WILLIS'S POEMS.* The prose writings of Mr. Willis contain much to prove that he is a poet: but whoever has failed to find the evidences of it there, needs only read a few pieces in the volume mentioned below, to be satisfied of their author's claim to that title. It is not intended to assert for him a very high place on the Muses' hill. His own sound taste and good sense would be among the first to revolt at an association of him with Byron, Scott, or Campbell; far more with the great, earlier masters of song. Perhaps he cannot be raised quite to the level even of James Montgomery, Mrs. Hemans, Rogers, Halleck, and Bryant: but the place he merits, if below these, is just below them. His poetry does not excite the deepest or stormiest emotions. Scarcely a sublime passage is to be found in it-either of the calm, or of the terrible kind: none, for example, possessing in ever so small a degree, either the quiet grandeur of the stanzas to the ocean, in Childe Harold, or the awful magnificence of those describing a tempest and shipwreck, in Don Juan. The gentle and tender affections are those moved by his strains. His breathings of filial, fraternal, and parental love; his picturings of mental suffering; his exhibitions of human feeling, in whatever form he has occasion to display it; are true, forcible, and touching. The images he presents are sometimes of exquisite beauty, and the most happily appropriate to the subjects they are designed to illus trate. The poem especially named in the title page, is one of the longest in the book; being of nearly 22 pages' length--loose, wide-lined pages, however. We cannot much praise its plot; its catastrophe is the instantaneous death of the heroine, Melanie, at the altar, where she discovers that the lover she is about to marry, is her own brother! The next, "Lord Ivon and his daughter," of 24 pages, is a better conceived tale, and more thrillingly told. Both these contain passages worth quoting; but we hasten on to shorter pieces. The first stanza of the lines 'To,' written during a long sojourn in Europe, has been often copied, and justly admired. Its turn of thought bears some analogy to that contained in Shenstone's pathetic sentence, Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, which Moore has translated; To live with them is far less sweet Mr. Willis has expanded the thought, and given it new illustrations: 'As, gazing on the Pleiades, We count each fair and starry one, Yet wander from the light of these To muse upon the Pleiad goneAs, bending o'er fresh gathered flowers, The rose's most enchanting hue Reminds us but of other hours Whose roses were all lovely tooSo, dearest, when I rove among The bright ones of this foreign sky, And mark the smile, and list the song, And watch the dancers gliding by, The fairer still they seem to be, The more it stirs a thought of thee!' The 'Lines on leaving Europe' have three stanzas almost worthy of Moore's happiest mood. The last of them refers to the author's young wife, whom he had married in England: 'Adieu, oh fatherland! I see Your white cliffs on th' horizon's rim, My heart swells, and my eyes are dim! In which it may have flowed before- There come new words and warmer tears! Fear not, to-night, or storm or sea! He comes to shore who sails with me! I know my mother lives and prays! 'I come-but with me comes another Room, mother! in thy heart!-place for her in thy prayer!' English Channel, May, 1836. 'The Dying Alchymist' is a successful representation of well-imagined horrors. The lonely and comfortless chamber in a solitary tower; the agony of death, trebled by disappointment in the visionary's quest of that mysterious essence which had been the hope of his lifetime; are depicted with great truth and power. The aged sufferer gasps out a soliloquy, of which the following is the commencement ;-the italics, ours, to mark what we think extraordinary beauties: 'I did not think to die Till I had finished what I had to do; I thought to pierce th' eternal secret through I felt-Oh God! it seemeth even now 'And yet it is-I feel Of this dull sickness at my heart afraid; 'And this is death! But why Like a chain'd eaglet at its parent's call? The scene is closed by these fearfully graphic passages: 'Twas morning, and the old man lay alone. No friend had closed his eyelids, and his lips, 'The storm was raging still. The shutters swung "The fire beneath the crucible was out; But of all his compositions, Mr. Willis has been most happy in some blank verse narratives of several Scriptural incidents. The titles of these pieces are "The Leper,' 'Christ's Entrance into Jerusalem,' 'The Healing of the Daughter of Jairus,' 'The Baptism of Christ,' 'The Shunamite,' 'Absalom,' 'Hagar in the Wilderness,' and 'The Widow of Nain.' Three of them strike us with especial admiration: The Leper,' "The Widow of Nain,' and 'The Healing of the Ruler's Daughter.' He must have very strong eyes, or a very weak head (as Sterne said, with reference to the first scene of Samson Agonistes), who can read any one of the three, without tears. At the hazard of overquotation, we shall copy one of them; founded upon the incident in Luke's Gospel, chapter vii. 'THE WIDOW OF NAIN.' "The Roman sentinel stood helmed and tall Beside the gate of Nain. The busy tread Of comers to the city mart was done, Of some poor mendicant, he rais'd his head 'Twas now high noon. The dull, low murmur of a funeral And by the crowd that in the burning sun Jesus drew near to Nain as from the gate Forth from the city-gate the pitying crowd Heav'd in its cerements, and a sudden flush 'The Leper' is perhaps even superior still, in beauty and pathos. Throughout the volume, are many pieces of uncommon excellence; and detached passages, embodying thoughts fine enough to be enrolled among those uttered by the best poets in the language. How expressive is this image of a lovely woman: 'Never swan Dreamed on the water with a grace so calm!' And this, of a young girl's innocent buoyancy, con- 'But life with her was at the flow, The following lines, from the 'Healing of Jairus' Daughter,' present a water scene with more than the vividness of painting: 'It was night- And softly o'er the sea of Galilee, And my locks are not yet gray; For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart, To catch the thrill of a happy voice, 'I have walked the world for fourscore years; I'm old, and "I bide my time:" 'Play on, play on; I am with you there, I hide with you in the fragrant hay, 'I am willing to die when my time shall come, For the world at best is a weary place, But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail And it wiles my heart from its dreariness, Notwithstanding all this praise, however, there is some ground for censure. Our first quarrel is with the metre which Mr. Willis often uses. It is so much out of the common way, that ordinary readers cannot find in it half the pleasure which the same thoughts would afford, if couched And where can be found a more exquisite picture of in rhyming couplets, or in quatrains with alternate Jesus than follows? 'On a rock With the broad moonlight falling on his brow, He stood and taught the people.' * * ** * * 'His hair was parted meekly on his brow, rhymes; those old-fashioned, but smoothest, most transparent, and most captivating forms of poetical diction. Writers who adopt either the spenserian stanza, or the more new-fangled one preferred by our present author, may be assured that they diminish very much their chances of popularity; for both the latter are unmanageable and with difficulty understood, by readers whose ear is charmed by the melody while their minds are alive to the meaning, of Campbell, Goldsmith, and Pope. How much better are the metrical forms of these poets adapted to quotation, and therefore how much more likely to win that fame which all A great merit of Mr. W.'s poems, is the admirable poets long for, than the really beautiful ideas embodied moral tone that pervades them. There is not an inde-in the following stanzas! They are a part of some cent word or allusion: no holding up of villainy, or lines 'On a picture of a girl leading her blind mother.' gentlemanly vice, to admiration; no attempt, by sneer or innuendo, to throw ridicule upon any of man's good affections. On the contrary, no one can read the volume, with clear understanding and proper feeling, without having the generous principles of his nature refined and strengthened. Nor is Mr. W.'s always a tearful or pensive muse, like that of Mrs. Hemans. Serious, she generally is: but now and then, her frolic step and joyous note shew a just consciousness that life has a due mixture of gladness with its gloom. The piece called "Saturday Afternoon," is an instance of this. The supposed speaker is a cheerful old man : 'I love to look on a scene like this, Of wild and careless play, And persuade myself that I am not old, 'But thou canst hear! and love Yes, thou canst hear! and He Who on thy sightless eye its darkness hung, And 'tis a lesson in our hearts to know- There is an occasional want of exactness in Mr. Willis's rhymes. In the last extract, 'love' and 'prove,' 'pour'd' and 'word,' are unnaturally yoked together. tion, certainly, rests upon the verse, which crowns treason and all baseness, with the laurels of patriotism and virtue: which says of Arnold, almost all that could be said of Washington. We entreat Mr. Willis, if he loves historic truth and justice, to blot out this piece from his book. Elsewhere, 'love' is made to rhyme with 'wove;' and | We have no objection to fancy-pictures, when they 'flow' with 'bow' (to bend the body.) Let us not be are happily conceived and well drawn: but when they misunderstood. We would not alter a syllable, an falsify Nature or History, they deserve ridicule or accent, or a pause, in several of the pieces here, which reprobation, accordingly as the untruth is merely ludivary from the modes of versification we generally pre-crous, or positively mischievous. The latter imputafer. "Saturday Afternoon," above quoted, is not more exquisite in conception, than musical and appropriate in its bounding numbers. Many of Moore's poems, 'Birth Days,' for instance-are unsurpassably melodious; and print themselves in the memory without an effort, and almost without volition on the reader's part. And who can be insensible to the varied flow of Walter Scott's epic verse, so happily commingling sweetness and strength? But even there, our favorite forms predominate; and are only sometimes departed from, to prevent monotony. The sense of his verses is not always clear. It was only after thrice reading, that we could discern what the last six lines of the following stanza mean; and even now, they seem a jumble of ill assorted and infelicitous metaphors, leaving no distinct idea in the mind: 'I fear thy gentle loveliness, Thy witching tone and air, But they who kneel at woman's shrine, Ye may fling back the gift again, But the crushed flower will leave a stain.' LORD BACON. PART II. HIS CHARACTER, AND WRITINGS. The Baconian Philosophy-its chief peculiarity--its end, 'Fruit' -Bacon contrasted with Seneca-superiority of the Baconian, to the ancient Philosophy, even to that of Socrates-still more, to that of Epicurus-Fruitlessness of ancient philosophyWhy?--its disdain of the merely useful--its disrepute, even before Bacon's time-its false use, and false estimate, of the Sciences--arithmetic--geometry--astronomy--alphabetical writing-medicine--difference of Bacon in these respects. The chief peculiarity of Bacon's philosophy seems to us to have been this-that it aimed at things altogether different from those which his predecessors had proposed to themselves. This was his own opinion. Finis scientiarum,' says he, 'a nemine adhuc bene positus est.'* And again, 'Omnium gravissimus error in deviatione ab ultimo doctrinarum fine consistit.' 'Nec ipsa meta,' says he elsewhere, 'adhuc ulli, quod But the greatest fault in the whole book, is the hono- sciam, mortalium posita est et defixa.' The more rary tribute to Benedict Arnold. In boyhood, he was carefully his works are examined, the more clearly, we selfish and cruel: in riper years, he added peculation think, it will appear, that this is the real clue to his and swindling to increased selfishness and cruelty: whole system; and that he used means different from later still, he grafted upon those vices, constantly grow-arrive at an end altogether different from theirs. those used by other philosophers, because he wished to ing more intense in his bosom and in his practice,-a What then was the end which Bacon proposed to treason unparalleled in its blackness and enormity: and the sun of his life went down amid clouds of just contempt, and storms of revenge, drunkenness and avarice. Yet in 'The Burial of Arnold,' Mr. Willis calls this prodigy of crime the noble sleeper'! and 'the noblest of the dead!' Of him, whose childhood, like Domitian's, was signalized by torturing brutes and insects, as well as by oppressing his weaker playmates,* Mr. Willis asks and answers, 'Whose heart, in generous deed and thought, And yet distinction claiming not? So far from not claiming his share of distinction, Arnold Of him, whose last years were those of a drunkard, and whose eyes were therefore probably bloodshot, his eye-lids inflamed, and his features discolored and bloated, in accordance with the usual effect of drunkenness,-Mr. W. says (beautifully, were it not so untruly,) 'Tread lightly-for 'tis beautiful, See Mr. Sparks' Life of Arnold. himself? It was, to use his own emphatic expression, 'FRUIT.' It was the multiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings. It was 'the relief of man's estate.' It was 'commodis humanis inservire.' It was 'efficaciter operari ad sublevanda vitæ humanæ incommoda.'§ It was 'dotare vitam humanam novis inventis et copiis.' It was 'genus humanum novis operibus et potestatibus continuo dotare.' This was the object of all his speculations in every department of science,-in natural philosophy, in legislation, in politics, in morals. Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrineutility and progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools regarded that office as degrading; some censured it as immoral. Once indeed Posidonius, a distinguished writer of the age of Cicero and Cesar, so far forgot himself as to enumerate among the humbler blessings which mankind owed to philosophy, the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the introduction of the use of metals. This eulogy was considered as an af The proper aim of science, no man hath as yet determined.' The most grievous of errors is, to miss the true and main end of learning.' To promote the good of mankind.' To strive to alleviate the ills of human life.' VOL. IV.-10 ters, 'was so fixed in his mind as it could not be removed,' this majestic humility, this persuasion that nothing can be too insignificant for the attention of the wisest, which is not too insignificant to give pleasure or pain to the meanest is the great characteristical dictinction, the essential spirit of the Baconian philosophy. We trace it in all that Bacon has written on physics, on laws, on morals. And we conceive that from this peculiarity all the other peculiarities of his system directly and almost necessarily sprang. front, and was taken up with proper spirit. Seneca, he said, in one of the most remarkable of his early letvehemently disclaims these insulting compliments. Philosophy, according to him, has nothing to do with teaching men to rear arched roofs over their heads. The true philosopher does not care whether he has an arched roof or any roof. Philosophy has nothing to do with teaching men the uses of metals. She teaches us to be independent of all material substances, of all mechanical contrivances. The wise man lives according to nature. Instead of attempting to add to the physical comforts of his species, he regrets that his lot was not cast in that golden age when the human race had no protection against the cold but the skins of wild beasts--no screen from the sun but a cavern. To impute to such a man any share in the invention or improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill, is an insult. In my own time,' says Seneca, 'there have been inventions of this sort,-transparent windows,-tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building,—short-hand, which has been carried to such perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves: philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul-Non est, inquam, instrumentorum ad usus necessarios opifex,'* If the non were left out, this last sentence would be no bad description of the Baconian philosophy; and would, indeed, very much resemble several expressions in the Novum Organum. We shall next be told,' exclaims Seneca, 'that the first shoemaker was a philosopher.' For our own part, if we are forced to make our choice between the first shoemaker, and the author of the three books On Anger,' we pronounce for the shoemaker. It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept any body from being angry. It is very reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess that any philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention to any thing that could possibly promote what vulgar people would consider as the well being of mankind. He labors to clear Democritus from the disgraceful imputation of having made the first arch, and Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the potter's wheel. He is forced to own that such a thing might happen; and it may also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher may be swift of foot. But it is not in his character of philosopher that he either wins a race or invents a machine. No, to be sure. The business of a philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty with two millions sterling out at usury-to meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evi's of luxury, in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns-to rant about liberty, while fawning on the insolent and pampered freedmen of a tyrant-to celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with the same pen which had just before written a defence of the murder of a mother by a son. From the cant of this philosophy-a philosophy meanly proud of its own unprofitableness-it is delightful to turn to the lessons of the great English teacher. We can almost forgive all the faults of Bacon's life when we read that singularly graceful and dignified passage:-Ego certe, ut de me ipso, quod res est, loquar, et in iis quæ nunc edo, et in iis quæ in posterum, meditor, dignitatem ingenii et nominis mei, si qua sit, sæpius sciens et volens projicio, dum commodis humanis inserviam; quique architectus fortasse in philosophia et scientiis esse debeam, etiam operarius et bajulus, et quidvis demum fio cum haud pauca quæ omnino fieri necesse sit, alii autem ob innatam superbiam subterfugiant, ipse sustineam et exsequar.' This philanthropia, which, as She, I say, is [net] a mere artisan, to drudge with tools.' 'If I may be allowed to say so,--I do often, both in my present and in my meditated works, lay aside the dignity of genius and of reputation (if any I have,) in my zeal for the good of mankind and I, who should perhaps be an architect in science and philosophy, drudge as a hodman; doing and bearing many things indispensable to the work, but which others, through pride eschew." The spirit which appears in the passage of Seneca to which we have referred, tainted the whole body of the ancient philosophy from the time of Socrates downwards; and took possession of intellects with which that of Seneca cannot, for a moment, be compared. It pervades the dialogues of Plato. It may be distinctly traced in many parts of the works of Aristotle. Bacon has dropped hints from which it may be inferred, that in his opinion the prevalence of this feeling was in a great measure to be attributed to the influence of Socrates. Our great countryman evidently did not consider the revolution which Socrates effected in philosophy as a happy event; and he constantly maintained that the earlier Greek speculators, Democritus in particular, were, on the whole, superior to their more celebrated successors.* Assuredly, if the tree which Socrates planted, and Plato watered, is to be judged of by its flowers and leaves, it is the noblest of trees. But if we take the homely test of Bacon,-if we judge of the tree by its fruits,- -our opinion of it may perhaps be less favorable. When we sum up all the useful truths which we owe to that philosophy, to what do they amount? We find, indeed, abundant proofs that some of those who cultivated it were men of the first order of intellect. We find among their writings incomparable specimens both of dialectical and rhetorical art. We have no doubt that the ancient controversies were of use in so far as they served to exercise the faculties of the disputants; for there is no controversy so idle that it may not be of use in this way. But, when we look for something more-for something which adds to the comforts or alleviates the calamities of the human race,--we are forced to own ourselves disappointed. We are forced to say with Bacon, that this celebrated philosophy ended in nothing but disputation; that it was neither a vineyard nor an olive ground, but an intricate wood of briers and thistles, from which those who lost themselves in it, brought back many scratches and no food † We readily acknowledge that some of the teachers of this unfruitful wisdom were among the greatest men that the world had ever seen. If we admit the justice of Bacon's censure, we admit it with regret, similar to that which Dante felt when he learned the fate of those illustrious heathens who were doomed to the first circle of Hell. 'Gran duol mi prese al cuor quando lo'ntesi, Conobbi che'n quel limbo eran sospesi.' the eminent philosophers of antiquity, forces us to adopt But, in truth, the very admiration which we feel for the opinion, that their powers were systematically misdirected. For how else could it be that such powers should effect so little for mankind? A pedestrian may show as much muscular vigor on a treadmill as on the highway road. But on the road his vigor will assuredly carry him forward; and on the treadmill he will not mill, not a path. It was made up of revolving quesadvance an inch. The ancient philosophy was a treadtions,-of controversies which were always beginning again. It was a contrivance for having much exertion *Norum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 71, 79. De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. De principiis atque originibus. Cogitata et visa. Redargutio philosophiarum. Novum Organum. Lib. 1, Aph. 73. 'Great sorrow seized my heart, when I heard it, for I knew that persons of great worth were suspended in that limbo.' |