We say he had no moral intention, for the reason, that,
as artist, it was not his to deal with the realities, but only with
the shows of things; yet, with a temperament so just, an insight so
inevitable as his, it was impossible that the moral reality, which
underlies the _mirage_ of the poet's vision, should not always be
suggested. His humor and satire are never of the destructive kind; what
he does in that way is suggestive only,--not breaking bubbles with
Thor's hammer, but puffing them away with the breath of a Clown, or
shivering them with the light laugh of a genial cynic. Men go about to
prove the existence of a God! Was it a bit of phosphorus, that brain
whose creations are so real, that, mixing with them, we feel as if we
ourselves were but fleeting magic-lantern shadows?
But higher even than the genius, we rate the character of this unique
man, and the grand impersonality of what he wrote. What has he told
us of himself? In our self-exploiting nineteenth century, with its
melancholy liver-complaint, how serene and high he seems! If he had
sorrows, he has made them the woof of everlasting consolation to his
kind; and if, as poets are wont to whine, the outward world was cold
to him, its biting air did but trace itself in loveliest frost-work of
fancy on the many windows of that self-centred and cheerful soul.
* * * * *
NEW PUBLICATIONS
For the Quarter ending December 31, 1858.
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