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disturbs the clear action of his intellect.

The critic, of

His province is to

If the clearness

all persons, should have a keen eye. see, more, perhaps, than it is to feel. of his vision is dimmed by discipleship or enmity, or if the object that he examines be discolored by the hues of his own mind, he gives us a fancy picture, not a portrait, he adds or takes away from the original until its real features are lost. In Talfourd's critiques, we discover much which can hardly be called critical. The judge is too apt to lose himself in the advocate or disciple. Το use his own words, in speaking of Hazlitt, he sometimes confounds the processes of argument with those of feeling. He is more often at the feet of Gamaliel than in the judgment-seat. He bends his knee in reverent homage to the great and the good. The splendid notices of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Mackenzie, are rapturous hymns in praise of those authors, rather than close, analytical judgments of their merits. Talfourd has none of that dogmatism of feeling which impels Macaulay to exalt himself above his subject, and remorselessly analyze and dissect even his favorite authors; neither does he, like the same critic, take some writers captives of his criticism, and exhibit their scalps in proof of his prowess. All warfare against poets or prose writers, whether conducted on Indian or civilized principles, he steadily eschews. He becomes sternly critical only when he applies the principles educed from the works of his favorite authors to writings which are formed on a different system, or which spring from a different moral or mental source; and then he is frequently partial and one-sided in his view. He describes the genius of a poet, not as it is in reality, but as it has affected his own imagination and sympathies; and he

consequently pours out in the praise of a cherished author the whole wealth of suggestive thought which belongs to his own mind. He thus gives the object of his eulogy credit for all the ideas and imaginations which he has awakened, as well as for all which he has directly imparted. By this method, we have an abstract and expression of two minds, not of one, as in the Dialogues reported by Plato, where the disciple adds to the teachings of the master, without claiming his share of the joint product.

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The prominent characteristic of Talfourd's critical system is his view of the nature and sphere of imagination, stated with considerable definiteness in his articles on Maturin, Wordsworth, and Hazlitt, and influencing his judgment in others. This theory essentially modifies his opinion of books and men, and, though beautiful in itself, appears to lie open to weighty objections. It is a curious fact, and one which well illustrates the influence of the spirit of discipleship, that Talfourd narrows the domain of imagination within the sphere of Wordsworth's genius. His definition of the faculty is as follows. "In our sense, it is that power by which the spiritualities of our nature, and the sensible images derived from the material universe, are commingled at the will of the possessor. It has thus a two-fold operation, the bodying forth of feelings, sentiments, and ideas, in beautiful and majestic forms, and giving to them local habita tions; and the informing the colors and shapes of matter with the properties of the soul."

It does not

This definition we conceive to be narrow. cover the whole extent of the power. It restricts the operation of the faculty to the capacity of discerning, suggesting, and commingling analogies. Is this the

whole of its province? Are not the creation of individual characters, and the invention of incident, among its legitimate efforts? The conception and creation of the characters of Lear and Macbeth seem to us as noble efforts of the imagination, as the commingling of the spiritualities of their natures with the sensible images derived from the material universe. To apply the argumentum ad hominem, we might ask, is not the creation of the character of Ion, out of the finest elements of humanity, as grand and beautiful an operation of the “faculty divine" as any of the images in which his thoughts and sentiments take shape and hue? But Wordsworth is deficient in the power of creating character and incidents. His genius is intensely subjective and egotistical. He pours his personal feelings into everything he writes. He makes nature and man speak in his peculiar dialect. A theory must, therefore, be invented, by which the poetic power of Wordsworth shall be made the measure of the poetic power itself; and this Talfourd has done, with a seeming unconsciousness of sophistry which it is beautiful to see.

There is still another objection to be made to Talfourd's critical canons. Connected with his theory of the scope of the imagination, he has another, relating to its operation as the reconciling and harmonizing principle of the mind. He also gives to its analogies more authɔrity than belongs to the deductions of the understanding. In his system, imagination sees truth in clear vision. Like figures, it cannot lie. All the other mental faculties are liable to delude us; but this divine power, if it exist at all, must ever picture forth what is real and true. It discerns the eternal substance, not the "shows and shams," of things. "A mirror can no more reflect an

object which is not before it, than the imagination can show the false and the baseless." Our author, indeed, gives it all the intuitive power which Cousin confers on the "spontaneous reason." We are gravely told, that the faculty is never irregular, confused, dim, or unreal, in any of its manifestations; that gaudiness of diction, excess of metaphor, turbulence, and a number of other qualities, which many good people conceive to spring from the predominance of the poetic faculty, do not arise from an ill-regulated imagination, for such a term is altogether inapplicable to the power, but rather from excessive sensibility and verbal fluency. He is certainly correct in distinguishing false from true imagination, and vindicating the faculty from many of the tasteless enormities which have passed for its creations; but in his zeal he forgets facts, and abandons logic. From his statement, it would seem that no one can imagine what does not exist; that we are never fooled by fantasy; and that Hamlet grossly libelled the power, when he hinted the possibility that his imaginations might be as foul as Vulcan's stithy. Besides, our author, in his other essays, is not altogether faithful to his own principles. We can occasionally detect expressions and illustrations which are logically inconsistent with his cherished notion. His admiration, at times, will burst out, in spite of his theory, in praise of imagination when it is distempered, or shadows forth unreal mockeries.

The notion that the imagination acts as the harmonizing principle of the mind, we conceive to be fallacious. The general suffrage would be in favor of a directly opposite opinion. Besides, it does not follow from Talfourd's definition of the faculty, and it is likewise contradicted by facts. It is merely an assumption. The

method of reasoning which the author followed in arriv ing at this singular conclusion was probably something like this: -Wordsworth must be placed above all the other poets of the age. The mind of Wordsworth, as developed in his writings, is harmonious. It rarely

seems stung and stirred into action by passion and impulse; it is cool and philosophic. Therefore the imagination, which above all others is the faculty of the poet, must act as the reconciling principle of the soul, and be the source of its harmony.

We cannot see any necessary connection at all between the power of commingling at will the "spiritualities of our nature " with sensible images, and a harmonized state of the whole inward nature. Among Wordsworth's contemporaries, Shelley and Byron are examples at once of great imaginations and unsettled minds. They possessed, in a high degree, the power of "informing the colors and shapes of matter with the properties of the soul," and "of bodying forth ideas, feelings, and sentirents, in beautiful and majestic forms;" and whether these ideas, feelings, and sentiments, were pernicious or good, false or true, the forms in which they were embodied were still beautiful and majestic.

"For they knew

How to make madness beautiful; and threw

O'er erring thoughts and deeds a heavenly hue

Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling, as they past,

The eyes which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast."

The "heavenly hue" of all language comes from imagination, and cannot be caught from the lexicon; and the fact that this has been thrown over madness, error, lust, and intemperance, is too notorious to admit of doubt. From a single page of Shelley's writings there

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