THE three greatest natural geniuses of Britain hitherto, have been a player, a tinker, and a gauger, Shakspeare, Bunyan and Burns. It is marvellous to think of the Divinæ particula aura passing by palaces and courts as in scorn, and shedding its selectest influences on heads not only uncrowned, but actually loaded by a penumbra of contempt, and the "foregone conclusion" of three of the most unpoetical of professions. Marvellous, and yet not, perhaps, to remain for ever unparalleled; for would our readers believe, that the three most rising poets of our day are a brewer, a wine merchant, and a seller of shawls? Verb. sat. sap. Facts like these prove unquestionably, that poetry is a gift, not an art; that poeta nascitur non fit; that genius, like the will of that Being of whose breath it is a minor inspiration, is sovereign, and like the wind, bloweth where it listeth; and that to feel contempt for any lawful trade is a vulgarism The Works of John Bunyan, with an Introduction to each Treatise, Notes, and a Sketch of his Life, Times and Contemporaries. Edited by George Offer, Esq. Vols. I and II, royal 8vo. Glasgow: Blackie and Son. VOL. XXVI. NO. I. and fallacy liable to the exposure and reversal of the Almighty himself. Shakspeare might have been a chimneysweep instead of a stage-player; Burns might have been a hind instead of a farmer holding his own plough; and Bunyan a camp-suttler, instead of a soldier in the parliamentary army. It had been the same to the great breath, which, in poetry as in religion, seems to search about, to wait long, and to " return according to its circuits," in order, by chosing the weak and the base things, yea, and the very nonentities of this world, to bring to nought the things that are, and to confound the things that are mighty. The walls of the seventh heaven of invention are not to be scaled by mere ambition, or art; inspiration, if genuine, descends from above, and in descending, must, like the lightning, be permitted its own proud and imperial choice. Let, then, the stage-player, the tinker, and the gauger, appear for a moment togethand Spaniard looking man, with tall forehead, er upon our stage. The first is a swarthy sharp sidelong eyes, dark hair curling over his lips and chin, and firm deep cut nostril. 1 The second has a fresh complexion, auburn | locks, round brow, hair on his upper lip after the old English fashion, and sparkling glowing eyes, not the least like those of a dreamer, but resembling rather the eyes of "some hot amourist" as John Woodvil hath it. The third has a broad low brow palpitating with thought and suffering, eyes, shivering in their great round orbs with emotion, like the star Venus in the orange west, nostril slightly curved upward, dusky skin, black masses of hair, and dimpled, undecisive chin and cheek. All three have imagination as their leading faculty, but that of the player is wide as the Globe; that of the tinker is intense, almost to lunacy; and that of the gauger is narrow and vivid as a stream of forked lightning. All three have strong intellect, but the intellect of the one is capacious, that of the other casuistic, and that of the third clear. All are partially educated, but Shakspeare's culture is that of the society of his age, Bunyan's that of solitary reading, and Burns' of a compound of both. All are men of "one Book," Shakspeare's being the universe, Bunyan's the Bible, and Burns' the ballad poetry of Scotland. All are men of intensely ardent temperament, which in Shakspeare is subdued by the width of the mind in which the furnace glows, which in Bunyan becomes a purged flame, but which in poor Burns bursts out of all restraint into a destructive conflagration. In the works of all, materiem superat opus, the genius of Shakspeare flaming out of mean structures of farce and tragicomedy, Bunyan's power overflowing the banks of narrow controversial treatises, and the great soul of Burns o'er-informing the tenement of fugitive poems, jeux d'esprits, satires, and semi-scandalous ballads. All sprang from the people, but while Shakspeare and Burns belonged to its upper stratum, Bunyan appeared amid its lowest dregs, like a new creation amid the slush of chaos. All had something of a religious tendency, but while in Shakspeare it takes a vague diffusive form, and in Burns never amounts to much more than what he himself calls "an idiot piety," in Bunyan it becomes a deep burning principle of thought and action, at once swallowing up and sanctifying his native genius. The fate of the three was curious and characteristic. Shakspeare, the sublime stageplayer, outliving his early self, with those vsterious errors which are partially revealed ́s sonnets, subsided into a decent, retired, Julgent gentleman, like a dull, sleepy, vening following a day of blended storm and splendor. Burns, after many a vain attempt to rally against the misfortunes and sins of his life and temperament, fell down at last their proud recalcitrating victim, dying and making but dubious signs; while John Bunyan, strong in supernal might, victorious over his tendencies, having bound his very madness in chains, and turned his tears and tortures into the elements of hope and triumph, crossed the black river, singing in concert with the shining ones, and passed into eternity, perfect through suffering, and resembling rather one of its own native children than a poor burdened sinner from the City of Destruction. Philosophers might speculate long and vainly on the causes of those very different destinies. Our theory is the simple Christian one:-God endowed the three with almost commensurate powers, but one only, through patient struggle and solemn search, reached the blessed hope and new life of Christianity. And we come to the farther analysis and illustration of Bunyan's genius, with this exulting thought we are not about to speak of a ray which has wandered, or even of a magnificent world unfinished, unnamed, unbaptised of God, but of a star once astray, but which returned and received a place in the great galaxy of the worshipping and holy heavens." It is curious to mark the slow and gradual progress of this man's fame, when compared with the rapid growth of his reputation. It was to some extent the same with Shakspeare and Burns. William Shakspeare was very popular in his lifetime, for the sake of the humor and geniality of his plays, but it took a century or two for the world to see that he was the greatest poet that ever lived. Burns' wild and witty and pathetic poems pervaded all Scotland like the winds of April, as swift and as soft; put forty years had to pass ere Carlyle ventured to pronounce him the first man, in genius, his country had ever produced. Bunyan's first part of the " Pilgrim" was speedily translated into other languages, as well as widely circulated in his own; but nearly two hundred years revolved ere any critic was hardy enough to call it a work of genius. Previously to this it was named and praised with misgiving, and in cold and timid terms. Wonderful book for a tinker; clever allegory; pity it is so Calvinistic; considerable dramatic power in it; an excellent book for the vulgar." Such were some of the morceaux of criticism with which the eighteenth century bestrewed it. Dr. Johnson, to be sure, praised it for its invention and the conduct of its story, but laid too much stress ately, not been perpetuated, for the two, who in modern times most resembled him in this quality, wanting Bunyan's ballast, became morbid, if not mad. We refer to Blake and Shelley. In Bunyan, at the period at least when he wrote his works, it was a power healthy as the vision of the eagle, and yet peculiar and inimitable as the eyeless intuitions of clairvoyance-that blind goddess who is reported to see so far. upon the mere popularity it had acquired; | he saw visions as well as dreamed dreams, and and though he compared its opening passage that this perilous faculty did not unhinge his to the first lines of Dante, he seemed igno- mind, owing to the strength of his bodily rant of the author's other works, and pro- constitution, the simplicity of his habits, and bably regarded the "Pilgrim's Progress" as that vigorous intellect which burned yet was a kind of lusus naturæ- an exception and not consumed amid the blaze of his imaginnot an expression of the general character of ation. But if ever a man since the prophets the author's mind. Scott says of it, in rather of Israel deserved, in a lower sense, the name a disparaging tone, that "it rarely fails to of "seer," it was John Bunyan. It was as make an impression upon children and per- if his brain throbbed and thought in his eye, sons of the lower rank of life." Campbell every motion of which seemed "scintillating compares Bunyan to Spenser, but it is with soul." If this objectiveness might be termed a patronizing air, and he seems to start back, diseased, it was the divine disease of Dante, affrighted, at the "sound himself hath made." of Spenser, and of Michael Angelo-a disCowper, indeed, long before, had sung the ease perfectly compatible with strength of "Ingenious Dreamer," in worthy strains; judgment, and even with severity of purpose but it required the tongue of Coleridge, the-but the infection of which has, unfortupens of Macaulay, and Montgomery, and the pencils of Martin, Melville, and David Scott, not to speak of the excellent lives by Philip, Southey, and others, fairly to elevate him to that position, as an unconscious artist, whence it were hopeless now to dislodge him, and before which the intellectual and the Christian world universally and emulously bend. We are not sure but the history of all works of profound genius and permanent influence is precisely similar. They are not, in general, as Wordsworth thinks, ignored or despised at first, but consisting, as all great productions must, of the splendid and the deep, the bright foam above and the strong billow below, their brilliance attracts in their own age, while their profounder qualities fascinate the future. It was so with Homer, with Eschylus, with Sophocles, with Lucretius, with Dante, with Spenser, with Milton, with Dryden, with Cowper, with Byron, with Wordsworth himself. All these obtained reputation in their lifetimes, for properties in their writings of interest, or elegance, or oddity, or splendor, which were not their rarest or most characteristic, and all afterwards grew up to that fame, which now "waits like a menial" on their immortal names. To this there are exceptions, but we believe it to be the rule, and a rule, moreover, in strict accordance with the principles which prevail through the universe. We see long before we can weigh the star. In analyzing the mind of Bunyan, the first quality which strikes us is the thorough equality and almost identity of the subjective and the objective. Not only are thought and imagery one, but imagery and reality seem one also. He does not think, but imagine-not imagine, but see. We have no doubt whatever, that many of his pictures, like Blake's, stood out from the eye; that He In close connexion with, and dependence on, this peculiar faculty, is his child-like simplicity, or unconsciousness of self. This is, we think, always connected with real sight. Who is proud of the landscape which he beholds, however pleased he may be with the spectacle? To one who actually sees, there is nothing for it but a cry-a Eureka-if he does not first fall down as a dead man. may, indeed, afterwards begin to speculate on the power and perspicacity of his eye; but he will have little leisure and less inclination to pursue this, if visions after visions, new and varied, continue to press forward in panoramic vividness and succession upon his soul. As to "dare, and to dare, and to dare," was Danton's method for a revolutionist, so to "see, and to see, and to see," till the eye be shut in death, or rather opened on eternal realities, is the method and the history of a poet. Nay, the fact that these sights are frequently terrific and bewildering, is itself enough to check, if not to crush, the vanity of vision. And how often must the dreamer, as he awakes, like Jacob, exclaim-"How dreadful is this place;" and not always, like Jacob, be able to add "It is none other than the gate of heaven!" Perhaps rather he has been led past the mouth of the pit, and his cry has been not that of exultation, but of anguish and despair. |