DESCRIPTION OF AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE — THE ANIMAL ENJOYMENT OF LIFE — SOLITARY PERSONS THE LEAST REPINING — COWLEY ON THE TOWN AND COUNTRY — L— ‘s MENTAL PROGRESS FROM HISTORY TO WORKS OF IMAGINATION — HE IS INSPIRED TO EMULATION, NOT BY THE, FAME OF GENIUS, BUT BY THE LUXURY OF COMPOSITION — GENIUS IS PECULIARLY SUSCEPTIBLE OF ENJOYMENT — IT EVEN ENJOYS SADNESS — L— ‘s STUDIES INTERRUPTED.
IT is a singularly pretty spot in which L —— resides. Perhaps some of the most picturesque scenery in England is in the neighbourhood of London; and as I rode the other day, in the later April, along the quiet lane, which branches from the main road to L— ‘s house — Spring never seemed to me to smile upon a lovelier prospect.
The year had broken into its youth as with a sudden and hilarious bound. A little while before, I had passed along the same road — all was sullen and wintry — the March wind had swept along dry hedges and leafless trees — the only birds I had encountered were two melancholy sparrows in the middle of the road — too dejected even to chirp; but now a glory had passed over the earth — the trees were dight in that delicate and lively verdure, which we cannot look upon without feeling a certain freshness creep over the heart. Here and there thick blossoms burst in clusters from the fragrant hedge, and (as a schoolboy prankt out in the hoops and ruffles of his grandsire) the whitethorn seemed to mock at the past winter by assuming its garb. Above, about, around — all was in motion, in progress, in joy — the birds, which have often seemed to me like the messengers from earth to heaven — charged with the homage and gratitude of Nature, and gifted with the most eloquent of created voices to fulfil the mission; — the birds were upon every spray, their music upon every breath of air, Just where the hedge opened to the left, I saw the monarch of English rivers glide on his serene and silver course — and in the valley on the other side of his waters, village, spire, cottage, and (at rarer yet thick intervals) the abodes of opulence looked out among the luxuriant blossoms, and the vivid green by which they were encircled. It was a thoroughly English scene. For I have always thought that the peculiar characteristic of English scenery is a certain air of content. There is a happier smile on the face of an English landscape than I have ever beheld even in the landscapes of the South; a happier though a less voluptuous smile — as if Nature were more at home. Presently I came to the turn of the lane which led at once to L— ‘s house — in a few minutes I was at the gate. Within, the grounds, though not extensive, have the appearance of being so — the trees are of great size, and the turf is broken into many a dell and hollow, which gives the lawn a wild and a park-like appearance. The house is quaint and old-fashioned (not Gothic or Elizabethan) in its architecture; it seems to have been begun at the latter period of the reign of James the First, and to have undergone sundry alterations, the latest of which might have occurred at the time of Anne. The old brown bricks are three parts covered with jessamine and ivy, and the room in which L — generally passes his day, looks out upon a grove of trees, amidst which, at every opening, are little clusters and parterres of flowers. And in this spot, half wood half garden, I found my friend, seduced from his books by the warmth and beauty of the day, seated on a rustic bench, and surrounded by the numerous dogs, which of all species and all sizes, he maintains in general idleness and favour.
“I love,” said L — , speaking of these retainers, “like old Montaigne, to have animal life around me. The mere consciousness and sensation of existence is so much stronger in brutes than in ourselves, their joy in the common air and sun is so vivid and buoyant, that I (who think we should sympathise with all things, if we would but condescend to remark all things,) feel a contagious exhilaration of spirits, in their openness to pleasurable perceptions. And how happy, in reality, the sentiment of life is! — how glorious a calm we inhale in the warm sun! — how rapturous a gladness in the fresh winds! — how profound a meditation and delight in the stillness of the ‘starry time!’ — how sufficient alone to make us happy is external nature, were it not for these eternal cares that we create for ourselves. Man would be happy but that he is forbidden to be so by men. The most solitary persons have always been the least repining.”
A. But then their complacency arises from the stagnation of the intellect — it is indifference, not happiness.
L. Pardon me, I cannot think so. How many have found solitude not only, as Cicero calls it, the pabulum of the mind, but the nurse of their genius! How many of the world’s most sacred oracles have been uttered like those of Dodona, from the silence of deep woods! Look over the lives of men of genius, how far the larger proportion of them have been passed in loneliness. Now, for my part, I think solitude has its reward both for the dull and the wise; — the former are therein more sensible to the mere animal enjoyment which is their only source of happiness: the latter are not (by the irritation, the jealousy, the weariness, the round of small cares, which the crowd produces) distracted from that contemplation, and those pursuits, which constitute the chief luxury of their life and the to kalon of their desires. There is a feeling of escape, when aman who has cultivated his faculties rather in thought than action, finds himself after a long absence in cities, returned to the spissa nemora domusque Nympharum, which none but himself can comprehend. With what a deep and earnest dilation Cowley luxuriates in that, the most eloquent essay perhaps in the language! — although, as a poet, the author of the Davideis was idolised far beyond his merits by a courtly audience, and therefore was not susceptible, like most of his brethren, of that neglect of the crowd which disgusts our hearts by mortifying our vanity. How calm, how august, and yet how profoundly joyful is the vein with which he dwells on the contrast of the town and the country! “We are here among the vast and noble scenes of Nature. We are there among the pitiful shifts of policy. We walk here in the light and open ways of Divine bounty. We grope there in the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice!”
A. There is a zest even in turning from the harsher subjects, not only of life, but of literature, to passages like these! How these green spots of the poetry of sentiment soften and regenerate the heart!
L. And so, after wading through the long and dry details, which constitute the greater part of history, you may conceive the pleasure with which I next turned to that more grateful method of noting the progress of nations, — the history of their literature.
A. I thank you for renewing the thread broken off in our last conversation. We had been speaking of the refactions which history awakened in your mind. That necessary (and yet how seldom an useful) study, was followed then by the relaxation of more graceful literature.
L. Yes, and in the course of this change, a singular effect was produced in my habits of mind. Hitherto I had read without much emulation. Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition. And so few among historians awaken our more lively feelings, and so little in history encourages us to pass the freshness of our years in commemorating details at once frivolous to relate and laborious to collect, that I did not find myself tempted by either study to compose a treatise or a record. But Fiction now opened to me her rich and wonderful world — I was brought back to early (and early are always aspiring) feelings — by those magical fascinations, which had been so dear to my boyhood. The sparkling stores of wit and fancy, the deep and various mines of poesy, stretched before me, and I was covetous! I desired to possess, and to reproduce. There is a Northern legend of a man who had resisted all the temptarions the earth could offer. The demon opened to his gaze the marvels beneath the earth. Trees effulgent with diamond fruits, pillars of gold, and precious stones, fountains with water of a million hues, and over all a floating and delicious music instead of air. The tempter succeeded: — envy and desire were created in the breast that had been calm till then. This weakness was a type of mine! — I was not only charmed with the works around me, but I became envious of the rapture which they who created them, must, I fancied, have enjoyed. I recalled that intense and all-glowing description which De Stael has given in her Essay on Enthusiasm, of the ecstasy which an author enjoys, not in the publication, but the production, of his work. Could Shakspeare, I exclaimed, have erected his mighty Temple to Fame, without feeling, himself, the inspiration which consecrated the shrine? Must he not have enjoyed, above all the rest of mankind, every laugh that rang from Falstaff, or every moral that came from the melancholy Jacques?
Must he not have felt the strange and airy rapture of a preternatural being, when his soul conjured up the Desert Island, the Caliban, and the Ariel? Must he not have been intoxicated with a gladness, lighter and more delicate, yet, oh, more exquisite and rich, than any which the harsh merriment of earth can father, when his fancy dwelt in the summer noon under the green boughs with Titania, and looked on the ringlets of the fairies, dewy with the kisses of the flowers? And was there no delight in the dark and weird terror with which he invoked the grisly Three, “so withered and so wild in their attire,” who, in foretelling, themselves created, the bloody destinies of Macbeth? — So far from believing, as some have done, that the feelings of genius are inclined to sadness and dejection — it seemed to me vitally necessary to genius to be vividly susceptible to enjoyment. The poet in prose or verse — the Creator — can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has keenly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.
And how few among the mass of writings that float down to posterity are not far more impregnated with the bright colourings of the mind, than its gloomier hues! Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, Voltaire, Goethe, Cervantes — and — perhaps, a lower grade — Scott, Fielding, Le Sage, Molière. What a serene and healthful cheerfulness, nay, what a quick and vigorous zest of life, are glowingly visible in all I — It is with a very perverted judgment that some have fastened on the few ‘exceptions to the rule, and have asserted that the gloom of Byron or the -morbidity of Rousseau, characterize not the individual, but the tribe. Nay, even in these exceptions, I imagine that, could we accurately examine, we should find, that the capacity to enjoy strongly pervaded their temperament, and made out of their griefs a luxury! — Who shall say whether Rousseau, breathing forth his ‘Reveries,’ or Byron tracing the Pilgrimage of ‘Childe Harold,’ did not more powerfully feel the glory of. the task, than the sorrow it was to immortalize? Must they not have been exalted with an almost divine gladness, by the beauty of their own ideas, the melody of, their own murmurs, the wonders of their own art? Perhaps we should find that Rousseau did not experience a deeper pleasure, though it might be of a livelier hue, when he dwelt on his racy enjoyment of his young and pedestrian excursion, than when in his old age, and his benighted, but haunted mood, he filled the solitude with imaginary enemies, and bade his beloved lake echo to self-nursed woes.
You see then that I was impressed, erroneously or truly, with the belief, that in cultivating the imagination. I should cultivate my happiness. I was envious, not so much of the fame of the ornaments of letters, as of the enjoyment they must have experienced in acquiring it. I shut myself in a closer seclusion, not to study the thoughts of others, but to embody my own. I had been long ambitious of the deepest hoards of learning. I now became ambitious of adding to the stores of a lighter knowledge.
A. And did you find that luxury in ideal creation which you expected? —
L. I might have done so, but I stopped short in my apprenticeship. —
A. And the cause? —
L. Why, one bright day in June, as I was sitting alone in my room, I was suddenly aroused from my reverie, by a sharp and sudden pain, that shot through my breast, and when it left me I fainted away. I was a little alarmed by this circumstance? but thought the air might relieve me. I walked out, and ascended a hill at the back of the house. My attention being now aroused and directed towards myself I was startled to find my breath so short that I was forced several times to stop in the ascent. A low, short cough, which I had not heeded before, now struck me as a warning, which I ought to prepare myself to obey. That evening as I looked in the glass, for the first time for several weeks with any care, in the survey, I. perceived that my apprehensions were corroborated by the change in my appearance. My cheeks were fallen, and I detected in the midst of their natural paleness, that hectic which never betrays its augury. I saw that my days were numbered, and I lay down on my pillow that night with the resolve to prepare for death. The next day when I looked over my scattered papers; when I saw the mighty schemes I had commenced, and recalled the long and earnest absorption of all my faculties, which even that commencement had required, — I was seized with a sort of despair. It was evident that I could now perform nothing great, and as for trifles, ought they to occupy the mind of one whose eye was on the grave? — There was but one answer to this question. I committed my fragments to the flames; and now there came, indeed, upon me a despondency I had not felt before. I saw myself in the condition of one, who, after much travail in the world, has found a retreat, and built a home, and who in the moment he says to his heart, “Now thou shalt have rest!” beholds himself summoned away. I had found an object — it was torn from me — my staff was broken, and it was only left to me to creep to the tomb, without easing by any support the labour of the way. I had coveted no petty aim — I had not bowed my desires to the dust and mire of men’s common wishes — I had bade my ambition single out a lofty end and pursue it by generous means. In the dreams of my spirit, I had bound the joys of my existence to this one aspiring hope, nor had I built that hope on the slender foundations of a young inexperience — I had learned, I had thought, I had toiled, before I ventured in my turn to produce. And now, between myself and the fulfilment of schemes, that I had wrought with travail, and to which I looked for no undue reward — there yawned the Eternal Gulf. It seemed to me as if I was condemned to leave life, at the moment I had given to life an object. There was a bitterness in these thoughts which it was not easy to counteract. In vain, I said to my soul, “Why grieve? — Death itself does not appal thee. — And after all, what can life’s proudest objects bring thee better than rest?” — But we learn at last to conquer our destiny, by surveying it; there is no regret which is not to be vanquished by resolve. And now, when I saw myself declining day by day, I turned to those more elevating and less earthly meditations, which supply us, as it were, with wings, when the feet fail. They have become to me dearer than the dreams which they succeeded, and they whisper to me of a brighter immortality than that of Fame.