The Religious Sublime: Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in 18Th-Century England

University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 1972 The Religious Sublime: Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in 18th-Century England David B. Morris American University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Morris, David B., "The Religious Sublime: Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in 18th-Century England" (1972). Literature in English, British Isles. 44. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/44 'The Religious Sublime, South Atlantic Modern Language Association Award Study This page intentionally left blank David B. Morris The Religious Sublime Christian Poetry and Critical Tradition in 18f h- Cenhrry England 'The Universify Press of Kentucky Frontispiece: Altarpiece formerly at Magdalen College, Oxford, painted by Isaac Fuller (frontispiece to the fourth edition of Joseph Addison's poem The Resurrection) ISBN 978-0-813 1-5361-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-190534 Copyright @ 1972 by The University Press of Kentucky A statewide cooperative scholarly publishing agency serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State College, Morehead State University, Murray State University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506 To Dee This page intentionally left blank Confenfs Acknowledgments Introduction The Literary Origins of Religious Sublimity Early Rhetoric and Criticism . Milton and Hobbes Boileau's Longinus Le merveilleux chrktien . The Religious Sublime: Glimmerings John Dennis and the Religious Sublime Poetry and Passion The Religious Sublime Ancient and Modern Religious Sublimity Imagination, Machinery, and Terror . The Importance of Dennis The Critical Argument: Consistent Aspects The Passion for Reform The Bases of Reform Poetic Practice: Varieties of the Religious Sublime 1°4 The Biblical Paraphrase Eschatological Poetry: Sublimity and the Last Things The Attributes of God and 'Seatonian' Poetry Imaginative Devotion: Addison, Thomson, Young Changes in Poetry and Criticism Sentiment and Sublimity Primitive Sublimity: Lowth, Blair, and Ossian Praise and Prophecy: The Sublimity of Christopher Smart 'The Egotistical Sublime': Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge Literature and Religion: A Speculative Conclusion I97 Religion and the Printed Word Words and Things: Johnson and the Language of Poetry Ut pictura poesis: Imaginary Sisters Notes Index Acknowledgments To my teacher and friend Samuel Holt Monk I owe much more than thanks. He first helped me approach this subject in a doc- toral dissertation and has stood by unfailingly during my sub- sequent revisions. Praise, like thanks, is equally unnecessary to a scholar who perfectly resembles Pope's description: "Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know." My affection and esteem, then, are all that I can possibly convey in wishing that this book could be worthy of the man. Another debt of thanks is a great pleasure to mention here. Martin Battestin and Ralph Cohen have in different but im- portant ways helped me to understand the possibilities of my subject. Credit for such ponderous assistance would no doubt alarm them: to a large extent, they did not provide direct advice but a more subtle and exemplary direction. By trying to understand their work I gradually came to know more of my own. For their comments on particular parts of the manuscript, I would like especially to thank Paul K. Alkon, Walter John Hip- ple, Jr., and my friend the late Robert D. Saltz. I am also grateful to the University of Virginia for timely and generous fellowship aid. Robert D. Hume graciously assisted me in reading proof. Whatever errors remain are, I regret to say, my own. My wife, Dee, assisted unsparingly. Of her profounder help, Longinus has taught me that silence is the only true expression. This page intentionally left blank Infroduction The sublime arises from the nobleness of thoughts, the magnificence of the words, or the harmonious and lively turn of the phrase; the perfect sublime arises from all three together (Jo- seph Addison, quoted in Johnson's Dictionary). The discovery of the sublime was one of the great adventures of eighteenth-century England: accompanying the establishment of a commercial empire, the growth of industrialism, the inven- tion of the common reader, and the rise of the waltz, a taste de- veloped among almost all classes of society for the qualities of wildness, grandeur, and overwhelming power which, in a flash of intensity, could ravish the soul with a sudden transport of thought or feeling. In an age conscious of man's limited middle state, sublimity lifted men above the daily world of prudence; in an age of reason, it temporarily teased men out of thought- constricting systems of belief. Sublimity liberated the eighteenth- century imagination from all that was little, pretty, rational, regular, and safe-although only for as long as the moment of intensity could be sustained. It spans the chasm separating Pope's "Messiah" from Blake's prophetic books, and it is one of the few literary topics on which Addison and Wordsworth would find much to agree. The history of taste provides no better example of an aesthetic idea which, emerging with apparent suddenness, virtually dominated the imagination of an entire century. The study of sublimity in the eighteenth century has attracted some of the best scholars of our day. Samuel Monk in 1935 initi- ated modern interest with his valuable book The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England (rpt. 2 The Religious Sublime Ann Arbor, Mich., 1960). Subsequently, both Ernest Tuvesonl and Marjorie Nicolson2 have clarified the scientific and philo- sophical implications of the taste for sublimity in nature, while Josephine Miles3 and Martin Price4 have attempted, using different strategies, to define the special eighteenth-century mode of the "sublime poem." It seems entirely appropriate that the sublime should comprise a subject too vast for a single scholar to discuss fully and that much work still remains to be done. My own study, then, is meant to supplement-not, by any means, to supersede-the investigations of those who have written already on the sublime. Its aim is to treat an aspect of the subject which deserves to be rescued from neglect: that is, the close association between sublimity and religious poetry in eighteenth-century England. The general relationship between sublimity and religion has been attributed in the past to three main causes: the impact of Newtonian science, the influence of physico-theological thought, and the implications of Lockean epistemology. Newton in effect deified the concept of immensity by calling space the vast sen- sorium of God. The empty interstellar reaches, which had terri- fied Pascal with thoughts of nothingness, could be comfortingly addressed by Addison as evidence of God's stupendous handi- work, and the notion of the universe as a sublime but explicable artifact blended easily with the physico-theological doctrine of fitness: from the wheeling of the planets to the operation of the bladder-the last being Cotton Mather's solemn contribution to the encyclopedia of physico-theological lore-the created universe was held to show a world instinct with purpose. Thus, even the wildest and apparently most irregular aspects of nature, which earlier ages had shunned, could be explained as part of the divine economy and appreciated as revelations of God's power and wisdom. Certainly the new enthusiasm for scientific and rational- istic explanations of the natural world helped to support the doctrine of fitness, but perhaps an additional reason for its popu- larity was its usefulness in filling the void created by Locke's rejection of innate ideas. Unable to argue that man is born with a knowledge of God, eighteenth-century thinkers increasingly Introduction 3 sought to derive assurances of God's existence from human ex- perience. Mountains, seas, and other sublime objects of immensity became for many, as Tuveson explains, "images of God's being constantly before human eyes."5 Such general explanations of the relationship between sublimity and religion are thoroughly sound. But, in stressing only science, theology, and epistemology, they necessarily limit our understanding of a com- plex phenomenon. Particularly, they ignore the long and in- fluential literary tradition of the religious sublime. During the early years of the century, while men were just awakening to the lure of wild and vast scenes of nature, English poets and critics were establishing a similarly close relationship between sublimity and religion. Their interest was at first pri- marily literary, and they took as their exemplars not Newton and Locke but Longinus, Milton, and the Bible. Their subject was as often the supernatural world of Christian mystery as the explicable, if awesome, world of nature. In fact, to a number of poets and critics, the literary tradition of the religious sublime seemed to promise breakthroughs as exciting as those achieved by the advancement of science: a way had been found at last, some claimed, to surpass the triumphs of Greek and Roman literature. Its adherents never comprised a formal school or move- ment, but their agreement about a new direction for modern poetry created a significant opposition to the general course of neoclassical aesthetics. Often, it is true, they disagreed mainly with the subjects and styles of their orthodox contemporaries, not with the basic assumptions about man's relationship to nature, to human history, and to God which unite many apparently heterodox eighteenth-century works.

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