to the mature and philosophic mind. To the question, "What makes Summer?" the reply is supposed to be addressed to a group of open-eyed children, and here is the reply :— ""Tis the Sun that rises early, -(Vol. iii. p. 228.) Even more exquisite is the continuation of the vision: with the Sun going down, with Twilight and its new series of wonders coming on, ending with the Moon climbing to her throne, the whole still conceived on the plane of the infant imagination, with delicious touches drawn from children's frolics, as they go unwillingly to bed, and seek to postpone the hour of their vanishing to repose. The little cherubs below are made to enter, as by kindred emotion, into the soul of those movements which are enacted by the "other celestial bodies" all blinking and winking, "Slow at length, adown the west, And, though sleepy, heels and head, Even when down behind the hill, Then the Moon comes up the hill, Lest her path should not be clear, Like a timid lady she Looks around her daintily, Begs the clouds to come about her, Night is then a dream opaque, There they sparkle, pop, and play- Like a nursemaid watching them." And here we take occasion to observe that such 'Poems for Children' mark not any inferior or commonplace power, but a very high order of genius. The aerial fancy they display and demand is akin to that of the "Comus" of Milton and the "Midsummer Night's Dream "of Shakspere; and it is one of the best proofs of MacDonald's power that he has dwelt so long in the faery vestibule of young imagination, and has drawn more visions of beauty from its scenes than any other poet except his great prototype Wordsworth, of whom, as in much else, he is in this regard the true successor. The happiest, and at the same time the subtlest and truest, expression ever given of the differentia of " genius was that coined by Coleridge when defending the famous paradox of Wordsworth, which proclaimed "the child to be the father of the man." Genius, said the poet sage, consists in the carrying forward into the conceptions of youth and manhood the freshness and vividness and simplicity of the impressions of the child. To have the dew of one's youth retained under the browner shades of life or beneath the snows of age, to be one of those whose heart has kept pure the holy forms of young imagination, is the prerogative of genius; and to none has this special phase of that prerogative been given in our age more largely than to George MacDonald. Further, to those who remember what a large proportion of Wordsworth's poetry deals with child hood and the early visions of life, no apology is needed for the introduction of another poem of MacDonald's, in which is attempted a flight backward into the unseen at a period of thought earlier than even Wordsworth has ventured to explore. ventured to explore. It is the jeu d'esprit known as "The Baby," perhaps the best known of his productions; for the words of it have gone out and floated round the world, no one, or very few, knowing whence the fine essence has been distilled. It professes to be little more than the pretty prattle of a mother and her babe, but when you study it, these lispings are found to touch questions that echo wide and far, even into infinity. How did they all just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew. And how did you come to us, you dear? God thought about you, and so I am here." (Vol. iii. p. 246.) these Delicious crozings gurgling forth like the "bonny havers, as he calls them, of a purling, trotting burn. Light they are, and airy as the gossamer film of the autumn, but with an iridescence drawn from a supramundane sphere-at once touching and profound. In the first reply of the Baby, there is flashed upon us a glimpse of the origin of the soul as from the bosom of God, "who is our Home," and the words are the childlike expression for the old conception of Deity, mathemat ically defined, as "that circle of Being whose centre is everywhere, and circumference is nowhere.' Then, again, in the Baby's fourth answer, as to how the pearly tear came in, we find ourselves brushing the edge of the great abyss whence came sin and misery, the heritage of woe to which man is born. The little theologian disclaims responsibility, and, safe in his own innocence, reminds us pathetically of his environment, the inheritance of humanity. The whole is rounded off with a delightful pair of rejoinders on the part of the child, the last of them depositing us safe on the soil of this living world, and so ends this "fine frenzy," which, out of the humble nursery, has sent glances from earth to heaven and heaven to earth of a kind at once to enlighten, to harmonise, and to reconcile. As a typical specimen of his power to invest objects, even inanimate objects, with the halo of a nobler lustre, we may dip into one of his poems, presenting no higher title or inviting theme than "My Room," but which turns out to be a walk and a talk round his chamber, а “Voy " age autour de ma Chambre," wherein few would not be charmed to accompany him. Into this "Room he conjures the spirits of the past, for is not his library around him? and by the adjustment of his window-blinds, he can pour upon the walls the infinite prismatic play of light and colour, in which he, like every true poet, revels; while, as for the voices of nature, the songs of birds, the whispers of the breeze, the roar of streams, he has them all enchanted within his call in that square box against the wall, which box, in the language of men, is known as a piano, but in the tongue of the angels is what MacDonald will portray. After preamble, and starting at conversation-pitch, he proceeds :— "This poor-seeming room in fact Ne'er unveiled such hidden glory; See that case against the wall, Do you hear a voice of singing? So soars with strong pinion the muse of MacDonald, starting from the humblest footstool on the floor of earth, and springing from crystal step to crystal step into the region of aerial fancy. Not in Herrick himself have we a more graceful harlequin, turning somersaults in rhyme, but with profounder meanings than even Herrick was able to infuse. The glorification of the Sofa by the poet Cowper, which naturally occurs for comparison, is tame and poor compared with this glorification of the Piano by MacDonald, and the whole picture, even to us who are by no means musically given, sounds as the transfiguration of music, such as only a Haydn or an Abt Vogler in his seraphic moments can attain. some one Very beautiful," some one may say-and this " need not be necessarily a downright Gradgrind of the hopeless Utilitarians "very beautiful all this, and pretty enough withal; but, after all, these are only gew-gaws of the fancy. In this world of hard realities we need stronger stuff to feed our souls upon. Has your poet any such at his command ?” Yes, much and precious he can supply of sustenance; only you must, as with Wordsworth or with Shakspere, first have an appetite awakened for such sustenance, and then you must go a-searching for it with braced-up energies, as for hidden treasure, and you will not lose your due reward. It is true-and we are free to confess it-that MacDonald has not given us all he might under other auspices have given, and was dowered to give us: he has yet given us enough to enable us to rejoice over him as one of the subtlest and finest spirits of our time. In illustrating this point, we might dip anywhere into what we think his most finished work, the story of student days, called "The Hidden Life," but for brevity we must refrain, and shall take, as an example of his strength as well as variety of handling, his imaginative portrayal of that loftiest but most hazardous of themes-the character and work and influence of the Redeemer of Mankind. The subject is one recurring in our poet often and under most varied light; but three of the pictures stand out pre-eminent, any one of which might have sufficed as witness of power in a writer of less opulence of thought. It is with these companion pictures, though loath to leave unculled many flowers as fair, we must now conclude our critique on MacDonald at the present time. The first vision of the Man of Sorrows is contained in his earliest work, "Within and Without," and it will be found when studied to rise gradually into a great apostrophe expressing homage to Christ out of the bosom of the sin-laden world. There are signs of juvenility in the verse, and still more in the thought: neither of these is as yet firm or mature with the crispness of his after-time; but what a glow has already begun to breathe in these youthful lines! "I came to Him: I gazed upon His Face; And lo from out His eyes, God looked on me. Yea, let them laugh! I will sit at His feet, As a child sits upon the ground, and looks Up in his mother's face. from Him, One smile One look from those sad eyes, is more to me Than to be lord myself of hearts and thoughts. O perfect made through the reacting pain In which Thy making force recoiled on Thee! Whom no less glory could make visible Than the utter giving of Thyself away, Without a thought of grandeur in the deed, More than a child embracing from full heart! Lord of Thyself and me through the sore grief, Which Thou didst bear to bring us back to God, Or rather, bear in being unto us Thy own pure shining self of love and truth! When I have learned to think Thy radiant thoughts, To love the truth beyond the power to know it, To bear my light, as Thou Thy heavy, cross, Nor ever feel a martyr for Thy sake, and waste; The second of these pictures is found in one of MacDonald's sonnets, the greatest as appears to us among his many fine sonnets. It is the most complete-we had almost said the most marvellousepitome that we know of the greatest and divinest of lives, and all within the compass of the fourteen-lined sonnet. And although we cannot aver that MacDonald's sonnets strike us as by any means his best poems, it is well that he has shown what he could do in that domain; for it is a domain in which the "Dii Majores" of English poetry have elected to put forth their greatest strength -as witness Shakspere, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats; and so MacDonald has fittingly shown that here too he could take rank with the true Orphic band. "For three-and-thirty years, a living seed, A lonely germ, dropt on our waste world's side, Thy death and rising Thou didst calmly bide; Sore compassed by many a clinging weed Sprung from the fallow soil of evil and need ; Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied ; Pitied of goodness dull and scorned of pride; Until at length was done the awful deed, And Thou didst lie outworn in stony bower Three days asleep-oh, slumber, godlike, brief, For Man of Sorrows and acquaint with grief! Heaven's seed Thou diedst, that out of thee might tower Aloft with rooted stem and shadowy leaf, Of all Humanity the crimson flower." -(Vol. ii. p. 180.) We glean one other poem which, strangely, has no title, but leads up to, and closes with, the same high theme: a poem which is more unique and characteristic still, which none but MacDonald could have written, unless perhaps Tennyson, whose "In Memoriam " quatrain it reproduces in perfect poise and felicity, with its noble gradation of fancy flowing on from point to point, from stage to stage, of ascending beauty, and the whole uttering itself with most melodious sweetness. A hymn of praise it may be said to be, to Him in whom he finds the apex of all beauty, who is fairer "than the children of men." |