Boccace comes last to be considered, who, living in the same age with Chaucer, had the same genius, and followed the same studies; both writ novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue. But the greatest resemblance of our two modern authors being in their familiar style, and pleasing way of relating comical adventures, I may pass it over, because I have translated nothing from Boccace of that nature. In the serious part of poetry, the advantage is wholly on Chaucer's side; for though the Englishman has borrowed many tales from the Italian, yet it appears that those of Boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken from authors of former ages, and by him only modelled; so that what there was of invention in either of them may be judged equal. But Chaucer has refined on Boccace, and has mended the stories which he has borrowed in his way of telling, though prose allows more liberty of thought, and the expression is more easy when unconfined by numbers. Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage. I desire not the reader should take my word, and therefore I will set two of their discourses on the same subject, in the same light, for every man to judge betwixt them. I translated Chaucer first, and amongst the rest pitched on the Wife of Bath's tale—not daring, as I have said, to adventure on her prologue, because it is too licentious. There Chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful knight of noble blood was forced to marry, and consequently loathed her. The crone being in bed with him on the wedding-night, and finding his aversion, endeavours to win his affection by reason, and speaks a good word for herself (as who could blame her?) in hope to mollify the sullen bridegroom. She takes her topics from the benefits of poverty, the advantages of old age and ugliness, the vanity of youth, and the silly pride of ancestry and titles without inherent virtue, which is the true nobility. When I had closed Chaucer I returned to Ovid, and translated some more of his fables; and by this time had so far forgotten the Wife of Bath's tale that, when I took up Boccace unawares, I fell on the same argument of preferring virtue to nobility of blood, and titles, in the story of Sigismunda, which I had certainly avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, if my memory had not failed me. Let the reader weigh them both, and if he thinks me partial to Chaucer, it is in him to right Boccace.
I prefer in our countryman, far above all his other stories, the noble poem ofPalamon and Arcite, which is of the Epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to theIliasor theAeneis. The story is more pleasing than either of them—the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as artful—only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven years at least; but Aristotle has left undecided the duration of the action, which yet is easily reduced into the compass of a year by a narration of what preceded the return of Palamon to Athens. I had thought for the honour of our nation, and more particularly for his whose laurel, though unworthy, I have worn after him, that this story was of English growth and Chaucer's own; but I was undeceived by Boccace, for casually looking on the end of his seventh Giornata, I found Dioneo (under which name he shadows himself) and Fiametta (who represents his mistress the natural daughter of Robert, King of Naples), of whom these words are spoken,Dioneo e la Fiametta granpezza contarono insieme d'Arcita, e di Palamone, by which it appears that this story was written before the time of Boccace; [Footnote: It was really written by Boccaccio himself, but, as Dryden himself says, Chaucer has greatly improved upon his original (La Teseide).] but the name of its author being wholly lost, Chaucer is now become an original, and I question not but the poem has received many beauties by passing through his noble hands. Besides this tale, there is another of his own invention, after the manner of the Provencals, called the Flower and the Leaf, with which I was so particularly pleased, both for the invention and the moral, that I cannot hinder myself from recommending it to the reader.
As a corollary to this preface, in which I have done justice to others, I owe somewhat to myself; not that I think it worth my time to enter the lists with one Milbourn and one Blackmore, but barely to take notice that such men there are who have written scurrilously against me without any provocation. Milbourn, who is in orders, pretends amongst the rest this quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little. Let him be satisfied that he shall not be able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I contemn him too much to enter into competition with him. His own translations of Virgil have answered his criticisms on mine. If (as they say he has declared in print) he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him the same compliment, for it is agreed on all hands that he writes even below Ogilby. That, you will say. is not easily to be done; but what cannot Milbourn bring about? I am satisfied, however, that while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word, I have not bribed him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 'Tis true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; for I find by experience he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them. He has taken some pains with my poetry, but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I had taken to the church (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. But his account of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever.
As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is, that I was the author ofAbsalom and Achitophel, which he thinks was a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.
But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead, and therefore peace be to the Manes of his Arthurs. I will only say that it was not for this noble knight that I drew the plan of an Epic poem on King Arthur in my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by Entellus. Yet from that preface he plainly took his hint; for he began immediately upon his story, though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor; but instead of it, to traduce me in a libel.
I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, [Footnote: HisShort View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage(1698) was largely directed against Dryden. See the account of it given in Macaulay'sComic Dramatists of the Restoration.] because in many things he has taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause when I have so often drawn it for a good one. Yet it were not difficult to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses, and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, of which they were not guilty—besides that he is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plough. I will not say the zeal of God's house has eaten him up, but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. It might also be doubted whether it were altogether zeal which prompted him to this rough manner of proceeding; perhaps it became not one of his function to rake into the rubbish of ancient and modern plays. A divine might have employed his pains to better purpose than in the nastiness of Plautus and Aristophanes, whose examples, as they excuse not me, so it might be possibly supposed that he read them not without some pleasure. They who have written commentaries on those poets, or on Horace, Juvenal, and Martial, have explained some vices which, without their interpretation, had been unknown to modern times. Neither has he judged impartially betwixt the former age and us.
There is more bawdry in one play of Fletcher's, called theCustom of the Country, than in all ours together. Yet this has been often acted on the stage in my remembrance. Are the times so much more reformed now than they were five and twenty years ago? If they are, I congratulate the amendment of our morals. But I am not to prejudice the cause of my fellow-poets, though I abandon my own defence; they have some of them answered for themselves, and neither they nor I can think Mr. Collier so formidable an enemy that we should shun him. He has lost ground at the latter end of the day by pursuing his point too far, like the Prince of Conde at the battle of Senneffe: from immoral plays to no plays—ab abusu ad usum, non valet consequentia. [Footnote: From the fact that there are immoral plays to the inference that there should be no plays the argument does not follow.] But being a party, I am not to erect myself into a judge. As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourn are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to their infamy.
——Demetri teque, Tigelli,Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.
(1709-1784.)
The criticism of the 'metaphysical poets' occurs in the Life of Cowley, published as one of theLives of the Poetsin 1780. The name 'metaphysical poetry' was first devised by Dryden, in hisEssay of Dramatic Poesy. It was revived by Johnson, and is now generally accepted by historians of English literature. It is used by Johnson, as it was used by Dryden, to express the love of remote analogies, which was a mark of the poetry of Donne and those who wrote more or less after the manner of Donne. But it has a deeper meaning than was probably intended by its inventors. It is no unapt term to indicate the vein of weighty thought and brooding imagination which runs like a thread of gold through all the finer work of these poets. Johnson did no harm in calling attention to the extravagance of much of the imagery beloved by the lyric poets of the Stuart period. But it is unpardonable that he should have had no eye for the nobler and subtler qualities of their genius, and equally unpardonable that he should have drawn no distinction between three men so incomparable in degree and kind of power as Cleveland, Cowley, and Donne. Some remarks on the place of the metaphysical poets in English literature will be found in the Introduction.
Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another.
Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some account.
The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.
If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry,an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.
Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits.Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries that they fall belowDonne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.
If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed", they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.
If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.
But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind ofdiscordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as Beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities making remarks on the actions of men and the vicissitudes of life without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before.
Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic; for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments: and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon. What they wanted, however, of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by hyperbole; their amplification had no limits; they left not only reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused magnificence that not only could not be credited, but could not be imagined.
Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost: if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth: if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables.
In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised either by recollection or inquiry; either something already learned is to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found, buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment.
This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino [Footnote: As Marino's chief poem,L'Adone, was not published till 1623, and as most of Donne's poems must have been written earlier, this is very unlikely. Besides, the resemblance is more apparent than real. Metaphysical poetry was a native product. See Introduction.] and his followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very extensive and various knowledge; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his sentiments.
When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more imitators than time has left behind. Their immediate successors, of whom any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the metaphysic style only in his lines upon Hobson the Carrier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment and more music. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.
Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples, and I have therefore collected instances of the modes of writing by which this species of poets, for poets they were called by themselves and their admirers, was eminently distinguished.
As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. Thus Cowley onKnowledge:
The sacred tree midst the fair orchard grew;The phoenix Truth did on it rest.And built his perfum'd nest,That right Porphyrian tree which did true logick shew.Each leaf did learned notions give,And th' apples were demonstrative:So clear their colour and divine,The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.
On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:
Love was with thy life entwin'd,Close as heat with fire is join'd,A powerful brand prescrib'd the dateOf thine, like Meleager's fate.The antiperistasis of ageMore enflam'd thy amorous rage.
In the following verses we have an allusion to a Rabbinical opinion concerning Manna:
Variety I ask not: give me oneTo live perpetually upon.The person Love does to us fit,Like manna, has the taste of all in it.
Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastic verses:
In everything there naturally growsA Balsamum to keep it fresh and new,If't were not injur'd by extrinsique blows;Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.But you, of learning and religion,And virtue and such ingredients, have madeA mithridate, whose operationKeeps off, or cures what can be done or said.
Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant:
This twilight of two years, not past nor next,Some emblem is of me, or I of this,Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,Whose what and where, in disputation is,If I should call me any thing, should miss.
I sum the years and me, and find me notDebtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new,That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot,Nor trust I this with hopes: and yet scarce trueThis bravery is, since these times shew'd me you.—Donne.
Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon Man as aMicrocosm:
If men be worlds, there is in every oneSomething to answer in some proportionAll the world's riches: and in good men, thisVirtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul is.
Of thoughts so far-fetched as to be not only unexpected but unnatural, all their books are full.
They, who above do various circles find,Say, like a ring th' aquator heaven does bind.When heaven shall be adorn'd by thee,(Which then more heaven than 't is, will be)'T is thou must write the poesy there,For it wanteth one as yet,Though the sun pass through 't twice a year,The sun, which is esteem'd the god of wit.—Cowley.
The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy are by Cowley, with still more perplexity, applied to Love:
Five years ago (says story) I lov'd you,For which you call me most inconstant now;Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;For I am not the same that I was then;No flesh is now the same't was then in me,
And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see.The same thoughts to retain still, and intents,Were more inconstant far; for accidentsMust of all things most strangely inconstant prove,If from one subject they t' another move:My members then, the father members wereFrom whence these take their birth, which now are here.If then this body love what th' other did,'T were incest, which by nature is forbid.
The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to travels, through different countries:
Hast thou not found each woman's breast(The land where thou hast travelled)Either by savages possest,Or wild, and uninhabited?What joy could'st take, or what repose,In countries so unciviliz'd as those?Lust, the scorching dog-star, hereRages with immoderate heat;Whilst Pride, the rugged Northern Bear,In others makes the cold too great.And when these are temperate known,The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone.—Cowley.
A lover, burnt up by his affections, is compared to Egypt:
The fate of Egypt I sustain,And never feel the dew of rain.From clouds which in the head appear;But all my too much moisture oweTo overflowings of the heart below.—Cowley.
The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury and rites of sacrifice:
And yet this death of mine, I fear,Will ominous to her appear:When found in every other part,Her sacrifice is found without an heart.For the last tempest of my deathShall sigh out that too, with my breath.
That the chaos was harmonized, has been recited of old; but whence the different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover:
Th' ungovern'd parts no correspondence knew,And artless war from thwarting motions grew;Till they to number and fixt rules were brought.Water and air he for the Tenor chose.Earth made the Base, the Treble flame arose.—Cowley.
The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account, but Donne has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read again:
On a round ballA workman, that hath copies by, can layAn Europe, Afric, and an Asia,And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.So doth each tear,Which thee doth wear,A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflowThis world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.
On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out,"Confusion worse confounded":
Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here,She gives the best light to his sphere,Or each is both, and all, and soThey unto one another nothing owe.—Donne.
Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?
Though God be our true glass, through which we seeAll, since the being of all things is He,Yet are the trunks, which do to us deriveThings, in proportion fit, by perspectiveDeeds of good men; for by their living here,Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.
Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together?
Since't is my doom, Love's undershrieve,Why this reprieve?Why doth my She Advowson flyIncumbency?To sell thyself dost thou intendBy candle's end,And hold the contrast thus in doubt,Life's taper out?Think but how soon the market fails,Your sex lives faster than the males;As if to measure age's span,The sober Julian were th' account of man,Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.—Cleveland.
Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:
By every wind, that comes this way,Send me at least a sigh or two,Such and so many I'll repayAs shall themselves make winds to get to you.—Cowley.
In tears I'll waste these eyes,By Love so vainly fed;So lust of old the Deluge punished.—Cowley.
All arm'd in brass the richest dress of war,(A dismal glorious sight) he shone afar.The sun himself started with sudden fright,To see his beams return so dismal bright.—Cowley.
An universal consternation:
His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp pawsTear up the ground; then runs he wild about,Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.
Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;Silence and horror fill the place around:Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.—Cowley.
Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.
The fish around her crowded, as they doTo the false light that treacherous fishers shew,And all with as much ease might taken be,As she at first took me:For ne'er did light so clearAmong the waves appear,Though every night the sun himself set there.—Cowley.
The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass:
My name engrav'd hereinDoth contribute my firmness to this glass;Which, ever since that charm, hath beenAs hard as that which grav'd it was.—Donne.
Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling.
He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now,And no breath stirring hears,In the clear heaven of thy brow,No smallest cloud appears.He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,And trusts the faithless April of thy May.—Cowley.
Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:
Nothing yet in thee is seen:But when a genial heat warms thee within,A new-born wood of various lines there grows;Here buds an L, and there a B,Here sprouts a V, and there a T,And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.—Cowley
As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.
Gently, ah gently, madam, touchThe wound, which you yourself have made;That pain must needs be very much,Which makes me of your hand afraid.Cordials of pity give me now,For I too weak for purgings grow.—Cowley.
Mahol, th' inferior world's fantastic face,Through all the turns of matter's maze did trace;Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took;On all the springs and smallest wheels did lookOf life and motion; and with equal artMade up again the whole of every part.—Cowley.
A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun:
The moderate value of our guiltless oreMakes no man atheist, and no woman whore;Yet why should hallow'd vestals' sacred shrineDeserve more honour than a flaming mine?These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter beThan a few embers, for a deity.
Had he our pits, the Persian would admireNo sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:He'd leave the trotting whipster, and preferOur profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.For wants he heat or light? or would have storeOf both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?Nay, what's the sun but, in a different name,A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!Then let this truth reciprocally runThe sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.
No familyE'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,With whom more venturers might boldly dareVenture their stakes, with him in joy to share.—Donne.
Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.
Then down I laid my head,Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled:Ah, sottish soul, said I,When back to its cage again I saw it fly:Fool to resume her broken chain!And row her galley here again!Fool, to that body to returnWhere it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!Once dead, how can it be,Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me?—Cowley.
Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine comeInto the self-same room,'T will tear and blow up all within,Like a grenado shot into a magazin.
Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts,Of both our broken hearts:Shall out of both one new one make;From hers th' allay; from mine, the metal take.—Cowley.
The Prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all,From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall;Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride's bright eyes,At every glance a constellation flies,And sows the court with stars, and doth preventIn light and power, the all-ey'd firmament:First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes,Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise;And from their jewels torches do take fire,And all is warmth, and light, and good desire.—Donne.
They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their thoughts.
That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality is by Cowley thus expressed:
Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand,Than woman can be plac'd by Nature's hand;And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be,To change thee, as thou 'rt there, for very thee.
That prayer and labour should co-operate are thus taught by Donne:
In none but us, are such mixt engines found,As hands of double office: for the groundWe till with them; and them to heaven we raise;Who prayerless labours, or without this, prays,Doth but one half, that's none.
By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is thus illustrated:
—That which I should have begun In my youth's morning, now late must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost Light and strength, dark and tir'd must then ride post.
All that Man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is comprehended by Donne in the following lines:
Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;After, enabled but to suck and cry.Think, when't was grown to most, 't was a poor inn,A province pack'd up in two yards of skin,And that usurp'd, or threaten'd with a rageOf sicknesses, or their true mother, age.But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee;Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flownIn pieces, and the bullet is his own,And freely flies; this to thy soul allow,Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatched but now.
They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophizes beauty:
—Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free! Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be! Thou murderer, which hast kill'd, and devil, which would'st damn me.
Thus he addresses his mistress:
Thou who, in many a propriety,So truly art the sun to me.Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can,And let me and my sun beget a man.
Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:
Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have beenSo much as of original sin,Such charms thy beauty wears as mightDesires in dying confest saints excite.Thou with strange adulteryDost in each breast a brothel keep;Awake, all men do lust for thee,And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
The true taste of tears:
Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,And take my tears, which are Love's wine,And try your mistress' tears at home;For all are false, that taste not just like mine.—Donne.
This is yet more indelicate:
As the sweet sweat of roses in a stillAs that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill,As th' almighty balm of th' early East,Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast.And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets:Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles.—Donne.
Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic:
As men in hell are from diseases free,So from all other ills am I.Free from their known formality:But all pains eminently lie in thee.—Cowley.
They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions.
It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke;In vain it something would have spoke:The love within too strong for't was,Like poison put into a Venice-glass.—Cowley.
In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows:
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:Time's dead low-water; when all minds divestTo-morrow's business, when the labourers haveSuch rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;Now when the client, whose last hearing isTo-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,Who when he opens his eyes, must shut them thenAgain by death, although sad watch he keep,Doth practise dying by a little sleep,Thou at this midnight seest me.
It must be, however, confessed of these writers that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle, yet where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention:
Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is,Alike if it succeed, and if it miss;Whom good or ill does equally confound,And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound.Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite,Both at full noon and perfect night!The stars have not a possibilityOf blessing thee;If things then from their end we happy call,'T is hope is the most hopeless thing of all.Hope, thou bold taster of delight,Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour'st it quite!Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor,By clogging it with legacies before!The joys, which we entire should wed,Come deflower'd virgins to our bed;Good fortune without gain imported be,Such mighty customs paid to thee:For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;If it take air before, its spirits waste.
To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,Though I must go, endure not yetA breach, but an expansion,Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two soAs stiff twin-compasses are two,Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no showTo move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,Yet when the other far doth roam,It leans, and hearkens after it,And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who mustLike th' other foot, obliquely run.Thy firmness makes my circle just,And makes me end where I begun.—Donne.
In all these examples it is apparent that whatever is improper or vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange, and that the writers fail to give delight by their desire of exciting admiration.
(1772-1834)
The following passage forms Chapters xiv and xv of Coleridge'sBiographia Literaria, published in 1817 It has been selected as giving a less imperfect impression of his powers as a critic than any other piece that could have been chosen The truth is that, great in talk and supreme in poetry, Coleridge was lost directly he sat down to express himself in prose His style is apt to be cumbrous, and his matter involved. We feel that the critic himself was greater than any criticism recorded either in his writings or his lectures The present extract may be defined as an attempt, and an attempt less inadequate than was common with Coleridge, to state his poetic creed, and to illustrate it by reference to his own poetry and to that of Wordsworth and of Shakespeare. In what he says of Shakespeare he is at his best. He forgets himself, and writes with a single eye to a theme which was thoroughly worthy of his powers. In the earlier part of the piece, and indeed indirectly throughout, he has in mind Wordsworth's famous Preface to theLyrical Ballads, which is to be found in any complete edition of Wordsworth's poems, or in his poise writings, as edited by Dr. Grosart.
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversation turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of theLyrical Ballads;[Footnote: Published in 1798. It opened with theAncient Marinerand closed with Wordsworth's lines onTintern Abbey.Among other poems written in Wordsworth's simplest style wereThe Idiot Boy, The Thorn,andWe are Seven.] in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
With this view I wrote theAncient Mariner,and was preparing, among other poems, theDark Ladie,and theChristabel,in which I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is characteristic of his genius. In this form theLyrical Balladswere published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed in the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the second edition he added a preface of considerable length; in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think, adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the presence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy. For from the conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy I explain the inveteracy, and in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by the assailants.
Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things which they were for a long time described as being; had they been really distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with them. But year after year increased the number of Mr. Wordsworth's admirers. They were found, too, not in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among young men of strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their admiration (inflamed perhaps in some degree by opposition) was distinguished by its intensity, I might almost say, by its religious fervour. These facts, and the intellectual energy of the author, which was more or less consciously felt, where it was outwardly and even boisterously denied, meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and of alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, which would of itself have borne up the poems by the violence with which it whirled them round and round. With many parts of this preface, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the contrary, objected to them as erroneous in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least) both to other parts of the same preface and to the author's own practice in the greater number of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth, in his recent collection, has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of his second volume, to be read or not at the reader's choice. But he has not, as far as I can discover, announced any change in his poetic creed. At all events, considering it as the source of a controversy, in which I have been honoured more than I deserve by the frequent conjunction of my name with his, I think it expedient to declare, once for all, in what points I coincide with his opinions, and in what points I altogether differ. But in order to render myself intelligible, I must previously, in as few words as possible, explain my ideas, first, of a poem; and secondly, of poetry itself, in kind and in essence.
The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction; while it is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself constantly aware that distinction is not division. In order to obtain adequate notions of any truth, we must intellectually separate its distinguishable parts; and this is the technical process of philosophy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our conceptions to the unity in which they actually co-exist; and this is the result of philosophy.
A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition; the difference, therefore, must consist in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object proposed. According to the difference of the object will be the difference of the combination. It is possible that the object may be merely to facilitate the recollection of any given facts or observations by artificial arrangement; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly. In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to the well-known enumeration of the days in the several months:
Thirty days hath September,April, June, and November, &c.
and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all compositions that have this charm superadded, whatever be their contents,maybe entitled poems.
So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose may be the communication of truths; either of truth absolute and demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced and recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the highest and most permanent kind, may result from the attainment of the end; but it is not itself the immediate end. In other works the communication of pleasure may be the immediate purpose; and though truth, either moral or intellectual, ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will distinguish the character of the author, not the class to which the work belongs. Blest indeed is that state of society, in which the immediate purpose would be baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end; in which no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus even of an Anacreon, or the Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion!
But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high degree attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The answer is, that nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it. They must be such as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are calculated to excite. The final definition then, so deduced, may be thus worded. A poem is that species of composition which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.
Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants attaching each a different meaning to the same word; and in few instances has this been more striking than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a poem which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined that the whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of interesting reflections, I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a poem, and an additional merit. But if the definition sought for be that of a legitimate poem, I answer, it must be one the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical arrangement. The philosophic critics of all ages coincide with the ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the praises of a just poem, on the one hand to a series of striking lines or distichs, each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader to itself, disjoins it from its context, and makes it a separate whole, instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result unattracted by the component parts. The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power; or like the path of sound through the air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him onward.Praecipitandus est liber spiritus, says Petronius Arbiter most happily. The epithet,liber, here balances the preceding verb, and it is not easy to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.
But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem, we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato and Bishop Taylor, and theTheoria Sacraof Burnet, furnish undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem. The first chapter of Isaiah (indeed a very large proportion of the whole book) is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less irrational than strange to assert that pleasure, and not truth, was the immediate object of the prophet. In short, whatever specific import we attach to the word poetry, there will be found involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Yet if a harmonious whole is to be produced, the remaining parts must be preserved in keeping with the poetry; and this can be no otherwise effected than by such a studied selection and artificial arrangement as will partake of one, though not a peculiar, property of poetry. And this again can be no other than the property of exciting a more continuous and equal attention than the language of prose aims at, whether colloquial or written.
My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of the word, have been in part anticipated in the preceding disquisition on the fancy and imagination. What is poetry? is so nearly the same question with, what is a poet? that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own mind. The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control (laxis effertur habenis), reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.
Doubtless, as Sir John Davies observes of the soul (and his words may with slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, to the poetic imagination),—
Doubtless this could not be, but that she turnsBodies to spirit by sublimation strange,As fire converts to fire the things it burns,As we our food into our nature change.
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,And draws a kind of quintessence from things;Which to her proper nature she transformsTo bear them light on her celestial wings.
Thus does she, when from individual statesShe doth abstract the universal kinds;Which then re-clothed in divers names and fatesSteal access through our senses to our minds.
Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.
In the application of these principles to purposes of practical criticism as employed in the appraisal of works more or less imperfect, I have endeavoured to discover what the qualities in a poem are, which may be deemed promises and specific symptoms of poetic power, as distinguished from general talent determined to poetic composition by accidental motives, by an act of the will, rather than by the inspiration of a genial and productive nature. In this investigation, I could not, I thought, do better than keep before me the earliest work of the greatest genius that perhaps human nature has yet produced, our myriad-minded Shakespeare. I mean theVenus and Adonis, and theLucrece; works which give at once strong promises of the strength, and yet obvious proofs of the immaturity, of his genius. From these I abstracted the following marks, as characteristics of original poetic genius in general.
I. In theVenus and Adonisthe first and obvious excellence is the perfect sweetness of the versification, its adaptation to the subject, and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of melody predominant. The delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and not the result of an easily imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favourable promise in the compositions of a young man. "The man that hath not music in his soul" can indeed never be a genuine poet. Imagery (even taken from nature, much more when transplanted from books, as travels, voyages, and works of natural history), affecting incidents, just thoughts, interesting personal or domestic feelings, and with these the art of their combination or intertexture in the form of a poem, may all by incessant effort be acquired as a trade, by a man of talents and much reading, who, as I once before observed, has mistaken an intense desire of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius; the love of the arbitrary end for a possession of the peculiar means. But the sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing multitude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some one predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can never be learnt. It is in these thatPoeta nascitur non fit.
2. A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself. At least I have found that where the subject is taken immediately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a fallacious pledge, of genuine poetic power. We may perhaps remember the tale of the statuary, who had acquired considerable reputation for the legs of his goddesses, though the rest of the statue accorded but indifferently with ideal beauty; till his wife, elated by her husband's praises, modestly acknowledged that she herself had been his constant model. In theVenus and Adonisthis proof of poetic power exists even to excess. It is throughout as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious even than the characters themselves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view; himself meanwhile unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement which had resulted from the energetic fervour of his own spirit, in so vividly exhibiting what it had so accurately and profoundly contemplated. I think I should have conjectured from these poems that even then the great instinct which impelled the poet to the drama was secretly working in him, prompting him by a series and never-broken chain of imagery, always vivid, and because unbroken, often minute; by the highest effort of the picturesque in words, of which words are capable, higher perhaps than was ever realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted; to provide a substitute for that visual language, that constant intervention and running comment by tone, look, and gesture, which, in his dramatic works, he was entitled to expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of those characters by the most consummate actors. You seem to be told nothing, but to see and hear everything. Hence it is that from the perpetual activity of attention required on the part of the reader; from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts and images; and, above all, from the alienation, and, if I may hazard such an expression, the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst; that, though the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a moral account. Instead of doing as Ariosto, and as, still more offensively, Wieland has done; instead of degrading and deforming passion into appetite, the trials of love into the struggles of concupiscence, Shakespeare has here represented the animal impulse itself so as to preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the reader's notice among the thousand outward images, and now beautiful, now fanciful circumstances, which form its dresses and its scenery; or by diverting our attention from the main subject by those frequent witty or profound reflections which the poet's ever active mind has deduced from, or connected with, the imagery and the incidents. The reader is forced into too much action to sympathize with the merely passive of our nature. As little can a mind thus roused and awakened be brooded on by mean and instinct emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep upon the surface of a lake while a strong gale is driving it onward in waves and billows.
3. It has been before observed that images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion; or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion; or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an instant; or, lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's own spirit,
Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air.
In the two following lines, for instance, there is nothing objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their proper place, part of a descriptive poem:
Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'dBend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.
But with the small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be equally in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive tour. The same image will rise into a semblance of poetry if thus conveyed:
Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,By twilight-glimpse discerned, mark! how they fleeFrom the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wildStreaming before them.
I have given this as an illustration, by no means as an instance, of that particular excellence which I had in view, and in which Shakespeare, even in his earliest as in his latest works, surpasses all other poets. It is by this that he still gives a dignity and a passion to the objects which he presents. Unaided by any previous excitement, they burst upon us at once in life and in power.
Full many a glorious morning have I seenFlatterthe mountain-tops with sovereign eye.—Sonnet33.
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soulOf the wide world dreaming on things to come,Can yet the lease of my true love control,Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,And the sad augurs mock their own presage:Incertainties now crown themselves assured,And peace proclaims olives of endless age.Now with the drops of this most balmy timeMy love looks fresh: and Death to me subscribes,Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.And thou in this shalt find thy monument,When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.—Sonnet107.
As of higher worth, so doubtless still more characteristic of poetic genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence the reader's own memory will refer him to theLear, Othello,in short, to which not of the'great, ever living, dead man's'dramatic works?Inopem me copia fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the instance of love in
Sonnet98:
From you have I been absent in the spring,When proud-pied April drest in all his trimHath put a spirit of youth in every thing,That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smellOf different flowers in odour and in hue,Could make me any summer's story tell,Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grewNor did I wonder at the lily's white,Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;They were, but sweet, but figures of delight,Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.Yet seem'd it winter still and, you away,As with your shadow I with these did play!
Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less indispensable mark
[Greek text, transliterated]
Gonzmou men Poihtou————— —————ostis rhma gennaion lakoi,
will the imagery supply when, with more than the power of the painter, the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the feeling of simultaneousness!
With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace Of those fair arms, that bound him to her breast, And homeward through the dark laund runs apace:Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky! So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.—Venus and Adonis, 1. 811.
4. The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but little, except as taken conjointly with the former; yet without which the former could scarce exist in a high degree, and (even if this were possible) would give promises only of transitory flashes and a meteoric power;—its depth and energy of thought. No man was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare's Poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams that, at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tumult, but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. TheVenus and Adonisdid not perhaps allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand, their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakespeare's management of the tale neither pathos nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection; and lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domination, over the whole world of language. What, then, shall we say? even this, that Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England, my country! Truly, indeed,