Its master chords Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood; Between the words.1 As so often happens in both literature and life, the religious element in Burns shows to best advantage when it is implicit. He hated hypocrisy, and, like many a conscience-smitten man, exalted his hatred into a special virtue. "Holy Willie's Prayer," for instance, is a diatribe acrid enough to have come from the pen of Churchill or of Junius. It is an attack ultra-Calvinism in general, upon - which was sufficiently justifiable; and upon a certain William Fisher in particular, - which nothing could justify. So in the "Holy Fair," with its innuendoes and personalities, there is far less Christian spirit than in the rollicking stanzas of the "Jolly Beggars,” a poem which for genuine inspiration must take precedence of the far more famous "Tam o' Shanter." But the "Lines to a Mountain Daisy," to the mouse whose poor home was invaded by his ploughshare, the closing stanzas of his "Address to the Unco Guid," and especially — A man's a man for a' that are instinct with the very spirit of the Gospel. Somewhere this man 1 1 H. W. Longfellow, Robert Burns. As originally printed in Harper's Magazine for 1880, the last stanza began, But still the burden of his song learned the touch that speeds Right to the natural heart of things; It is not without hesitation that one writes down William Blake as a mystic; not but that mysticism of a sort played a part in his strange mental and spiritual experience, but because we have fallen into the notion that such experience is typical of mysticism. The genuine mystic is simply a person of keen spiritual perceptions to whom the Immanent Soul of the Universe seems very near and real. He looks askance at trances on the one hand, as he extends but a dubious welcome to rituals upon the other, and always he is suspicious of hysteria, though possibly willing to admit that life subject to hysterical seizures is better than stark death. The genuine mystical element in Blake consists in his God-consciousness rather than in his tendency to dream dreams, to see visions, and to babble with tongues. His claim to sanity may be questioned; so may his claim to the possession of the clear flame of genius; yet sparks of genius illumine his work both in literature and art. He has aroused some enthusiasms and inspired some disciples-at least to appropriate his ideas. He was a man of weird visions, ecstasies, and revelations, which were never quite plain to him and which he could therefore never adequately reveal to others. Possessed as he was by a sort of religious demon, he wrote some poetry and made some drawings which are wonderfully suggestive in their partial and inchoate state; and he left two or three exquisite lyrics which can scarcely fail of immortality. In the "Reeds of Innocence" he incorporates with something of Stevenson's naturalness and simplicity that childlike spirit which is the essence of religion. Piping down the valleys wild, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb!" So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again"; So I piped: he wept to hear. "The Tyger" suggests in inimitable phrase the mystery of cruelty and death in Nature. When the stars threw down their spears, And watered Heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the Lamb, make thee? Perhaps the best characterization of Blake is that contained in the little poem bearing his name by James Thomson. He came to the desert of London town, Grey miles long; He wandered up and he wandered down, Singing a quiet song. He came to the desert of London town, Mirk miles broad; He wandered up and he wandered down, Thus, at what may seem to be somewhat disproportionate length, I have sketched the dawn of the new day in English poetry. These four men, of whom Cowper and Crabbe seem to belong to the eighteenth century, as Burns and Blake do to the nineteenth, all suggest in their different ways the opportunity lying before the student of the religious implications of our literature, its religious implications, I repeat, because in literature, as elsewhere in life, it is the implicit religion which counts and which finally determines religious expression. Cowper with his keen eye, humourous smile, and tender heart; Crabbe, the realist, Nature's sternest painter, yet the best, (to quote again Lord Byron's rather hackneyed tribute), depicting life in low and sombre lights, yet never cynically; Burns, singing his new song; and Blake, piping his thin but haunting melody, all bear witness to the ineradicable influence of religion upon literature. I am not concerned just now to attempt the definition of that influence, but am content to note it as we pass on to observe two great leaders in the literary achievement of the new century. CHAPTER III SONS OF THE MORNING WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE MATTHEW ARNOLD once observed that, while Wordsworth's poetry had failed of the recognition it deserves, still it had not wanted eulogists; "and it may be said to have brought its eulogists luck, for almost every one who has praised Wordsworth's poetry has praised it well." No better illustration of the truth of this remark could be cited than the filial and illuminating estimate wherewith Matthew Arnold himself prefaced the little volume of Wordsworth selections edited by him some five and twenty years ago. It is so sane and rare a bit of criticism that I could perhaps best attain my present purpose by asking the reader to renew acquaintance with it, and then to draw his own conclusions concerning the poet's testimony to my thesis; for it is only honest to confess that I cannot bring myself to speak of Wordsworth with the detachment and coolness of judgement becoming to the present task. That very edition of his poems is the volume which, next perhaps to the Bible, Shakespeare, and Boswell's Johnson, I should choose to take into exile with me, unless indeed I threw discretion to the |