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of the body to the soul appears in the shadowy corporeity with which the poet invests his fvxal; a conception of the possibility of a perpetual life of the body is disclosed in the transfer of Menelaus, by a special divine decree, without death, to Elysium;1 and it is impossible to read, without astonishment, the passage in which Achilles expresses his emotions when he sees before him the living form of Lycaon, one of the sons of Priam, whom he had long before sent into captivity beyond the sea, and now probably supposed to be dead: 2

Ω πόποι, ἢ μέγα θαῦμα τόδ ̓ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῶμαι·
Η μάλα δή Τρῶες μεγαλήτορες, οὔσπερ ἔπεφνον,
Αὖτις ἀναστήσονται ὑπὸ ζόφου ηερόεντος·
Οἷον δὴ καὶ ὅδ ̓ ἦλθε ;

But the thought of an actual resurrection never probably occurred to the mind of Homer; nor is it to be found, we believe, among the innumerable guesses of Greek ingenuity and inquisitiveness.3 No secret was kept more profoundly "hid from ages and generations." Faint and occasional gleams of it broke upon the minds of pious Hebrews from the beginning. But they were only gleams. They did not shed that steady and strong illumination which was needed to see through the breakers and mists along the coast of death, the peaceful and happy shore of a better life. Sheol was scarcely less terrible to the Hebrew than Hades to the Greek. That best and brightest of revelations which announces, not an immortal soul (that is everywhere taken for granted in the New Testament), but an immortal man, was reserved for the Son of God in person, the divine Brother and Redeemer of man. It shone full-orbed on the world when he uttered those words: "I am the resurrection and the life. Thy brother shall rise again. He that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live. I will raise

1 Od. 4. 561-9.

2 II. 21. 53 seq.

3 There was, however, a strong and general conviction The ʊxhr Tov σwμatos WoTep oxhμaros deiodai. Plut. De Vit. et Poes. Hom, above cited, near the end.

him up at the last day." This prophecy was turned into fact by his own resurrection, the first-fruits of the general harvest of restored and re-vivified humanity. Fuller light, with other circumstances and concomitants, were afterwards added. "Behold! I tell you a mystery (a secret). In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the dead shall be raised." Through all the earlier ages, the belief of the soul's immortality had survived, defective and one-sided though it was, an indestructible sentiment, a part of consciousness, a perpetual and universal traditionawaiting the happy hour when it should be completed by that of an incorruptible, powerful, and glorious body, and thus the idea of immortal humanity receive its full and perfect form "life and immortality brought to light by the Gospel."

ARTICLE V.

CAPRICES AND LAWS OF LITERATURE.

BY REV. LEONARD WITHINGTON, D. D., NEWBURYPORT, MASS.

THE tendency of philosophical investigation is to extend the dominion of the laws of nature and to diminish the region of chance, until it dwindles to an unextended point. We behold a chip floating down a stream, or a feather floating on the air, — nothing at first view can be more apparently capricious than their motions; yet it is not more certain that they are passive things than it is that they are subjected to an invariable law, regulating all their movements and never for a moment relaxed or repealed.

When Dr. Paley, in the opening of his work on Natural Theology, was looking round for an antagonist power to his watch, he pitched upon a stone, lying on a heath, as an in

stance of chance in opposition to design. But every reader feels the illustration to be imperfect because the antithesis is a false one. The stone is not a counterpart to a watch; it is only itself one wheel in a still greater watch, that is, the universe. The imperfect sample is felt in the subsequent reasoning. There was no place to be found, no object in creation that could supply an adequate illustration. The author would have had to go back to the original chaos, about which we know so little, to find the shadow of a comparison; and even there another power first permits and then interposes

Hanc Deus, et melior litem Natura diremit.

The Anarch in Milton, the king of chaos and the nethermost abyss, complains that the creations of God had invaded the confusion of his realms:

I upon my frontiers here

Keep residence; if all I am will serve
That little which is left so to defend ;
Encroached on still thro' our intestine broils,
Weakening the sceptre of old Night; first hell
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath,
Now lately heaven and earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm linked in a golden chain
To that side heaven from whence your legions fell.
Paradise Lost, B. ii. lines 997–1005.

This is a striking illustration of the results of all our examinations into the laws of nature. The old Anarch is seen to retire and complain, until at last he vanishes into a shadow. "The laws," says bishop Butler, "by which persons, born into the world at such a time and place, are of such capacities, geniuses, tempers; the laws by which thoughts come into our mind, in a multitude of cases; and by which innumerable things happen, of the greatest influence on the affairs and state of the world; these laws are so wholly unknown to us, that we call the events which come to pass by them, accidental; though all men know certainly that there cannot, in reality, be any such thing as chance; and con

clude that the things which have this appearance, are the result of general laws, and may be reduced into them."

The same principle extends to mind. The will, however free and apparently capricious in its decisions, is still governed by laws, which are laws because their influence is universal. It is very true that the coercions of material nature extend not to mind; a ship is turned by a power which the mind of its master never feels. A motive and a natural power are not the same. Yet the mind submits to its own laws, and no man for a moment jumps out of his character.

In the collected world, the same stern uniformity prevails. Nations rise and fall, battles are won and lost; political organizations are made and dissolved by uniform causes which few can foresee and all are compelled to acknowledge when their latency is developed in the effect.

Literature is no doubt eminently a mental development, and therefore exists under two essential conditions: first, apparent caprice; and secondly, behind that caprice, an eternal law. Let us consider, then, the caprices and laws of lite rature, or rather the invariable laws which latently govern the caprices of literature. A clock sometimes has a dancing figure which comes out at a peculiar hour and seems to be a spontaneous performer; but no one doubts, on the least reflection, that the fantastic figure is guided by the same weights and wheels which move the more regulated hands, and point out the minute and the hour.

In stating the following instances of caprice over law, and law under caprice, we are far from pretending that our register is complete. It is a specimen, which demonstrates the track in which observation must walk, in order to verify, or confute.

First, then, in the infancy of literature originality is a cause and a help to universal acceptance; in the second stages of progression, it is an impediment, at least for a seaHomer and Shakspeare were at once acknowledged.

son.

1 Analogy, Part II. c. 4.

The thrill of their genius was immediate; but afterwards peculiarities are found to be disagreeable and are pronounced wrong. The more original the writer, the slower his acceptance. The reason is obvious; the world has accommodated itself to its favorite models, and every deviation seems to indicate a bad taste, and of course perverse power.

Secondly, mannerism is at first an impediment and then a help, whenever it is united with strong power. We have by us now an old periodical, the Monthly Mirror, in which is a criticism on Cooke, the famous tragedian's first appearance in Covent Garden theatre. The writer says: "Admiration supersedes objection, and such are the insinuating effects of his acting, that the peculiarities which rather offend at first, grow more pleasing by degrees, and before the close of his performance, have lost nearly all their weight in the scale of criticism." It is so with poems, histories, fictions, and sermons; every reader and hearer has felt it. Not one of the passages in Milton, which Bentley has exscinded with his "desperate hook," could now be spared. They are gen erally admired.

Thirdly, sometimes one great work of an author obscures and sinks the other works, and sometimes buoys up and preserves its weaker brethren. Milton's versification of the Psalms is always preserved, in the volumes of his poetry, though worse than mediocrity; while Thomson's Liberty is seldom published with his Seasons. Now we venture to say that Thomson has shown greater poetic art and conquered greater difficulties, in the fine parts of his poem on liberty, than he has in his Seasons, though he has not produced so attractive a composition. Yet Liberty always sinks, and Milton's Psalms always swim.2 De Foe's great

Monthly Mirror, Nov. 1800.

2 It is astonishing, however, what stuff some of the good poets wrote. An eagle seldom perches but on a lofty cliff. But genius-how high it soars! how low it sinks! Otway and Lee were geniuses, but who can read — who would not gladly burn their worst works? Dryden himself-how low he can go! How wretched beyond conception! We tried to read his WILD GALLANT, his first comedy, sixty times at least, and succeeded at last only by the curiosity to know

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