Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

NUMBER XVIII.

A work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapour of wine—nor to be obtained by the invocation of Memory and her siren daughters; but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his alter to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.

Milton.

No species of poetry, perhaps, is more difficult of execution than the religious; the natural sublimity of the subject cannot be heightened but by very superior powers, and demands an imagination plastic in the extreme, vast and gigantic on the one hand, tender, luxuriant and beautiful on the other, which can select, and vividly delineate, objects the most contrasted, the graceful inhabitant of heaven, or the appalling possessor of hell, which can, in short,

combine the force and sublimity of Michael Angelo with the sweetness and amenity of Guido Rheni.

The slightest failure too, either in point of language or conception, will frequently, in this province of the poetic art, destroy the whole scope and purport of an elaborate work, for the subject being of the utmost importance and solemnity, and essentially connected with all that is interesting to the mind of man, the most exquisite taste is required in adopting throughout the whole a diction appropriate to the weight of sentiment, and in colouring with a chastity and even severity of style those creations of fancy which are necessary to the constitution of the fable. Any unguarded levity, any want of adaptation in phraseology, or in fiction will immediately be felt, and will not only annihilate the effect intended of the part in which they are introduced, but will materially injure, and throw an air of ridicule over the entire poem. Imbecilities of this kind perpetually disgrace the pages of Quarles, Crashaw, and most of the writers of sacred poesy previous to the age of Milton, and nearly obliterate the pleasure arising from their purer

passages. A vigour of imagination, indeed, and a simplicity in composition and idea adequately combined for the production of a sublime religious poem, form a faculty of rare attainment, and which has been exerted with felicity in only three or four instances. since the birth of Christianity, for the reiterated attempts of the poets of Italy in the language of either ancient or modern Rome, are by no means worthy of their subject.

Our celebrated countryman, the immortal Milton, may therefore be considered as the very first who with true dignity supported the weight of his stupendous theme,

For Atlantean Spirit proper charge.

Gifted with a mind pre-eminently sublime, and richly stored with all the various branches of learning and science, with an ear attuned to harmony, and a taste chastised by cultivation, the divine bard projected and compleated a poem, which has challenged the admiration of each succeeding age, and is, without exaggeration, the noblest monument of human genius.

With bow

powers inferior to Milton, turgid,

obscure, and epigrammatic, yet with occasional sallies of imagination, and bursts of sublimity that course along the gloom with the rapidity and brilliancy of lightning, Young has in his Night Thoughts become a favorite not only with the multitude here, but with many of the nations upon the continent, for, with the bulk of mankind, there is little discrimination between the creative energy of Milton, and the tumid declamation of Young, or between the varied pauses of highly-finished blank verse and a succession of monotonous lines. Young has, however, the merit of originality, for few authors who have written so much have left fainter traces of imitation, or in the happy hour of inspiration more genuine and peculiar excellence.

The felicity of producing a sacred epic that may be thrown into competition with the Paradise Lost has been claimed, and justly claimed, by the literati of Germany. KLOPSTOCK, though possessing not the stern and gigantic sublimity of Milton, still elevates the mind by the vigour and novelty of his fiction, and is certainly more tender and pathetic than the English Bard. "The edifice of Milton,"

says the ingenious Herder, "is a stedfast and well-planned building, resting on ancient columns. Klopstock's is an enchanted Dome, echoing with the softest and purest tones of human feeling, hovering between heaven and earth, borne on angels' shoulders. Milton's Muse is Masculine—Klopstock's is a tender woman, dissolving in pious extacies, warbling elegies and hymns.—When music shall acquire among us the highest powers of her art, whose words will she select to utter but those of Klopstock?"* Impartial posterity will probably confirm this opinion of the critic, but omit, as I have done, the epithet harsh as applicable to Miltonic numbers; and it will assuredly annul the idea of Herder that Klopstock "has won for the language of his country more powers than the Briton ever suspected his to possess;" for the strength and energy, the varied harmony and beauty of the english language, the words that breathe and burn are displayed with prodigality in the pages of Milton, nor will it be conceded that the language of Germany, as even now improved and polished, is at all superior to the nervous yet

Herder's Letters on Humanization.

« AnteriorContinuar »