BOOKS.
KEBLE'S OCCASIONAL PAPERS.*
THE singular power exercised by Keble on the thought of the age is due even more to the excellence of his heart than to the strength of his intellect. He was eminently a holy man, humble, self-denying, simple-minded, the model of a parish • Occasional Papers mid Reviews. By John Keble, M.A. Oxford and London : Parker and Co. 1877. priest, who recalls in many ways the memory of George Herbert. Like Herbert, Keble seems to have been devoid of literary ambi=
tion. He wrote for God's glory, not for earthly fame, and no anti- cipation of the amazing success of the Christian Year seems ever to have crossed his mind. When Herbert was dying, he requested that the manuscript volume of his poems might be given to his friend Ferrar, adding :—" Desire him to read it, and then if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public ; if not, let him burn it." And so Herbert passed away, little knowing what a precious legacy he had left be- hind him. Keble's modesty upon first publishing his book was quite as conspicuous, and no one probably was more amazed than the author at the extraordinary welcome it received. He lived, we are told, to see ninety-five editions of the Christian Year, and at the end of the year following his death the number had risen to a hundred and nine. The influence of this volume of sacred poetry on the religious feeling of the time cannot be estimated. Keble has done more probably than any author of our age, not even excepting his dear friend Dr. Newman, to destroy the first principles of Protestantism, and to revive ecclesiastical authority. Ritualism, not only in its highest sense, but in its feeblest mani- festations, was encouraged by all that Keble said or sung, and he was wont to discover incentives to devotion in what most of us would regard as superstition,—as, for example, in his recommen- dation of the principle of the rosary in assisting the religious services of the poor and unlettered.
It is impossible not to object again and again while reading Keble's writings to the judgments he forms, and the deference he pays to the superstitious and least manly side of human nature but it is impossible, in spite of the strongest disagreement, not to love a man so eminently loveable, not to reverence a man so holy, not to feel towards his memory somewhat of the feeling of which a son is conscious who has lost a revered and venerable father. All who think thus of Keble will welcome heartily this volume of Occasional Papers, and the beautiful and tender way in which it is brought before the world by the poet's oldest friends, Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman, will awaken general sympathy. The editorship is undertaken by the former, but Dr. Newman contri- butes a characteristic letter, which forms a fitting introduction to this highly interesting book.
Henceforth it will be impossible to give any biographical notice of Keble without referring to this letter, from which we must find space for a brief extract. After alluding to the poet's habitual disregard of self, the writer adds :—
" How can I profess to paint a man who will not sit for his picture ? How can I draw out his literary merits, when he considers it his special office to edit, or to translate, or to discourse in a dead language, or to• sing hymns ? It was no accident that he is thus difficult to bring under the jurisdiction of the critic. He had as little aim at literary success in what he wrote as most authors have a thirst for attaining it To me, indeed, in proportion as I came to know him well, nothing he wrote could really be a failure ; and here is a second reason why I am so little qualified to take upon me the task of criticising him. His own familiar apophthegm, which he used when a preacher was the subject of. conversation, ' All sermons are good,' I learned to apply to his own compositions, whether on religions subjects or not. They all spoke of Beble. And still I am unable to separate the writer from the man, or to view him as poet, critic, scholar, reviewer, editor, or divine, except as those aspects of him are gathered up in one in his own proper personality. I have too often heard him lecture, preach, and converse, not to have gained a habit of associating his matter and his diction with his living- and breathing delivery. I have in my ears still the modulations and cadences of his voice, his pauses and emphatic points ; I recollect what music there was in the simple earnestness and sweet gravity with which he spoke ; the way he held his paper, his gesture, his look, are all before me. I cannot judge even of his style impartially ; phrases and colloca- tions of words, which others would call imperfections in his composition, are to me harmonised by the remembrance how he uttered them."
The contents of the volume are varied in character. Of the thir- teen papers that compose it, some consist of literary or theo- logical studies, while others are comments upon the ecclesiastical controversies which were as ripe a quarter of a century ago as in the present day. George Eliot writes of Sir Walter Scott as " that beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young lives." This is true, but it is not the whole truth ; and it is interesting to note the love and admiration expressed for Scott by men distinguished by genius, piety, and learning. Keble was an ardent admirer of Sir Walter, and the first article, in this collection, eighty pages in length, is devoted to the great Scottish poet. In this essay the writer touches upon the old and well-worn topic,—What is poetry ? We cannot attempt to follow him through his somewhat elaborate disquisi- tion,—the conclusion at which he arrives is as follows :—" It would seem that the analogical applications of the word ' Poetry' coincide well enough with Aristotle's notion of it, as consisting chiefly in Imitation or Expression, provided we understand that term with the two following qualifications :-1. That the thing to be imitated or expressed is some object of desire or regret, or some other imaginative feeling, the direct indulgence whereof is impeded. 2. That the mode of imitation or expression is in- direct, the instruments of it being, for the moat part, associations more or less accidental." Like all definitions of poetry, this is but partially satisfactory. ' This divine art never has been and never will be properly defined. A poem is not a manufacture, but a birth, and how is it possible to define life ? As he goes on, Mr. Keble seems to us to confound what is poetical with poetry, especially in his assertion that metre is not essential to the genuine practice of the art. Scott's prose romances, he maintains, are essentially poems, whatever test we take of poetry except that ordinary one of metre, and he adds that " it would not perhaps be easy to find a completer proof of metrical com- position being but an accident of the art than any one may make out for himself, by recollecting what he felt on first reading the Lady of the Lake, and how little the impression differed from , that left by the Talisman or Guy Mannering. The kind of interest, the objects of sympathy, are surely the same in both cases ; the -difference of prose and verse is felt to be but technical,—it is the same or similar music performed on different instruments." We hold that this theory of poetry is a false theory, and that Scott's metrical romances, so far from proving its truth, may be quoted with greater justice in illustration of its fallacy. It is true that a story may be told with much the same effect, whether in rhyme or prose, and as a story may be poetical under either form ; but Scott's genuine impulse as a poet is not to be found in mere narrative, but in the lyrical inspiration, or in other words, the power of song which bursts out again and again in his poems, and this inspiration can be expressed in one way only,— namely, with the help of metre. No doubt we may fairly say, speaking broadly, that a noble romance like the Antiquary or the Bride of Lammermoor is a great prose-poem, because such tales do excite the fancy and rouse the imagination, but the finest feelings of the poet can only find utterance under the restraining and, at the same time, stimulating influence of verse, This is too large a subject to dwell upon in a newspaper article, but let the reader compare some of Scott's finest passages in the Antiquary, for example, or the glowing words in which Jeanie Deans implores her sister's pardon from Queen Caroline, with some of his lovely songs, and the difference between eloquent prose and the words uttered by the poet when he has his singing- robes upon him will be at once apparent.
Keble looks at Scott's works in connection with his life, and his remarks on the two will be found full of suggestiveness, but we do not know that there is much in them calling for special com- ment. Enough to say that his estimate of Scott will probably satisfy those whose admiration for the author of Waverley has in- creased in proportion to their knowledge of his works. But they may be excused if they do not feel the regret pathetically expressed that Scott did not become the poet of the Church, which in Mr. Keble's sense of the expression would have gone far, we venture to say, in destroying his poetical vitality. A Christian poet is one thing, a Church poet is another, and we dissent from the writer's opinion that " the presence of high Catholic views of religion is just the thing needed to elevate indefinitely the many noble parts
of Scott's and to correct the comparatively few points which one would wish quite otherwise."
The second paper in this volume is on " Sacred Poetry," and it must needs be intensely interesting to read Keble's views on a subject about which no man was better qualified to write. Dr. Johnson's opinions on the same topic have been often contro- verted, but Keble undertakes the task with admirable discretion. Here we are glad to find a noble tribute to Spenser, as " pre-eminently the sacred poet of his country ; " and the essay, considering who is the author of it, will prove the means, let us hope, of inducing many young readers to study that immortal poet. In a review of Copleston's Przlectiones Academics, Keble expresses still further his thoughts upon poetry, and refers all poetical pleasure " to the awakening of some moral or religious feeling, not by direct instruction—that is the office of morality or theology—but by way of association." There is also a just estimate of Bishop Warburton, a man whose faults are as conspicuous as his virtues, and whose name is pre- served chiefly from his association with Pope. Few now-a-days, excepting curious students, read Warburton's Divine Legation, but almost all readers know how Pope treated him, and how, when the poet was no more, he treated the memory of his friend. Keble, by the way, preserves a pleasant anecdote of the time, unrecorded in the popular biographies of the poet. It shows the best side of Warburton 'a character, as well as of Pope's, and on that account we quote it with pleasure :—
"It may seem that as Warburton's weakness was love of intellectual command, so he never thought he could be kind enough to such as were not in circumstances to dispute his superiority, at least on. his own ground. And it was the same with his partial attachment to his friends : he loved them, and pleaded for them, more earnestly and con- stantly than even for his most favourite theories. In the last sad scene of his life, when he could no longer speculate nor reason, his affectionate heart survived. The writer of these lines has been told, by one who was much with Bishop Warburton after the decay of his powers, that one day when Pope's character was being freely censured in his pre- sence, at a time when he seemed incapable of noticing anything, he waked up in a manner suddenly, exclaimed, Who talks against Pope? he was the beat of friends and the best of men ; ' and so relapsed into his state of insensibility."
Many of the Church topics discussed by Keble in reviews or pastoral tracts are also comprehensively treated by Bishop Thirlwall in his thoughtful and weighty Charges. That two men so good, so wise, so learned should differ so widely on matters of discipline and doctrine may teach all who listen to them a lesson of charity and forbearance.
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