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vances and the final perfection of the species. It was this good hope for humanity which excited Mr. Malthus to affirm, that there is in the constitution of man's nature a perpetual barrier to any extensive improvement in his earthly condition. After a long interval, Mr. Godwin has announced a reply to this popular systema system which reduces man to an animal, governed by blind instinct, and destitute of reason, sentiment, imagination, and hope, whose most mysterious instincts are matter of calculation to be estimated by rules of geometrical series! Most earnestly do we desire to wit

ness his success. To our minds, indeed, he sufficiently proves the falsehood of his adversary's doctrines by his own intellectual character. His works are, in themselves, evidences that there is power and energy in man which have never yet been fully brought into action, and which were not given to the species in vain. He has lived himself in the soft and mild light of those peaceful years, which he believes shall hereafter bless the world, when force and selfishness shall disappear, and love and joy shall be the unerring lights of the species.

MATURIN.

[NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.]

They pass by us sometimes like gorgeous phantoms, sometimes like "horrible shadows and unreal mockeries," which seem to elude us because they are not of us. When we follow him closest, he introduces us into a region where all is unsatisfactory and unreal-the chaos of principles, fancies, and passionswhere mightiest elements are yet floating without order, where appearances between substance and shadow perpetually harass us, where visionary forms beckon us through painful avenues, and, on approach, sink into despicable realities; and pillars which looked ponderous and immovable at a distance, melt at the touch into air, and are found to be only masses of vapour and of cloud. He neither raises us to the skies, nor "brings his angels down," but astonishes by a phantasmagoria of strange appearances, sometimes scarcely distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, but which, when most clearly defined, come not near us, nor claim kindred by a warm and living touch. This chill remoteness from humanity is attended by a general want of harmony and proportion in the whole-by a wild excursiveness of sensibility and thoughtwhich add to its ungenial influence, and may be traced to the same causes.

THE author of Montorio and of Bertram is | twine with the heart-strings, and which keep unquestionably a person gifted with no ordi- their hold until the golden chords of our sensinary powers. He has a quick sensibility-ability and imagination themselves are broken. penetrating and intuitive acuteness-and an unrivalled vigour and felicity of language, which enable him at one time to attain the happiest condensation of thought, and at others to pour forth a stream of eloquence, rich, flowing, and deep, checkered with images of delicate loveliness, or darkened by broad shadows cast from objects of stern and adamantine majesty. Yet, in common with many other potent spirits of the present time, he fails to excite within us any pure and lasting sympathy. We do not, on reading his works, feel that we have entered on a precious and imperishable treasure. They dazzle, they delight, they surprise, and they weary us-we lay them down with a vague admiration for the author, and try to shake off their influence as we do the impressions of a feverish dream. It is not thus that we receive the productions of genuine and holy bards-of Shakspeare, of Milton, of Spenser, or of Wordsworth-whose farreaching imaginations come home to our hearts, who become the companions of our sweetest moods, and with whom we long to "set up our everlasting rest." Their creations are often nearest to our hearts when they are farthest removed from the actual experience of our lives. We travel on the bright tracks which their genius reveals to us as safely and If we were disposed to refer these defects to with as sure and fond a tread as along the one general source, we should attribute them broad highway of the world. When the re- to the want of an imagination proportionate to gions which they set before us are the most sensibility and to mastery of language in the distant from our ordinary perceptions, we yet writer's mind, or to his comparative neglect of seem at home in them, their wonders are that most divine of human faculties. It is edistrangely familiar to us, and the scene, over-fying to observe how completely the nature of spread with a consecrating and lovely lustre, breaks on us, not as a wild fantastic novelty, but as a revived recollection of some holier life, which the soul rejoices thus delightfully to recognise.

Not thus do the works of Mr. Maturin-original and surprising as they often are-affect us. They have no fibres in them which en

this power is mistaken by many who profess to decide on matters of taste. They regard it as something wild and irregular, the reverse of truth, nature, and reason, which is divided from insanity only by "a thin partition," and which, uncontrolled by sterner powers, forms the essence of madness. They think it abounds in speeches crowded with tawdry and

superfluous epithets-in the discourses of Dr. Chalmers, because they deal so largely in infinite obscurities that there is no room for a single image-and in the poems of Lord Byron, because his characters are so unlike all beings which have ever existed. Far otherwise thought Spencer when he represented the laurel as the meed-not of poets insane-but "of poets SAGE." True imagination is, indeed, the deep eye of the profoundest wisdom. It is opposed to reason, not in its results, but in its process; it does not demonstrate truth only because it sees it. There are vast and eternal realities in our nature, which reason proves to exist which sensibility "feels after and finds"-and which imagination beholds in clear and solemn vision, and pictures with a force and vividness which assures their existence even to ungifted mortals. Its subjects are the true, the universal, and the lasting. Its distinguishing property has no relation to dimness, or indistinctness, or dazzling radiance, or turbulent confusedness, but is the power of setting all things in the clearest light, and bringing them into perfect harmony. Like the telescope it does not only magnify celestial objects, but brings them nearer to us. Of all the faculties it is the severest and the most unerring. Reason may beguile with splendid sophistry; sensibility may fatally misguide; but if imagination exists at all, it must exhibit only the real. A mirror can no more reflect an object which is not before it, than the imagination can show the false and the baseless. By revealing to us its results in the language of imagery, it gives to them almost the evidence of the senses. If the analogy between an idea and its physical exponent is not complete, there is no effort of imagination-if it is, the truth is seen, and felt, and enjoyed, like the colours and forms of the material universe. And this effect is produced not only with the greatest possible certainty, but in the fewest possible words. Yet even when this is done-when the illustration is not only the most enchanting, but the most convincing of proofs-the writer is too often contemptuously depreciated as flowery, by the advocates of mere reason. Strange chance that he who has imbodied truth in a living image, and thus rendered it visible to the intellectual perceptions, should be confounded with those who conceal all sense and meaning beneath mere verbiage and fragments of disjointed metaphor!

and moral beauty-that imagination really puts forth its divine energies. We do not charge on Mr. Maturin that he is destitute of power to do this, or that he does not sometimes direct it to its purest uses. But his sensibility is so much more quick and subtle than his authority over his impressions is complete; the flow of his words so much more copious and facile than the throng of images on his mind; that he too often confounds us with unnumbered snatches and imperfect gleams of beauty, or astonishes us by an outpouring of eloquent bombast, instead of enriching our souls with distinct and vivid conceptions. Like many other writers of the present time-especially of his own country-he does not wait until the stream which young enthusiasm sets loose shall work itself clear, and calmly reflect the highest heavens. His creations bear any stamp but that of truth and soberness. He sees the glories of the external world, and the mightier wonders of man's moral and intellectual nature, with a quick sense, and feels them with an exquisite sympathy-but he gazes on them in "very drunkenness of heart," and becomes giddy with his own indistinct emotions, till all things seem confounded in a gay bacchanalian dance, and assume strange fantastic combinations; which, when transferred to his works, startle for a moment, but do not produce that "sober certainty of waking bliss" which real imagination assures. There are two qualities necessary to form a truly imaginative writer-a quicker and an intenser feeling than ordinary men possess for the beautiful and the sublime, and the calm and meditative power of regulating, combining, and arranging its own impressions, and of distinctly bodying forth the final results of this harmonizing process. Where the first of these properties exists, the last is, perhaps, attainable by that deep and careful study which is more necessary to a poet than to any artist who works in mere earthly materials. But this study many of the most gifted of modern writers unhappily disdain; and if mere sale and popularity are their objects, they are right; for, in the multitude, the wild, the disjointed, the incoherent, and the paradoxical, which are but for a moment, necessarily awaken more immediate sensation than the pure and harmonious, which are destined to last while nature and the soul shall endure.

It is easy to perceive how it is that the imThus the products of genuine imagination perfect creations of men of sensibility and of are "all compact." It is, indeed, only the eloquence strike and dazzle more at the first, compactness and harmony of its pictures than the completest works of truly imaginative which give to it its name or its value. To poets. A perfect statue-a temple fashioned discover that there are mighty elements in with exactest art-appear less, at a mere humanity to observe that there are bright glance, from the nicety of their proportions. hues and graceful forms in the external world The vast majority of readers, in an age like -and to know the fitting names of these-is ours, have neither leisure nor taste to seek and all which is required to furnish out a rich stock ponder over the effusions of holiest genius. of spurious imagination to one who aspires to They must be awakened into admiration by the claim of a wild and irregular genius. For something new and strange and surprising; him a dictionary is a sufficient guide to Par- and the more remote from their daily thoughts nassus. It is only by representing those in- and habits-the more fantastical and daringtellectual elements in their finest harmony-by the effort, the more will it please, because the combining those hues and forms in the fairest more it will rouse them. Thus a man who pictures-or by making the glorious combina- will exhibit some impossible combination of tions of external things the symbols of truth | heroism and meanness-of virtue and of vice

-of heavenly love and infernal malignity and in this story, a being whom we are long led baseness-will receive their wonder and their praise. They call this POWER, which is in reality the most pitiable weakness. It is because a writer has not imagination enough to exhibit in new forms the universal qualities of nature and the soul, that he takes some strange and horrible anomaly as his theme. Incompetent to the divine task of rendering beauty "a simple product of the common day," he tries to excite emotion by disclosing the foulest recess of the foulest heart. As he strikes only one feeling, and that coarsely and ungently, he appears to wield a mightier weapon than he whose harmonious beauty sheds its influence equably over the whole of the sympathies. That which touches with strange commotion, and mere violence on the heart, but leaves no image there, seems to vulgar spirits more potent than the faculty which applies to it all perfect figures, and leaves them to sink gently into its fleshly tablets to remain there for ever. Yet, surely, that which merely shakes is not equal even in power to that which impresses. The wild disjointed part may be more amazing to a diseased perception than the well-compacted whole; but it is the nice balancing of properties, the soft blending of shades, and the all-pervading and reconciling light shed over the harmonious imagination, which take off the sense of rude strength that alone is discernible in its naked elements. Is there more of heavenly power in seizing from among the tumult of chaos and eternal night, strange and fearful abortions, or in brooding over the vast abyss, and making it pregnant with life and glory and joy? Is it the higher exercise of human faculties to represent the frightful discordances of passion, or to show the grandeurs of humanity in that majestic repose which is at once an anticipation and a proof of its eternal destiny? Is transitory vice-the mere accident of the species

and those vices too which are the rarest and most appalling of all its accidents-or that good which is its essence and which never can perish, fittest for the uses of the bard? Shall he desire to haunt the caves which lie lowest on the banks of Acheron, or the soft bowers watered by "Siloa's brook that flows fast by the oracle of God?"

Mr. Maturin gave decisive indications of a morbid sensibility and a passionate eloquence out-running his imaginative faculties, in the commencement of his literary career. His first romance, the "Family of Montorio," is one of the wildest and strangest of all "false creations proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." It is for the most part a tissue of magnificent yet unappalling horrors. Its great faults as a work of amusement, are the long and unrelieved series of its gloomy and marvellous scenes, and the unsatisfactory explanation of them all, as arising from mere human agency. This last error he borrowed from Mrs. Ratcliffe, to whom he is far inferior | in the economy of terrors, but whom he greatly transcends in the dark majesty of his style. As his events are far more wild and wondrous than hers, so his development is necessarily far more incredible and vexatious. There is,

to believe is not of this world-who speaks in the tones of the sepulchre, glides through the thickest walls, haunts two distant brothers in their most secret retirements through their strange wanderings, leads one of his victims to a scene which he believes infernal, and there terrifies him with sights of the wildest magic-and who after all this, and after really vindicating to the fancy his claim to the supernatural by the fearful cast of his language-is discovered to be a low impostor, who has produced all by the aid of poor tricks and secret passages! Where is the policy of this? Unless, by his power, the author had given a credibility to magic through four-fifths of his work, it never could have excited any feeling but that of impatience or of scorn. And when we have surrendered ourselves willingly to his guidance-when we have agreed to believe impossibilities at his bidding why does he reward our credence with de rision, and tacitly reproach us for not having detected his idle mockeries? After all, too, the reason is no more satisfied than the fancy; for it would be a thousand times easier to be lieve in the possibility of spiritual influences, than in a long chain of mean contrivances, no one of which could ever succeed. The first is but one wonder, and that one to which our na ture has a strange leaning; the last are num berless, and have nothing to reconcile them to our thoughts. In submitting to the former, we contentedly lay aside our reasoning facul ties; in approaching the latter our reason itself is appealed to at the moment when it is insulted. Great talent is, however, unquestionably exhibited in this singular story. A stern justice breathes solemnly through all the scenes in the devoted castle. "Fate sits on its dark battlements, and frowns." There is a spirit of deep philosophy in the tracing of the gradual influence of patricidal thoughts on the hearts of the brothers, which would finally exhibit the danger of dallying with evil fancies, if the subject were not removed so far from all ordinary temptations. Some of the scenes of horror, if they were not accumulated until they wear out their impression, would produce an effect inferior to none in the works of Ratcliffe or of Lewis. The scene in which Flippo escapes from the assassins, deserves to be ranked with the robber-scenes in the Monk and Count Fathom. The diction of the whole is rich and energetic-not, indeed, flowing in a calm beauty which may glide on for everbut impetuous as a mountain torrent, which, though it speedily passes away, leaves behind it no common spoils

"Depositing upon the silent shore

Of memory. images and gentle thoughts

Which cannot die, and will not be destroyed." "The Wild Irish Boy" is, on the whole, inferior to Montorio, though it served to give a farther glimpse into the vast extent of the author's resources. "The Milesian" is, perhaps, the most extraordinary of his romances. There is a bleak and misty grandeur about it, which, in spite of its glaring defects, sustains for it an abiding-place in the soul. Yet never, perhaps, was there a more unequal production

alternately exhibiting the grossest plagiarism | rendered popular, not by its poetical beauties, and the wildest originality-now swelling into but by the violence with which it jars on the offensive bombast, and anon disclosing the sensibilities, and awakens the sluggish heart simplest majesty of nature, fluctuating with from its lethargy. "Manuel," its successor, inconstant ebb between the sublime and the feebler, though in the same style, excited little ridiculous, the delicate and the revolting. attention, and less sympathy. In "Fredolpho," "Women, or Pour et Contre," is less unequal, the author, as though he had resolved to sting but we think, on the whole, less interesting the public into a sense of his power, crowded than the author's earlier productions. He together characters of such matchless deprashould not venture, as in this work he has vily, sentiments of such a demoniac cast, and done, into the ordinary paths of existence. events of such gratuitous horror, that the His persons, if not cast in a high and heroic moral taste of the audience, injured as it had mould, have no stamp of reality upon them. been by the success of similar works, felt the The reader of this work, though often dazzled insult, and rose up indignantly against it. Yet and delighted, has a painful feeling that the in this piece were passages of a soft and characters are shadowy and unreal, like that mournful beauty, breathing a tender air of which is experienced in dreams. They are romance, which led us bitterly to regret that unpleasant and tantalizing likenesses, ap- the poet chose to "embower the spirit of a proaching sufficiently near to the true to make fiend, in mortal paradise of such sweet" song. us feel what they would be and lament what We do not, however despair even yet of the they are. Eva, Zaira, the manaic mother, and regeneration of our author's taste. There has the group of Calvinists, have all a resemblance always been something of humanity to redeem to nature and sometimes to nature at its most those works in which his genius has been passionate or its sweetest-but they look as at most perverted. There is no deliberate sneera distance from us, as though between us and ing at the disinterested and the pure-no cold them there were some veil, or discolouring derision of human hopes-no deadness to the medium, to baffle and perplex us. Still the lonely and the loving, in his writings. His novel is a splendid work; and gives the feel- error is that of a hasty trusting to feverish iming that its author has "riches fineless" in pulses, not of a malignant design. There is store, which might delight as well as astonish far more of the soul of goodness in his evil the world, if he would cease to be their slave, things, than in those of the noble bard whose and become their master. example has assisted to mislead him. He does not, indeed, know so well how to place his un

In the narrow boundaries of the Drama the redundancies of Mr. Maturin have been neces-natural characters in imposing attitudes-to sarily corrected. In this walk, indeed, there seems reason to believe that his genius would have grown purer, as it assumed a severer attitude; and that he would have sought to attain high and true passion, and lofty imagination, had he not been seduced by the admiration unhappily lavished on Lord Byron's writings. The feverish strength, the singular blending of good and evil, and the spirit of moral paradox, displayed in these works, were congenial with his tastes, and aroused in him the desire to imitate. "Bertram," his first and most successful tragedy, is a fine piece of writing, wrought out of a nauseous tale, and

work up his morbid sensibilities for sale-or to "build the lofty rhyme" on shattered principles, and the melancholy fragments of hope. But his diction is more rich, his fancy is more fruitful, and his compass of thought and feeling more extensive. Happy shall we be to see him doing justice at last to his powersstudying not to excite the wonder of a few barren readers or spectators, but to live in the hearts of the good of future times-and, to this high end, leaving discord for harmony, the startling for the true, and the evil which, however potent, is but for a season, for the pure and the holy which endure for ever'

REVIEW OF RYMER'S WORKS ON TRAGEDY.

[RETROSPECTIVE Review.]

viewer. We will select a few passages from his work, which may be consolatory to modern authors and useful to modern critics.

The chief weight of Mr. Rymer's critical vengeance is wreaked on Othello. After a slight sketch of the plot, he proceeds at once to speak of the moral, which he seems to regard as of the first importance in tragedy.

THESE are very curious and edifying works. The author (who was the compiler of the Fadera) appears to have been a man of considerable acuteness, maddened by a furious zeal for the honour of tragedy. He lays down the most fantastical rules for the composition which he chiefly reverses, and argues on them as "truths of holy writ." He criticises Shakspeare as one invested with authority to sit in judgment "Whatever rubs or difficulty may stick on on his powers, and passes on him as decisive the bark, the moral use of this fable is very ina sentence of condemnation, as ever was structive. First, this may be a caution to all awarded against a friendless poet by a Re-1 maidens of quality, how, without their parents'

consent, they run away with blackamoors. Secondly, this may be a warning to all good wives, that they look well to their linen. Thirdly, this may be a lesson to husbands, that before their jealousy be tragical, the proofs may be mathematical."

Our author then proceeds happily to satirize Othello's colour. He observes, that "Shakspeare was accountable both to the eyes and to the ears." On this point we think his objection is not without reason. We agree with an excellent modern critic in the opinion, that though a reader may sink Othello's colour in his mind, a spectator can scarcely avoid losing the mind in the colour. But Mr. Rymer proceeds thus to characterize Othello's noble account to the Senate of his whole course of love.

"This was the charm, this was the philtre, the love-powder that took the daughter of this noble Venetian. This was sufficient to make the Blackamoor white, and reconcile all, though there had been a cloven foot into the bargain. A meaner woman might as soon be taken by Aqua Tetrachymagogon."

The idea of Othello's elevation to the rank of a general, stings Mr. Rymer almost to madness. He regards the poet's offence as a kind of misprision of treason.

"Horace describes a soldier otherwise,-Impyger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.

"Shakspeare knew his character of Iago was inconsistent. In this very play he pronounces,

'If thou deliver more or less than truth,
Thou art no soldier.'

"This he knew, but to entertain the audience with something new and surprising against common sense and nature, he would pass upon us a close, dissembling, false, insinuating rascal, instead of an open-hearted, frank, plaindealing soldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands of years in the world."

Against "the gentle lady married to the Moor," Mr. Rymer cherishes a most exemplary hatred. He seems to labour for terms strong enough to express the antipathy and scorn he bears her. The following are some of the daintiest:

"There is nothing in the noble Desdemona, that is not below any country kitchen-maid with us."—"No woman bred out of a pig-stye could talk so meanly."

Yet is Mr. Rymer no less enraged at her death than at her life.

"Here (he exclaims in an agony of passion) a noble Venetian lady is to be murdered by our poet, in sober sadness, purely for being "The character of the state (of Venice) is a fool. No pagan poet but would have found to employ strangers in their wars; but shall a some machine for her deliverance. Pegasus poet thence fancy that they will set a negro to would have strained hard to have brought old be their general; or trust a Moor to defend Perseus on his back, time enough to rescue them against the Turk? With us, a Blacka- this Andromeda from so foul a monster. Has moor might rise to be a trumpeter, but Shaks-our Christian poetry no generosity, no bowels? peare would not have him less than a lieute-Ha, ha, Sir Launcelot! Ha, Sir George! Will nant-general. With us, a Moor might marry no ghost leave the shades for us in extremity, some little drab or small-coal wench; Shaks- to save a distressed damsel?" peare would provide him the daughter and heir of some great lord, or privy-counsellor; and all the town should reckon it a very suitable match yet the English are not bred up with that hatred and aversion to the Moors as the Venetians, who suffer by a perpetual hostility from them,

'Littora littoribus contraria." "

Our author is as severe on Othello's character, as on his exaltation and colour.

"Othello is made a Venetian general. We see nothing done by him, nor related concerning him, that comports with the condition of a general, or, indeed, of a man, unless the killing himself to avoid a death the law was about to inflict upon him. When his jealousy had wrought him up to a resolution of his taking revenge for the supposed injury, he sets Iago to the fighting part to kill Cassio, and chooses himself to murder the silly woman, his wife, that was like to make no resistance."

Mr. Rymer next undertakes to resent the affront put on the army by the making Iago a soldier.

On the "expression," that is, we presume, the poetry of the work, Mr. Rymer does not think it necessary to dwell; though he admits that "the verses rumbling in our ears, are of good use to help off the action." On those of Shakspeare he passes this summary judgment: "In the neighing of a horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and may I say more humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of Shakspeare. Having settled this trivial point, he invites the reader" to step among the scenes, to observe the conduct on this tragedy."

In examining the first scene of Othello, our critic weightily reprehends the sudden and startling manner in which Iago and Roderigo inform Brabantio of his daughter's elopement with the Moor. He regards their abruptness as an unpardonable violation of decorum, and, by way of contrast to its rudeness, informs us,

that

"In former days there wont to be kept at the courts of princes somebody in a fool's coat, that in pure simplicity might let slip something, which made way for the ill news, and blunted the shock, which otherwise might have come too violent on the party."

"But what is most intolerable is Iago. He is no Blackamoor soldier, so we may be sure he should be like other soldiers of our acquaintance; yet never in tragedy, nor in comedy, nor Mr. Rymer shows the council of Venice no in nature, was a soldier with his character;-quarter. He thus daringly scrutinizes their take it in the author's own words:

-some eternal villain,

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office.

proceedings.

"By their conduct and manner of talk, a body must strain hard to fancy the scene at Venice, and not rather at some of our Cinque

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