I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours. Where are they? with the years beyond the flood. How much is to be done? my hopes and fears Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? A worm!-a god!—I tremble at myself, What can preserve my life? or what destroy? 'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof: On me, more justly numbered with the dead. The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom; All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond Is substance. The reverse is folly's creed: How solid all, where change shall be no more! All through our lives we look towards a future : All promise is poor dilatory man, And that through every stage; when young, indeed, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan: At fifty chides his infamous delay, And why? because he thinks himself immortal: Oh, ye cold-hearted, frozen formalists! The theme of the Fifth Night is the Relapse into grief : "Tis vain to seek in men for more than man. The Sixth and Seventh Nights of the poem dwell in two parts on the nature, proof, and importance of Immortality, under the title of "The Infidel Reclaimed." The poem here rises to the consequences of Man's Immortality; and the Eighth Night has for its theme "Virtue's Apology, or the Man of the World Answered; in which are considered the Love of This Life, the Ambition and Pleasure, with the Wit and Wisdom, of the World: And has all nature, then, espoused my part? Have I bribed heaven, and earth, to plead against thee? The "Night Thoughts" are, in fact, only another form of the reply to failing faith; and though their tone is not that of a deep enthusiasm, they have a manifest affinity to other forms of the religious reasoning and feeling of their day. Lines like these might express thoughts of Wesley : No man is happy, till he thinks, on earth Such angels all, entitled to repose On Him who governs fate. Though tempest frowns, Were all men happy, revellings would cease, The Ninth and Last Night, the "Consolation," is occupied with contemplation of God in the visible heavens, and of man as part of the great harmony : Amidst my list of blessings infinite, Stand this the foremost, "That my heart has bled." As when o'er-laboured, and inclined to breathe, For peace on earth, or prospect of the skies. What then remains?-Much, much! a mighty deb To be discharged: these thoughts, O Night! are thine From thee they came, like lovers' secret sighs, While others slept. So, Cynthia (poets feign) In shadows veiled, soft-sliding from her sphere, Her shepherd cheered; of her enamoured less, Than I of thee.-And art thou still unsung, Beneath whose brow, and by whose aid, I sing? Immortal silence!-Where shall I begin? Where end? or how steal music from the spheres, To soothe their goddess? Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flight Of fancy, when our hearts remain below? Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes? 'Tis pride to praise her; penance to perform. To more than words, to more than worth of tongue, An hour, when Heaven's most intimate with man; And midnight, universal midnight, reigns. Its A poem on "The Grave," by Robert Blair, cousin of Hugh Blair, who wrote upon Rhetoric, was produced at the same time as the "Night Thoughts," with like purpose, and published in 1743. author was minister of Athelstaneford, in East Lothian, and was succeeded in that ministry by John Home, author of the play of "Douglas." Blair's "Grave" was as popular as the " Night Thoughts," and went in a few years through eight editions. Those dead forms of the time, which provoked many an effort to revive the soul within them, or to sweep them away and replace them with a young vigorous life, produced a gloom, often passing into sickness of mind, that is manifest in life and literature during the half century before the French Revolution. There was an appetite for sombre thought, and among Englishmen of genius more of insanity, or of a state of mind that bordered on insanity, than at any time before or since. Young failed to describe in cheerful notes religious cheerfulness; and Blair, however healthy his desire to paint death as the gate of life, is very conscious of the churchyard gloom, although he may not share the instinct he thus paints: The wind is up. Hark, how it howls! Methinks Quite round the pile a row of reverend elms, By glimpse of moonshine chequering through the trees, Sudden he starts; and hears, or thinks he hears, Full fast he flies, and dares not look behind him William Collins, who died insane in 1759, pub lished his Odes in 1747, at the age of six-and-twenty. When, in April, 1746, the rising of '45 in Scotland for the young Pretender was crushed on Culloden Moor, and cruel executions for rebellion followed, with the disembowelling of victims and the burning of their hearts, Collins expressed sympathy for the fellow-countrymen fallen in battle, and desire for mercy to the vanquished, in two of his Odes. ODE, Written in the beginning of the year 1746. By fairy hands their knell is rung ; ODE TO MERCY. Strophe. O thou, who sit'st a smiling bride Who oft with songs, divine to hear, Winn'st from his fatal grasp the spear, And hid'st in wreaths of flowers his bloodless sword! Oft with thy bosom bare art found, Pleading for him, the youth, who sinks to ground: wound. Antistrophe. When he whom even our joys provoke, The fiend of nature joined his yoke, And rushed in wrath to make our isle his prey; And stopped his wheels, and looked his rage away. That bore him swift to salvage deeds, Thy tender melting eyes they own; O Maid, for all thy love to Britain shown, To thee we build a roseate bower; [throne! Thou, thou shalt rule, our Queen, and share our monarch's Samuel Johnson, after publishing, in 1749, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," began, on the 20th of March, 1750, the Rambler, a series of essays in the form established by the Tatler and Spectator, but in spirit and substance all his own. It was continued every Tuesday and Saturday until the 17th of March, 1752, when the approaching death of his wife disabled him for work. She died eleven days afterwards. The English of the Rambler represents that earlier manner of his in which Johnson developed to its utmost the theory of style then dominant. He was not the founder of the custom of employing long words, Latin in origin, constructing periods and balanced sentences, avoiding the familiarities of speech as low. That writers should do so was the doctrine of the day, established by the ascendancy of a French criticism born in artificial times. In the Rambler Johnson only pushed the current doctrine as to style to its legitimate conclusion. As the times changed he grew with them, and the prose of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," written late in life, was as distinctly prose of 1780 as the Rambler was the prose of a date thirty years earlier. But at no period of Samuel Johnson's life was his sincerity affected by the part of the vocabulary from which he drew his language: whether long or short as to their syllables, his words as to their meaning were measured to his thought with a conscientious desire SAMUEL JOHNSON. (From a Portrait by Reynolds, 1756.) for truth. He prayed before writing; and although so unlike Milton in tendencies of thought that he failed in an endeavour thoroughly to understand him, there is perhaps not another man in literature of whom it is so evident that, like Milton, he endeavoured to "do all as in his great Taskmaster's eye." This was Johnson's prayer before he began the Rambler : PRAYER ON THE "RAMBLER." Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour is ineffectual, and without whose grace all 1 See "Shorter English Poems," pages 375-8. wisdom is folly; grant, I beseech Thee, that in this my undertaking, thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me. but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation both of myself and others; grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Jesta Christ. Amen. The concern of the Rambler is with the true wisdom of life. Its essays reproduce, with a grave kindliness and scholarly variety of thought, the essentials of Christian duty. All that he saw in the world concerned Johnson only as it touched the life of man. Two Christmas Days occurred during the issue of this series of essays. The first fell on a Tuesday, one of his publishing days, and the theme of that essay was a practical discussion of Christ's doctrine, "Whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them." "Of the divine Author of our religion," he said in that essay, "it is impossible to peruse the evangelical historie without observing how little he favoured the vanity of inquisitiveness, how much more rarely he condescended to satisfy curiosity than to relieve distress, and how much he desired that his followers shoul rather excel in goodness than in knowledge." In the following year his Tuesday Rambler ap peared on the day before Christmas Day, and his topic then was THE FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES. No vicious dispositions of the mind more obstinately res both the counsels of philosophy and the injunctions of gion, than those which are complicated with an opinioa dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in t hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our own prejudices some imputation of pas lanimity. For this reason scarcely any law of our Redeemer is mr openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than t by which He commands His followers to forgive injuries prohibits, under the sanction of eternal misery, the gratit tion of the desire which every man feels to return pain up: him that inflicts it. Many who could have conquered th anger, are unable to combat pride, and pursue offences: extremity of vengeance, lest they should be insulted by: triumph of an enemy. But certainly no precept could better become Hin whose birth peace was proclaimed to the earth. For would so soon destroy all the order of society, and der life with violence and ravage, as a permission to every judge his own cause, and to apportion his own recumpare for imagined injuries? It is difficult for a man of the strictest justice not to f himself too much in the calmest moments of solitary tion. Every one wishes for the distinctions for which thos are wishing at the same time, in their own opinion, better claims. He that, when his reason operate in its: force, can thus, by the mere prevalence of self-love, pre: himself to his fellow-beings, is very unlikely to judge 4ably when his passions are agitated by a sense of wrong, his attention wholly engrossed by pain, interest, or date? Whoever arrogates to himself the right of vengeance & how little he is qualified to decide his own claims, sr certainly demands what he would think unfit to be grant to another. Nothing is more apparent than that, however interhowever provoked, some must at last be contented to fur For it can never be hoped that he who first commits an injury will contentedly acquiesce in the penalty required: the same haughtiness of contempt or vehemence of desire that prompt the act of injustice, will more strongly incite its justification; and resentment can never so exactly balance the punishment with the fault, but there will remain an overplus of vengeance which even he who condemns his first action will think himself entitled to retaliate. What then can ensue but a continual exacerbation of hatred, an unextinguishable feud, an incessant reciprocation of mischief, a mutual vigilance to entrap, and eagerness to destroy? Since, then, the imaginary right of vengeance must be at last remitted, because it is impossible to live in perpetual hostility, and equally impossible that, of two enemies, either should first think himself obliged by justice to submission, it is surely eligible to forgive early. Every passion is more easily subdued before it has been long accustomed to possession of the heart; every idea is obliterated with less difficulty, as it has been more slightly impressed, and less frequently renewed. He who has often brooded over his wrongs, pleased himself with schemes of malignity, and glutted his pride with the fancied supplications of humbled enmity, will not easily open his bosom to amity and reconciliation, or indulge the gentle sentiments of benevolence and peace. It is easiest to forgive while there is yet little to be forgiven. A single injury may be soon dismissed from the memory; but a long succession of ill offices by degrees associates itself with every idea: a long contest involves so many circumstances, that every place and action will recall it to the mind, and fresh remembrance of vexation must still enkindle rage and irritate revenge. A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. He that willingly suffers the corrosions of inveterate hatred, and gives up his days and nights to the gloom of malice and perturbations of stratagem, cannot surely be said to consult his ease. Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity, a combination of a passion which all endeavour to avoid with a passion which all concur to detest. The man who retires to meditate mischief, and to exasperate his own rage; whose thoughts are employed only on means of distress and contrivances of ruin; whose mind never pauses from the remembrance of his own sufferings, but to indulge some hope of enjoying the calamities of nother, may justly be numbered among the most miserable of human beings, among those who are guilty without reward, who have neither the gladness of prosperity nor the calm of innocence. Whoever considers the weakness both of himself and others will not long want persuasives to forgiveness. We know not to what degree of malignity any injury is to be imputed; or how much its guilt, if we were to inspect the mind of him that committed it, would be extenuated by mistake, precipitance, or negligence. We cannot be certain how much more we feel than was intended to be inflicted, or how much we increase the mischief to ourselves by voluntary aggravations. We may charge to design the effects of accident; we may think the blow violent only because we have made ourselves delicate and tender; we are on every side in danger of error and of guilt, which we are certain to avoid only by speedy forgiveness. From this pacific and harmless temper, thus propitious to others and ourselves, to domestic tranquillity and to social happiness, no man is withheld but by pride, by the fear of being insulted by his adversary, or despised by the world. It may be laid down as an unfailing and universal axiom, that "all pride is abject and mean." It is always an igno rant, lazy, or cowardly acquiescence in a false appearance of excellence, and proceeds not from consciousness of our attainments, but from insensibility of our wants. Nothing can be great which is not right. Nothing which reason condemns can be suitable to the dignity of the human mind. To be driven by external motives fom the path which our own heart approves, to give way to anything but conviction, to suffer the opinion of others to rule our choice or overpower our resolves, is to submit tamely to the lowest and most ignominious slavery, and to resign the right of directing our own lives. The utmost excellence at which humanity can arrive is a constant and determinate pursuit of virtue, without regard to present dangers or advantage; a continual reference of every action to the Divine will; an habitual appeal to everlasting justice; and an unvaried elevation of the intellectual eye to the reward which perseverance only can obtain. But that pride which many, who presume to boast of generous sentiments, allow to regulate their measures, has nothing nobler in view than the approbation of men, of beings whose superiority we are under no obligation to acknowledge, and who, when we have courted them with the utmost assiduity, can confer no valuable or permanent reward; of beings who ignorantly judge of what they do not understand, or partially determine what they never have examined; and whose sentence is therefore of no weight till it has received the ratification of our own conscience. He that can descend to bribe suffrages like these at the price of his innocence; he that can suffer the delight of such acclamations to withhold his attention from the commands of the universal Sovereign, has little reason to congratulate himself upon the greatness of his mind. Whenever he awakes to seriousness and reflection, he must become despicable in his own eyes, and shrink with shame from the remembrance of his cowardice and folly. Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is therefore superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain. These are three prayers by Johnson : ON THE DEATH OF MY WIFE. April 24, 1752. Almighty and most merciful Father, who lovest those whom Thou punishest, and turnest away thy anger from the penitent, look down with pity upon my sorrows, and grant that the affliction which it has pleased Thee to bring upon me may awaken my conscience, enforce my resolutions of a better life, and impress upon me such conviction of thy power and goodness, that I may place in Thee my only felicity, and endeavour to please Thee in all my thoughts, words, and actions. Grant, O Lord, that I may not languish in fruitless and unavailing sorrow, but that I may consider from whose hand all good and evil is received, and may remember that I am punished for my sins, and hope for comfort only by repentance. Grant, O merciful God, that by the assistance of thy Holy Spirit I may repent, and be comforted, obtain that peace which the world cannot give, pass the residue of my life in humble resignation and cheerful obedience; and when it shall please Thee to call me from this mortal state, resign myself into Thy hands with faith and confidence, and finally obtain mercy and everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. |