Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

MARK AKENSIDE.

[Born, 1721. Died, 1770.]

It may be easy to point out in Akenside a superfluous pomp of expression; yet the character which Pope bestowed on him, "that he was not an every-day writer," is certainly apparent in the decided tone of his moral sentiments, and in his spirited maintenance of great principles. His verse has a sweep of harmony that seems to accord with an emphatic mind. He encountered in his principal poem the more than ordinary difficulties of a didactic subject

"To paint the finest features of the mind,

And to most subtle and mysterious things

Give colour, strength, and motion.”—Book i.

The object of his work was to trace the various pleasures which we receive from nature and art to their respective principles in the human imagination, and to show the connexion of those principles with the moral dignity of man, and the final purposes of his creation. His leading speculative ideas are derived from Plato, Addison, Shaftesbury, and Hutchinson. To Addison he has been accused of being indebted for more than he acknowledged; but surely in plagiarisms from 'The Spectator' it might be taken for granted that no man could have counted on concealment; and there are only three passages (I think) in his poem where his obligations to that source are worthy of notice.† Independent of these, it is true that he adopted Addison's threefold division of the sources of the pleasures of the imagination; but in doing so he properly followed a theory which had the advantage of being familiar to the reader; and when he afterwards substituted another, in recasting his poem, he profited nothing by the change. In the purely ethical and didactic parts

* [While he was yet unknown.]

6

† Viz., in his comparison of the Votary of Imagination to a knighterrant, in some enchanted paradise, Pleasures of Imagination,' book iii. 1. 507; in his sketch of the village matron, book i. 1. 255; and in a passage of book iii., at line 379, beginning, "But were not nature thus endowed at large." His idea of the final cause of our delight in the vast and illimitable is the same with one expressed in The Spectator,' No. 413. But Addison and he borrowed it in common from the sublime theology of Plato. The leading hint of his well-known passage, "Say why was man so eminently raised," &c., is avowedly taken from Longinus.

of his subject he displays a high zeal of classical feeling, and a graceful development of the philosophy of taste. Though his metaphysics may not be always invulnerable, his general ideas of moral truth are lofty and prepossessing. He is peculiarly eloquent in those passages in which he describes the final causes of our emotions of taste; he is equally skilful in delineating the processes of memory and association; and he gives an animated view of Genius collecting her stores for works of excellence. All his readers must recollect with what a happy brilliancy he comes out in the simile of art and nature, dividing our admiration when he compares them to the double appearance of the sun distracting his Persian worshipper. But "non satis est pulchra esse poemata dulcia sunto." The sweetness which we miss in Akenside is that which should arise from the direct representations of life, and its warm realities and affections. We seem to pass in his poem through a gallery of pictured abstractions rather than of pictured things. He reminds us of odours which we enjoy artificially extracted from the flower instead of inhaling them from its natural blossom. It is true that his object was to teach and explain the nature of mind, and that his subject led him necessarily into abstract ideas, but it admitted also of copious scenes, full of solid human interest, to illustrate the philosophy which he taught. Poetry, whatever be its title, should not make us merely contemplate existence, but feel it over again. That descriptive skill which expounds to us the nature of our own emotions is rather a sedative than a stimulant to enthusiasm. The true poet renovates our emotions, and is not content with explaining them. Even in a philosophical poem on the Imagination, Akenside might have given historical tablets of the power which he delineated; but his illustrations for the most part only consist in general ideas fleetingly personified. There is but one pathetic passage (I think) in the whole poem, namely, that in which he describes the lover embracing the urn of his deceased mistress. On the subject of the passions, in Book ii., when our attention evidently expects to be disengaged from abstraction by spirited draughts illustrative of their influence, how much are we disappointed by the cold and tedious episode of Harmodius's vision, an allegory which is the more intolerable, because it professes to teach us resignation to the will of Heaven, by a fiction which neither imposes on the fancy nor communicates a moral

to the understanding! Under the head of 'Beauty' he only personifies Beauty herself, and her image leaves upon the mind but a vague impression of a beautiful woman, who might have been anybody. He introduces indeed some illustrations under the topic of ridicule, but in these his solemn manner overlaying the levity of his subjects unhappily produces a contrast which approaches itself to the ridiculous. In treating of novelty he is rather more descriptive; we have the youth breaking from domestic endearments in quest of knowledge, the sage over his midnight lamp, the virgin at her romance, and the village matron relating her stories of witchcraft. Short and compressed as those sketches are, they are still beautiful glimpses of reality, and it is expressly from observing the relief which they afford to his didactic and declamatory passages that we are led to wish that he had appealed more frequently to examples from nature. It is disagreeable to add, that, unsatisfactory as he is in illustrating the several parts of his theory, he ushers them in with great promises, and closes them with self-congratulation. He says,

its

"Thus with a faithful aim have we presumed
Adventurous to delineate nature's form,"

when, in fact, he has delineated very little of it. He raises triumphal arches for the entrance and exit of his subject, and then sends beneath them a procession of a few individual ideas. He altered the poem in maturer life, but with no accession to powers of entertainment. Harmodius was indeed dismissed, as well as the philosophy of ridicule; but the episode of Solon was left unfinished, and the whole work made rather more dry and scholastic; and he had even the bad taste, I believe, to mutilate some of those fine passages, which, in their primitive state, are still deservedly admired and popular.

THOMAS CHATTERTON.

[Born, Nov. 20, 1752. Died, Aug. 25, 1770;

AGED SEVENTEEN YEARS, NINE MONTHS, AND A FEW DAYS.]* THOMAS CHATTERTON was the posthumous child of the master of a free-school in Bristol. At five years of age he was sent to

* [O, early ripe! to thy abundant store

What could advancing age have added more?

Dryden of Oldham.]

the same school which his father had taught; but he made so little improvement that his mother took him back, nor could he be induced to learn his letters till his attention had been accidentally struck by the illuminated capitals of a French musical MS. His mother afterwards taught him to read from an old black-letter Bible. One of his biographers has expressed surprise that a person in his mother's rank of life should have been acquainted with black-letter. The writer might have known that books of the ancient type continued to be read in that rank of life long after they had ceased to be used by persons of higher station. At the age of eight he was put to a charityschool in Bristol, where he was instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic. From his tenth year he discovered an extraordinary passion for books; and, before he was twelve, had perused about seventy volumes, chiefly on history and divinity. The prematurity of his mind, at the latter period, was so strongly marked in a serious and religious cast of thought as to induce the bishop to confirm him and admit him to the sacrament at that early age. His piety, however, was not of long duration. He had also written some verses sufficiently wonderful for his years, and had picked up some knowledge of music and drawing, when, at the age of fourteen, he was bound apprentice to a Mr. Lambert, a scrivener, in his native city. In Mr. Lambert's house his situation was very humble; he ate with the servants, and slept in the same room with the footboy; but his employments left him many hours of leisure for reading, and these he devoted to acquiring a knowledge of English antiquities and obsolete language, which, together with his poetical ingenuity, proved sufficient for his Rowleian fabrications.

6

It was in the year 1768 that he first attracted attention. On the occasion of the new bridge of Bristol being opened, he sent to Farley's Journal,' in that city, a letter, signed Dunhelmus Bristoliensis, containing an account of a procession of friars, and of other ceremonies, which had taken place, at a remote period, when the old bridge had been opened. The account was said to be taken from an ancient MS. Curiosity was instantly excited; and the sages of Bristol, with a spirit of barbarism which the monks and friars of the fifteenth century could not easily have rivalled, having traced the letter to Chatterton, interrogated him, with threats, about the original. Boy as he was, he

About the year 1727 those order from proper autho

haughtily refused to explain upon compulsion; but by milder treatment was brought to state that he had found the MS. in his mother's house. The true part of the history of those ancient papers, from which he pretended to have derived this original of Farley's letter, as well as his subsequent poetical treasures, was, that in the muniment-room of St. Mary Redcliffe church, of Bristol, several chests had been anciently deposited, among which was one called the "Cofre" of Mr. Canynge, an eminent merchant of Bristol, who had rebuilt the church in the reign of Edward IV. chests had been broken open by an rity some ancient deeds had been taken out, and the remaining MSS. left exposed as of no value. Chatterton's father, whose uncle was sexton of the church, had carried off great numbers of the parchments, and had used them as covers for books in his school. Amidst the residue of his father's ravages, Chatterton gave out that he had found many writings of Mr. Canynge, and of Thomas Rowley (the friend of Canynge), a priest of the fifteenth century. The rumour of his discoveries occasioned his acquaintance to be sought by a few individuals of Bristol, to whom he made presents of vellum MSS. of professed antiquity. The first who applied to him was a Mr. Catcott, who obtained from him 'The Bristowe Tragedy,' and Rowley's Epitaph' on Canynge's ancestor. Mr. Barret, a surgeon, who was writing a history of Bristol, was also presented with some of the poetry of Rowley; and Mr. Burgum, a pewterer, was favoured with 'The Romaunt of the Knyghte,' a poem, said by Chatterton to have been written by the pewterer's ancestor, John de Berghum, about 450 years before. The believing presentees, in return, supplied him with small sums of money, lent him books, and introduced him into society. Mr. Barret even gave him a few slight instructions in his own profession. Chatterton's spirit and ambition perceptibly increased; and he used to talk to his mother and sisters of his prospects of fame and fortune, always promising that they should be partakers in his success.*

[ocr errors]

* [Nothing can be more extraordinary than the delight which Chatterton appears to have felt in executing these numberless and multifarious impositions. His ruling passion was not the vanity of a poet who depends upon the opinion of others for its gratification, but the stoical pride of talent, which felt nourishment in the solitary contemplation of superiority over the

« FöregåendeFortsätt »