Literary and General Lectures and Essays by Charles Kingsley
page 43 of 300 (14%)
page 43 of 300 (14%)
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why beautiful? Because there is a certain sincerity in it, which
breeds coherence and melody, which, in short, makes it poetry. But what if such a tone of mind be consciously encouraged, even insincerely affected as the ideal state for a poet's mind, as his followers have done? The mischief which such a man would do is conceivable enough. He stands out, both by his excellences and his defects, as the spokesman and ideal of all the unrest and unhealth of sensitive young men for many a year after. His unfulfilled prophecies only help to increase that unrest. Who shall blame either him for uttering those prophecies, or them for longing for their fulfilment? Must we not thank the man who gives us fresh hope that this earth will not be always as it is now? His notion of what it will be may be, as Shelley's was, vague, even in some things wrong and undesirable. Still, we must accept his hope and faith in the spirit, not in the letter. So have thousands of young men felt, who would have shrunk with disgust from some of poor Shelley's details of the "good time coming." And shame on him who should wish to rob them of such a hope, even if it interfered with his favourite "scheme of unfulfilled prophecy." So men have felt Shelley's spell a wondrous one--perhaps, they think, a life-giving regenerative one. And yet what dream at once more shallow and more impossible? Get rid of kings and priests; marriage may stay, pending discussions on the rights of women. Let the poet speak--what he is to say being, of course, a matter of utterly secondary import, provided only that he be a poet; and then the millennium will appear of itself, and the devil be exorcised with a kiss from all hearts--except, of course, these of "pale priests" and "tyrants with their sneer of cold command" (who, it seems, have not been got rid of after all), and the Cossacks and Croats whom they |
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