154 THE REV. R. COLLINS, ON 



beautiful poem, which he has written under that title. A 

 poet is a creator ; and no doubt he is at liberty to take any- 

 subject, and adorn it, or remodel it, as he wills, for the pur- 

 poses of his art. The result becomes the creature of his own 

 brain. And what we all most admire, probably, in a poem, 

 is the evidence of the skill and poetical power of the thinker. 

 Sir Edwin Arnold's poetry is admirable in that it is picturesqr e 

 in a high degree ; but I read The Light of Asia -with this 

 one feeling, that it is no more a picture of the genuine and 

 real Buddha, than Alfred Tennyson's " King Arthur " is a 

 picture of the actual King Arthur, if such King, indeed, ever 

 existed. There is all the difference in the world between a 

 portrait by Millais, and an Andromache by the President of 

 the Royal Academy; between what may be called, in an 

 " Art " sense — realism and idealism. 



That Buddha really existed, I fully believe ; but that he 

 himself would have been deeply astonished, could he have 

 foreseen the future picture to be drawn of him by the modern 

 poet, I beheve also. Sir Edwin Arnold, indeed, admits in 

 his preface, that he has " modified more than one passage in 

 the received narratives " ; but yet he speaks of a " just con- 

 ception " to be gathered from his poem, " of the lofty character 

 of this noble prince (Buddha), and of the general purport of 

 his doctrines " ; and many Avill, no doubt, regard The Light 

 of Asia as conveying a correct portrait of the real funda- 

 mental facts of Baddha's character and original teaching. 



Our poet, for instance, as perhaps he has a right to do as a 

 poet — though certainly not as an expounder of the real nature 

 of a so-called rehgious system— takes the later legends as 

 to Buddha's nature and work, as best fitted to his poetical 

 dream, and opens his poem by a description of Buddha coming 

 from the sky to be born again among men to " help the world." 

 From the same sources, and from Avhencesoever there is a 

 picturesque bit to be gleaned, he draws the picture of a human 

 incarnation of a divine Buddha. A somewhat striking de- 

 scription is that of the aged recluse Asita worshipping the 

 new-born infant. 



" O Babe ! I worship ! Thou art He ! 

 I see the rosy light, the foot-sole marks, 

 The soft curled tendril of the Swastika, 

 The sacred primal signs thirty and two, 

 The eighty lesser tokens. Thou art Buddh, 

 A nd thou wilt preach the Law and save all flesh 

 Who learn the Law, though I shall never hear, 

 Dying too soon, who lately longed to die ; 



