In popularity thro all the letter'd
Society of nations still augments!
For me against a sense so universal
To lift my voice seems madness.—I have task'd
My taste and judgment o'er and o'er again;—
And yet I think the same!-I am not able
This charm to pierce: in it there is to me
But little merit, and still less attraction.
It is a clear transparent stream of elegance,
With a light bottom. Never does it rise
To eloquence, or energy!—It has
The art of throwing all vain accessaries
Away, and seeming to extract the essence
Of every subject: it is in sooth a trick,
If I may so express myself, of saying
Trite things, adapted to the apprehension
Of common minds, as if they were discoveries
Of deep and philosophic genius; and
A shrewd appeal to what the populace
Calls common sense;-forever mingled with
That jest and ridicule and irony
And taunt, which are the unresisted masters
Of vulgar intellects. But for the heart,—
The generous feeling,—the emotion grand,-
Nerer by chance is there a single spark!
His proper motto is-« The world's a jest,
« And all things shew it!»-But the world is not
A jest! and therefore he's no sage or bard!
Yet even in the apprehensions of
The people will a witticism be
The most consummate and resistless argument;
And he who laughs;-and has th' ungenerous talent
To see th' absurd, or make it, holds a rod,
A spear-whose touch is instant victory.
But I would never trust the bosom, which
First sees th'incongruent in presented objects,
Material or ideal!-It betrays
A littleness of mind; a microscopic
Habit of searching with ungenerous labour,
Not for the good, but bad :—for combinations
Invented ill; for failures, which may prove
Man's being, and the Universe, a folly!—
It soothes frail human envy to believe
There is no greatness;-that pretended wisdom,
Virtue, and magnanimity, cannot
The sharp dissecting eye of wit withstand;
And that the greatest sage is he, whose insight
Can shew them all to be unsound delusions.
Thou wast, Voltaire, as I conceive, in midst
Of all thy worldly elevation, ill
At ease in thine own heart;-thy spirit working
To carry thine own points by artifice,
Mistrustful of intrinsic strength or greatness;
Thinking that genius was, in truth, a farce;
And in thine own art drowning all thy comfort;
Seeking the plausible, and not the true;—
Witty, not wise; and deeming grandeur, beauty,
To lie i' the pictur'd image only;—not
In the reality! the passions ever
At work to crush thy rivals by deep artifice
And living only in the vain applause
Of loud capricious multitudes! In thee
There was no genuine love of nature's charms;
Of beauty no idolatry; -no fictions
Of fairy lands; no heavenly visitings
Involuntary of imagination.
But ever the long studied combination
Of forc'd, not forceful, art!―Then daily watchfulness
Of rival power no peace within the bosom
Left, and the rising genius of Rousseau
Was poison thus to thy frail veteran breast.
And thus in secret were the enmities
Of the all-morbid dreamer's fellow-citizens
Nurs'd, and incessant by the insidious darts
Of wit perverted the sad wanderer's step
Prevented from return to the dear spot
Of his inspir'd nativity! But ye,
Who in these two dispute the palm of genius,
First fix precisely that which constitutes
True genius! If, as said, it be th'invention
Of what is grand, or beautiful, or tender,
And simpathises with the native movements
That Heaven into the human breast instils,
Then who will most abide this test? the rhymer
In verse prosaic of dull Ferney's lord,
Or he, the eloquent and passionate
Dreamer of Heloise's melting bosom,
The painter of the storm on Leman's Lake,
The muse-enchanted wood-crownd rocks that hang Over the bright waves at La Meilleirai:
If it were true, that Ferney's Lord has drawn
Man as he is with more fidelity,
"Tis man alone in his material essence,
Mingled with earth's contaminating grossness.
Genius is better conversant with man's
Feelings and thoughts than with his coarsest actions.
O call not this delusion! Virtue lives
More in the mind and heart than in the body,
And all of grandeur we enjoy, and beauty,
And love, and admiration, not the less
Is genuine, if it only be ideal!—
Without th'associations, which the mind
To matter brings, it is a barren essence.
It may be said that Ferney's Bard is ever
All intellect:-but then it is an intellect
Applied to Man in his most artificial
Condition in society; with manners,
Passions, ambitions, toils, pursuits of pleasure,
Of judgment rules, and estimates of merit,
Conventional,-far more the close result
Of nice observance, than of pure invention:
Not the embodiment of abstract thoughts
In living imagery, but itself abstraction,
Subtle, unsimpathising with the heart,
Calling forth only the keen faculties
Of apprehension, judgment, memory!—
These are miscall'd delusions, which removed,
Then all the charms of life dissolve away!
It is not reason, which the callous give
That sacred name! They stupidly call reason
That which their hands can touch, and eyes can see,
And ears can hear; and they are sceptical
On all which is unseen, unheard, unknown,
Save in the regions of imagination!
So, when the heart at the sublime and fair
In Man's conceptions to high rapture swells,
They call it an irrational delusion!
Thus reason is the damper and extinguisher,
Which not produces fruit, but only blights it.
Far up among the mountain gorges lies
The rude domain of craggy Faucigny.
Its ancient feudal lords were sovereign princes;
And high were their alliances, and rivals
Of the Genevan Counts, and those of Savoy!
Oft on the summits of its crags are perch'd
The fragments of their castellated towers
Among the clouds in most magnificent form;
And in its narrow vallies green is view'd
The loveliness of nature in her softest
And sweetest hues and features. There, St.-Gervais,
I pass'd an autumn month in thy abode,
Since which twelve busy years have pass'd away,
Bringing in their career full many a change
To Europe, and to half the world besides!
Imagination cannot figure scenes
More beautiful, more grand, of rural shapes
And hues more full of ravishment,
Than thine, St.-Gervais, in an autumn day
Of splendor; nor a peasantry in childhood
Of face more lovely, and seemingly more happy!
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