The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-11-27 00:00:00

IDOLATRY OF GENIUS.

-- -
NORTH : Well, then, mark my drift, James. We
idolise Genius, to the neglect of the worship of Virtue.
To our thoughts, Genius is all in all—Virtue absolutely,
nothing. Human nature seems to be glorified in Shake-
speare, because his intellect was various and vast, and
because it comprehended a knowledge of all the work-
ings, perhaps, of human being. But if there be truth in
that faith to which the Christian world is bound, how
dare we, on that ground, to look on Shakespeare as almost
greater and better than Man ? Why, to criticise one of
his works poorly, or badly, or insolently, is it held to be
blasphemy ? Why ? Is Genius so sacred, so holy a
thing, per se, and apart from Virtue ? Folly all ! One
truly good action performed is worth all that ever Shake-
speare wrote. Who is the Swan of Avon in comparison
to the humblest being that ever purified his spirit in the
waters of eternal life !
SHEPHERD: Speak awa! I'll no interrupt you --but
whether I agree wi' you or no's anither question.
NORTH: Only listen, James, to our eulogies on genius.
How virtue must vail her radiant forehead before that
idol! How the whole world speaks out her ceaseless
sympathy with the woes of (genius ! How silent as frost,
when virtue pines! Let a young poet poison himself in
wrathful despair— and all the muses weep over his un-
hallowed bier. Let a young Christian die under the
visitation of God, who weeps ? No eye hut his mother's.
We know that such deaths are every day—every hour—
but the thought affects us not—we have no thought—
and heap after heap is added, unbewailed, to city or
country churchyard. But let a poet, forsooth, die in
y h
out —pay the debt of nature early—and Nature herself,
throughout her elements, must in her turn pay tribute to
his shade.
SHEPHERD : Dinna mak me unhappy, sir—dinna make
me sae very unhappy, sir, I beseech you—try and explain
awa what you hae said, to the satisfaction o' our hearts
and understandins.
NORTH: Impossible. We are base idolaters. 'Tis in-
fatuation—not religion. Is it Genius, or is it Virtue, that
shall send a soul to heaven ?
SHEPHERD . Virtue—there's nae denying that ;—vir-
, toe, sir.—virtue.
NoRTH: Let us then feel, think, speak, and act, as if
we so believed. Is Poetry necessary to our salvation ?
Is Paradise Lost better than the New Testament ?

[GRATIS.

SHEPHRRD: Oh ! dinna mak me unhappy. Say again
that Poetry is religion.
NORTH ; Religion has in it the finest and truest spirit
of poetry, and the finest and truest spirit of poetry has in
it the spirit of religion. But—
SHEPHERD ; Say nae main—say nae main I'm satin
fled wi' that
NORTH ; Oh ! James, it makes my very soul sick
within me to hear the puny whinings poured by phiNo-
sophical sentimentalists over the failings—the errors—the
vices of genius ! There has been, I fear, too much of
that traitorous dereliction of the only true faith, even in
some eloquent eulogies on the dead, which I have been
the means of giving to the world. Have you not often
felt that, when reading what has been said about our own
immortal Burns?
SHEpHERD: I have in my calmer moments.
NORTH ; While the hypocritical and the base exagger-
ated all that illustrious man's aberrations from the right
path, nor had the heart to acknowledge the manifold
temptations strewed around his feet,—the enthusiastic
and the generous ran into the other extreme, and weakly
—I must not say wickedly—strove to extenuate them into
mere trifles—in too many instances to deny them al-
together; and when too flagrant to be denied, dared to
declare that we were bound to forget and forgive them on
the score of the poet's genius—as if genius, the guardian
of virtue, could ever be regarded as the pander to vice,
and the slave of sin. Thus they were willing to sacrifice
morality, rather than that the idol set up before their
imagination should be degraded ; and did far worse injury,
and offered far worse insult, to Virtue and Religion, 19y
thus slurring over the offences of Burns against both, than
ever was done by those offences themselves —for Burns
bitterly repented what they almost canonised ; and the
evil practice of one man can never do so much injury to
society, as the evil theory of a thousand. Burns erred
greatly and greviously ; and since the world knows that
I he did, as well from friends as from foes, let us be lenient
and merciful to him, whose worth was great; but just
and faithful to that law of right, which must on no con-
sideration be violated by our judgments, but which must
! maintain and exercise its severe and sovereign power over

all transgressions, and more especially over the transgres-
sions of those to whom nature has granted endowments
that might have been, had their possepsors nobly willed it,
the ministers of unmingled good to themselves and the
whole human race.
SHEPHERD : You've written better about Burns yoursel,
sir, nor onybody else breathin. That you hae—baith
better and aftener—and a' friends of the poet ought to be
grateful to Christopher North.
NORTH : That is true praise coming from my Shepherd.
But I have fallen into the error I now reprehended.

Systematic extract from a repository so charm-
ing, and so redundantly filled, is no easy task,
and one who undertakes it soon feels the reality
of une embarrasse des riehesses ; he becomes
speedily overwhemed by the abundance of the
material by which he finds himself on all sides
surrounded. We have already alluded to Wil-
son's finely attuned sympathies with the misfor-
tunes to which all " men of woman born" are
subject ; hear how eloquently, yet with what
unobtrusive sweetness, he reflects upon
THE SORROWS OF THE POOR.

NORTH : There is something more affecting in the
natural sorrows of poor men, my dear Shepherd, as, after
a few days' wrestling with affliction, they appear again at
their usual work—melancholy, but not miserable.
SHEPHERD: You ken a gude deal, sir, about the life
and character o' the puir ; but then it's frae philosophical
and poetical observation and sympathy—no frae art-and-
part participation, like mine, in their merriment and their
meesery. Folk in what they ca' the upper classes o' society,
a' look upon life inair or less, as u scene o' enjoyment, and
amusement, and delicht. They get a' selfish in their sensi-
bilities, and would fain mak the verra laws o' natur obedient
to their wull. Thus they cherish and encourage habits o'
thocht and feeling that are maist adverse to obedience and
resignation to the decrees o' the Almighty—when these
decrees dash in pieces small the idols o' their earthy
Iworship.
NORTH : Too true, alas l my dearest Shepherd.

18G

SHEPHERD : Pity me ! how they moan, and groan, and
greet, and wring their hauns, and tear their hair, even auld
folk their thin grey hair, when death comes into the bed-
room, or the verra drawing-room, and carries aff in his
clutches some wee bit spoiled bairn, yaumtnerin amang its
playthings, or keeping its mither awake a' nicht by its per-
petual cries !
NORTH : Touch tenderly, James—on—
2.
. .

SHEPHERD : Ane wad think that nae parents had ever
lost a child afore--yet hoo mony a slim' funeral do you
see ilka day pacin alang the streets uuheeded on, amang
the carts and hackney-coaches !
NORTH : Unheeded, as a party of upholsterer's men
carrying furniture to a new house.
SHEPHERD : There is little or naething o' this thocht-
less, this senseless clamour in kintra-houses, when the
cloud o' God's judgment passes ower them, anti orders are
Bien for a grave to be dug in the kirkyard. A' the house
is hushed and quate—just the same as if the patient were
still sick, and no gane awa— the father, and perhaps the
mother, the brothers, and the sisters, are a' gaun about
their ordinary business, wi' grave faces, nae doubt, and
some o' them now and then dichtin the draps frae their een ;
but, after the first black day, little audible greetin, and
nae indecent and impious outcries.
NORTH : The angler calling in at the cottage would
never know that a corpse was the cause of the calm.
SHEPHERD : Rich folk, if they saw sic donee, composed
ongoings, wad doubtless wonder to think boo callous, hoo
insensible were the puir ! That natur bad kindly denied
to them those fine feelings that belong to cultivated life !
But if they heard the prayer o' the auld man at nicht, when
the survivin family were on their knees around the wa', and
his puir wife neist him in the holy circle, they wad ken
better, and confess that there is something as sublime as it
is sincere and simple, in the resignation and piety of those
humble Christians, whose doom it is to live by the sweat
o' their brow, and who are taught, almost frae the cradle to
the grave, to feel every hour they breathe, that all they
enjoy, and all they suffer, is dropt doun frae the hand o'
God, almost as visible as the dew or hail,—and hence their
faith in things unseen and eternal, is firm as their belief in
things seen and temporal—and that they a' feel, sir, when
lettin doun the coffin into the grave!

While thus sustained in his eloquence, and
pathetic in his teaching, the Professor is not less suc-
cessful or persuasive in some of the merely chance
touches with which, as it were unconsciously, he
adorns his picture. Take as an example the
following appropriately uttered remarks upon