giving immediate pleasure to a human being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a man. Except this one restriction, there is no object standing between the poet and the image of things; between this and the biographer and historian there are a thousand. Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere, because it is not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it is an homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure. I would not be misunderstood, but wherever we sympathise with pain it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist and mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge. What then does the poet? He considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions, which by habit become of the nature of intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations, and finding every where objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an over-balance of enjoyment. To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the poet principally directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature. And thus the poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies, converses with general nature with affections akin to those which, through labour and length of time, the man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the poet and the man of science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. The man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices. in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science. Emphatically may it be said of the poet, as Shakspere hath said of man, "that he looks before and after." He is the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying every where with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the poet's thoughts are every where; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge-it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labours of men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarised to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. It is not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of poetry which I have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of his subject. END OF VOL. II. G. Woodfall and Son, Printers, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London. NOW PUBLISHING BY CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE STREET. THE LAND WE LIVE IN: A PICTORIAL AND LITERARY SKETCH BOOK OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. IN MONTHLY SHILLING PARTS, IN SMALL FOLIO; PROFUSELY ENGRAVED ILLUSTRATED WITH WOOD-CUTS, DRAWN AND PROSPECTUS. THREE hundred years ago, John Leland, cause that may be more permanent, and make a like, by a perfect example." The honest antiquary did not accomplish his ambitious purpose. The labour of a life -and his was a short life-would have been insufficient, even in those days, to "paint all the realm in its native colours." Leland's Notes alone fill many volumes. But in the present day the man who would set about such a task, even with the appliances of railroad wings, must have two lives to expend; and when, as Charles Lamb says of Michael Drayton, he has gone over our native earth with the fidelity of a herald and the painful love of a son," his native earth will be wholly changed by the genius of progress; he will be new and obsolete at one and the same time. We propose no such hopeless task in the work now announced. We aim at producing nothing more than a tolerably full BOOK OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. world has seen-venerable in the monuments of the Past-magnificent in the crea tions of the Present; infinitely varied in its natural scenery-equally diversified in the characters and condition of its People. The "little body with a mighty heart" is now all compact. It is an entire thing, which can be understood and described without parcelling it out into realms, and principalities, and duchies, and shires, and parishes. The Capital and the Provinces are linked together indissolubly. The WEEKLY SHEET, which we now offer to our twenty-seven millions of compatriots, will aim at gradually embodying the MOST PROMINENT CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS GREAT SUBJECT. Wherever the records of the Past can be combined with descriptions of the Present, the traces of other states of society will not be overlooked. Wherever the great features of our own times shape themselves into appropriate subjects for the Pen and the Pencil, there shall we find the materials for Sketches that we hope will have a permanent value. We desire to produce something of less temporary interest than the mere records of the day; something more amusing than a Book of Antiquities or a Book of Statistics, without forgetting the great end of being useful. Our work will combine the various talent of MANY WRITERS AND MANY ARTISTS, labouring together upon a well-considered and harmonious plan, who will each see with his own eyes the object which he describes or draws. Each sheet will be complete in itself, containing one or two subjects of general interest, whether to the TRAVELLER or the HOME-READER. But each sheet will con 2 tribute towards the formation of a Book, varied in its contents but uniform in its objects. The Poet of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' looked upon the picturesque features of the external world as we may look to gather the materials of our unpretending prose; glancing from "russet lawns," and "mountains," and "meadows trim," and "rivers wide," to "towers and battlements," "cities," and "the busy hum of men:" then turning to some wide-watered shore," or to " arched walks 66 The of twilight groves; " then lingering in the "studious cloister's pale," or beneath "the high embowed roof" of the dim cathedral. But we have also to look upon many things, some of which are scarcely picturesque, some wholly modern, but which have the elements of grandeur in their vastness and their moral influences. courts and offices of government, legislation, and the administration of justice; the halls of science, art, and letters; the seats of education; the emporiums of commerce and manufactures; the havens of maritime power; the material improvements of our day viewed in connection with the moral; the manners and social characteristics of the people. All these features, and many more which it is better here to suggest than enumerate, make up the wonderful whole of "The Land we live in." Be it our aim to seize upon the most permanent and most universal of these features; in the desire to amuse as well as to inform-to advance all safe and benevolent progress-to nourish a just patriotism. Five Parts have been now published, containing the following subjects [VOLUME I., elegantly bound, will be ready on the ist of December.] |