poetry the same consequence follows as when religion has been thus excommunicated-that is to say, poetry itself is the chief sufferer. The religious and the patriotic sentiments are two of the largest, the most disinterested, and the most self-sacrificing known to man. Both may lie doubtless at the heart of poetry when they do not rise to the surface, for the life-blood is not always shown either in the flushed cheek or in the wound; but the poetry which purposely excludes these sources of inspiration will be tempted to throw itself upon inferior ones-on frivolities, on epicurean enjoyments, or on sensational incidents hunted up out of odd corners, not found on the broad highways of human life. A few remarks on the patriotic may fitly supplement those already made on the religious sentiment in its relations with poetry. One of the most honourable characteristics of that great outburst of English poetry in the nineteenth century is the manifest sincerity with which it gave utterance to love of country. It had, though in a lesser degree, done so at that earlier outburst of the sixteenth century. Shakespeare's marvellous series of historic plays, from which Sir Robert Walpole confessed that he had learned whatever he knew of England's earlier annals, suggest that the famous deathbed speech of John of Gaunt was but the expression of that patriotic passion which had ever burned in the poet's heart. Doubtless it was also in a large part the love of country which moved Spenser to seek in England's Arthur the hero of his Fairy Queen; but unhappily in that age a genuine patriotism—which must ever sympathise tenderly with the people, though not with the populace, while it is loyal to the sovereign-was half smothered in the idolatry felt, not by courtiers only, but by many literary aspirants, for Queen Elizabeth. The patriotism of a country that worships despotism, especially a novel despotism like that of the Tudors, is a patriotism founded largely on national vanity, as we learn from the 'Grande Nation' of Louis the Fourteenth's time; and national vanity is not, like a true love of country, an inspirer of high poetry. The patriotic sentiment in England had made progress in proportion as a freedom grounded on law and in harmony with order had made progress; it had become matured during the vicissitudes of a long and perilous war, waged not to enslave feebler nations, but to vindicate the freedom of all from the aggressions of Buonaparte, the child and embodiment of the French Revolution; and when the righteous cause had triumphed, a larger element of patriotism than English literature had ever known before manifested itself in that poetry which had accompanied the struggle and gained animation from the victory. Scott found his best themes in the history of his country; and it was not in the spirit of rancour, but of mutual respect, that the children of lands once foes fought again in his verse the fields of Bannockburn and Flodden. Burns had written a little earlier, and if his poems are still recited, alike amid the Highlands and the shrewder Lowlands, it is because the image of his country is to be found in them. As strong a patriotic sentiment broke out in Campbell's great naval odes, and in spite of his Lochiel's Warning it was one not restricted to the northern part of the island. Wordsworth, in his Sonnets dedicated to Liberty, cheered England on through the vicissitudes of a struggle such as she had never known in the days of her Henries and Edwards. Coleridge's Fears in Solitude, exquisitely expressed, when invasion was expected, a poet's solicitude for those sufferings which fall on the helpless and the aged, when their prayer is that their flight be not in the winter;' while in his Ode to the Departing Year, amid passages of admiring love, he mingled as fearless denunciations of his country's sins, especially in connection with the slave trade-— But chief by Afric's wrongs, Strange, horrible, and foul. 6 In two of Southey's lyrical poems his genius rose, under the stimulus of patriotic emotion, to a height never by him reached elsewhere. One of these is his Ode written during the Negotiations with Buonaparte in January 1814 Who counsels peace at this momentous hour. And the other is his Funeral Song for the Princess Charlotte. In the latter, the poet follows the funeral procession while it advances along St. George's Chapel; and the old tombs, as he passes them, bleed again with sad memories of the chief passages in English history from the Wars of the Roses to the war with Napoleon. Among the greater poets of modern times Byron and Goethe seem to have been those the least marked by strong love of country, perhaps because among those most self-engrossed. Several of Browning's poems are vigorous illustrations of English history. Keats had love. to spare besides that which spent itself on Greek mythology; among his aspirations here is one : one. In the long vista of the years to come, Tennyson, while the most ideal and imaginative of our living poets, has also in numberless ways proved himself pre-eminently a national He has written a great cycle of Idyls' on England's mythic king; and many more illustrating with matchless skill the modern life of England not only among the poor, but also in that higher class, which, from the degree in which it is coloured by conventionalities, admits least easily of poetic delineation. He has recorded countless incidents of English life, legendary or historical, from Cophetua and Godiva to The Revenge and The Defence of Lucknow. He has added three to the roll of English historical plays. He has vividly illustrated many of those modes of thought, feeling, and action which characterise modern England, and not a few of her social conditions, alike in their good and in their evil. He has sung the cottage, the manor-house, the throne Broad-based upon her people's will, And compassed by the inviolate sea. He has flattered no class prejudices, aristocratic or democratic; and he has asserted the true principles of national greatness and stability in those two majestic poems, You ask me why, though ill at ease,' and 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights,' on reading which a statesman," who was also ardently attached to letters and widely acquainted with them, exclaimed, 'They are as stately as those two temples which stand side by side on that plain near Pæstum !' In ancient times no less the true poets loved their country. The blind old man of Scio's rocky isle, when the villagers gathered round him as he chaunted his rhapsodies on the sea-shore, embraced the whole race of Greece, whether on the mainland, her islands, or her colonial dependencies, in a common affection. We cannot doubt that in his imagination he saw the eyes of the listeners flash as they heard the deeds of their fathers recited, and that he received from their ready sympathy no small portion of his own inspiration. Virgil sang the Trojan hero to whom Rome owed her existence. Horace, though his themes were sometimes below him, yet in the most impassioned and pathetic of his odes gave expression to the despair with which in his youth he had bewailed the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia, and the destruction of the Roman republic; and in his later life he dedicated his most important lyrics to the enforcement of those solid ethical principles through which alone the empire could become great; while he fearlessly reproved his fellow-countrymen for their luxury, their factiousness, and their neglect of the household ties. The great poets of Italy and Spain, like Schiller and other poets in modern Germany, were each of them devoted to his native land-her greatness in the past, and her freedom and peace in the present. In this fellowship of patriotism and poetry there is nothing extraordinary. Patriotism, while a moral, is also largely an imaginative passion. If it is to bring forth worthy fruit it must become more than this, wedding itself with reason and walking in the ways of duty; but without imagination a man can hardly even take in the idea of country and of nation. He has no difficulty in appreciating the claims of a clan, which is but a family expanded, or of sympathising with a class whose well-being is identified with his own; but the idea of a nation is a vaster thing than these, and he who grasps it has to blend in a single conception countless thoughts and associations that come to him from remote tracts and distant periods. A The late Lord Monteagle. nation is a unity which includes a vast plurality, many members with diverse functions, and yet a common life and common interest. It comprises whole races which in early days strove against each other on many a battlefield, yet whose remoter descendants were destined, through geographical or other necessities, to become amalgamated. Looking back on history the thoughtful patriot discerns not merely its accidental confusions, but under them a latent meaning and a providential purpose. Petty resentments then give place to a sounder love of country, and the lesson of history is peace. How otherwise could a common country exist for the children of Provence and of Brittany, or for those of Austria and Hungary? The true patriot remembers the past and its wrongs, where wrongs have existed, to learn the lesson they bequeath and pay a reverent tribute to the suffering heroism of ancient days, not to forge bolts of vengeance when there is no longer a head upon which they can justly fall. True patriotic love is not a vindictive passion, it is a magnanimous one; it is not a vainglorious assumption that a single nation has absorbed all the virtues and that all other nations consist of barbarians' as the Greeks, or of hostes' as the Romans, called them. It is not an aggressive impulse; on the contrary, the aspiration of the patriot is that his country should be justly looked up to as the teacher and sustainer of virtuous civilisation in all lands. Patriotism is not a blind affection; it sees clearly the faults of the country loved, and cares little for its praise and much for the fulfilment of its highest vocation. It is not self-love dilated, but the extinction of selflove in an affection the largest known to man, except that inspired by religion. The love of country blends the loyal devotedness of filial love with the discrimination, often painful, of love parental; and yet that love, far from obliterating, quickens in him who feels it the love which he owes to his neighbour, and the reverence due to total humanity. There is a mystery in all affections which rise above vulgar instincts; it is thus with the love of country-a love unintelligible to many who claim its exclusive possession. The patriot sees in her more than can be seen by those who are without; and yet he remembers that there remains in her much that cannot meet his eye; for it is part of the greatness of a nation that, though her fields and cities are visible things, her highest greatness and most sacred claims lie beyond these, and belong in part, like whatever includes a spiritual element, to the sphere of things not seen.' Towards such an insight, as regards nation and country, the imagination, like man's other faculties, contributes its part, thus elevating patriotism, which sinks otherwise, like other blind affections, to the low level of unreasonable and illicit passions, and passes thence on to extinction. It is therefore not surprising that the old Greek who knew everything should have noted in the Poet of a Nation' the patriot as well as the seer, and in both capacities a counsellor well fitted to 6 advise.' If that Greek had lived later, and become a believer, he would have remained a patriot. He would have said, 'A nation comes next in dignity to the Christian Church; and it was in some sort a type of her.' To return to Archbishop Trench. His secular poems are drawn from very various sources. At the close of the second volume we find a series entitled 'Elegiac Poems,' replete with a deep pathos; and elsewhere are numerous pieces based on the human affections and social ties. Some of the best are a combination of natural description and of reflection. . . . As happy specimens of this class we may name 'An Evening in France' and 'The Descent of the Rhone.' Other poems combine occurrences with meditations, as for instance An Incident Versified' and 'On an Early Death.' 9 Some embody old legends of many countries, such as 'A Legend of Alhambra,' 10 Sais,' 11 'Sabbation,' a Jewish legend, 12 The Oil of Mercy,' 13 The Tree of Life,' 14 Timoleon,' 15 'Alexander at the Gates of Paradise, a Legend from the Talmud,' 16 The Breaker of Idols.' 17 We have tales from the Persian and ballads of Haroun Al Raschid, and many besides, including Genoveva ' and 'The Steadfast Prince.' Here is a specimen of a style different from that in which he commonly wrote. It is extracted from a poem entitled an Ode to Sleep': I cannot follow thy departing track, Nor tell in what far meadows, gentle Sleep, And when the day is joyless, and its task Why thou wilt give it such an ample space, For memory, and for that which men call hope. Sad eve and night forlorn And undelightful morn. And therefore am I seeking to entwine A coronal of poppies for my head, Or wreathe it with a wreath engarlanded By Lethe's slumberous waters. Oh! that mine • Vol. i. p. 51. 7 Vol. i. p. 54. 6 • Vol. i. p. 86. 11 Vol. i. p. 132. 14 Vol. ii. p. 21. 17 Vol. ii. p. 87. |