le too
mechanical, what were the magic spells with which he sways our
imaginative moods? Like other spells, we must reply, it is
incommunicable: no real answer can be given even by critics who, like
Coleridge and De Quincey, show something of the same power. Coarser
observers can only point to such external peculiarities as the Latinisms
in which he indulges even more freely than most of his contemporaries.
To Johnson they seemed 'pedantic;' to most modern readers they have an
old-world charm; but in any case we know little more of Sir Thomas when
we have observed that he is capable of using for 'hanging' the
periphrasis 'illaqueation or pendulous suffocation.' The perusal of a
page will make us recognise what could not be explained in a whole
volume of analysis. One may, however, hazard a remark upon the special
mood which is clothed or incarnated in his stately rhetoric. The
imagination of Sir Thomas, of course, shows the generic qualities
roughly described as Northern, Gothic, Teutonic, or romantic. He writes
about tombs, and all Englishmen, as M. Taine tells us, like to write
about tombs. When we try to find the specific differences which
distinguish it from other imaginations of similar quality, we should be
inclined to define him as belonging to a very rare intellectual family.
He is a mystic with a sense of humour, or rather, his habitual mood is
determined by an attraction towards the two opposite poles of humour and
mysticism. He concludes two of his treatises (the 'Christian Morals' and
'Urn Burial') in words expressive of one of these tendencies: 'If any
have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation,
ecstacy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and
ingression into the divine shadow according to mystical theology, they
have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is in a
manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.' Many of Sir Thomas's
reflections, his love in spiritualising external emblems, as, for
example, in the reflections on the quincunx, and the almost sensuous
delight in the contemplation of a mystery, show the same bent. The
fully-developed mystic loses sight of the world and its practical duties
in the rapture of formless meditations; facts become shadows, and
emotions the only realities. But the presence of a mystical element is
the mark of all lofty imaginations. The greatest poet is he who feels
most deeply and habitually that our 'little