THE CHURCHYARD AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 217

Smitten while all the promises of life

Are opening round her; those of middle age,
Cast down while confident in strength they stand,
Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,
And more secure, by very weight of all
That, for support, rests on them; the decayed
And burthensome; and lastly, that poor few
Whose light of reason is with age extinct;
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,
The earliest summoned and the longest spared-
Are here deposited, with tribute paid
Various, but unto each some tribute paid;
As if amid these peaceful hills and groves
Society were touched with kind concern,
And gentle Nature grieved that one should die;'
Or if the change demanded no regret

Observed the liberating stroke-and blessed."

And here in the central shrine of the Poet's Longest Theme, and by the Grave Stone where lie his remains, we close our reminiscences of the Land of Wordsworth.

CHAPTER VII.

WORDSWORTH AS AN ARTIST.

"For to say nothing of his natural gifts, he has cultivated himself and his art, he has studied how to live and how to write, with a fidelity and unwearied earnestness, of which there is no other living instance; of which among British Poets especially, Wordsworth alone offers any resemblance. And this in our view is the result. To our minds in those soft, melodious imaginations of his, there is embodied the wisdom which is proper to this time; the beautiful religious wisdom, which may still with something of its old impressiveness speak to the whole soul; still in these hard unbelieving, utilitarian days reveal to us glimpses of the Unseen but not Unreal World, that so the Actual and the Ideal may again meet together, and clear Knowledge be again wedded to Religion, in the life and business of men."

THOMAS CARLYLE.-Miscellanies; Goethe.

"I must not be reproached with here confounding beauty with truth. I am very far from wishing that a work of art should be nothing but a true copy of the original. No it ought to be true, but it should also be beautiful, not by copying objects as they really are, but by bringing to light the idea which is in them."

WOLFGANG Menzel.

"From beauty infinitely growing
Upon a mind with love o'erflowing

To sound the depths of every art

That seeks its wisdom thro' the heart."

THE subject with which we have headed this Chapter is indeed that of our whole book; we desire to pass in review some of those principles on which the Artist's

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219

power is founded-those under-currents and streams of thought which give efficacy and enchantment to the painting; thus to illustrate some of those ideas in which the greatness of genius is supposed to consist. And first must we acknowledge, that as the Poet rises into the Artist, he passes beyond the impulses of ordinary humanity to a transcendental power,-the power of knowing things, and men by looking at them from a more exalted and ideal stand point. This is the greatness of the Artist; he sees things as they should be, rather than as they are, and seeing them so, he best illustrates their true character. Exact copies and imitations are never the best likenesses; the Painter makes the best likeness from his own genius, merely taking the outline and supplying the expression of the varying lights and shades which give the character to the Painting, or to the Portrait. The highest art is essentially Ideal, it exhibits the results and consequences of character, it shows the essence of a principle of conduct. So the Poet idealises Evil, as Goethe, or Good, as Schiller, or Passion, as Byron, or Nature and Abstract Humanity, as Wordsworth. And in a word, we may say that the Poet sees Nature from Law, not from Phænomenaobserves the beat of the Heart more than the colour of the Skin, and enters into the organic and vital life of things, and men, and beings, rather than the mechanical and occasional combinations. The inferior Poet is merely a Physiognomist, he only observes features, the great Poet, the Artist is a Physiologist :-and as the study of Physiology is in its first pages very re

220

THE THREE WORLDS.

pulsive, so also is the study of Art in relation to Humanity. It is sad work when we begin to dissect Beauty, but if we look steadily, Beauty we shall find has its Palingenesia.

The Poet sways a sceptre over Three Worlds-Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; of these He is the Ministerthe Priest-the Expositor to men; you may define these Worlds to be those of Fact, Form, and Fitness. The first concerns itself with what is, and with all that is, apart from any other consideration; the inquisitive Spirit pries into all the recesses of Being, the most attractive, the most repulsive regions of horror, doleful shades, realms of wild and wondrous Enchantment; common things, common fields and objects, truth concerns herself with them all, and the Poet is interested in whatever is True, or possibly True; the truth of all nature is interesting to the Poet, the intricacies of material nature, the intricacies of moral nature, the recesses, curious and astonishing, of Mind. Beauty concerns herself with what is agreeable in Emotion and Expression, in Object and Conception, and by a very natural movement of the mind, with what is disagreeable too; with the forms most repulsive to the senses; with the features which awaken alarm and terror within the soul; with the sounds that startle, and the sights that appal. While Goodness brings to the eye the fitnesses of things, and their infinite relations, and is found by the mind that can look deepest into the heart of Nature, and then it is found to be the innermost core of all being, the fountain and the spring of being;

THE THREE WORLDS.

221

the origin, the impelling principle of all the rest. Beauty lies in the Truth of things, and both in their Goodness.

But the Poet should be tried by his relation to all these Worlds; he is a great Poet in the degree in which he Perceives the Truthful, Paints the Beautiful, and Illustrates and Advances the Good. It is a great thing to do this in any World; it is a great thing to do this in the realm of dead Nature, if we dare to speak of Nature as ever dead; but the most truly great Evidence of Power and Strength, is in the Empire over the moral World, in making the Human Spirit the Platform upon which all these shapes of Reality, and Magnificence, and Beneficence, exert their power, and spread their glorious territories of Light and Shade. Hence the Dramatist is the Highest Poet, for he vindicates God within the Human Soul, and the Dramatist who attains to the Highest Power of Art is he who shews the Powers of the Human Spirit most in alliance with Virtue; most potent in subjecting evil passions and ideas to the spell and the mastery of a nature instinctive with the love of Goodness, and therefore alive to every impression of the Beautiful, and responding eagerly to every indication of Truth to Nature-Truth to Moral Nature. This is the Test of the Poet's insight, and his power to make the reader feel that he is in the presence of these, is the surest evidence that he has himself entered those hidden realms and conversed with the purest forms of being.

If this then is a fair mode of estimating a Poet, it is