three great moments of humanity may be thus expressed. 1st, The natural or given man, is man in passion-in enslaved Being. 2d, The conscious man-the man working into freedom against passion-is man in action. 3d, The "I" is man in free, that is, in real personal Being. CHAPTER IV. Are we then to hold that man does not become "I" by compulsion that he is not constrained to become "I?" We must hold this doctrine. No man is forced or necessitated to become "I." All the necessitated part of his Being leans the other way, and tends to prevent him from becoming "I." He becomes "I" by fighting against the necessitated part of his nature. "I" embraces and expresses the sum and substance of his freedom-of his resistance. He becomes "I" with his own consent-through the coneurrence and operation of his own will. We have as yet said little about Human Will, because " Will" is but a word; and we have all along been anxious to avoid that very common, though most fatal, error in philosophy -the error, namely, of supposing that words can ever do the business of thoughts, or can, of themselves, put us in possession of the realities which they denote. If, in philosophy, we commence with the word " Will," or with any other word denoting what is called "a faculty" of man, and keep harping on the same, without having first of all come round the reality without the assistance of the word,-if we seek to educe the reality out of the word, the chances are a thousand to one that we shall end where we began, and never get beyond the region of mere words. It makes a mighty difference in all kinds of composition, whether the reality suggests the word, or whether the word suggests the reality. The former kind of suggestion alone possesses any value-it alone gives truth and life both to philosophy and to poetry. The latter kind is worthless altogether, either in philoso pher or poet; and the probability is, that the reality which the word suggests to him is not the true reality at all.* Without employing the word "will," then, let us look forth into the realities of man, and perhaps we shall fall in with the reality of it when we are Some curious considerations present themselves in connexion with this subject. Human compositions may be divided into two great classes. In the first, the commenceThese beget and clothe themselves in ment is made from feelings, ideas, or realities. words. These precede the words. The workers in this order are, in poetry, the true poets. But the words having been employed and established, it is found that these of themselves give birth to feelings and ideas which may be extracted out of them without recourse being had to any other source. Hence a second class of composers arises, in whom words precede ideas-a class who, instead of construing ideas into words, This class commences construe words into ideas-and these again into other words. with words, making these feel and think for them. Of this class are the poetasters, the authors of odes to " Imagination," "Hope," &c., which are merely written because such words as hope," "imagination," &c., have been established. These are the employers of the hereditary language of poetry. In philosophy the case is precisely the same. An Aristotle, a Liebnitz, or a Kant, having come, by certain realities of humanity, through an original exertion, and not through the instrumentality of words, makes use of a certain kind of phraseology to denote these realities. An inferior generation of philosophers, finding this phraseology made to their hand, adopt it; and, without looking for the realities themselves independently of the words, they endeavour to lay hold of the realities solely through the words; they seek to extract the realities out of the words, and, consequently, their labours are in a different subject-matter, as dead and worthless as those of the poetaster. Both classes of imitators work in an inverted order. They seek the living among the dead: that is, they seek it where it never can be found. Let us ask whether one inevitable result-one disadvantage of the possession of a highly cultivated language is not this :-that, being fraught with numberless associations, it enables poetasters and false philosophers to abound-inasmuch as it enables them to make words stand in place of things and do the business of thoughts? never thinking of the word, or troub. ling ourselves about it; perhaps we shall encounter the phenomenon itself, when the expression of it is the last thing in our thoughts; perhaps we shall find it to be something very different from what we suspected; perhaps we shall find that it exists in deeper regions, presides over a wider sphere, and comes into earlier play than we had any notion of. The law of causality is the great law of nature. Now, what do we precisely understand by the law of causality? We understand by it the keep ing up of an uninterrupted dependency throughout the various links of creation; or the fact that one Being assumes, without resistance or challenge, the state modification, or whatever we may choose to call it, imposed upon by another Being. Hence the law of causality is emphatically the law of virtual surrender or assent. Now the natural man-man as he is born-is clearly placed entirely under the dominion of this law. He is, as we have often said, a mere passive creature throughout. He dons the sensations and the passions that come to him, and bends before them like a sapling in the wind. But it is by no means so obvious that the conscious man-the man become "I"-is also placed under jurisdiction of this law. The "I" stands in a direct antithesis to the natural man; it is realized through consciousness, an act of antagonism against his passive modifications. Are we then to suppose that this "I" stands completely under the law of causality, or of virtual surrender that the man entirely assents, and offers no resistance to the passive states into which he may be cast?then, in this case, no act of antagonism taking place, consciousness, of course, disappears, and the "I" becomes extinct. If, therefore, consciousness and the "I" become extinct beneath the law of causality, their appearance and realization cannot depend upon that law, but must be brought about by a direct violation of the law of causality. If the "I" disappears in consequence of the law of causality, it must manifest (if it manifests itself at all) in spite of that law. If the law of virtual assent is its death, nothing but the law of actual dissent (the opposite of causality) can give it life. Here, then, in the realization of the "I," we find a counter-law establish ed to the law of causality. The law of causality is the law of assent-and upon this law man's natural being and all its modifications, depend. But the life of the "I" depends upon the law of dissent-of resistance to all his natural or derivative states. And if the one of these laws-the law of assent-is known by the name of causality-the other of them, the law of dissent, which, in man, clashes with the law of causality at every point, is, or ought to be, known by the designation of will; and this will, this law of dissent, which embodies itself in an act of antagonism against the states which depend upon the law of causality-and which may therefore be called the law of freedom, as the other is the law of bondage, is the ground-law of humanity, and lies at the bottom of the whole operation of consciousness, at the roots of the existence of the "I." Much more might be said concerning these two great laws, which may be best studied and understood in their opposition or conflict with one another. But we have dug sufficiently deep downwards. It is now time that we should begin to dig upwards, and escape out of these mines of humanity, in which we have been working hard, although, we know, with most imperfect hands. We have trod, we trust with no unhallowed step, but with a foot venturous after truth, on the confines of those dread abysses which, in all ages, have shaken beneath the feet of the greatest thinkers among men. We have seen and handled the dark ore of humanity in its pure and elemental state. It will be a comparatively easy task to trace it forth in its general currency through the ranks of ordinary superficial life. In our next and concluding discussion, we will endeavour to point out the consequences of the act of consciousness; and we trust that the navigation through which we shall then have to steer will be less intricate and perplexing than that through which our present course has lain. A GLANCE OVER THE POETRY OF THOMAS WARTON. THERE is a loud demand from all the quarters of the globe for Our Two VASES. But we do nothing on compulsion-therefore the world must wait. Besides, we are from home. Maga has undertaken to edit herself during our absence, and we confess that we are not a little curious to see what kind of an October Number she may bring forth. Indeed we have resigned the Editorship till the New Year, and are now but an occasional Contributor. Poor dear soul! we wonder what she is doing with herself during such weather. We shrewdly sus pect there has been no summer, and perhaps it was unreasonable to expect one, as there had been no spring. We ought not to have left her all by herself in Edinburgh among the owls and satyrs-but let us trust that she is with Mrs Gentle in the Lodge. No jealousy between the Widow and the Virgin-and we hear them whispering into each other's ears-" O yes! they always mention him"-with tenderest epithets, the name of Christopher North. On parting with Maga some six weeks ago, we told her insidiously with a kiss that we should employ the first dry day on an Article, assured in our weather-wisdom that no such day would occur before our return. Accordingly, it has never ceased raining, where we have been, from that day to this; and so far from ceasing on this, rain enough has fallen within these few hours to satisfy any ordinary month. As Armstrong sings or says.— Steep'd in continual rains, or with raw fogs Till black with thunder all the South descends. Would that we had, by way of a change, some of that sort of weather. We should be contented to see the "circling seasons mix," not in every, but in one "monstrous day"-now a dry cold cutting blast of spring-now a rattling thunder-storm worthy of summer-now a flood of which Autumn had no need to be ashamedand now a blash of sleet or a fall of snow creditable to winter. But we defy mortal man to tell to what season of the year this day is entitled to lay claim. We question much its being a day at all-it is merely the afternoon of a month's rain, and there go the rest of the hay-cocks sailing along the meadow to the sea. We are driven in despair to the Library, and blindly take down a book. Oh dear! what great big clumsy volume have we got? Yet there is something refreshing in this cloud of dust. Rarely have we seen a larger spider. Fear not, Arachne-for thou preservest the leaves from moth and fly-and we are sorry to have disturbed thee in thine ancient web. Volume XVIII. of Chalmers' English Poets, we declare! Maga! though "absent long and distant far" from thee, the jewel of our soul, this instant shall we sit down-thus-nor rise up till we have written an article on the poet who shall first appear on our opening these prison doors. THOMAS WARTON! Now frown not, nor mutter "pshaw!" Not one in a hundred of you-we venture to say-has read a line of him, "whose head," saith Thomas Campbell, filled the laurel with more learning than it had encompassed for a hundred years of whom, saith Robert Southey, "there is no man of his generation to whom our literature is so much indebted, except Percy. We had a great share in what may be called our poetical reformation—in recalling us from a blind faith in idols, to the study of the true books." These poets were then speaking of him as the editor of Milton, the annotator on Spenser, and the historian of English poetry; we shall be disappointed if you do not agree with us in thinking that our selection from his own poems proves him to have been likewise a man of genius. We know that with you the love of poetry is sincere, and therefore not exclusive; and that so far from being fastidious, it finds delight in every touch of nature. You are not among the num ber of those who hold their heads so high as to overlook all poets, but a few of the greatest, and who would scorn to drop a glance on the poetasters at their feet. In the House of Genius there are many mansions; and worthy of everlasting remembrance on earth are all the departed sons of song. It is pleasant to us who, from our boyhood, have known all that has been said about him, to read again, even in the words of the clumsy Chalmers, of Thomas Warton-as Southey finely says-" happy-natured man, who carried with him a boy's heart to the grave." But it is of his poetry, not of his life and character that we would now say a few words; and but a fewfor our article shall consist, as it ought to do, for your delight, chiefly of Specimens. It has this moment struck us, that tens of thousands would thank us for a Series of such articles-for what a mine of silver and of gold is the great Body of English Poetry! In the "Pleasures of Melancholy," composed in his seventeenth year, there are some passages of no mean power-and that will bear comparison with any thing written at so carly an age by the best of our poets. Indeed, we agree with Thomas Campbell in thinking that "it gives promise of a sensibility which his subsequent poetry did not fulfil ;" and, though it cannot be truly said that in after life he did not follow the bidding of his own genius, yet, by following it, he seems to have allowed to languish in disuse many feelings and emotions with which his thoughtful heart had in early boyhood been familiar, and almost to have forgotten them in his devotion to the lore of Chivalry and Romance, "Beneath yon ruined abbey's moss-grown piles Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, Where through some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levelled rule of streaming light; While sullen sacred silence reigns around, Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bower Amid the mouldering caverns dark and damp, Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tower. Or let me tread Its neighbouring walk of pines, where mused of old As on I pace, religious horrour wraps My soul in dread repose. But when the world Is clad in Midnight's raven coloured robe, My lonesome steps, through the far-winding vaults. Of night, when haply wakeful from my couch, I start lo, all is motionless around! Come towering, armed in adamant and gold." Nor is the following passage less impressive:— "The tapered choir, at the late hour of prayer, Far in sequestered iles of the deep dome, Which, as they lengthen through the Gothic vaults, In these fine passages, equally as in the productions of his maturer genius, Warton discovers "that fondness for the beauties of Architecture which was an absolute passion in his breast." But there is in them, if we mistake not, a depth of feeling hardly to be found in the best descriptions of the same objects and places in his later poems. They are always brought by him before our eye with wonderful distinctness--but rather by a vivid conceptive than imaginative power; and his pic tures, beautiful or solemn though they be, want, we fear, what Wordsworth could have given them, "The Consecration and the Poet's Dream." Yet we may be doing them injustice and you may prefer the celebrated passages for once they were celebrated in his "Triumphs of Isis," written in his 21st year and in his "Verses on Sir Joshua's Painted Window at New College," written in advanced life and justly called by Campbell "spirited and splendid blending the point and succinctness of Pope with the richness of the elder and more fanciful school." "Ye fretted pinnacles, ye fanes sublime, Ye towers that wear the mossy vest of time; Ye massy piles of old munificence, At once the pride of learning and defence; Ye cloisters pale, that lengthening to the sight, To contemplation, step by step, invité; Ye high-arched walks, where oft the whispers clear |