MUSEUM OF Foreign Literature, Science DECEMBER, 1838. From Blackwood's Magazine. OF THE EARLIER ENGLISH MORAL SONGS AND POEMS. No. I. We regard it as a sacred and sublime truth, that among the various forms in which human energy can influence the minds of others, the poetical faculty contains in itself the best security that it will be nobly and beneficently employed. Bestowed, doubtless, like every similar gift, not as a plaything or ornament, not as a snare or seduction, but as an instrument for purifying and exalting our spiritual being, it seems distinguished from other powers by a peculiar incapability of being diverted from its proper end, or degraded to an unworthy use. Genius or talent in other shapes may but imperfectly reach the deeper-seated sensibilities of the heart and conscience, or may, with comparative indifference, be exerted for good or evil, for happiness or misery. Music, sculpture, painting-powerful always to confer exterior polish-may fail to affect the internal structure of the mind, and even though not terminating in the outward senses, may yet linger in a superficial region of taste and enjoyment, not directly leading to the inner sanctuaries of the soul. Courage and conduct, whether military or political, oral or written eloquence, philosophical subtility, all of them agents of mighty force to control the destinies and change the character of mankind, have been severally displayed in their brightest excellence, in subserviency to designs of cruelty, eorruption, or falsehood. But the power of poetry in its essence implies a combination of moral and intellectual qualities that cannot coexist in perfection with depravity of heart or perversity of purpose. A facility for uniting melodious numbers to pointed diction or dazzling fancies may be compatible with insensibility to virtue or enslavement to vice: and poets, even of a high order, may be allured to dally too fondly with those affections which, though VOL. XXXIV.-DECEMBER, 1838. 54 laudable within their limits, are vicious in excess. But the higher a poet rises in the scale of his art, the more closely must his tendencies and conceptions conform to that standard of human excellence in which the purer and more heavenly faculties attain a rightful ascendency. Virtue and poetry are in this indeed identified, that they both involve the predominance of spirit over sense, of the sympathetic over the selfish emotions. It will not follow that the life of the poet is as moral as his lay, or that his works are unstained by error or blemish: for the man and the writer will still be subject to the law of humanity. But the poet, so far as he is a poet, and in those creations in which he chiefly appears a poet, will, in direct proportion to his genius, display the truest susceptibility for those feelings and convictions by which the soul of man is distinguished as a moral spirit. In obeying the high vocation to which the poet is impelled, it is not necessary that he should prominently put forward the moral purposes which inseparably attend him. In seeking, no doubt, to excite devout or religious feelings, the very nature of his task, the noblest and most arduous that poetry can attempt, implies that its object should openly appear. But it is otherwise in the general prosecution of that scheme of moral amelioration which is next in importance. The poet here has leave to deal with all the feelings of our frame, provided he can so move them as to advance his great design of rendering the hearts of his hearers more obedient to the sway of sympathy and imagination. It is his duty to enlarge and strengthen his influence by choosing a field of interest the most wide and attractive that will permit him to labour for the final objects of his art. The largest combination of literary pleasure and moral culture seems an unfailing characteristic of poetry in its most influential form, and therefore, in its highest perfection, as a means of human improvement. The poet, as a pleasing and potent teacher of truth and goodness, will not in this view convey his lessons best by assuming the rod of the schoolmaster, or the gown of the sage. His secret tional spirit which they have helped to form, and their will be to preserve a seeming community of thoughts and passions with the rest of his race: to borrow his themes and topics from objects and events the most alluring to their minds: and in so doing to lead them insensibly to new perceptions and higher emotions, the result of that wonder-working skill which, by an endless variety and succession of golden links, can connect the meanest things of earth and human life with the sublimest essences of heaven and immortality. The Father of poetry was justly described by a poet and moralist as one, "Qui, quid sit rectum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, Planius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit." "Whose pictured page, with living forms impressed, The great narrative and dramatic poems which genius has produced, seem to tell the world of nothing but its own business and interests, and yet under every image and incident there lurks an unsuspected lesson in moral advancement more clear and cogent than any that the porch or the cloister could inculcate. The Muse is permitted even to assume a garb the most dissimilar to that of the professed instructress, and in the disguise of gaiety and merriment, may still discharge her appointed duties. Not inconsiderable is her praise, when, in exercising a mastery over the light and sportive emotions, she moulds them imperceptibly into forms of purity and loveliness. As a religious messenger, intent on conveying peace and truth to a rude people, may outwardly conform to their language and customs, the better to win and change them to his wishes, so may moral wisdom adopt the mask of mirth, and teach the gay to diversify their levities within permitted bounds, and to temper in all things their hilarity with innocence. noble poems, as the faithful record of what nature is and ought to be, will for ever exert a beneficial sway over the minds of men, even when the language in which they sung may have been numbered with the dead. It were an infinite task to traverse the wide range of usefulness and beauty which would be opened up by a consideration of our great poets in this aspect of their character. But we propose at present to gather from the field of English poetry, and to weave into a very humble wreath, some flowerets of a lowlier kind, which may delight by their hues and fragrance, while they help to reveal the virtues of the generous soil and kindly sky to which they owe their birth. Scattered through our miscellaneous English poetry, especially of an earlier date, there are a number of smaller and chiefly irregular moral poems, of varying merit and popularity, which deserve consideration as a distinct class. We rather think that they have no precise parallel in the literature of other countries, and they eminently reflect some peculiarities of the Engglish mind. They spring from that serious and sober character, that self-dependent and contemplative disposition, which turns the eye inwards as often as without, and which claims kindred with noble qualities, the love of rural nature and of domestic quiet. The compositions we refer to are often bedewed with sweet sprinklings of fancy, and have almost always a purity of diction which time and change have failed to render obsolete. They are not always distinguished by poetical merit, but they generally present some characteristic feature that gives them an interest. Sometimes they are the effusions of simple minds, grateful for the slender talent of poetry which has been lent them, and pleased to dedicate it to the expression of those earnest thoughts in which they find their sweetest employment. Sometimes they have afforded an occasional refuge to men, who, flying from the weariness of busi Yet an honourable and appropriate purpose is also served by poetry of a cast more directly moral and re-ness and publicity, prove the purity of their heart and flective. The danger is, that a formally didactic poem may repel the disciple by continued calls on his attention, and in general it seems true that poems, avowedly moral, must, in order to please, be either confined within a short compass, or blended with a large mixture of incident or description. In no country, better than in England, has poetry performed her allotted function as a teacher of virtue and wisdom. The names of Chaucer and Spenser, Shakspeare and Milton, Pope and Goldsmith, Thomson and Cowper, Crabbe and Wordsworth, afford a proud and instantaneous proof of the assertion. In different forms and degrees, and with reference to various modes of society and character, these mighty masters have delivered the precepts of moral government with a truth and energy expressive of that na taste by the retired worship of those ideal graces for which in practical life they have longed in vain. Sometimes they speak the language of those who, having wandered from the path of duty, have forgot the practice though not the love of virtue, but who now in the intervals of passion, or in the returning of the prodigal to his father's house, lift up an humble and mournful hymn to proclaim from sad experience the blessings of that rectitude from which they have too easily departed. The topics on which these compositions chiefly touch are confined within a limited and uniform sphere. Life and its vanities, death and its certainty; affliction and its uses, prosperity and its dangers; the emptiness of outward advantages, the felicity of a calm and contemplative spirit; the cares of the court and city, the pleasures of solitude and the country. There is much sameness in these subjects, and when feebly handled they are senseless and insipid. But when they flow sincerely from a sensitive heart, they affect us readily as their authors would have wished, and they tend to preserve in literature a sound and solemn spirit. When tainted by affectation, or defaced by the tame diction and obscure imagery of a more modern mediocrity, they entirely cease to please. We exclude from this examination poems of more considerable dimensions, and those belonging to a more formal class, such as that of the regular sonnet, otherwise so near akin to the moral compositions we have in view. We shall likewise abstain from referring to those lyrics of a mixed character in which moral reflections are engrafted on the theme of love, or revelry, or some other predominating subject. We shall also pass over those poems which are properly of a sacred and devotional tone, and of which we may hereafter attempt a separate examination. But in drawing these distinctions, we feel that it is neither easy nor necessary to observe the line of division with scrupulous accuracy. In the task which we now undertake we beg leave to disclaim in ourselves, though by no means to depreciate in others, any pretensions to black-letter precision or minute literary information. We propose to stand in a middle and connecting position between the antiquary and the popular reader, divested if possible of the natural prepossessions and prejudices of both, and endeavouring to promote what is surely an important object, a friendly but discriminating acquaintance with the less familiar literature of our country. We give, as our earliest example of this kind of composition, two stanzas of "a ditty upon the uncertainty of this life," preserved in a manuscript of the British Museum, and published in Ritson's Ancient Songs. It appears to have been written about the middle or rather the end of the thirteenth century, and is worth something as a curiosity, if not as a poem. "That thee is sent receive in buxomness:|| The other verses attributed to Chaucer contain a simple and wholesome list of advices for all conditions. "People, obey your king and the law; No comparison could be more illustrative and more pleasing than that which has been drawn by Warton, himself a poet as well as the historian of poets, between the premature and solitary rise of Chaucer's genius and the bright and brittle promises of a genial day in an English spring! The truth of the picture cannot be apparent in the limited enquiry which we are now pursuing: but even here we are struck by the dreary barrenness that ensues. Our respect for royalty cannot constrain us to admit as an exception the dull verses attributed to Henry VI., of which the following stanza is much the most tolerable, and, if genuine, is at least remarkable for being perfectly modern in its language aud cadence. From boy to man, from man to boy, would chop and The compositions attributed to Lord Vaux are of unequal character, but he aimed often at a right mark, Wyatt the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the | Whereat full oft I smiled to see how all these three, two chieftains.' With these eminent names may be associated that of Thomas Lord Vaux, who, at the same period, and probably earlier than Surrey, though in a more simple and vernacular style, contributed something to the refinement of taste and versification in England. The works of this cluster of poets were first published in 1557 in Tottel's Collection, the ear-though not a high one, and he sometimes hit it. His liest printed miscellany of poetry in the language, where songs are not unfrequently fortunate in their ideas, the poems of Surrey and Wyatt are followed by a neat and natural in their expression, and smooth in number of others of "Uncertain authors," among their numbers. He seems to have excited the simple which are at least two by Lord Vaux. Those poems wonder of his time by the art of counterfeiting imagiin this collection, of which the parentage is unknown,nary situations and feelings. His best and most popu seem to extend back somewhat indefinitely in date, for lar piece is entitled by Tottel, "The Aged Lover reamong them is included the "Good Counsel of Chau-nounceth Love," a name too limited for its subject, cer," though under this new title, "To lead a virtuous which embraces the more general contemplation of and honest life." declining years and approaching death. Its dismal Wyat's strength seems to lie in his ethical or satiri-imagery supplied Shakspeare with some appropriate cal epistles, which exceed the compass of our present fragments of melancholy mirth for his sexton in Hamplan. We borrow from him, however, the following let, while engaged in labouring for the dead. The irregular sonnet: THAT PLEASURE IS MIXED WITH EVERY PAIN. "Venomous thorns, that are so sharp and keen, Bear flowers, we see, full fresh and fair of hue; Poison is also put in medicine, And unto man his health doth oft renew. The fire that all things else consumeth clean May hurt and heal; then if that this be true, I trust some time my harm may be my health, Since every wo is joined with some wealth." To Surrey our poetry owes much, independently of his having first used in England, in his translation of Virgil, that noble form of versification in which Shakspeare and Milton found free and fit scope for their genius, and which at once stimulates and tests the true poet by the high standard of thought and language, which its simple grandeur requires to sustain it. Love, though it may be doubted if it had much share in Surrey's life, is the prevailing theme of his original compositions. But we extract from them the beginning of a little moral poem which suits our purpose. It is written in a pleasing and favourite metre of that day. The title, as in the other cases likewise, seems to be Mr. Tottel's. HOW NO AGE IS CONTENT WITH HIS OWN ESTATE, AND HOW THE "Laid in my quiet bed, in study as I were, I saw within my troubled head a heap of thoughts appear, I saw the little boy, in thought how oft that he Did wish of God, to scape the rod, a tall young man to be. How he would be a rich old man, to live and lie at rest. poem has considerable merit. The following verses contain a not unexpressive picture of the encroaching torpor of old age. "My lusts they do me leave, My fancies all be fled, And tract of time begins to weave "My muse doth not delight Me as she did before; "For reason me denies This youthly idle rhyme; The furrows in my face, In what immediately follows, a more striking figure is somewhat roughly delineated. We add, also, such of the concluding verses as best deserve quotation. "The harbinger of death To me I see him ride: The cough, the cold, the gasping breath "A pick-axe and a spade, Eke and a winding sheet, That knolls the careful knell, "When all is done and said, in the end thus shall you find, He most of all doth bathe in bliss, that hath a quiet mind: And clear from worldly cares, to deem can be content, The sweetest time in all his life in thinking to be spent. "The body subject is to fickle Fortune's power, And to a million of mishaps is casual every hour: And death in time doth change it to a clod of clay, Whenas the mind, which is divine, runs never to decay. "Companion none is like unto the mind alone, For many have been harmed by speech, through thinking few or none. Fear oftentimes restraineth words, but makes not thoughts to cease, And he speaks best that hath the skill when for to hold his peace. "Our wealth leaves us at death, our kinsmen at the grave, But virtues of the mind unto the heavens with us we have, Wherefore for virtue's sake I can be well content, The sweetest time of all my life to deem in thinking spent." BETHINKING HIMSELF OF HIS END, WRITETH THUS. "When I behold my bier, my last and posting horse, That bear shall to the grave my vile and carrion corse, Then say I, silly wretch, why dost thou put thy trust In things each made of clay, that soon will turn to dust. "Dost thou not see the young, the hardy, and the fair, "Dost thou not see how death through-smiteth with his lance, Some by war, some by plague, and some by worldly chance? What thing is there on earth, for pleasure that was made, But go'th more swift away than doth the summer shade? "Lo! here the summer flower, that sprung this other day, But winter weareth it as fast, and bloweth clean away: Even so shalt thou consume, from youth to loathsome age, For death he doth not spare the prince more than the page. "Thy house shall be of clay, a clod under thy head; Until the latter day, the grave shall be thy bed: Until the blowing trump doth say to all and some, 'Rise up out of your grave, for now the Judge is come.'" If Lord Vaux's life was a gay one, it must be owned that his lines have, with wonderful success, shown "the counterfeit action" of the lugubrious, though we should hardly say with Puttenham, that he has done it "very lively and pleasantly." If his conversation was like his poetry, he must have played at Court the part of the Consul's Companion in the Roman triumph, and both Henry and his courtiers might have better profited by such lessons. We return to Tottel's Collection, from which we shall take a few further specimens, believing that the importance of this period, in giving a direction to the sentiments and a shape to the language of poetry cult to bestow much praise. among us, may excite interest even where it is diffi THEY OF THE MEAN ESTATE ARE HAPPIEST. |