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By Root 16444 0

if we dismiss even the nearly divine emotion of human love — that emotion which, merely to name, now causes the pen to tremble — with how much greater reason shall we dismiss all else? And yet there are men who would mingle with the august theme the merest questions of expediency — the cant topics of the day — the doggerel æsthetics of the time — who would trammel the soul in its flight to an ideal Helusion, by the quirks and quibbles of chopped logic. There are men who do this lately there are a set of men who make a practice of doing this — and who defend it on the score of the advancement of what they suppose to be truth. Truth is, in its own essence, sub-lime — but her loftiest sublimity, as derived from man’s clouded and erratic reason, is valueless — is pulseless — is utterly ineffective when brought into comparison with the unerring sense of which we speak; yet grant this truth to be all which its seekers and worshipers pretend — they forget that it is not truth, per se, which is made their thesis, but an argumentation, often maudlin and pedantic, always shallow and unsatisfactory (as from the mere inadaptation of the vehicle it must be) by which this truth, in casual and indeterminate glimpses, is or is not — rendered manifest.

We have said that, in minor poetical efforts, we may tolerate some deflection from the true poetical thesis; but when a man of the highest powers sets himself seriously to the task of constructing what shall be most worthy those powers, we expect that he shall so choose his theme as to render it certain that he labor not at disadvantage. We regret to see any trivial or partial imperfection of detail; but we grieve deeply when we detect any radical error of conception.

In setting about “Orion,” Mr. Horne proposed to himself, (in accordance with the views of his junto) to “elaborate a morality” — he ostensibly proposed this to himself — for, in the depths of his heart, we know that he wished all juntos and all moralities in Erebus. In accordance with the notions of his set, however, he felt a species of shame-facedness in not making the enforcement of some certain dogmas or doctrines (questionable or unquestionable) about Progress, the obvious or apparent object of his poem. This shame-facedness is the cue to the concluding sentence of the ­Preface. “Meantime, the design of this poem of ‘Orion’ is far from being intended as a mere echo or reflection of the past, and is, in itself, and in other respects, a novel experiment upon the mind of a nation.” Mr. Horne conceived, in fact, that to compose a poem merely for that poem’s sake — and to acknowledge such to be his purpose — would be to subject himself to the charge of imbecility — of triviality — of deficiency in the true dignity and force; but, had he listened to the dictates of his own soul, he could not have failed to perceive, at once, that under the sun there exists no work more intrinsically noble, than this very poem written solely for the poem’s sake.

But let us regard “Orion” as it is. It has an under and an upper current of meaning; in other words, it is an allegory. But the poet’s sense of fitness (which, under no circumstances of mere conventional opinion, could be more than half subdued) has so far softened this allegory as to keep it, generally, well subject to the ostensible narrative. The purport of the moral conveyed is by no means clear — showing conclusively that the heart of the poet was not with it. It vacillates. At one time a certain set of opinions predominate — then another. We may generalize the subject, however, by calling it a homily against supineness or apathy in the cause of human progress, and in favor of energetic action for the good of the race. This is precisely the idea of the present school of canters. How feebly the case is made out in the poem — how insufficient has been all Mr. Horne’s poetical rhetoric in convincing even himself — may be gleaned from the unusual bombast, rigmarole, and mystification of the concluding paragraph, in which he has thought it necessary to say something very profound, by