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NOTE IV.-Text 265.

PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.

I. The mind aspires to perfection.

THIS world is inferior to the soul, by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things.-BACON.

The soul during her confinement within this prison of the body, is doomed by fate to undergo a severe penance. For her native seat is in heaven; and it is with reluctance that she is forced down from those celestial mansions into these lower regions, where all is foreign and repugnant to her divine nature. But the gods, I am pursuaded, have thus widely disseminated immortal spirits, and clothed them with human bodies, that there might be a race of intelligent creatures, not only to have dominion over this our earth, but to contemplate the host of heaven, and imitate in their moral conduct the same beautiful order and uniformity, so conspicuous in those splendid orbs.

CICERO.

This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, ennobling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection, as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay-lodgings, can be capable of. Some give themselves to astronomy; some to be natural and supernatural philosophers; some an admirable delight drew to music; and some the certainty of demonstration to the mathematics; but all, one and other, having this scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body, to the enjoying his own divine essence.

SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

If there be a radical propensity in our nature to do that which is wrong, there is on the other hand a counteracting power within it, or an impulse by means of the action of the Divine spirit upon our minds, which urges us to do that which is right. If the voice of temptation, clothed in musical and seducing accents, charms us one way, the voice of holiness speaking to us from within in a solemn and powerful manner, commands us another. Does one man obtain a victory over his corrupt affections? an immediate perception of pleasure, like the feeling of a reward divinely conferred upon him, is

noticed. Does another fall prostrate beneath their power? a painful feeling, and such as pronounces to him the sentence of reproof, and punishment is found to follow.

Whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon me in other respects, he has certainly inspired me, if any ever were inspired, with a passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, according to the fable, ever seek her daughter Proserpine with such unceasing solicitude, as I have sought this perfect model of the beautiful in all the forms and appearances of things I am wont, day and night, to continue my search; and I fol low in the way in which you go before.

MILTON'S LETTER TO DEODATI.

The highborn soul

Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing
Beneath its native quarry. Tir'd of earth

And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft.-AKENSIDE.
Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth,
No ever fail of their allegiance there.-YOUNG.
Though I have lost

Much lustre of my native brightness-lost
To be beloved of God-I have not lost
To love, at least contemplate and admire,
What I see excellent in good, or fair,
Or virtuous.-MILTON.

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures:

In spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.-KEATS.

II. Does not the mind delight in the Invisible and the Ohscure?

See ante, pages 286, 7, 8, 9.

Ask the faithful youth,
Why the cold urn of her whom long he loved
So often fills his arms; so often draws

His lonely footsteps at the silent hour,

To the mournful tribute of his tears?
pay
Oh! he will tell thee, that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego

That sacred hour, when, stealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes
With virtue's kindest looks his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture.

III. Does not the Mind delight in its creative Powers-of

Imitation, of Extension,-of Personification,-of Combination, &c.?

Do not the pleasures of imagination enable the mind to indulge its delight in aspiring to perfection?

In regions mild of calm and serene air,

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,

Which men call earth, and with low thoughted care

Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here,

Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, &c.

Do not the pleasures of imagination enable the mind to indulge its love of the invisible, and its creative powers? There is a spirit within us, which arrays The thing we dote upon with colourings Richer than roses-brighter than the beams Of the clear sun at morning, when he flings His shower of light upon the peach, or plays With the green leaves of June, and strives to dart Into some great forest's heart,

And scare the Sylvan from voluptuous dreams.

BARRY CORNWALL.

ON THE NIGHTINGALE.

The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

SATURN.

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

It is a stormy night, and the wild sea,
That sounds for ever, now upon the beach
Is pouring all its power. Each after each,
The hurrying waves cry out rejoicingly,

KEATS.

KEATS.

And, crowding onwards, seem as they would reach
The height I tread upon. The winds are high,
And the quick lightnings shoot along the sky,
At intervals. It is an hour to teach
Vain man his insignificance; and yet,

Though all the elements in their might have met,
At every pause comes ringing on my ear
A sterner murmur, and I seem to hear
The voice of Silence, sounding from her throne
Of darkness mightier than all-but all alone-

BARRY CORNWALL.

Two voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, liberty!
There came a tyrant and with holy glee

Thou fought'st against him; but hast vainly striven:
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmur's heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft :
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left;
For high soul'd maid, what sorrow would it be
That mountain floods should thunder as before,
And ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful voice be heard by thee!

Does Fiction exceed Reality?

WORDSWORTH.

Bacon, speaking of Magic, says, "Surely he shall not much err, who shall say, that this kind of magic is as far differing in truth of nature, from such a knowledge as we require, as the Books of the Jests of Arthur of Britain, or of Hugh of Burdeaux, differs from Cæsar's Commentaries in truth of story. For it is manifest, that Cæsar did greater things de vero,' than they durst feign of their Heroes; but he did them not in that fabulous manner." And, in his Novum Organum, Art. 87, after having mentioned various vain imaginations, he says, "The truth is, there seems to be the same difference in the doctrines of philosophy, between these vanities, and the real arts; as there is between the historical narrations of the exploits of Julius Cæsar, or Alexander the Great, and the achievements of Amadis de Gaul, or Arthur of Britain. For those celebrated emperors are found, in fact, to have accomplished greater things, than the other shadowy heroes are even feigned to have done; and yet this by such means as are no way fabulous or monstrous.'

William Wordsworth, in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, says, "Whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt but that the language which it will suggest to him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the Poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in himself."

In a modern novel there is the following passage:"Were a thousandth part of the living romances of the time to be given to the world, those inventions which have staggered credulity would be pronounced tame and insipid, and all would declare what every one can vouch from his own experience, that romance is the mere commonplace of life, and, like some of the general phenomena of nature, is incredible only to those who do not examine into that which forms the very essence of their own being."

Which are the greatest, the pleasures of imagination or of reality?

In the address to the reader in the Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon thus concludes: "This work of Natural History is the world, as God made it, and not as men have made it, for it hath nothing of imagination."

That there are pleasures of imagination, who can doubt? Who can think, without delight, of the Lady in Comus, or of Ariel?

Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip's bell I lie.

So far from doubting the existence of these pleasures, it is obvious that they are so intense, as, without the greatest caution, to absorb and mislead the mind.

"be

"Great pleasures," says Philosophy, "are only for extraordinary occasions." May I," says the old maxim, wise enough to write one poem, and wise enough not to write more than one."

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy-
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride:

Of him who walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough along the mountain side.
By our own spirits we are deified:

We poets, in our youth, begin in gladness,

But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.

WORDSWORTH.

The question, therefore, is not whether there are pleasures of imagination, or whether these pleasures, when properly