James Beattie

“ Blair, on the other hand, never tarries long in such scenes; he does not dwell amidst, and brood over them like an owl, but crosses them with the swift brushing wing of a bird returning to her evening nest. He never goes out of his way to search for them—he sees and shows them merely because they meet him on his path. There is nothing morbid nor much that is melancholy in this poem. He takes the hard fact as it is, and paints it with all his force, but he does not seek to exaggerate or discolour it. ”

“ Wantons on fickle pinion through the skies;
But, fix'd in aim, and conscious of her power,
Aloft from cause to cause exults to rise,
Creation's blended stores arranging as she flies.
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Nor love of novelty alone inspires,
Their laws and nice dependencies to scan;
For, mindful of the aids that life requires,
And of the services man owes to man,
He meditates new arts on Nature's plan;
The cold desponding breast of sloth to warm,
The flame of industry and genius fan,
And emulation's noble rage alarm,
And the long hours of toil and solitude to charm. ”

“ Meanwhile the world, Ambition, owns thy sway,
Fame's loudest trumpet labours in thy praise,
For thee the Muse awakes her sweetest lay,
And Flattery bids for thee her altars blaze.
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Nor in life's lofty bustling sphere alone,
The sphere where monarchs and where heroes toil,
Sink Virtue's sons beneath Misfortune's frown,
While Guilt's thrill'd bosom leaps at Pleasure's smile;
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Full oft, where Solitude and Silence dwell,
Far, far remote, amid the lowly plain,
Resounds the voice of Woe from Virtue's cell:
Such is man's doom, and Pity weeps in vain. ”

“ He is worthy, thus, of the name so often misapplied, of Poet—
i. e.
Maker. You see an original genius both in the beauties and the faults of the work. Its language, so simply strong and daring in its homeliness, its free and energetic motion, its fresh fearless touch, its fidelity to nature and to life, the quick succession and sharp brief poignancy of its pictures, its absence of elaboration, and carelessness about minute lights and shades—all combine to prove that the author has an eye, an imagination, and a purpose quite peculiar to himself. ”

“ Again, scenery will help sometimes to settle a question with a young mind, whose intellectual and imaginative faculties are nearly equal, whether it shall turn permanently to philosophy or to poetry. Such dilemmas or Hercules choices are not uncommon; and there is a period in life when the sight of a mountain, or a sunset, or an autumn river, amid its yellow woods, can have more power than even a book, or the influence of an older mind, or a young love-passion, in deciding them. Again, early intimacy with fine scenery furnishes the poetic mind with an exhaustless supply of images. ”

“ Whom Juno calls to high triumphant fame,
Shall he to meaner sway inglorious bend?
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Yet lingering comfortless in lonesome wild,
Where Echo sleeps 'mid cavern'd vales profound,
The pride of Troy, Dominion's darling child,
Pines while the slow hour stalks in sullen round.
34
Hear thou, of Heaven unconscious! From the blaze
Of glory, stream'd from Jove's eternal throne,
Thy soul, O mortal, caught the inspiring rays
That to a god exalt Earth's raptured son.
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Hence the bold wish, on boundless pinion borne,
That fires, alarms, impels the maddening soul ”

“ Blair's
Grave
too, had, ere Johnson's day, appeared, and furnished a good example of a solemn and religious theme, treated with genuine poetic power.
We need not say what a flood of sacred song has arisen since, and drowned the dictum of the lexicographer in the waves. Nay, an opinion is gaining ground, that all lofty poetry tends toward the sacred, and lies under the shadow of the divine. Poetry is like fire, which, even when employed in culinary or destructive purposes, points its column upwards, and seems to transmit the flower and essence of its conquests to heaven. ”

“ What more so than that of a shepherd among the Grampian Mountains, constantly living between the everlasting hills and the silent sun and stars, surrounded by streams, cataracts, deep dun moorlands, and the wild-eyed and wild-winged creatures which dwell in them alone, their life hid in Nature, and their cries of rude praise going up continually to Nature's God? And yet the Highlands of Scotland have not hitherto produced one great rural poet, except Macpherson, who did belong to the peasantry. ”

“ Like yonder blasted boughs by lightning riven,
Perfection, beauty, life, they never know,
But frown on all that pass, a monument of woe.
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Shall he whose birth, maturity, and age
Scarce fill the circle of one summer day,
Shall the poor gnat, with discontent and rage,
Exclaim that Nature hastens to decay,
If but a cloud obstruct the solar ray,
If but a momentary shower descend?
Or shall frail man Heaven's dread decree gainsay,
Which bade the series of events extend
Wide through unnumber'd worlds, and ages without end? ”

“ First gave you form! Hence! lest the Muse should deign
(Though loth on theme so mean to waste a rhyme) ,
With vengeance to pursue your sacrilegious crime.
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But hail, ye mighty masters of the lay,
Nature's true sons, the friends of man and truth!
Whose song, sublimely sweet, serenely gay,
Amused my childhood, and inform'd my youth.
O let your spirit still my bosom soothe,
Inspire my dreams, and my wild wanderings guide;
Your voice each rugged path of life can smooth,
For well I know, wherever ye reside,
There harmony, and peace, and innocence abide.
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Ah me! ”

“ But not the pomp that royalty displays,
Nor all the imperial pride of lofty Troy,
Nor Virtue's triumph of immortal praise
Could rouse the langour of the lingering boy.
12
Abandon'd all to soft Enone's charms,
He to oblivion doom'd the listless day;
Inglorious lull'd in Love's dissolving arms,
While flutes lascivious breathed the enfeebling lay.
13
To trim the ringlets of his scented hair:
To aim, insidious, Love's bewitching glance;
Or cull fresh garlands for the gaudy fair,
Or wanton loose in the voluptuous dance:
14
These were his arts ”

“ He no doubt also admired and often visited the noble sea scenery to the south of that town.—Slaines Castle, standing on its rock, sheer over the savage surge, and begirt by the perpetual clang of sea-fowl and roar of billows, and the famous Bullers of Buchan, where the sea has forced its way through the solid rock, leaving an arch of triumph to commemorate the passage, and formed a huge round pot where its waters, in the time of storm, rage and fret and foam like a newly imprisoned maniac—a pot which Dr Johnson proposes to substitute for the Red Sea, in the future incarceration of demons. ”

“ Would Edwin this majestic scene resign
For aught the huntsman's puny craft supplies?
Ah! no; he better knows great Nature's charms to prize.
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And oft he traced the uplands, to survey,
When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn,
The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray,
And lake, dim-gleaming on the smoky lawn:
Far to the west the long long vale withdrawn,
Where twilight loves to linger for a while;
And now he faintly kens the bounding fawn,
And villager abroad at early toil.
But, lo! the Sun appears, and heaven, earth, ocean smile! ”

“ Each soft indulgence Nature framed to share;
Pomp, wealth, renown, dominion, all resign'd,
Oh, haste to Pleasure's bower, for Love is there.
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Love, the desire of Gods! the feast of heaven!
Yet to Earth's favour'd offspring not denied!
Ah! let not thankless man the blessing given
Enslave to Fame, or sacrifice to Pride.
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Nor I from Virtue's call decoy thine ear ”

“ Indulged this tender theme:
2
"Ye cliffs, in hoary grandeur piled
High o'er the glimmering dale;
Ye woods, along whose windings wild
Murmurs the solemn gale:
Where Melancholy strays forlorn,
And Woe retires to weep,
What time the wan Moon's yellow horn
Gleams on the western deep!
3
To you, ye wastes, whose artless charms
Ne'er drew ambition's eye,
'Scaped a tumultuous world's alarms,
To your retreats I fly.
Deep in your most sequester'd bower
Let me at last recline,
Where Solitude, mild, modest power,
Leans on her ivied shrine.
4
How shall I woo thee, matchless fair? ”

“ It is, as a poem, chiefly remarkable for its solemn music, which reminds you of a burial-march, but is far inferior to the Scottish poem in lofty moral, in theological truth, and in illustrative power. Blair, and not Bryant, remains the laureate of the Grave.
It is much to have one's name and fame connected with one of the great centrical truths of the universe, especially when that truth is related to a fact. Suppose a writer to have produced a great poem on Light and the Sun—or on Absolute Being and God—or on Immortal Life and Heaven—how sublime and how enviable were his reputation! ”

“ Where the fresh flowers in living lustre blow,
Where thousand pearls the dewy lawns adorn,
A thousand notes of joy in every breeze are borne.
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But who the melodies of morn can tell?
The wild brook babbling down the mountain side;
The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell;
The pipe of early shepherd dim descried
In the lone valley; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above;
The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide;
The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove.
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The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark ”

“ Nature supplied the wish she taught to crave.
None prowl'd for prey, none watch'd to circumvent;
To all an equal lot Heaven's bounty gave:
No vassal fear'd his lord, no tyrant fear'd his slave.
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"But ah! the Historic Muse has never dared
To pierce those hallow'd bowers: 'tis Fancy's beam
Pour'd on the vision of the enraptured bard,
That paints the charms of that delicious theme.
Then hail, sweet Fancy's ray! and hail, the dream
That weans the weary soul from guilt and woe!
Careless what others of my choice may deem,
I long, where Love and Fancy lead, to go
And meditate on Heaven ”

“ Shall rage of blood pollute the sylvan reign?
Shall Leisure wanton in the spoils of Peace?
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Free let the feathery race indulge the song,
Inhale the liberal beam, and melt in love:
Free let the fleet hind bound her hills along,
And in pure streams the watery nations rove.
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To joy in Nature's universal smile
Well suits, O man, thy pleasurable sphere;
But why should Virtue doom thy years to toil?
Ah! why should Virtue's laws be deem'd severe?
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What meed, Beneficence, thy care repays? ”

“ Flushed by its success, Beattie, in 1771, revisited London, and obtained admission to the best literary circles—sate under the "peacock-hangings" of Mrs Montague—visited Hagley Park, and became intimate with Lord Lyttelton—chatted cheerily with Boswell and Garrick—listened with wonder to the deep bow-wows of Johnson's talk—and as he watched the rich alluvial, yet romantic mountain stream of thought, knowledge, and imagery that flowed perpetually from the inspired lips of Burke, perhaps forgot Gray and Glammis Castle, and felt "a greater is here." ”

“ Where could we expect elegant studies to be prosecuted with more success, or whence could we expect more works of sanctified learning and genius to issue, than in and from the "manses" of Scotland, always so beautifully situated, now on the brink of the mountain stream, singing its wild way through the woods,—now in the centre of rich orchards and fertile fields,—now on sunny braes, overlooking the whole parish, prostrate in its loveliness at their feet,—and now surrounded and shadowed by broad old oaks and tall black pine-trees? ”

“ The Grave
is superior in ease, in nature, in healthy tone, and in those happy touches which light upon even genius only in rare and favoured hours. In some of these points, as well as in a certain power of rough moral anatomy, and vivid hurrying sarcasm (like one in haste lifting, handling, and striking with a red-hot falchion) , Blair reminds us rather of Cowper; but the poet of
The Task
teaches a sterner morality, wears around him a mantle of austerer gloom, abounds more in Scriptural reference and in purely theological matter, and exhibits a more thoroughly bardic and prophetic spirit. ”

“ The shortness of the poem has been objected to it. But this, we think, shows the poet's good sense. The subject is too uniform and too gloomy for a long poem.
The Grave, in twelve books
would have been totally unreadable. It was far better to give, as Blair has given, a strong, stern, rapid, and concentrated sketch of the grisly gulf. The grave, in one respect, has no unity, and no story. It stands by itself, hollow, solitary, with its momentary ghastly yawnings, its general repose, and the dark mysteries which, whether open or shut, it conceals in its silent bosom. ”

“ Or, shall we say the mind of the young, especially if gifted, is a daguerreotype plate of the finest construction, and when surrounded by romantic or lovely scenes, it receives and preserves them to the last, and can reproduce them, too, in ever-varying forms, and perpetual succession? And hence, in fine, it follows, that the greatest poets have either been brought up in the country, or have early come in contact with a beautiful nature, as the names of Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Milton, Thomson, Burns, Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Wilson, and Thomas Aird, abundantly prove. ”

“ With iron grasp the tortured bosom wring.
Ah then! even Fancy speeds the venom's course,
Even Fancy points with rage the maddening sting.
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Her wrath a thousand gnashing fiends attend,
And roll the snakes, and toss the brands of hell;
The beam of Beauty blasts: dark heavens impend
Tottering: and Music thrills with startling yell.
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What then avails, that with exhaustless store
Obsequious Luxury loads thy glittering shrine?
What then avails, that prostrate slaves adore,
And Fame proclaims thee matchless and divine?
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What though bland Flattery all her arts apply? ”