Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850

The word culture must, I think, here specifically touch the First Case. Shall we then be afraid of giving a share, and a large share too, to the reading of the Poets, and the regard of the Fine Arts, in a liberal Education? Poetry, History, Science, are the three strands of the cable by which the vessel shall ride – Religion being the sheet-anchor.

SEWARD

Perhaps it is meant to touch the Second Case too?

NORTH

It may be meant to do so, but it does not. The word "culture" is dictated by or is proper to the First Case – for culture is deliberate and elective. But in him – the young Poet – the Edwin – in whom imagination is given in the measure assigned by the Muse to her children, the culture proceeds undeliberate and unwilled. Edwin, when he roves "beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine," or sitting to watch the "wide-weltering waves," or is seized from the hint of ballad or tale, or any chance word, with dreams and visions of the more illustrious Past – follows a delight and desire that have the nature and may have the name of a passion. All this is involuntary to the unforeseen result – but afterwards, when he has accepted his art for a vocation, he more than any man deliberately cultivates. Has the Philosopher, then, in mind only the third class, and do the dangers of "the culture of imagination" apply to them only – "the indolent fainéant dreamers of life?" If so, he not only forgets and loses his subject, as announced by himself, but wastes words on one altogether below it. "False conceptions of human life!" Here is an equivocation which must be set right. "Conceptions of human life" are here meant to apply to expectations of the honesty, gratitude, virtue of the persons in general with whom you or I shall come in contact in life. Good. The contemplation of human beings – men and women —ideally drawn by the Poet lifts me too high – tinges hope in me with enthusiasm, and prepares disappointment. So it has been often said, and said truly. This is conception prospective and personal; and more philosophically termed Expectation. But then "conception of human life" – from the lip of a philosopher should mean rather "intelligence of man's life." Now I repeat that only through the Poet have you true intelligence of man's life – either external or internal. In the Actual the Poet sees the Idea – just as a Painter does in respect of the visible man. In the man set before him He sees two men – the man that is and the man of whom at his nativity was given the possibility to be. He reads cause and effect; and sees what has hindered the possible from being. Who, excepting the Poet, does this? And excepting this, what intelligence of man is an intelligence?

SEWARD

There are two world-Wisdoms. One, to know men, as for the most part they will show themselves – commonly called Knowledge of the World: one, to know them as God made them. I forget what it is called. Possibly it has no name.

NORTH

Observe, my dear Seward, the precise error of that expectation. It is to believe the good more prevalent than it is. It is no misunderstanding as to the constitution of the good. The good is; and the important point of all is to know it, when you meet it. To be cheated, by not apprehending the ill of a man, is a wound to your purse, and when you at last apprehend, to your heart. To be cheated by not apprehending the good of man is —death, which you bear in yourself, and know it not.

SEWARD

What is desired? Is it that we should go into the world with hope not a whit wider and higher than the dimensions of the reality that we are to encounter? I trow not.

NORTH

Your hope will elect your own destiny – will shape it – will be it. There are possibilities given of the nobler happinesses, as well as of the nobler services; and your hope, faithful to itself, will reach and grasp them. And only to such hope are they given. Moreover, in all men there is under the mask of evil which the world has shaped on them, the power inextinct which the Creator sowed there; and they may, if they dare to believe in it, and know to call to it, bring it out with a burst. But belief is the main ingredient of the spell, and hope is the mother of belief.

TALBOYS

The Poet has glorious apprehensions of human existence – visions of men – visions of men's actions – visions of men's destinies. He pitches his theory of the human world above reality – and that he shall, in due season or before it, learn – to his great loss and to his great gain. In the meanwhile do not speak of the temper in him, as if you would upbraid him with it. Do not lay to his charge the splendour of his powers and aspirations. Do not chide and rate him for his virtues.

SEWARD

"False conceptions!" a term essentially of depreciation and reproach. They are not false, they are true. For they are faithful to the vocation that lies upon the human beings; but they, the human beings, are false, and their lives are false; falling short of those true conceptions.

NORTH

Well. He – the Poet – comes to the encounter. It is the trial set for him by his stars – as it is the trial set for all great spirits. He finds those who disappoint him, and those who do not. But, grant the disappointment, rather. What shall he do? That which all great spirits do – transfer the grandeur of his hopes, over which fate, fortune, and the winds of heaven ruled, to his own purposes of which he is master.

TALBOYS

Why did not Mr Stewart say simply that the Poet – and the young enthusiast of Poetry – thinks better of his fellows than they deserve, and brings a faith to them which they will take good care to disappoint? Why harp thus on the jarring string; torturing our ears, and putting our souls out of tune?

NORTH

Who doubts – who does not know, and admire, and love Hope – in the ardent generous spirit – looking out from within the Eden of Youth into the world into which it shall, alas! fall? What is asked? That the spring-flowering of youth shall be prematurely blighted and blasted by winds frosty or fiery, which the set fruit may bear? Of course we hope beyond the reality, and it is God's gift that we do.

TALBOYS

And why lay that Imagination which looks into Life with unmeasured ideas to the charge of the Poet alone? Herein every man is a Poet, more or less; and, most, every spirit of power – the hero, the saint, the minister of religion, the very Philosopher. Would we ask, sir, for a new law of nature? Upon the elements, fewer or more, which an anticipated experience gathers, a spirit impelled by the yearnings inseparable from self-conscious power, and mighty to create, works unchecked and unruled. What shall it do but build glorious illusions?

NORTH

"The culture of Imagination," – understanding thereby, first, in the Great Poets themselves, the intercourse of their own minds with facts which imagination vivifies, and with ideas which it creates – of humanity; and secondly, in all others, as poets to be or not to be, the reading of the Great Poets, Mr Stewart says – "does not diminish our interest in human life." Does not diminish! Quite the reverse. It extraordinarily deepens and heightens, increases and ennobles. For who are the painters, the authentic delineators and revealers of human life, outer and inner —

BULLER

Why, the Poets – the Poets to be sure – the Poets beyond all doubt —

NORTH

"Extremely apt to inspire the mind with false conceptions of it" – and so on. Why, the Faculty is there with a mission. It is its bounden office – its embassy from heaven – to exalt us above our earthly experience – to lift us into the ideal possibility of things. Thereby it is an "angel of Life," the white-winged good genius. The too sanguine hope is an adhering consequence, and the quelling of the hope is one of the penalties which we pay for Adam and Eve's coming through that Eastern Gate into this Lower World.

TALBOYS

Of course, my dear sir, every power has its dangers – the greater, the profounder, the more penetrating and vital the power, the greater the danger. But is this the way that a Philosopher begins to treat of a power – with hesitation and distrust – inauspiciously auspicating his inquiry? The common – the better – the true order of treatment is by Use and, Abuse – Use first. "Expectations above the level of our present existence!" Of course – that when the heaven on earth fails, we may have learnt "to expect above the level of our present existence," and go on doing so more and more, till Earth shall fade and Heaven open.

SEWARD

"Frequently produces a youth of enthusiastic hope!" Is this proposed as a perversion and calamity, a "youth" to be deprecated?

NORTH

I really don't know – it looks almost like it.

SEWARD

Will you say Wo and Alas! for the City – Wo and Alas! for the Nation – in which princes, and nobles, and the gentle of blood – and the merchants, and the husbandmen, and the peasants, and the artisans, suffer under this endemic and feverous malady – a "youth of enthusiastic hope?" Methinks, sir, you would expect there to find an overflow of Pericles's, and Pindars, and Phidias's, and Shakspeares, and Chathams, and Wolfes —

BULLER

Stop, Seward – spare us the Catalogue.

SEWARD

You would say – here is the People that is to lead the world in Arms and in Arts. Only let us use all our endeavours to see that the community produces reason enough in balance of the enthusiasm.

BULLER

Let us procure Aristotles, and Socrates's, and Newtons, and —

TALBOYS

What should a Philosopher do or say relatively to any particular power? He expounds an Economy of Nature. Therefore, he says, let us look how Nature deals with such or such a power. She gives it for such and such uses: and such is its fostering, and such are its phenomena. But as every power unbalanced carries the subject in which it inheres ex orbita, let us look how nature provides to balance this power which we consider.

NORTH

That, my dear Talboys, is a magnanimous and a capacious way of inquiry. But how can any man write about a power who has not a full sympathy with it? I have no doubt that Davy, when he wielded Galvanism to make wonderful and beautiful revelations of veiled things, deeply and largely sympathised with Galvanism. You would think it easier to sympathise with Imagination, and yet to Stewart it seems almost more difficult. Go on.

TALBOYS