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nerbaps to high poetic aspirations ; I refer to the neglect of the poetic vision of nature ! external nature , the sights and sounds of this material world , the glory of which proclaimed in divine inspiration , is ever associated with " the consecration and the poet ' s dream . " Who can question , without questioning the Creator ' s wisdom and troodnesB that the things of earth and sky have their ministry on man's spiritual nature ? ' We may not be able to measure or define it , but it is a . perpetual and universal influence , and it must be for good . Most of all is it recognised by the poet , prepared as he is r ' " By his intense conceptions to receive , Deeply the lesson deep of love which he Whom nature , by whatever means , has taught To feel intensely , cannot but receive . "— Wordsworth .
No great poet , perhaps I may say no great writer , is without the deep sense of the beauty and glory of the universe , the earth that is trod on , the heavens that are gated at . It is an element of the poetry of the Bible . The ^ classical poetry of antiquity shows it ; it abounds , in vernal exuberance , in Chaucer ; you meet with it perpetually in Spenser , and Shakspeare , and Milton , and in the prose of Bacon and Taylor . But when we come to the next generation , particularly of poets , the spiritual communion with nature was at an end . They hold not vision of sunlight or starlight , but were busy within doors with thing 3 of lamp-light-or candle-light . They took not heed of mountain or seaside or the open field , and nature ' s music there , but city , " the town , " street and house , were all in all to them : " The soft blue sky did never melt Into their hearts . "
If it can be shown , as it undoubtedly can , that thoughtful , genial communion with Nature is an accompaniment of all poetry of the highest order , in all ages , surely we may infer that a literary era which is deficient in this element is the era of a lower literature . Now , it has been ascertained , by careful examination , that , with two or three unimportant exceptions , " the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and Thomson's Seasons ( a period of about sixty years ) does not contain a single new image of external nature ; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet had been steadily fixed upon his object—much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination . "
Mr . Reed has noted the fact , but he is quite blind as to the cause . English Poetry , like German Poetry , is great only under the inspiration of nature ; granted . There must be some deep-seated cause of this , and the question first presenting itself to the philosophic mind is—Does the cause lie in Poetry as Poetry , or in the National Character and Education ? Mr . Reed at once jumps to the conclusion that the cause lies in the nature of Poetry , and boldly asserts " that it can undoubtedly be shown" by the evidence of " poetry of the highest order in all ages . " The assertion , however , is directly contradicted by facts . The Greek Tragedians surely belong to the highest order of poets , but in them there is no trace of that " thoughtful communion with nature" which characterises the Teutonic poets . Lucretius aud Catullus , Virgil and Ovid , were very considerable
poets , but they would have been utterly at a loss to understand the modern feeling for Nature . Corneille and Racine are put out of court , because it is the fashion in England to deny them the title of great poets—principally on the very ground of their not haying that sentiment for nature which our poets express . Enough has been indicated , however , to show that the cause we are seeking cannot lie in Poetry ns such , for no one will be bold enough to deny the claim of Sophocles to the rank of a poet of the highest order . Having thus narrowed the question to a question of National Tendency , our philosophical inquirer would then find that the question thus narrowed was still a very wide one — so wide that one must not open it in these columns . ; content if some ingenious reader be set upon the track to find the clue for himself .
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THE HISTORY OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE . The History of Napoleon Bonaparte . By J . S . C . Abbott . Sampson Low , Son , and Co . " The history of Napoleon has often been written by his enemies . This narrative is from the pen of one who reveres and loves the Emperor . ^ The writer admires Napoleon because he abhorred war , and did everything in his power to avert , that dire calamity ; because ho merited the sovereignty to which the suU ' rages of a grateful nation elevated him ; because he consecrated the most extraordinary energies ever conferred upon a mortal to promote the prosperity of his country ; because he was regardless of luxury , and cheerfully endured all toil and all hardships that he might elevate and bless the masses of mankind ; because he had a high sense of honour , revered religion , respected the rights of conscience , and nobly advocated equality of privileges and tho universal brotherhood of man . " Such is Mr .
Abbott ' s exordium to the most inflated and indisoriminating panegyric that has ever damaged the reputation of tho great Napoleon , It must be admitted , however , that tho maps and engravings which illustrate these two teeming volumes arc excellent of their kind , and some of the latter possess true artistic merit . Tho numerous anecdotee , also , with which every page is enlivened , if not always very authentic , are at least amusing and pointed . But the work possesses one great and unpardonable detect . The author is ever indulging in spasmodic attempts at fine writing , but , while aiming at the sublime , achieves onl y the ridiculous . So many are tho instances of this meretriciously ornate style , that it is difficult to select tho most salient : a fevr , however , will suffice . This is the description of the taking of Toulon , ¦ which wo would respectfully recommend to tho serious attention of " our special correspondent *) " in the Crimea , while awaiting the fall of Scbastopol : "—•
Sheila were exploding , and hot ahot fulling in tho thronged dwellings . Children ill tho cradle , and maidens in their chambcra , had limb to in from limb by the dreadful missiles . Conflagrations wore continually bursting forth , burning the mangled and the dying , while piercing ehriukti of dismay and of ugony nroso even abovo tho thunders of the' terrific cannonade . Tim wind howled in harmony with tho awful ¦ w » , and a cold and drenching rain awept the btroots . One cannot contemplate B « klh a conflict without wondering that u God of muroy could have allowed hia children thus brutally to deform this fair creation with tho spirit of the world of woe . For tho anguish indicted upon fluttering humanity that night a dread responsibility must roat somewhere . A thousand hounea worn made dciolate . Thousands of hearts Were lacerated and crushed , with ovary hope of life blighted for over . . . .
Cannonballs tore their way through family groups . Bombs exploded upon the thronged decks of the ships , and in the crowded boats . Many boats were thus sunk , and tie shrieks of drowning women and children pierced through the heavy thunders of the cannonade . Husbands and wives , parents and children , brothers and sisters , were separated from each other , and ran to and fro upon the shore in delirious agony . The daughter was left mangled and dying upon the' beach ; the father was borne by the rush into one boat , the wife into another , and no one knew who was living , and who , mercifully , was dead . The ships , the magazines , the arsenals , were all now in flames . It is no easy task to " cap" this terrific melodramatic scene , "worthy of the Surrey Gardens , unless we turn to the bombardment of Copenhagen : — Nothing can be imagined more awful , more barbarous , than the bombardment of a crowded city . Shot and shells have no mercy . They are heedless of the cry at mothers and of maidens . They turn not from the bed of languishing nor from the cradle of infancy . ... A tremendous fire of howitzers , bombs , and rockets burst upon the city . The very earth trembled beneath the terrific thunders of the can- : nonade . During all the long hours of this dreadful night , and until noon of the ensuing day , the destruction and the carnage continued . The city was now on fire ia various quarters . Hundreds of dwellings were blown to pieces . The streets were red with the blood of women and children . Vast columns of smoke rose from the burning capital . . . . There was no place of safety for helpless infancy or for decrepit age The terrific shells , crushing through the roofs of the houses , descended to the cellars ; bursting with thunder peal , they buried the mangled forms of the family in the ruins of their dwellings . Here is a picture in the mawkishly domestic style of sentimentalism : — Letitia , the mother of Napoleon , was a woman of extraordinary endowments . She had herself hardly passed the period of childhood , being but nineteen years of age , when she heard the first wailing cry of Napoleon , her second-born , and pressed the helpless babe , with thanksgiving and prayer , to her maternal bosom . She -was a young mother to train and educate such a child for his unknown but exalted destiny . She encircled , in protecting arms , the nursing babe , as it fondled a mother's bosom with those little hands , which , in after years , grasped sceptres and uphove thrones , and hewed down armies with resistless sword . She taught those infant lips to lisp " papa" " mamma" —those lips at whose subsequent command all Europe was moved , and whose burning , glowing , martial words fell like trumpet-tones upon the world , burling nation upon nation in the shock of war . She taught those feeble feet to make their first trembling essays upon the carpet , rewarding the successful endeavour with a mother ' s kiss and a mother ' s caress—those feet which afterward strode over the sands of the desert , and waded through the blood-stained snows of Russia , and tottered , in the infirmities of sickness and death , on the misty , barren , stormswept crags of St . Helena . She instilled ... Ohe ! jam satis est . And yet we cannot resist the temptation of describing the fight on Mount Tarwis in Mr . Abbott ' s own grandiloquent style : — Wintry winds swept the bleak and icy eminence , and a clear , cold , cloudless sky canopied the two armies as , with fiendlike ferocity , they hurled themselves upon each other . The thunder of artillery reverberated above the clouds . The shout of onset and the shrieks of the wounded were heard upon eminences which even the wing of the eagle had rarely attained . Squadrons of cavalry fell upon fields of ice , and men and horses were precipitated into fathomless depths below . The snowdrifts of Mount Tarwis were soon crimsoned with blood , and the warm current from human hearts congealed with the eternal glaciers , and there , embalmed in ice , . it long and mournfully testified of man ' s inhumanity to man . Mr . Abbott can also moralise , but always in the same sesquipedalian strain : — If war has its chivalry and its pageantry , it has also revolting hideousness and demoniac woe . The young , the noble , the sanguine were writhing there in agony . Bullets respect not beauty . They tear out the eye , and shatter the jaw , and rend the cheek , and transform the human face divine into an aspect upon which one cannot gaze but with horror . From the field of Marengo many a young man returned to hi » home so mutilated as no longer to be recognised by friends , and passed a weary life in repulsive deformitj-. Mercy abandons the arena of battle . The frantic war-horse , with iron hoof , tramples upon the mangled face , the throbbing and inflamed wounds , the splintered bones , and heeds not the shriek of torture . Crushed into the bloody mire by the ponderous wheels of heavy artillery , the victim of barbaric war thinks of mother and father , and sister , and home , and shrieks , and moans , and dies ; his body is stripped by the vagabonds who follow the camp ; his naked , mangled corpse is covered with a few snovelsful of earth , and left as food for vultures and for dogs , and he is forgotten for ever— -and it is called glory . After this , who would not turn a deaf ear to the fife and drum—a blind eye to the dashing white sergeant ? Mr . Abbott must surely be a member of the Peace Society , or perhaps he is an agent of Russia , and thus artfully labours to depress the martial ardour of our youth . It is impossible to calculate the dire consequences that may ensue should this big-sounding book find its way into our bai-racks— if the gallant fellows are proof against desertion , they will assuredly slumber at their posts . The very angels ia heaven shudder at the fearful scenes enacted here below . The siege of Aci « was peculiarly distressing to them : — - To the pure spirits of a happier world , in the sweet companionship of celestial mansions , loving and blessing each other , it must have appeared a spectacle worthy of a Pandemonium . And yet the human heart is so wicked th « t it can often , forgetting tho atrocity of such a scone , find a strango pleasure iu the contemplation of ita energy and its heroism . Wo are indeed a fallen race , Mr . Abbott ' s notion , however , of tho " celestial mansions" would seem to bo somewhat Virgilian , for ho thus notices the " unexpected meeting" the shades of Desaix and Kleber in the Elysian fields :- ^> The spirits of these illustrious men , these blood-stained warriors , thus unexpectedly met in the spirit-land . There they wander now . How impenetrable the veil which shuts their destiny from our view . Tho soul longs for a clearer vision of that fardistant world , peopled by the innumerable host of tho mighty dead . Thoro Napoleon now dwells . Docs ho retain his intellectual supremacy ? Do his general * gather around him with love und homage V Has hia pensive spirit , &c , &c . But enough and to spare of this stilted nonsense . Wo would only char ritably hope that Napoleon's » pensive spirit" is not doomed to re <« I incso two volumes of unmeaning rhapsody . Mr . Abbott should learn * httt ^"" V is not eloquence , and that the longest words in tho dictionary wiH tan to inspire enthusiasm if they do not well out of the . ^ undanco of tl 10 he art . llcaidcs , his mind is sufficiently narrow and pedantic to be token up _ wit the Mitfordinu affectation as to » ibnetio authogrnleo . Vo J " ^?^ * . . with such impertinences as these : " traveling , " " reveled , equaled ,
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8 BgTEMi * E » l ; 1855 . ] THE LEAD B B . 845
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 1, 1855, page 845, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2104/page/17/
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