Oft o'er my brain does that strange rapture roll Which makes the present (while its brief fit last) Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past, Mixed with such feelings as distress the soul When dreaming that she dreams.[134]
Next as to "mystical." Now that the thinking part of man, that is, the soul, existed previously to its appearance in its present body may be very wild philosophy, but it is very intelligible poetry; inasmuch as "soul" is an orthodox word in all our poets, they meaning by "soul" a being inhabiting our body, and playing upon it, like a musician enclosed in an organ whose keys were placed inwards. Now this opinion I do not hold; not that I am a materialist, but because I am a Berkleyan. Yet as you, who are not a Christian, wished you were, that we might meet in heaven, so I, who did not believe in this descending and incarcerated soul, yet said if my baby had died before I had seen him I should have _struggled_ to believe it. Bless me! a commentary of thirty-five lines in defence of a sonnet! and I do not like the sonnet much myself. In some (indeed, in many of my poems) there is a garishness and swell of diction which I hope that my poems in future, if I write any, will be clean of, but seldom, I think, any _conceits_. In the second edition, now printing, I have swept the book with the expurgation-besom to a fine tune, having omitted nearly one third. As to Bowles, I affirm that the manner of his accentuation in the words "broad daylight" (three long syllables) is a beauty, as it admirably expresses the captive's dwelling on the sight of noon with rapture and a kind of wonder.
The common sun, the air, the skies To him are opening paradise. GRAY.
But supposing my defence not tenable; yet how a blunder in metre stamps a man Italian or Della Cruscan I cannot perceive. As to my own poetry, I do confess that it frequently, both in thought and language, deviates from "nature and simplicity." But that Bowles, the most tender, and, with the exception of Burns, the only _always natural_ in our language, that _he_ should not escape the charge of Della Cruscanism,--this cuts the skin and surface of my heart. "Poetry to have its highest relish must be impassioned." True. But, firstly, poetry ought not always to have its _highest_ relish; and, secondly, judging of the cause from its effect, poetry, though treating on lofty and abstract truths, ought to be deemed _impassioned_ by him who reads it with impassioned feelings. Now Collins's "Ode on the Poetical Character,"--that part of it, I should say, beginning with "The band (as faery legends say) Was wove on that creating day,"--has inspired and whirled _me_ along with greater agitations of enthusiasm than any the most _impassioned_ scene in Schiller or Shakespeare, using "impassioned" in its confined sense, for writing in which the human passions of pity, fear, anger, revenge, jealousy, or love are brought into view with their workings. Yet I consider the latter poetry as more valuable, because it gives _more general_ pleasure, and I judge of all things by their utility. I feel strongly and I think strongly, but I seldom feel without thinking or think without feeling. Hence, though my poetry has in general a hue of tenderness or passion over it, yet it seldom exhibits unmixed and simple tenderness or passion. My philosophical opinions are blended with or deduced from my feelings, and this, I think, peculiarises my style of writing, and, like everything else, it is sometimes a beauty and sometimes a fault. But do not let us introduce an Act of Uniformity against Poets. I have room enough in _my_ brain to admire, aye, and almost equally, the _head_ and fancy of Akenside, and the heart and fancy of Bowles, the solemn lordliness of Milton, and the divine chit-chat of Cowper.[135] And whatever a man's excellence is, that will be likewise his fault.