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The natural progress of events and relationships, is for a time to increase our hold upon this present scene, and to open to us new sources of earthly enjoyment. We form connections and friendships,--we lay our plans, and commence operations, that are to fill up our appointed period. But though we conceive that these things are adding to our happiness, and are consequently anxious to increase them, they are so many additional points at which we are accessible to affliction; and then, at last, the time comes, when we feel that schemes and plans will fail, and unexpected misfortunes will arise. The happiness on which we calculated ends in disappointment. Life is uncertain: and the dearest friends or relations may die. The father may lay his child's head in the dust, or the errors or dissensions of his offspring may threaten to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. And while, in the former period of life, much support in sorrow was derived from the novelty of every opening scene, and from the natural buoyancy of the animal spirits, and from the bustle of uncompleted plans requiring attention, these things, in after life, lose much of their influence. The character of life appears to be more and more a breaking-up of an establishment-an abandonment of this or the other accustomed pleasure-a falling away of this or the other support; and from the very nature of the case in lengthened life, these events crowd together towards its close, and shed a melancholy colouring, a sort of autumnal appearance of withering, and approaching cold, over all that remains. Life is, in this respect, like a tree, which in its progress to maturity sustains, and soon recovers an injury, by the energy of the vegetative principle; but after it has spread to its widest extent, both in the root and the branch, and the day of maturity is gone by, it is more widely exposed to injuries than ever, and every day less fitted to repair them.

But it is of Divine appointment also that afflictions crowd upon the decline of life. We see it in the history of the saints,-in Jacob, and Eli, and David. We see it every day around us. There is much to be done in the heart, which remains long undone; and life glides away, and grey hairs are upon us, before we are prepared to submit to the needful discipline. And yet the work must be done. The Christian's heart must not be divided. The sins of youth must not be unrepented of. The Christian's graces must not always remain poor and scanty. The Christian's hope must not be a mere adjunct to indulged earthly affections, and undisappointed earthly expectations. The Christian's garments must not be blurred and stained by sensual defilements. The Christian must not be mixed and confounded with an indiscriminate and careless multitude. God, therefore, hastens his work of sanctification, and often, very often, sustains and sanctifies the soul of his faithful pilgrim under an accumulation of suffering, which once would have appeared absolutely insupportable: " Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and Rachel is not, and ye will take Benjamin away."

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There is also a peculiar poignancy in the way in which these afflictions operate on the mind. They are frequently associated with the most distressing coldness of heart towards the Redeemer; with temptations to deny the truth of his grace; and with a heavy sense of loneliness and desolation. To remove these evils, nothing presents itself except that hope in God which was once warm and vigorous; but it now seems to have withered, and so far to have withered, that it becomes questionable to the man's own mind if it ever had existence; if it were ever more than the mere ebullitions of natural affection; or if there be a gracious covenant, and a gracious God, on whom that hope ever did, or ever may effectually rest. All this unquestionably adds severity to the trial while it lasts, and gives a peculiar keenness to the afflictions of declining life, and frequently throws a dark cloud over the hope of later years. But when the result is subsequently seen in the rapid march of

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the soul towards the requisite meetness for a perfect world, then a full and satisfactory explanation is given. pp. 216-219.

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The Course of Time: a Poem, in ten Books. By ROBERT POLLOK, A.M. London: T. Cadell. 1827. 2 vols. 12mo.

THE poetical faculty has a two-fold manner of operation-one, when it creates the splendid world of images which it groups and quickens according to its will; and another, when it dives into the recesses of the human heart, and traces out the secret workings of our passions, and their effect on our minds and dispositions. Each of these divisions contains an almost infinite variety of styles; but under one or other of them we may rank all those various species of poetical description which have received their names rather from the objects described, than the peculiar faculty exerted in the delineation. Poetry, in its higher orders, is creation; in its less powerful exertions it is revelation. In the former, the plastic hand of imagination makes out of that vast ocean of ideas which, to the rest of mankind, is but a boundless and unformed chaos, a world of light and loveliness: in the latter, the feelings of one heart become the interpreters for a thousand others; and the secrets of our nature are revealed in the gay or melancholy song which springs from the poet's own

internal sensations.

It is to the former species of poetry that the highest praise of excellency has always been awarded. It is that which has given immortality to the mighty masters of the lyre; which has ever flourished in the days most favourable to high intellectual energy; and acquired an influence over men's minds, which neither difference of age nor alteration in customs and opinions has been able to diminish. The history of poetry, however, presents us with a curious contradiction to that of all other arts. The perfection of its noblest branches has been first conspicuous in very early periods of its history. The traditional poetry of every nation has a simple beauty and sublimity which critics have every where acknowledged to be the greatest excellence of the art. Their war-songs and their hymns; their wild but magnificent imagery; the terrible and thrilling distinctness of their supernatural agencies; and the stern strength of their imaginations, which seemed to make them reject whatever was not supernaturally real: all these combine to make the ancient bards of every country objects of an almost superstitious veneration. The power which they are said to have possessed over

the human mind, though now so little understood and so obscured by fables, was undoubtedly greater than that acquired by any other means. They were enabled by their faculty to embody those visions of fear or beauty, which it seems natural to the mind to possess, and which, in an early state of civilization, must have received continual nourishment from external circumstances. They held communion with nature in her wildest and most unfrequented paths, and they made use of her images to carry the minds of their auditors beyond her limits; and while they thus both excited and satisfied the natural disposition of the mind to wonder, they became themselves the most venerable beings of whom mankind had knowledge.

But while the poetry of remote antiquity was strictly imaginative, that also of all the greatest geniuses of every age and country has been of the same character. Homer, whose imagination had a power which gave the distinctness of a marble group to every picture which he drew, bestowed definitiveness on a system which was for some thousands of years the religion of mankind. Dante, with the stern and fearful energy of a spirit that only looked on earthly forms when they had become eternal, has left us a work in which human genius almost seems divested of its humanity. Milton, the third great master in imaginative poetry, has, like Homer, given a distinctness of form to the objects of men's holiest recollections; a new and wondrous reality of power to scenes and characters of which before we knew only the name. Whatever, however, may be the particular characteristics of each of these mighty geniuses, the common property of each was the strength and sublimity of their imagination. was this which carried them on their flight beyond the boundaries of time and space; and it was this which, operating on different materials, gave life to the creations both of the Heathen and the Christian bards.

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After naming the three celebrated instances of imaginative writing-the Iliad, the Divina Comedia, and the Paradise Lostit will not be necessary to instance any of the minor examples of poetical composition. Many will undoubtedly strike the recollection of every reader; and our only aim, in the above observations, is to point out the distinction between those writers whose works are the result of a pure creative imagination, and those whose interest is derived from the mere moral susceptibilities or passions of our nature. In the history of poetry, we have several curious illustrations of the effect of external circumstances on the human mind. It has always been either in a very early age, or in one of political trouble, that the imagination has exerted its greatest vigour ;situations which give that sort of hardihood to the mind, which

seems a necessary quality in great imaginative powers. As manners have become refined, and learning begun to exert its influence over society, national taste has gradually changed, and literature has received the polish which the fastidiousness and weakened energy of the mind required. This appears to be the common course which poetry has taken in every country with whose history we are acquainted; and though genius is confined to no one time or place, and a writer will here and there start up whose works seem to contradict the above opinion, the popularity which other authors acquire, of less splendid but more polished talent, will be a convincing proof of its general cor

rectness.

The present state of literature in England is perhaps the best exemplification of the above remarks. Never was science more generally pursued, or more successfully employed; and, in all the arts of life, we have arrived at an excellence that has diffused a luxurious and expensive taste through every order of society. These are all signs of a very advanced stage of civilization. But with our advancement in luxury, and even in knowledge, so far as it is physical and experimental, there has been a proportional decline in the imaginative powers of the mind, and in those branches of art which require the exertion of pure intellect. In our poetry this is especially the case. In those species of it which approach nearest to what we call the imaginative, we have brilliancy instead of power, and ornament instead of distinctness. Fancy is awake, and decks out the productions of our modern writers with a profusion of illustration, drawn from every part of nature; but imagination has given birth to none of those mighty wonders of the mind, which transport our human thoughts, and our human sympathies, beyond the boundaries of humanity. Our poetry has followed the course which we have seen to be common to that of all countries. When it is not merely descriptive or ornamental, it is a refined vehicle of sentiment, and is made use of as the best medium for expressing ideas which have resulted from a careful analyzation of some desire or passion. When it is the production of a heart naturally susceptible of deep emotions, and easily wrought upon by the varying circumstances of life, it is generally sweet and touching; and we could name some of our present English writers, whose exquisitely beautiful style has never been excelled. When, on the other hand, the writer is less alive in his feelings and emotions, his poetry is artificial and frigid, and the affectations of language are employed to supply the place of deep heart-stirring sentiment. In this class of writers our

literature at present abounds; and we bid fair to have a Della Cruscan school, that shall rival the worst and coldest of the Italian muse.

While observing the present state of our national poetry, and remarking the almost total absence of those higher excellencies which distinguished the fathers of the lyre, it is matter of no small surprise, as well as pleasure, to see a work issuing from the press, which, if not equal, is at least a worthy successor to the great master-pieces of Dante and Milton. We allude to Mr. Pollok's "Course of Time;"-a poem which, taking as it does one of the boldest flights of the imagination, is distinguished from every other of the present day by an originality of thought and style, a pure and sustained sublimity, that are deserving of the highest admiration.

A remark has frequently been made, that an epic poem is both one of the greatest and rarest productions of human genius and the remark is correct; for, even by a great stretch of courtesy, we cannot number up half a dozen poems which come under this description. But, rare as the epic is, we have still fewer specimens of the poetry which, taking for its action some of those awful events which connect man with eternity, require that deep energy of thought which springs from an intelligence granted only to the favoured of mankind. The "Divina Comedia," and the " Paradise Lost," are the only two poems which possess the essential excellencies of this species of composition. We have numberless instances, it is true, of minor attempts at the religious epic; but the common consent and feeling of mankind have given to none, but the above, the praise of legitimacy or success. Indeed, when we consider the difficulties of such a production, the danger of wounding the prejudices or contradicting the well-established faith of the human mind, the hazardous attempt of ornamenting the most awful revelation of truth with the imagery of fancywhen we consider this, and, moreover, that an order of feelings is to be dealt with, scenes to be described, and characters pourtrayed, which require the imagination to be almost unclothed of its humanity, we shall have some idea of the difficulty of religious epic poetry. We return, however, to Mr. Pollok; the sublime subject of whose poem has forcibly brought back to our minds the fearful visions of him who sang of that valle d'abisso dolorosa, Che tuono accoglie d'infiniti guai. Oscura, profond' era e nebulosa Tanto, che per ficcar lo viso al fondo I' non vi discernea veruna cosa."

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