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our love for that most exquisite and most characteristic of all Mr Southey's poems; because it has satisfied us of its perfect fidelity. No man of high original genius ever possessed the power of imitation in the same measure as Mr Southey. His genius seems to become intensely infused into his imitation.

THOUGHTS ON NOVEL WRITING.

SINCE, in modern times, the different modes of national existence are no longer capable of being represented in epic poems, it has become the task of the novelist to copy, in an humbler style, the humbler features exhibited by human life. Of all novels, Don Quixote (which was the earliest great work in that line) has most resemblance to an epic. It has little to do with cities, but relates chiefly to the indigenous national manners remaining visible in Spanish country-life, and to chivalry; which, being unable any longer to hold its place in society, could not be introduced among contemporary objects, except in masquerade. Fielding also represented English country-manners with their roots still fixed in their native soil. Le Sage and Smollet both bear traces of the adulteration which natural characteristics undergo, when plucked up, and boiled together, in the town cauldrons. Goethe has preserved the rural life of the Germans in Herman and Dorothea; which, although written in the form of a poem, bears a close affinity to some of the higher sorts of novels. And, lastly, some person, who seems averse to have his name too often repeated, has fairly pasted the flowers of Scotland into his herbals of Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, &c. for perpetual preservation.

These form the highest class of the novels which have dealt in actual existences, and not in pastimes of imagination. In proportion as society has undergone the influence of detrition, succeeding novels of the pourtraying class have grown more limited in their objects, more slight in their execution, and more ephemeral in their interest. The external aspect of town-life no longer affords any thing worthy of being painted for posterity; and the country-people, feeling the influence of an intellectual ascendancy proceeding from the cities, have lost confi

dence in their own impressions. The uniformity of habits, imposed by most trades and professions, has eradicated freedom and variety of volition from those who exercise them, and has caused every unfolding of character, except what bears on a certain point, to be considered as superfluous and pernicious. Novelists have therefore, for some time past, found more persons in the highest circles fit for exhibition than any where else, except in life approaching to barbarism. Unshackled by the drudgeries of life, and standing in awe of few persons' opinions, the leaders of fashion have been able to let their minds shoot forth in a considerable variety of forms and affectations, which, although neither noble nor useful, have served to afford some amusement to gaping spectators in the other classes. Only such individuals of the lower class have dragged in, as happened to retain some uncouth traits of physiognomy.

However, as the manifestations exhibited in fashionable life are without system or coherency, and have no root in any thing permanent, they cannot be painted, once for all, in any standard performance; and hence a succession of flimsy publications keeps pace with their changes. The manners and concerns of the middle classes have also been handled in works, which are not written like the highest novels, for the sake of recording the develope ments exhibited by the human mind, but which may be called moral novels ; because they have generally a didactic purpose, relating to existing circumstances, and are meant to shew the causes of success or failure in life, or the ways in which happiness or misery is produced by the different manage ment of the passions and affections.

To judge how far the modes of existence of the different classes are worth painting, it would be necessary to take a glance at the objects, passions, or employments which respectively fill up their lives. The highest class has more room than any other, to sprout forth in spontaneous forms; but its aims are for the most part neither high nor serious, and its force like that of rockets, is spent chiefly in vacuo, without being directed towards any manly or rational purposes. Their volitions, not being sufficiently tasked against obstacles, want nerve and concentration; and the rapid whirl of objects around them prevents any faculty from being exert

ed, for so long a continuance, as to attain its full growth. Except in so far as the tone of their existence is strengthened by political partizanship (which among them is not conducted so as to exercise the higher faculties), their time is either spent in enjoyments and amusements, quite ephemeral and selfish, or in contests of vanity, relating to objects of no practical importance, except within the circles of fashion. Persons of the learned professions have a line chalked out for them, in which direction they must spend their energies. Perseverance, and a regular exercise of the understanding, are the things chiefly required from them; and their leisure time, of course, is not apt to produce any very spirited or forcible manifestations of character. It is chiefly spent in squaring their manners to those of the higher classes, and in partaking of similar amusements. The next comprehensive class is that of shop-keepers and master-tradesmen, whose existence seems to be chiefly occupied by the passion for money-making, and the enjoyments of physical luxury, and often by the sectarian forms of religion. Among the richer portion of this class, the advantages, and the external show procurable by wealth, serve to engross the attention of their self-love, and to confine its operations within the circle of their own acquaintances; but, among the poorer set, self-love, being unable to spend itself in that manner, takes a different direction, and assumes the form of political fanaticism. Unsatisfied pride, finding nothing in the station which it occupies, to allay its fever, grasps at an increase of political functions, with which to dignify its existence; and, being always at war with the lazy and inactive importance of property, wishes to change the field of society in a gymnastic arena, where advantages are to be gained or lost, according as individuals possess that sort of activity and address, which are inspired by envy and ambition. The sturdy malcontent, finding no peace within, wishes to exereise his itching sinews in wrestling matches with those members of society who feel more at ease, and whose muscular powers are not in the same feverish state of excitement. In the next lower class, that of workmen and mechanics, the desire of political change, where it exists, proceeds from different motives; namely, from the belief that

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it would lighten the pressure of a taxation which preys upon the daily comforts of their existence. Vanity and ambition do not lead them to hate their superiors; they only wish to be relieved from physical causes of suffering. In this class, the uniformity of occupations is such, as to destroy all variety in the developements of the mind. The external aspect of their existence is without any features worthy of being represented; but a source of internal life is often lighted up within them by the most beautiful sentiments of piety, and by the feelings engendered out of domestic relations.

Since external existence no longer presents the same striking objects as it has done at former periods, a new species of novels (of which Werter and the Nouvelle Heloise are examples) has sprung up, and has for its purpose the exhibition of the internal growth and progress of sentiments and passions, and their conflicts. Great genius may be shewn in works of this kind, and probably no kind of writing has exerted more influence over modern habits of thought; yet they cannot well be considered as any thing more than a spurious sort of literature, and one that is not perhaps very salu tary in its effects. They are not memorials of what has existed; for such combinations of sentiment as they represent never took place in any human mind. Neither are they didactic works; for no person, in reading them, ever picked up rules of practical prudence, or gained more control over his passions. Mastery over our feelings is gained by exerting the will in the course of our personal experience; but, in reading a novel, the will remains totally inactive. And, lastly, in novels of this kind, such is the crude mixture of beauty and deformity, and of what is to be chosen with what avoided, that they cannot be regarded as works of art, holding up models of perfection to the imagination. Therefore, the only purpose they can serve is to afford a temporary excitement, neither very pure in its kind, nor even always agreeable to feel, from its want of harmony and consistency.

When literature has become so redundant, and conceptions have been so largely accumulated, as in this country, the spirit of system is needed to enable authors to discover the true

places which ideas should occupy, and the proper forms in which they should be arranged. Every unprejudiced spectator must perceive that English literature is running waste, and sinking into degradation, from the want of a philosophy to guide its combinations. The earliest forms given to literature are generally dictated by instinctive impressions which authors have received from real life. Later authors are apt to bewilder themselves among the variety of existing models, and to choose modes of writing which do not always harmonize with the principal ideas they mean to convey. When the lights and instincts of nature have been lost sight of (as they always must be after a long series of artificial compositions), it is only by the influence of philosophy that literature can be regenerated, and made to spring up again in pure and symmetrical forms. English literature, indeed, has all along been more remarkable for substance and vigour, than for fine proportions or flowing outlines. The external causes of that vigour, however, are now on the decline; and there remains but one chance for our literature, namely, that of being regenerated by a spirit of system, proceeding out of a more profound analytical examination of human nature, than has hitherto taken place in England. If nothing of that sort comes round, our literature must go rapidly down the hill. Schlegel has a passage on this subject, which we have already quoted in a former number of this publication. It contains so much truth, that we earnestly request our readers to turn back to No XVII. Vol. III. page 509, and read it over again.

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ties of that wonderful region of lakes and mountains. I have indeed lived a month in Paradise, and scarcely know, when I return-as I must do to that 'dull native city of mine, how I shall be able to endure existence. But to begin. You know that I had too long been kept, sorely against my will, in the dreariest part of England, and when I found myself among the mountains of the north, I felt as if I had been dropt from the sky into some far distant land of enchantment. My very soul seemed changed with the scenery around me, and I gave myself up to a crowd of delightful emotions that formed, as it were, a new and complete life of themselves, independent of all former recollections. I was insulated, among the dreary sea of human existence, in a spot that seemed sacred to happiness,-care, sorrow, and anxiety, were shut out by an everlasting barrier of mountains; there was a bright regeneration of all the brightness of early youth, and I walked along like a being who had never suffered the depression of mortality, but was strong in the spirit of gladness that seemed to pervade universal nature. These feelings may seem exaggerated or incomprehensible to those who have lived all their days in a beautiful and magnificent country, or to those whose hearts are bound only to cities and communities of men. The first cannot fully understand the glorious exultation of novelty that expands the soul of an enthusiast, admitted but "in angel-visits short and far between" to communion with those great and lovely forms of nature, among which they themselves have passed all their tranquil lives-while the second can yet less sympathize with that devotional feeling excited by objects which to them yield, at best, but a transitory entertainment. It is perhaps on persons such as I that nature most omnipotently works, persons who have known enough of her and her wonders to have conceived for her a deep and unconquerable passion, but whom destiny has debarred from frequent intercourse, and chained down among scenes most alien indeed to all her holiest influences.

"My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky."

Those little secret haunts of beauty which one sometimes sees near the

suburbs of a great smoky city, never fail to touch my heart with inexpressible pleasure. They seem vestiges of my past youth-groves of gladness left sacred in the melancholy waste of time and peopled with a thousand visions. They have often made me feel how imperishable is the love of nature-a love that may sleep, but may not be extinguished-that, like an early attachment to a human soul, can live for ever on occasional or recollected smiles, and is unconsciously strong in the mournfulness of absence as in the bounding bliss of enjoyment. For nearly fifteen years of a life yet short, I had seen mountains, and glens, and cataracts only on the canvass-silent shadows of thunderous magnificence, -fair gleamings of light and verdure, that no art can steal from the bosom of inimitable Nature. But now I was restored to my birth-right-the mountains, the rocks, the lakes, the clouds, the very blue vault of heaven itself were felt to belong to me, and my soul, expanding like a rainbow, embraced the whole horizon in its own brightening joy.

The circumstances in which I was, drew around me a peculiar atmosphere of feeling. I was stranger-a foreigner-in this heavenly land. All the mountains that rose up before me had each its own name unknown to me on every hand streams came dancing by me, that doubtless gave appropriate appellations to the long winding vallies which they made so beautiful-cottages peeped from every little covert of wood, and shone in clusters on every hill-side, filled with happy beings all strangers to me, and now for the first time brought into the existing world of my imagination-ancient halls, impressed with a solemn shade of hereditary grandeur, at times lifted themselves above the fine oak woods-there hung a mossy bridge that for centuries had spanned the cliffy torrent-there stood a chapel bright in a green old-age of ivy-there lay a gray heap of stones-burial-place, or cairn, or shapeless and undistinguish able ruin of some dwelling of the days gone by. The great objects of nature herself speak an universal language, and I understood at once the character of the noble mountains of England. But here, there were under tones new to my heart; the spirit of human life breathed a peculiar music-shed a

peculiar light over the face of Nature. For a while I was haunted by a delightful perplexity concerning the moral character of the happy people, whose figures, faces, dresses, fields, gardens, houses, churches, all seemed to me so interesting-and so impres sive. Nature, thought I, is in herself most beautiful-and beautiful would this region be, even were it a region of lifeless solitude. But here, there is a subordination of all the various works of man to the spirit that reigns over all the vast assemblage of these various works of nature. The very houses seem to grow out of the rocks-they are not so much on the earth, as of the earth-every thing is placed seemingly just where it ought to be-there is a concord and a harmony in the disrupted fragments of the cliffs that have overstrewed the plains with treecrowned natural edifices, no less than in the artificial habitations that are mingled with that mountain-architecture, in every imaginable shape of fantastic beauty.-Here must dwell an indigenous population-their outward forms and shews of life are moulded visibly by the influence of these superincumbent mountains-the genius of the place-the" Relligio Loci" has made what it willed of the human life over which it presides. Never before had I seen nature so powerful in the birth of beauty, harmony, solemnity, gentleness, and peace, all blending with and sustaining the works and the spirit of animated existence.

For the first day or two I understood every thing I saw imperfectly, but there was unspeakable delight in the constant flow of images that kept passing through my soul." In a foreign country almost every thing is, to a certain degree, new to us. Things so familiar to the natives as not even to be seen by them, touch a stranger with an inquiring emotion, and as he is becoming gradually acquainted with the meaning, and purposes, and character of every thing around him, his mind enjoys a singular union of the pleasure of mere perception, with that of imagination, and even of the reasoning faculty. It is like acquiring a new language, when words seem gradually to brighten into things, and when the page of a book, at first dim and perplexing, seems at last crowded with pictures brightly painted and clearly defined. I had not slept two nights

among the hills of Westmorland, till I felt as if I could have pointed out and explained to others, beauties, which, on my first entrance into the country, I might be said to have enjoyed, rather than to have understood. I soon felt like a native-and in walking up the mountains, have acquired some thing of the springing step and forward-leaning attitude of the shepherds and the herdsmen.

A strong and deep passion for nature, especially when of a sudden revived and gratified to the utmost, seeks to indulge itself in solitude,-and on plunging into the manifold recesses of those magnificent mountains, I felt that even the conversation and society of a beloved friend would have been irksome, much more the unsatisfactory talk of some peasant guide, whose provincial dialect I, though well acquainted with the pure English tongue, might have been unable distinctly to have understood. I wished for no guide -and in good truth I needed none. I had an imperfect map-knowledge of the geography of those mountains and had formed to myself a confused and dim picture of its celebrated lakes -but I cared not into what pass I first penetrated-I went not there to prove the correctness of other men's descriptions or to sail down the stream of their emotions-I had no faith in that mock philosophy that pretends to lay down the infallible laws of beauty and grandeur, and draws out rules for scientifically making our approaches towards the impregnable precipices of nature,-I chose rather to travel like the free wind that shifts twenty times aday, yet, midst all its caprices, obeys the spirit of the regions where it roams; and, if I may so speak, to linger, like a calm, in places of sudden and unexpected peace. Who shall pretend to determine which of a hundred vallies is the most beautiful? Who ever saw all the beauties that, during one long summer day pass over the very humblest dell? There can be no guide to a lover of nature but that love itself-and he who once surrenders the course and flow of his affection and his imagination to the will of another,-sees as he sees-and feels as he feels-and may undoubtedly both see and feel much that is startling and impressive; but his pleasure, after all, must be a barren pleasure, and can create within the soul, neither exalted enthusiasm

at the time, nor food for future poetical meditations. I therefore asked no questions, even of those intelligent and noble looking shepherds whom I often passed upon the hillside; I courteously returned their somewhat haughty and laconic salutations, and passed on like a shadow along the verdant moss, or the flinty crags. Why should I ask what the mountains themselves told me in language easily understood. I saw before me the cliff that might not be scaledand the abyss that might not be descended. At each bend of a valleyon each shoulder of a mountain-my magnificent and royal road stretched into the distance-I feared not to move onwards when the torrent called upon me to follow-and if the thick mist overshadowed me, I waited till the blast drove into air the walls of my prisonhouse. At night-fall I could recollect no plan on which I had pursued my pilgrimage, but I did recollect many a panoramic vision on earth-many a phantasmagorial procession through the heavens all the tamer scenery of the spectacle was forgotten, and in sleep my senses continued to be impressed by a wild and hurried confusion of all the met majestic images of nature.

I felt afraid to enter into conversation with the shepherds and peasants in whose cottages I slept. I wished them to be what they seemed to my imagination, and I was loth to acquire an imperfect knowledge of their character, lest the strong interest which their appearance had created in my mind should thereby be destroyed or weakened. Never had I seen so finelooking a race. The young men were all tall, straight, and muscular, with brown-clustering hair, and bronzed faces, in whose high and regular features nothing vulgar or clownish appeared. The old men, as I have seen them, sitting at their cottagedoors, or beneath a huge beam of wood that forms a recess for the fireplace in these simple dwellings, seemed, with their solemn countenances and gray heads, like patriarchs of the great pastoral age; while the young women, beautiful as angels, and arrayed in a bashful yet no inelegant timidity in the presence of a stranger, even surpassed all my former ideas of the fabled charms of shepherdesses and mountain-nymphs. Never before had

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