Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443, by Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443
Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852

Author: Various

Editor: Robert Chambers
William Chambers

Release Date: March 10, 2007 [EBook #20793]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

No. 443. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._

PROSAIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

There are some phrases that convey only a vague and indefinite
meaning, that make an impression upon the mind so faint as to be
scarcely resolvable into shape or character. Being associated,
however, with the feeling of beauty or enjoyment, they are ever on our
lips, and pass current in conversation at a conventional value. Of
these phrases is the 'poetry of life'--words that never fail to excite
an agreeable though dreamy emotion, which it is impossible to refer to
any positive ideas. They are generally used, however, to indicate
something gone by. The poetry of life, we say, with sentimental
regret, has passed away with the old forms of society; the world is
disenchanted of its talismans; we have awakened from the dreams that
once lent a charm to existence, and we now see nothing around us but
the cold hard crust of external nature.

This must be true if we think it is so; for we cannot be mistaken,
when we feel that the element of the poetical is wanting in our
constitutions. But we err both in our mode of accounting for the fact,
and in believing the loss we deplore to be irretrievable. The fault
committed by reasoners on this subject is, to confound one thing with
another--to account for the age being unpoetical--as it unquestionably
is--by a supposed decay in the materials of poetry. We may as well be
told that the phenomena of the rising