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despotism , as the only objects stately or sacred— -as the stay of man ' s hopes —as the buttresses of his frail nature . His readers were led to believe that , if these things were cast down , mail would be left in utter nakedness , would feel
that his glory had departed , and nothing prominent , nothing remarkable , nothing sublime , would remain to love or to revere . To this , indeed , it might be sufficient to answer , that there is a price at which even the golden images of fancy are dear ; and that the
individual lives * of millions may scarcely be compensated by the splendour of the sacrifice in which they are devoted . But I protest against the principle which gives to the cause of power a monygpoly of imaginative charms . I mean to contend that poetry is not
* ' right royal , " but right human—that it does not " put might before right ' —that if the necessities of society did not require thrones , dominations and powers , their abolition would leave no void in the heart , but that far nobler
and more venerable things would remain to elevate the soul and kindle the affections . It is perfectly true that the imagination loves to accumulate . But there is no analogy between its operations and those of material strength . It ,
indeed , heightens the impression of objects by encircling them with associations of beauty , not inherent in them in nature , but yet naturally capable of intimate union . It touches its subject with a tenderer loveliness , yet , instead of weakening by a crowd of sensations ,
its simple emotion imprints it more vividly on the soul . There is nothing in tliis process , which is but a heightening of the beautiful and the grand , at all similar to the advances or the triumphs of earthly . might . For all the ideas which mere power gives , unadorned and unrelieved by thoge * ' attributes in which fancy itself jsj ^ thes it , are of mere strength , force ^ aii d vastness . In these things there is nothing poetical , nothing affecting , nothing intellectually grand . The intensity of power may-be f § lt , its iron may enter into the soul ; but jit presents us with no goodly image to console us amicj&t our actual distresses . The sternest o £
ppets have not affected us by ideas of mere power ; but in their most sublime pictures of might * , have sought to
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delight by the accumulation " of beautiful images and romantic ? allusions . In their poetry , the eternal mountain is not seen merely in the vastness of its size ; but lifts ijfcs head into the clouds , clothed with a thousand , woods
affording delicious resting-places among its steeps , and , in the very ruggedness of its precipices tinted by a thousand hues of soft beauty , and reflecting the over-hanging trees * most delicate shado wings . Let us take , by way of example , Milton ' s picture of the fallen archangel : — His ponderous shield , Ethereal temper , massy , large and round , Behind him cast ; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon , whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole " , Or in Valdarno , to descry new lands , Rivers or mountains in her spotty globed His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills , to be the mast Of some great ammiral were but a
wand—He walk'd with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marie I This is a description , from the loftiest pen , of the most gloomy of beings , endowed with prodigious and awful energies . But does the poet overwhelm
us with a mere idea of personal size or of naked power ? On the contrary , every line teems with images , and allusions of the most exquisite and tender beauty . The shield is not merely of broad circumference , but it hangs on his shoulders like the moon in ether ,
with all its sweet influences and cWra grandeur ; and not only like the moon as gazed on by common eyes , but as viewed by a Tuscan artist from places whose very names " are silver sweet as lovers * tongues atxught . " The spear is not only represeiiteu as so vast that
the most stupendous of pines is a wand in comparison wjth it , but is compared with the tallest pine hewn among Norwegian hills ^ apd hewii to be the €€ mas | of soijje high admiral . ^ Thus in the very parenthetical comparison , axe we conveyed to the silent eminences in the depth of Scandinavian forests . Thus , the ; pi $ e < Uewn there consecrated by , all tfiose romantic associations which atfe connected wi ^ U thq
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96 The Nonconformist . No . XVI .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1820, page 96, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2485/page/32/
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