of the sensuous Present only—what they remember and what they anticipate, belong both to this present life—scarcely to the classical past, and little indeed to the theological future. The best of them is rather an essayist on criticism, than an essayer in poetry."
As we may have something to say of this "Lecture," and eke of the "Oration on Coleridge" another day, we shall now merely remark that the world will not think the worse of Pope, Campbell, and Rogers, because they "never dream of publishing themselves for men inspired." Men inspired need not take that trouble; for sooner or later—and a few years are of no moment—they will be numbered with the greater or lesser prophets. Men not inspired, but puffed up, may publish themselves for Isaiahs, and yet find themselves in the Balaam Box.
It may be very sinful "to despise the passive;" but we cannot think it a serious misfortune to any man "to be unconscious of the neuter." Be that as it may, "John A. Heraud, Esq.," who has often "published himself for a man inspired," is here guilty of a gross offence to Campbell. His whole Lecture is a series of plagiarisms—as we, at our leisure, shall show—and he must steal even his insults. But the Quarterly Reviewer always writes like a gentleman—here Mr Heraud does not; and, servilely adopting another man's error, he pompously emits it as his own truth. He talks of the "purlieus of the Eternal," and the Last Day, as confidently as of the purlieus of Epping Forest, and the Day of the Hunt. We see the curl of contempt on Campbell's poetic lips—and in his poetic eye the smile of disdain.
"Gertrude of Wyoming," continues the Quarterly Reviewer, "is a more equal and better sustained effort, but contains fewer of those separable passages of mingled terseness and beauty, which form the charm of the Pleasures of Hope. The verse is extremely melodious, and a hue of tenderness is suffused over the whole. The scene it presents is one of almost pastoral simplicity; the feelings dealt with are few, and of no complicated nature; and the characters introduced are such as require no peculiar powers of discrimination. The theme is well adapted to a poet more accomplished in the mechanism of his art, than versed in the passions of mankind. That quite imaginary personage,
'The Stoic of the woods, the man without a tear,'
is, for the same reason that we gave when speaking of the love-lorn maniac, a fortunate subject for his powers. It is a blemish in the piece that the story, which is sufficiently simple, should have been told in so obscure and abrupt a manner, that the reader is perplexed, and his attention distracted, in putting together the few incidents of which it is composed."
This is poor stuff—and 'tis not "an honest attempt to determine the question." Having tried "to take the shine out of" the Pleasures of Hope, the appraiser turns the "separable passages of mingled terseness and beauty" in that Poem against Gertrude of Wyoming—which being a tale "of almost pastoral simplicity"—with "a hue of tenderness suffused over the whole," did not, in the nature of things, admit of the presence of that of which the absence is noticed as a defect. The character of the poem, however, would have been, on the whole, not ill expressed in the above passage, but for the captious and carping qualifyings that make praise almost look like censure. Let the sweet and bitter waters—as they issue from different sources—keep their own channel: with such mixture there is no refreshment in the cup.
"The Stoic of the woods, the man without a tear—"
is not "quite an imaginary personage." Outalissi is Logan Americo-Indianized by genius into the ideal—but not out of the sphere of our deepest human sympathies.
"'And I could weep;'—the Oneyda chief
His descant wildly thus begun:
'But that I may not stain with grief
The death-song of my Father's son.'"
True to nature!—'tis a creation of the highest poetry—and ruthful indeed are the events that wring out such tears
"He bids me dry the last—the first—
The only tears that ever burst
From Outalissi's soul!"
