Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

poem with the Soul's Knell or "Soul Knil" of Richard Edwards, which Gascoigne mentions in one of his prefaces, and which he ridicules simple readers for supposing to have been written "in extremity of sickness." This theory would remove its date to a period prior to 1567, the year of Edwards's death, which seems scarcely admissible. If it were so, it is singular that so remarkable a poem should not be found in print long before the publication of the Rhapsody in 1601, while, on the other hand, it is equally singular if the "Soul Knell," which is mentioned by more than one early writer as well known and as having been "commended for a good piece," should not now be at all extant. Were we to indulge in a very diffident conjecture as to this last question, we should suggest that Edwards's "Soul Knell" might be found in the pleasing little piece beginning

"O death, rock me on sleep,

Bring me on quiet rest,
Let pass my very guiltless ghost
Out of my careful brest."

The burden of this song is certainly favourable to the supposition.

"Toll on the passing bell,
Ring out the doleful knell,
Let the sound my death tell,
For I must die.

There is no remedy,
For now I die."

The manuscript of this dirge is said to bear the appearance of having been written about the time of Henry VIII., and it has been thought to have been composed either by, or in the person of, Anne Boleyn; while Mr Ritson, with little apparent reason, has ascribed it to George, Lord Rochford, the brother of that unhappy princess. It seems possible that it may have been com.. posed by Edwards, who, in 1561, was appointed master of the singing-boys in Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, and may, in compliment to his mistress, have written it in the person of her mother. Its composition has eminently the appearance of having proceeded from a practical vocalist, while it corresponds, more nearly than any other piece we remember, with the now unattached title of Edwards's once celebrated "Soul Knell." The "Soul's Errand” appears to us to in

dicate a considerably later date as well as a different style.

Dismissing these unsatisfactory speculations, let us return to an examination of the poetical merits of the composition which has given rise to them. The Soul's Errand" has received a very high commendation from a very high authority. "The Soul's Errand,'" Mr Campbell has said, " by whomsoever it was written, is a burst of genuine poetry. I know not how that short production has ever affected other readers, but it carries to my imagination an appeal which I cannot easily account for from a few simple rhymes. It places the last and inexpressibly awful hour of existence before my view, and sounds like a sentence of vanity on the things of this world, pronounced by a dying man, whose eye glares upon eternity, and whose voice is raised by strength from another world."

This is noble criticism if it were justly bestowed. But we confess that we greatly question its soundness. The critic seems to have been duped by his own poetical genius conspiring with an indulgent taste, and to have discovered in this composition that sublime tone and those solemn features which are the appropriate characters of the subject, but which, we fear, are but feebly and defectively expressed in the attempted representation of them. Here it is, perhaps, that a poet is found to be most fallible as a judge, if, at any time, by accidental associations or relaxed attention, the spirit of sound and searching criticism is biassed in its decisions, or its vigilance laid asleep. The suggestion to a poet's mind of a poetical situation or sentiment has in itself the effect of poetry, and gross deficiencies in taste and execution may escape his observation, if his excited feelings and conceptions overpower his faculties of judgment and comparison. He sees, then, in the subject of his criticism, not what the work truly is, but what it might be. He clothes the dead and dull skeleton that is presented to him with the vigour and warmth of life, and mistakes the images of his own fancy for the creations of the performance before him, which has merely roused them from their sleeping-places in his soul. This result is most likely to occur in the case of unpretending and sketch-like productions, which disarm the severities

of censure by not appearing to challenge a high place in poetical reputation. It will be further facilitated as to those compositions which have the charm of antiquity on their side, and are likely to have been first presented to the mind while its susceptibilities of pleasure were greater than its experience or penetration. We readily admit that the first stanza of the "Soul's Errand" is elevated and striking; whether we conceive it to be the poet's idea that he was then infusing his spirit into this dying address to the world, or adopt the bolder view that he was delivering a command to his soul itself to visit men after its separation from the body, and denounce their deceptions. The last verse also, or at least the last couplet, has some vigour and dignity, but these are associated with mean expressions, and a feeble conceit. The intermediate verses, might, some of them, make tolerable prose, but can scarcely be said to contain much poetry, while many of them are not merely commonplace, but stupid. No calm or unprejudiced critic, we think, would be startled either by the glaring eye, or by the supernatural voice of a dying man, in reading the following very middling

stanzas.

"Tell potentates they live,

Acting by others' actions, Not loved unless they give,

Not strong but by their factions.

If potentates reply,

Give potentates the lie.

"Tell men of high condition

That rule affairs of state, Their purpose is ambition, Their practice only hate : And if they once reply, Then give them all the lie.

"Tell them that brave it most, They beg for more by spending, Who in their greatest cost

Seek nothing but commending; And if they make reply,' Then give them all the lie.

"Tell arts they have no soundness,

But vary by esteeming ;

Tell schools they want profoundness, And stand too much on seeming; If arts and schools reply,

Give arts and schools the lie.

"Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity;
Tell virtue least preferreth;
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie."

It seems to need no ghost, nor any man about to become one, to tell us most of these things; and they are often so tamely expressed, that we might suspect they were not all the production of the same author who conceived the idea, and composed the first stanza of the poem. But, in truth, the writers of that time seem to have been incapable of retrenching the weak and unequal things which most poets must sometimes write. They had not learned "the last great art of all, the art to blot." They had no idea, that in the poetical litter, it was generally best to destroy a large proportion of the progeny; but seem to have looked with a parent's partiality on even the most rickety of the productions to which they had once given birth. The poem now before us, like many others, would be greatly improved by abridgement; and, familiar as it must be to our readers, we take the liberty of inserting it in the curtailed shape in which a maturer judgment might perhaps have originally presented it to the public. "Go, soul, the body's guest,

Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best,
The truth shall be thy warrant.
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

"Go, tell the court, it glows

And shines like rotten wood;
Go tell the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good.

If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

"Tell zeal it lacks devotion,
Tell love, it is but lust,
Tell time, it is but motion,
Tell flesh, it is but dust,
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

*

"Tell wit, how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom, she entangles
Herself, in overwiseness.

And if they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

We believe that we have now reached the point at which, for the present, we should pause. The extracts we have given exhaust, according to the objects of our plan, the period previous to 1590, the most important era in the history of English poetry. In that year appeared the "Fairy Queen," the brightest effulgence of moral poetry that ever rose on the world, and at whose light the meaner beauties of the sky must have paled their ineffectual fires. The "Fairy Queen" will be for ever felt and admired by all who can feel or admire poetical truth and beauty; but the genius of its author cannot be fully appreciated except by comparing his work with those of his predecessors, and ascertaining its immeasurable superiority over every thing that his country had yet produced. The only type of Spencer's spirit is to be found in "Sackville's Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates;" but highly as we must estimate that composition, it yet detracts little from the infinite praise of Spencer's varied and sustained powers. Whether as a repository of the richest poetical language, or as a monument of the noblest faculties of intellect and imagination, the Fairy Queen equally demands our wonder and our love, in a degree which can only be surpassed by our reverence for the solemn and sublime purposes which were to its author as the muse of his inspiration. Let us be forgiven, however, if we intercede for the poets who preceded Spencer to obtain a milder judgment than if Spencer had already written; and let us not be thought too bold in behalf of the humbler class of whom we have now been treating, if we claim for them the praise of being the harbingers of the great moral poet, to announce his possible approach, and to prepare for him in the breasts of his countrymen a wider and a warmer

welcome. We can scarcely regard it
here as an indifferent consideration,
that for nearly half a century the
popular poetry of England had
shown a character so earnest and
serious, and so faithful to the laws
of our spiritual nature. We shall
not ask whether, in any circum-
stances, Spencer could have descend-
ed to the levities of Ariosto; but we
may be allowed to doubt whether he
would have been encouraged to string
his pure and virtuous lyre at all, ex-
cept in a country where the hearts
of men were already attuned to
better strains than those of luxury
or love. The importance of popular
poetry in connexion with political
feeling has often been noticed: its in-
fluence in fostering and diffusing poe-
tical compositions of a higher class
than itself is at least equally conspi-
cuous. The floating songs and sim-
ple stanzas that are in the mouths of
children and uneducated persons, are
as the elements of poetical thought
and feeling that lead them gradually on
to higher attainments than they could
otherwise reach. They are often the
seeds from which the poetical faculty it-
self springs up, in lonely and neglected
minds, with as much luxuriance, and
nearly as much beauty, as in those which
have been visited by regular cultivation.
The remarks we have now made ap-
ply with the same force to the appear.
ance of Shakspeare's poetry as to that
of Spencer's. He, too, perhaps,
needed the assurance of being exten-
sively loved and understood before he
could be excited to pour forth with
such boundless profusion those max-
ims and sentiments of moral wisdom
and beauty which exalt his dramas
above even the sublime oracles of the
Greek Chorus. The appearance of
Spencer and Shakspeare within a
year or two of each other bears the
strongest testimony to the advance
that had been made in the materials of
literary taste, and to the solid charac-
ter, and lofty spirit of that country
which produced them with such powers,
and inspired them to use those powers
with so true a reference to the duties
and destinies of mankind.

We shall take another opportunity
of following out the subject of this
essay, by collecting some of the most
pleasing compositions of the minor
moralists who appeared subsequently
to the era with which we have now
concluded.

[ocr errors]

FUNERALS.

"Hic niger est-hunc tu Romane caveto."-HOR.

"UPON my honour, sir, my father does not get more than 40 per cent!" This conscientious and genteel speech haunted me not very long since, during a painful and dangerous illness. It came certainly very mal a-propos; but having come, would not depart, like an imp of evil, as it was-for some one has observed, or, if not, some one might have observed, that words once embodied in sense or sentence have a living existence, the good or bad spirits taking conception in the mind, and birth from the mouth, never to return again, but invisible agents in the world, that do a world of mischief in it, and often standing in a court of justice against their parents in the flesh-such an imp of evil, I assert, was that sentence to me, for, having taken possession of the best room in the house of my brains, it kicked its heels there, and called about it lustily, and innumerable were the train of thought-imps that came at its call. "Upon my honour, sir, my father does not get more than 40 per cent." Who gave it existence? It was the son of an undertaker, my dear Euse. bius. The occasion this:-I was present when the said very genteel youth presented the bill for a funeral, a few weeks after my acquaintance had buried his father. I am sure the old gentleman never would have slept with his fathers, could he have read over the items of his last journey, and would have again died over the sumtotal. The bill was indeed startling. It was upon a slight remonstrance that this nicely. dressed mincing son of his father, in about the nineteenth year of his age, and full promise of his trade of hat-bands and scarfs, laid his hand upon the left side of his waistcoat, and unhesitatingly swore like any Peer of Parliament-" Upon my honour, sir, my father does not get above 40 per cent!!" Years have passed away since I heard this sentence, nor have I thought of it in the interim; but that it should just then, above all times, when I lay in a feverish state, and when it appeared by no means improbable that an inquest of "40 per cents" might be called to sit upon my body, was a remarkable proof of

a fiendish existence of words that, like vultures, come to the wreck. From that day I know an undertaker by instinct, and abhor him, as dogs in China fly from a butcher. Long days and nights did I lie upon my uneasy bed; and this son of an undertaker was at the foot or the head of it continually. At one time he brought me a list of friends and relatives to attend my funeral, most of whom I thoroughly disliked; at another time he laid out the scarfs, and hat-bands, and gloves upon my bed, and changed my curtains into black cloaks. At another time he presented me with a book of patterns of nicely drawn coffins, and coffin-ornaments, tin-lacquered cherubims, with wings, cloud, and trumpet. Then stepped out of the room, and came in again with a stone-cutter, and his book of monuments and tablets-and then I racked my brain for inscriptions, and he suggested many, so abominable, that I was quite angry. Then the discussions upon the relative merits of stone and marble, the cost of cutting per letter; the clergyman's fee, the clerk's, the sexton's-if all were to have silk hatbands? the charges for pumping the grave dry. But the worst was when I felt that I was in my coffin, and yet know all that was going on in the room about me, just the same as if I had been purposely gifted with the faculties of mesmerism-only I was conscious of sense of suffocation. Under this new magnetism I saw them carry me out of the room, the ever polite son of an undertaker pointing the way. I felt the shock as they knocked against a bureau (of which, by the by, I told them to take care), in which I had many treasures-alas! thought Ifarewell! never to see them again. I very distinctly saw a near relative, to whom I had left, for me and for him, too, a handsome legacy, smile with more hilarity than was becoming the peculiar situation, and I believed he inwardly thought he should rummage my bureau. I would call to them to stop-I wished to alter my willbut no utterance came to my wishes. "This then," says I, "is being dead in law."-" I am infant-oh! the

rogues! they will ransack all-I shall have nothing."- "You shall have the bill," looked the son of an undertaker, and "upon my honour, my father does not get more than 40 per cent." Extortion! miscreant ! "Lift the poor gentleman cautiously over the banisters, and don't hurt the wall for the next comer," muttered an oily-faced fellow in damp black, the smell of which was awfully suffocating. I saw and smelt through the boards that covered me. Bang they went against the staircase wall, and they staggered under me. "Well done, Old Scratch," cried another. I was horrified-was he one of my bearers? We passed the door of the room where my "mourning friends" were assembled. It was open. Who would believe it? they were in jocund conversation. My surgeon, whom I had considered the tenderest and most humane of beings, was facetious with the parson; how they, too, were "true" sportsmen-always in at the death! There was some confusion in the hall. The great door was open. I saw the two mutes, the horses of a part of the body of the hearse, and heard the wheels of mourning coaches behind. "Go on," says one. "We can't," says another. "Lawyer Codicil isn't come yet," said another. -“I sent him hatband and gloves," said the son of an undertaker, "and a coach at his door."-" Coach is returned," said another; "he can't come, he says, but will be here after the funeral to read the will."-"Oh, he will, will he," thought I; but I couldn't jump out of the coffin, though I tried. "He will take the will for the deed," said I; "I never will employ Lawyer Codicil again."-There are no lawyers where you are going, a something suggested to me; and do you forget you are dead? you are going to be buried." Go on," said the son of an undertaker. Out came the procession in cloaks, and he was ranging them in order, two and two. I saw the paraphernalia, hatbands, &c. blown by the wind as we got out of doors, but I couldn't feel a breath of it. I have no breath in my body, thought I, and therefore the air will have no sympathy with me; I shall never feel it again. Then all the men about me looked the most solid substances I ever beheld; they had been all the morning real beef-eaters. They shoved me into the hearse. I was sen

sible of the first slow motion-then that I was quite dead-in fact, I fell fast asleep; and when I awoke they told me I was better-and the good surgeon was feeling my pulse, and did look jocund, and I forgave him. But it was some time before I could reconcile myself to the sight of my relatives, who had put on a hilarious look as they struck against my bureau. Though I knew perfectly that I was then alive, I had at first a confused notion as if I were two persons, one dead and one alive; then that I the living and I the dead were at issue and had a lawsuit, and that I the living had a decision of the Court of Chancery in my favour-that my dead self was outlawed for contempt of Court, and that the Court below had issued an "habeas corpus" against him. He was condemned in costs. The surgeon was plainly metamorphosed before my face into Lawyer Codicil. I insisted upon discharging his bill; he told his clerk to make it out; and then behind him, with his pen in his hand, I saw the aforesaid son of an undertaker, who asked him if he should tack on more than "forty per cent."

I will not attempt to run through an hundredth part of the detail of the wanderings of these two miserable days and nights, scenes various in character, but in all of which, in one shape or another, this forty per centage was my persecutor. But, while I am on the subject of this mental delusion during illness, I will just men. tion two dreams, the effects of laudanum, which I do not recollect that I had ever taken before.

It is utterly inconceivable to one awake and (as he trusts) in his senses how such an idea could even enter into a sick brain. I thought my head was a forest; that there was a battue in it; there were plenty of birds and of sportsmen; shots were fired, and a brace of partridges fell right through my eyes to my feet. The shots were suggested only by the slamming of a door.

The other dream was more painful. To understand which it must be told that I had suffered under acute inflammation, and it had been found necessary to apply a mustard plaster. And here I cannot but remember my own simplicity, for when my medical friend, good creature-and he was really my friend, and I ought to be thankful to

« ПредишнаНапред »