion as it more or less nearly approaches the middle stage in the march of intellect. We find that the eloquence and the poetry of savages is always natural, and frequently sublime, though they seldom evince either delicacy or refinement. What writer is more sublime than the savage Ossian: he has even more delicacy than Cowley and most of his contemporaries: but indeed there is great reason to apprehend that he has too much delicacy for a savage, and that he owes a considerable portion of this amiable attribute to the mistaken generosity of his translator. But if natural feeling be characteristic of the savage state, we find it is equally so of the state of extreme refinement. The eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes were natural and sublime, while it was polished and refined to the last degree: they aimed at no false beauties;-they endeavoured to excite no false emotions in the minds of their auditors. The same may be said of the poetry of Virgil and Horace their feelings were at once natural and refined. But when we come to the middle state, how woefully is the scene reversed. Of this we need no other instance than the literature of the middle age. To the writers of this time, may be applied what Dr. Johnson says of Cowley and his contemporaries, that "they cannot be said to have imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the ope In the state of nature every one, who has the ambition of communicating to writing his own unculti, vated ideas, indites them exactly as they arise in his mind, without art, order, or inversion. The more any writer neglects authority, communes with his own mind alone, and neglects the information which he might have derived from others, the more he pursues this mode of writing. Of this Montaigne is a noted instance No writer neglected more or perhaps despised more the aid, which he might have acquired from others. He always thought for himself, and communicated every thought to paper in the order of priority. "First come first serve," was always his motto, and therefore the first thought, that occurred to him, was the first he wrote down without waiting to examine whether the proposition it (contained was liable to any exceptions. Accordingly he is perpetually raising objections to his own arguments, because he did not perceive the objection when he first advanced the argument; but having once advanced it, he suffered it to remain, and brings forward his objection afterward, the moment he perceives it. Hence Montaigne is all nature, because he never consults any other authority than his own immediate feelings, and this is iden tically the reason, if I mistake not, why the poetry and eloquence of savag are always natural. They always write and speak as they feel; or, more properly, they cannot write otherwise, because they have no authority to consult. They have no literary guides, no critical monitors, no principles, systems, or theories of elegance and propriety. They are therefore entirely their own teachers and directors, and it is im possible they can write otherwise than what their own feelings dictate. Now as every feeling that is actually felt is a natural feeling, (for if it were otherwise it could not be felt,) the expression of these feelings must always be natural, and it is therefore in a manner impossible for men in a state of nature to write or speak but what is natural. It is true indeed there is a grossness frequently in what they say which shocks the delicacy of more refined feelings, but this is no argument of its being unnatural, for it was natural to them, though it is not so to us, and we immediately recognize it as such. Man is altogether the creature of circumstances, and so consequently are his feelings. The feelings therefore which are natural to him at one time are not natural at another, though he perceives they would be natural if he were placed under the circumstances that would have naturally excited them. We therefore recognize the real feelings of nature in the productions of the rude unculti vated mind, though such feelings are no longer agreeable to ourselves because a more exquisite sense of propriety, which is in fact all that distinguishes the savage from the courtier, insensibly generates other feelings which become as natural to us as those which nature herself originally gave us. It is different, however, when we take our departure from the state of nature, and seek to enrich our minds with the knowledge of others. If we can make the knowledge of others properly our own, if we believe that the truths which they communicate to us are truths, not because they have taught them to us, but because we perceive, on examining them ourselves, that they are true, if we can perceive where our authorities are wrong, and where they are right, and follow them no farther than this perception leads us, we are then actually in the state of nature, because ultimately we have no guide or authority but ourselves, and the consultation which we hold with our own feelings and understanding. It is evident, at the same time, that we cannot reach this height, and be perfectly qualified to judge how far every thing communicated to us is right or wrong, until science and literature have reached their utmost height, because, until then, we have not all the aids and means of ascertaining the truth of every proposi tion, theory, and system, to which our assent may be required. They may be right or wrong, for any thing that we can discover to the contrary, because the means of discovery are not placed within our reach, while science herself is em ployed, as we are, in exploring and investigating the nature of things, and even the nature of the means by which this nature can be discovered. But when science has reached her utmost height, she places within our reach the means of ascertaining what is demonstratively true, what is conjectural, and the degrees of probability on which conjecture is founded, what is merely possible, and, lastly, what is purely ideal. The moment we are enabled to ascertain all this, we are no longer the slaves of authority, because we have the same means of ascertaining, whether what they teach us be true that they had themselves, and, consequently, we revert back to the state of nature. We are no longer influenced by the authority of others, except so far as this authority quadrates with our own feelings and perceptions of things; and, therefore, we stand exactly upon the same ground with the natural poet and orator, whose effusions are always the emanations of his own mind and feelings, having no other feelings or authority which he could possibly consult. It appears, then, that the state of nature, and that in which science has reached her last perfection, are, so far as regards natural feeling, exactly the same; and therefore we can have no difficulty in explaining why Cicero and Demosthenes are, as natural orators, as the savage chief who animates his followers to deeds of heroism, and inspires them with the most perfect contempt for death, and all the images of horror which follow in its train. If it should be said that the eloquence of the savage chief is not true or natural eloquence, I reply that the enthusiasm which he excites in his follow ers proves it to be eloquence of the very first order, because the highest aim of oratory is to persuade, and he who persuades us to face danger in all its terrifying and appalling aspects must certainly be of all other men best acquainted with the art of persuading. To maintain that the eloquence of the savage chief cannot be natural, because he does not address his followers with that force of argument which Cicero was obliged to use in addressing a Roman audience, would be, to maintain what is in itself not less unnatural than it is absurd. The moment however we go one step beyond the state of nature, the human faculties present us with an aspect totally different from either the state of nature or that of knowledge. By perfect knowledge I do not mean that perfectability of human reason which Madame de Stael so strenuously advocates, because this is a perfectability which I have shewn in my "Essay on Taste," to be placed beyond the utmost reach of human attainment. I mean, therefore, by perfect knowledge, only that perfection of knowledge of which the limited nature of our faculties are capable. Keeping this idea of perfection in view, I say, that the moment we advance one step beyond the state of nature, we enter into a new world where all our faculties are enchained, and where it is impossible we can display a perfect freedom of opinions. The reason is obvious: we are thenceforth, necessarily obliged to look up to the authority of others. We acknowledge at once that we are no longer qualified to judge for ouselves, that ̄nature is not sufficient to direct us, and that to attain to higher perfection, it is necessary to become acquainted with the acquirements of others. The moment we adopt this creed, we necessarily abandon all confidence in ourselves, and we view every object through the speculum of others. We either believe that they are right, or if we reject their opinion, we are apt to go into the extreme of scepticism, and to suspect that there is no certainty in human knowledge. It is impossible, however, that we can become complete sceptics in the infancy of science, because we are every day discovering the cause of effects, and the resolution of problems of which we were ignorant the day before; and we very justly conclude, that if we cannot understand what is taught by others, or even if it appear doubtful, the fault is in ourselves, and we expect that when we enlarge our views, and extend our enquiries farther, we shall perceive them as clearly as we do the truth which we discovered to day, but of which we were yesterday perfectly ignorant. A nation must therefore be far removed from the state of nature, and approach very nearly to the last stage of human knowledge before it can generate sceptics. The consequence is, that during the intermediate periods, we are completely the slaves of authority. The mere light of nature cannot enable us to determine whether what we are taught be true or false for the reasons which I have already assigned, and therefore we are apt to devour greedily whatever is sanctioned by the authority of others. Hence it is that we seldom venture to think for ourselves, because every day makes us acquainted with the folly of our own opinions, with a clear perception of things which we could not understand before, and with the difficulties which we have yet to surmount before we are qualified to form a correct judgment. We are therefore apt to believe implicitly whatever we are taught, and make no distinction between truth and error, provided we have as good authority for the one as for the other. The consequence is, that we view every thing through the medium of authority, that we feel and think as others feel and think for us, and that we suspect our own feelings towards the close of life, withdrawn from the gay illusions of society,— and opinions whenever we find them at variance with those of persons whom we are in the habit of reverencing as our guardians and directors. (To be continued.) |
