Read Ebook: The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside by Akenside Mark Gilfillan George Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 436 lines and 108502 words, and 9 pages

She ended, and the whole romantic scene 660 Immediate vanish'd; rocks, and woods, and rills, The mantling tent, and each mysterious form Flew like the pictures of a morning dream, When sunshine fills the bed. Awhile I stood Perplex'd and giddy; till the radiant power Who bade the visionary landscape rise, As up to him I turn'd, with gentlest looks Preventing my inquiry, thus began:--

ARGUMENT.

Pleasure in observing the tempers and manners of men, even where vicious or absurd. The origin of Vice, from false representations of the fancy, producing false opinions concerning good and evil. Inquiry into ridicule. The general sources of ridicule in the minds and characters of men, enumerated. Final cause of the sense of ridicule. The resemblance of certain aspects of inanimate things to the sensations and properties of the mind. The operations of the mind in the production of the works of Imagination, described. The secondary pleasure from Imitation. The benevolent order of the world illustrated in the arbitrary connexion of these pleasures with the objects which excite them. The nature and conduct of taste. Concluding with an account of the natural and moral advantages resulting from a sensible and well formed imagination.

What wonder therefore, since the endearing ties Of passion link the universal kind Of man so close, what wonder if to search This common nature through the various change Of sex, and age, and fortune, and the frame Of each peculiar, draw the busy mind With unresisted charms? The spacious west, And all the teeming regions of the south, Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight Of Knowledge, half so tempting or so fair, 10 As man to man. Nor only where the smiles Of Love invite; nor only where the applause Of cordial Honour turns the attentive eye On Virtue's graceful deeds. For, since the course Of things external acts in different ways On human apprehensions, as the hand Of Nature temper'd to a different frame Peculiar minds; so haply where the powers Of Fancy neither lessen nor enlarge The images of things, but paint in all 20 Their genuine hues, the features which they wore In Nature; there Opinion will be true, And Action right. For Action treads the path In which Opinion says he follows good, Or flies from evil; and Opinion gives Report of good or evil, as the scene Was drawn by Fancy, lovely or deform'd: Thus her report can never there be true Where Fancy cheats the intellectual eye, With glaring colours and distorted lines. 30 Is there a man, who, at the sound of death, Sees ghastly shapes of terror conjured up, And black before him; nought but death-bed groans And fearful prayers, and plunging from the brink Of light and being, down the gloomy air, An unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind, If no bright forms of excellence attend The image of his country; nor the pomp Of sacred senates, nor the guardian voice Of Justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes 40 The conscious bosom with a patriot's flame; Will not Opinion tell him, that to die, Or stand the hazard, is a greater ill Than to betray his country? And in act Will he not choose to be a wretch and live? Here vice begins then. From the enchanting cup Which Fancy holds to all, the unwary thirst Of youth oft swallows a Circaean draught, That sheds a baleful tincture o'er the eye Of Reason, till no longer he discerns, 50 And only guides to err. Then revel forth A furious band that spurn him from the throne, And all is uproar. Thus Ambition grasps The empire of the soul; thus pale Revenge Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands Of Lust and Rapine, with unholy arts, Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws That keeps them from their prey; thus all the plagues The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scone The tragic Muse discloses, under shapes 60 Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease, or pomp, Stole first into the mind. Yet not by all Those lying forms, which Fancy in the brain Engenders, are the kindling passions driven To guilty deeds; nor Reason bound in chains, That Vice alone may lord it: oft adorn'd With solemn pageants, Folly mounts the throne, And plays her idiot antics, like a queen. A thousand garbs she wears; a thousand ways She wheels her giddy empire.--Lo! thus far 70 With bold adventure, to the Mantuan lyre I sing of Nature's charms, and touch well pleased A stricter note: now haply must my song Unbend her serious measure, and reveal In lighter strains, how Folly's awkward arts Excite impetuous Laughter's gay rebuke; The sportive province of the comic Muse.

See! in what crowds the uncouth forms advance: Each would outstrip the other, each prevent Our careful search, and offer to your gaze, 80 Unask'd, his motley features. Wait awhile, My curious friends! and let us first arrange In proper order your promiscuous throng.

Then comes the second order; all who seek The debt of praise, where watchful Unbelief Darts through the thin pretence her squinting eye On some retired appearance which belies The boasted virtue, or annuls the applause That Justice else would pay. Here side by side I see two leaders of the solemn train Approaching: one a female old and gray, With eyes demure, and wrinkle-furrow'd brow, Pale as the cheeks of death; yet still she stuns 130 The sickening audience with a nauseous tale, How many youths her myrtle chains have worn, How many virgins at her triumphs pined! Yet how resolved she guards her cautious heart; Such is her terror at the risks of love, And man's seducing tongue! The other seems A bearded sage, ungentle in his mien, And sordid all his habit; peevish Want Grins at his heels, while down the gazing throng He stalks, resounding in magnific praise 140 The vanity of riches, the contempt Of pomp and power. Be prudent in your zeal, Ye grave associates! let the silent grace Of her who blushes at the fond regard Her charms inspire, more eloquent unfold The praise of spotless honour: let the man, Whose eye regards not his illustrious pomp And ample store, but as indulgent streams To cheer the barren soil and spread the fruits Of joy, let him by juster measures fix 150 The price of riches and the end of power.

But now, ye gay! to whom indulgent fate, Of all the Muse's empire hath assign'd The fields of folly, hither each advance Your sickles; here the teeming soil affords Its richest growth. A favourite brood appears, In whom the demon, with a mother's joy, Views all her charms reflected, all her cares At full repaid. Ye most illustrious band! Who, scorning Reason's tame, pedantic rules, And Order's vulgar bondage, never meant 200 For souls sublime as yours, with generous zeal Pay Vice the reverence Virtue long usurp'd, And yield Deformity the fond applause Which Beauty wont to claim, forgive my song, That for the blushing diffidence of youth, It shuns the unequal province of your praise.

Last of the motley bands on whom the power Of gay Derision bends her hostile aim, Is that where shameful Ignorance presides. 230 Beneath her sordid banners, lo! they march Like blind and lame. Whate'er their doubtful hands Attempt, Confusion straight appears behind, And troubles all the work. Through many a maze, Perplex'd they struggle, changing every path, O'erturning every purpose; then at last Sit down dismay'd, and leave the entangled scene For Scorn to sport with. Such then is the abode Of Folly in the mind; and such the shapes In which she governs her obsequious train. 240

Through every scene of ridicule in things To lead the tenor of my devious lay; Through every swift occasion, which the hand Of Laughter points at, when the mirthful sting Distends her sallying nerves and chokes her tongue; What were it but to count each crystal drop Which Morning's dewy fingers on the blooms Of May distil? Suffice it to have said, Where'er the power of Ridicule displays Her quaint-eyed visage, some incongruous form, 250 Some stubborn dissonance of things combined, Strikes on the quick observer: whether Pomp, Or Praise, or Beauty, mix their partial claim Where sordid fashions, where ignoble deeds, Where foul Deformity are wont to dwell; Or whether these with violation loathed, Invade resplendent Pomp's imperious mien, The charms of Beauty, or the boast of Praise.

Such are the various aspects of the mind-- Some heavenly genius, whose unclouded thoughts Attain that secret harmony which blends 280 The etherial spirit with its mould of clay, Oh! teach me to reveal the grateful charm That searchless Nature o'er the sense of man Diffuses, to behold, in lifeless things, The inexpressive semblance of himself, Of thought and passion. Mark the sable woods That shade sublime yon mountain's nodding brow: With what religious awe the solemn scene Commands your steps! as if the reverend form Of Minos or of Numa should forsake 290 The Elysian seats, and down the embowering glade Move to your pausing eye! Behold the expanse Of yon gay landscape, where the silver clouds Flit o'er the heavens before the sprightly breeze: Now their gray cincture skirts the doubtful sun; Now streams of splendour, through their opening veil Effulgent, sweep from off the gilded lawn The a?rial shadows, on the curling brook, And on the shady margin's quivering leaves With quickest lustre glancing; while you view 300 The prospect, say, within your cheerful breast Plays not the lively sense of winning mirth With clouds and sunshine chequer'd, while the round Of social converse, to the inspiring tongue Of some gay nymph amid her subject train, Moves all obsequious? Whence is this effect, This kindred power of such discordant things? Or flows their semblance from that mystic tone To which the new-born mind's harmonious powers At first were strung? Or rather from the links 310 Which artful custom twines around her frame?

What then is taste, but these internal powers Active, and strong, and feelingly alive To each fine impulse,--a discerning sense Of decent and sublime, with quick disgust From things deform'd, or disarranged, or gross In species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold, 520 Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow; But God alone, when first His active hand Imprints the secret bias of the soul. He, mighty Parent! wise and just in all, Free as the vital breeze or light of heaven, Reveals the charms of Nature. Ask the swain Who journeys homeward from a summer day's Long labour, why, forgetful of his toils And due repose, he loiters to behold The sunshine gleaming as through amber clouds, 530 O'er all the western sky; full soon, I ween, His rude expression and untutor'd airs, Beyond the power of language, will unfold The form of beauty, smiling at his heart, How lovely! how commanding! But though Heaven In every breast hath sown these early seeds Of love and admiration, yet in vain, Without fair culture's kind parental aid, Without enlivening suns, and genial showers, And shelter from the blast, in vain we hope 540 The tender plant should rear its blooming head, Or yield the harvest promised in its spring. Nor yet will every soul with equal stores Repay the tiller's labour, or attend His will, obsequious, whether to produce The olive or the laurel. Different minds Incline to different objects; one pursues The vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; Another sighs for harmony, and grace, And gentlest beauty. Hence, when lightning fires 550 The arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground, When furious whirlwinds rend the howling air, And ocean, groaning from his lowest bed, Heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky; Amid the mighty uproar, while below The nations tremble, Shakspeare looks abroad Prom some high cliff, superior, and enjoys The elemental war. But Waller longs, All on the margin of some flowery stream To spread his careless limbs amid the cool 560 Of plantane shades, and to the listening deer The tale of slighted vows and love's disdain Resound soft-warbling all the livelong day; Consenting Zephyr sighs; the weeping rill Joins in his plaint, melodious; mute the groves; And hill and dale with all their echoes mourn. Such and so various are the tastes of men.

BOOK FIRST.

ENDNOTE A.

ENDNOTE B.

ENDNOTE C.

It was a notion of the great Mr. Huygens, that there may be fixed stars at such a distance from our solar system, as that their light should not have had time to reach us, even from the creation of the world to this day.

ENDNOTE D.

It is here said, that in consequence of the love of novelty, objects which at first were highly delightful to the mind, lose that effect by repeated attention to them. But the instance of habit is opposed to this observation; for there, objects at first distasteful are in time rendered entirely agreeable by repeated attention.

The difficulty in this case will be removed if we consider, that, when objects at first agreeable, lose that influence by frequently recurring, the mind is wholly passive, and the perception involuntary; but habit, on the other hand, generally supposes choice and activity accompanying it: so that the pleasure arises here not from the object, but from the mind's conscious determination of its own activity; and consequently increases in proportion to the frequency of that determination.

It will still be urged perhaps, that a familiarity with disagreeable objects renders them at length acceptable, even when there is no room for the mind to resolve or act at all. In this case, the appearance must be accounted for one of these ways.

The pleasure from habit may be merely negative. The object at first gave uneasiness: this uneasiness gradually wears off as the object grows familiar: and the mind, finding it at last entirely removed, reckons its situation really pleasurable, compared with what it had experienced before.

The dislike conceived of the object at first, might be owing to prejudice or want of attention. Consequently the mind being necessitated to review it often, may at length perceive its own mistake, and be reconciled to what it had looked on with aversion. In which case, a sort of instinctive justice naturally leads it to make amends for the injury, by running toward the other extreme of fondness and attachment.

Or lastly, though the object itself should always continue disagreeable, yet circumstances of pleasure or good fortune may occur along with it. Thus an association may arise in the mind, and the object never be remembered without those pleasing circumstances attending it; by which means the disagreeable impression which it at first occasioned will in time be quite obliterated.

ENDNOTE E.

These two ideas are oft confounded; though it is evident the mere novelty of an object makes it agreeable, even where the mind is not affected with the least degree of wonder: whereas wonder indeed always implies novelty, being never excited by common or well-known appearances. But the pleasure in both cases is explicable from the same final cause, the acquisition of knowledge and enlargement of our views of nature: on this account it is natural to treat of them together.

ENDNOTE F.

This excellent observation has been illustrated and extended by the noble restorer of ancient philosophy. And another ingenious author has particularly shewn, that it holds in the general laws of nature, in the works of art, and the conduct of the sciences . As to the connexion between beauty and truth, there are two opinions concerning it. Some philosophers assert an independent and invariable law in nature, in consequence of which all rational beings must alike perceive beauty in some certain proportions, and deformity in the contrary. And this necessity being supposed the same with that which commands the assent or dissent of the understanding, it follows, of course, that beauty is founded on the universal and unchangeable law of truth.

But others there are who believe beauty to be merely a relative and arbitrary thing; that, indeed, it was a benevolent provision in nature to annex so delightful a sensation to those objects which are best and most perfect in themselves, that so we might be engaged to the choice of them at once, and without staying to infer their usefulness from their structure and effects; but that it is not impossible, in a physical sense, that two beings, of equal capacities for truth, should perceive, one of them beauty, and the other deformity, in the same proportions. And upon this supposition, by that truth which is always connected with beauty, nothing more can be meant than the conformity of any object to those proportions upon which, after careful examination, the beauty of that species is found to depend. Polycletus, for instance, a famous ancient sculptor, from an accurate mensuration of the several parts of the most perfect human bodies, deduced a canon or system of proportions, which was the rule of all succeeding artists. Suppose a statue modelled according to this: a man of mere natural taste, upon looking at it, without entering into its proportions, confesses and admires its beauty; whereas a professor of the art applies his measures to the head, the neck, or the hand, and, without attending to its beauty, pronounces the workmanship to be just and true.

ENDNOTE G.

ENDNOTE H.

According to the opinion of those who assert moral obligation to be founded on an immutable and universal law; and that which is usually called the moral sense, to be determined by the peculiar temper of the imagination and the earliest associations of ideas.

The school of Aristotle.

ENDNOTE J.

The school of Plato.

ENDNOTE K.

One of the rivers on which Athens was situated. Plato, in some of his finest dialogues, lays the scene of the conversation with Socrates on its banks.

BOOK SECOND.

ENDNOTE L

About the age of Hugh Capet, founder of the third race of French kings, the poets of Provence were in high reputation; a sort of strolling bards or rhapsodists, who went about the courts of princes and noblemen, entertaining them at festivals with music and poetry. They attempted both the epic, ode, and satire; and abounded in a wild and fantastic vein of fable, partly allegorical, and partly founded on traditionary legends of the Saracen wars. These were the rudiments of Italian poetry. But their taste and composition must have been extremely barbarous, as we may judge by those who followed the turn of their fable in much politer times; such as Boiardo, Bernardo, Tasso, Ariosto, etc.

ENDNOTE M.

The famous retreat of Francisco Petrarcha, the father of Italian poetry, and his mistress, Laura, a lady of Avignon.

ENDNOTE N.

The river which runs by Florence, the birth-place of Dante and Boccaccio.

ENDNOTE O.

Or Naples, the birth-place of Sannazaro. The great Torquato Tasso was born at Sorrento in the kingdom of Naples.

ENDNOTE P.

This relates to the cruel wars among the republics of Italy, and abominable politics of its little princes, about the fifteenth century. These, at last, in conjunction with the papal power, entirely extinguished the spirit of liberty in that country, and established that abuse of the fine arts which has been since propagated over all Europe.

ENDNOTE Q.

Nor were they only losers by the separation. For philosophy itself, to use the words of a noble philosopher, 'being thus severed from the sprightly arts and sciences, must consequently grow dronish, insipid, pedantic, useless, and directly opposite to the real knowledge and practice of the world.' Insomuch that 'a gentleman,' says another excellent writer, 'cannot easily bring himself to like so austere and ungainly a form: so greatly is it changed from what was once the delight of the finest gentlemen of antiquity, and their recreation after the hurry of public affairs! From this condition it cannot be recovered but by uniting it once more with the works of imagination; and we have had the pleasure of observing a very great progress made towards their union in England within these few years. It is hardly possible to conceive them at a greater distance from each other than at the Revolution, when Locke stood at the head of one party, and Dryden of the other. But the general spirit of liberty, which has ever since been growing, naturally invited our men of wit and genius to improve that influence which the arts of persuasion gave them with the people, by applying them to subjects of importance to society. Thus poetry and eloquence became considerable; and philosophy is now, of course, obliged to borrow of their embellishments, in order even to gain audience with the public.

ENDNOTE R.

This very mysterious kind of pleasure, which is often found in the exercise of passions generally counted painful, has been taken notice of by several authors. Lucretius resolves it into self-love:--

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet