JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON, born so early as
January 1812, still lives; and still his tall strong frame
wears a memory of the robustness of his long youth. The
most of his life abnormally active, the harvest of it is little
“sensational.” For the physician sows seeds of which
others gather the fruit; an exponent of spiritual science
writes for obscurity (and who gives himself with passion to an exalted
materialism, as Emanuel Swedenborg’s, wraps a veil about obscurity itself);
the dilettante has his circle of literary friends and is like to pass with them.
Yet in the New Church Dr. Wilkinson has a great worth, a position
almost apostolic in its dignity ; the man of virtue and knowledge is noble
in spirit circles.
accepted translations of Swedenborg into English, and he has written much
commentatory of that seer’s system: works indeed only to be received as
ultimate by a New Churchman, but surely not the exclusive property of the
Swedenborgian in their ultimate value. Their titles speak, wanting only
the small knowledge of Swedenborg’s writings which is universal to explain
them, and indicate their purpose: Epidemic Man; The African and the
True Christian Religion his Magna Charta. Also derived from
Swedenborg, but infinitely expanded, is the marvellous book, not authorised
I think by the College of Surgeons, called The Human Body and its
Connexion with Man, laying down a new scientific method, purporting to
be a beginner’s book of physiology.
hunger drives it to Improvisations from the Spirit. The volume is
uncut, thickish; of the size known technically as 24mo. It contains one
hundred and nine poems. It is bound in cloth of a cold piercing green
colour. Its date is 1857.
is in all cases rudimentary, without technical ingenuity; especially in the
rhymes. They are narrative and philosophical, the lyric character all but
absent. Some, the most virile and free, have abstractions for subject:
Newness, Gentleness, Uncertainty. Many are addressed to persons, to the
members of the writer’s family and circle, to W. M. Wilkinson, the writer
of the book upon Spirit-drawing, a dozen or so of them. Many again
describe the notable, in remotest symbolic terms; poets, philosophers and
scientific men: Poe, Turner, Hahnemann, Finden the engraver, Berzelius,
Chatterton, Tegnér, taken at random. High ethical and religious dicta are
hung, for the rest, upon a variety of topics, surgical, biblical, physiological,
political and religious; the object of the writer seeming to be to look at all
the world from the very original standpoint he was able to reach, as it lay
around him, radiating from his own heart and brain and soul.
provisations. These qualities perhaps the best excuse for the comparison
to Blake’s poems one sees inevitable; better than similarity of strange
epithet and symbol, derived from a common source, let us not say the
spiritual world, (at least yet) but disposition towards it.
literary composition, is like that produced by some of Wordsworth’s most
lyrical work, the Lucy poems a good instance: where doggerel will break
suddenly into a cry, so shrill and clear and passionate, that the doggerel
becomes an essential to the song’s worth: fusion of idea in Wilkinson
corresponding to fusion of emotion in Wordsworth.
with reference to subject. The injustice is best annulled by a further
quotation, on the understanding that these extracts from Madness and
Solitude are to represent two poles of expression (moderation has guided
the choice in each case):
wait upon the mad, and the personification of solitude; but the pulse beats
low in these passages against the quick-following strokes of The Birth of
Adam, where brain and spirit are quick in every verse. Criticism of
Wilkinson will never need to lose itself in eulogy ; but certain summits in
the Improvisations are signal attainments of imagination : The Birth of
Adam among these, and in Patience the mighty image where the vaulted
back of the ass Christ rode into the State of God is become in heaven the
bridge that angels walk. A further point must be touched upon (for a chief
reason of respect to the poet, and others): Dr. Wilkinson’s assertion that
the poems were written by impression. To say no word on this subject
beyond what Dr. Wilkinson has said in the note at the end of Improvisa-
tions is the only way to escape the necessity of going back to radical
principles of sciences not yet fully orthodox.
Influx, “is chosen and written down.* So soon as this is done, the first
“impression upon the mind which succeeds the act of writing the title, is
“the beginning of the evolution of that theme; no matter how strange
“or alien the word or phrase may seem. That impression is written down
“and then another, and another until the piece is concluded.”
“an infallible instinct into the subject.”
“elevation of mind, and purity of feeling existing at the time.”
“man, whose highest present faculties these are, to be well assured what
“is put in the first place. Hence, Writing from an Influx which is really
“out (-side) of your Self, or so far within your Self as to amount to the
“same thing, is either a religion or a madness. In allowing your faculties
“to be directed to ends you know not of, there is only One Being to whom
“you dare entrust them: only the Lord.† Of consequence, before writing
“by Influx, your prayer must be to Him, for His Guidance, Influx, and
“Protection.”
of his inspiration was pentecostal, as he proceeds to demonstrate his ortho-
doxy as a New Churchman. “Suffice it to say,” a further explanation
adds, “ that every piece was produced without premeditation or preconcep-
versperret es zwar Niemandem, aber es muss in Gottesfurcht mit stetem Anhalten und Beten gefunden werden
. . . .sage ich treulich, als ich hoch im Centro Naturä und im Principio des Lebens erkannt habe.”
“tion: had these processes stolen in, such production would have been
“impossible. The longest pieces in the volume occupied from thirty to
“forty-five minutes.* The production was attended by no feeling, and by
“no fervour, but only by an anxiety of all the circumstant faculties, to
“observe the unlooked for evolution, and to know what would come of it.”
or occasion may develop the suggestion that the phenomenon of the Wil-
kinson poems is that of Ecstatic Memory. The experience of all poets,
the sharply defined periods of their power, and the links between the life of
thought and the moment of creation, shall come in aid to that intent. For
a heavenly development there are two general requisites. The first is, an
unremitting assiduity in all that naturally concerns the subject: the entire
knowledge and manipulation and progress of the thing as far as industry
can attain them. The second is, the heart’s Prayer to the Lord, in New
Church language, as good for the moment as any other name for spiritual
disposition.
the thought of man coheres with his memory, and his speech flows from it,
therefore, when an angel or spirit is turned to him and conjoined with him.
This is one of a thousand such definitions of Swedenborg which cover
more or less completely, and invest such results as the Improvisations with
authority, in the sense of spiritual knowledge.
The Birth of Adam in extenso:
two-footed verses) occupied from fifty to sixty minutes.