Literary and General Lectures and EssaysKingsley, Charles
History
Literary and General Lectures and Essays
Kingsley, Charles
English literature -- History and criticism
medicines produce no effect on them, and all we can do is, like
quacks, to increase the dose. Of course, if ten boxes of Morison's
pills have killed a man, it only proves that--he ought to have taken
twelve of them. We are jesting, but, as an Ulster Orangeman would
say, "it is in good Protestant earnest."
In the meantime some of the deepest cravings of the human heart have
been left utterly unsatisfied. And be it remembered, that such
universal cravings are more than fancies; they are indications of
deep spiritual wants, which, unless we supply them with the good food
which God has made for them, will supply themselves with poison--
indications of spiritual faculties, which it is as wicked to stunt or
distort by mis-education as it is to maim our own limbs or stupefy
our understanding. Our humanity is an awful and divine gift; our
business is to educate it throughout--God alone must judge which part
of it shall preponderate over the rest. But in the last generation--
and, alas! in this also--little or no proper care has been taken of
the love for all which is romantic, marvellous, heroic, which exists
in every ingenuous child. Schoolboys, indeed, might, if they chose,
in play-hours, gloat over the "Seven Champions of Christendom," or
Lempriere's gods and goddesses; girls might, perhaps, be allowed to
devour by stealth a few fairy tales, or the "Arabian Nights;" but it
was only by connivance that their longings were satisfied from the
scraps of Moslemism, Paganism--anywhere but from Christianity.
Protestantism had nothing to do with the imagination--in fact, it was
a question whether reasonable people had any; whether the devil was
not the original maker of that troublesome faculty in man, woman, and
child. Poetry itself was, with most parents, a dram, to be given,
like Dalby's Carminative, as a pis-aller, when children could not
possibly be kept quiet by Miss Edgeworth or Mrs. Mangnall. Then, as
the children grew up, and began to know something of history and art,
two still higher cravings began to seize on many of them, if they
were at all of deep and earnest character: a desire to associate
with religion their new love for the beautiful, and a reverence for
antiquity; a wish to find some bond of union between themselves and
the fifteen centuries of Christianity which elapsed before the
Reformation. They applied to Protestant teachers and Protestant
books, and received too often the answer that the Gospel had nothing
to do with art--art was either Pagan or Popish; and as for the
centuries before the Reformation, they and all in them belonged
utterly to darkness and the pit. As for the heroes of early
Christianity, they were madmen or humbugs; their legends, devilish
and filthy puerilities. They went to the artists and literary men,
and received the same answer. The medieval writers were fools.
Classical art was the only art; all painters before the age of
Raphael superstitious bunglers. To be sure, as Fuseli said,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account