Kingdom's are but cares; Pleasure is a privy [game] Pomp, unprompt; and fame, a flame; Who meaneth to remove the rocke Shall mire himself, and hardly scape The pious and contemplative disposition of this monarch, well betrays itself in these verses; they are not inelegant, and were written probably about 40 years after the time of Chaucer. The author of such unambitious sentiments might well be supposed to utter those congenial lines which the poet has given him: O God! methinks it were a happy life, So many hours must I tend my flock; So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, Past over to the end they were created, Would bring white hairs into a quiet grave. Ah, what a life were this, how sweet, how lovely! Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, It is more than probable, that the poet had never seen his royal brohe hit off the same melancholy and ther's verses, yet how admirably has philosophic strain, which it appears Henry himself had indulged. What a pity this unfortunate monarch was not born to a crook instead of a sceptre ! Lest we should not find, even so unfit an opportunity as this is, we beg leave to subjoin here two sentences written by the same Henry, and preserved by one who had taken him prisoner in the wars of York and Lancaster: Patience is the armour and conquest of the godly: this meriteth mercy, when causeless is suffered sorrow. Nought else is war but fury and madness, wherein is not advice but rashness; not right but rage, ruleth and reigneth. These breathe the same mild and amiable spirit; they confirm that character which their author has received from history: more of the saint than the soldier, less of the prince than the philosopher. King Bluff, as he had a finger in every thing; so had he a foot (a gouty one we confess) on the hill of Poesy; he was the landlord of so much ground there, as produced one weed of a proud carriage, but of little fragrance, the Turk's Cap, probably: The eagle's force subdues each bird that flies; And melt the ice, and make the frost retire? So much for the Royal Polygamist and his despotic verses. "Fools," indeed, to allow a son of clay like themselves, to insult them in poetry, as if prose were not sublime enough to express the greatness of their insignificance ! The Emperor Adrian had undoubtedly a soul for poetry; the pathetic lines which he wrote whilst on his death-bed, have never been equalled, though frequently imitated by those who would blush to be compared with him as poets: Animula, vagula, blandula, The diminutives and titles of endearment which the dying Emperor applies to his soul, give these verses a prettiness, yet of a melancholy sort, which no translation into English can attain. It is worth while remarking, that the epitaphs-pale, stiff, and naked, cannot be preserved except when the national mythology allows the spirit to be material, or at least, visible, as was the case with Paganism. It is so likewise, perhaps, with vulgar, but certainly not with true and philosophical Christianity. But of Royal Poets, David is at once the most ancient and most illustrious; the Sacred Minstrel can alone, of all the sceptred race, be said to have enjoyed in its highest degree, the gift of poetic inspiration, unless the Song of Solomon be properly so entitled. In one of his Psalms there is a description which far exceeds in point of sublimity the highest flights of profane imagination; the Muse of Homer or of Shakspeare, in her loftiest hours, would not have dared to utter such magnificent language as this:- Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because He was wroth. The Lord also thundered in the heavens and the Highest gave his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows and scattered them; and he shot out lightnings and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. Poetry of such tremendous sublimity as this, renders all other composition mean and grovelling. It transcends, by an infinite measure, Virgil's description of Jupiter striking Mount Athos with a thunderbolt, in his Georgics. Milton, whose temerity in the sublime is remarkable, and whose subject often inspires him with more than mortal strength of imagination, appears tame and feeble beside the poet of God. History informs us, that Alexander the Great usually slept with Homer and his sword under his pillow. It is probable, however, that the martial and adventurous nature of these works procured them this honour, not their poetical merit. But as to Alexander himself, he was certainly no poet-at least if he was, history has forgot to mention it. Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, is said to have collected the scattered verses of Homer, a better proof of his taste than Alexander has left us of his; nevertheless there is a great difference between the compiler and composer of verses. One or two instances more than those we have given, might be cited to increase the miserable band of Poets Royal; in examining their pretensions, however, it is but fair to own that they are very humble, and indeed (except in the sacred examples) should be so. James I. of Scotland, author of King's Quair and Christ's Kirk of the Green, wears his laurel like a true soldier of Calliope. NOTES FROM THE POCKET-BOOK OF A LATE OPIUM-EATER. No. IV. FALSE DISTINCTIONS. THE petty distinctions current in conversation and criticism--are all false when they happen to regard intellectual objects: and there is no mode of error which is so disgusting to a man who has descended an inch below the surface of things: for their evil is-first, That they become so many fetters to the mind; and secondly, That they give the appearance of ambitious paradoxes to any juster distinctions substituted in their places. More error is collected in the form of popular distinctions than in any other shape: and as they are always assumed (from their universal currency), without the mind's ever being summoned to review them, they present incalculable hindrances to its advance in every direction. What a world of delusion, for example, lies in the hollow distinction of Reason and Imagination. I protest that I feel a sense of shame for the human intellect, and sit uneasily in my chair, when I hear a man summing up his critique upon a book, by saying, "that in short it is addressed to the imagination and not to the reason." Yet upon this meagre and vague opposition are built many other errors as gross as itself. I will notice three: 1. That women have more imagina tion than men.-This monstrous assertion, which is made in contempt of all literature, not only comes forward as a capital element in all attempts *to characterize the female sex, as contradistinguished from the male, but generally forms the theme on which all the rest is but a descant. A friend, to whom I was noticing this, suggested that by Imagination in this place was meant simply the Fancy in its lighter and more delicate movements. But even this will not cure the proposition: so restricted even, it is a proposition which sets all experience at defiance. For, not to be so hard upon the female sex as to ask-Where is their Paradise Lost? Where is their Lear and Othello?—I will content myself with asking, where is the female Hudibras, or the female Dunciad? Or, to descend from works of so masculine a build, to others of more delicate proportions, where is the female Rape of the Lock? Or, to adapt the question to the French literature, Where is the female VerVert? † And the same questions may be put, mutatis mutandis, upon all other literatures past or current. Men are shy of pressing too hard upon women: however much our sisters may be in the wrong (and See for instance those which occur in the works of Mrs. Hannah More-a woman of great talents, and for whom I feel the greatest respect personally, having long had the pleasure of her acquaintance: her conversation is brilliant and instructive: but this has nothing to do with her philosophy. + This little work of Gresset's occupies the same station in the French literature that the Rape of the Lock does in ours. For playful wit, it is the jewel of the French Poésies Légéres. Its inferiority to the Rape of the Lock, however, both in plan and in brilliancy of execution, is very striking,-and well expresses the general ratio of the French literature to ours. If in any department, common prejudice would have led us in this to anticipate a superiority on the part of the French. Yet their inferiority is hardly any where more conspicuous.-By the way, it is very reinarkable, that the late Mr. Scott, who had expressly studied the French literature, should have had so little acquaintance with a writer of Gresset's eminence, as is argued by the fact of his having admitted into the LONDON MAGAZINE a mere prose abstract of the Ver-Vert, without any reference to the French original. This is the more remarkable, because there existed already in the English language, a metrical version of the Ver-Vert (a bad one, I dare say), which is reprinted in so notorious a book as Chalmers's Poets. The prose abstract is not ill executed according to my remembrance: but still an abridgment of a jeu d'esprit, in all parts elaborately burnished, is of itself an absurdity: to strip it of verse is no advantage: and to omit the recommendation of a celebrated name, seems to argue that it was unknown. is the female Eschylus, or Euripides, or Aristophanes? Where is the female rival of Chaucer, of Cervantes, of Calderon? Where is Mrs. Shakspeare?—No, no! good women: it is sufficient honour for you that you produce us-the men of this planet-who produce the books (the good ones, I mean). In some sense therefore you are grandmothers to all the intellectual excellence that does or will exist: and let that content you. As to poetry in its highest form, I never yet knew a womannor will believe that any has existed they generally are in the wrong), in their disputes with us, they always take the benefit of sex-which is a stronger privilege than benefit of clergy. But, supposing them to waive that for a moment, and imagining this case that the two sexes were to agree to part and to "pack up their alls," and each sex to hoist on its backs its valuable contributions to literature, then I shall be so ungallant as to affirm, that the burthens would be pretty well adapted to the respective shoulders and physical powers which were to bear them; and for no department of litera--who could rise to an entire symture would this hold more certainly true, than for the imaginative and the fanciful part. In mathematics there exist works composed by women-to reprieve which from destruction men would be glad to pay something or other (let us not ask too curiously how much): but what poem is there in any language (always excepting those of our own day) which any man would give a trifle to save? Would he give a shilling? If he would, I should suspect the shilling exceedingly; and would advise a rigorous inquiry into its character. I set aside Sappho and a few other female lyric poets; for we have not sufficient samples of their poetry: and for modern literature I set aside the writers of short poems that take no sweep and compass, such as Lady Winchelsea, Madame Deshouliéres, &c. &c. But I ask with respect to poems solemnly planned, such as keep the poet on the wing and oblige him to sustain his flight for a reasonable space and variety of course,-where is there one of any great excellence which owes its existence to a woman? I ask of any man who suffers his understanding to slumber so deeply and to benefit so little by his experience, as to allow credit to the doctrine that women have the advantage of men in imagination;-I ask him this startling question, which must surely make him leap up from his dream. What work of imagination owing its birth to a woman can he lay his hand on (-I am a reasonable man, and do not ask for a hundred or a score, but will be content with one,) which has exerted any memorable influence, such as history would notice, upon the mind of man? Who pathy with what is most excellent in that art. High abstractions, to which poetry Kar' oxny is always tending, are utterly inapprehensible by the female mind: the concrete and the individual, fleshed in action and circumstance, are all that they can reach: the rò ka' oλe-the ideal-is above them. Saying this, however, I mean no disrespect to female pretensions: even intellectually they have their peculiar and separate advantages, though no balance to ours: they have readier wits than men, because they are more easily impressed and excited: and for moral greatness and magnanimity, under the sharpest trials of danger, pain, adversity, or temptation,-there is nothing so great that I cannot believe of women. This world has produced nothing more heroic and truly noble than Mrs. Hutchinson of Nottingham Castle, and Madame Roland: and we may be assured, that there are many Hutchinsons and many Rolands at all times in posse, that would show themselves such, if ordinary life supplied occasions: for their sakes I would be happy to tell or to believe any reasonable lie in behalf of their sex: but I cannot and will not lie, or believe a lie, in the face of all history and experience. 2. That the savage has more imagination than the civilized man: 3. That Oriental nations have more imagination (and according to some a more passionate constitution of mind) than those of Europe.As to savages, their poetry and their eloquence are always of the most unimaginative order: when they are figurative, they are so by mere necessity; language being too poor amongst savage nations to express any but the rudest thoughts; so that such feelings as are not of hourly recurrence can be expressed only by figures. Moreover it is a mistake to suppose that merely to deal in figurative language implies any imaginative power: it is one of the commonest expressions of the over-excitement of weakness; for there are spasms of weakness no less than spasms of strength.-In all the specimens of savage eloquence which have been reported to us (as that of Logan, &c.), there is every mark of an infantine understanding: the thoughts are of the poorest order; and, what is particularly observable, are mere fixtures in the brainhaving no vital principle by which they become generative or attractive of other thoughts. A Demosthenical fervor of manner they sometimes have; which arises from the predominance of interrogation-the suppression of the logical connexions the nakedness of their mode of schematising the thoughts-and the consequent rapidity with which the different parts of the harangue succeed to each other. But these characteristics of manner, which in the Athenian were the result of exquisite artifice, in them are the mere negutive product of their intellectual barrenness. The Athenian forewent the full developement of the logical connexion: the savage misses it from the unpractised state of his reasoning faculties: the Athenian was naked from choice and for effect; the savage from poverty. And, be the manner what it may, the matter of a savage oration is always despicable. But, if savages betray the negation of all imaginative power (=0), the oriental nations betray the negative of that power ( imagination). In the Koran I read that the pen, with which God writes, is made of mother-of-pearl, and is so long, that an Arabian courser of the finest breed would not be able to gallop from one end to the other in a space of 500 years. Upon this it would be said in the usual style of English criticism-" Yes: no doubt, it is very extravagant: the writer's imagination runs away with his judgment." Imagination! How so? The imagination seeks the illimitable; dissolves the definite; translates the finite into the infinite. But this Arabian image has on the contrary translated the infinite into the finite. And so it is generally with Oriental imagery. In all this there is something more than mere error of fact; something worse than mere error of theory; for it is thus implied that the understanding and the imaginative faculty exist in insulation-neither borrowing nor lending; that they are strong at the expense of each other; &c. &c. And from these errors of theory arise practical errors of the worst consequence. One of the profoundest is that which concerns the discipline of the reasoning faculties. All men are anxious, if it were only for display in conversation, to "reason" (as they call it) well. But how mighty is the error which many make about the constituents of that power! That the fancy has any thing to do with it-is the last thought that would occur to them. Logic, say they, delivers the art of reasoning; and logic has surely no commerce with the fancy. Be it so: but logic, though indispensable, concerns only the formal part of reasoning; and is therefore only its negative condition: your reasoning will be bad, if it offends against the rules of logic; but it will not be good simply by conforming to them. To use a word equivocally for instance, i. e. in two senses, will be in effect to introduce four terms into your syllogism; and that will be enough to vitiate it. But will it of necessity heal your argument-to exterminate this dialectic error? Surely not: the matter of your reasoning is the grand point; and this can no more be derived from logic, than a golden globe from the geometry of the sphere. It is through the fancy, and by means of the schemata which that faculty furnishes to the understanding, that reasoning (good or bad) proceeds, as to its positive or material part, on most of the topics which interest mankind: the vis imaginatrix of the mind is the true fundus from which the understanding draws: and it may be justly said in an axiomatic form-that Tantum habet homo discursûs, quantum habet phantasiæ." On this doctrine however at another time: meantime I would ask of any reader, to whom it appears |