II.-MORNING HYMN TO MONT BLANC. 1. Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer, 2. Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven. 3. Awake, my soul! not only passive praise 4. Thou first and chief, sole Sovran of the Vale! Or when they climb the sky or when they sink : 5 10 15 20 25 30 Co-herald wake, oh wake, and utter praise! 5. And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 35 40 Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 45 And who commanded-and the silence came"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?" 6. Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 7. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! 50 55 60 65 8. Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peak, In adoration, upward from thy base, Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears, To rise before me-rise, O, ever rise; Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth. 70 75 80 85 CHARACTERIZATION BY DE QUINCEY.1 1. Without attempting any elaborate analysis of Lamb's merits, which would be no easy task, one word or two may be said generally about the position he is entitled to hold in our litera 1 324 ture, and, comparatively, in European literature. In the literature of every nation, we are naturally disposed to place in the highest rank those who have produced some great and colossal work—a Paradise Lost, a Hamlet, a Novum Organum-which presupposes an effort of intellect, a comprehensive grasp, and a sustaining power, for its original conception, corresponding in grandeur to that effort, different in kind, which must preside in its execution. 2. But after this highest class, in which the power to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same scale of grandeur, there comes a second, in which brilliant powers of execution, applied to conceptions of a very inferior range, are allowed to establish a classical rank. Every literature possesses, besides its great national gallery, a cabinet of minor pieces, not less perfect in their polish, possibly more so. In reality, the characteristic of this class is elaborate perfection: the point of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass and power of the original creation, which (however exquisite in its class), moves within a smaller sphere. To this class belong, for example, The Rape of the Lock, that finished jewel of English literature; The Dunciad (a still more exquisite gem); The Vicar of Wakefield (in its earliest part); in German, the Luise of Voss; in French-what? Above all others, the fables of La Fontaine. He is the pet and darling, as it were, of the French literature. 3. Now, I affirm that Charles Lamb occupies a corresponding station in his own literature. I am not speaking (it will be observed) of kinds, but of degrees, in literary merit; and Lamb I hold to be, as with respect to English literature, that which La Fontaine is with respect to French. For though there may be little resemblance otherwise, in this they agree, that both were wayward and eccentric humorists; both confined their efforts to short flights; and both, according to the standards of their sev eral countries, were occasionally, and in a lower key, poets. |