as to the nature and grounds of his be- pleasures, indeed, they give, but of a differlief :ent order. Every attempt to prove the influence of mathematical investigation upon 1. D'Oyley and Mant's Notes to the the poetical mind, has been unsuccessful. It Bible. 2. Lowth on Hebrew Poetry. 3. Bishop Jebb's Sacred Literature. ment. 5. Bishop Percy's Key to the New. 6. Paley's Horeæ Paulinæ. Evidences of Christianity. 7. Bishop Butler's Analogy. 8. Burnet, or Beveridge, on the Arti cles. 9. Bishop Pearson on the Creed. 10. Bishop Marsh's Lectures. 11. Horne's Introduction to the Scrip tures. 12. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History. has, however, been often renewed. Black supposes Tasso to have derived from scientific researches that methodical and lucid arrangement of his poem, in which he is considered to have excelled Ariosto. The names of Virgil and Milton have also been mentioned with considerable emphasis; by the former of whom mathematics are said to have been combined with medicine, and by the latter with music. The example of Virgil is a weak one. Like Gray, whom he appears to have resembled in the painful elaborateness of composition, and the retiring fastidiousness of taste, he carried his inquiries over every path of learning, and amused the curiosity of his learned leisure with scientific inquiry. To ascribe the harmony of the Eneid to the mathematics of Virgil, is to assign the rural pictures of the Elegy and Odes to the botany of Gray. To read the Scriptures in their original tongue, is not the privilege of many; but of the New Testament, and of St. Paul's Epistles in particular, it may be affirmed, that no person can fully understand their Milton's allusion to his scientific occupadeep and suggestive spirit, unless he has ac- tions occurs in the second Defence, where quired some knowledge of the Greek lan- he speaks of relieving the retirement of guage. In the Epistles of St. Paul, almost Horton and the perusal of Greek and Latin every word is a picture, which enlarges as authors, by occasional visits to London for the eye lingers upon it. A few verbal il- the purpose of purchasing books, or learning lustrations, and those familiar to every any new discovery in mathematics or muscholar, can only be produced. In the sic. In the sic. But the illustrations, which these Epistle to the Romans (viii. 26), the Apos- sciences supplied to his poetry, are only tle speaks of the Spirit helping our infirmi- valuable when they are obvious, and disties; the word rendered helpeth, expresses please the eye of taste in exact proportion the action of a friend assisting another to as they become intricate. Johnson thought raise a burden, by supporting it on the it unnecessary to mention his ungraceful other side. The word (2 Cor. xii. 6) adox- use of terms of art, because they are easily pot, which our version explains by repro- remarked, and generally censured. If Milbates, describes persons who were unable ton had been entirely ignorant of science, to give any testimony or proof (with a re- he would have produced a completer ference to the trial of gold) of the indwell. poem. ing power of Christ. St. Paul tells the Gallatians (v. 7) that they did run well, and inquires who hindered them, that they should not obey the truth. It is a metaphorical expression, taken from a person crossing the course, in the Olympic games, and so intercepting the progress of the runner. Commentators have noticed the force imparted to the description, given by St. James, of the fragility of human riches and dignity, by the employment of the past tense, a circumstance not regarded in our version. Virgil has produced a similar effect by a change of tense in his wonderful description of a tempest in the first Georgic. Black conceives that the fantastic disarrangement of Ariosto bewildered the fancy of Spenser, and weakened the interest by destroying the unity of his poem. But if science could have furnished a rudder to guide him through those intermingling streams of thought, Spenser possessed an ample store. It has been related of a celebrated mathematician, that while he never was able to discover any sublimity in Paradise Lost, the perusal of the queries at the end of Newton's Optics always seemed to make his hair stand on end, and his blood run cold.* Gibbon rejoiced that he had, at an early * Alison on the Nature of Emotions of Sublimity XVIII. The sciences have no legitimate place among the pleasures of literature; and Beauty. period of life, abandoned mathematical | the economy of the universe, until he has demonstrations. found that the last link in nature's chain is One inherent defect seems to exist in all fastened to the foot of Jupiter's throne." mathematical studies; they occupy the mind But the chain is frequently dropped or without filling it; they exercise the reason broken before it reaches the Great First without nourishing it. As a substitute for Cause. philosophical researches, they are not only nothing, but they are worse than nothing. Burnet has placed this objection in a clear light: "Learning, chiefly in mathematical sciences, can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations." It was, perhaps, for this, among other reasons, that Bossuet excluded science from the circle of theological study; and Fénélon turned with disgust from what he called les attraits diaboliques de geometrie. Let me here interpose one word of caution. I do not speak of science considered That brings the planets home into the eye "Never yet did philosophic tube, Not visible, his family of worlds, And it is not impossible that Cowper, Let the elements of science, then, be offered to all; but let them know their place; let them be held in subordination to in itself, as the mother of discoveries, the pure literature. They are calculated, in contributor to civilization, the ameliorator certain cases, to brace the faculties, and to of suffering; but of science as bearing upon give distinctness to the reasoning and acthe human mind; as affecting the cultiva-quisitive powers; they may be means to an tion of the taste, the regulation of the ap- end; they may serve to connect materials, petites, the government of the heart. Gray, to impart symmetry to argument. Let not who despised the mathematical pursuits of the scaffolding be mistaken for the palace. Cambridge, is reported to have lamented Let them be adapted to the tastes and his ignorance in maturer life. Without incapacity of the student; it is one thing to quiring into the foundation of this assertion, shape the understanding, and another thing it may be at once admitted that the science of method will always be beneficial to a full mind like Gray's. The misfortune of science, early and exclusively cultivated, is that it finds the mind empty and leaves it so. It is an elaborate mechanism to convey water, with no water to convey. In every country Imagination, in its noblest form, has preceded science. Homer sang, and Eschylus painted, before Aristotle had given a single rule. Warton has not forgotten to notice this circumstance in reference to the condition of England in the thirteenth century:"Nor is it science alone, even if founded on truth, that will polish nations. For this purpose the powers of the imagination must be awakened and exerted, to teach elegant feelings and to heighten our natural sensibilities." Science has its own objects, and pleasures, and duties. It is the business of science, if, with Mr. Davies, I may venture to apply a heathen illustration, "To lead the inquirer through the beautiful range of harmonious and mutually dependent operations which pervade * Estimate of the Mind, sect. vi. to "Petrify a genius to a dunce." It was the opinion of the Swedish Charles that he who is ignorant of arithmetic is only half a man; and every reader of Boswell knows what book was the companion of Johnson in his Highland travels. Take your Bonnycastle; but if the student never opens Euclid, his literary pleasures. will not be diminished. Perhaps I speak warmly, for I speak from the heart. Science may be a Minerva, but to me, at least, she is always, in the vivid line of Ben Jonson, "Minerva holding forth Medusa's head." There is a stony chill about the eyes of the goddess that pierces the very soul of imagination with its arrowy cold, and benumbs all the joyous faculties of the mind; and when I behold the features of the intelmation, beneath the kindling and downlect awakening from their suspended anistooping eyes of Poetry, I often think of the fantastic description of the recovery of Thaisa in the doubtful play of Pericles,— "Nature awakes; a warmth Begin to part their fringes of bright gold; XIX. In the natural world there are two ways in which a body may be rendered visible; by its own internal brilliancy, or by a light reflected from a separate object. Now, in the world of literature it would be untrue to say that any stars are essentially and of themselves luminous, shining so far beyond the boundaries of the mental creation as to be unvisited and unwarmed by the great sun of intellect, and sympathy, and imagination. But it does seem to be in harmony with the laws of the universe, that these stars of thought, like the fixed stars of the sky, should present us with periodical variations of light. That at certain seasons, and from certain causes casement of the index, furnishes as cor rect an idea as an entire day passed in the interior. When Boswell asked Johnson whether he had read Du Halde's account of China, he said, "Why, yes, as men read such books, that is to say, consult it." The same remark might be applied to a large portion of the prose writings of Milton, and eloquence of Jeremy Taylor. Pope has even to the costly erudition and elaborate has frequently manifested itself in our own very justly rebuked that disposition which time, of bestowing unmeasured praise upon have flowered in a single book; the rich a writer whose genius, in reality, seems to ness and fragrance of whose fancy seem to have been concentrated into one beautiful and vigorous blossom. It is impossible to consider the quotation of one admirable line or passage, brought forward as a speci men of the author's genius, in any other light than that of a fraud upon the credulity of the reader. The handful of good grain at the mouth of the sack deceives us manifestly operating, though not always frequently contains not a single ear of corn into the purchase of the sack itself, which admitting of explanation-these bodies of from the true and faithful harvest-field of glory should become fainter and darker; wisdom. and that in their mysterious revolutions Let me not be misunderstood. I know through the firmament of the intellectual heaven, one side, so to speak, should rise into light, as the other side sinks down into shadow. Thus we have the Iliad first and afterward the Odyssey; now the Paradise Lost and then the Paradise Regained. And it is also pleasing to observe how soothing a harmony of repose steals over the scenery of thought in the succession of years; how exquisitely its brilliancy and heat are tempered and subdued by the sweet interchange of light and shade. If we turn to Athenian history, we behold the milder majesty of Sophocles casting a gentle beauty over the dark grandeur of Eschylus. In Italy we see the stern features of Dante shone upon by the serener eye of Petrarch; and we can turn away from the gloomy and black architecture of the Florentine, to admire the palace of Fiction, with every gate blooming with the garlands of Boccaccio. that as there is many a rich stone laid up "A sudden break of beauty out of night." Upon these occasions we also frequently meet the original of a description, or an illustration, which has afforded us delight or It is obviously wise to contemplate these improvement. Had not, for example, the luminaries of genius on their bright side- preacher in the seventeenth century antici to study their greatest works. Warbur-pated a very striking thought of the preachton, writing in 1761, observed that he had er in the nineteenth? Compare these pas not time to read books at a venture. Warburton was an old man; but the youngest man has no time to spare. There are many books, even of famous men, of whose construction and decorations, in the quaint words of Fuller, a glance, through the sages: Bishop Hall. "Even the works of our own hands remain "This is our life, while we enjoy it; we lose much longer than we. The pyramids of Egypt it like the sun, which flies swifter than an arrow, have defied the attacks of 3000 years, while and yet no man perceives that it moves. He their builders sank, perhaps, under the burden of fourscore. Our houses stand long after their transient proprietors are gone, and their names forgotten. Where is now the head that planned, and the head which built this house of God? They were all reduced to ashes 500 years ago. The very seats we sit on have borne generations before they bore us, and will probably bear many after us. The remains of those who once occupied the places we now fill are underneath our feet."-The Brevity of Human Life, v. i. 271. which lasted 900 years could not hold out one hour longer; and what is he now more than a child that lived but a year? Where are they which founded this goodly city? which possessed these fair houses, and walked these pleasant fields; which entered these stately temples; which kneeled in these seats; which preached out of this place but thirty years ago? Is not earth turned to earth? and shall not the sun set like theirs when the night comes ?"— The Magistrate's Scripture Sermons, p. 300. 1675. "Multa vim virtus animo, multusque recursat Gentis honos instead of this filial tenderness and submission, there is the arrogance of the judge and the bitterness of the rival. We shall find that where this reverence is wanting, true genius is also wanting. A pleasing moral was concealed in the superstition of the Thracians, that the nightingales which built their nests near the grave of Orpheus, had the most melodious song. Nor is the story of Mandeville without interest; he mentions the assembling of the chief men round the tomb of Aristotle, in the hope of deriving some imparted gift from the genius of the buried philosopher. Let us not forget that the costliest jewels and the purest gold are always found in the sepulchres of the Kings of Literature. But to return. Every greater light of sive. Instead of pondering with lingering intellect kindles into life and splendor some and reverent affection upon the intellectual lesser light; every great author awakens achievements of the heroes in the thousand some inferior author; and so the sun of provinces of the understandinggenius, like the sun of nature, appears with clusters of stars in his train. And the purity and color of the light always declares the fountain of glory from whence it flowed. The influence of Spenser upon our imaginative literature presents an interesting exemplification of this assertion. From his own day until ours, from Milton to Southey, we can trace the beams of his lustrous fancy tinging every golden urn which each successive disciple brings to him to be filled; and all these effluxes of light still leave the fountain unexhausted and unimpaired. Spenser still shines with the unclouded splendor of his rising; the Faerie Queene bearing the same relation to our literature which Westminster Abbey bears to our architecture. The spirit of one bearing witness, so to speak, with the spirit of the other; the cathedral illustrating the poem, and the poem reflecting light upon the The cathedral has faults, so has the cathedral. "Large masses of dim and dis- Faerie Queene. Horace Walpole remarks, colored light, diffused in various directions, in reference to Mabuse, a painter in the and at different intervals, through unequal reign of our seventh Henry, that allegori varieties of space, divided, but not separa-cal personages are only a poor decomposi ted, so as to produce intricacy without con- tion of human nature; a single quality fusion." This is a description of a cathedral being erected into "a kind of half deity," Sir -this is a description of the Faerie Queene. and rendered intelligible by symbols. We cannot, therefore, go back with too Joshua Reynolds seems to have regarded humble and submissive a mind to these allegory with a more favorable eye. If allights of our intellectual sky. Pythagoras legorical painting, he says, "produces a enjoined upon his disciples a period of si- greater variety of ideal beauty, a richer, a lence, which lasted five years, before he more various and delightful composition, permitted them to deliver an opinion upon and gives to the artist a greater opportuniany question of science. It would be well ty of exhibiting his skill, all the interest he for all students in literature, as in science, wishes for is accomplished; such a picture if this novitiate of humility and silence not only attracts but fixes the attention." were strictly enforced: of all exhibitions of human pride and presumption, the familiar contempt with which the most illustrious men are spoken of by the lips of the pretenders to criticism is the most offen But these worlds of fiction, hanging upon nothing, and launched into the wide expanse of human imagination, must be shone upon by the kindling sun of human interest *Discourse VII. "The grace of motion, or the bloom of life, Thrillls through imagination's tender frame From nerve to nerve.' and life; where this sun is wanting, there | Claude or a storm of Poussin with an admay be splendor, but there will be no miration and delight corresponding in charwarmth. The reader is dazzled, without acter, though differing in degree,— being cheered; a melancholy stillness. broods over the garden of poetry; unreal figures go by him with cold and stony eyes; he longs for the familiar voices of affection, and the gentle harmony of home endearments; like the Trojan wanderer, in the Latin paradise, he opens his arms in vain to a shadowy Anchises, and the child cannot embrace his father in the Elysium of Fancy. The poetry of the allegoric school shares this defect in common with the poetry of the classic school. Hurd, who never omitted any opportunity of elevating the Gothic over the Greek or Latin poetry, conceived the gallantry that inspirited the feudal times to supply to the poet finer scenes and subjects of description, in every view, than the simple and uncontrolled barbarity of the Grecian. In the Iliad, he seems to think the sources of delight to be placed in the development and illustration of the boisterous passions which "are provoked and kept alive in that poem by every imaginable scene of rage, revenge, and slaughter;" while in the Gothic tales he discovers, in combination with the stirring incidents and darker passions of the Homeric legends, delineations of the sweeter affections, which diffuse a mild and soothing light over the savageness of the picture. But the Iliad has its gleams of tenderness, and affection, and beauty; and more simple and uncontaminated than any of the scenes in Gothic allegory. In the Odyssey their presence is still clearer. The face of the Greek Penelope is, at least, as sweet and lovely as the face of the Gothic Faerie Queene; the first shining upon us with all the natural charms of womanhood; the second glimmering upon us through the cloudy veil of fiction. I love a catholic taste in poetry as in literature, and "At night, when all assembling round the fire, Of merchants from Golcond or Astracan, And Sinbad voyaged, and the caliphs reign'd." At that hour, to me at least, the classic or the Gothic tale comes with a voice equally sweet and winning. Taste, educated into that refined sensibility which diligent nurture and cultivation can alone produce, will study and appreciate every varying expression in the physiognomy of genius. It will love the Raphael as well as the Rubens of the pen; and will linger before a sunset of Let me linger for a moment upon this interesting subject. To appreciate the charms whether of classic or Gothic poetry, the reader must possess the inward eye of taste. That clear and serene organ of intellectual vision which looks not only into all the component elements of the object before it, but gazes even beyond the visible into the invisible, and perceives not only the beauty and splendor of the actual creation, but also the remote array of thoughts and images which, being present to the creative transports of the poet, are, as it were, thrown into shadow, and intercepted by a veil from the eyes of the vulgar. Let me illustrate this remark from the sister art of painting. When Paul Veronese was asked why certain figures were painted in shade, no cause of shadow being apparent in the picture itself, he immediately answered, "A clond is passing the sky, which has overshadowed them." The reader of Homer, or Milton, or Shakspeare, or Dante, might expect to receive a similar reply. No delineation by the pen of genius can be properly admired or understood, without the perspective, and retrospective, and circumspective eyesight of the mind. Imagi nation, transparent as it is with its own internal and glorious light, can, nevertheless, turn a dark side to the weak vision of unilluminated common sense, or the enfeebled and diseased eyesight of a licentious fancy. To the first, the Faerie Queene would only be a series of dull pictures by a dull painter; to the second, Paradise Lost would only be, as it was to Waller, a poem written by a blind old schoolmaster, and remarkable for nothing but its extreme length. The possession of this inward eye of pure and serene perception is undoubtedly the chief thing to be desired; and the next is, to accustom it to receive pleasure from all objects in themselves pleasing, however they might differ in appearance. There should be in every lover of literature an universality of admiration. Every feature of the landscape should be dear to his eye. If he is fond of contemplating the peasants of Gainsborough, the boors of Ostade, or the shepherds of Berghem, he should still turn with a reverent and loving eye to the majestic heads of Titian, the sacred dignity of Raphael, and the sweet harmony of |