Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory, that aims to identify the style of prose and verse,—(if it does not indeed claim for the latter a yet nearer resemblance to the average style of men in the viva voce intercourse of real life)—we might anticipate the following as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I have indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole acknowledged difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye only. The existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the merit of a poem, must at length be conceded, when a number of successive lines can be rendered, even to the most delicate ear, unrecognizable as verse, or as having even been intended for verse, by simply transcribing them as prose; when if the poem be in blank verse, this can be effected without any alteration, or at most by merely restoring one or two words to their proper places, from which they have been transplanted[69]for no assignable cause or reason but that of the author’s convenience; but if it be in rhyme, by the mere exchange of the final word of each line for some other of the same meaning, equally appropriate, dignified and euphonic.
The answer or objection in the preface to the anticipated remark “that metre paves the way to other distinctions,” is contained in the following words. “The distinction of rhyme and metre is regular and uniform, and not, like that produced by (what is usually called) poetic diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon which no calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion.” But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it not his own fault? The ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass judgment on what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two could be separated. But if it be asked, by what principles the poet is to regulate his own style, if he do not adhere closely to the sort and order of words which he hears in the market, wake, high-road, or plough-field? I reply; by principles, the ignorance or neglect of which would convict him of being no poet, but a silly or presumptuous usurper of the name. By the principles of grammar, logic, psychology. In one word by such a knowledge of the facts, material and spiritual, that most appertain to his art, as, if it have been governed and applied by good sense, and rendered instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and reward of our past conscious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and acquires the name of Taste. By what rule that does not leave the reader at the poet’s mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter to distinguish between the language suitable to suppressed, and the language, which is characteristic of indulged, anger? Or between that of rage and that of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search of angry or jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy their words? Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding upon the all in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by observation? And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As eyes, for which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and to which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? There is not, I firmly believe, a man now living, who has, from his own inward experience, a clearer intuition, than Mr. Wordsworth himself, that the last mentioned are the true sources of genial discrimination. Through the same process and by the same creative agency will the poet distinguish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, what differences of style it at once inspires and justifies; what intermixture of conscious volition is natural to that state; and in what instances such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere creatures of an arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of ornament or connection. For, even as truth is its own light and evidence, discovering at once itself and falsehood, so is it the prerogative of poetic genius to distinguish by parental instinct its proper offspring from the changelings, which the gnomes of vanity or the fairies of fashion may have laid in its cradle or called by its names. Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be morphosis, not poiaesis. The rules of the Imagination are themselves the very powers of growth and production. The words to which they are reducible, present only the outlines and external appearance of the fruit. A deceptive counterfeit of the superficial form and colours may be elaborated; but the marble peach feels cold and heavy, and children only put it to their mouths. We find no difficulty in admitting as excellent, and the legitimate language of poetic fervour self-impassioned, Donne’s apostrophe to the Sun in the second stanza of his PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.
“Thee, eye of heaven! this great Soul envies not;By thy male force is all, we have, begot.In the first East thou now beginn’st to shine,Suck’st early balm and island spices there,And wilt anon in thy loose-rein’d careerAt Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,And see at night this western world of mine:Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,Who before thee one day began to be,And, thy frail light being quench’d, shall long, long outlivethee.”
Or the next stanza but one:
“Great Destiny, the commissary of God,That hast mark’d out a path and periodFor every thing! Who, where we offspring took,Our ways and ends see’st at one instant: thouKnot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless browNe’er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look,And shew my story in thy eternal book,” etc.
As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudopoesy, or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms. Such are the Odes to jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in Dodsley’s collection and the magazines of that day, which seldom fail to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two SUTTONS, commencing with
“Inoculation, heavenly maid! descend!”
It is not to be denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory period of Cowley’s preface to his “Pindaric Odes,” written in imitation of the style and manner of the odes of Pindar. “If,” (says Cowley), “a man should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another as may appear, when he, that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving.” I then proceeded with his own free version of the second Olympic, composed for the charitable purpose of rationalizing the Theban Eagle.
“Queen of all harmonious things,Dancing words and speaking strings,What god, what hero, wilt thou sing?What happy man to equal glories bring?Begin, begin thy noble choice,And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice.Pisa does to Jove belong,Jove and Pisa claim thy song.The fair first-fruits of war, th’ Olympic games,Alcides, offer’d up to Jove;Alcides, too, thy strings may move,But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy prove?Join Theron boldly to their sacred names;Theron the next honour claims;Theron to no man gives place,Is first in Pisa’s and in Virtue’s race;Theron there, and he alone,Ev’n his own swift forefathers has outgone.”
One of the company exclaimed, with the full assent of the rest, that if the original were madder than this, it must be incurably mad. I then translated the ode from the Greek, and as nearly as possible, word for word; and the impression was, that in the general movement of the periods, in the form of the connections and transitions, and in the sober majesty of lofty sense, it appeared to them to approach more nearly, than any other poetry they had heard, to the style of our Bible, in the prophetic books. The first strophe will suffice as a specimen:
“Ye harp-controlling hymns! (or) ye hymns the sovereigns of harps!What God? what Hero?What Man shall we celebrate?Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,The first-fruits of the spoils of war.But Theron for the four-horsed car,That bore victory to him,It behoves us now to voice aloud:The Just, the Hospitable,The Bulwark of Agrigentum,Of renowned fathersThe Flower, even himWho preserves his native city erect and safe.”
But are such rhetorical caprices condemnable only for their deviation from the language of real life? and are they by no other means to be precluded, but by the rejection of all distinctions between prose and verse, save that of metre? Surely good sense, and a moderate insight into the constitution of the human mind, would be amply sufficient to prove, that such language and such combinations are the native product neither of the fancy nor of the imagination; that their operation consists in the excitement of surprise by the juxta-position and apparent reconciliation of widely different or incompatible things. As when, for instance, the hills are made to reflect the image of a voice. Surely, no unusual taste is requisite to see clearly, that this compulsory juxtaposition is not produced by the presentation of impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any sympathy with the modifying powers with which the genius of the poet had united and inspirited all the objects of his thought; that it is therefore a species of wit, a pure work of the will, and implies a leisure and self-possession both of thought and of feeling, incompatible with the steady fervour of a mind possessed and filled with the grandeur of its subject. To sum up the whole in one sentence. When a poem, or a part of a poem, shall be adduced, which is evidently vicious in the figures and centexture of its style, yet for the condemnation of which no reason can be assigned, except that it differs from the style in which men actually converse, then, and not till then, can I hold this theory to be either plausible, or practicable, or capable of furnishing either rule, guidance, or precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as well as more naturally, have been deduced in the author’s own mind from considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things, confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of one country nor of one age.
Continuation—Concerning the real object which, it is probable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical preface—Elucidation and application of this.
It might appear from some passages in the former part of Mr. Wordsworth’s preface, that he meant to confine his theory of style, and the necessity of a close accordance with the actual language of men, to those particular subjects from low and rustic life, which by way of experiment he had purposed to naturalize as a new species in our English poetry. But from the train of argument that follows; from the reference to Milton; and from the spirit of his critique on Gray’s sonnet; those sentences appear to have been rather courtesies of modesty, than actual limitations of his system. Yet so groundless does this system appear on a close examination; and so strange and overwhelming[70]in its consequences, that I cannot, and I do not, believe that the poet did ever himself adopt it in the unqualified sense, in which his expressions have been understood by others, and which, indeed, according to all the common laws of interpretation they seem to bear. What then did he mean? I apprehend, that in the clear perception, not unaccompanied with disgust or contempt, of the gaudy affectations of a style which passed current with too many for poetic diction, (though in truth it had as little pretensions to poetry, as to logic or common sense,) he narrowed his view for the time; and feeling a justifiable preference for the language of nature and of good sense, even in its humblest and least ornamented forms, he suffered himself to express, in terms at once too large and too exclusive, his predilection for a style the most remote possible from the false and showy splendour which he wished to explode. It is possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative, deviated for a time into direct partiality. But the real object which he had in view, was, I doubt not, a species of excellence which had been long before most happily characterized by the judicious and amiable Garve, whose works are so justly beloved and esteemed by the Germans, in his remarks on Gellert, from which the following is literally translated. “The talent, that is required in order to make, excellent verses, is perhaps greater than the philosopher is ready to admit, or would find it in his power to acquire: the talent to seek only the apt expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same time with it the rhyme and the metre. Gellert possessed this happy gift, if ever any one of our poets possessed it; and nothing perhaps contributed more to the great and universal impression which his fables made on their first publication, or conduces more to their continued popularity. It was a strange and curious phaenomenon, and such as in Germany had been previously unheard of, to read verses in which everything was expressed just as one would wish to talk, and yet all dignified, attractive, and interesting; and all at the same time perfectly correct as to the measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It is certain, that poetry when it has attained this excellence makes a far greater impression than prose. So much so indeed, that even the gratification which the very rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a contemptible or trifling gratification.”[71]
However novel this phaenomenon may have been in Germany at the time of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spenser occasionally compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes, the whole FAIRY QUEEN is an almost continued instance of this beauty. Waller’s song GO, LOVELY ROSE, is doubtless familiar to most of my readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of Cotton, more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the VIRGIL TRAVESTIED, I should have indulged myself, and I think have gratified many, who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image, and passion, which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder muse; and yet so worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have expressed such thoughts otherwise without loss or injury to his meaning.
But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer’s age was either sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either “beloved” or “belov’d” according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then only adopt the pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he lived, both with respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable; I would then venture to ask, what even in the colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women, (who are the peculiar mistresses of “pure English and undefiled,”) what could we hear more natural, or seemingly more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRESEIDE.
“And after this forth to the gate he wente,Ther as Creseide out rode a ful gode pass,And up and doun there made he many’ a wente,And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solasAs woulde blisful God now for his joie,I might her sene agen come in to Troie!And to the yondir hil I gan her Bide,Alas! and there I toke of her my leveAnd yond I saw her to her fathir ride;For sorow of whiche mine hert shall to-cleve;And hithir home I came whan it was eve,And here I dwel, out-cast from ally joie,And steal, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.“And of himselfe imaginid he ofteTo ben defaitid, pale and woxin lesseThan he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,What may it be? who can the sothe gesse,Why Troilus hath al this hevinesse?And al this n’ as but his melancolie,That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.Anothir time imaginin he wouldThat every wight, that past him by the wey,Had of him routhe, and that thei saien should,I am right sory, Troilus wol dey!And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey,As ye have herde: suche life gan he to ledeAs he that stode betwixin hope and drede:For which him likid in his songis sheweTh’ encheson of his wo as he best might,And made a songe of words but a fewe,Somwhat his woful herte for to light,And whan he was from every mann’is sightWith softe voice he of his lady dere,That absent was, gan sing as ye may here:* * * * * *This song, when he thus songin had, ful BoneHe fil agen into his sighis oldeAnd every night, as was his wonte to done;He stode the bright moone to beholdeAnd all his sorowe to the moone he tolde,And said: I wis, whan thou art hornid newe,I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe!”
Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his TEMPLE; or SACRED POEMS AND PRIVATE EJACULATIONS are Comparatively but little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and for the simple dignity of the language. Unless, indeed, a fastidious taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line. The second is a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches namely, that the characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton’s IDEAS
As other men, so I myself do muse,Why in this sort I wrest invention so;And why these giddy metaphors I use,Leaving the path the greater part do go;I will resolve you: I am lunatic![72]
The other recalls a still odder passage in THE SYNAGOGUE: or THE SHADOW OF THE TEMPLE, a connected series of poems in imitation of Herbert’s TEMPLE, and, in some editions, annexed to it.
O how my mindIs gravell’d!Not a thought,That I can find,But’s ravell’dAll to nought!Short ends of threds,And narrow shredsOf lists,Knots, snarled ruffs,Loose broken tuftsOf twists,Are my torn meditations ragged clothing,Which, wound and woven, shape a suit for nothing:One while I think, and then I am in painTo think how to unthink that thought again.
Immediately after these burlesque passages I cannot proceed to the extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the interposition of the three following stanzas of Herbert’s.
VIRTUE.Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky,The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;For thou must die.Sweet rose, whose hue angry and braveBids the rash gazer wipe his eyeThy root is ever in its grave,And thou must die.Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,A box, where sweets compacted lieMy music shews, ye have your closes,And all must die.
THE BOSOM SIN:A SONNET BY GEORGE HERBERT.Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round,Parents first season us; then schoolmastersDeliver us to laws; they send us boundTo rules of reason, holy messengers,Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,Bibles laid open, millions of surprises;Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,The sound of Glory ringing in our earsWithout, our shame; within, our consciences;Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.Yet all these fences and their whole arrayOne cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.
LOVE UNKNOWN.Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sadAnd in my faintings, I presume, your loveWill more comply than help. A Lord I had,And have, of whom some grounds, which may improve,I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.To him I brought a dish of fruit one day,And in the middle placed my heart. But he(I sigh to say)Look’d on a servant, who did know his eye,Better than you know me, or (which is one)Than I myself. The servant instantly,Quitting the fruit, seiz’d on my heart alone,And threw it in a font, wherein did fallA stream of blood, which issued from the sideOf a great rock: I well remember all,And have good cause: there it was dipt and dyed,And wash’d, and wrung: the very wringing yetEnforceth tears. “Your heart was foul, I fear.”Indeed ’tis true. I did and do commitMany a fault, more than my lease will bear;Yet still ask’d pardon, and was not denied.But you shall hear. After my heart was well,And clean and fair, as I one eventide(I sigh to tell)Walk’d by myself abroad, I saw a largeAnd spacious furnace flaming, and thereonA boiling caldron, round about whose vergeWas in great letters set AFFLICTION.The greatness shew’d the owner. So I wentTo fetch a sacrifice out of my fold,Thinking with that, which I did thus present,To warm his love, which, I did fear, grew cold.But as my heart did tender it, the manWho was to take it from me, slipt his hand,And threw my heart into the scalding pan;My heart that brought it (do you understand?)The offerer’s heart. “Your heart was hard, I fear.”Indeed ’tis true. I found a callous matterBegan to spread and to expatiate there:But with a richer drug than scalding waterI bath’d it often, ev’n with holy blood,Which at a board, while many drank bare wine,A friend did steal into my cup for good,Ev’n taken inwardly, and most divineTo supple hardnesses. But at the lengthOut of the caldron getting, soon I fledUnto my house, where to repair the strengthWhich I had lost, I hasted to my bed:But when I thought to sleep out all these faults,(I sigh to speak)I found that some had stuff’d the bed with thoughts,I would say thorns. Dear, could my heart not break,When with my pleasures ev’n my rest was gone?Full well I understood who had been there:For I had given the key to none but one:It must be he. “Your heart was dull, I fear.”Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mindDid oft possess me; so that when I pray’d,Though my lips went, my heart did stay behind.But all my scores were by another paid,Who took my guilt upon him. “Truly, Friend,“For aught I hear, your Master shews to you“More favour than you wot of. Mark the end.“The font did only what was old renew“The caldron suppled what was grown too hard:“The thorns did quicken what was grown too dull:“All did but strive to mend what you had marr’d.“Wherefore be cheer’d, and praise him to the full“Each day, each hour, each moment of the week“Who fain would have you be new, tender quick.”
The former subject continued—The neutral style, or that common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from Chaucer, Herbert, and others.
I have no fear in declaring my conviction, that the excellence defined and exemplified in the preceding chapter is not the characteristic excellence of Mr. Wordsworth’s style; because I can add with equal sincerity, that it is precluded by higher powers. The praise of uniform adherence to genuine, logical English is undoubtedly his; nay, laying the main emphasis on the word uniform, I will dare add that, of all contemporary poets, it is his alone. For, in a less absolute sense of the word, I should certainly include Mr. Bowies, Lord Byron, and, as to all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the exceptions in their works being so few and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in the quotation from Garve, I appear to find more, and more undoubted specimens in the works of others; for instance, among the minor poems of Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illustrious Laureate. To me it will always remain a singular and noticeable fact; that a theory, which would establish this lingua communis, not only as the best, but as the only commendable style, should have proceeded from a poet, whose diction, next to that of Shakespeare and Milton, appears to me of all others the most individualized and characteristic. And let it be remembered too, that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. Wordsworth’s critical preface by the purpose and object, which he may be supposed to have intended, rather than by the sense which the words themselves must convey, if they are taken without this allowance.
A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of Shakespeare’s principal plays, would without the name affixed scarcely fail to recognise as Shakespeare’s a quotation from any other play, though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth’s style, whenever he speaks in his own person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis personae of THE RECLUSE. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth. The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference to the persons introduced:
“It seems, as I retrace the ballad line by lineThat but half of it is theirs, and the better half is thine.”
Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion of Mr. Wordsworth’s publications, and having studied them with a full feeling of the author’s genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian the little poem on the rainbow?
“The Child is father of the Man, etc.”
Or in the LUCY GRAY?
“No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;She dwelt on a wide moor;The sweetest thing that ever grewBeside a human door.”
Or in the IDLE SHEPHERD-BOYS?
“Along the river’s stony margeThe sand-lark chants a joyous song;The thrush is busy in the wood,And carols loud and strong.A thousand lambs are on the rocks,All newly born! both earth and skyKeep jubilee, and more than all,Those boys with their green coronal;They never hear the cry,That plaintive cry! which up the hillComes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll.”
Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea-Loch in THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY. Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little ones by the fire-side as—
“Yet had he many a restless dream;Both when he heard the eagle’s scream,And when he heard the torrents roar,And heard the water beat the shoreNear where their cottage stood.Beside a lake their cottage stood,Not small like our’s, a peaceful flood;But one of mighty size, and strange;That, rough or smooth, is full of change,And stirring in its bed.For to this lake, by night and day,The great Sea-water finds its wayThrough long, long windings of the hills,And drinks up all the pretty rillsAnd rivers large and strong:Then hurries back the road it cameReturns on errand still the same;This did it when the earth was new;And this for evermore will do,As long as earth shall last.And, with the coming of the tide,Come boats and ships that sweetly ride,Between the woods and lofty rocks;And to the shepherds with their flocksBring tales of distant lands.”
I might quote almost the whole of his RUTH, but take the following stanzas:
But, as you have before been told,This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,And, with his dancing crest,So beautiful, through savage landsHad roamed about with vagrant bandsOf Indians in the West.The wind, the tempest roaring high,The tumult of a tropic sky,Might well be dangerous foodFor him, a Youth to whom was givenSo much of earth—so much of heaven,And such impetuous blood.Whatever in those climes he foundIrregular in sight or soundDid to his mind impartA kindred impulse, seemed alliedTo his own powers, and justifiedThe workings of his heart.Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,The beauteous forms of nature wrought,Fair trees and lovely flowers;The breezes their own languor lent;The stars had feelings, which they sentInto those magic bowers.Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween,That sometimes there did intervenePure hopes of high intentFor passions linked to forms so fairAnd stately, needs must have their shareOf noble sentiment.”
But from Mr. Wordsworth’s more elevated compositions, which already form three-fourths of his works; and will, I trust, constitute hereafter a still larger proportion;—from these, whether in rhyme or blank verse, it would be difficult and almost superfluous to select instances of a diction peculiarly his own, of a style which cannot be imitated without its being at once recognised, as originating in Mr. Wordsworth. It would not be easy to open on any one of his loftier strains, that does not contain examples of this; and more in proportion as the lines are more excellent, and most like the author. For those, who may happen to have been less familiar with his writings, I will give three specimens taken with little choice. The first from the lines on the BOY OF WINANDER-MERE,—who
“Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,That they might answer him.—And they would shoutAcross the watery vale, and shout again,With long halloos, and screams, and echoes loudRedoubled and redoubled; concourse wildOf mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced,That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,Then sometimes in that silence, while he hungListening, a gentle shock of mild surpriseHas carried far into his heart the voiceOf mountain-torrents; or the visible scene[73]Would enter unawares into his mindWith all its solemn imagery, its rocks,Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, receivedInto the bosom of the steady lake.”
The second shall be that noble imitation of Drayton[74](if it was not rather a coincidence) in the lines TO JOANNA.
—“When I had gazed perhaps two minutes’ space,Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheldThat ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud.The Rock, like something starting from a sleep,Took up the Lady’s voice, and laughed again!That ancient woman seated on Helm-cragWas ready with her cavern; Hammar-scarAnd the tall Steep of Silver-How sent forthA noise of laughter; southern Lougbrigg heard,And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone.Helvellyn far into the clear blue skyCarried the lady’s voice!—old Skiddaw blewHis speaking trumpet!—back out of the cloudsFrom Glaramara southward came the voice:And Kirkstone tossed it from its misty head!”
The third, which is in rhyme, I take from the SONG AT THE FEAST OF BROUGHAM CASTLE, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors.
———“Now another day is come,Fitter hope, and nobler doom;He hath thrown aside his crook,And hath buried deep his book;Armour rusting in his hallsOn the blood of Clifford calls,—‘Quell the Scot,’ exclaims the Lance!Bear me to the heart of France,Is the longing of the Shield—Tell thy name, thou trembling Field!—Field of death, where’er thou be,Groan thou with our victory!Happy day, and mighty hour,When our Shepherd, in his power,Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword,To his ancestors restored,Like a re-appearing Star,Like a glory from afar,First shall head the flock of war!”“Alas! the fervent harper did not know,That for a tranquil Soul the Lay was framed,Who, long compelled in humble walks to go,Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;His daily teachers had been woods and rills,The silence that is in the starry sky,The sleep that is among the lonely hills.”
The words themselves in the foregoing extracts, are, no doubt, sufficiently common for the greater part.—But in what poem are they not so, if we except a few misadventurous attempts to translate the arts and sciences into verse? In THE EXCURSION the number of polysyllabic (or what the common people call, dictionary) words is more than usually great. And so must it needs be, in proportion to the number and variety of an author’s conceptions, and his solicitude to express them with precision.—But are those words in those places commonly employed in real life to express the same thought or outward thing? Are they the style used in the ordinary intercourse of spoken words? No! nor are the modes of connections; and still less the breaks and transitions. Would any but a poet—at least could any one without being conscious that he had expressed himself with noticeable vivacity—have described a bird singing loud by, “The thrush is busy in the wood?”—or have spoken of boys with a string of club-moss round their rusty hats, as the boys “with their green coronal?”—or have translated a beautiful May-day into “Both earth and sky keep jubilee!”—or have brought all the different marks and circumstances of a sealoch before the mind, as the actions of a living and acting power? Or have represented the reflection of the sky in the water, as “That uncertain heaven received into the bosom of the steady lake?” Even the grammatical construction is not unfrequently peculiar; as “The wind, the tempest roaring high, the tumult of a tropic sky, might well be dangerous food to him, a youth to whom was given, etc.” There is a peculiarity in the frequent use of the asymartaeton (that is, the omission of the connective particle before the last of several words, or several sentences used grammatically as single words, all being in the same case and governing or governed by the same verb) and not less in the construction of words by apposition (“to him, a youth”). In short, were there excluded from Mr. Wordsworth’s poetic compositions all, that a literal adherence to the theory of his preface would exclude, two thirds at least of the marked beauties of his poetry must be erased. For a far greater number of lines would be sacrificed than in any other recent poet; because the pleasure received from Wordsworth’s poems being less derived either from excitement of curiosity or the rapid flow of narration, the striking passages form a larger proportion of their value. I do not adduce it as a fair criterion of comparative excellence, nor do I even think it such; but merely as matter of fact. I affirm, that from no contemporary writer could so many lines be quoted, without reference to the poem in which they are found, for their own independent weight or beauty. From the sphere of my own experience I can bring to my recollection three persons of no every-day powers and acquirements, who had read the poems of others with more and more unallayed pleasure, and had thought more highly of their authors, as poets; who yet have confessed to me, that from no modern work had so many passages started up anew in their minds at different times, and as different occasions had awakened a meditative mood.
Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals.
Long have I wished to see a fair and philosophical inquisition into the character of Wordsworth, as a poet, on the evidence of his published works; and a positive, not a comparative, appreciation of their characteristic excellencies, deficiencies, and defects. I know no claim that the mere opinion of any individual can have to weigh down the opinion of the author himself; against the probability of whose parental partiality we ought to set that of his having thought longer and more deeply on the subject. But I should call that investigation fair and philosophical in which the critic announces and endeavours to establish the principles, which he holds for the foundation of poetry in general, with the specification of these in their application to the different classes of poetry. Having thus prepared his canons of criticism for praise and condemnation, he would proceed to particularize the most striking passages to which he deems them applicable, faithfully noticing the frequent or infrequent recurrence of similar merits or defects, and as faithfully distinguishing what is characteristic from what is accidental, or a mere flagging of the wing. Then if his premises be rational, his deductions legitimate, and his conclusions justly applied, the reader, and possibly the poet himself, may adopt his judgment in the light of judgment and in the independence of free-agency. If he has erred, he presents his errors in a definite place and tangible form, and holds the torch and guides the way to their detection.
I most willingly admit, and estimate at a high value, the services which the EDINBURGH REVIEW, and others formed afterwards on the same plan, have rendered to society in the diffusion of knowledge. I think the commencement of the EDINBURGH REVIEW an important epoch in periodical criticism; and that it has a claim upon the gratitude of the literary republic, and indeed of the reading public at large, for having originated the scheme of reviewing those books only, which are susceptible and deserving of argumentative criticism. Not less meritorious, and far more faithfully and in general far more ably executed, is their plan of supplying the vacant place of the trash or mediocrity, wisely left to sink into oblivion by its own weight, with original essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious, or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keenness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account, as long as no personal allusions are admitted, and no re-commitment (for new trial) of juvenile performances, that were published, perhaps forgotten, many years before the commencement of the review: since for the forcing back of such works to public notice no motives are easily assignable, but such as are furnished to the critic by his own personal malignity; or what is still worse, by a habit of malignity in the form of mere wantonness.
“No private grudge they need, no personal spiteThe viva sectio is its own delight!All enmity, all envy, they disclaim,Disinterested thieves of our good name:Cool, sober murderers of their neighbour’s fame!”S. T. C.
Every censure, every sarcasm respecting a publication which the critic, with the criticised work before him, can make good, is the critic’s right. The writer is authorized to reply, but not to complain. Neither can anyone prescribe to the critic, how soft or how hard; how friendly, or how bitter, shall be the phrases which he is to select for the expression of such reprehension or ridicule. The critic must know, what effect it is his object to produce; and with a view to this effect must he weigh his words. But as soon as the critic betrays, that he knows more of his author, than the author’s publications could have told him; as soon as from this more intimate knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he avails himself of the slightest trait against the author; his censure instantly becomes personal injury, his sarcasms personal insults. He ceases to be a critic, and takes on him the most contemptible character to which a rational creature can be degraded, that of a gossip, backbiter, and pasquillant: but with this heavy aggravation, that he steals the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world into the museum; into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, should be our sanctuary, and secure place of refuge; offers abominations on the altar of the Muses; and makes its sacred paling the very circle in which he conjures up the lying and profane spirit.
This determination of unlicensed personality, and of permitted and legitimate censure, (which I owe in part to the illustrious Lessing, himself a model of acute, spirited, sometimes stinging, but always argumentative and honourable, criticism) is beyond controversy the true one: and though I would not myself exercise all the rights of the latter, yet, let but the former be excluded, I submit myself to its exercise in the hands of others, without complaint and without resentment.
Let a communication be formed between any number of learned men in the various branches of science and literature; and whether the president and central committee be in London, or Edinburgh, if only they previously lay aside their individuality, and pledge themselves inwardly, as well as ostensibly, to administer judgment according to a constitution and code of laws; and if by grounding this code on the two-fold basis of universal morals and philosophic reason, independent of all foreseen application to particular works and authors, they obtain the right to speak each as the representative of their body corporate; they shall have honour and good wishes from me, and I shall accord to them their fair dignities, though self-assumed, not less cheerfully than if I could inquire concerning them in the herald’s office, or turn to them in the book of peerage. However loud may be the outcries for prevented or subverted reputation, however numerous and impatient the complaints of merciless severity and insupportable despotism, I shall neither feel, nor utter aught but to the defence and justification of the critical machine. Should any literary Quixote find himself provoked by its sounds and regular movements, I should admonish him with Sancho Panza, that it is no giant but a windmill; there it stands on its own place, and its own hillock, never goes out of its way to attack anyone, and to none and from none either gives or asks assistance. When the public press has poured in any part of its produce between its mill-stones, it grinds it off, one man’s sack the same as another, and with whatever wind may happen to be then blowing. All the two-and-thirty winds are alike its friends. Of the whole wide atmosphere it does not desire a single finger-breadth more than what is necessary for its sails to turn round in. But this space must be left free and unimpeded. Gnats, beetles, wasps, butterflies, and the whole tribe of ephemerals and insignificants, may flit in and out and between; may hum, and buzz, and jar; may shrill their tiny pipes, and wind their puny horns, unchastised and unnoticed. But idlers and bravadoes of larger size and prouder show must beware, how they place themselves within its sweep. Much less may they presume to lay hands on the sails, the strength of which is neither greater nor less than as the wind is, which drives them round. Whomsoever the remorseless arm slings aloft, or whirls along with it in the air, he has himself alone to blame; though, when the same arm throws him from it, it will more often double than break the force of his fall.
Putting aside the too manifest and too frequent interference of national party, and even personal predilection or aversion; and reserving for deeper feelings those worse and more criminal intrusions into the sacredness of private life, which not seldom merit legal rather than literary chastisement, the two principal objects and occasions which I find for blame and regret in the conduct of the review in question are first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by subjecting to criticism works neither indecent nor immoral, yet of such trifling importance even in point of size and, according to the critic’s own verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid mind the suspicion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at work; or that there was a cold prudential pre-determination to increase the sale of the review by flattering the malignant passions of human nature. That I may not myself become subject to the charge, which I am bringing against others, by an accusation without proof, I refer to the article on Dr. Rennell’s sermon in the very first number of the EDINBURGH REVIEW as an illustration of my meaning. If in looking through all the succeeding volumes the reader should find this a solitary instance, I must submit to that painful forfeiture of esteem, which awaits a groundless or exaggerated charge.
The second point of objection belongs to this review only in common with all other works of periodical criticism: at least, it applies in common to the general system of all, whatever exception there may be in favour of particular articles. Or if it attaches to THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, and to its only corrival (THE QUARTERLY), with any peculiar force, this results from the superiority of talent, acquirement, and information which both have so undeniably displayed; and which doubtless deepens the regret though not the blame. I am referring to the substitution of assertion for argument; to the frequency of arbitrary and sometimes petulant verdicts, not seldom unsupported even by a single quotation from the work condemned, which might at least have explained the critic’s meaning, if it did not prove the justice of his sentence. Even where this is not the case, the extracts are too often made without reference to any general grounds or rules from which the faultiness or inadmissibility of the qualities attributed may be deduced; and without any attempt to show, that the qualities are attributable to the passage extracted. I have met with such extracts from Mr. Wordsworth’s poems, annexed to such assertions, as led me to imagine, that the reviewer, having written his critique before he had read the work, had then pricked with a pin for passages, wherewith to illustrate the various branches of his preconceived opinions. By what principle of rational choice can we suppose a critic to have been directed (at least in a Christian country, and himself, we hope, a Christian) who gives the following lines, portraying the fervour of solitary devotion excited by the magnificent display of the Almighty’s works, as a proof and example of an author’s tendency to downright ravings, and absolute unintelligibility?
“O then what soul was his, when on the topsOf the high mountains he beheld the sunRise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked—Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth,And ocean’s liquid mass, beneath him layIn gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,And in their silent faces did he readUnutterable love. Sound needed none,Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drankThe spectacle! sensation, soul, and form,All melted into him; they swallowed upHis animal being; in them did he live,And by them did he live: they were his life.”
Can it be expected, that either the author or his admirers, should be induced to pay any serious attention to decisions which prove nothing but the pitiable state of the critic’s own taste and sensibility? On opening the review they see a favourite passage, of the force and truth of which they had an intuitive certainty in their own inward experience confirmed, if confirmation it could receive, by the sympathy of their most enlightened friends; some of whom perhaps, even in the world’s opinion, hold a higher intellectual rank than the critic himself would presume to claim. And this very passage they find selected, as the characteristic effusion of a mind deserted by reason!—as furnishing evidence that the writer was raving, or he could not have thus strung words together without sense or purpose! No diversity of taste seems capable of explaining such a contrast in judgment.
That I had over-rated the merit of a passage or poem, that I had erred concerning the degree of its excellence, I might be easily induced to believe or apprehend. But that lines, the sense of which I had analysed and found consonant with all the best convictions of my understanding; and the imagery and diction of which had collected round those convictions my noblest as well as my most delightful feelings; that I should admit such lines to be mere nonsense or lunacy, is too much for the most ingenious arguments to effect. But that such a revolution of taste should be brought about by a few broad assertions, seems little less than impossible. On the contrary, it would require an effort of charity not to dismiss the criticism with the aphorism of the wise man, in animam malevolam sapientia haud intrare potest.
What then if this very critic should have cited a large number of single lines and even of long paragraphs, which he himself acknowledges to possess eminent and original beauty? What if he himself has owned, that beauties as great are scattered in abundance throughout the whole book? And yet, though under this impression, should have commenced his critique in vulgar exultation with a prophecy meant to secure its own fulfilment? With a “This won’t do!” What? if after such acknowledgments extorted from his own judgment he should proceed from charge to charge of tameness and raving; flights and flatness; and at length, consigning the author to the house of incurables, should conclude with a strain of rudest contempt evidently grounded in the distempered state of his own moral associations? Suppose too all this done without a single leading principle established or even announced, and without any one attempt at argumentative deduction, though the poet had presented a more than usual opportunity for it, by having previously made public his own principles of judgment in poetry, and supported them by a connected train of reasoning!
The office and duty of the poet is to select the most dignified as well as
“The gayest, happiest attitude of things.”
The reverse, for in all cases a reverse is possible, is the appropriate business of burlesque and travesty, a predominant taste for which has been always deemed a mark of a low and degraded mind. When I was at Rome, among many other visits to the tomb of Julius II. I went thither once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and great vivacity of feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo’s MOSES, our conversation turned on the horns and beard of that stupendous statue; of the necessity of each to support the other; of the super-human effect of the former, and the necessity of the existence of both to give a harmony and integrity both to the image and the feeling excited by it. Conceive them removed, and the statue would become un-natural, without being super-natural. We called to mind the horns of the rising sun, and I repeated the noble passage from Taylor’s HOLY DYING. That horns were the emblem of power and sovereignty among the Eastern nations, and are still retained as such in Abyssinia; the Achelous of the ancient Greeks; and the probable ideas and feelings, that originally suggested the mixture of the human and the brute form in the figure, by which they realized the idea of their mysterious Pan, as representing intelligence blended with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the conscious intellect of man; than intelligence;—all these thoughts and recollections passed in procession before our minds. My companion who possessed more than his share of the hatred, which his countrymen bore to the French, had just observed to me, “a Frenchman, Sir! is the only animal in the human shape, that by no possibility can lift itself up to religion or poetry:” when, lo! two French officers of distinction and rank entered the church! “Mark you,” whispered the Prussian, “the first thing which those scoundrels will notice—(for they will begin by instantly noticing the statue in parts, without one moment’s pause of admiration impressed by the whole)—will be the horns and the beard. And the associations, which they will immediately connect with them will be those of a he-goat and a cuckold.” Never did man guess more luckily. Had he inherited a portion of the great legislator’s prophetic powers, whose statue we had been contemplating, he could scarcely have uttered words more coincident with the result: for even as he had said, so it came to pass.
In THE EXCURSION the poet has introduced an old man, born in humble but not abject circumstances, who had enjoyed more than usual advantages of education, both from books and from the more awful discipline of nature. This person he represents, as having been driven by the restlessness of fervid feelings, and from a craving intellect to an itinerant life; and as having in consequence passed the larger portion of his time, from earliest manhood, in villages and hamlets from door to door,
“A vagrant Merchant bent beneath his load.”
Now whether this be a character appropriate to a lofty didactick poem, is perhaps questionable. It presents a fair subject for controversy; and the question is to be determined by the congruity or incongruity of such a character with what shall be proved to be the essential constituents of poetry. But surely the critic who, passing by all the opportunities which such a mode of life would present to such a man; all the advantages of the liberty of nature, of solitude, and of solitary thought; all the varieties of places and seasons, through which his track had lain, with all the varying imagery they bring with them; and lastly, all the observations of men,
“Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits,Their passions and their feelings=”
which the memory of these yearly journeys must have given and recalled to such a mind—the critic, I say, who from the multitude of possible associations should pass by all these in order to fix his attention exclusively on the pin-papers, and stay-tapes, which might have been among the wares of his pack; this critic, in my opinion, cannot be thought to possess a much higher or much healthier state of moral feeling, than the Frenchmen above recorded.