Footnote
1:
� 'Or little,' &c.: from Gray's
Elegy
.
The Hares a Fable
| Yes, yes, I grant the sons of Earth Are doom'd to trouble from their birth. We all of sorrow have our share; But say, is yours without compare? Look round the world; perhaps you'll find Each individual of our kind Press'd with an equal load of ill, Equal at least: look further still, And own your lamentable case Is little short of happiness. In yonder hut that stands alone Attend to Famine's feeble moan; Or view the couch where Sickness lies, Mark his pale cheek, and languid eyes; His frame by strong convulsion torn, His struggling sighs, and looks forlorn. Or see, transfixt with keener pangs, Where o'er his hoard the miser hangs; Whistles the wind; he starts, he stares, Nor Slumber's balmy blessing shares; Despair, Remorse, and Terror roll Their tempests on his harass'd soul. But here perhaps it may avail To enforce our reasoning with a tale. Mild was the morn, the sky serene, The jolly hunting band convene, The beagle's breast with ardour burns, The bounding steed the champaign spurns, And Fancy oft the game descries Through the hound's nose and huntsman's eyes, Just then a council of the hares Had met on national affairs. The chiefs were set; while o'er their head The furze its frizzled covering spread. Long lists of grievances were heard, And general discontent appear'd. "Our harmless race shall every savage Both quadruped and biped ravage? Shall horses, hounds, and hunters still Unite their wits to work us ill? The youth, his parent's sole delight, Whose tooth the dewy lawns invite, Whose pulse in every vein beats strong, Whose limbs leap light the vales along, May yet ere noontide meet his death, And lie dismember'd on the heath. For youth, alas! nor cautious age, Nor strength, nor speed eludes their rage. In every field we meet the foe, Each gale comes fraught with sounds of woe; The morning but awakes our fears, The evening sees us bathed in tears. But must we ever idly grieve, Nor strive our fortunes to relieve? Small is each individual's force; To stratagem be our recourse; And then, from all our tribes combined, The murderer to his cost may find No foes are weak whom Justice arms, Whom Concord leads, and Hatred warms. Be roused; or liberty acquire, Or in the great attempt expire." He said no more, for in his breast Conflicting thoughts the voice suppress'd: The fire of vengeance seem'd to stream From his swoln eyeball's yellow gleam. And now the tumults of the war, Mingling confusedly from afar, Swell in the wind. Now louder cries Distinct of hounds and men arise. Forth from the brake, with beating heart, The assembled hares tumultuous start, And, every straining nerve on wing, Away precipitately spring. The hunting band, a signal given, Thick thundering o'er the plain are driven; O'er cliff abrupt, and shrubby mound, And river broad, impetuous bound; Now plunge amid the forest shades, Glance through the openings of the glades; Now o'er the level valley sweep, Now with short step strain up the steep; While backward from the hunter's eyes The landscape like a torrent flies. At last an ancient wood they gain'd, By pruner's axe yet unprofaned. High o'er the rest, by nature rear'd, The oak's majestic boughs appear'd; Beneath, a copse of various hue In barbarous luxuriance grew. No knife had curb'd the rambling sprays, No hand had wove the implicit maze. The flowering thorn, self-taught to wind, The hazel's stubborn stem entwined, And bramble twigs were wreathed around, And rough furze crept along the ground. Here sheltering from the sons of murther, The hares their tired limbs drag no further. But, lo! the western wind ere long Was loud, and roar'd the woods among; From rustling leaves and crashing boughs The sound of woe and war arose. The hares distracted scour the grove, As terror and amazement drove; But danger, wheresoe'er they fled, Still seem'd impending o'er their head. Now crowded in a grotto's gloom, All hope extinct, they wait their doom. Dire was the silence, till, at length, Even from despair deriving strength, With bloody eye and furious look, A daring youth arose and spoke: "O wretched race, the scorn of Fate, Whom ills of every sort await! O cursed with keenest sense to feel The sharpest sting of every ill! Say ye, who, fraught with mighty scheme, Of liberty and vengeance dream, What now remains? To what recess Shall we our weary steps address, Since Fate is evermore pursuing All ways, and means to work our ruin? Are we alone, of all beneath, Condemn'd to misery worse than death? Must we, with fruitless labour, strive In misery worse than death to live? No. Be the smaller ill our choice; So dictates Nature's powerful voice. Death's pang will in a moment cease; And then, all hail, eternal peace!" Thus while he spoke, his words impart The dire resolve to every heart. A distant lake in prospect lay, That, glittering in the solar ray, Gleam'd through the dusky trees, and shot A trembling light along the grot. Thither with one consent they bend, Their sorrows with their lives to end; While each, in thought, already hears The water hissing in his ears. Fast by the margin of the lake, Conceal'd within a thorny brake, A linnet sat, whose careless lay Amused the solitary day. Careless he sung, for on his breast Sorrow no lasting trace impress'd; When suddenly he heard a sound Of swift feet traversing the ground. Quick to the neighbouring tree he flies, Thence trembling casts around his eyes; No foe appear'd, his fears were vain; Pleased he renews the sprightly strain. The hares whose noise had caused his fright, Saw with surprise the linnet's flight. "Is there on earth a wretch," they said, "Whom our approach can strike with dread?" An instantaneous change of thought To tumult every bosom wrought. So fares the system-building sage, Who, plodding on from youth to age, At last on some foundation dream Has rear'd aloft his goodly scheme, And proved his predecessors fools, And bound all nature by his rules; So fares he in that dreadful hour, When injured Truth exerts her power, Some new phenomenon to raise, Which, bursting on his frighted gaze, From its proud summit to the ground Proves the whole edifice unsound. "Children," thus spoke a hare sedate, Who oft had known the extremes of fate, "In slight events the docile mind May hints of good instruction find, That our condition is the worst, And we with such misfortunes curst, As all comparison defy, Was late the universal cry; When, lo! an accident so slight As yonder little linnet's flight, Has made your stubborn hearts confess (So your amazement bids me guess) That all our load of woes and fears Is but a part of what he bears. Where can he rest secure from harms, Whom even a helpless hare alarms? Yet he repines not at his lot; When past, the danger is forgot: On yonder bough he trims his wings, And with unusual rapture sings: While we, less wretched, sink beneath Our lighter ills, and rush to death. No more of this unmeaning rage, But hear, my friends, the words of age: "When, by the winds of autumn driven, The scatter'd clouds fly 'cross the heaven, Oft have we, from some mountain's head, Beheld the alternate light and shade Sweep the long vale. Here, hovering, lowers The shadowy cloud; there downward pours, Streaming direct, a flood of day, Which from the view flies swift away; It flies, while other shades advance, And other streaks of sunshine glance. Thus chequer'd is the life below With gleams of joy and clouds of woe. Then hope not, while we journey on, Still to be basking in the sun; Nor fear, though now in shades ye mourn, That sunshine will no more return. If, by your terrors overcome, Ye fly before the approaching gloom, The rapid clouds your flight pursue, And darkness still o'ercasts your view. Who longs to reach the radiant plain Must onward urge his course amain: For doubly swift the shadow flies, When 'gainst the gale the pilgrim plies. At least be firm, and undismay'd Maintain your ground! the fleeting shade Ere long spontaneous glides away, And gives you back the enlivening ray. Lo, while I speak, our danger past! No more the shrill horn's angry blast Howls in our ear: the savage roar Of war and murder is no more. Then snatch the moment fate allows, Nor think of past or future woes." He spoke; and hope revives; the lake That instant one and all forsake, In sweet amusement to employ The present sprightly hour of joy. Now from the western mountain's brow, Compass'd with clouds of various glow, The sun a broader orb displays, And shoots aslope his ruddy rays. The lawn assumes a fresher green, And dew-drops spangle all the scene. The balmy zephyr breathes along, The shepherd sings his tender song, With all their lays the groves resound, And falling waters murmur round: Discord and care were put to flight, And all was peace and calm delight. |
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 200 210 220 230 240 |
The Wolf and Shepherds. A Fable
written in 1757 and first published in 1766
| Laws, as we read in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. Your simile perhaps may please one With whom wit holds the place of reason: But can you prove that this in fact is Agreeable to life and practice? Then hear, what in his simple way Old Æsop told me t' other day. In days of yore, but (which is very odd) Our author mentions not the period, We mortal men, less given to speeches, Allow'd the beasts sometimes to teach us. But now we all are prattlers grown, And suffer no voice but our own; With us no beast has leave to speak, Although his honest heart should break. 'Tis true, your asses and your apes, And other brutes in human shapes, And that thing made of sound and show, Which mortals have misnamed a beau, (But in the language of the sky Is call'd a two-legg'd butterfly), Will make your very heartstrings ache With loud and everlasting clack, And beat your auditory drum, Till you grow deaf, or they grow dumb. But to our story we return: 'Twas early on a Summer morn, A Wolf forsook the mountain den, And issued hungry on the plain. Full many a stream and lawn he past And reach'd a winding vale at last; Where from a hollow rock he spied The shepherds drest in flowery pride. Garlands were strew'd, and all was gay, To celebrate a holiday. The merry tabor's gamesome sound Provoked the sprightly dance around. Hard by a rural board was rear'd, On which in fair array appear'd The peach, the apple, and the raisin, And all the fruitage of the season. But, more distinguish'd than the rest, Was seen a wether ready drest, That smoking, recent from the flame, Diffused a stomach-rousing steam. Our Wolf could not endure the sight, Courageous grew his appetite: His entrails groan'd with tenfold pain, He lick'd his lips, and lick'd again: At last, with lightning in his eyes, He bounces forth, and fiercely cries: "Shepherds, I am not given to scolding, But now my spleen I cannot hold in. By Jove, such scandalous oppression Would put an elephant in passion. You, who your flocks (as you pretend) By wholesome laws from harm defend, Which make it death for any beast, How much soe'er by hunger press'd, To seize a sheep by force or stealth, For sheep have right to life and health; Can you commit, uncheck'd by shame, What in a beast so much you blame? What is a law, if those who make it Become the forwardest to break it? The case is plain: you would reserve All to yourselves, while others starve. Such laws from base self-interest spring, Not from the reason of the thing—" He was proceeding, when a swain Burst out,—"And dares a wolf arraign His betters, and condemn their measures, And contradict their wills and pleasures? We have establish'd laws, 'tis true, But laws are made for such as you. Know, sirrah, in its very nature A law can't reach the legislature. For laws, without a sanction join'd, As all men know, can never bind; But sanctions reach not us the makers, For who dares punish us, though breakers? 'Tis therefore plain, beyond denial, That laws were ne'er design'd to tie all; But those, whom sanctions reach alone: We stand accountable to none. Besides, 'tis evident, that, seeing Laws from the great derive their being, They as in duty bound should love The great, in whom they live and move, And humbly yield to their desires: 'Tis just what gratitude requires. What suckling, dandled on the lap, Would tear away its mother's pap? But hold—Why deign I to dispute With such a scoundrel of a brute? Logic is lost upon a knave, Let action prove the law our slave." An angry nod his will declared To his gruff yeoman of the guard; The full-fed mongrels, train'd to ravage, Fly to devour the shaggy savage. The beast had now no time to lose In chopping logic with his foes; "This argument," quoth he, "has force, And swiftness is my sole resource." He said, and left the swains their prey, And to the mountains scour'd away. |
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 |
Song, in imitation of Shakspeare's "Blow, blow, thou winter wind"
1
Blow, blow, thou vernal gale!
Thy balm will not avail
To ease my aching breast;
Though thou the billows smooth,
Thy murmurs cannot soothe
My weary soul to rest.
2
Flow, flow, thou tuneful stream!
Infuse the easy dream
Into the peaceful soul;
But thou canst not compose
The tumult of my woes,
Though soft thy waters roll.
3
Blush, blush, ye fairest flowers!
Beauties surpassing yours
My Rosalind adorn;
Nor is the Winter's blast,
That lays your glories waste,
So killing as her scorn.
4
Breathe, breathe, ye tender lays,
That linger down the maze
Of yonder winding grove;
O let your soft control
Bend her relenting soul
To pity and to love.
5
Fade, fade, ye flowerets fair!
Gales, fan no more the air!
Ye streams, forget to glide;
Be hush'd each vernal strain;
Since nought can soothe my pain,
Nor mitigate her pride.
To Lady Charlotte Gordon, dressed in a Tartan Scotch Bonnet, with Plumes, &c .
1
Why, lady, wilt them bind thy lovely brow
With the dread semblance of that warlike helm;
That nodding plume, and wreath of various glow,
That graced the chiefs of Scotia's ancient realm?
2
Thou know'st that Virtue is of power the source,
And all her magic to thy eyes is given;
We own their empire, while we feel their force,
Beaming with the benignity of heaven.
3
The plumy helmet and the martial mien
Might dignify Minerva's awful charms;
But more resistless far the Idalian queen—
Smiles, graces, gentleness, her only arms.
Epitaph: being part of an Inscription designed for a Monument erected by a Gentleman to the Memory of his Lady
Farewell, my best beloved! whose heavenly mind
Genius with virtue, strength with softness join'd;
Devotion, undebased by pride or art,
With meek simplicity, and joy of heart:
Though sprightly, gentle; though polite, sincere;
And only of thyself a judge severe:
Unblamed, unequall'd in each sphere of life,
The tenderest daughter, sister, parent, wife.
In thee, their patroness the afflicted lost;
Thy friends their pattern, ornament, and boast;
And I—but ah, can words my loss declare,
Or paint the extremes of transport and despair!
O thou, beyond what verse or speech can tell—
My guide, my friend, my best beloved, farewell!
Epitaph on Two Young Men of the name of Leitch, who were drowned in crossing the River Southesk
O thou! whose steps in sacred reverence tread
These lone dominions of the silent dead;
On this sad stone a pious look bestow,
Nor uninstructed read this tale of woe;
And while the sigh of sorrow heaves thy breast,
Let each rebellious murmur be suppress'd;
Heaven's hidden ways to trace, for us how vain!
Heaven's wise decrees, how impious to arraign!
Pure from the stains of a polluted age,
In early bloom of life they left the stage:
Not doom'd in lingering woe to waste their breath,
One moment snatch'd them from the power of Death:
They lived united, and united died;
Happy the friends whom Death cannot divide!
Epitaph, intended for Himself
1
Escaped the gloom of mortal life, a soul
Here leaves its mouldering tenement of clay,
Safe where no cares their whelming billows roll,
No doubts bewilder, and no hopes betray.
2
Like thee, I once have stemm'd the sea of life;
Like thee, have languish'd after empty joys;
Like thee, have labour'd in the stormy strife;
Been grieved for trifles, and amused with toys.
3
Yet, for a while, 'gainst Passion's threatful blast
Let steady Reason urge the struggling oar;
Shot through the dreary gloom, the morn at last
Gives to thy longing eye the blissful shore.
4
Forget my frailties, thou art also frail;
Forgive my lapses, for thyself mayst fall;
Nor read, unmoved, my artless tender tale,
I was a friend, O man! to thee, to all.
Poetical Works of Robert Blair
The Life of Robert Blair
The paradox of Dr Johnson, in reference to sacred poetry, has
long ago fallen into disrepute. It seems singular indeed, how it
ever obtained credence, even although supported by one of the
most powerful pens that ever wrote in Britain, when we remember
that, previous to that author's day, the best poetry in the world
had
been sacred. The Holy Scriptures then existed, with
that poetry which bursts out at their every pore, besides being
collected here and there into masses of rich song, "pressed down,
shaken together, and running over." Dante, too, had written his
great work, which, as if to mark it out for ever from things
unclean and common, he had called the
Divina
Commedia
, and which was worthy of the name. Tasso's
Gerusalemme Liberata
had a religious moral, as well as a
title suggestive of religious ideas. Spenser's
Faery Queen
was sacred, if not in all the parts, yet at least in the
pervading spirit of its poetry. Cowley's
Davideis
,
Herbert's
Temple
, Milton's
Paradise Lost
and
Paradise Regained,
and Young's
Night Thoughts
,
existed then, were all admitted to be more or less masterpieces,
and were all sacred in their subjects and aims. Blair's
Grave
too, had, ere Johnson's day, appeared, and furnished
a good example of a solemn and religious theme, treated with
genuine poetic power.
We need not say what a flood of sacred song has arisen since, and
drowned the dictum of the lexicographer in the waves. Nay, an
opinion is gaining ground, that all lofty poetry tends toward the
sacred, and lies under the shadow of the divine. Poetry is like
fire, which, even when employed in culinary or destructive
purposes, points its column upwards, and seems to transmit the
flower and essence of its conquests to heaven. All poetry that
does not thus ascend is either morbid in spirit, or secondary in
merit.
We come now to the life of one of our best religious
poets,—
Robert Blair
—whose short poem
The Grave
,
is so admirable as to excite keen regret that it is almost the
only specimen extant of his gifted and original mind.
The facts of his life are more than usually scanty, and our
biography, therefore, must be brief and meagre. Robert Blair was
born in Edinburgh, in 1699. It is curious, by the way, how few
poets the Modern Athens has produced. It has bred lawyers,
statists, critics, savans, in plenty, but reared but few men of
transcendant genius, and, so far as we remember, only five good
poets,—Scott, Ferguson, Ramsay, Falconer, and Blair,—whom the
manufacturing town of Paisley nearly matches with its Tannahill,
Motherwell, Alexander and John Wilson. Blair was the eldest son
of the Rev. David Blair, who was a minister of the Old Church of
Edinburgh, and one of the chaplains to the King. His mother was
Euphemia Nisbet, daughter of Alexander Nisbet, Esq., of Carfin.
His grandfather, Robert Blair, of Irvine,—descended from the
ancient family of Blair
of that ilk
(
i. e.
, of
Blair), in Ayrshire,—distinguished himself, in the troublous
times of the Solemn League and Covenant, as a powerful preacher,
an able negociator, and a brave, determined man. The celebrated
Hugh Blair,—whose writings, once so popular, seem now nearly
forgotten,—was our poet's cousin, although younger by nineteen
years. Robert lost his father while yet a boy, but enjoyed the
anxious care and admirable training of an excellent mother. He
studied first at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards in
Holland. Of the particulars of either part of his curriculum
nothing is known. On his return from abroad, he seems to have
received license to preach, and to have hung about Edinburgh for
a few years, an unemployed probationer. This was of less
consequence, as he had some hereditary property. It gave him,
too, abundant leisure for study, and he employed it
well—cultivating natural history and the cognate
sciences—publishing a few fugitive verses, which made very
little impression on the public—and drawing out the first rude
draught of the poem which was destined to make him
immortal,—
The Grave
. In 1731, when he was in his
thirty-second year, he was appointed to the living of
Athelstaneford, a parish in East Lothian, where he continued to
reside all the rest of his life. Dissenter though the author of
this biography be, he is free to confess, that there is very much
that is enviable in the position of a parish minister,
particularly in the country. Possessed of an easy competence, and
a manageable field of labour, surrounded by the simplicities of
rural manners, and the picturesque features of rural
scenery,—lord of his sphere of duty, and master of his
time,—his life can be, and often is, one of the most useful and
happy, honourable in its toils, and graceful in its relaxations,
to be found on earth. Where could we expect elegant studies to be
prosecuted with more success, or whence could we expect more
works of sanctified learning and genius to issue, than in and
from the "manses" of Scotland, always so beautifully situated,
now on the brink of the mountain stream, singing its wild way
through the woods,—now in the centre of rich orchards and
fertile fields,—now on sunny braes, overlooking the whole
parish, prostrate in its loveliness at their feet,—and now
surrounded and shadowed by broad old oaks and tall black
pine-trees? And so, accordingly, it has been, although not
perhaps to the extent we might have wished or expected.
Philosophy of the deepest order has been studied—inquiries the
most profound and extensive into natural science and history have
been prosecuted; and painting, music, and poetry, have found
enthusiastic and gifted votaries, who, at the same time, have not
neglected their higher vocation,—in the quiet manses of our
country; and we rejoice to know that this state of things
continues, and is not confined to the Established Church, but may
be asserted with equal or greater force to exist in others.
At Athelstaneford, Blair seems to have realised this ideal of a
country minister. He was attentive to his pastoral duties, and
the correspondent of Doddridge and the author of
The
Grave
, could not fail to be an evangelical, a practical, and
a powerful preacher. He at the same time diligently prosecuted
his favourite studies, which were botany, natural history, and
poetry. Possessing a considerable fortune, he lived on a footing
of equality and friendship with the gentry of the neighbourhood,
and others of similar rank in distant parts of Scotland. Sir
Francis Kinloch of Gilmerton and John Gallander of Craigforth are
mentioned as two of his intimates. We are tempted to figure the
author of
The Grave
as a morose and melancholy
solitaire
—musing amid midnight churchyards—stumbling
over bones—and returning home to light his lamp, inserted in a
gaping skull, and to write out his gloomy cogitations. This is
very far from being his real character. He was more frequently
seen wandering amidst the flowery nooks of summer, with a
microscope in his hand; or, on his way home from his pastoral
visitations, stopping to analyse the fungi and the mosses which
met him on his path; or musing above the long liquid lapse of
some wayside stream, down which were floating the red leaves of
autumn; or turning a telescope of his own construction aloft to
the gleaming host of heaven. In his mode of spending his time, as
well as in some of the stern features of his genius, he resembled
Crabbe, who, believing that every weed was a flower, spent much
of his time amidst the fields and on the sea-shores; who
extracted delight out of the meanest fungus, even as he extracted
poetry out of the humblest characters; and whose life, like
Blair's, was a harmless dream.
After spending seven years of studious solitude, he, in 1738,
married his relation, Isabella Law, daughter of Mr Law of
Elvingston, who had been professor of moral philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh, and whose death, which had happened ten
years before, he had mourned in some rather lame verses, which
our readers will find in this edition. Her brother was the
sheriff-depute of East Lothian. She is described as a lady of
great beauty and amiable manners, and succeeded in making the
poet very happy. She bore him five sons and one daughter. Of
these, Robert arose, through various gradations of honour at the
Scottish bar, to be President of the Court of Session, and died
in 1811. He was a man of massive and powerful intellect. It is,
we think, in
Peter's Letters
that Lockhart gives a glowing
portraiture of President Blair's remarkable powers. He had not
the genius or "hairbrained sentimental trace" of his father, but
had inherited that clear, stern understanding, and that profound
insight into men and manners, which are met with in every page of
The Grave.
Of this poem the author had, we said, drawn a first outline when
a youth in Edinburgh. This he completed after his settlement at
Athelstaneford; and, about the year 1742, he began to make
arrangements for its publication. He had, probably through his
neighbour, the celebrated Colonel Gardiner, who fell at the
battle of Prestonpans, become acquainted with Isaac Watts, who
paid him, he says in one of his letters, "many civilities." To
him he forwarded the MS. of his poem. Dr Watts, with
characteristic candour and good taste, admired it, and offered it
to two different London booksellers, both of whom, however,
declined to publish it, expressing a doubt whether any person
living three hundred miles from town could write so as to be
acceptable to the fashionable and the polite! No poetry at that
time went down except imitations of Pope. Blair got back his MS.,
and, nothing daunted, sent it to Philip Doddridge, who was also
an intimate of Colonel Gardiner's, requesting his opinion, which
appears to have been as favourable as that of Dr Watts. At length
it was published in London in the year 1743, and reprinted at
Edinburgh in 1747, a year after its author's death.
Between that event and the appearance of his poem, nothing
remarkable occurred. The success of his work must have shed
additional sweetness into a cup which was rich before. "His
tastes," says one of his biographers, "were elegant and domestic.
Books and flowers seem to have been the only rivals in his
thoughts. His rambles were from his fireside to his garden; and,
although the only record of his genius is of a gloomy character,
it is evident that his habits and life contributed to render him
cheerful and happy." At last that awful chasm, the terrors,
grandeurs, and moral lessons of which he had so powerfully sung,
opened its jaws to receive him, and the Grave crowned its
laureate with its cold and earthy crown. He was seized with
fever, caught probably in the exercise of his pastoral functions,
and expired on the 4th of February 1746, at the early age of
forty-seven, when his body and mind were both in full vigour, and
when, speaking after the manner of men, yet greater works than
The Grave
were before him. He left his wife, who lived
till 1774, and five children behind him. His body reposes in the
church-yard of Athelstaneford, without a monument, and with
nothing but the initials K.B. to mark the spot.
The fact that he died comparatively so young, sufficiently
accounts for the paucity of his poems. He had found a vein of
rich and virgin gold; he had thrown out one mass of ore, and was,
as it were, resting on his pickaxe ere recommencing his labour,
when he was smitten down by a workman who never rests nor
slumbers. Still let us thankfully accept what he has produced;
the more as it is so distinctively original, so free from any
serious alloy, and so impressively religious in its spirit and
tone.
This masterpiece of Blair's genius is not a great poem so much as
it is a magnificent portion, fragment, or book of a great poem.
The most, alike of its merits and its faults, spring from the
fact, that it keeps close to its subject—it daguerreotypes its
dreadful theme. Many have objected to its conclusion as lame and
impotent, and would have wished a loftier swell of hopeful
anticipation of the Resurrection at the close; but this, in fact,
would have started the subject of another poem. Blair was writing
of the power and triumphs of the tomb. He left it to others, or
possibly to another poem by himself, to celebrate the victory
over it, to be gained at the resurrection. Enough for his purpose
to allude to it at the close, in such a way as to intimate his
own belief in its reality. Surely he expects too much who
requires the painter of
Night
to introduce
Morning
into the same picture.
The shortness of the poem has been objected to it. But this, we
think, shows the poet's good sense. The subject is too uniform
and too gloomy for a long poem.
The Grave, in twelve books
would have been totally unreadable. It was far better to give, as
Blair has given, a strong, stern, rapid, and concentrated sketch
of the grisly gulf. The grave, in one respect, has no unity, and
no story. It stands by itself, hollow, solitary, with its
momentary ghastly yawnings, its general repose, and the dark
mysteries which, whether open or shut, it conceals in its silent
bosom. Reverence, as well as good taste, requires the poet who
would venture on such a theme, to approach it trembling, and to
withdraw from it in haste.
Yet Blair has been accused of a want of reverence in his
treatment of this awful subject, nor is this objection altogether
unfounded; the poet does treat
the Grave
in a somewhat
abrupt and cavalier fashion, and does not seem sufficiently
afraid of it. He was young when he wrote the greater part of the
poem, and of young poets we may ask as Wordsworth asks about
little children, "What can they know of death?" It had never
knocked at his door or glared in at his window. He was, besides,
of a bold and daring genius. He consulted rather strong effect
than minute finish. The tone and style of his poem, consequently,
are somewhat hirsute and unpolished. Campbell says of him,
judiciously, "Blair may be a homely and even a gloomy poet in the
eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a masculine and
pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness that keeps
it most distinctly apart from either dulness or vulgarity. His
style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance
without regular beauty." He excels most in describing the darkest
and most terrible ideas suggested by the subject, and seems
almost to exult, while depicting the triumphs of the grave over
the rich, the strong, the lofty, and the powerful. Death himself
he assails in language approaching virulence, as when he says
O great maneater,
Unheard-of epicure, without a fellow,
Thou must render up thy dead,
And with high interest too.
This exulting spirit, however, springs in him, less from
ferocious feeling than from conscious rejoicing power. He is not
a savage, brandishing his bloody tomahawk, so much as a Michael
Angelo, hewing, with heat and haste, at one of his terrible
pieces of statuary. He characterizes the miser severely; he
lashes the proud wicked man whom he sees pompously hearsed into
Hell; with stern irony he pursues the beauty from her
looking-glass to the clods where
"The high-fed worm, in lazy volumes roll'd,
Feeds on her damask cheek;"
he derides the baffled son of Æsculapius, who is deserted
and deceived by his own drugs; and he exerts all the fearful
force of his genius to show us the suicide in that "Other Place,"
where
"The common damn'd shun his society,
And look upon themselves as fiends less foul."
But the fine imagery and the rapid touch serve alike to show
that though he is angry, it is with the wrath of a man—not with
the malignity of a demon. We have sometimes been induced to fancy
that Pollok, in the