60 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
theme is treated. In a work written upon this noble symbolic method, one 
is never sure of exactly stating the author’s meaning,—indeed, as we have 
said of Shakespeare, the meaning is too full to be stated more briefly than 
by the whole poem ; but we are sure that we are not far from the writer’s 
intention, when we say, that in Saul he represents a man who is eminently the 
creature of spiritual influences ; who is of the happiest sensitive and per- 
ceptive constitution, but lacks the one thing needful, the principle of faith, 
which would have given the will to submit himself to the good influence and 
resist the bad. “Faith wanting, all his works fell short,” is the only explicit 
statement in the whole poem of this idea; but the whole poem indirectly 
implies it. This view of Saul’s character, which is amply justified by Scrip- 
ture history, is carried out and illustrated with an elaborate subtlety of 
which it is impossible for us to give our readers an adequate idea. The evil 
spirit of the King is brought personally, under the name of Malzah, upon 
the stage; and we are made to understand Saul’s nature, and the nature 
of all who are the more or less passive slaves of the natural and spiritual 
influences ab extra, by the exaggeration of this character in the spirit him- 
self, who is depicted with an imaginative veracity which we do not exag- 
gerate in saying has not been equalled in our language by any but the 
creator of Caliban and Ariel. Malzah is decidedly ‘ well disposed,’’ like 
many another evil spirit, human or otherwise; he knows his faults; is almost 
changed, for the moment, into a good spirit by artistic influences, especially 
music ; he has attained to be a deep philosopher through the habitual obser- 
vation of himself ; and does not at all like the evil work of destroying the 
soul of Saul,—a work which he undertook voluntarily, and to which he 
returns as the fit takes him. The following passages will carry out what 
we have said, and will illustrate the oddity, subtlety, and originality of 
this writer’s language. 
* + * * * * * * * * * 
“In this poem, for the first time, spirits have been represented in a man- 
ner which fully justifies the boldness involved in representing them at all. 
Malzah is a living character, as true to supernature as Hamlet or Falstaff 
are to nature; and, by this continuation, as it were, of humanity into new 
circumstances, and another world, we are taught to look upon humanity 
itself from a fresh point of view, and we seem to obtain new.and startling 
impressions of the awful character of the influences by which we are beset. 
Seldom has art so well performed the office of handmaiden to religion as in 
this extraordinary character of Malzah, in whom we have the disembodi- 
ment of the soul of the faithless, sophistical, brave, and generously disposed 
king of Israel, and a most impressive exposition of the awful truth, that he 
who is not wholly for God is against Him. For proof of our opinion we can 
only refer the reader to the entire work, of which a few separate passages 
are no tests whatever.” 
[In a recent letter, Dr. Richard Garnett, late keeper of Printed Books at 
the British Museum, informs me that the author of the ‘“ North British 
Review ” article was the late Mr. Coventry Patmore, author of ‘“ The Angel 
in the House,” etc.] 
