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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of English literary criticism, by  Various
+
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+Title: English literary criticism
+
+Author:  Various
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6320]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 25, 2002]
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM ***
+
+
+
+
+E-book produced by Beth Constantine, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM
+
+
+
+C. E. VAUGHAN
+
+Edited by C H. HERFORD, Litt. D
+
+
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY C. E. VAUGHAN
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In the following pages my aim has been to sketch the development of
+criticism, and particularly of critical method, in England; and to
+illustrate each phase of its growth by one or two samples taken from
+the most typical writers. I have in no way attempted to make a full
+collection of what might be thought the most striking pieces of
+criticism to be found in our literature.
+
+Owing to the great wealth of such writing produced during the last
+sixty years, it is clearly impossible to give so complete a picture
+of what has been done in this period as in others. I am obliged to
+content myself with one specimen of one writer. But that is the writer
+who, in the opinion of many, is the most remarkable of all English
+critics. For the permission, so kindly granted, to include the Essay
+on Sandro Botticelli I desire to offer my sincerest thanks to Messrs.
+Macmillan and to the other representatives of the late Mr. Pater.
+
+It may seem strange to close a volume of literary criticism with a
+study on the work and temperament of a painter. I have been led to do
+so for more than one reason. A noticeable tendency of modern criticism,
+from the time of Burke and Lessing, has been to break down the barrier
+between poetry and the kindred arts; and it is perhaps well that this
+tendency should find expression in the following selection. But a
+further reason is that Mr. Pater was never so much himself, was never
+so entirely master of his craft, as when interpreting the secrets of
+form and colour. Most of all was this the case when he had chosen for
+his theme one who, like Botticelli, "is before all things a poetical
+painter".
+
+C. E. VAUGHAN.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+SIR PHILIP SIDNEY--
+
+I. An Apology for Poetry
+
+JOHN DRYDEN--
+
+II. Preface to the Fables
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON--
+
+III. On the Metaphysical Poets
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE--
+
+IV. On Poetic Genius and Poetic Diction
+
+WILLIAM HAZLITT--
+
+V. On Poetry in General
+
+CHARLES LAMB--
+
+VI. On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century VII. On Webster's
+_Duchess of Malfi_ VIII. On Ford's _Broken Heart_
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY--
+
+IX. A Defence of Poetry
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE--
+
+X. Goethe
+
+WALTER PATER--
+
+XI. Sandro Botticelli
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+In England, as elsewhere, criticism was a late birth of the literary
+spirit. English poets had sung and literary prose been written for
+centuries before it struck men to ask themselves, What is the secret
+of the power that these things have on our mind, and by what principles
+are they to be judged? And it could hardly have been otherwise.
+Criticism is a self-conscious art, and could not have arisen in an age
+of intellectual childhood. It is a derivative art, and could scarcely
+have come into being without a large body of literature to suggest
+canons of judgment, and to furnish instances of their application.
+
+The age of Chaucer might have been expected to bring with it a new
+departure. It was an age of self-scrutiny and of bold experiment. A
+new world of thought and imagination had dawned upon it; and a new
+literature, that of Italy, was spread before it. Yet who shall say
+that the facts answer to these expectations? In the writings of Chaucer
+himself a keen eye, it is true, may discern the faint beginnings of
+the critical spirit. No poet has written with more nicely calculated
+art; none has passed a cooler judgment upon the popular taste of his
+generation. We know that Chaucer despised the "false gallop" of
+chivalrous verse; we know that he had small respect for the marvels
+of Arthurian romance. And his admiration is at least as frank as his
+contempt. What poet has felt and avowed a deeper reverence for the
+great Latins? What poet has been so alert to recognize the
+master-spirits of his own time and his father's? De Meung and Granson
+among the French--Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio of the Italians--each
+comes in for his share of praise from Chaucer, or of the princely
+borrowings which are still more eloquent than praise.
+
+Yet, for all this, Chaucer is far indeed from founding the art of
+criticism. His business was to create, and not to criticise. And, had
+he set himself to do so, there is no warrant that his success would
+have been great. In many ways he was still in bondage to the mediaval,
+and wholly uncritical, tradition. One classic, we may almost say, was
+as good to him as another. He seems to have placed Ovid on a line with
+Virgil; and the company in his House of Fame is undeniably mixed. His
+judgments have the healthy instinct of the consummate artist. They do
+not show, as those of his master, Petrarch, unquestionably do, the
+discrimination and the tact of the born critic.
+
+For this, or for any approach to it, English literature had to wait
+for yet two centuries more. In the strict sense, criticism did not
+begin till the age of Elizabeth; and, like much else in our literature,
+it was largely due to the passion for classical study, so strongly
+marked in the poets and dramatists of Shakespeare's youth, and
+inaugurated by Surrey and others in the previous generation. These
+conditions are in themselves significant. They serve to explain much
+both of the strength and the weakness of criticism, as it has grown
+up on English soil. From the Elizabethans to Milton, from Milton to
+Johnson, English criticism was dominated by constant reference to
+classical models. In the latter half of this period the influence of
+these models, on the whole, was harmful. It acted as a curb rather
+than as a spur to the imagination of poets; it tended to cripple rather
+than give energy to the judgment of critics. But in earlier days it
+was not so. For nearly a century the influence of classical masterpieces
+was altogether for good. It was not the regularity but the richness,
+not the self-restraint but the freedom, of the ancients that came home
+to poets such as Marlowe, or even to critics such as Meres. And if
+adventurous spirits, like Spenser and Sidney, were for a time misled
+into the vain attempt to graft exotic forms upon the homely growths
+of native poetry, they soon saw their mistake and revolted in silence
+against the ridiculous pedant who preferred the limping hexameters of
+the _Arcadia_ to Sidney's sonnets, and the spavined iambics of Spenser
+to the _Faerie Queene_.
+
+In the main, the worship of the classics seems to have counted at this
+time rather for freedom than restraint. And it is well that it was so.
+Yet restraint too was necessary; and, like freedom, it was found--
+though in less ample measure--through devotion to the classics. There
+can be little doubt that, consciously or no, the Elizabethans, with
+their quick eye for beauty of every kind, were swayed, as men in all
+ages have been swayed, by the finely chiselled forms of classical art.
+The besetting sin of their imagination was the tendency to run riot;
+and it may well be that, save for the restraining influence of ancient
+poetry, they would have sinned in this matter still more boldly than
+they did. Yet the chastening power of classical models may be easily
+overrated. And we cannot but notice that it was precisely where the
+classical influence was strongest that the force of imagination was
+the least under control. Jonson apart, there were no more ardent
+disciples of the ancients than Marlowe and Chapman. And no poets of
+that age are so open to the charge of extravagance as they.  It is
+with Milton that the chastening influence of the ancients first makes
+itself definitely felt. But Milton was no less alive to the fervour
+than to the self-mastery of his classical models. And it was not till
+the Restoration that "correctness" was recognized as the highest, if
+not the only, quality of the ancients, or accepted as the one worthy
+object of poetic effort. For more than a century correctness remained
+the idol both of poetry and of criticism in England; and nothing less
+than the furious onslaught of the Lyrical Ballads was needed to
+overthrow it. Then the floodgates were opened. A new era both of poetic
+and critical energy had dawned.
+
+Thus the history of English criticism, like that of English literature,
+divides itself roughly into three periods. The first is the period of
+the Elizabethans and of Milton; the second is from the Restoration to
+the French Revolution; the third from the Revolution to the present
+day. The typical critic of the first period is Sidney; Dryden opens
+and Johnson closes the second; the third, a period of far more varied
+tendencies than either of the others, is perhaps most fitly represented
+by Lamb, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. It will be the aim of the following
+pages to sketch the broader outlines of the course that critical inquiry
+has taken in each.
+
+I. The first thing that strikes us in the early attempts of criticism
+is that its problems are to a large extent remote from those which
+have engrossed critics of more recent times. There is little attempt
+to appraise accurately the worth of individual authors; still less,
+to find out the secret of their power, or to lay bare the hidden lines
+of thought on which their imagination had set itself to work. The first
+aim both of Puttenham and of Webbe, the pioneers of Elizabethan
+criticism, was either to classify writers according to the subjects
+they treated and the literary form that each had made his own, or to
+analyse the metre and other more technical elements of their poetry.
+
+But this, after all, was the natural course in the infancy of the
+study. All science begins with classification; and all classification
+with the external and the obvious. The Greek critics could take no
+step forward until they had classified all poems as either lyric, epic,
+or dramatic. And how necessary that division was may be seen from the
+length at which Plato discusses the nature of the distinction in the
+second book of the Republic. Even Aristotle, in this as in other things
+the 'master of those who know', devotes no inconsiderable space of the
+Poetics to technical matters such as the analysis of vocal sounds, and
+the aptness of different metres to different forms of poetic thought.
+
+There is another matter in which the methods of Elizabethan critics
+run side by side with those of the early Greeks. In Plato and Aristotle
+we are not seldom startled by the sudden transition from questions of
+form to the deepest problems suggested by imaginative art. The same
+is true of the Elizabethan critics. It is doubtless true that the
+latter give a proportionally larger space to the more technical sides
+of the subject than their Greek forerunners. They could not reasonably
+be expected to write with the width of view that all the world has
+admired in Aristotle and Plato. Moreover, they were from the first
+confronted with a practical difficulty from which the Greek critics
+were so fortunate as to be free. Was rhyme a "brutish" form of verse?
+and, if so, was its place to be taken by the alliterative rhythm, so
+dear to the older poets, or by an importation of classical metres,
+such as was attempted by Sidney and Spenser, and enforced by the
+unwearied lectures of Harvey and of Webbe? This, however technical,
+was a fundamental question; and, until it was settled, there was but
+little use in debating the weightier matters of the law.
+
+The discussion, which might have raged for ever among the critics, was
+happily cut short by the healthy instinct of the poets. Against
+alliteration the question had already been given by default. Revived,
+after long disuse, by Langland and other poets of the West Midlands
+in the fourteenth century, it had soon again been swept out of fashion
+by the irresistible charm of the genius of Chaucer. The _Tale of
+Gamelyn_, dating apparently from the first quarter of the fifteenth
+century, is probably the last poem of note in which the once universal
+metre is even partially employed. And what could prove more clearly
+that the old metrical form was dead? The rough rhythm of early English
+poetry, it is true, is kept; but alliteration is dropped, and its place
+is taken by rhyme.
+
+Nor were the efforts to impose classical measures on English poetry
+more blest in their results. The very men on whom the literary
+Romanizers had fixed their hopes were the first to abandon the
+enterprise in despair. If any genius was equal to the task of
+naturalizing hexameters in a language where strict quantity is unknown,
+it was the genius of Spenser. But Spenser soon ranged himself heart
+and soul with the champions of rhyme; his very name has passed down
+to us as a synonym for the most elaborate of all rhyming stanzas that
+have taken root in our verse. For the moment, rhyme had fairly driven
+all rivals from the field. Over the lyric its sway was undisputed. In
+narrative poetry, where its fitness was far more disputable, it
+maintained its hold till the closing years of Milton. In the drama
+itself, where its triumph would have been fatal, it disputed the ground
+inch by inch against the magnificent instrument devised by Surrey and
+perfected by Marlowe.
+
+It was during the ten years preceding the publication of Webbe's
+_Discourse_ (1586) that this controversy seems to have been hottest.
+From the first, perhaps, it bulked more largely with the critics than
+with the poets themselves. Certainly it allowed both poets and critics
+sufficient leisure for the far more important controversy which has
+left an enduring monument in Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_. [Footnote:
+The most important pieces of Elizabethan criticism are:--
+
+  Gosson's _School of Abuse_, 1579.
+  Lodge's _Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays_, 1579(?).
+  Sidney's _Apologie for Poetrie_, 1580(?).
+  Webbe's _Discourse of English Poetrie_, 1586.
+  Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_, 1589.
+  Harington's _Apologie of Poetrie_, 1591.
+  Meres' _Palladis Tamia_, 1598.
+  Campion's _Observations in the Arte of English Poesie_, 1602.
+  Daniel's _Defence of Ryme_, 1603.]
+
+The historical bearing of Sidney's treatise has been too commonly
+overlooked. It forms, in truth, one move in the long struggle which
+ended only with the restoration of Charles II.; or, to speak more
+accurately, which has lasted, in a milder form, to the present day.
+In its immediate object it was a reply to the Puritan assaults upon
+the theatre; in its ultimate scope, a defence of imaginative art against
+the suspicions with which men of high but narrow purpose have always,
+consciously or unconsciously, tended to regard it. It is a noble plea
+for liberty, directed no less against the unwilling scruples of
+idealists, such as Plato or Rousseau, than against the ruthless bigotry
+of practical moralists and religious partisans.
+
+From the first dawn of the Elizabethan drama, the stricter Protestants
+had declared war upon the stage. Intrenched within the city they were
+at once able to drive the theatres beyond the walls (1575); just as
+seventy years later, when it had seized the reins of central government,
+the same party, embittered by a thousand insults and brutalities,
+hastened to close the theatres altogether. It would be an evident
+mistake to suppose that this was merely a municipal prejudice, or to
+forget that the city council was backed by a large body of serious
+opinion throughout the country. A proof of this, if proof were needed,
+is to be found in the circumstances that gave rise to the _Apologie_
+of Sidney.
+
+The attack on the stage had been opened by the corporation and the
+clergy. It was soon joined by the men of letters. And the essay of
+Sidney was an answer neither to a town councillor, nor to a preacher,
+but to a former dramatist and actor. This was Stephen Gosson, author
+of the _School of Abuse_. The style of Gosson's pamphlet is nothing
+if not literary. It is full of the glittering conceits and the fluent
+rhetoric which the ready talent of Lyly had just brought into currency.
+It is euphuism of the purest water, with all the merits and all the
+drawbacks of the euphuistic manner. For that very reason the blow was
+felt the more keenly. It was violently resented as treason by the
+playwrights and journalists who still professed to reckon Gosson among
+their ranks. [Footnote: Lodge writes, "I should blush from a Player
+to become an enviouse Preacher".--_Ancient Critical Essays_, ed.
+Haslewood, ii. 7.]
+
+A war of pamphlets followed, conducted with the usual fury of literary
+men. Gosson on the one side, Lodge, the dramatist, upon the other,
+exchanged compliments with an energy which showed that one at least
+of them had not in vain graduated in "the school of abuse". "Raw
+devises", "hudder mudder", "guts and garbage", such are the phrases
+hurled by Gosson at the arguments and style of his opponents; "bawdy
+charms", "the very butchery of Christian souls", are samples of the
+names fastened by him upon the cause which they defended. [Footnote:
+Lodge, in his _Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays_ (1579 or
+1580), is hardly less scurrilous. "There came into my hand lately a
+little (would God a wittye) pamphelet.... Being by me advisedly wayed,
+I find it the oftscome of imperfections, the writer fuller of words
+than judgement, the matter certainely as ridiculus as serius."--In
+_Ancient Critical Essays_, ii. 5.]
+
+From this war of words Sidney turned loftily aside. Pointedly challenged
+at the outset--for the first and second pamphlets of Gosson had, without
+permission, been dedicated to "the right noble gentleman, Maister
+Philip Sidney"--he seldom alludes to the arguments, and never once
+mentions the name of Gosson. He wrote to satisfy his own mind, and not
+to win glory in the world of letters. And thus his _Apologie_, though
+it seems to have been composed while the controversy was still fresh
+in men's memory, was not published until nearly ten years after his
+death (1595). It was not written for controversy, but for truth. From
+the first page it rises into the atmosphere of calm, in which alone
+great questions can be profitably discussed.
+
+The _Apologie_ of Sidney is, in truth, what would now be called a
+Philosophy of Poetry. It is philosophy taken from the side of the
+moralist; for that was the side to which the disputants had confined
+themselves, and in which--altogether apart from the example of
+others--the interest of Sidney, as man of action, inevitably lay. It
+is philosophy as conceived by the mind of a poet. But, none the less,
+it pierces to the eternal problems which underlie the workings of all
+creative art, and presents them with a force, for the like of which
+we must go back to Plato and Aristotle, or look forward to the
+philosophers and inspired critics of a time nearer our own. It recalls
+the _Phadrus_ and the _Ion_; it anticipates the utterance of a still
+more kindred spirit, the _Defence of Poetry_ by Shelley.
+
+Philosopher as he was, Sidney arranges his thoughts in the loose order
+of the poet or the orator. It may be well, therefore, to give a brief
+sketch of his argument; and to do so without much regard to the
+arrangement of the _Apologie_ itself.
+
+The main argument of the _Apologie_ may indeed be called a commentary
+on the saying of Aristotle, cited by Sidney himself, that "Poetry is
+more philosophical and more studiously serious than History"--that is,
+as Sidney interprets it, than the scientific fact of any kind; or
+again, on that yet more pregnant saying of Shelley, that "poets are
+the unacknowledged legislators of the world". Gosson had denounced
+poetry as "the vizard of vanity, wantonness, and folly"; or, in Sidney's
+paraphrase, as "the mother of lies and the nurse of abuse". Sidney
+replies by urging that of all arts poetry is the most true and the
+most necessary to men.
+
+All learning, he pleads, and all culture begin with poetry. Philosophy,
+religion, and history herself, speak through the lips of poetry. There
+is indeed a sense in which poetry stands on higher ground than any
+science. There is no science, not even metaphysics, the queen of all
+sciences, that does not "build upon nature", and that is not, so far,
+limited by the facts of nature. The poet alone is "not tied to any
+such subjection"; he alone "freely ranges within the zodiac of his own
+wit".
+
+This, no doubt, is dangerous ground, and it is enforced by still more
+dangerous illustrations. But Sidney at once guards himself by insisting,
+as Plato had done before him, that the poet too is bound by laws which
+he finds but does not make; they are, however, laws not of fact but
+of thought, the laws of the idea--that is, of the inmost truth of
+things, and of God. Hence it is that the works of the poet seem to
+come from God, rather than from man. They stand rather on a level with
+nature, the material of all sciences, than with the sciences themselves,
+which are nothing more than man's interpretation of nature. In some
+sense, indeed, they are above nature; they stand midway between nature
+and him who created nature. They are a first nature, "beyond and over
+the works of that second nature". For they are the self-revelation of
+that which is the noblest work of God, and which in them finds utterance
+at its best and brightest.
+
+Thus, so far from being the "mother of lies", poetry is the highest
+form of truth. Avowedly so, in what men have always recognized to be
+the noblest poetry, the psalms and parables and other writings that
+"do imitate the inconceivable excellences of God". To a less degree,
+but still avowedly, in that poetry whose theme is philosophy or history.
+And so essentially, however men may overlook it, in that poetry which,
+professedly dealing with human life as we know it, does not content
+itself with reproducing the character of this man or that, but "reined
+only with learned discretion, ranges into the divine consideration of
+what may be and should be"--of the universal and complete rather than
+the individual and imperfect.
+
+But, if truth be the essence of the poet's work, "the right describing
+note to know a poet by", it would seem that the outward form of it,
+the metre and the ornament, are of little moment. "There have been
+many most excellent poets that never versified." And verse is nothing
+more than a means, and not the only means, of securing a "fitting
+raiment" for their matter and suiting their manner "according to the
+dignity of their subject". In this suggestion--that harmonious prose
+may, for certain forms of poetic thought, be hardly less suitable than
+verse--Sidney is at one with Shelley. And neither critic must be taken
+to disparage verse, or to mean more than that the matter, the
+conception, is the soul of poetry, and that the form is only of moment
+so far as it aids--as undoubtedly it does aid--to "reveal the soul
+within". It is rather as a witness to the whole scope of their argument
+than as a particular doctrine, to be left or taken, that the suggestion
+is most profitably regarded.
+
+Having settled the speculative base of poetry, Sidney turns to a yet
+more cherished theme, its influence upon character and action. The
+"highest end" of all knowledge, he urges, is "the knowledge of a man's
+self, with the end of well doing and not of well knowing only". Now
+by no artist is this end served so perfectly as by the poet. His only
+serious rivals are the moral philosopher and the historian. But neither
+of these flies so straight to his mark as the poet. The one gives
+precepts that fire no heart to action; the other gives examples without
+the precepts that should interpret and control them. The one lives in
+the world of ideas, the other in the world of hard and literal fact.
+Neither, therefore, has power to bridge the gulf that parts thought
+from action; neither can hope to take hold of beings in whose life,
+by its very nature, thought and action are indissolubly interwoven.
+"Now doth the peerless poet perform both. For whatsoever the philosopher
+saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it in some one,
+by whom he presupposeth it was done. So as he coupleth the general
+notion with the particular example .... Therein of all sciences is our
+poet the monarch."
+
+Once more we feel that Sidney is treading upon dangerous ground. But
+once more he saves himself by giving a wider definition both to thought
+and action, both to "well knowing and to well doing", than is common
+with moralists. By the former most moralists are apt to understand the
+bare "precept", thought as crystallized in its immediate bearing upon
+action. By the latter they commonly mean the passive rather than the
+active virtues, temperance and self-restraint rather than energy and
+resolve. From both these limitations Sidney, on the whole, is nobly
+free.
+
+To him the "delight which is all the good fellow poet seemeth to
+promise", "the words set in delightful proportion and prepared for the
+well enchanting skill of music", "the tale which holdeth children from
+play and old men from the chimney corner"--all these, its indefinable
+and purely artistic elements, are an inseparable part of the "wisdom"
+which poetry has to offer. In other words, it is the frame of mind
+produced by poetry, the "thought hardly to be packed into the narrow
+act", no less than the prompting to this action or to that, which
+Sidney values in the work of the poet. And if this be true, none but
+the most fanatical champion of "art for art's sake" will dispute the
+justice of his demands on poetry. None but such will deny that, whether
+by attuning the mind to beauty and nobleness, or by means yet more
+direct and obvious, art must have some bearing upon the life of man
+and on the habitual temper of his soul. No doubt, we might have wished
+that, in widening the scope of poetry as a moral influence, Sidney had
+been yet more explicit than in fact he is. We cannot but regret that,
+however unjustly, he should have laid himself open to the charge of
+desiring to turn poetry into sermons. But it is bare justice to point
+out that such a charge cannot fairly be brought against him; or that
+it can only be brought with such qualifications as rob it of its sting.
+
+On the other matter the record of Sidney is yet clearer. By "well
+doing" he does not mean, as is too often meant, mere abstinence from
+evil, but the active pursuit of whatsoever things are manly, noble,
+and of good report. It is not only the "temperance of Diomedes"--
+though temperance too may be conceived as an active virtue--but the
+wisdom of Ulysses, the patriotism of Aneas, "the soon repenting pride
+of Agamemnon", the valour of Achilles--it is courage, above all courage,
+that stirs his soul in the great works of ancient poetry. It is the
+same quality that moves him in the ballads and romances of the moderns.
+"Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness; I never heard the old
+song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than
+with a trumpet." And again: "Truly I have known men that, even with
+reading _Amadis de Gaule_ (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect
+poesy), have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy,
+liberality, and especially courage." The man who wrote these words had
+no starved conception of what poetry should be.
+
+Once again. Sidney has small patience with those who would limit art
+by the banishment of all that recalls the baser side of life. "Now,
+as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right. So in
+the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth
+a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy
+handle so ... as with hearing it we get, as it were, an experience....
+So that the right use of comedy will, I think, by no body be blamed."
+No doubt, the moral aspect of comedy is here marked with what must be
+called immoderate stress. Here, too, as when he deals with the kindred
+side of tragedy, Sidney demands that the poet shall, in his villains,
+"show you nothing that is not to be shunned"; in other words, that,
+so far as it paints evil, comedy shall take the form of satire.
+
+But, even with this restriction, it must be allowed that Sidney takes
+a wider view than might appear at a hasty reading; wider, it is
+probable, than was at all common among the men of his generation. No
+Shakespeare had yet arisen to touch the baser qualities of men with
+a gleam of heroism or to humanize the most stoical endurance with a
+strain of weakness. And even Shakespeare, in turning from the practice
+to the theory of his art, could find no words very different from those
+of Sidney. To him, as to Sidney, the aim of the drama is "to show
+virtue her own image and scorn her own feature"; though by a saving
+clause, which Sidney perhaps would hardly have accepted, it is further
+defined as being to show "the very age and body of the time his form
+and pressure". Yet it must be remembered that Sidney is loud in praise
+of so unflinching a portraiture of life, base and noble, as Chaucer's
+_Troilus and Cressida_. And on the whole it remains true that the
+limitations of Sidney are the limitations of his age, while his
+generosity is his own.
+
+The remainder of the _Apologie_ is necessarily of slighter texture.
+Apart from the examination of Plato's banishment of the poets--a theme
+on which Harington also discourses, though with less weight than
+Sidney--it is concerned mainly with two subjects: an assertion that
+each form of poetry has its peculiar moral import, and a lament over
+the decay into which English poetry had fallen in the sixteenth century.
+
+Such a lament sounds strangely to us, accustomed as we are to regard
+the age of Elizabeth, already half ended when Sidney wrote, as the
+most fruitful period of our literature. But, when the _Apologie_ was
+composed, no one of the authors by whose fame the Elizabethan age is
+now commonly known--Sidney himself and Spenser alone excepted--had
+begun to write. English poetry was about to wake from the long night
+that lies between the age of Chaucer and the age of Shakespeare. But
+it was not yet fully awakened. And the want of a full and free life
+in creative art goes far to account for the shortcomings of Elizabethan
+criticism.
+
+Vague the Elizabethan critics undeniably are; they tend to lose
+themselves either in far-fetched analogies or in generalities that
+have but a slight bearing upon the distinctive problems of literary
+appreciation. When not vague, they are apt to fritter their strength
+on technical details which, important to them, have long lost their
+significance for the student of literature. But both technicalities
+and vagueness may be largely traced to the uncertain practice of the
+poets upon whom, in the first instance, their criticism was based. The
+work of Surrey and of Sackville was tentative; that of Webbe and
+Puttenham was necessarily the same. It is the more honour to Sidney
+that, shackled as he was by conditions from which no man could escape
+altogether, he should have struck a note at once so deep and so strong
+as is sounded in the _Apologie_.
+
+II. In turning from Sidney to Dryden we pass into a different world.
+The philosophy, the moral fervour, the prophetic strain of the
+Elizabethan critic have vanished. Their place is taken by qualities
+less stirring in themselves, but more akin to those that modern times
+have been apt to associate with criticism. In fact, whatever qualities
+we now demand from a critic may be found at least foreshadowed, and
+commonly much more than foreshadowed, in Dryden. Dryden is master of
+comparative criticism: he has something of the historical method; he
+is unrivalled in the art of seizing the distinctive qualities of his
+author and of setting them before us with the lightest touch. His very
+style, so pointed yet so easy, is enough in itself to mark the gulf
+that lies between the age of Elizabeth and the age of the Restoration.
+All the Elizabethan critics, Sidney himself hardly excepted, bore some
+trace of the schoolmaster. Dryden was the first to meet his readers
+entirely as an equal, and talk to them as a friend with friends. It
+is Dryden, and not Sainte-Beuve, who is the true father of the literary
+_causerie_; and he still remains its unequalled master. There may be
+other methods of striking the right note in literary criticism. Lamb
+showed that there may be; so did Mr. Pater. But few indeed are the
+critics who have known how to attune the mind of the reader to a
+subject, which beyond all others cries out for harmonious treatment,
+so skilfully as Dryden.
+
+That the first great critic should come with the Restoration, was only
+to be expected. The age of Elizabeth was essentially a creative age.
+The imagination of men was too busy to leave room for self-scrutiny.
+Their thoughts took shape so rapidly that there was no time to think
+about the manner of their coming. Not indeed that there is, as has
+sometimes been urged, any inherent strife between the creative and the
+critical spirit. A great poet, we can learn from Goethe and Coleridge,
+may also be a great critic. More than that: without some touch of
+poetry in himself, no man can hope to do more than hack-work as a
+critic of others. Yet it may safely be said that, if no critical
+tradition exists in a nation, it is not an age of passionate creation,
+such as was that of Marlowe and Shakespeare, that will found it. With
+all their alertness, with all their wide outlook, with all their zeal
+for classical models, the men of that time were too much of children,
+too much beneath the spell of their own genius, to be critics. Compare
+them with the great writers of other ages; and we feel instinctively
+that, in spite of their surroundings, they have far more of vital
+kindred with Homer or the creators of the mediaval epic, than with the
+Greek dramatists--Aschylus excepted--or with Dante or with Goethe. The
+"freshness of the early world" is still upon them; neither they nor
+their contemporaries were born to the task of weighing and pondering,
+which is the birthright of the critic.
+
+It was far otherwise with the men of the Restoration. The creative
+impulse of a century had at length spent its force. For the first time
+since Wyatt and Surrey, England deserted the great themes of literature,
+the heroic passions of Tamburlaine and Faustus, of Lear and Othello,
+for the trivial round of social portraiture and didactic discourse;
+for _Essays on Satire_ and _on Translated Verse_, for the Tea-Table
+of the _Spectator_, for dreary exercises on the _Pleasures of the
+Imagination_ and the _Art of Preserving Health_. A new era had opened.
+It was the day of small things.
+
+Yet it would be wrong to regard the new movement as merely negative.
+Had that been all, it would be impossible to account for the passionate
+enthusiasm it aroused in those who came beneath its spell; an enthusiasm
+which lived long after the movement itself was spent, and which--except
+in so far as it led to absurd comparisons with the Elizabethans--was
+abundantly justified by the genius of Butler and Dryden, of Congreve
+and Swift and Pope. Negative, on one side, the ideal of Restoration
+and Augustan poetry undoubtedly was. It was a reaction against the
+"unchartered freedom", the real or fancied extravagances, of the
+Elizabethan poets. But, on the higher side, it was no less positive,
+though doubtless far less noble, than the ideal it displaced.
+
+The great writers of the eighty years following the Restoration were
+consumed by a passion for observation--observation of the men and
+things that lay immediately around them. They may have seen but little;
+but what they did see, they grasped with surprising force and clearness.
+They may not have gone far beneath the surface; but, so far as they
+went, their work was a model of acuteness and precision. This was the
+secret of their power. To this may be traced their victory in the
+various tasks that they undertook.
+
+Hence, on the one hand, their success in painting the manners of their
+own day--a task from which, with some notable exceptions, the greatest
+of the Elizabethans had been apt to shrink, as from something alien
+to their genius; and, on the other hand, the range and keenness of
+their satire. Hence, finally, the originality of their work in
+criticism, and their new departure in philosophy. The energies of these
+men were diverse: but all sprang from the same root--from their
+invincible resolve to see and understand their world; to probe life,
+as they knew it, to the bottom.
+
+Thus the new turn given to criticism by Dryden was part of a far-
+reaching intellectual movement; a movement no less positive and self-
+contained than, in another aspect, it was negative and reactionary.
+And it is only when taken as part of that movement, as side by side
+with the philosophy of Locke and the satire of Swift or Pope, that its
+true meaning can be understood. Nor is it the least important or the
+least attractive of Dryden's qualities, as a critic, that both the
+positive and the negative elements of the prevailing tendency--both
+the determination to understand and the wish to bring all things under
+rule--should make themselves felt so strongly and, on the whole, so
+harmoniously in his Essays. No man could have felt more keenly the
+shortcomings of the Elizabethan writers. No man could have set greater
+store by that "art of writing easily" which was the chief pride of the
+Restoration poets. Yet no man has ever felt a juster admiration for
+the great writers of the opposite school; and no man has expressed his
+reverence for them in more glowing words. The highest eulogy that has
+yet been passed on Milton, the most discriminating but at the same
+time the most generous tribute that has ever been offered to
+Shakespeare--both these are to be found in Dryden. And they are to be
+found in company with a perception, at once reasoned and instinctive,
+of what criticism means, that was altogether new to English literature.
+
+The finest and most characteristic of Dryden's critical writings--but
+it is unfortunately also the longest--is without doubt the _Essay of
+Dramatic Poesy_. The subject was one peculiarly well suited to Dryden's
+genius. It touched a burning question of the day, and it opened the
+door for a discussion of the deeper principles of the drama. The _Essay_
+itself forms part of a long controversy between Dryden and his
+brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. The dispute was opened by Dryden's
+preface to his tragi-comedy, _The Rival Ladies_, published probably,
+as it was certainly first acted, in 1664; and in the beginning Dryden,
+then first rising [Footnote: "To a play at the King's house, _The Rival
+Ladies_, a very innocent and most pretty witty play"--is Pepys' entry
+for August 4, 1664: _Diary_, ii. 155. Contrast his contemptuous
+description of Dryden's first comedy, _The Wild Gallant_, in the
+preceding year (Feb. 23)--"So poor a thing as I never saw in my life
+almost".--_Ib_., i. 390.] into fame as a dramatist, confines himself
+to pleading the cause of rhyme against blank verse in dramatic writing.
+[Footnote: Tragedy alone is mentioned by name [_English Garner_, in.
+490, 491]. But, from the general drift of the argument, it seems
+probable that Dryden was speaking of the drama in general. At a later
+stage of the dispute, however, he distinguishes between tragedy and
+comedy, and allows that the arguments in favour of rhyme apply only
+to the former--a curious inversion of the truth, as it would appear
+to the modern mind.--_Ib_., pp. 561, 566.] Howard--who, it may
+reasonably be guessed, had had some brushes with Dryden over their
+joint tragedy, _The Indian Queen_--at once took up the cudgels. He had
+written rhymed plays himself, it is true; the four plays, to which his
+attack on rhyme was prefixed, were such; but he saw a chance of paying
+off old scores against his brother-in-law, and he could not resist it.
+Dryden began his reply at once; but three years passed before it was
+published. And the world has no reason to regret his tardiness. There
+are few writings of which we can say with greater certainty, as Dryden
+himself said of a more questionable achievement,
+
+  'T is not the hasty product of a day,
+  But the well-ripened fruit of wise delay.
+
+The very form of the _Essay_ bears witness to the spirit in which it
+is written. It is cast as a dialogue, "related"--as Dryden truly
+says--"without passion or interest, and leaving the reader to decide
+in favour of which part he shall judge most reasonable". The balance
+between opposing views is held as evenly as may be. It is a search for
+truth, carried out in the "rude and undigested manner" of a friendly
+conversation. Roughly speaking, the subjects of the _Essay_ are two.
+The first, and the more slightly treated, is the quarrel of rhyme
+against blank verse. The second is the far more important question,
+How far is the dramatist bound by conventional restrictions? The
+former--a revival under a new form of a dispute already waged by the
+Elizabethans--leads Dryden to sift the claims of the "heroic drama";
+and his treatment of it has the special charm belonging to an author's
+defence of his artistic hearth and home. The latter is a theme which,
+under some shape or other, will be with us wherever the stage itself
+has a place in our life.
+
+This is not the place to discuss at length the origin or the historical
+justification of the Heroic Drama. There is perhaps no form of art
+that so clearly marks the transition from the Elizabethan age to that
+of the Restoration. Transitional it must certainly be called; for, in
+all vital points, it stands curiously apart from the other forms of
+Restoration literature. It has nothing either of the negative or the
+positive qualities, nothing of the close observation and nothing of
+the measure and self-restraint, that all feel to be the distinctive
+marks of the Restoration temper. On the other hand the heroic drama,
+of which Dryden's _Conquest of Granada_ and _Tyrannic Love_ may be
+taken as fair samples, has obvious affinities with the more questionable
+side of the Elizabethan stage. It may be defined as wanting in all the
+virtues and as exaggerating all the vices of the Elizabethan dramatists.
+Whatever was most wild in the wildest of the Elizabethan plays--the
+involved plots, the extravagant incidents, the swelling metaphors and
+similes--all this reappears in the heroic drama. And it reappears
+without any of the dramatic force or of the splendid poetry which are
+seldom entirely absent from the work of the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+dramatists. The term "heroic drama" is, in fact, a fraud. The plays
+of Dryden and his school are at best but moc-heroic; and they are
+essentially undramatic. The truth is that these plays take something
+of the same place in the history of the English drama that is held by
+the verse of Donne and Cowley in the history of the English lyric. The
+extravagant incidents correspond to the far-fetched conceits which,
+unjustly enough, made the name of Donne a by-word with the critics
+of the last century. The metaphors and similes are as abundant and
+overcharged, though assuredly not so rich in imagination, as those of
+the "metaphysical" poets. And Dryden, if we may accept the admission
+of Bayes, "loved argument in verse"; a confession that Donne and Cowley
+would heartily have echoed. The exaggerations of the heroic drama are
+the exaggerations of the metaphysical poets transferred from the study
+to the stage; with the extravagance deepened, as was natural, by the
+glare of their new surroundings. And, just as the extravagance of the
+"metaphysicians" led to the reaction that for a hundred years stifled
+the lyric note in English song, so the extravagance of the heroic drama
+gave the death-blow to English tragedy.
+
+Against this parallel the objection may be raised that it takes no
+reckoning of the enormous gulf that, when all is said, separates even
+the weakest of the Elizabethan plays from the rant and fustian of
+Dryden: a gulf wider, it must be admitted, than that which parts the
+metaphysical poets from the "singing birds" of the Elizabethan era.
+And, so far as we have yet gone, the objection undoubtedly has force.
+It is only to be met if we can find some connecting link; if we can
+point to some author who, on the one hand, retains something of the
+dramatic instinct, the grace and flexibility of the Elizabethans; and,
+on the other hand, anticipates the metallic ring, the declamation and
+the theatrical conventions of Dryden. Such an author is to be found
+in Shirley; in Shirley, as he became in his later years; at the time,
+for instance, when he wrote _The Cardinal_ (1641). _The Cardinal_ is,
+in many respects, a powerful play. It is unmistakably written under
+the influence of Webster; and of Webster at his most sombre and his
+best--the Webster of the _Duchess of Malfi_. But it is no less
+unmistakably wanting in the subtle strength, the dramatic grip and
+profound poetry, of its model. The villainy of the Cardinal is mere
+mechanism beside the satanic, yet horribly human, iniquity of Ferdinand
+and Bosolo. And, at least in one scene, Shirley sinks--it is true, in
+the person of a subordinate character--to a foul-mouthed vulgarity
+which recalls the shameless bombast of the heroes and heroines of
+Dryden. [Footnote:
+
+  I would this soldier had the Cardinal
+  Upon a promontory; with what a spring
+  The churchman would leap down! It were a spectacle
+  Most rare to see him topple from the precipice,
+  And souse in the salt water with a noise
+  To stun the fishes. And if he fell into
+  A net, what wonder would the simple sea-gulls
+  Have to draw up the o'ergrown lobster,
+  So ready boiled! He shall have my good wishes.
+                     --_The Cardinal_, act v. sc, 2.]
+
+Yet, with all his shortcomings, Shirley preserves in the main the great
+tradition of the Elizabethans. A further step downwards, a more deadly
+stage in the history of decadence, is marked by Sir William Davenant.
+That arch-impostor, as is well known, had the effrontery to call himself
+the "son of Shakespeare": a phrase which the unwary have taken in the
+physical sense, but which was undoubtedly intended to mark his literary
+kinship with the Elizabethans in general and with the greatest of
+Elizabethan dramatists in particular.
+
+So far as dates go, indeed, the work of Davenant may be admitted to
+fall within what we loosely call the Elizabethan period; or, more
+strictly, within the last stage of the period that began with Elizabeth
+and continued throughout the reigns of her two successors. His first
+tragedy, _Albovine, King of the Lombards_, was brought out in 1629;
+and his earlier work was therefore contemporary with that of Massinger
+and Ford. But much beyond this his relation to the Elizabethans can
+hardly claim to go. Charity may allow him some faint and occasional
+traces of the dramatic power which is their peculiar glory; and this
+is perhaps more strongly marked in his earliest play than in any of
+its successors. What strikes us most forcibly, however--and that, even
+in his more youthful work--is the obvious anticipation of much that
+we associate only with the Restoration period. The historical plot,
+the metallic ring of the verse,
+
+[Footnote: I take two instances from _Albovine_.--
+
+    (1) Let all glad hymns in one mix'd concord sound,
+        And make the echoing heavens your mirth rebound.--Act i.
+
+    (2) I am the broom of heaven; when the world grows foul,
+        I'll sweep the nations into the sea, like dust.--Act ii.
+
+It is noticeable that both passages are spoken by Albovine himself,
+a very creditable elder brother of Dryden's Maximin and Almanzor. One
+more passage may be quoted, from the _Just Italian_ (1630):--
+
+    The sacred noise attend that, whilst we hear,
+    Our souls may dance into each others' ear.--Act v.
+
+It will be observed that two out of the above passages, coming at the
+end of scenes, are actually in rhyme, and rhyme which is hardly
+distinguishable from that of Dryden.] the fustian and the bombast--
+we have here every mark, save one, of what afterwards came to be known
+as the heroic drama. The rhymed couplet alone is wanting. And that was
+added by Davenant himself at a later stage of his career. It was in
+_The Siege of Rhodes_, of which the first part was published in 1656,
+that the heroic couplet, after an interval of about sixty years, made
+its first reappearance on the English stage. It was garnished, no
+doubt, with much of what then passed for Pindaric lyric; it was eked
+out with music. But the fashion was set; and within ten years the
+heroic couplet and the heroic drama had swept everything before them.
+[Footnote: A few lines may be quoted to make good the above description
+of _The Siege of Rhodes_:--
+
+  What various voices do mine ears invade
+  And have a concert of confusion made?
+  The shriller trumpet and tempestuous drum,
+  The deafening clamour from the cannon's womb.
+                     --Part i. First _Entry_.
+
+The following lines from part ii. (published in 1662) might have been
+signed by Dryden:--
+
+  No arguments by forms of senate made
+  Can magisterial jealousy persuade;
+  It takes no counsel, nor will be in awe
+  Of reason's force, necessity, or law.
+
+Or, again,
+
+  Honour's the soul which nought but guilt can wound,
+  Fame is the trumpet which the people sound.]
+
+The above dates are enough to disprove the common belief that the
+heroic drama, rhymed couplet and all, was imported from France.
+_Albovine_, as we have seen, has every mark of the heroic drama, except
+the couplet; and _Albovine_ was written seven years before the first
+masterpiece of Corneille, one year before his first attempt at tragedy.
+A superficial likeness to the drama of Corneille and, subsequently,
+of Racine may doubtless have given wings to the popularity of the new
+style both with Davenant and his admirers. But the heroic drama is,
+in truth, a native growth: for good or for evil, to England alone must
+be given the credit of its birth. Dryden, no doubt, more than once
+claims French descent for the literary form with which his fame was
+then bound up. [Footnote: He is, however, as explicit as could be
+wished in tracing the descent _through_ Davenant. "For Heroick Plays
+... the first light we had of them on the English theatre was from the
+late Sir W. Davenant. He heightened his characters, as I may probably
+imagine, from the example of Corneille and some French Poets."--_Of
+Heroic Plays_, printed as preface to _The Conquest of Granada, Dramatic
+Works_ (fol.), i. 381. It was for this reason that Davenant was taken
+as the original hero of that burlesque masterpiece, _The Rehearsal_
+(1671); and even when the part of Bayes was transferred to Dryden, the
+make-up still remained largely that of Davenant.] In a well-known
+prologue he describes his tragic-comedy, _The Maiden Queen_, as
+
+    a mingled chime
+    Of Jonson's humour and
+    Corneille's rhyme.
+[Footnote: The greater part of _The Maiden Queen_, however, is
+written either in prose or in blank verse.]
+
+But the fact is that of Corneille there is no more trace in Dryden's
+tragedy than there is of Jonson in his comedy; that is, just none at
+all. The heroic temper, which was at once the essence of Corneille's
+plays and true to the very soul of the man, was mere affectation and
+_mise-en-scene_ with Dryden. The heroes of Corneille reflect that
+nobility of spirit which never entirely forsook France till the days
+of the Regency; those of Dryden give utterance to nothing better than
+the insolent swagger of the Restoration.
+
+To the peculiar spirit of the heroic drama--to its strength as well
+as to its weakness--no metrical form could have been more closely
+adapted than the heroic couplet. It was neither flexible nor delicate;
+but in the hands of Dryden, even more than in those of Davenant, it
+became an incomparably vigorous and effective weapon of declamation.
+As the most unmistakable and the most glaring mark of the new method
+it was naturally placed in the forefront of the battle waged by Dryden
+in defence of the heroic drama. It seems, indeed, to have struck him
+as the strongest advantage possessed by the Restoration drama over the
+Elizabethan, and as that which alone was wanting to place the
+Elizabethan drama far ahead both of the Greek and of the French.
+
+The claims of rhyme to Dryden's regard would seem to have been twofold.
+On the one hand, he thought that it served to "bound and circumscribe"
+the luxuriance of the poet's fancy. [Footnote: Dedication to _The Rival
+Ladies_: _English Garner_, iii. 492.] On the other hand, it went to
+"heighten" the purely dramatic element and to "move that admiration
+which is the delight of serious plays" and to which "a bare imitation"
+will not suffice. [Footnote: _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_: ib. 582] Both
+grounds of defence will seem to the modern reader questionable enough.
+Howard at once laid his finger upon the weak spot of the first. "It
+is", he said, "no argument for the matter in hand. For the dispute is
+not what way a man may write best in; but which is most proper for the
+subject he writes upon. And, if this were let pass, the argument is
+yet unsolved in itself; for he that wants judgment in the liberty of
+his fancy may as well shew the want of it in its confinement."
+[Footnote: _Preface to Four New Plays_: ib. 498.] Besides, he adds in
+effect on the next page, so far from "confining the fancy" rhyme is
+apt to lead to turgid and stilted writing.
+
+The second argument stands on higher ground. It amounts to a plea for
+the need of idealization; and, so far, may serve to remind us that the
+extravagances of the heroic drama had their stronger, as well as their
+weaker, side. No one, however, will now be willing to admit that the
+cause of dramatic idealization is indeed bound up with the heroic
+couplet; and a moment's thought will show the fallacy of Dryden's
+assumption that it is. In the first place, he takes for granted that,
+the further the language of the drama is removed from that of actual
+life, the nearer the spirit of it will approach to the ideal. An
+unwarrantable assumption, if there ever was one; and an assumption,
+as will be seen, that contains the seeds of the whole eighteenth-century
+theory of poetic diction. In the second place--but this is, in truth,
+only the deeper aspect of the former plea--Dryden comes perilously
+near to an acceptance of the doctrine that idealization in a work of
+art depends purely on the outward form and has little or nothing to
+do with the conception or the spirit. The bond between form and matter
+would, according to this view, be purely arbitrary. By a mere turn of
+the hand, by the substitution of rhyme for prose--or for blank verse,
+which is on more than "measured" or harmonious prose--the baldest
+presentment of life could be converted into a dramatic poem. From the
+grosser forms of this fallacy Dryden's fine sense was enough to save
+him. Indeed, in the remarks on Jonson's comedies that immediately
+follow, he expressly rejects them; and seldom does he show a more
+nicely balanced judgment than in what he there says on the limits of
+imitation in the field of art. But in the passage before us--in his
+assertion that "the converse must be heightened with all the arts and
+ornaments of poetry"--it is hard to resist a vision of the dramatist
+first writing his dialogue in bald and skimble-skamble prose, and then
+wringing his brains to adorn it "with all the arts" of the dramatic
+_gradus_. Here again we have the seeds of the fatal theory which
+dominated the criticism and perverted the art of the eighteenth century;
+the theory which, finding in outward form the only distinction between
+prose and poetry, was logically led to look for the special themes of
+poetic art in the dissecting-room or the pulpit, and was driven to
+mark the difference by an outrageous diction that could only be called
+poetry on the principle that it certainly was not prose; the theory
+which at length received its death-blow from the joint attack of
+Wordsworth and Coleridge.
+
+It remains only to note the practical issue of the battle of the metres.
+In the drama the triumph of the heroic couplet was for the moment
+complete; but it was short-lived. By 1675, the date of _Aurungzebe_,
+Dryden proclaimed himself already about to "weary of his long-loved
+mistress, Rhyme"; and his subsequent plays were all written in blank
+verse or prose. But the desertion of "his mistress" brought him little
+luck; and the rest of his tragedies show a marked falling off in that
+splendid vigour which went far to redeem even the grossest absurdities
+of his heroic plays. A more sensitive, though a weaker, genius joined
+him in the rejection of rhyme; and the example of Otway--whose two
+crucial plays belong to 1680 and 1682--did perhaps more than that of
+Dryden himself, more even than the assaults of _The Rehearsal_, to
+discredit the heroic drama. With the appearance of _Venice Preserved_,
+rhyme ceased to play any part in English tragedy. But at the same time,
+it must be noted, tragedy itself began to drop from the place which
+for the last century it had held in English life. From that day to
+this no acting tragedy, worth serious attention, has been written for
+the English stage.
+
+The reaction against rhyme was not confined to the drama. The epic,
+indeed--or what in those days passed for such--can hardly be said to
+have come within its scope. In the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ Dryden--and
+this is one of the few judgments in which Howard heartily agrees with
+him--had denounced rhyme as "too low for a poem"; [Footnote: _English
+Garner_, iii. p. 567.] by which, as the context shows, is meant an
+epic. This was written the very year in which _Paradise Lost_, with
+its laconic sneer at rhyme as a device "to set off wretched matter and
+lame metre", was given to the world. That, however, did not prevent
+Dryden from asking, and obtaining, leave to "tag its verses" into an
+opera; [Footnote: The following will serve as a sample of Dryden's
+improvements on his model:--
+
+  Seraph and Cherub, careless of their charge
+  And wanton in full ease, now live at large,
+  Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
+  And all dissolved in Hallelujahs lie.
+              --_Dramatic Works_, i. p. 596.]
+
+nor did it deter Blackmore--and, at a much later time, Wilkie [Footnote:
+Blackmore's _King Arthur_ was published in 1695; Wilkie's
+_Epigoniad_--the subject of a patriotic puff from Hume--in 1757.]--from
+reverting to the metre that Milton had scorned to touch. It is not
+till the present century that blank verse can be said to have fairly
+taken seisin of the epic; one of the many services that English poetry
+owes to the genius of Keats.
+
+In the more nondescript kinds of poetry, however, the revolt against
+rhyme spread faster than in the epic. In descriptive and didactic
+poetry, if anywhere, rhyme might reasonably claim to hold its place.
+There is much to be said for the opinion that, in such subjects, rhyme
+is necessary to fix the wandering attention of the reader. Yet, for
+all that, the great efforts of the reflective muse during the next
+century were, with hardly an exception, in blank verse. It is enough
+to recall the _Seasons_ of Thomson, the discourses of Akenside and
+Armstrong, and the _Night Thoughts_ of the arch-moralist Young.
+[Footnote: It may be noted that Young's blank verse has constantly the
+run of the heroic couplet.] In the case of Young--as later in that of
+Cowper--this is the more remarkable, because his Satires show him to
+have had complete command of the mechanism of the heroic couplet. That
+he should have deliberately chosen the rival metre is proof--a proof
+which even the exquisite work of Goldsmith is not sufficient to
+gainsay--that, by the middle of the eighteenth century the heroic
+couplet had been virtually driven from every field of poetry, save
+that of satire.
+
+We may now turn to the second of the two themes with which Dryden is
+mainly occupied in the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_. What are the
+conventional restrictions that surround the dramatist, and how far are
+they of binding force?
+
+That the drama is by nature a convention--more than this, a convention
+accepted largely with a view to the need of idealization--the men of
+Dryden's day were in no danger of forgetting. The peril with them was
+all the other way. The fashion of that age was to treat the arbitrary
+usages of the classical theatre as though they were binding for all
+time. Thus, of the four men who take part in the dialogue of the
+_Essay_, three are emphatically agreed in bowing down before the three
+unities as laws of nature. Dryden himself (Neander) is alone in
+questioning their divinity: a memorable proof of his critical
+independence; but one in which, as he maliciously points out, he was
+supported by the greatest of living dramatists. Corneille could not
+be suspected of any personal motive for undertaking the defence of
+dramatic license. Yet he closed his _Discourse of the Three Unities_
+with the admission that he had "learnt by experience how much the
+French stage was constrained and bound up by the observance of these
+rules, and how many beauties it had sacrificed". [Footnote: Il est
+facile aux speculatifs d'etre severes; mais, s'ils voulaient donner
+dix ou douze poemes de cette nature au public, ils elargiraient
+peut-etre les regles encore plus que je ne sais, si tot qu'ils auraient
+reconnu par l'experience quelle contrainte apporte leur exactitude et
+combien de belles choses elle bannit de notre theatre--_Troisieme
+Discours Euvres_, xii. 326. See Dryden's Essay _English Garner_, iii
+546. On the next page is a happy hit at the shifts to which dramatists
+were driven in their efforts to keep up the appearance of obedience
+to the Unity of Place: "The street, the window, the two houses and the
+closet are made to walk about, and the persons to stand still."] When
+the two leading masters of the 'Classical Drama', the French and the
+English, joined hands to cast doubt upon the sacred unities, its
+opponents might well feel easy as to the ultimate issue of the dispute.
+
+Dryden was not the man to bound his argument by any technical question,
+even when it touched a point so fundamental as the unities. Nothing
+is more remarkable in the _Essay_, as indeed in all his critical work,
+than the wide range which he gives to the discussion. And never has
+the case against--we can hardly add, for--the French drama been stated
+more pointedly than by him. His main charge, as was to be expected,
+is against its monotony, and, in close connection with that, against
+its neglect of action and its preference for declamation.
+
+Having defined the drama as "a just and lively image of human nature,
+in its actions, passions and traverses of fortune", [Footnote: _English
+Garner_, iii 513, ib. 567] he proceeds to test the claims of the French
+stage by that standard. Its characters, he finds, are wanting in variety
+and nature. Its range of passion and humour is lamentably narrow.
+[Footnote: Ib. 542-4.] Its declamations "tire us with their length;
+so that, instead of grieving for their imaginary heroes, we are
+concerned for our own trouble, as we are in the tedious visits of bad
+company; we are in pain till they are gone". [Footnote: English Garner,
+iil 542.] The best tragedies of the French--_Cinna and Pompey_--"are
+not so properly to be called Plays as long discourses of Reason of
+State". [Footnote: Ib. 543.] Upon their avoidance of action he is
+hardly less severe. "If we are to be blamed for showing too much of
+the action"--one is involuntarily reminded of the closing scene of
+_Tyrannic Love_ and of the gibes in _The Rehearsal_--"the French are
+as faulty for discovering too little of it ". [Footnote: Ib. 545.]
+Finally, on a comparison between the French dramatists and the
+Elizabethans, Dryden concludes that "in most of the irregular Plays
+of Shakespeare or Fletcher ... there is a more masculine fancy, and
+greater spirit in all the writing, than there is in any of the French".
+[Footnote: Ib. 548.]
+
+Given the definition with which he starts--but it is a definition that
+no Frenchman of the seventeenth or eighteenth century would have
+admitted--it is hard to see how Dryden could have reached a
+substantially different result. Nor, if comparisons of this sort are
+to be made at all, is there much--so far, at least, as Shakespeare is
+concerned--to find fault with in the verdict with which he closes. Yet
+it is impossible not to regret that Dryden should have failed to
+recognize the finer spirit and essence of French tragedy, as conceived
+by Corneille: the strong-tempered heroism of soul, the keen sense of
+honour, the consuming fire of religion, to which it gives utterance.
+
+The truth is that Dryden stood at once too near, and too far from, the
+ideals of Corneille to appreciate them altogether at their just value.
+Too near because he instinctively associated them with the heroic
+drama, which at the bottom of his heart he knew to be no better than
+an organized trick, done daily with a view to "elevate and surprise".
+Too far, because, in spite of his own candid and generous temper, it
+was well-nigh impossible for the Laureate of the Restoration to
+comprehend the highly strung nature of a man like Corneille, and his
+intense realization of the ideal.
+
+But, if Dryden is blind to the essential qualities of Corneille, he
+is at least keenly alive to those of Shakespeare. It is a memorable
+thing that the most splendid tribute ever offered to the prince of
+Elizabethans should have come from the leading spirit of the
+Restoration. It has often been quoted, but it will bear quoting once
+again.
+
+"Shakespeare was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets,
+had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature
+were still present to him; and he drew them not laboriously, but
+luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel
+it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the great
+commendation. He was naturally learned. He needed not the spectacles
+of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I
+cannot say he is everywhere alike. Were he so, I should do him injury
+to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat,
+insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling
+into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is
+presented to him. No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his
+wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,
+
+    Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi."
+[Footnote: _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_. _English Garner_, iii. 549.]
+
+The same keenness of appreciation is found in Dryden's estimate of
+other writers who might have seemed to lie beyond the field of his
+immediate vision. Of Milton he is recorded to have said: "He cuts us
+all out, and the ancients too". [Footnote: The anecdote is recorded
+by Richardson, who says the above words were written on the copy of
+_Paradise Lost_ sent by Dorset to Milton. Dryden, _Poetic Works_, p.
+161. Comp. _Dramatic Works_, i. 590; _Discourse on Satire_, p. 386.]
+On Chaucer he is yet more explicit. "As he is the father of English
+poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians
+held Homer, or the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good
+sense; learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all
+subjects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off,
+a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any
+of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace ... Chaucer followed
+nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her." [Footnote:
+See _Preface to Fables_, below.]
+
+This points to what was undoubtedly the most shining quality of Dryden,
+as a critic: his absolute freedom from preconceived notions, his
+readiness to "follow nature" and to welcome nature in whatever form
+she might appear. That was the more remarkable because it ran directly
+counter both to the general spirit of the period to which he belonged
+and to the prevailing practice of the critics who surrounded him. The
+spirit of the Restoration age was critical in the invidious, no less
+than in the nobler, sense of the word. It was an age of narrow ideals
+and of little ability to look beyond them. In particular, it was an
+age of carping and of fault-finding; an age within measurable distance
+of the pedantic system perfected in France by Boileau, [Footnote:
+Boileau's _Art Poetique_ was published in 1674. A translation made by
+Soame, with the aid of Dryden, was published in 1683.] and warmly
+adopted by a long line of English critics from Roscoromon and
+Buckinghamshire to the Monthly Reviewers and to Johnson. Such writers
+might always have "nature" on their lips; but it was nature seen through
+the windows of the lecture room or down the vista of a street.
+
+With Dryden it was not so. With him we never fail to get an unbiassed
+judgment; the judgment of one who did not crave for nature "to advantage
+dressed", but trusted to the instinctive freshness of a mind, one of
+the most alert and open that ever gave themselves to literature. It
+is this that puts an impassable barrier between Dryden and the men of
+his own day, or for a century to come. It is this that gives him a
+place among the great critics of modern literature, and makes the
+passage from him to the schoolmen of the next century so dreary a
+descent.
+
+Dryden's openness of mind was his own secret. The comparative method
+was, in some measure, the common property of his generation. This, in
+fact, was the chief conquest of the Restoration and Augustan critics.
+It is the mark that serves to distinguish them most clearly from those
+of the Elizabethan age. Not that the Elizabethans are without
+comparisons; but that the parallels they saw were commonly of the
+simplest, not to say of the most childish, cast. Every sentence of
+Meres' critical effort--or, to be rigorously exact, every sentence but
+one--is built on "as" and "so"; but it reads like a parody--a
+schoolmaster's parody--of Touchstone's improvement on Orlando's verses
+in praise of Rosalind. Shakespeare is brought into line with Ovid,
+Elizabeth with Achilles, and Homer with William Warner. This, no doubt,
+is an extreme instance; but it is typical of the artless methods dear
+to the infancy of criticism. In Jonson's _Discoveries_, such comparisons
+as there are have indisputable point; but they are few, and, for the
+most part, they are limited to the minuter matters of style.
+
+It is with the Restoration that the comparative method first made its
+way into English criticism; and that both in its lawful and less lawful
+use. The distinction must be jealously made; for there are few matters
+that lend themselves so readily to confusion and misapprehension as
+this. Between two men, or two forms of art, a comparison may be run
+either for the sake of placing the one above the head of the other,
+or for the sake of drawing out the essential differences between the
+one and the other. The latter method is indispensable to the work of
+the critic. Without reference, express or implied, to other types of
+genius or to other ways of treatment it is impossible for criticism
+to take a single step in definition either of an author, or a movement,
+or a form of art. In a vague and haphazard fashion, even the
+Elizabethans were comparative. Meres was so in his endless stream of
+classical parallels; Sidney, after a loftier strain, in his defence
+of harmonious prose as a form of poetry. And it is the highest
+achievement of modern criticism to have brought science and order into
+the comparative method, and largely to have widened its scope. In this
+sense, comparison _is_ criticism; and to compare with increased
+intelligence, with a clearer consciousness of the end in view, is to
+reform criticism itself, to make it a keener weapon and more effective
+for its purpose.
+
+A comparison of qualities, however, is one thing, and a comparison
+between different degrees of merit is quite another. The former is the
+essence of criticism; the latter, one of the most futile pastimes that
+can readily be imagined. That each man should have his own preferences
+is right enough. It would be a nerveless and unprofitable mind to which
+such preferences were unknown. More than that, some rough
+classification, some understanding with oneself as to what authors are
+to be reckoned supreme masters of their craft, is hardly to be avoided.
+The mere fact that the critic lays stress on certain writers and
+dismisses others with scant notice or none at all, implies that in
+some sense he has formed an estimate of their relative merits. But to
+drag this process from the background--if we ought not rather to say,
+from behind the scenes--to the very foot-lights, to publish it, to
+insist upon it, is as irrelevant as it would be for the historian--
+and he, too, must make his own perspective--to explain why he has
+recorded some events and left others altogether unnoticed. All this
+is work for the dark room; it should leave no trace, or as little as
+may be, upon the finished picture. Criticism has suffered from few
+things so much as from its incurable habit of granting degrees in
+poetry with honours. "The highest art", it has been well said, "is the
+region of equals."
+
+It must be admitted that the Restoration critics had an immoderate
+passion for classing authors according to their supposed rank in the
+scale of literary desert. A glance at _The Battle of the Books_--a
+faint reflection of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns--is
+enough to place this beyond dispute. Dryden himself is probably as
+guilty as any in this matter. His parallel between Juvenal and Horace,
+his comparison of Homer with Virgil, are largely of the nature of an
+attempt to show each poet to his proper place, to determine their due
+order of precedence in the House of Fame. In the early days of criticism
+this was perhaps to be expected. Men were feeling their way to the
+principles; and the shortest road might naturally seem to lie through
+a comparative table of the men. They were right in thinking that the
+first step was to ascertain what qualities, and what modes of treatment,
+give lasting pleasure in poetry; and, to do this, they could not but
+turn to compare the works of individual poets. But they were wrong in
+supposing that they could learn anything by striking the balance between
+the merits of one poet, as a sum total, and the merits of another.
+
+The fault was, no doubt, largely in the Restoration critics themselves;
+and it is a fault which, so long as the competitive instinct holds
+sway with men, will never be entirely unknown. But its hold on the men
+of Dryden's day was in great measure due to the influence of the French
+critics, and to the narrow lines which criticism had taken in France.
+No one can read Boileau's _Art Poetique_, no one can compare it with
+the corresponding _Essay_ of Pope, without feeling that the purely
+personal element had eaten into the heart of French criticism to a
+degree which could never have been natural in England, and which, even
+in the darkest days of English literature, has seldom been approached.
+But at the same time it will be felt that never has England come nearer
+to a merely personal treatment of artistic questions than in the century
+between Dryden and Johnson; and that it was here, rather than in the
+adoption of any specific form of literature--rather, for instance,
+than in the growth of the heroic drama--that the influence of France
+is to be traced.
+
+Side by side, however, with the baser sort of comparisons, we find in
+the Restoration critics no small use of the kind that profits and
+delights. Rymer's _Remarks on the Tragedies of the Former Age_ are an
+instance of the comparative method, in its just sense, as employed by
+a man of talent. The essays of Dryden abound in passages of this nature,
+that could only have been written by a man of genius. They may have
+a touch of the desire to set one form of art, or one particular poet,
+in array against another. But, when all abatements have been made,
+they remain unrivalled samples of the manner in which the comparative
+vein can be worked by a master spirit. To the student of English
+literature they have a further interest--notably, perhaps, the
+comparison between Juvenal and Horace and the eulogy of Shakespeare--as
+being among the most striking examples of that change from the Latinized
+style of the early Stuart writers to the short, pointed sentence
+commonly associated with French; the change that was inaugurated by
+Hobbes, but only brought to completion by Dryden.
+
+Once again. As Dryden was among the earliest to give the comparative
+method its due place in English criticism, so he was the first to make
+systematic use of the historical method. Daniel, indeed, in a remarkable
+essay belonging to the early years of the century, had employed that
+method in a vague and partial manner. [Footnote: _A Defence of Ryme_
+(1603). It was written in answer to a pamphlet by Campion (1602), of
+which the second chapter "declares the unaptness of Rime in
+Poesie".--Ancient Critical Essays, ii. t64, &c.] He had defended rhyme
+on the score of its popularity with all ages and all nations. Celts,
+Slavs, and Huns--Parthians and Medes and Elamites--are all pressed
+into the service. [Footnote: "The Turks, Slavonians, Arabians,
+Muscovites, Polacks, Hungarians ... use no other harmony of words. The
+Irish, Britons, Scots, Danes, Saxons, English, and all the inhabiters
+of this island either have hither brought, or here found the same in
+use."--Ib. p. 198.] That is, perhaps, the first instance in which
+English criticism can be said to have attempted tracing a literary
+form through the various stages of its growth. But Daniel wrote without
+system and without accuracy. It was reserved for Dryden--avowedly
+following in the steps of the French critic Dacier--to introduce the
+order and the fulness of knowledge--in Dryden's case, it must be
+admitted, a knowledge at second hand--which are indispensable to a
+fruitful use of the historical method. In this sense, too--as in his
+use of the comparative method, as in the singular grace and aptness
+of his style--Dryden was a pioneer in the field of English criticism.
+
+III. Over the century that parts Dryden from Johnson it is not well
+to linger. During that time criticism must be said, on the whole, to
+have gone back rather than to have advanced. With some reservations
+to be noticed later, the critics of the eighteenth century are a
+depressing study. Their conception of the art they professed was barren;
+their judgments of men and things were lamentably narrow. The more
+valuable elements traceable in the work of Dryden--the comparative and
+the historical treatment--disappear or fall into the background. We
+are left with little but the futile exaltation of one poet at the
+expense of his rivals, or the still more futile insistence upon faults,
+shortcomings, and absurdities. The _Dunciad_, the most marked critical
+work of the period, may be defended on the ground that it _is_ the
+Dunciad; a war waged by genius upon the fool, the pedant, and the
+fribble. But, none the less, it had a disastrous influence upon English
+criticism and English taste. It gave sanction to the habit of
+indiscriminate abuse; it encouraged the purely personal treatment of
+critical discussions. Its effects may be traced on writers even of
+such force as Smollett; of such genius and natural kindliness as
+Goldsmith. But it was on Johnson that Pope's influence made itself
+most keenly felt. And _The Lives of the Poets_, though not written
+till the movement that gave it birth had spent its force, is the most
+complete and the most typical record of the tendencies that shaped
+English literature and gave the law to English taste from the
+Restoration to the French Revolution: a notable instance of the fact
+so often observed, and by some raised to the dignity of a general law,
+that both in philosophy and in art, the work of the critic does not
+commonly begin till the creative impulse of a given period is exhausted.
+
+What, then, was Johnson's method? and what its practical application?
+The method is nothing if not magisterial. It takes for granted certain
+fixed laws--whether the laws formulated by Aristotle, or by Horace,
+or the French critics, is for the moment beside the question--and
+passes sentence on every work of art according as it conforms to the
+critical decalogue or transgresses it. The fault of this method is
+not, as is sometimes supposed, that it assumes principles in a subject
+where none are to be sought; but that its principles are built on a
+miserably narrow and perverted basis. That there are principles of
+criticism, that the artist's search for beauty must be guided by some
+idea, is obvious enough. It can be questioned only by those who are
+prepared to deny the very possibility of criticism; who would reduce
+the task both of critic and of artist to a mere record of individual
+impressions. It need hardly be said that the very men who are most
+ready to profess such a doctrine with their lips, persistently, and
+rightly, give the lie to it in their deeds. No creative work, no
+critical judgment, either is or can be put forward as a mere impression;
+it is the impression of a trained mind--that is, of a mind which,
+instinctively or as a conscious process, is guided by principles or
+ideas.
+
+So far, then, as he may be held to have borne witness to the need of
+ideas, Johnson was clearly in the right. It was when he came to ask,
+What is the nature of those ideas, and how does the artist or the
+critic arrive at them? that he began to go astray. Throughout he assumes
+that the principles of art--and that, not only in their general bearing
+(proportion, harmony, and the like), but in their minuter details-are
+fixed and invariable. To him they form a kind of case-law, which is
+to be extracted by the learned from the works of a certain number of
+"correct writers", ancient and modern; and which, once established,
+is binding for all time both on the critic and on those he summons to
+his bar. In effect, this was to declare that beauty can be conceived
+in no other way than as it presented itself, say, to Virgil or to Pope.
+It was to lay the dead hand of the past upon the present and the future.
+
+More than this. The models that lent themselves to be models, after
+the kind desired by Johnson, were inevitably just those it was most
+cramping and least inspiring to follow. They were the men who themselves
+wrote, to some degree, by rule; in whom "correctness" was stronger
+than inspiration; who, however admirable in their own achievement,
+were lacking in the nobler and subtler qualities of the poet. They
+were not the Greeks; not even, at first hand, the Latins; though the
+names both of Greek and Latin were often on Johnson's lips. They were
+rather the Latins as filtered through the English poets of the preceding
+century; the Latins in so far as they had appealed to the writers of
+the "Augustan age", but no further; the Latins, as masters of satire,
+of declamation, and of the lighter kinds of verse. It was Latin poetry
+without Lucretius and Catullus, without the odes of Horace, without
+the higher strain of the genius of Virgil. In other words, it was
+poetry as conceived by Boileau or Addison-or Mr. Smith. [Footnote: See
+Johnson's extravagant eulogy of this obscure writer in the Lives of
+the Poets. Works, x. i.]
+
+Yet again. In the hands of Johnson--and it was a necessary consequence
+of his critical method--poetry becomes more and more a mere matter of
+mechanism. Once admit that the greatness of a poet depends upon his
+success in following certain models, and it is but a short step--if
+indeed it be a step--further to say that he must attempt no task that
+has not been set him by the example of his forerunners. It is doubtless
+true that Johnson did not, in so many words, commit himself to this
+absurdity. But it is equally true that any poet, who overstepped the
+bounds laid down by previous writers, was likely to meet with but
+little mercy at his hands. Milton, Cowley, Gray--for all had the
+audacity to take an untrodden path in poetry-one after another are
+dragged up for execution. It is clear that by example, if not by
+precept, Johnson was prepared to "make poetry a mere mechanic art";
+and Cowper was right in saying that it had become so with Pope's
+successors. Indeed John--son himself, in closing his estimate of Pope,
+seems half regretfully to anticipate Cowper's verdict. "By perusing
+the works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English
+verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best.
+... New sentiments and new images others may produce; but to attempt
+any further improvement of versification will be dangerous. Art and
+diligence have now done their best, and what shall be added will be
+the effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity". [Footnote: _Life
+of Pope_. Johnson's Works, xi. pp 194, 195.] But Johnson failed to see
+that his own view of poetry led inevitably to this lame and impotent
+conclusion.
+
+To adopt Johnson's method is, in truth, to misconceive the whole nature
+of poetry and of poetic imagination. The ideas that have shaped the
+work of one poet may act as guide and spur, but can never be a rule--far
+less a law--to the imagination of another. The idea, as it comes to
+an artist, is not a law imposing itself from without; it is a seed of
+life and energy springing from within. This, however, was a truth
+entirely hidden from the eyes of Johnson and the Augustan critics. To
+assert it both by word and deed, both as critics and as poets, was the
+task of Coleridge, and of those who joined hands with Coleridge, in
+the succeeding generation. Apart from the undying beauty of their work
+as artists, this was the memorable service they rendered to poetry in
+England.
+
+It remains to illustrate the method of Johnson by its practical
+application. As has already been said, Johnson is nothing if not a
+hanging judge; and it is just where originality is most striking that
+his sentences are the most severe. If there was one writer who might
+have been expected to win his favour, it was Pope; and if there is any
+work that bears witness to the originality of Pope's genius, it is the
+imitations of Horace. These are dismissed in a disparaging sentence.
+There is no adequate recognition of Congreve's brilliance as a
+dramatist; none of Swift's amazing powers as a satirist. Yet all these
+were men who lived more or less within the range of ideas and tendencies
+by which Johnson's own mind was moulded and inspired.
+
+The case is still worse when we turn to writers of a different school.
+Take the poets from the Restoration to the closing years of the American
+war; and it is not too much to say that, with the exception of
+Thomson--saved perhaps by his "glossy, unfeeling diction"--there is
+not one of them who overstepped the bounds marked out for literary
+effort by the prevailing taste of the Augustan age, in its narrowest
+sense, without paying the price for his temerity in the sneers or
+reprobation of Johnson. Collins, it is true, escapes more lightly than
+the rest; but that is probably due to the affection and pity of his
+critic. Yet even Collins, perhaps the most truly poetic spirit of the
+century between Milton and Burns, is blamed for a "diction often harsh,
+unskillfully laboured, and injudiciously selected"; for "lines commonly
+of slow motion"; for "poetry that may sometimes extort praise, when
+it gives little pleasure". [Footnote: Johnson's Works, xi. 270.]The
+poems of Gray--an exception must be made, to Johnson's honour, in
+favour of the _Elegy_ [Footnote: In the bosom of "the Club" the
+exception dwindled to two stanzas (Boswell's Life, ii. 300).] are
+slaughtered in detail; [Footnote: Johnson's Works, xi. 372-378. Johnson
+is peculiarly sarcastic on the _Bard_ and the _Progress of Poetry_.]
+the man himself is given dog's burial with the compendious epitaph:
+"A dull fellow, sir; dull in company, dull in his closet, dull
+everywhere". [Footnote: Boswell's _Life_, ii. 300. Comp. in. 435.]
+
+But most astonishing of all, as is well known, is the treatment bestowed
+on Milton. Of all Milton's works, _Paradise Lost_ seems to have been
+the only one that Johnson genuinely admired. That he praises with as
+little of reservation as was in the nature of so stern a critic. On
+_Paradise Regained_ he is more guarded; on _Samson_, more guarded yet.
+[Footnote: The two papers devoted to _Samson_ in the _Rambler_ are
+"not entitled even to this slender commendation". "This is the tragedy
+that ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded" (Johnson's Works,
+v. 436).] But it is in speaking of the earlier poems that Johnson shows
+his hand most plainly. _Comus_ "is a drama in the epic style,
+inelegantly splendid and tediously instructive". [Footnote: Johnson's
+Works, ix. 153.] Of _Lycidas_ "the diction is harsh, the rhymes
+uncertain, and the numbers un-pleasing" [Footnote: Ib. 159.] As for
+the sonnets, "they deserve not any particular criticism. For of the
+best it can only be said that they are not bad; and perhaps only the
+eighth and twenty-first are truly entitled to this slender
+commendation.... These little pieces may be dismissed without much
+anxiety". [Footnote: Ib. 160. The two sonnets are those written _When
+the assault was intended to the City_, and _On his Blindness_.]
+
+It would be hardly worth while to record these ill-tempered judgments
+if they were not the natural outcome of a method which held unquestioned
+sway over English taste for a full century--in France for nearly
+two--and which, during that time, if we except Gray and his friends,
+was not seriously disputed by a single man of mark. The one author in
+whose favour the rules of "correct writing" were commonly set aside
+was Shakespeare; and perhaps there is no testimony to his greatness
+so convincing as the unwilling homage it extorted from the
+contemporaries of Pope, of Johnson, and of Hume. Johnson's own notes
+and introductions to the separate plays are at times trifling enough;
+[Footnote: Compare the assault on the "mean expressions" of Shakespeare
+(Rambler, No. 168).] but his general preface is a solid and manly piece
+of work. It contrasts strangely not only with the verdicts given above,
+but with his jeers at _Chevy Chase_ [Footnote: Ib. x. 139.]--a "dull
+and lifeless imbecility"--at the _Nonne Prestes Tale_, and at the
+_Knightes Tale_ [Footnote: Ib. ix. 432.]
+
+One more instance, and we may leave this depressing study in critical
+perversity. Among the great writers of Johnson's day there was none
+who showed a truer originality than Fielding; no man who broke more
+markedly with the literary superstitions of the time; none who took
+his own road with more sturdiness and self-reliance. This was enough
+for Johnson, who persistently depreciated both the man and his work.
+Something of this should doubtless be set down to disapproval of the
+free speech and readiness to allow for human frailty, which could not
+but give offence to a moralist so unbending as Johnson. But that will
+hardly account for the assertion that "Harry Fielding knew nothing but
+the outer shell of life"; still less for the petulant ruling that he
+"was a barren rascal". [Footnote: Boswell's _Life_, ii. 169. Diary and
+Letters of Madame D'Arblay, i. 91] The truth is--and Johnson felt it
+instinctively--that the novel, as conceived by Fielding--the novel
+that gloried in painting all sides of life, and above all in drawing
+out the humour of its "lower spheres"--dealt a fatal blow not only at
+the pompous canons which the _Rambler_ was pleased to call "the
+indispensable laws of Aristotelian criticism", [Footnote: Johnson's
+Works, v. 431.]  but also at the view which found "human life to be
+a state where much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed". It would
+be hard to say whether Johnson found more in Fielding to affront him,
+as pessimist or as critic. And it would be equally hard to say in which
+of the two characters lay the greater barrier to literary insight.
+Even Richardson--no less revolutionary, though in a different way,
+than Fielding--was only saved so as by fire; by the undying hatred
+which he shared with Johnson for his terrible rival. It was rather as
+moralist than as artist, rather for "the sentiment" than for the tragic
+force of his work, that Richardson seems to have won his way to
+Johnson's heart. [Footnote: See the passage referred to in the preceding
+note.]
+
+Is not the evidence conclusive? Is it a harsh judgment to say that no
+critic so narrow, so mechanical, so hostile to originality as Johnson
+has ever achieved the dictatorship of English letters?
+
+The supremacy of Johnson would have been impossible, had not the way
+been smoothed for it by a long succession of critics like-minded with
+himself. Such a succession may be traced from Swift to Addison, from
+Addison to Pope, and--with marked reservations--from Pope to Goldsmith.
+It would be unjust to charge all, or indeed any, of these with the
+narrowness of view betrayed in Johnson's verdicts on individual writers.
+To arrive at this perfection of sourness was a work of time; and the
+nature of Addison and Goldsmith at least was too genial to allow of
+any approach to it. But, with all their difference of temperament, the
+method of the earlier critics is hardly to be distinguished from that
+of Johnson. There is the same orderliness of treatment--first the
+fable, then the characters, lastly the sentiment and the diction; the
+same persistency in applying general rules to a matter which, above
+all others, is a law to itself; the same invincible faith in "the
+indispensable laws of Aristotelian criticism". It is this that, in
+spite of its readiness to admire, makes Addison's criticism of _Paradise
+Lost_ so dreary a study; and this that, in an evil hour, prompted
+Goldsmith to treat the soliloquy of Hamlet as though it were a
+schoolboy's exercise in rhetoric and logic. [Footnote: Goldsmith, Essay
+xvi. The next essay contains a like attack on Mercutio's description
+of Queen Mab.]
+
+And yet it is with Goldsmith that we come to the first dawn of better
+things. The carping strain and the stiffness of method, that we cannot
+overlook in him, were the note of his generation. The openness to new
+ideas, the sense of nature, the fruitful use of the historical method,
+are entirely his own. There had been nothing like them in our literature
+since Dryden. In criticism, as in creative work, Goldsmith marks the
+transition from the old order to the new.
+
+Perhaps the clearest indication of this is to be found in his constant
+appeal to nature. In itself, as we have seen, this may mean much or
+little. "Nature" is a vague word; it was the battle-cry of Wordsworth,
+but it was also the battle-cry of Boileau. And, at first sight, it
+might seem to be used by Goldsmith in the narrower rather than in the
+wider sense. "It is the business of art", he writes, "to imitate nature,
+but not with a servile pencil; and to choose those attitudes and
+dispositions only which are beautiful and engaging." [Footnote:
+Goldsmith, Essay xiii.] But a glance at the context will show that
+what Goldsmith had in mind was not "nature to advantage dressed", not
+nature with any adornments added by man; but nature stripped of all
+that to man has degrading associations; nature, to adopt the words
+used by Wordsworth on a kindred subject, "purified from all lasting
+or rational causes of dislike or disgust". It may well be that Goldsmith
+gave undue weight to this reservation. It may well be that he did not
+throw himself on nature with the unwavering constancy of Wordsworth.
+But, none the less, we have here--and we have it worked out in detail
+[Footnote: As to oratory, poetry, the drama, and acting, Ib., Essays
+iv., xii., xiii.; _The Bee_, no. ii.]--the germ of the principle which,
+in bolder hands, gave England the Lyrical Ballads and the Essays of
+Lamb.
+
+In an essay not commonly reprinted, Goldsmith, laying his finger on
+the one weak spot in the genius of Gray, gives the poet the memorable
+advice--to "study the people". And throughout his own critical work,
+as in his novel, his comedies, and his poems, there is an abiding sense
+that, without this, there is no salvation for poetry. That in itself
+is enough to fix an impassable barrier between Goldsmith and the
+official criticism of his day.
+
+The other main service rendered by Goldsmith was his return to the
+historical method. It is true that his knowledge is no more at first
+hand, and is set out with still less system than that of Dryden a
+century before. But it is also true that he has a far keener sense of
+the strength which art may draw from history than his great forerunner.
+Dryden confines himself to the history of certain forms of art;
+Goldsmith includes the history of nations also in his view. With Dryden
+the past is little more than an antiquarian study; with Goldsmith it
+is a living fountain of inspiration for the present. The art of the
+past--the poetry, say, of Teutonic or Celtic antiquity--is to him an
+undying record of the days when man still walked hand in hand with
+nature. The history of the past is at once a storehouse of stirring
+themes ready to the hand of the artist, and the surest safeguard against
+both flatness and exaggeration in his work. [Footnote: See Essays
+xiii., xiv., xx.; _Present State of Polite Learning_, in particular,
+chap. xi.] It offers, moreover, the truest schooling of the heart, and
+insensibly "enlists the passions on the side of humanity". "Poetry",
+Byron said, "is the feeling of a former world, and future"; [Footnote:
+Moore's _Life_, p. 483] and to the first half of the statement Goldsmith
+would have heartily subscribed. For the historical method in his hands
+is but another aspect of the counsel he gave to Gray: "Study the
+people". It is an anticipation--vague, no doubt, but still
+unmistakable--of the spirit which, both in France and England, gave
+birth to the romantic movement a generation or two later.
+
+That zeal for the literature of the past was in the air when Goldsmith
+wrote is proved by works so different as those of Gray and Percy, of
+Chatterton and MacPherson, of Mallet and Warton. [Footnote: Percy's
+Reliques were published in 1765; Chatterton's _Rowley Poems_ written
+in 1769; MacPherson's _Ossian_ (first instalment) in 1760; Mallet's
+_Northern Antiquities_ in 1755; and Warton's _History of English
+Poetry_--a book to the learning and importance of which scant justice
+has been done--from 1772 to 1778. To these should be added a work,
+whose fine scholarship and profound learning is now universally
+admitted, Tyrwhitt's _Chaucer_ (1775-78). It will be noticed that all
+these works fall within the space of twenty years, 1755-1775] But it
+may be doubted whether any one of them, Gray excepted, saw the true
+bearing of the movement more clearly than Goldsmith, or did more to
+open fresh springs of thought and beauty for the poetry of the next
+age, if not of his own. It would be unpardonable to turn from the
+writers of the eighteenth century with no notice of a book which,
+seldom now read, is nevertheless perhaps the most solid piece of work
+that modern Europe had as yet to show in any branch of literary
+criticism. This is Burke's treatise _On the Sublime and the Beautiful_.
+Few will now be prepared to accept the material basis which Burke finds
+for the ideas of the imagination. [Footnote: Burke traces our ideas
+of the sublime to the sense of physical pain; our ideas of the beautiful
+to that of physical pleasure; identifying the former with a contraction
+or tension, and the latter with a relaxation of the muscles. Against
+this theory two main objections may be urged: (1) As, on Burke's own
+showing, the objects of the imagination, at least as far as poetry is
+concerned, are, and must be, presented first to the _mind_, it is (in
+the strictest sense of the term) preposterous to attribute their power
+over us to a purely muscular operation (2) The argument, taken by
+itself, is barely relevant to the matter in hand. Even where a physical
+basis can be proved--as it can in the case of music, painting, and
+sculpture (and of poetry, so far as rhythm and harmony are an essential
+element of it) it is extravagant to maintain that the physiologist or
+the "psycho physicist" can explain the whole, or even the greater part,
+of what has to be explained Beyond the fraction of information that
+purely physical facts can give us, a vast field must be left to
+intellectual and imaginative association. And that is the province not
+of physiology but of psychology, and of what the Germans call
+_Aesthetik_ This province, however, is but seldom entered by Burke.
+
+What, then, was it that drove Burke to a position so markedly at
+variance with the idealism of his later years? In all probability it
+was his rooted suspicion of reasoning as a deliberate and conscious
+process. Other writers of the century--Addison, for instance--had
+spoken as if men reasoned from certain abstract ideas (proportion,
+fitness, and the like) to individual instances of beauty, deciding a
+thing to have beauty or no, according as it squared or failed to square
+with the general notion This, as Burke points out, is more than
+questionable in itself, and it was certain to affront a man who, even
+thus early, had shown an almost morbid hatred of abstractions. In his
+later years, as is well known, he sought refuge from them in instinct,
+in "prejudice", in the unconscious working of the "permanent reason
+of man". In earlier days--he was still well under thirty--he found
+escape by the grosser aid of a materialist explanation (Burke's treatise
+was published in 1756 The _Laocoon_ of Lessing, a work which may be
+compared with that of Burke and which was very probably suggested by
+it, appeared in 1766.)] But none can deny the skill with which he works
+out his theory, nor the easy mastery with which each part is fitted
+into its place. The speculative power of the book and the light it
+throws on the deeper springs of the imagination are alike memorable.
+The first is not unworthy of the _Reflections_ or the _Appeal from the
+New to the Old Whigs_; the second shows that fruitful study of the
+Bible and the poets, English and classical, to which his later writings
+and speeches bear witness on every page.
+
+If the originality and depth of Burke's treatise is to be justly
+measured, it should be set side by side with those papers of Addison
+which Akenside expanded in his dismal _Pleasures of the Imagination_.
+The performance of Addison, grateful though one must be to him for
+attempting it, is thin and lifeless. That of Burke is massive and full
+of suggestion. At every turn it betrays the hand of the craftsman who
+works with his eye upon his tools. The speculative side of criticism
+has never been a popular study with Englishmen, and it is no accident
+that one of the few attempts to deal seriously with it should have
+been made at the only time when philosophy was a living power among
+us, and when the desire to get behind the outward shows of things was
+keener than it has ever been before or since. But for Burke's treatise,
+a wide gap would have been left both in the philosophy and the criticism
+of the eighteenth century; and it is to be wished that later times had
+done more to work the vein which he so skilfully explored. As it is,
+the writers both of France and Germany--above all, Hegel in his
+_Aesthetik_--have laboured with incomparably more effect than his own
+countrymen, Mr. Ruskin excepted, upon the foundations that he laid.
+
+IV. Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_ was the last word of the school
+which the Restoration had enthroned; the final verdict of the supreme
+court which gave the law to English letters from the accession of Anne
+to the French Revolution. Save in the splenetic outbursts of Byron--and
+they are not to be taken too seriously--the indispensable laws of
+Aristotelian criticism fell silent at Johnson's death. A time of anarchy
+followed; anarchy _plus_ the policeman's truncheon of the _Edinburgh_
+and the _Quarterly_. [Footnote: The first number of the _Edinburgh_
+appeared in 1802; the _Quarterly_ was started in a counterblast in
+1809.]
+
+The ill-fame of these Reviews, as they were in their pride of youth,
+is now so great that doubts may sometimes suggest themselves whether
+it can possibly be deserved. No one who feels such doubts can do better
+than turn to the earlier numbers; he will be forced to the conclusion
+that, whatever their services as the journeymen of letters and of party
+politics, few critics could have been so incompetent to judge of genius
+as the men who enlisted under the standard of Jeffrey or of Gifford.
+There is not, doubtless, in either Review the same iron wall of reasoned
+prejudice that has been noted in Johnson, but there is a plentiful
+lack of the clear vision and the openness to new impressions which are
+the first necessity of the critic. What Carlyle says of Jeffrey and
+the _Edinburgh_ may be taken as the substantial truth also about Gifford
+and the _Quarterly_, and it is the most pregnant judgment that has yet
+been passed upon them.
+
+"Jeffrey may be said to have begun the rash, reckless style of
+criticising everything in heaven and earth by appeal to Moliere's maid:
+'Do _you_ like it?' '_Don't_ you like it?' a style which, in hands
+more and more inferior to that sound-hearted old lady and him, has
+since grown gradually to such immeasurable length among us; and he
+himself is one of the first that suffers by it. If praise and blame
+are to be perfected, not in the mouth of Moliere's maid only but in
+that of mischievous, precocious babes and sucklings, you will arrive
+at singular judgments by degrees." [Footnote: Carlyle, _Reminiscences_
+n 63, 64 ]
+
+Carlyle has much here to say of Jeffrey's "recklessness", his defiance
+of all rules, his appeal to the chance taste of the man in the crowd.
+He has much also to say of his acuteness, and the unrivalled authority
+of his decrees. [Footnote: "Jeffrey was by no means the supreme in
+criticism or in anything else, but it is certain there has no critic
+appeared among us since who was worth naming beside him and his
+influence for good and for evil in literature and otherwise has been
+very great. Nothing in my time has so forwarded all this--the 'gradual
+uprise and rule in all things of roaring, million headed &c Demos'--
+"as Jeffrey and his once famous _Edinburgh Review_'--Ib ] But he is
+discreetly silent on their severity and short-sightedness. [Footnote:
+"You know", Byron wrote in 1808 "the system of the Edinburgh gentlemen
+is universal attack. They praise none, and neither the public nor the
+author expects praise from them."--Moore's _Life_, p 67.]
+
+Yet this is the unpardonable sin of both Reviews: that mediocrity was
+applauded, but that, whenever a man of genius came before them, the
+chances were ten to one that he would be held up to ridicule and
+contempt. The very first number of the _Edinburgh_ lays this down as
+an article of faith. Taking post on the recent appearance of _Thalaba_,
+the reviewer opens fire by a laboured parallel between poetry and
+religion. [Footnote: _Edinburgh Review_, No. 1, pp 63, &c ] With an
+alteration of names it might have been written by a member of the
+English Church Union, or of the Holy Inquisition.
+
+"The standards of poetry have been fixed long ago by certain inspired
+writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to call in question.
+Many profess to be entirely devoted to poetry, who have no _good works_
+to produce in support of their pretensions. The Catholic poetical
+Church too . . . has given birth to an infinite variety of heresies
+and errors, the followers of which have hated and persecuted each other
+as heartily as other bigots."
+
+Then, turning to business, the writer proceeds to apply his creed to
+Southey and all his works, not forgetting the works also of his friends.
+"The author belongs to a sect of poets that has established itself in
+this country within these ten or twelve years"--it would be hard to
+say for whose benefit in particular this date was taken--"and is looked
+upon as one of its chief champions and apostles". "The doctrines of
+this sect"--the Reviewer continues, with an eye upon the Alien Act--"are
+of German origin, or borrowed from the great apostle of Geneva".
+Rousseau is then "named" for expulsion, together with a miscellaneous
+selection of his following: Schiller and Kotzebue (the next number
+includes Kant under the anathema), Quarles and Donne, Ambrose Phillips
+and Cowper--perhaps the most motley crew that was ever brought together
+for excommunication. It is not, however, till the end of the essay
+that the true root of bitterness between the critic and his victims
+is suffered fully to appear. "A splenetic and idle discontent with the
+existing institutions of society seems to be at the bottom of all their
+serious and peculiar sentiments." In other words, the _Edinburgh_ takes
+up the work of the _Anti-Jacobin_; with no very good grace Jeffrey
+affects to sit in the seat of Canning and of Frere.
+
+So much for the "principles" of the new venture; principles, it will
+be seen, which appear to rest rather upon a hatred of innovation in
+general than upon any reasoned code, such as that of Johnson or the
+"Aristotelian laws", in particular. On that point, it must be clearly
+realized, Carlyle was in the right. It is that which marks the essential
+difference of the Reviewers--we can hardly say their advance--as against
+Johnson.
+
+We may now turn to watch the Reviewers, knife in hand, at the
+dissecting-table. For the twenty-five years that followed the foundation
+of the _Edinburgh_, England was more full of literary genius than it
+had been at any time since the age of Elizabeth. And it is not too
+much to say that during that period there was not one of the men, now
+accepted as among the chief glories of English literature, who did not
+fall under the lash of one, or both, of the Reviews. The leading cases
+will suffice.
+
+And first, the famous attack--not altogether undeserved, it must be
+allowed--of the _Edinburgh_ upon Byron. "The poetry of this young lord
+belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit",
+and so on for two or three pages of rather vulgar and heartless
+merriment at the young lord's expense. [Footnote: _Edinburgh Review_,
+xi. 285. It is uncommonly hard to find any trace of poetic power, even
+of the imitative kind, in the _Hours of Idleness_. It is significant
+that the best pieces are those in the heroic couplet; an indication--to
+be confirmed by _English Bards_--of Byron's leaning towards the past.]
+The answer to the sneer, as all the world knows, was _English Bards
+and Scotch Reviewers_. The author of the article had reason to be proud
+of his feat. Never before did pertness succeed in striking such
+unexpected fire from genius. And it is only fair to say that the Review
+took its beating like a gentleman. A few years later, and the
+_Edinburgh_ was among the warmest champions of the "English Bard".
+[Footnote: See the article on _The Corsair_ and _Bride of Abydos_, Ib.
+xxiii. 198. After speaking of the "beauty of his diction and
+versification, and the splendour of his description", the reviewer
+continues: "But it is to his pictures of the stronger passions that
+he is indebted for the fulness of his fame. He has delineated with
+unequalled force and fidelity the workings of those deep and powerful
+emotions.... We would humbly suggest to him to do away with the reproach
+of the age by producing a tragic drama of the old English school of
+poetry and pathos." The _amende honorable_ with a vengeance. The review
+of _The Giaour_, Byron thought, was "so very mild and sentimental that
+it must be written by Jeffrey in _love_".--Moore's _Life_, p. 191.]
+It was reserved for Southey, a pillar of the _Quarterly_, to rank him
+as the "Goliath" of the "Satanic school".
+
+Let us now turn to the _Quarterly_ upon Keats. _Endymion_, in spite
+of the noble self-criticism of its preface, is denounced as "Cockney
+poetry" [Footnote: The phrase was also employed by _Blackwood_, vol.
+iii. 519-524.]--a stupid and pointless vulgarism--and is branded as
+clothing "the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language".
+The author is dismissed with the following amenities: "Being bitten
+by Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, he more than rivals the insanity of
+his poetry"; and we are half-surprised not to find him told, as he was
+by _Blackwood_, to "go back to the shop, Mr. John; back to the plasters,
+pills, and ointment-boxes". [Footnote: _Quarterly Review_, xix. 204.
+See _Blackwood_, vol. iii. 524; where the Reviewer sneers at "the calm,
+settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of _Endymion_".]
+
+With this insolence it is satisfactory to contrast the verdict of the
+_Edinburgh_: "We have been exceedingly struck with the genius these
+poems--_Endymion_, _Lamia_, _Isabella_, _The Eve of St. Agnes_,
+&c.--display, and the spirit of poetry which breathes through all their
+extravagance. . . . They are at least as full of genius as absurdity."
+Of _Hyperion_ the Reviewer says: "An original character and distinct
+individuality is bestowed upon the poet's mythological persons. . . .
+We cannot advise its completion. For, though there are passages of
+some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious that the subject
+is too far removed from all the sources of human interest to be
+successfully treated by any modern author". [Footnote: Edinburgh Review,
+xxxiv. 203.] A blundering criticism, which, however, may be pardoned
+in virtue of the discernment, not to say the generosity, of the
+foregoing estimate.
+
+It would have been well had the _Edinburgh_ always written in this
+vein. But Wordsworth was a sure stumbling-block to the sagacity of his
+critics, and he certainly never failed to call forth the insolence and
+flippancy of Jeffrey. Two articles upon him remain as monuments to the
+incompetence of the _Edinburgh_; the first prompted by the Poems of
+1807, the second by the _Excursion_.
+
+The former pronounces sentence roundly at the very start: "Mr.
+Wordsworth's diction has nowhere any pretence to elegance or dignity,
+and he has scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness
+or dignity to his versification". From this sweeping condemnation four
+poems--_Brougham Castle_, and the sonnets on Venice, Milton, and
+Bonaparte--are generously excepted. But, as though astonished at his
+own moderation, the reviewer quickly proceeds to deal slaughter among
+the rest. Of the closing lines of _Resolution and Independence_ he
+writes: "We defy Mr. Wordsworth's bitterest enemy to produce anything
+at all parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even
+from the specimens of his friend, Mr. Southey". Of the stanzas to the
+sons of Burns, "never was anything more miserable". _Alice Fell_ is
+"trash"; _Yarrow Unvisited_, "tedious and affected". The lines from
+the _Ode to Duty_.
+
+  "Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
+  And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong,"
+
+are "utterly without meaning". The poem on the _Cuckoo_ is "absurd".
+The _Ode on Immortality_ is "the most illegible and unintelligible
+part of the whole publication". "We venture to hope that there is now
+an end of this folly." [Footnote: _Edinburgh Review_, xi. 217, &c.]
+
+But the hope is doomed to disappointment. The publication of the
+_Excursion_ a few years later finds the reviewer still equal to his
+task. "This will never do", he begins in a fury; "the case of Mr.
+Wordsworth is now manifestly hopeless. We give him up as altogether
+incurable and beyond the power of criticism." The story of Margaret,
+indeed, though "it abounds, of course, with mawkish sentiment and
+details of preposterous minuteness, has considerable pathos". But the
+other passage which one would have thought must have gone home to every
+heart--that which describes the communing of the wanderer with nature
+[Footnote: _Excursion_, book i.]--is singled out for ridicule; while
+the whole poem is judged to display "a puerile ambition of singularity,
+grafted on an unlucky predilection for truisms". [Footnote: _Edinburgh
+Review_, xxiv. I, &c. It is but just to add that in the remainder of
+the essay the Reviewer takes back--so far as such things can ever be
+taken back--a considerable part of his abuse.]
+
+It would be idle to maintain that in some of these slashing verdicts--
+criticisms they cannot be called--the reviewer does not fairly hit the
+mark. But these are chance strokes; and they are dealt, as the whole
+attack is conceived, in the worst style of the professional swash-
+buckler. Yet, low as is the deep they sound, a lower deep is opened
+by the _Quarterly_ in its article on Shelley; an article which bears
+unmistakable marks of having been written under the inspiration, if
+not by the hand, of Southey.
+
+It is impossible to know anything about Southey without feeling that,
+both in character and in intellect, he had many of the qualities that
+go to make an enlightened critic. But his fine nature was warped by
+a strain of bigotry; and he had what, even in a man who otherwise gave
+conclusive proof of sincerity and whole-heartedness, must be set down
+as a strong touch of the Pharisee. After every allowance has been made,
+no feeling other than indignation is possible at the tone which he
+thought fit to adopt towards Shelley.
+
+He opens the assault, and it is well that he does so, by an
+acknowledgment that the versification of the _Revolt of Islam_, the
+_corpus delicti_ at that moment under the scalpel, is "smooth and
+harmonious", and that the poem is "not without beautiful passages,
+free from errors of taste". But the "voice of warning", as he himself
+would too generously have called it, is not long in making itself
+heard. "Mr. Shelley, with perfect deliberation and the steadiest
+perseverance, perverts all the gifts of his nature, and does all the
+injury, both public and private, which his faculties enable him to
+perpetrate. . . .He draws largely on the rich stores of another mountain
+poet, to whose religious mind it must be matter of perpetual sorrow
+to see the philosophy, which comes pure and holy from his pen, degraded
+and perverted by this miserable crew of atheists and pantheists."
+
+So far, perhaps, the writer may claim not to have outstepped the
+traditional limits of theological hatred. For what follows there is
+not even that poor excuse. "If we might withdraw the veil of his private
+life and tell what we now know about him, it would be indeed a
+disgusting picture that we should exhibit, but it would be an
+unanswerable comment on our text. . .Mr. Shelley is too young, too
+ignorant, too inexperienced, and too vicious to undertake the task of
+reforming any world but the little world within his own breast."
+[Footnote: Quarterly Review, xxi. 460, &c.] For the credit of both
+Reviews it must be said that it would be difficult to find another
+instance of so foul a blow as this: [Footnote: Except in the infamous
+insinuations, also a crime of the _Quarterly_,]
+
+  Non ragioniam di _lui_, ma guarda e passa.
+
+[Footnote: against the character of Currer Bell. See also the scurrilous
+attack on the character of Leigh Hunt in _Blackwood_, vol III 453]
+
+Apart from their truculence, the early numbers of the _Edinburgh_ and
+_Quarterly_ are memorable for two reasons in the history of English
+literature. They mark the downfall of the absolute standard assumed
+by Johnson and others to hold good in criticism. And they led the way,
+slowly indeed but surely, to the formation of a general interest in
+literature, which, sooner or later, could not but be fatal to their
+own haphazard dogmatism. By their very nature they were an appeal to
+the people; and, like other appeals of the kind, they ended in a
+revolution.
+
+Of the men who fixed the lines on which this revolution was to run,
+four stand out taller from the shoulders upwards than their fellows.
+These are Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Carlyle. The critical work of
+all four belongs to the first thirty years or so of the present century;
+[Footnote: Some of the dates are as follows Lamb's _Specimens of English
+Dramatic Poets_ was published in 1808, his _Essays of Elia_ began to
+appear in the _London Magazine_, 1820, Coleridge's first Course of
+Lectures (on English poets) was delivered in 1808, his second Course,
+in 1811-12, his _Biographia Literana_ in 1817  Hazlitt's _Characters
+of Shakespeare's Plays_ was published in 1817, his _Lectures on the
+English Poets_ in 1818, and on _The English Comic Writers_ in 1819
+Carlyle's Essays began to appear (in the _Edinburgh_ and other Reviews)
+in 1827, that on Diderot--the last notable essay of a literary cast--in
+1833 Hazlitt died in 1830, Coleridge and Lamb in 1834  By that time
+Carlyle had turned to history and kindred subjects] and of the four
+it is probable that Carlyle, by nature certainly the least critical,
+had the greatest influence in changing the current of critical ideas.
+Space forbids any attempt to treat their work in detail. All that can
+be done is to indicate what were the shortcomings of English criticism
+as it came into their hands, and how far and in what manner they
+modified its methods and its aims.
+
+Till the beginning of the present century, criticism in England had
+remained a very simple thing. When judgment had once been passed, for
+good or evil, on an individual work or an individual writer, the critic
+was apt to suppose that nothing further could reasonably be expected
+of him. The comparative method, foreshadowed but only foreshadowed by
+Dryden, had not been carried perceptibly further by Dryden's successors.
+The historical method was still more clearly in its infancy. The
+connection between the two, the unity of purpose which alone gives
+significance to either, was hardly as yet suspected.
+
+It may be said--an English critic of the eighteenth century would
+undoubtedly have said--that these, after all, are but methods; better,
+possibly, than other methods; but still no more than means to an end--
+the eternal end of criticism, which is to appraise and to classify.
+The view is disputable enough. It leaves out of sight all that
+criticism--the criticism of literature and art--has done to throw light
+upon the dark places of human thought and history, upon the growth and
+subtle transformations of spiritual belief, upon the power of reason
+and imagination to mould the shape of outward institutions. All these
+things are included in the scope of the historical and comparative
+methods; and all of them stand entirely apart from the need to judge
+or classify the works of individual poets.
+
+But, for the moment, such wider considerations may be put aside, and
+the objection weighed on its own merits. It must then be answered that,
+without comparison and without the appeal to history, even to judge
+and classify reasonably would be impossible; and hence that, however
+much we narrow the scope of criticism, these two methods--or rather,
+two aspects of the same method--must still find place within its range.
+For, failing them, the critic in search of a standard--and without
+some standard or criterion there can be no such thing as criticism--is
+left with but two possible alternatives. He must either appeal to some
+absolute standard--the rules drawn from the "classical writers", in
+a sense wider or narrower, as the case may be; or he must decide
+everything by his own impression of the moment, eked out by the "appeal
+to Moliere's maid". The latter is the negation of all criticism. The
+former, spite of itself, is the historical method, but the historical
+method applied in an utterly arbitrary and irrational way. The former
+was the method of Johnson; the latter, of the _Edinburgh_ and the
+_Quarterly_. Each in turn, as we have seen, had ludicrously broken
+down.
+
+In the light of recent inventions, it might have been expected that
+some attempt would be made to limit the task of the critic to a mere
+record of his individual impressions. This, in fact, would only have
+been to avow, and to give the theory of what the _Edinburgh_ and the
+_Quarterly_ had already reduced to practice. But the truth is that the
+men of that day were not strong in such fine-spun speculations. It was
+a refinement from which even Lamb, who loved a paradox as well as any
+man, would have shrunk with playful indignation.
+
+It was in another direction that Coleridge and his contemporaries
+sought escape from the discredit with which criticism was threatened.
+This was by changing the issue on which the discussion was to be fought.
+In its most general form, the problem of criticism amounts to this:
+What is the nature of the standard to be employed in literary judgments?
+Hitherto--at least to the Reviewers--the question may be said to have
+presented itself in the following shape: Is the standard to be sought
+within or without the mind of the critic? Is it by his own impression,
+or by the code handed down from previous critics, that in the last
+resort the critic should be guided? In the hands of Coleridge and
+others, this was replaced by the question: Is the touchstone of
+excellence to be found within the work of the poet, or outside of it?
+Are we to judge of a given work merely by asking: Is it clearly
+conceived and consistently carried out? Or are we bound to consider
+the further question: Is the original conception just, and capable of
+artistic treatment; and is the workmanship true to the vital principles
+of poetry? The change is significant. It makes the poet, not the critic,
+master of the situation. It implies that the critic is no longer to
+give the law to the poet; but that, in some sense more or less complete,
+he must begin, if not by putting himself in the place of the individual
+writer as he was when at work on the individual poem, at least by
+taking upon himself--by making his own, as far as may be--what he may
+conceive to be the essential temperament of the poet.
+
+This, indeed, is one of the first things to strike us in passing from
+the old criticism to the new. The _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ plunge
+straight into the business of the moment. From the first instant--with
+"This will never do"--the Reviewer poses as the critic, or rather as
+the accuser. Not so Coleridge and Hazlitt. Like the _Edinburgh_ and
+_Quarterly_, they undertake to discourse on individual poets. Unlike
+them, each opens his enquiry with the previous question-a question
+that seems to have found no lodgment in the mind of the Reviewers--What
+is poetry? Further than this. Hazlitt, in a passage of incomparably
+greater force than any recorded utterance of Coleridge, makes it his
+task to trace poetry to the deepest and most universal springs of human
+nature; asserts boldly that it is poetry which, in the strictest sense,
+is "the life of all of us"; and calls on each one of us to assert his
+birthright by enjoying it. It is in virtue of the poet latent in him,
+that the plain man has the power to become a critic.
+
+Starting then from the question as just stated: Is it within the mind
+of the individual poet, or without it, that the standard of judgment
+should be sought?--neither Coleridge nor Hazlitt could have any doubt
+as to the answer. It is not, they would tell us, in the individual
+work but in the nature of poetry--of poetry as written large in the
+common instincts of all men no less than in the particular achievement
+of exceptional artists--that the test of poetic beauty must be
+discovered. The opposite view, doubtless, finds some countenance in
+the precepts, if not the example, of Goethe. But, when pressed to
+extremes, it is neither more nor less than the impressionist conception
+of criticism transferred to the creative faculty; and, like its
+counterpart, is liable to the objection that the impression of one
+poet, so long as it is sincerely rendered, is as good as the impression
+of another. It is the abdication of art, as the other is the abdication
+of criticism.
+
+Yet Hazlitt also--for, leaving Coleridge, we may now confine ourselves
+to him--is open to attack. His fine critical powers were marred by the
+strain of bitterness in his nature. And the result is that his judgment
+on many poets, and notably the poets of his own day, too often sounds
+like an intelligent version of the _Edinburgh_ or the _Quarterly_. Or,
+to speak more accurately, he betrays some tendency to return to
+principles which, though assuredly applied in a more generous spirit,
+are at bottom hardly to be distinguished from the principles of Johnson.
+He too has his "indispensable laws", or something very like them. He
+too has his bills of exclusion and his list of proscriptions. The
+poetry of earth, he more than suspects, is for ever dead; after Milton,
+no claimant is admitted to anything more substantial than a courtesy
+title. This, no doubt, was in part due to his morose temper; but it
+was partly also the result of the imperfect method with which he
+started.
+
+The fault of his conception--and it was that which determined his
+method--is to be too absolute. It allows too much room to poetry in
+the abstract; too little to the ever-varying temperament of the
+individual poet. And even that is perhaps too favourable a statement
+of the case. His idea of poetry may in part be drawn--and its strength
+is to have been partly drawn--direct from life and nature. But it is
+also taken, as from the nature of the case it must be with all of us,
+from the works of particular poets. And, in spite of his appeal to
+Dante and the Bible, it is clear that, in framing it, he was guided
+too exclusively by his loving study of the earlier English writers,
+from Chaucer to Milton. The model, so framed, is laid with heavy hand
+upon all other writers, who naturally fare ill in the comparison. Is
+it possible to account otherwise for his disparagement of Moliere, or
+his grudging praise of Wordsworth and of Coleridge?
+
+It was here that Carlyle came in to redress the balance. From interests,
+in their origin perhaps less purely literary than have moved any man
+who has exercised a profound influence on literature, Carlyle was led
+to quicken the sense of poetic beauty, and by consequence to widen the
+scope of criticism, more than any writer of his day. He may have sought
+German literature more for its matter than for its artistic
+beauty--here, too, he brought a new, if in some ways a dangerous,
+element into criticism--but neither he nor his readers could study it,
+least of all could they study the work of Goethe, without awakening
+to a whole world of imagination and beauty, to which England had
+hitherto been dead. With all its shortcomings, the discovery of German
+literature was a greater revelation than any made to Europe since the
+classical Renaissance.
+
+The shock--for it was nothing less--came at a singularly happy moment.
+The blow, given by Carlyle as critic, was closely followed up by the
+French _Romantiques_, as creative artists. Nothing could well have
+been more alien to English taste, as understood by the _Edinburgh_ and
+_Quarterly_, than the early works, or indeed any works, of Hugo and
+those who owned him for chief--if it were not the works of Goethe and
+the countrymen of Goethe. Different as these were from each other,
+they held common ground in uniting the most opposite prejudices of
+Englishmen against them. The sarcasms of Thackeray on the French writers
+speak to this no less eloquently than the fluent flippancies of De
+Quincey upon the Germans. [Footnote: See Thackeray's _Paris Sketch
+Book_, especially the chapters on _Madame Sand and the New Apocalypse_
+and _French Dramas and Melodramas_. See also De Quincey's Review of
+Carlyle's translation of _Wilhelm Meister_. Works, vol. xii.] Yet, in
+the one case as in the other--thanks, in no small measure, to Matthew
+Arnold and Mr. Swinburne--genius, in the long run, carried the day.
+And the same history has been repeated, as the literatures of Russia
+and of Scandinavia have each in turn been brought within our ken.
+
+These discoveries have all fallen within little more than half a century
+since Carlyle, by the irony of fate, reviewed Richter and the _State
+of German Literature_ in the pages of the _Edinburgh_. And their result
+has been to modify the standards of taste and criticism in a thousand
+ways. They have opened our eyes to aspects of poetry that we should
+never otherwise have suspected, and unveiled to us fields of thought,
+as well as methods of artistic treatment which, save by our own fault,
+must both have widened and deepened our conception of poetry. That is
+the true meaning of the historical method. The more we broaden our
+vision, the less is our danger of confounding poetry, which is the
+divine genius of the whole world, with the imperfect, if not misshapen
+idols of the tribe, the market-place and the cave.
+
+Of this conquest Carlyle must in justice be reckoned as the pioneer.
+For many years he stood almost single-handed as the champion of German
+thought and German art against the scorn or neglect of his countrymen.
+But he knew that he was right, and was fully conscious whither the
+path he had chosen was to lead. Aware that much in the work of Goethe
+would seem "faulty" to many, he forestalls the objection at the outset.
+
+"To see rightly into this matter, to determine with any infallibility
+whether what we call a fault _is_ in very deed a fault, we must
+previously have settled two points, neither of which may be so readily
+settled. First, we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet's
+aim really and truly was, how the task he had to do stood before his
+own eye, and how far, with such means as it afforded him, he has
+fulfilled it. Secondly, we must have decided whether and how far this
+aim, this task of his accorded--not with _us_ and our individual
+crotchets, and the crotchets of our little senate where we give or
+take the law--but with human nature and the nature of things at large;
+with the universal principles of poetic beauty, not as they stand
+written in our text-books, but in the hearts and imaginations of all
+men. Does the answer in either case come out unfavourable; was there
+an inconsistency between the means and the end, a discordance between
+the end and the truth, there is a fault; was there not, there is no
+fault." [Footnote: Carlyle on Goethe: _Miscellanies_, i. 295]
+
+Nothing could ring clearer than this. No man could draw the line more
+accurately between the tendency to dispense with principles and the
+tendency to stereotype them, which are the twin dangers of the critic.
+But it is specially important to note Carlyle's relation, in this
+matter, to Hazlitt He insists with as much force as Hazlitt upon the
+need of basing all poetry on "human nature and the nature of things
+at large"; upon the fact that its principles are written "in the hearts
+and imaginations of all men". But, unlike Hazlitt, he bids us also
+consider what the aim of the individual poet was, and how far he has
+taken the most fitting means to reach it. In other words, he allows,
+as Hazlitt did not allow, for the many-sidedness of poetry, and the
+infinite variety of poetic genius. And, just because he does so, he
+is able to give a deeper meaning to "nature" and the universal
+principles of imagination than Hazlitt, with all his critical and
+reflective brilliance, was in a position to do. Hazlitt is too apt to
+confine "nature" to the nature of Englishmen in general and, in his
+weaker moments, of Hazlitt in particular. Carlyle makes an honest
+attempt to bound it only by the universal instincts of man, and the
+"everlasting reason" of the world. Thus, in Carlyle's conception, "it
+is the essence of the poet to be new"; it is his mission "to wrench
+us from our old fixtures"; [Footnote: Carlyle on Goethe: _Miscellanies_,
+i. 291.] for it is only by so doing that he can show us some aspect
+of nature or of man's heart that was hidden from us before. The
+originality of the poet, the impossibility of binding him by the example
+of his forerunners, is the necessary consequence of the infinity of
+truth.
+
+That Carlyle saw this, and saw it so clearly, is no doubt partly due
+to a cause, of which more must be said directly; to his craving for
+ideas. [Footnote: See p. xciv.]  But it was in part owing to his hearty
+acceptance of the historical method. Both as critic and as historian,
+he knew--at that time, no man so well--that each nation has its own
+genius; and justly pronounced the conduct of that nation which "isolates
+itself from foreign influence, regards its own modes as so many laws
+of nature, and rejects all that is different as unworthy even of
+examination", to be "pedantry". [Footnote: _Miscellanies_, i. 37, 38.]
+This was the first, and perhaps the most fruitful consequence that he
+drew from the application of historical ideas to literature. They
+enlarged his field of comparison; and, by so doing, they gave both
+width and precision to his definition of criticism.
+
+But there is another--and a more usual, if a narrower--sense of the
+historical method; and here, too, Carlyle was a pioneer. He was among
+the first in our country to grasp the importance of studying the
+literature of a nation, as a whole, and from its earliest monuments,
+its mythological and heroic legends, downwards to the present. The
+year 1831--a turning-point in the mental history of Carlyle, for it
+was also the year in which _Sartor Resartus_ took shape "among the
+mountain solitudes"--was largely devoted to Essays on the history of
+German literature, of which one, that on the _Nibelungenlied_, is
+specially memorable. And some ten years later (1840) he again took up
+the theme in the first of his lectures on Heroes, which still remains
+the most enlightening, because the most poetic, account of the primitive
+Norse faith, or rather successive layers of faith, in our language.
+[Footnote: See _Lectures on Heroes_, p. 20; compare _Corpus Poeticum
+Borealt_, i. p. ci. ] But what mainly concerns us here is that Carlyle,
+in this matter as in others, had clearly realized and as clearly defines
+the goal which the student, in this case the student of literary
+history, should set before his eyes.
+
+"A History ... of any national Poetry would form, taken in its complete
+sense, one of the most arduous enterprises any writer could engage in.
+Poetry, were it the rudest, so it be sincere, is the attempt which man
+makes to render his existence harmonious, the utmost he can do for
+that end; it springs, therefore, from his whole feelings, opinions,
+activity, and takes its character from these. It may be called the
+music of his whole manner of being; and, historically considered, is
+the test how far Music, or Freedom, existed therein; how the feeling
+of Love, of Beauty, and Dignity, could be elicited from that peculiar
+situation of his, and from the views he there had of Life and Nature,
+of the Universe, internal and external. Hence, in any measure to
+understand the Poetry, to estimate its worth and historical meaning,
+we ask, as a quite fundamental inquiry: What that situation was? Thus
+the History of a nation's Poetry is the essence of its History,
+political, economic, scientific, religious. With all these the complete
+Historian of a national Poetry will be familiar; the national
+physiognomy, in its finest traits and through its successive stages
+of growth, will be dear to him: he will discern the grand spiritual
+Tendency of each period, what was the highest Aim and Enthusiasm of
+mankind in each, and how one epoch naturally evolved itself from the
+other. He has to record the highest Aim of a nation, in its successive
+directions and developments; for by this the Poetry of the nation
+modulates itself; this _is_ the Poetry of the nation." [Footnote:
+Carlyle, _Miscellanies_, iii. 292, 293.]
+
+Never has the task of the literary historian been more accurately
+defined than in this passage; and never do we feel so bitterly the
+gulf between the ideal and the actual performance, at which more than
+one man of talent has since tried his hand, as when we read it. It
+strikes perhaps the first note of Carlyle's lifelong war against
+"Dryasdust". But it contains at least two other points on which it is
+well for us to pause.
+
+The first is the inseparable bond which Carlyle saw to exist between
+the poetry of a nation and its history; the connection which inevitably
+follows from the fact that both one and the other are the expression
+of its character. This is a vein of thought that was first struck by
+Vico and by Montesquieu; but it was left for the German philosophers,
+in particular Fichte and Hegel, to see its full significance; and
+Carlyle was the earliest writer in this country to make it his own.
+It is manifest that the connection between the literature and the
+history of a nation may be taken from either side. We may illustrate
+its literature from its history, or its history from its literature.
+It is on the necessity of the former study that Carlyle dwells in the
+above. And in the light of later exaggerations, notably those of Taine,
+it is well to remember, what Carlyle himself would have been the last
+man to forget, that no man of genius is the creature of his time or
+his surroundings; and, consequently, that when we have mastered all
+the circumstances, in Carlyle's phrase the whole "situation", of the
+poet, we are still only at the beginning of our task. We have still
+to learn what his genius made out of its surroundings, and what the
+eye of the poet discovered in the world of traditional belief; in other
+words, what it was that made him a poet, what it was that he saw and
+to which all the rest were blind. We have studied the soil; we have
+yet to study the tree that grew from it and overshadows it. [Footnote:
+Perhaps the most striking instances of this kind of criticism, both
+on its strong and its weak side, are to be found in the writings of
+Mazzini. See _Opere_, ii. and iv.]
+
+In reversing the relation, in reading history by the light of
+literature, the danger is not so great. The man of genius may, and
+does, see deeper than his contemporaries; but, for that very reason,
+he is a surer guide to the tendencies of his time than they. He is
+above and beyond his time; but, just in so far as he is so, he sees
+over it and through it. As Shakespeare defined it, his "end, both at
+the first and now, was and is... to show the very age and body of the
+time his form and pressure". Some allowance must doubtless be made for
+the individuality of the poet; for the qualities in which he stands
+aloof from his time, and in which, therefore, he must not be taken to
+reflect it. But to make such allowance is a task not beyond the skill
+of the practised critic; and many instances suggest themselves in which
+it has, more or less successfully, been done. Witness not a few passages
+in Michelet's _Histoire de France_, and some to be found in the various
+works of Ranke. [Footnote: As instances may be cited, Michelet's remarks
+on Rabelais (tome viii. 428-440) and on Moliere (tome xiii. 51-85):
+or again Ranke's _Papste_, i. 486-503 (on Tasso and the artistic
+tendencies of the middle of the sixteenth century): _Franzosische
+Geschichte_, iii. 345-368 (the age of Louis XIV.).] Witness, again,
+Hegel's illustration of the Greek conception of the family from the
+_Antigone_ and the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles; or, if we may pass to a
+somewhat different field, his "construction" of the French Revolution
+from the religious and metaphysical ideas of Rousseau. [Footnote:
+Hegel, _Phanomenologie des Geistes_, pp. 323-348, and pp. 426-436.]
+
+So far as it employs literature to give the key to the outward history
+of a nation or to the growth of its spiritual faith, it is clear that
+the historical method ceases to be, in the strict sense of the word,
+a literary instrument. It implies certainly that a literary judgment
+has been passed; but, once passed, that judgment is used for ends that
+lie altogether apart from the interests of literature. But it is idle
+to consider that literature loses caste by lending itself to such a
+purpose. It would be wiser to say that it gains by anything that may
+add to its fruitfulness and instructiveness. In any case, and whether
+it pleases us or no, this is one of the things that the historical
+method has done for literature; and neither Carlyle, nor any other
+thinker of the century, would have been minded to disavow it.
+
+This brings us to the second point that calls for remark in the
+foregoing quotation from Carlyle. Throughout he assumes that the matter
+of the poet is no less important than his manner. And here again he
+dwells on an aspect of literature that previous, and later, critics
+have tended to throw into the shade. That Carlyle should have been led
+to assert, and even at times to exaggerate, the claims of thought in
+imaginative work was inevitable; and that, not only from his
+temperament, but from those principles of his teaching that we have
+already noticed. If the poetry of a nation be indeed the expression
+of its spiritual aims, then it is clear that among those aims must be
+numbered its craving to make the world intelligible to itself, and to
+comprehend the working of God both within man and around him. Not that
+Carlyle shows any disposition to limit "thought" to its more abstract
+forms; on the contrary, it is on the sense of "music, love, and beauty"
+that he specially insists. What he does demand is that these shall be
+not merely outward adornments, but the instinctive utterance of a
+deeper harmony within; that they shall be such as not merely to "furnish
+a languid mind with fantastic shows and indolent emotions, but to
+incorporate the everlasting reason of man in forms visible to his
+sense, and suitable to it". [Footnote: Miscellanies, i. 297.] The
+"reason" is no less necessary to poetry than its sensible form; and
+whether its utterance be direct or indirect, that is a matter for the
+genius of the individual poet to decide. _Gott und Welt_, we may be
+sure Carlyle would have said, is poetry as legitimate as _Der Erlkonig_
+or the songs of Mignon.
+
+In this connection he more than once appeals to the doctrine of Fichte,
+one of the few writers whom he was willing to recognize as his teachers.
+"According to Fichte, there is a 'divine idea' pervading the visible
+universe; which visible universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible
+manifestation, having in itself no meaning, or even true existence
+independent of it. To the mass of men this divine idea of the world
+lies hidden; yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it,
+is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the
+end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age. Literary men are
+the appointed interpreters of this divine idea; a perpetual priesthood,
+we might say, standing forth, generation after generation, as the
+dispensers and living types of God's everlasting wisdom, to show it
+in their writings and actions, in such particular form as their own
+particular times require it in. For each age, by the law of its nature,
+is different from every other age, and demands a different
+representation of the divine idea, the essence of which is the same
+in all; so that the literary man of one century is only by mediation
+and reinterpretation applicable to the wants of another." [Footnote:
+Ib., p. 69. There is a similar passage in the _Lectures on Heroes_
+(Lec. v.), p. 145. In each case the reference is to Fichte's Lectures
+_Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten_ (1805), especially to lectures i.,
+ii., and x,; Fichte's Werke, vi. 350-371, 439-447.]
+
+The particular form of Fichte's teaching may still sound unfamiliar
+enough. But in substance it has had the deepest influence on the aims
+and methods of criticism; and, so far as England is concerned, this
+is mainly due to the genius of Carlyle. Compare the criticism of the
+last century with that of the present, and we at once see the change
+that has come over the temper and instincts of Englishmen in this
+matter.
+
+When Johnson, or the reviewers of the next generation, quitted--as
+they seldom did quit--the ground of external form and regularity and
+logical coherence, it was only to ask: Is this work, this poem or this
+novel, in conformity with the traditional conventions of respectability,
+is it such as can be put into the hands of boys and girls? To them
+this was the one ground on which the matter of literature, as apart
+from the beggarly elements of its form, could come under the cognizance
+of the critic. And this narrowness, a narrowness which belonged at
+least in equal measure to the official criticism of the French,
+naturally begot a reaction almost as narrow as itself. The cry of "art
+for art's sake", a cry raised in France at the moment when Carlyle was
+beginning his work in England, must be regarded as a protest against
+the moralizing bigotry of the classical school no less than against
+its antiquated formalities. The men who raised it were themselves not
+free from the charge of formalism; but the forms they worshipped were
+at least those inspired by the spontaneous genius of the artist, not
+the mechanical rules inherited from the traditions of the past. Nor,
+whatever may be the case with those who have taken it up in our own
+day, must the cry be pressed too rigorously against the men of 1830.
+The very man, on whom it was commonly fathered, was known to disavow
+it; and certainly in his own works, in their burning humanity and their
+"passion for reforming the world", was the first to set it at defiance.
+[Footnote: See Hugo's _William Shakespeare_, p. 288.]
+
+The moralist and the formalist still make their voice heard, and will
+always do so. But since Carlyle wrote, it is certain that a wider, a
+more fruitful, view of criticism has gained ground among us. And, if
+it be asked where lies the precise difference between such a view and
+that which satisfied the critics of an earlier day, the answer must
+be, that we are no longer contented to rest upon the outward form of
+a work of art, still less upon its conventional morality. We demand
+to learn what is the idea, of which the outward form is the harmonious
+utterance; and which, just because the form is individual, must itself
+too have more or less of originality and power. We are resolved to
+know what is the artist's peculiar fashion of conceiving life, what
+is his insight, that which he has to teach us of God and man and nature.
+"Poetry", said Wordsworth, "is the breath and finer spirit of all
+knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance
+of all Science." [Footnote: Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_ by Wordsworth:
+Works, vi. 328.] And Wordsworth is echoed by Shelley. [Footnote: "Poetry
+is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference
+of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science, and that to
+which all science must be referred."--Shelley, _Defence of Poetry_,
+p. 33.] But it is again to Carlyle that we must turn for the explicit
+application of these ideas to criticism:--
+
+"Criticism has assumed a new form...; it proceeds on other principles,
+and proposes to itself a higher aim. The grand question is not now a
+question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of
+metaphors, the fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in
+a work of art, as it was some half-century ago among most critics;
+neither is it a question mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered
+by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from
+his poetry, as is usual with the best of our own critics at present:
+[Footnote: A striking example of this method, the blending of criticism
+with biography, is to be found in Carlyle's own Essay on Burns. The
+significance of the method, in such hands as those of Carlyle, is that
+it lays stress on the reality, the living force, of the poetry with
+which it deals. It was the characteristic method of Sainte-Beuve; and
+it may be questioned whether it did not often lead him far enough from
+what can properly be called criticism;--into psychological studies,
+spiced with scandal, or what a distinguished admirer is kind enough
+to call "indiscretions". See M. Brunetiere, _L'Evolution des Genres_,
+i. 236. This book is a sketch of the history of criticism in France,
+and cannot be too warmly recommended to all who are interested in such
+subjects,] but it is--not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those
+two other questions--properly and ultimately a question on the essence
+and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions,
+as we see it answered, for instance, in the criticisms of Johnson and
+Kames, relates, strictly speaking, to the _garment_ of poetry: the
+second, indeed, to its _body_ and material existence, a much higher
+point; but only the last to its _soul_ and spiritual existence, by
+which alone can the body... be _informed_ with significance and rational
+life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison
+composed sentences and struck out similitudes; but by what far finer
+and more mysterious mechanism Shakespeare organized his dramas, and
+gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet? Wherein lies
+that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence
+comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and
+pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all
+hearts? Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true; nay,
+truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed reality is
+bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity
+of theirs; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible,
+and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from
+the general elements of all thought, and grows up therefrom into form
+and expansion by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how
+did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem
+and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are
+the questions for the critic." [Footnote: Miscellanies, i. 60, 61
+(1827).] And, a few pages later: "As an instance we might refer to
+Goethe's criticism of Hamlet.... This truly is what may be called the
+poetry of criticism: for it is in some sort also a creative art; aiming,
+at least, to reproduce under a different shape the existing product
+of the poet; painting to the intellect what already lay painted to the
+heart and the imagination." [Footnote: Ib. p. 72.]
+
+Instances of criticism, conceived in this spirit, are unhappily still
+rare. But some of Coleridge's on Shakespeare, and some of Lamb's on
+the Plays of the Elizabethan Dramatists--in particular _The Duchess
+of Malfi_ and _The Broken Heart_--may fairly be ranked among them. So,
+and with still less of hesitation, may Mr. Ruskin's rendering of the
+_Last Judgment_ of Tintoret, and Mr. Pater's studies on Lionardo,
+Michaelangelo, and Giorgione. Of these, Mr. Pater's achievement is
+probably the most memorable; for it is an attempt, and an attempt of
+surprising power and subtlety, to reproduce not merely the effect of
+a single poem or picture, but the imaginative atmosphere, the spiritual
+individuality, of the artist. In a sense still higher than would be
+true even of the work done by Lamb and Ruskin, it deserves the praise
+justly given by Carlyle to the masterpiece of Goethe; it is "the very
+poetry of criticism".
+
+We have now reviewed the whole circle traversed by criticism during
+the present century, and are in a position to define its limits and
+extent. We have seen that a change of method was at once the cause and
+indication of a change in spirit and in aim. The narrow range of the
+eighteenth century was enlarged on the one hand by the study of new
+literatures, and on the other hand by that appeal to history, and that
+idea of development which has so profoundly modified every field of
+thought and knowledge. In that lay the change of method. And this, in
+itself, was enough to suggest a wider tolerance, a greater readiness
+to make allowance for differences of taste, whether as between nation
+and nation or as between period and period, than had been possible for
+men whose view was practically limited to Latin literature and to such
+modern literatures as were professedly moulded upon the Latin. With
+such diversity of material, the absolute standard, absurd enough in
+any case, became altogether impossible to maintain. It was replaced
+by the conception of a common instinct for beauty, modified in each
+nation by the special circumstances of its temperament and history.
+
+But even this does not cover the whole extent of the revolution in
+critical ideas. Side by side with a more tolerant--and, it may be
+added, a keener--judgment of artistic form, came a clearer sense of
+the inseparable connection between form and matter, and the
+impossibility of comprehending the form, if it be taken apart from the
+matter, of a work of art. This, too, was in part the natural effect
+of the historical method, one result of which was to establish a closer
+correspondence between the thought of a nation and its art than had
+hitherto been suspected. But it was in part also a consequence of the
+intellectual and spiritual revolution of which Rousseau was the herald
+and which, during fifty years, found in German philosophy at once its
+strongest inspiration and its most articulate expression. Men were no
+longer satisfied to explain to themselves what Carlyle calls the
+"garment" and the "body" of art; they set themselves to pierce through
+these to the soul and spirit within. They instinctively felt that the
+art which lives is the art that gives man something to live by; and
+that, just because its form is more significant than other of man's
+utterances, it must have a deeper significance also in substance and
+in purport. Of this purport _Criticism of life_--the phrase suggested
+by one who was at once a poet and a critic--is doubtless an unhappy,
+because a pedantic definition; and it is rather creation of life, than
+the criticism of it, that art has to offer. But it must be life in all
+its fulness and variety; as thought, no less than as action; as energy,
+no less than as beauty--
+
+  As power, as love, as influencing soul.
+
+This is the mission of art; and to unfold its working in the art of
+all times and of all nations, to set it forth by intuition, by patient
+reason, by every means at his command, is the function of the critic.
+To have seen this, and to have marked out the way for its performance,
+is not the least among the services rendered by Carlyle to his own
+generation and to ours. Later critics can hardly be said to have yet
+filled out the design that he laid. They have certainly not gone beyond
+it.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM.
+
+
+
+
+SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
+
+(1554-1586.)
+
+I. AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE.
+
+The _Apologie_ was probably written about 1580; Gosson's pamphlet,
+which clearly suggested it, having appeared in 1579. Nothing need here
+be added to what has been said in the Introduction.
+
+
+When the right virtuous Edward Wotton and I were at the emperor's court
+together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of John Pietro
+Pugliano: one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire
+in his stable. And he, according to the fertileness of the Italian
+wit, did not only afford us the demonstration of his practice, but
+sought to enrich our minds with the contemplations therein, which he
+thought most precious. But with none I remember mine ears were at any
+time more laden, than when (either angered with slow payment, or moved
+with our learner-like admiration) he exercised his speech in the praise
+of his faculty. He said, soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind,
+and horsemen, the noblest of soldiers. He said, they were the masters
+of war, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers, and strong abiders,
+triumphers both in camps and courts. Nay, to so unbelieved a point he
+proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince, as
+to be a good horseman. Skill of government was but a pedanteria in
+comparison: then would he add certain praises, by telling what a
+peerless beast a horse was. The only serviceable courtier without
+flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such
+more, that, if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to
+him, I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a horse.
+But thus much at least with his no few words he drove into me, that
+self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous, wherein
+ourselves are parties. Wherein, if Pugliano his strong affection and
+weak arguments will not satisfy you, I will give you a nearer example
+of myself, who (I know not by what mischance) in these my not old years
+and idlest times, having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked
+to say something unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation;
+which if I handle with more good will than good reasons, bear with me,
+sith the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth the steps of his
+master. And yet I must say that, as I have just cause to make a pitiful
+defence of poor poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of
+learning is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children, so have I
+need to bring some more available proofs: sith the former is by no man
+barred of his deserved credit, the silly latter hath had even the names
+of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with great danger of civil
+war among the muses. And first, truly to all them that professing
+learning inveigh against poetry may justly be objected, that they go
+very near to ungratefulness, to seek to deface that which, in the
+noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first
+light-giver to ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and
+little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges: and will
+they now play the hedgehog that, being received into the den, drove
+out his host? or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their
+parents? Let learned Greece in any of her manifold sciences, be able
+to show me one book, before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiodus, all three
+nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history be brought, that can say
+any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same
+skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named: who having been
+the first of that country, that made pens deliverers of their knowledge
+to their posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers
+in learning: for not only in time they had this priority (although in
+itself antiquity be venerable) but went before them, as causes to draw
+with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration
+of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move stone with his poetry,
+to build Thebes. And Orpheus to be listened to by beasts indeed, stony
+and beastly people. So among the Romans were Livius Andronicus, and
+Ennius. So in the Italian language, the first that made it aspire to
+be a treasure-house of science were the poets Dante, Boccace, and
+Petrarch. So in our English were Gower and Chaucer.
+
+After whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing,
+others have followed, to beautify our mother tongue, as well in the
+same kind as in other arts. This did so notably show itself, that the
+philosophers of Greece durst not a long time appear to the world but
+under the masks of poets. So Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides sang
+their natural philosophy in verses: so did Pythagoras and Phocylides
+their moral counsels: so did Tyrtaus in war matters, and Solon in
+matters of policy: or rather, they being poets, did exercise their
+delightful vein in those points of highest knowledge, which before
+them lay hid to the world. For that wise Solon was directly a poet,
+it is manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the
+Atlantic Island, which was continued by Plato.
+
+And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth, shall find, that
+in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy,
+the skin as it were and beauty depended most of poetry: for all standeth
+upon dialogues, wherein he feigneth many honest burgesses of Athens
+to speak of such matters, that if they had been set on the rack, they
+would never have confessed them. Besides, his poetical describing the
+circumstances of their meetings, as the well ordering of a banquet,
+the delicacy of a walk, with interlacing mere tales, as Gyges' ring,
+and others, which who knows not to be the flowers of poetry, did never
+walk into Apollo's garden.
+
+And even historiographers (although their lips sound of things done,
+and verity be written in their foreheads) have been glad to borrow
+both fashion, and perchance weight, of poets. So Herodotus entitled
+his history by the name of the nine Muses: and both he, and all the
+rest that followed him, either stole or usurped of poetry their
+passionate describing of passions, the many particularities of battles,
+which no man could affirm: or if that be denied me, long orations put
+in the mouths of great kings and captains, which it is certain they
+never pronounced. So that truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer
+could at the first have entered into the gates of popular judgments,
+if they had not taken a great passport of poetry, which, in all nations
+at this day where learning flourisheth not, is plain to be seen: in
+all which they have some feeling of poetry. In Turkey, besides their
+law-giving divines, they have no other writers but poets. In our
+neighbour country Ireland, where truly learning goeth very bare, yet
+are their poets held in a devout reverence. Even among the most
+barbarous and simple Indians where no writing is, yet have they their
+poets, who make and sing songs which they call areytos, both of their
+ancestors' deeds, and praises of their Gods. A sufficient probability,
+that, if ever learning come among them, it must be by having their
+hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet delights of poetry.
+For until they find a pleasure in the exercises of the mind, great
+promises of much knowledge will little persuade them, that know not
+the fruits of knowledge. In Wales, the true remnant of the ancient
+Britons, as there are good authorities to show the long time they had
+poets, which they called bards: so through all the conquests of Romans,
+Saxons, Danes, and Normans, some of whom did seek to ruin all memory
+of learning from among them, yet do their poets, even to this day,
+last; so as it is not more notable in soon beginning than in long
+continuing. But since the authors of most of our sciences were the
+Romans, and before them the Greeks, let us a little stand upon their
+authorities, but even so far as to see what names they have given unto
+this now scorned skill.
+
+Among the Romans a poet was called _vates_, which is as much as a
+diviner, fore-seer, or prophet, as by his conjoined words _vaticinium_
+and _vaticinari_ is manifest: so heavenly a title did that excellent
+people bestow upon this heart-ravishing knowledge. And so far were
+they carried into the admiration thereof, that they thought in the
+chanceable hitting upon any such verses great foretokens of their
+following fortunes were placed. Whereupon grew the word of _Sortes
+Virgilianae_, when, by sudden opening Virgil's book, they lighted upon
+any verse of his making, whereof the histories of the emperors' lives
+are full: as of Albinus the governor of our island, who in his childhood
+met with this verse
+
+  _Arma amens capio nee sat rationis in armis:_
+
+and in his age performed it; which although it were a very vain and
+godless superstition, as also it was to think that spirits were
+commanded by such verses (whereupon this word charms, derived of
+_Carmina_, cometh), so yet serveth it to show the great reverence those
+wits were held in. And altogether not without ground, since both the
+oracles of Delphos and Sibylla's prophecies were wholly delivered in
+verses. For that same exquisite observing of number and measure in
+words, and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the Poet, did
+seem to have some divine force in it.
+
+And may not I presume a little further, to show the reasonableness of
+this word _vates_? And say that the holy David's Psalms are a divine
+poem? If I do, I shall not do it without the testimony of great learned
+men, both ancient and modern: but even the name Psalms will speak for
+me; which being interpreted is nothing but songs. Then that it is fully
+written in metre, as all learned Hebricians agree, although the rules
+be not yet fully found. Lastly and principally, his handling his
+prophecy, which is merely poetical. For what else is the awaking his
+musical instruments? The often and free changing of persons? His notable
+prosopopeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His
+majesty? His telling of the beasts' joyfulness, and hills leaping, but
+a heavenly poesy: wherein almost he showeth himself a passionate lover
+of that unspeakable and everlasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of
+the mind, only cleared by faith? But truly now having named him, I
+fear me I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry, which
+is among us thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation: but they that
+with quiet judgments will look a little deeper into it, shall find the
+end and working of it such as, being rightly applied, deserveth not
+to be scourged out of the Church of God.
+
+But now, let us see how the Greeks named it, and how they deemed of
+it. The Greeks called him a poet, which name hath, as the most
+excellent, gone through other languages. It cometh of this word
+_poiein_, which is, to make: wherein I know not, whether by luck or
+wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks, in calling him a maker:
+which name, how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather were
+known by marking the scope of other sciences, than by my partial
+allegation.
+
+There is no art delivered to mankind, that hath not the works of nature
+for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and
+on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were,
+of what nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon
+the stars, and by that he seeth, setteth down what order nature hath
+taken therein. So do the geometrician, and arithmetician, in their
+diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, in times, tell you
+which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher thereon hath
+his name, and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues,
+vices, and passions of man; and follow nature (saith he) therein, and
+thou shalt not err. The lawyer saith what men have determined. The
+historian what men have done. The grammarian speaketh only of the rules
+of speech; and the rhetorician, and logician, considering what in
+nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules,
+which still are compassed within the circle of a question, according
+to the proposed matter. The physician weigheth the nature of a man's
+body, and the nature of things helpful, or hurtful unto it. And the
+metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and
+therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he indeed build upon the
+depth of nature: only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such
+subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow
+in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature
+bringeth forth, or quite anew forms such as never were in nature, as
+the heroes, demigods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like: so as
+he goeth hand in hand with nature, not inclosed within the narrow
+warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his
+own wit.
+
+Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry, as divers poets
+have done, neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling
+flowers: nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more
+lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden: but let
+those things alone and go to man, for whom as the other things are,
+so it seemeth in him her uttermost cunning is employed, and know whether
+she have brought forth so true a lover as Theagenes, so constant a
+friend as Pylades, so valiant a man as Orlando, so right a prince as
+Xenophon's Cyrus: so excellent a man every way, as Virgil's Aneas.
+Neither let this be jestingly conceived, because the works of the one
+be essential, the other, in imitation or fiction; for any understanding
+knoweth the skill of the artificer standeth in that idea or fore-conceit
+of the work, and not in the work itself. And that the poet hath that
+idea, is manifest, by delivering them forth in such excellency as he
+hath imagined them. Which delivering forth also is not wholly
+imaginative, as we are wont to say by them that build castles in the
+air: but so far substantially it worketh, not only to make a Cyrus,
+which had been but a particular excellency, as Nature might have done,
+but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world, to make many Cyruses, if they
+will learn aright, why and how that maker made him.
+
+Neither let it be deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the highest
+point of man's wit with the efficacy of Nature: but rather give right
+honour to the heavenly Maker of that maker: who, having made man to
+his own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of that second
+nature, which in nothing he showeth so much as in poetry: when, with
+the force of a divine breath, he bringeth things forth far surpassing
+her doings, with no small argument to the incredulous of that first
+accursed fall of Adam; sith our erected wit maketh us know what
+perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto
+it. But these arguments will by few be understood, and by fewer granted.
+Thus much (I hope) will be given me, that the Greeks, with some
+probability of reason, gave him the name above all names of learning.
+Now let us go to a more ordinary opening of him, that the truth may
+be more palpable: and so I hope, though we get not so unmatched a
+praise as the etymology of his names will grant, yet his very
+description, which no man will deny, shall not justly be barred from
+a principal commendation.
+
+Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it
+in his word _Mimesis_, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting,
+or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture: with
+this end, to teach and delight; of this have been three several kinds.
+The chief both in antiquity and excellency, were they that did imitate
+the inconceivable excellencies of God. Such were David in his Psalms,
+Solomon in his Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs: Moses
+and Deborah, in their hymns, and the writer of Job; which, beside
+other, the learned Emanuel Tremilius and Franciscus Junius do entitle
+the poetical part of Scripture. Against these none will speak that
+hath the Holy Ghost in due holy reverence.
+
+In this kind, though in a full wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion,
+Homer in his hymns, and many other, both Greeks and Romans: and this
+poesy must be used by whosoever will follow St. James his counsel, in
+singing psalms when they are merry: and I know is used with the fruit
+of comfort by some, when, in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing
+sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness.
+
+The second kind, is of them that deal with matters philosophical;
+either moral, as Tyrtaus, Phocylides, and Cato: or natural, as Lucretius
+and Virgil's _Georgics_; or astronomical, as Manilius, and Pontanus;
+or historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is in their
+judgments quite out of taste, and not in the sweet food of
+sweetly-uttered knowledge. But because this second sort is wrapped
+within the fold of the proposed subject, and takes not the course of
+his own invention, whether they properly be poets or no, let grammarians
+dispute; and go to the third, indeed right poets, of whom chiefly this
+question ariseth; betwixt whom and these second is such a kind of
+difference, as betwixt the meaner sort of painters (who counterfeit
+only such faces as are set before them) and the more excellent; who,
+having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon you which is fittest
+for the eye to see; as the constant, though lamenting look of Lucretia,
+when she punished in herself another's fault.
+
+Wherein he painteth not Lucretia whom he never saw, but painteth the
+outward beauty of such a virtue: for these third be they which most
+properly do imitate to teach and delight; and, to imitate, borrow
+nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be: but range, only reined
+with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be,
+and should be. These be they that, as the first and most noble sort
+may justly be termed Vates, so these are waited on in the excellentest
+languages and best understandings, with the fore-described name of
+poets: for these indeed do merely make to imitate: and imitate both
+to delight and teach: and delight to move men to take that goodness
+in hand, which without delight they would fly as from a stranger: and
+teach, to make them know that goodness whereunto they are moved, which
+being the noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed, yet
+want there not idle tongues to bark at them. These be subdivided into
+sundry more special denominations. The most notable be the heroic,
+lyric, tragic, comic, satiric, iambic, elegiac, pastoral, and certain
+others. Some of these being termed according to the matter they deal
+with, some by the sorts of verses they liked best to write in, for
+indeed the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical
+inventions in that numbrous kind of writing which is called verse:
+indeed but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to
+poetry: sith there have been many most excellent poets that never
+versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the
+name of poets. For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently, as to
+give us _effigiem justi imperii_ the portraiture of a just empire under
+the name of Cyrus (as Cicero says of him), made therein an absolute
+heroical poem.
+
+So did Heliodorus in his sugared invention of that picture of love in
+Theagenes and Chariclea, and yet both these wrote in prose: which I
+speak to show, that it is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet,
+no more than a long gown maketh an advocate: who, though he pleaded
+in armour, should be an advocate and no soldier. But it is that feigning
+notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful
+teaching which must be the right describing note to know a poet by:
+although, indeed, the senate of poets hath chosen verse as their fittest
+raiment, meaning, as in matter they passed all in all, so in manner
+to go beyond them: not speaking (table-talk fashion, or like men in
+a dream) words as they chanceably fall from the mouth, but peyzing
+[Footnote: weighing.] each syllable of each word by just proportion
+according to the dignity of the subject.
+
+Now, therefore, it shall not be amiss first to weigh this latter sort
+of poetry by his works, and then by his parts; and if in neither of
+these anatomies he be condemnable, I hope we shall obtain a more
+favourable sentence. This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory,
+enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call
+learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate
+end soever it be directed, the final end is, to lead and draw us to
+as high a perfection, as our degenerate souls made worse by their
+clayey lodgings, can be capable of. This, according to the inclination
+of the man, bred many formed impressions; for some that thought this
+felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to
+be so high and heavenly as acquaintance with the stars, gave themselves
+to astronomy; others, persuading themselves to be demigods if they
+knew the causes of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers;
+some an admirable delight drew to music; and some the certainty of
+demonstration, to the mathematics. But all, one and other, having this
+scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon
+of the body, to the enjoying his own divine essence. But when by the
+balance of experience it was found, that the astronomer looking to the
+stars might fall into a ditch, that the inquiring philosopher might
+be blind in himself, and the mathematician might draw forth a straight
+line with a crooked heart: then lo, did proof the overruler of opinions
+make manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they
+have each a private end in themselves, so yet are they all directed
+to the highest end of the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called
+_Arkitektonike_, which stands (as I think) in the knowledge of a man's
+self, in the ethic and politic consideration, with the end of
+well-doing, and not of well-knowing only; even as the saddler's next
+end is to make a good saddle: but his farther end, to serve a nobler
+faculty, which is horsemanship: so the horseman's to soldiery, and the
+soldier not only to have the skill, but to perform the practice of a
+soldier: so that the ending end of all earthly learning, being virtuous
+action, those skills that most serve to bring forth that, have a most
+just title to be princes over all the rest. Wherein if we can show the
+poet's nobleness, by setting him before his other competitors, among
+whom as principal challengers step forth the moral philosophers, whom
+methinketh I see coming towards me with a sullen gravity, as though
+they could not abide vice by daylight, rudely clothed for to witness
+outwardly their contempt of outward things, with books in their hands
+against glory, whereto they set their names, sophistically speaking
+against subtlety, and angry with any man in whom they see the foul
+fault of anger; these men casting largess as they go, of definitions,
+divisions, and distinctions, with a scornful interrogative, do soberly
+ask, whether it be possible to find any path, so ready to lead a man
+to virtue, as that which teacheth what virtue is? and teacheth it not
+only by delivering forth his very being, his causes, and effects: but
+also, by making known his enemy vice, which must be destroyed, and his
+cumbersome servant passion, which must be mastered, by showing the
+generalities that contain it, and the specialities that are derived
+from it: lastly, by plain setting down, how it extendeth itself out
+of the limits of a man's own little world, to the government of families
+and maintaining of public societies. [Footnote: A principal clause--_It
+will be well_, or some equivalent--is unhappily lacking to this long
+sentence.]
+
+The historian scarcely giveth leisure to the moralist, to say so much,
+but that he, laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself
+(for the most part) upon other histories, whose greatest authorities
+are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay, having much ado to
+accord differing writers, and to pick truth out of partiality, better
+acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and
+yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth,
+curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties, a wonder to young
+folks, and a tyrant in table-talk, denieth in a great chafe that any
+man, for teaching of virtue and virtuous actions, is comparable to
+him. I am _Lux vitae_, _Temporum Magistra_, _Vita memoriae_, _Nuncia
+vetustatis_, &c.
+
+The philosopher (saith he) teacheth a disputative virtue, but I do an
+active: his virtue is excellent in the dangerless academy of Plato,
+but mine showeth forth her honourable face in the battles of Marathon,
+Pharsalia, Poitiers, and Agincourt. He teacheth virtue by certain
+abstract considerations, but I only bid you follow the footing of them
+that have gone before you. Old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine-
+witted philosopher, but I give the experience of many ages. Lastly,
+if he make the songbook, I put the learner's hand to the lute; and if
+he be the guide, I am the light.
+
+Then would he allege you innumerable examples, conferring story by
+story, how much the wisest senators and princes have been directed by
+the credit of history, as Brutus, Alphonsus of Aragon, and who not,
+if need be? At length the long line of their disputation maketh a point
+in this, that the one giveth the precept, and the other the example.
+
+Now, whom shall we find (sith the question standeth for the highest
+form in the school of learning) to be moderator? Truly, as me seemeth,
+the poet; and if not a moderator, even the man that ought to carry the
+title from them both, and much more from all other serving sciences.
+Therefore compare we the poet with the historian and with the moral
+philosopher, and, if he go beyond them both, no other human skill can
+match him. For as for the divine, with all reverence it is ever to be
+excepted, not only for having his scope as far beyond any of these,
+as eternity exceedeth a moment, but even for passing each of these in
+themselves.
+
+And for the lawyer, though _Jus_ be the daughter of Justice, and Justice
+the chief of virtues, yet because he seeketh to make men good, rather
+_Formidine poenae_ than _Virtutis amore_ or to say righter, doth not
+endeavour to make men good, but that their evil hurt not others: having
+no care, so he be a good citizen, how bad a man he be. Therefore, as
+our wickedness maketh him necessary, and necessity maketh him
+honourable, so is he not in the deepest truth to stand in rank with
+these, who all endeavour to take naughtiness away, and plant goodness
+even in the secretest cabinet of our souls. And these four are all
+that any way deal in that consideration of men's manners, which being
+the supreme knowledge, they that best breed it deserve the best
+commendation.
+
+The philosopher therefore and the historian are they which would win
+the goal: the one by precept, the other by example. But both not having
+both, do both halt. For the philosopher, setting down with thorny
+argument the bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be
+conceived, that one that hath no other guide but him shall wade in him
+till he be old before he shall find sufficient cause to be honest; for
+his knowledge standeth so upon the abstract and general, that happy
+is that man who may understand him, and more happy that can apply what
+he doth understand.
+
+On the other side, the historian wanting the precept is so tied, not
+to what should be, but to what is, to the particular truth of things,
+and not to the general reason of things, that his example draweth no
+necessary consequence, and therefore a less fruitful doctrine.
+
+Now doth the peerless poet perform both: for whatsoever the philosopher
+saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it in some one,
+by whom he presupposeth it was done. So as he coupleth the general
+notion with the particular example. A perfect picture, I say; for he
+yieldeth to the powers of the mind an image of that whereof the
+philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description: which doth neither
+strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul so much as that other
+doth.
+
+For as in outward things, to a man that had never seen an elephant or
+a rhinoceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their shapes,
+colour, bigness, and particular marks; or of a gorgeous palace, the
+architecture; with declaring the full beauties, might well make the
+hearer able to repeat, as it were by rote, all he had heard, yet should
+never satisfy his inward conceits, with being witness to itself of a
+true lively knowledge: but the same man, as soon as he might see those
+beasts well painted, or the house well in model, should straightway
+grow without need of any description, to a judicial comprehending of
+them: so no doubt the philosopher with his learned definition, be it
+of virtue, vices, matters of public policy or private government,
+replenisheth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom: which,
+notwithstanding, lie dark before the imaginative and judging power,
+if they be not illuminated or figured forth by the speaking picture
+of poesy.
+
+Tully taketh much pains and many times not without poetical helps, to
+make us know the force love of our country hath in us. Let us but hear
+old Anchises speaking in the midst of Troy's flames, or see Ulysses,
+in the fulness of all Calypso's delights, bewail his absence from
+barren and beggarly Ithaca. Anger, the Stoics say, was a short madness;
+let but Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage, killing and whipping sheep
+and oxen, thinking them the army of Greeks, with their chieftains
+Agamemnon and Menelaus, and tell me if you have not a more familiar
+insight into anger, than finding in the schoolmen his genus and
+difference. See whether wisdom and temperance in Ulysses and Diomedes,
+valour in Achilles, friendship in Nisus and Euryalus, even to an
+ignorant man, carry not an apparent shining: and contrarily, the remorse
+of conscience in Odipus, the soon repenting pride of Agamemnon, the
+self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus, the violence of ambition
+in the two Theban brothers, the sour-sweetness of revenge in Medea,
+and to fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho and our Chaucer's Pandar, so
+expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades. And
+finally, all virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural seats
+laid to the view, that we seem not to hear of them, but clearly to see
+through them. But even in the most excellent determination of goodness,
+what philosopher's counsel can so readily detect a prince, as the
+feigned Cyrus in Xenophon? or a virtuous man in all fortunes, as Aneas
+in Virgil? or a whole commonwealth, as the way of Sir Thomas More's
+Utopia? I say the way; because where Sir Thomas More erred, it was the
+fault of the man and not of the poet; for that way of patterning a
+commonwealth was most absolute, though he perchance hath not so
+absolutely performed it: for the question is, whether the feigned image
+of poesy, or the regular instruction of philosophy, hath the more force
+in teaching; wherein if the philosophers have more rightly showed
+themselves philosophers than the poets have obtained to the high top
+of their profession, as in truth
+
+                   _Mediocribus esse poetis,
+  Non Di, non homines, non concessere columna:_
+
+it is I say again, not the fault of the art, but that by few men that
+art can be accomplished.
+
+Certainly, even our Saviour Christ could as well have given the moral
+commonplaces of uncharitableness and humbleness, as the divine narration
+of Dives and Lazarus: or of disobedience and mercy, as that heavenly
+discourse of the lost child and the gracious Father; but that his
+through-searching wisdom knew the estate of Dives burning in hell, and
+of Lazarus being in Abraham's bosom, would more constantly (as it were)
+inhabit both the memory and judgment. Truly, for myself, meseems I see
+before my eyes the lost child's disdainful prodigality, turned to envy
+a swine's dinner: which by the learned divines are thought not
+historical acts, but instructing parables. For conclusion, I say the
+philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned
+only can understand him: that is to say, he teacheth them that are
+already taught, but the poet is the food for the tenderest stomachs,
+the poet is indeed the right popular philosopher, whereof Asop's tales
+give good proof: whose pretty allegories, stealing under the formal
+tales of beasts, make many, more beastly than beasts, begin to hear
+the sound of virtue from these dumb speakers.
+
+But now may it be alleged that, if this imagining of matters be so fit
+for the imagination, then must the historian needs surpass, who bringeth
+you images of true matters, such as indeed were done, and not such as
+fantastically or falsely may be suggested to have been done. Truly
+Aristotle himself in his discourse of poesy, plainly determineth this
+question, saying that poetry is _philosophoteron_ and _spoudaioteron_,
+that is to say, it is more philosophical, and more studiously serious,
+than history. His reason is, because poesy dealeth with _katholou,_
+that is to say, with the universal consideration; and the history with
+_kathekaston,_ the particular; now saith he, the universal weighs what
+is fit to be said or done, either in likelihood or necessity (which
+the poesy considereth in his imposed names), and the particular only
+marks, whether Alcibiades did, or suffered, this or that. Thus far
+Aristotle: which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason.
+For indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a
+particular act truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is
+to be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have Vespasian's
+picture right as he was, or at the painter's pleasure nothing
+resembling. But if the question be for your own use and learning,
+whether it be better to have it set down as it should be, or as it
+was: then certainly is more doctrinable the feigned Cyrus of Xenophon
+than the true Cyrus in Justin: and the feigned Aeneas in Virgil, than
+the right Aeneas in Dares Phrygius.
+
+As to a lady that desired to fashion her countenance to the best grace,
+a painter should more benefit her to portrait a most sweet face, writing
+Canidia upon it, than to paint Canidia as she was, who, Horace sweareth,
+was foul and ill-favoured.
+
+If the poet do his part aright, he will show you in Tantalus, Atreus,
+and such like, nothing that is not to be shunned. In Cyrus, Aeneas,
+Ulysses, each thing to be followed; where the historian, bound to tell
+things as things were, cannot be liberal (without he will be poetical)
+of a perfect pattern: but as in Alexander or Scipio himself, show
+doings, some to be liked, some to be misliked. And then how will you
+discern what to follow but by your own discretion, which you had without
+reading Quintus Curtius? And whereas a man may say, though in universal
+consideration of doctrine the poet prevaileth, yet that the history,
+in his saying such a thing was done, doth warrant a man more in that
+he shall follow; the answer is manifest: that if he stand upon that
+was; as if he should argue, because it rained yesterday, therefore it
+should rain to-day; then indeed it hath some advantage to a gross
+conceit: but if he know an example only informs a conjectured
+likelihood, and so go by reason, the poet doth so far exceed him, as
+he is to frame his example to that which is most reasonable: be it in
+warlike, politic, or private matters; where the historian in his bare
+Was, hath many times that which we call fortune, to overrule the best
+wisdom. Many times he must tell events, whereof he can yield no cause:
+or if he do, it must be poetical; for that a feigned example hath as
+much force to teach, as a true example (for as for to move, it is
+clear, sith the feigned may be tuned to the highest key of passion),
+let us take one example, wherein a poet and a historian do concur.
+
+Herodotus and Justin do both testify that Zopyrus, King Darius' faithful
+servant, seeing his master long resisted by the rebellious Babylonians,
+feigned himself in extreme disgrace of his king: for verifying of
+which, he caused his own nose and ears to be cut off: and so flying
+to the Babylonians, was received: and for his known valour so far
+credited, that he did find means to deliver them over to Darius. Much
+like matter doth Livy record of Tarquinius and his son. Xenophon
+excellently feigneth such another stratagem, performed by Abradates
+in Cyrus' behalf. Now would I fain know, if occasion be presented unto
+you, to serve your prince by such an honest dissimulation, why you do
+not as well learn it of Xenophon's fiction, as of the others' verity:
+and truly so much the better, as you shall save your nose by the
+bargain: for Abradates did not counterfeit so far. So then the best
+of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or
+faction, whatsoever counsel, policy or war stratagem, the historian
+is bound to recite, that may the poet (if he list) with his imitation
+make his own; beautifying it both for further teaching, and more
+delighting, as it pleaseth him: having all, from Dante his heaven, to
+his hell, under the authority of his pen. Which if I be asked what
+poets have done so, as I might well name some, yet say I, and say
+again, I speak of the art, and not of the artificer.
+
+Now to that which commonly is attributed to the praise of histories,
+in respect of the notable learning is gotten by marking the success,
+as though therein a man should see virtue exalted, and vice punished;
+truly that commendation is peculiar to poetry, and far off from history.
+For indeed poetry ever setteth virtue so out in her best colours,
+making fortune her well-waiting handmaid, that one must needs be
+enamoured of her. Well may you see Ulysses in a storm and in other
+hard plights; but they are but exercises of patience and magnanimity,
+to make them shine the more in the near-following prosperity. And of
+the contrary part, if evil men come to the stage, they ever go out (as
+the tragedy writer answered, to one that misliked the show of such
+persons) so manacled, as they little animate folks to follow them. But
+the historian, being captived to the truth of a foolish world, is many
+times a terror from well-doing, and an encouragement to unbridled
+wickedness.
+
+For see we not valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? The just Phocion,
+and the accomplished Socrates, put to death like traitors? The cruel
+Severus live prosperously? The excellent Severus miserably murdered?
+[Footnote: Of the two Severi, the earlier, who persecuted the
+Christians, was emperor 194-210; the later (Alexander), who favoured
+them, 222-235.] Sulla and Marius dying in their beds? Pompey and Cicero
+slain then, when they would have thought exile a happiness?
+
+See we not virtuous Cato driven to kill himself? and rebel Caesar so
+advanced, that his name yet after 1600 years, lasteth in the highest
+honour? And mark but even Caesar's own words of the fore-named Sulla,
+(who in that only did honestly, to put down his dishonest tyranny,)
+_literas nescivit_, as if want of learning caused him to do well. He
+meant it not by poetry, which not content with earthly plagues deviseth
+new punishments in hell for tyrants: nor yet by philosophy, which
+teacheth _occidendos esse_: but no doubt by skill in history: for that
+indeed can afford your Cypselus, Periander, Phalaris, Dionysius, and
+I know not how many more of the same kennel, that speed well enough
+in their abominable unjustice or usurpation. I conclude therefore that
+he excelleth history, not only in furnishing the mind with knowledge,
+but in setting it forward, to that which deserveth to be called and
+accounted good: which setting forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed
+setteth the laurel crown upon the poet as victorious, not only of the
+historian, but over the philosopher: howsoever in teaching it may be
+questionable.
+
+For suppose it be granted (that which I suppose with great reason may
+be denied) that the philosopher, in respect of his methodical
+proceeding, doth teach more perfectly than the poet; yet do I think
+that no man is so much _philophilosophos_, [Footnote: in love with
+philosophy.] as to compare the philosopher, in moving, with the poet.
+
+And that moving is of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this
+appear: that it is well-nigh the cause and the effect of teaching. For
+who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught? and
+what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of
+moral doctrine) as that it moveth one to do that which it doth teach?
+for as Aristotle saith, it is not _Gnosis_ but _Praxis_ [Footnote: not
+knowledge but action.] must be the fruit. And how _Praxis_ cannot be,
+without being moved to practice, it is no hard matter to consider.
+
+The philosopher showeth you the way, he informeth you of the
+particularities; as well of the tediousness of the way, as of the
+pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey is ended, as of the
+many by-turnings that may divert you from your way. But this is to no
+man but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive studious
+painfulness. Which constant desire, whosoever hath in him, hath already
+passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholding to the
+philosopher but for the other half. Nay truly, learned men have
+learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much overmastered
+passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward
+light each mind hath in itself is as good as a philosopher's book;
+seeing in nature we know it is well to do well, and what is well, and
+what is evil, although not in the words of art, which philosophers
+bestow upon us. For out of natural conceit, the philosophers drew it;
+but to be moved to do that which we know, or to be moved with desire
+to know, _Hoc opus, hic labor est_.
+
+Now therein of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to
+the human conceits), is our poet the Monarch. For he doth not only
+show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will
+entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should
+lie through a fair vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of grapes:
+that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further. He beginneth
+not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with
+interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he cometh
+to you with words sent in delightful proportion, either accompanied
+with, or prepared for the well enchanting skill of music; and with a
+tale forsooth he cometh unto you: with a tale which holdeth children
+from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And pretending no more,
+doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue: even
+as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things, by hiding
+them in such other as have a pleasant taste: which, if one should begin
+to tell them the nature of Aloes or Rhubarb they should receive, would
+sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth. So it is
+in men (most of which are childish in the best things, till they be
+cradled in their graves), glad they will be to hear the tales of
+Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, and Aneas; and hearing them, must needs
+hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice; which, if
+they had been barely, that is to say philosophically, set out, they
+would swear they be brought to school again.
+
+That imitation, whereof poetry is, hath the most conveniency to Nature
+of all other, insomuch, that as Aristotle saith, those things which
+in themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural monsters, are
+made in poetical imitation delightful. Truly I have known men that,
+even with reading _Amadis de Gaule_ (which God knoweth wanteth much
+of a perfect poesy), have found their hearts moved to the exercise of
+courtesy, liberality, and especially courage.
+
+Who readeth Aneas carrying old Anchises on his back, that wisheth not
+it were his fortune to perform so excellent an act? Whom do not the
+words of Turnus move? (the tale of Turnus having planted his image in
+the imagination)--
+
+             _Fugientem hoec terra videbit;
+   Usque adeone mori miserum est?_
+
+Where the philosophers, as they scorn to delight, so must they be
+content little to move: saving wrangling, whether virtue be the chief,
+or the only good: whether the contemplative, or the active life do
+excel: which Plato and Boethius well knew, and therefore made Mistress
+Philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy. For even
+those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school name, and know
+no other good but _indulgere genio_, and therefore despise the austere
+admonitions of the philosopher, and feel not the inward reason they
+stand upon, yet will be content to be delighted: which is all the good
+fellow poet seemeth to promise: and so steal to see the form of goodness
+(which seen they cannot but love) ere themselves be aware, as if they
+took a medicine of cherries. Infinite proofs of the strange effects
+of this poetical invention might be alleged; only two shall serve,
+which are so often remembered, as I think all men know them.
+
+The one of Menenius Agrippa, who when the whole people of Rome had
+resolutely divided themselves from the Senate, with apparent show of
+utter ruin: though he were (for that time) an excellent orator, came
+not among them upon trust of figurative speeches, or cunning
+insinuations: and much less, with far-fetched maxims of philosophy,
+which (especially if they were Platonic [Footnote: Alluding to the
+inscription over the door of Plato's Academy: _No entrance here without
+Geometry._)], they must have learned geometry before they could well
+have conceived: but forsooth he behaves himself, like a homely, and
+familiar poet. He telleth them a tale, that there was a time, when all
+the parts of the body made a mutinous conspiracy against the belly,
+which they thought devoured the fruits of each other's labour; they
+concluded they would let so unprofitable a spender starve. In the end,
+to be short (for the tale is notorious, and as notorious that it was
+a tale), with punishing the belly, they plagued themselves. This,
+applied by him, wrought such effect in the people, as I never read
+that ever words brought forth but then, so sudden and so good an
+alteration; for upon reasonable conditions, a perfect reconcilement
+ensued. The other is of Nathan the prophet, who when the holy David
+had so far forsaken God, as to confirm adultery with murder: when he
+was to do the tenderest office of a friend, in laying his own shame
+before his eyes, sent by God to call again so chosen a servant: how
+doth he it but by telling of a man, whose beloved lamb was ungratefully
+taken from his bosom? the application most divinely true, but the
+discourse itself feigned: which made David (I speak of the second and
+instrumental cause), as in a glass, to see his own filthiness, as that
+heavenly psalm of mercy well testifieth.
+
+By these therefore examples and reasons, I think it may be manifest,
+that the poet, with that same hand of delight, doth draw the mind more
+effectually than any other art doth; and so a conclusion not unfitly
+ensueth: that, as virtue is the most excellent resting-place for all
+worldly learning to make his end of, so poetry, being the most familiar
+to teach it, and most princely to move towards it, in the most excellent
+work is the most excellent workman. But I am content not only to
+decipher him by his works (although works in commendation or dispraise
+must ever hold an high authority), but more narrowly will examine his
+parts: so that (as in a man) though altogether he may carry a presence
+full of majesty and beauty, perchance in some one defectious piece we
+may find a blemish: now in his parts, kinds, or species (as you list
+to term them), it is to be noted, that some poesies have coupled
+together two or three kinds, as tragical and comical, whereupon is
+risen the tragi-comical. Some in the like manner have mingled prose
+and verse, as Sanazzar and Boethius. Some have mingled matters heroical
+and pastoral. But that cometh all to one in this question; for if
+severed they be good, the conjunction cannot be hurtful. Therefore
+perchance forgetting some, and leaving some as needless to be
+remembered, it shall not be amiss in a word to cite the special kinds,
+to see what faults may be found in the right use of them.
+
+Is it then the pastoral poem which is misliked? for perchance, where
+the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over. Is the poor pipe
+disdained, which sometime out of Melibeus's mouth, can show the misery
+of people under hard lords, or ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus,
+what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness
+of them that sit highest? Sometimes, under the pretty tales of wolves
+and sheep, it can include the whole considerations of wrong-doing and
+patience. Sometimes show, that contention for trifles can get but a
+trifling victory. Where perchance a man may see that even Alexander
+and Darius, when they strave who should be cock of this world's
+dunghill, the benefit they got, was that the after-livers may say,
+
+_Hac memini et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin;   Ex illo Corydon,
+Corydon est tempore nobis._ [Footnote: All these instances are taken
+from Virgil's _Eclogues_.]
+
+Or is it the lamenting Elegiac, which in a kind heart would move rather
+pity than blame, who bewails with the great philosopher Heraclitus the
+weakness of mankind, and the wretchedness of the world: who surely is
+to be praised, either for compassionate accompanying just causes of
+lamentation, or for rightly painting out how weak be the passions of
+woefulness. Is it the bitter, but wholesome Iambic [Footnote: Originally
+used by the Greeks for satire], which rubs the galled mind, in making
+shame the trumpet of villany, with bold and open crying out against
+naughtiness; or the satirist, who
+
+  _Omne vafer vitium ridenti tangit amico?_
+
+Who sportingly never leaveth, until he make a man laugh at folly, and
+at length ashamed, to laugh at himself: which he cannot avoid, without
+avoiding the folly. Who while
+
+  _Circum pracordia ludit_,
+
+giveth us to feel, how many headaches a passionate life bringeth us
+to. How when all is done,
+
+_Est Ulubris, animus si nos non deficit aquus_ [Footnote: _i.e._ The
+wise can find happiness even in a village.]_?_
+
+No perchance it is the comic, whom naughty play-makers and stage-
+keepers have justly made odious. To the argument of abuse [Footnote:
+To the argument that, because comedy is liable to abuse, it should
+therefore be prohibited altogether.], I will answer after. Only thus
+much now is to be said, that the comedy is an imitation of the common
+errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and
+scornful sort that may be. So as it is impossible that any beholder
+can be content to be such a one.
+
+Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right:
+and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even, so in the actions of
+our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a great foil
+to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy handle so in
+our private and domestical matters, as with hearing it we get as it
+were an experience, what is to be looked for of a niggardly Demea: of
+a crafty Davus: of a flattering Gnatho: of a vainglorious Thraso
+[Footnote: All characters in the Plays of Terence.]: and not only to
+know what effects are to be expected, but to know who be such, by the
+signifying badge given them by the comedian. And little reason hath
+any man to say that men learn evil by seeing it so set out: sith, as
+I said before, there is no man living but, by the force truth hath in
+nature, no sooner seeth these men play their parts, but wisheth them
+in Pistrinum [Footnote: the tread-mill.]: although perchance the sack
+of his own faults lie so behind his back, that he seeth not himself
+dance the same measure: whereto yet nothing can more open his eyes,
+than to find his own actions contemptibly set forth. So that the right
+use of comedy will (I think) by nobody be blamed, and much less of the
+high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and
+showeth forth the vicers [Footnote: sinners.], that are covered with
+tissue: that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest
+their tyrannical humours: that, with stirring the effects of admiration
+and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of this world, and upon
+how weak foundations golden roofs are builded. That maketh us know,
+
+  _Qui sceptra scevus duro imperio regit,
+  Timet timentes, metus in auctorem redit._
+
+But how much it can move, Plutarch yieldeth a notable testimony, of
+the abominable tyrant, Alexander Pheraus; from whose eyes, a tragedy
+well made and represented drew abundance of tears: who, without all
+pity, had murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood. So as
+he, that was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet could not
+resist the sweet violence of a tragedy.
+
+And if it wrought no further good in him, it was, that he in despite
+of himself withdrew himself from hearkening to that, which might mollify
+his hardened heart. But it is not the tragedy they do mislike: for it
+were too absurd to cast out so excellent a representation of whatsoever
+is most worthy to be learned. Is it the lyric that most displeaseth,
+who with his tuned lyre, and well accorded voice, giveth praise, the
+reward of virtue, to virtuous acts? who gives moral precepts and natural
+problems, who sometimes raiseth up his voice to the height of the
+heavens, in singing the lauds of the immortal God. Certainly I must
+confess my own barbarousness, I never heard the old song of Percy and
+Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet: and
+yet is it sung but by some blind crouder  [Footnote: fiddler.], with
+no rougher voice than rude style: which being so evil apparelled in
+the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed
+in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar? In Hungary I have seen it the
+manner at all feasts and other such meetings, to have songs of their
+ancestors' valour; which that right soldier-like nation think the
+chiefest kindlers of brave courage. The incomparable Lacedemonians did
+not only carry that kind of music ever with them to the field, but
+even at home, as such songs were made, so were they all content to be
+the singers of them, when the lusty men were to tell what they did,
+the old men what they had done, and the young men what they would do.
+And where a man may say that Pindar many times praiseth highly victories
+of small moment, matters rather of sport than virtue: as it may be
+answered, it was the fault of the poet, and not of the poetry; so
+indeed, the chief fault was in the time and custom of the Greeks, who
+set those toys at so high a price, that Philip of Macedon reckoned a
+horse-race won at Olympus, among his three fearful felicities. But as
+the inimitable Pindar often did, so is that kind most capable and most
+fit to awake the thoughts from the sleep of idleness, to embrace
+honourable enterprises.
+
+There rests the heroical, whose very name (I think) should daunt all
+backbiters; for by what conceit can a tongue be directed to speak evil
+of that which draweth with it no less champions than Achilles, Cyrus,
+Aneas, Turnus, Tydeus, and Rinaldo? who doth not only teach and move
+to a truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high and excellent
+truth? who maketh magnanimity and justice shine, throughout all misty
+fearfulness and foggy desires? who, if the saying of Plato and Tully
+be true, that who could see Virtue, would be wonderfully ravished with
+the love of her beauty, this man sets her out to make her more lovely
+in her holiday apparel, to the eye of any that will deign, not to
+disdain, until they understand. But if anything be already said in the
+defence of sweet poetry, all concurreth to the maintaining the heroical,
+which is not only a kind, but the best, and most accomplished kind of
+poetry. For as the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the
+mind, so the lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind with
+desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy. Only
+let Aneas be worn in the tablet of your memory, how he governeth himself
+in the ruin of his country, in the preserving his old father, and
+carrying away his religious ceremonies [Footnote: sacred vessels and
+household gods.]: in obeying the god's commandment to leave Dido,
+though not only all passionate kindness, but even the humane
+consideration of virtuous gratefulness, would have craved other of
+him. How in storms, how in sports, how in war, how in peace, how a
+fugitive, how victorious, how besieged, how besieging, how to strangers,
+how to allies, how to his enemies, how to his own: lastly, how in his
+inward self, and how in his outward government. And I think, in a mind
+not prejudiced with a prejudicating humour, he will be found in
+excellency fruitful: yea, even as Horace saith:
+
+  _Melius Chrysippo et Crantore_
+ [Footnote: A better teacher than the philosophers.].
+
+But truly I imagine, it falleth out with these poet-whippers, as with
+some good women, who often are sick, but in faith they cannot tell
+where. So the name of poetry is odious to them; but neither his cause,
+nor effects, neither the sum that contains him, nor the particularities
+descending from him, give any fast handle to their carping dispraise.
+
+Sith then poetry is of all human learning the most ancient, and of
+most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have taken
+their beginnings: sith it is so universal, that no learned nation doth
+despise it, nor no barbarous nation is without it: sith both Roman and
+Greek gave divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of
+making: and that indeed that name of making is fit for him; considering,
+that whereas other arts retain themselves within their subject, and
+receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet only bringeth his
+own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh
+matter for a conceit: sith neither his description, nor his end,
+containeth any evil, the thing described cannot be evil: sith his
+effects be so good as to teach goodness and to delight the learners:
+sith therein (namely, in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges),
+he doth not only far pass the historian, but for instructing is well-
+nigh comparable to the philosopher: and for moving, leaves him behind
+him: sith the Holy Scripture (wherein there is no uncleanness) hath
+whole parts in it poetical: and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed
+to use the flowers of it: sith all his kinds are not only in their
+united forms, but in their severed dissections fully commendable, I
+think (and think I think rightly), the laurel crown, appointed for
+triumphing captains, doth worthily (of all other learnings) honour the
+poet's triumph. But because we have ears as well as tongues, and that
+the lightest reasons that may be, will seem to weigh greatly, if nothing
+be put in the counter-balance: let us hear, and as well as we can
+ponder, what objections may be made against this art, which may be
+worthy, either of yielding or answering.
+
+First truly I note, not only in these _mysomousoi_ poet-haters, but
+in all that kind of people, who seek a praise by dispraising others,
+that they do prodigally spend a great many wandering words, in quips,
+and scoffs; carping and taunting at each thing, which, by stirring the
+spleen, may stay the brain from a through beholding the worthiness of
+the subject.
+
+Those kind of objections, as they are full of very idle easiness, sith
+there is nothing of so sacred a majesty, but that an itching tongue
+may rub itself upon it: so deserve they no other answer, but instead
+of laughing at the jest, to laugh at the jester. We know a playing wit
+can praise the discretion of an ass; the comfortableness of being in
+debt, and the jolly commodity of being sick of the plague. So of the
+contrary side, if we will turn Ovid's verse:
+
+  _Ut lateat virtus proximitate mali,_
+
+that good lie hid in nearness of the evil: Agrippa will be as merry
+in showingthe vanity of science, as Erasmus was in commending of folly.
+Neither shall any man or matter escape some touch of these smiling
+railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than
+the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant
+fault-finders, who will correct the verb, before they understand the
+noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own: I
+would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom. So
+as the best title in true English they get with their merriments is
+to be called good fools: for so have our grave forefathers ever termed
+that humorous kind of jesters: but that which giveth greatest scope
+to their scorning humours is rhyming and versing. It is already said
+(and as I think, truly said) it is not rhyming and versing that maketh
+poesy. One may be a poet without versing, and a versifier without
+poetry. But yet, presuppose it were inseparable (as indeed it seemeth
+Scaliger judgeth) truly it were an inseparable commendation. For if
+_oratio_ next to _ratio_, speech next to reason, be the greatest gift
+bestowed upon mortality: that cannot be praiseless, which doth most
+polish that blessing of speech, which considers each word, not only
+(as a man may say) by his forcible quality, but by his best measured
+quantity, carrying even in themselves, a harmony: without (perchance)
+number, measure, order, proportion, be in our time grown odious. But
+lay aside the just praise it hath, by being the only fit speech for
+music (music, I say, the most divine striker of the senses): thus much
+is undoubtedly true, that if reading be foolish, without remembering,
+memory being the only treasurer of knowledge, those words which are
+fittest for memory, are likewise most convenient for knowledge.
+
+Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory,
+the reason is manifest. The words (besides their delight, which hath
+a great affinity to memory), being so set, as one word cannot be lost,
+but the whole work fails: which accuseth itself, calleth the remembrance
+back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth it. Besides, one word
+so as it were begetting another, as be it in rhyme or measured verse,
+by the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower. Lastly,
+even they that have taught the art of memory have showed nothing so
+apt for it, as a certain room divided into many places well and
+thoroughly known. Now, that hath the verse in effect perfectly: every
+word having his natural seat, which seat must needs make the words
+remembered. But what needeth more in a thing so known to all men? Who
+is it that ever was a scholar, that doth not carry away some verses
+of Virgil, Horace, or Cato [Footnote: The moralist. His elegiacs are
+constantly quoted by medieval writers, _e.g._ in _Piers Plowman_.],
+which in his youth he learned, and even to his old age serve him for
+hourly lessons? But the fitness it hath for memory is notably proved
+by all delivery of arts: wherein for the most part, from grammar to
+logic, mathematic, physic, and the rest, the rules chiefly necessary
+to be borne away are compiled in verses. So that, verse being in itself
+sweet and orderly, and being best for memory, the only handle of
+knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can speak against it. Now
+then go we to the most important imputations laid to the poor poets;
+for aught I can yet learn, they are these: first, that there being
+many other more fruitful knowledges, a man might better spend his time
+in them, than in this. Secondly, that it is the mother of lies. Thirdly,
+that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires:
+with a siren's sweetness, drawing the mind to the serpent's tail of
+sinful fancy. And herein especially, comedies give the largest field
+to err, as Chaucer saith: how both in other nations and in ours, before
+poets did soften us, we were full of courage, given to martial
+exercises; the pillars of man-like liberty, and not lulled asleep in
+shady idleness with poets' pastimes. And lastly, and chiefly, they cry
+out with an open mouth, as if they outshot Robin Hood, that Plato
+banished them out of his commonwealth. Truly, this is much, if there
+be much truth in it. First to the first: that a man might better spend
+his time, is a reason indeed: but it doth (as they say) but _petere
+principium_. For if it be as I affirm, that no learning is so good as
+that which teacheth and moveth to virtue; and that none can both teach
+and move thereto so much as poetry: then is the conclusion manifest,
+that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed.
+And certainly, though a man should grant their first assumption, it
+should follow (methinks) very unwillingly, that good is not good,
+because better is better. But I still and utterly deny that there is
+sprung out of earth a more fruitful knowledge. To the second, therefore,
+that they should be the principal liars; I answer paradoxically, but
+truly I think, truly; that of all writers under the sun, the poet is
+the least liar: and though he would, as a poet can scarcely be a liar,
+the astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape,
+when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars.
+
+How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things
+good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of
+souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry? And no less
+of the rest, which take upon them to affirm. Now, for the poet, he
+nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie
+is to affirm that to be true which is false. So as the other artists,
+and especially the historian, affirming many things, can in the cloudy
+knowledge of mankind hardly escape from many lies. But the poet (as
+I said before) never affirmeth. The poet never maketh any circles about
+your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he writes.
+He citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry
+calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention: in truth,
+not labouring to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should
+not be: and therefore, though he recount things not true, yet because
+he telleth them not for true, he lieth not, without we will say that
+Nathan lied in his speech, before alleged, to David. Which as a wicked
+man durst scarce say, so think I, none so simple would say, that Asop
+lied in the tales of his beasts: for who thinks that Asop wrote it for
+actually true, were well worthy to have his name chronicled among the
+beasts he writeth of.
+
+What child is there, that coming to a play, and seeing Thebes written
+in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes? If
+then a man can arrive, at that child's age, to know that the poet's
+persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and not stories
+what have been, they will never give the lie to things not
+affirmatively, but allegorically and figuratively, written. And
+therefore as in history, looking for truth, they go away full fraught
+with falsehood: so in poesy, looking for fiction, they shall use the
+narration but as an imaginative groundplot of a profitable invention.
+
+But hereto is replied that the poets give names to men they write of,
+which argueth a conceit of an actual truth, and so, not being true,
+proves a falsehood. And doth the lawyer lie, then, when under the names
+of John a stile and John a noakes, he puts his case? But that is easily
+answered. Their naming of men is but to make their picture the more
+lively, and not to build any history: painting men, they cannot leave
+men nameless. We see we cannot play at chess, but that we must give
+names to our chessmen; and yet methinks he were a very partial champion
+of truth that would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend
+title of a bishop. The poet nameth Cyrus or Aneas no other way than
+to show what men of their fames, fortunes, and estates should do.
+
+Their third is, how much it abuseth men's wit, training it to wanton
+sinfulness and lustful love; for indeed that is the principal, if not
+the only abuse I can hear alleged. They say the comedies rather teach
+than reprehend amorous conceits. They say the lyric is larded with
+passionate sonnets. The elegiac weeps the want of his mistress. And
+that even to the heroical, Cupid hath ambitiously climbed. Alas, Love!
+I would thou couldst as well defend thyself as thou canst offend others.
+I would those on whom thou dost attend could either put thee away or
+yield good reason why they keep thee. But grant love of beauty to be
+a beastly fault, although it be very hard, sith only man and no beast
+hath that gift, to discern beauty. Grant that lovely name of love to
+deserve all hateful reproaches: although even some of my masters the
+philosophers spent a good deal of their lamp-oil in setting forth the
+excellency of it. Grant, I say, whatsoever they will have granted;
+that not only love, but lust, but vanity, but (if they list) scurrility,
+possesseth many leaves of the poet's books: yet think I, when this is
+granted, they will find their sentence may with good manners put the
+last words foremost; and not say that poetry abuseth man's wit, but
+that man's wit abuseth poetry.
+
+For I will not deny but that man's wit may make poesy (which should
+be _eikastike_, which some learned have defined, figuring forth good
+things) to be fantastic: which doth contrariwise infect the fancy with
+unworthy objects. As the painter, that should give to the eye either
+some excellent perspective or some fine picture fit for building or
+fortification, or containing in it some notable example, as Abraham
+sacrificing his son Isaac, Judith killing Holofernes, David fighting
+with Goliath, may leave those and please an ill-pleased eye with wanton
+shows of better hidden matters. But what, shall the abuse of a thing
+make the right use odious? Nay, truly, though I yield that poesy may
+not only be abused, but that, being abused by the reason of his sweet
+charming force, it can do more hurt than any other army of words: yet
+shall it be so far from concluding that the abuse should give reproach
+to the abused, that contrariwise it is a good reason that whatsoever
+being abused, doth most harm, being rightly used (and upon the right
+use each thing conceiveth his title) doth most good.
+
+Do we not see the skill of physic (the best rampire to our often-
+assaulted bodies), being abused, teach poison the most violent
+destroyer? Doth not knowledge of law, whose end is to even and right
+all things, being abused, grow the crooked fosterer of horrible
+injuries? Doth not (to go to the highest) God's word, abused, breed
+heresy? and His name abused, become blasphemy? Truly a needle cannot
+do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it
+cannot do much good. With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and
+with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country. So that, as
+in their calling poets the fathers of lies they say nothing: so in
+this their argument of abuse they prove the commendation.
+
+They allege herewith that, before poets began to be in price, our
+nation hath set their hearts' delight upon action and not upon
+imagination: rather doing things worthy to be written than writing
+things fit to be done. What that before time was, I think scarcely
+Sphinx can tell: sith no memory is so ancient that hath the precedence
+of poetry. And certain it is that, in our plainest homeliness, yet
+never was the Albion nation without poetry. Marry, this argument,
+though it be levelled against poetry, yet is it indeed a chain-shot
+against all learning, or bookishness, as they commonly term it. Of
+such mind were certain Goths, of whom it is written that, having in
+the spoils of a famous city taken a fair library, one hangman (belike
+fit to execute the fruits of their wits) who had murdered a great
+number of bodies, would have set fire on it. "No", said another very
+gravely, "take heed what you do, for while they are busy about these
+toys, we shall with more leisure conquer their countries."
+
+This indeed is the ordinary doctrine of ignorance, and many words
+sometimes I have heard spent in it; but because this reason is generally
+against all learning, as well as poetry; or rather, all learning but
+poetry: because it were too large a digression to handle, or at least
+too superfluous: (sith it is manifest that all government of action
+is to be gotten by knowledge, and knowledge best by gathering many
+knowledges, which is, reading), I only with Horace, to him that is of
+that opinion,
+
+  _Jubeo stultum esse libenter:_
+
+for as for poetry itself, it is the freest from this objection. For
+poetry is the companion of the camps.
+
+I dare undertake, Orlando Furioso or honest King Arthur will never
+displease a soldier; but the quiddity of _ens_ and _prima materia_
+will hardly agree with a corslet; and therefore, as I said in the
+beginning, even Turks and Tartars are delighted with poets. Homer, a
+Greek, flourished before Greece flourished. And if to a slight
+conjecture a conjecture may be opposed, truly it may seem that, as by
+him their learned men took almost their first light of knowledge, so
+their active men received their first motions of courage. Only
+Alexander's example may serve, who by Plutarch is accounted of such
+virtue that fortune was not his guide but his footstool; whose acts
+speak for him, though Plutarch did not: indeed, the Phoenix of warlike
+princes. This Alexander left his schoolmaster, living Aristotle, behind
+him, but took dead Homer with him; he put the philosopher Calisthenes
+to death for his seeming philosophical, indeed mutinous stubbornness.
+But the chief thing he ever was heard to wish for was that Homer had
+been alive. He well found he received more bravery of mind by the
+pattern of Achilles than by hearing the definition of fortitude; and
+therefore, if Cato misliked Fulvius for carrying Ennius with him to
+the field, it may be answered that, if Cato misliked it, the noble
+Fulvius liked it, or else he had not done it. For it was not the
+excellent Cato Uticensis (whose authority I would much more have
+reverenced), but it was the former [Footnote: Cato the Censor]: in
+truth, a bitter punisher of faults, but else a man that had never well
+sacrificed to the Graces. He misliked and cried out upon all Greek
+learning, and yet, being 80 years old, began to learn it. Belike,
+fearing that Pluto understood not Latin. Indeed, the Roman laws allowed
+no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers'
+roll; and therefore, though Cato misliked his unmustered person, he
+misliked not his work. And if he had, Scipio Nasica, judged by common
+consent the best Roman, loved him. Both the other Scipio brothers, who
+had by their virtues no less surnames than of Asia and Affrick, so
+loved him that they caused his body to be buried in their sepulchre.
+So as Cato, his authority being but against his person, and that
+answered with so far greater than himself, is herein of no validity.
+But now, indeed, my burden is great; now Plato his name is laid upon
+me, whom I must confess, of all philosophers, I have ever esteemed
+most worthy of reverence, and with great reason, sith of all
+philosophers he is the most poetical. Yet if he will defile the
+fountain, out of which his flowing streams have proceeded, let us
+boldly examine with what reasons he did it. First, truly, a man might
+maliciously object that Plato, being a philosopher, was a natural enemy
+of poets; for, indeed, after the philosophers had picked out of the
+sweet mysteries of poetry the right discerning true points of knowledge,
+they forthwith putting it in method, and making a school-art of that
+which the poets did only teach by a divine delightfulness, beginning
+to spurn at their guides like ungrateful 'prentices, were not content
+to set up shops for themselves, but sought by all means to discredit
+their masters. Which by the force of delight being barred them, the
+less they could overthrow them, the more they hated them. For, indeed,
+they found for Homer seven cities strove who should have him for their
+citizen: where many cities banished philosophers, as not fit members
+to live among them. For only repeating certain of Euripides' verses,
+many Athenians had their lives saved of the Syracusians: [Footnote:
+The story is told in _Balaustion's Adventure_.] when the Athenians
+themselves thought many philosophers unworthy to live.
+
+Certain poets, as Simonides and Pindarus had so prevailed with Hiero
+the first, that of a tyrant they made him a just king, where Plato
+could do so little with Dionysius, that he himself, of a philosopher,
+was made a slave. But who should do thus, I confess, should requite
+the objections made against poets, with like cavillation against
+philosophers; as likewise one should do, that should bid one read
+_Phaedrus_ or _Symposium_ in Plato, or the discourse of love in
+Plutarch, and see whether any poet do authorize abominable filthiness,
+as they do. Again, a man might ask out of what commonwealth Plato did
+banish them? in sooth, thence where he himself alloweth community of
+women: so as, belike, this banishment grew not for effeminate
+wantonness, sith little should poetical sonnets be hurtful, when a man
+might have what woman he listed. But I honour philosophical
+instructions, and bless the wits which bred them: so as they be not
+abused, which is likewise stretched to poetry.
+
+St. Paul himself, who yet (for the credit of poets) allegeth twice two
+poets, and one of them by the name of a prophet, setteth a watch-word
+upon philosophy, indeed upon the abuse. So doth Plato, upon the abuse,
+not upon poetry. Plato found fault, that the poets of his time filled
+the world with wrong opinions of the gods, making light tales of that
+unspotted essence; and therefore, would not have the youth depraved
+with such opinions. Herein may much be said, let this suffice: the
+poets did not induce such opinions, but did imitate those opinions
+already induced. For all the Greek stories can well testify, that the
+very religion of that time stood upon many and many-fashioned gods,
+not taught so by the poets, but followed, according to their nature
+of imitation. Who list, may read in Plutarch, the discourses of Isis,
+and Osiris, of the cause why oracles ceased, of the divine providence:
+and see, whether the theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams,
+which the poets superstitiously observed, and truly, (sith they had
+not the light of Christ,) did much better in it than the philosophers,
+who, shaking off superstition, brought in atheism. Plato therefore,
+(whose authority I had much rather justly construe, than unjustly
+resist,) meant not in general of poets, in those words of which Julius
+Scaliger saith _qua auctoritate barbari quidam atque hispidi abuti
+velint, ad poetas e republica exigendos_: but only meant, to drive out
+those wrong opinions of the Deity (whereof now, without further law,
+Christianity hath taken away all the hurtful belief) perchance (as he
+thought) nourished by the then esteemed poets. And a man need go no
+further than to Plato himself, to know his meaning: who in his dialogue
+called _Ion_, giveth high, and rightly divine commendation to poetry.
+So as Plato, banishing the abuse, not the thing, not banishing it but
+giving due honour unto it, shall be our patron, and not our adversary.
+For indeed I had much rather (sith truly I may do it) show their
+mistaking of Plato, (under whose lion's skin they would make an ass-like
+braying against poesy,) than go about to overthrow his authority, whom
+the wiser a man is, the more just cause he shall find to have in
+admiration: especially, sith he attributeth unto poesy more than myself
+do; namely to be a very inspiring of a divine force, far above man's
+wit; as in the aforenamed dialogue is apparent.
+
+Of the other side, who would show the honours have been by the best
+sort of judgments granted them, a whole sea of examples would present
+themselves. Alexanders, Caesars, Scipios, all favourers of poets.
+Lalius, called the Roman Socrates, himself a poet: so as part of
+_Heautontimorumenos_ in Terence was supposed to be made by him. And
+even the Greek Socrates, whom Apollo confirmed to be the only wise
+man, is said to have spent part of his old time in putting Asop's
+fables into verses. And therefore, full evil should it become his
+scholar Plato to put such words in his master's mouth against poets.
+But what need more? Aristotle writes the Art of Poesy: and why if it
+should not be written? Plutarch teacheth the use to be gathered of
+them, and how if they should not be read? And who reads Plutarch's
+either history or philosophy, shall find he trimmeth both their garments
+with guards of poesy. But I list not to defend poesy, with the help
+of her underling, historiography. Let it suffice, that it is a fit
+soil for praise to dwell upon: and what dispraise may set upon it is
+either easily overcome, or transformed into just commendation. So that,
+sith the excellencies of it may be so easily and so justly confirmed,
+and the low-creeping objections, so soon trodden down; it not being
+an art of lies, but of true doctrine: not of effeminateness, but of
+notable stirring of courage: not of abusing man's wit, but of
+strengthening man's wit: not banished, but honoured by Plato: let us
+rather plant more laurels, for to engarland our poets' heads, (which
+honour of being laureat, as besides them, only triumphant captains
+wear, is a sufficient authority, to show the price they ought to be
+had in,) than suffer the ill-favouring breath of such wrong-speakers,
+once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy.
+
+But sith I have run so long a career in this matter, methinks, before
+I give my pen a full stop, it shall be but a little more lost time,
+to inquire, why England, (the mother of excellent minds,) should be
+grown so hard a step-mother to poets, who certainly in wit ought to
+pass all other: sith all only proceedeth from their wit, being indeed
+makers of themselves, not takers of others. How can I but exclaim,
+
+  _Musa mihi causas memora, quo numine laso,_
+
+sweet poesy, that hath anciently had kings, emperors, senators, great
+captains, such as, besides a thousand others, David, Adrian, Sophocles,
+Germanicus, not only to favour poets, but to be poets; and of our
+nearer times, can present for her patrons, a Robert, king of Sicily,
+the great king Francis of France, King James of Scotland; such cardinals
+as Bembus, and Bibiena; such famous preachers and teachers, as Beza
+and Melancthon; so learned philosophers, as Fracastorius and Scaliger;
+so great orators, as Pontanus and Muretus; so piercing wits as George
+Buchanan; so grave counsellors, as besides many, but before all, that
+Hospital [Footnote: Michel de l'Hospital, Chancellor of France
+1560-1568, and the noble champion of tolerance in the evil days of
+Charles IX. He narrowly escaped with his life at the massacre of S.
+Bartholomew, and died a few months later] of France: than whom (I
+think) that realme never brought forth a more accomplished judgment:
+more firmly builded upon virtue; I say these, with numbers of others,
+not only to read others' poesies, but to poetise for others' reading:
+that poesy thus embraced in all other places, should only find, in our
+time, a hard welcome in England, I think the very earth lamenteth it,
+and therefore decketh our soil with fewer laurels than it was
+accustomed; for heretofore, poets have in England also flourished; and
+which is to be noted, even in those times, when the trumpet of Mars
+did sound loudest. And now, that an over-faint quietness should seem
+to strew the house [Footnote: pave the way.] for poets, they are almost
+in as good reputation as the mountebanks at Venice. Truly even that,
+as of the one side it giveth great praise to poesy, which like Venus
+(but to better purpose) hath rather be troubled in the net with Mars,
+than enjoy the homely quiet of Vulcan: so serves it for a piece of a
+reason, why they are less grateful to idle England, which now can
+scarce endure the pain of a pen. Upon this necessarily followeth, that
+base men with servile wits undertake it: who think it enough, if they
+can be rewarded of the printer. And so as Epaminondas is said, with
+the honour of his virtue, to have made an office, by his exercising
+it, which before was contemptible, to become highly respected: so
+these, no more but setting their names to it, by their own
+disgracefulness, disgrace the most graceful poesy. For now, as if all
+the Muses were got with child, to bring forth bastard poets, without
+any commission, they do post over the banks of Helicon, till they make
+the readers more weary than post-horses: while in the mean time, they
+
+  _Queis meliore luto finxit procordia Titan_,
+
+are better content, to suppress the outflowing of their wit, than by
+publishing them to be accounted knights of the same order. But I, that
+before ever I durst aspire unto the dignity am admitted into the company
+of the paper-blurrers, do find the very true cause of our wanting
+estimation, is want of desert: taking upon us to be poets, in despite
+of Pallas. Now, wherein we want desert were a thank-worthy labour to
+express: but if I knew, I should have mended myself. But I, as I never
+desired the title, so have neglected the means to come by it. Only
+overmastered by some thoughts, I yielded an inky tribute unto them.
+Marry, they that delight in poesy itself should seek to know what they
+do, and how they do; and especially, look themselves in an unflattering
+glass of reason, if they be inclinable unto it. For poesy must not be
+drawn by the ears, it must be gently led, or rather, it must lead.
+Which was partly the cause, that made the ancient-learned affirm, it
+was a divine gift, and no human skill: sith all other knowledges lie
+ready for any that hath strength of wit: a poet no industry can make,
+if his own genius be not carried unto it: and therefore is it an old
+proverb, _orator fit; poeta nascitur_. Yet confess I always, that as
+the fertilest ground must be manured, so must the highest-flying wit
+have a Dadalus to guide him. That Dadalus, they say, both in this and
+in other, hath three wings, to bear itself up into the air of due
+commendation: that is, art, imitation, and exercise. But these, neither
+artificial rules, nor imitative patterns, we much cumber ourselves
+withal. Exercise indeed we do, but that, very fore-backwardly: for
+where we should exercise to know, we exercise as having known: and so
+is our brain delivered of much matter, which never was begotten by
+knowledge. For, there being two principal parts, matter to be expressed
+by words, and words to express the matter, in neither, we use art, or
+imitation, rightly. Our matter is _quodlibet_ indeed, though wrongly
+performing Ovid's verse,
+
+  _Quicquid conabar dicere versus erat:_
+
+never marshalling it into an assured rank, that almost the readers
+cannot tell where to find themselves.
+
+Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his _Troilus and Cresseid_; of
+whom, truly I know not whether to marvel more, either that he in that
+misty time, could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age walk
+so stumblingly after him. Yet had he great wants, fit to be forgiven,
+in so reverent antiquity. I account the _Mirror of Magistrates_
+[Footnote: A long series of Poems, published in the early part of
+Elizabeth's reign. The two first, and best, pieces in it--The
+_Induction_ and _Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham_--were by
+Sackville, joint-author of the earliest English Tragedy, _Gorboduc_.]
+meetly furnished of beautiful parts; and in the Earl of Surrey's
+_Lyrics_, many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble
+mind. The _Shepherd's Calendar_ hath much poetry in his eclogues:
+indeed worthy the reading, if I be not deceived. That same framing of
+his style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, sith neither
+Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazar in Italian, did
+affect it. Besides these, do I not remember to have seen but few (to
+speak boldly) printed, that have poetical sinews in them: for proof
+whereof, let but most of the verses be put in prose, and then ask the
+meaning; and it will be found that one verse did but beget another,
+without ordering at the first, what should be at the last: which becomes
+a confused mass of words, with a tingling sound of rhyme, barely
+accompanied with reason.
+
+Our tragedies and comedies, (not without cause cried out against,)
+observing rules neither of honest civility nor of skilful poetry,
+excepting _Gorboduc_, (again, I say, of those that I have seen,) which
+notwithstanding as it is full of stately speeches, and well-sounding
+phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of
+notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain
+the very end of poesy: yet in truth it is very defectious in the
+circumstances; which grieveth me, because it might not remain as an
+exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty both in place and time,
+the two necessary companions of all corporal actions. For where the
+stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time
+presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle's precept and common
+reason, but one day: there is both many days, and many places,
+inartificially imagined. But if it be so in _Gorboduc_, how much more
+in all the rest? where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa
+of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when
+he cometh in, must ever begin with telling where he is: or else, the
+tale will not be conceived. Now ye shall have three ladies walk to
+gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By
+and by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are
+to blame, if we accept it not for a rock.
+
+Upon the back of that, comes out a hideous monster, with fire and
+smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a
+cave. While in the meantime, two armies fly in, represented with four
+swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for
+a pitched field? Now, of time they are much more liberal, for ordinary
+it is that two young princes fall in love. After many traverses, she
+is got with child, delivered of a fair boy, he is lost, groweth a man,
+falls in love, and is ready to get another child, and all this in two
+hours' space: which how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine,
+and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified: and at this
+day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in. Yet will some bring
+in an example of _Eunuchus_ in Terence, that containeth matter of two
+days, yet far short of twenty years. True it is, and so was it to be
+played in two days, and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though
+Plautus hath in one place done amiss, let us hit with him, and not
+miss with him. But they will say, how then shall we set forth a story,
+which containeth both many places, and many times? And do they not
+know that a tragedy is tied to the laws of poesy, and not of history?
+not bound to follow the story, but having liberty, either to feign a
+quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical
+convenience. Again, many things may be told, which cannot be showed,
+if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing. As for
+example, I may speak (though I am here) of Peru, and in speech digress
+from that, to the description of Calicut: but in action, I cannot
+represent it without Pacolet's horse: and so was the manner the ancients
+took, by some _nuncius_ to recount things done in former time, or other
+place. Lastly, if they will represent a history, they must not (as
+Horace saith) begin _ab ovo_: but they must come to the principal point
+of that one action, which they will represent. By example this will
+be best expressed. I have a story of young Polydorus, delivered for
+safety's sake, with great riches, by his father Priamus to Polymnestor,
+king of Thrace, in the Trojan war time: he after some years, hearing
+the overthrow of Priamus, for to make the treasure his own, murdereth
+the child: the body is taken up by Hecuba: she the same day findeth
+a slight to be revenged most cruelly of the tyrant: where now would
+one of our tragedy writers begin, but with the delivery of the child?
+Then should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I know not how many
+years, and travel numbers of places. But where doth Euripides?
+[Footnote: In his _Hecuba_.] Even with the finding of the body, leaving
+the rest to be told by the spirit of Polydorus. This need no further
+to be enlarged, the dullest wit may conceive it. But besides these
+gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor
+right comedies: mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so
+carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a
+part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion. So
+as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness,
+is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius [Footnote:
+In his Latin Romance, the _Metamorphoses_, or the _Golden Ass_.] did
+somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not
+represented in one moment: and I know, the ancients have one or two
+examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath _Amphitryo_: but if we
+mark them well, we shall find, that they never, or very daintily, match
+hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out, that having indeed no right
+comedy, in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but
+scurrility, unworthy of any chaste ears: or some extreme show of
+doltishness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else:
+where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the
+tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration. But
+our comedians think there is no delight without laughter, which is
+very wrong; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it
+not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but
+well may one thing breed both together: nay, rather in themselves,
+they have as it were a kind of contrariety: for delight we scarcely
+do, but in things that have a convenience to ourselves, or to the
+general nature: laughter almost ever cometh of things most
+disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Delight hath a joy in it,
+either permanent, or present. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.
+
+For example, we are ravished with delight to see a fair woman, and yet
+are far from being moved to laughter. We laugh at deformed creatures,
+wherein certainly we cannot delight. We delight in good chances, we
+laugh at mischances; we delight to hear the happiness of our friends,
+or country; at which he were worthy to be laughed at, that would laugh;
+we shall contrarily laugh sometimes, to find a matter quite mistaken,
+and go down the hill against the bias, in the mouth of some such men,
+as for the respect of them one shall be heartily sorry, yet he cannot
+choose but laugh; and so is rather pained, than delighted, with
+laughter. Yet deny I not, but that they may go well together; for as
+in Alexander's picture well set out we delight without laughter, and
+in twenty mad antics we laugh without delight: so in Hercules, painted
+with his great beard, and furious countenance, in woman's attire,
+spinning at Omphale's commandment, it breedeth both delight and
+laughter. For the representing of so strange a power in love, procureth
+delight: and the scornfulness of the action stirreth laughter. But I
+speak to this purpose, that all the end of the comical part be not
+upon such scornful matters as stir laughter only: but mixed with it,
+that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault
+even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle,
+is that they stir laughter in sinful things; which are rather execrable
+than ridiculous: or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than
+scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar, or
+a beggarly clown? or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers,
+because they speak not English so well as we do? what do we learn,
+sith it is certain
+
+  _Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
+  Quam quod ridiculos homines facit:_
+
+but rather a busy-loving courtier; a heartless threatening Thraso; a
+self-wise-seeming schoolmaster; an awry-transformed traveller? These
+if we saw walk in stage names, which we play naturally, therein were
+delightful laughter, and teaching delightfulness: as in the other, the
+tragedies of Buchanan do justly bring forth a divine admiration. But
+I have lavished out too many words of this play-matter. I do it because,
+as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used
+in England, and none can be more pitifully abused. Which like an
+unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother poesy's
+honesty to be called in question. Other sorts of poetry almost have
+we none, but that lyrical kind of songs and sonnets: which Lord, if
+he gave us so good minds, how well it might be employed, and with how
+heavenly fruit, both private and public, in singing the praises of the
+immortal beauty, the immortal goodness of that God, who giveth us hands
+to write, and wits to conceive, of which we might well want words, but
+never matter, of which we could turn our eyes to nothing, but we should
+ever have new budding occasions. But truly many of such writings, as
+come under the banner of un-resistible love, if I were a mistress,
+would never persuade me they were in love: so coldly they apply fiery
+speeches, as men that had rather read lovers' writings, and so caught
+up certain swelling phrases, which hang together, like a man which
+once told me, the wind was at north, west, and by south, because he
+would be sure to name winds enough, than that in truth they feel those
+passions, which easily (as I think) may be betrayed by that same
+forcibleness, or _energeia_ (as the Greeks call it) of the writer. But
+let this be a sufficient, though short note, that we miss the right
+use of the material point of poesy.
+
+Now, for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may term it)
+diction, it is even well worse. So is that honey-flowing matron
+eloquence apparelled, or rather disguised, in a courtezan-like painted
+affectation: one time with so far-fetched words, they may seem monsters,
+but must seem strangers to any poor Englishman; another time, with
+coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to follow the method of
+a dictionary: another time, with figures and flowers, extremely
+winter-starved. But I would this fault were only peculiar to versifiers,
+and had not as large possession among prose-printers; and (which is
+to be marvelled) among many scholars; and (which is to be pitied) among
+some preachers. Truly I could wish, if at least I might be so bold to
+wish in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity, the diligent imitators
+of Tully and Demosthenes (most worthy to be imitated) did not so much
+keep _Nizolian_ [Footnote: Nizolius, the compiler of a lexicon to the
+works of Cicero.] paper-books of their figures and phrases, as by
+attentive translation (as it were) devour them whole, and make them
+wholly theirs: for now they cast sugar and spice upon every dish that
+is served to the table; like those Indians, not content to wear earrings
+at the fit and natural place of the ears, but they will thrust jewels
+through their nose and lips because they will be sure to be fine.
+
+Tully, when he was to drive out Catiline, as it were with a thunderbolt
+of eloquence, often used that figure of repetition, _Vivit? Vivit;
+immo in Senatum venit_, &c. Indeed, inflamed with a well-grounded rage,
+he would have his words (as it were) double out of his mouth: and so
+do that artificially, which we see men do in choler naturally. And we,
+having noted the grace of those words, hale them in sometime to a
+familiar epistle, when it were to too much choler to be choleric. Now
+for similitudes, in certain printed discourses, I think all herbarists,
+all stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes, are rifled up, that they
+come in multitudes, to wait upon any of our conceits: [Footnote: An
+allusion to the style of Lyly and the Euphuists.] which certainly is
+as absurd a surfeit to the ears as is possible: for the force of a
+similitude, not being to prove anything to a contrary disputer, but
+only to explain to a willing hearer, when that is done, the rest is
+a most tedious prattling: rather over-swaying the memory from the
+purpose whereto they were applied, than any whit informing the judgment,
+already either satisfied, or by similitudes not to be satisfied. For
+my part, I do not doubt, when Antonius and Crassus, the great
+forefathers of Cicero in eloquence, the one (as Cicero testifieth of
+them) pretended not to know art, the other, not to set by it: because
+with a plain sensibleness they might win credit of popular ears; which
+credit is the nearest step to persuasion: which persuasion is the chief
+mark of oratory; I do not doubt (I say) but that they used these tracks
+very sparingly, which who doth generally use, any man may see doth
+dance to his own music: and so be noted by the audience more careful
+to speak curiously, than to speak truly.
+
+Undoubtedly (at least to my opinion undoubtedly), I have found in
+divers smally learned courtiers a more sound style, than in some
+professors of learning: of which I can guess no other cause, but that
+the courtier, following that which by practice he findeth fittest to
+nature, therein (though he know it not) doth according to art, though
+not by art: where the other, using art to show art, and not to hide
+art (as in these cases he should do), flyeth from nature, and indeed
+abuseth art.
+
+But what? methinks I deserve to be pounded, for straying from poetry
+to oratory: but both have such an affinity in this wordish
+consideration, that I think this digression will make my meaning receive
+the fuller understanding: which is not to take upon me to teach poets
+how they should do, but only finding myself sick among the rest, to
+show some one or two spots of the common infection, grown among the
+most part of writers: that, acknowledging ourselves somewhat awry, we
+may bend to the right use both of matter and manner; whereto our
+language giveth us great occasion, being indeed capable of any excellent
+exercising of it. I know, some will say it is a mingled language. And
+why not so much the better, taking the best of both the other?
+[Footnote: Both the Teutonic and the Romance elements.] Another will
+say it wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise, that it wanteth
+not grammar; for grammar it might have, but it needs it not; being so
+easy of itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases,
+genders, moods, and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of
+Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his
+mother-tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceits
+of the mind, which is the end of speech, that hath it equally with any
+other tongue in the world: and is particularly happy, in compositions
+of two or three words together, near the Greek, far beyond the Latin:
+which is one of the greatest beauties can be in a language.
+
+Now, of versifying there are two sorts, the one ancient, the other
+modern: the ancient marked the quantity of each syllable, and according
+to that framed his verse: the modern, observing only number (with some
+regard of the accent), the chief life of it standeth in that like
+sounding of the words, which we call rhyme. Whether of these be the
+most excellent, would bear many speeches. The ancient (no doubt) more
+fit for music, both words and tune observing quantity, and more fit
+lively to express divers passions, by the low and lofty sound of the
+well-weighed syllable. The latter likewise, with his rhyme, striketh
+a certain music to the ear: and in fine, sith it doth delight, though
+by another way, it obtains the same purpose: there being in either
+sweetness, and wanting in neither majesty. Truly the English, before
+any other vulgar language I know, is fit for both sorts: for, for the
+ancient, the Italian is so full of vowels, that it must ever be cumbered
+with elisions. The Dutch, [Footnote: Sidney probably means what we
+should call German.] so of the other side with consonants, that they
+cannot yield the sweet sliding fit for a verse. The French, in his
+whole language, hath not one word, that hath his accent in the last
+syllable saving two, called _Antepenultima_, and little more hath the
+Spanish: and therefore, very gracelessly may they use _Dactyls_. The
+English is subject to none of these defects.
+
+Now, for the rhyme, though we do not observe quantity, yet we observe
+the accent very precisely: which other languages either cannot do, or
+will not do so absolutely. That _Caesura_, or breathing place in the
+midst of the verse, neither Italian nor Spanish have; the French, and
+we, never almost fail of. Lastly, even the very rhyme itself, the
+Italian cannot put in the last syllable, by the French named the
+masculine rhyme, but still in the next to the last, which the French
+call the female, or the next before that, which the Italians termed
+_Sdrucciola_. [Footnote: Hence the Italian verse is always of eleven,
+not ten, syllables.] The example of the former, is _Buono_, _Suono_;
+of the _Sdrucciola_, _Femina_, _Semina_. The French, on the other side,
+hath both the male, as _Bon_, _Son_, and the female, as _Plaise_,
+_Taise_. But the _Sdrucciola_ he hath not: where English hath all
+three, as _Due_, _True_, _Father_, _Rather_, _Motion_, _Potion_ with
+much more which might be said, but that I find already, the triflingness
+of this discourse is much too much enlarged. So that sith the
+ever-praiseworthy poesy is full of virtue-breeding delightfulness, and
+void of no gift, that ought to be in the noble name of learning: sith
+the blames laid against it are either false, or feeble: sith the cause
+why it is not esteemed in England, is the fault of poet-apes, not
+poets: sith lastly, our tongue is most fit to honour poesy, and to be
+honoured by poesy, I conjure you all, that have had the evil luck to
+read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the nine Muses,
+no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy: no more to laugh at
+the name of poets, as though they were next inheritors to fools: no
+more to jest at the reverend title of a rhymer: but to believe with
+Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecians'
+Divinity. To believe with Bembus, that they were first bringers in of
+all civility. To believe with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts
+can sooner make you an honest man, than the reading of Virgil. To
+believe with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it pleased
+the heavenly Deity, by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to
+give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, natural and moral,
+and _Quid non?_ To believe with me, that there are many mysteries
+contained in poetry, which of purpose were written darkly, lest by
+profane wits it should be abused. To believe with Landin, that they
+are so beloved of the Gods, that whatsoever they write proceeds of a
+divine fury. Lastly, to believe themselves, when they tell you they
+will make you immortal, by their verses.
+
+Thus doing, your name shall flourish in the printers' shops; thus
+doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface; thus doing, you
+shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all, you shall dwell
+upon superlatives. Thus doing, though you be _libertino patre natus_,
+you shall suddenly grow _Herculis proles_:
+
+  _Si quid mea carmina possunt._
+
+Thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix, or Virgil's
+Anchises. But if (fie of such a but) you be born so near the dull
+making Cataphract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music
+of poetry, if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift
+itself up, to look to the sky of poetry: or rather, by a certain
+rustical disdain, will become such a mome [Footnote: scorner.], as to
+be a _momus_ of poetry: then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's
+ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses (as Bubonax was)
+to hang himself, nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in
+Ireland: yet thus much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all
+poets, that, while you live, you live in love, and never get favour,
+for lacking skill of a sonnet: and when you die, your memory die from
+the earth, for want of an epitaph.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+(1631-1700)
+
+II. PREFACE TO THE FABLES.
+
+
+The following _Preface_ belongs to the last few months of Dryden's
+life (1700), and introduces the collection, mainly of translations and
+adaptations, to which he gave the title of _Fables_ Apart from
+_Alexander's Feast_ (written in 1697), the most notable pieces in this
+collection were the versions of Chaucer's _Knightes Tale_ and _Nonne
+Prestes Tale_, and of three stories to be found in Boccaccio _Sigismunda
+and Guiscardo_, _Cymon and Iphigenia_, _Theodore and Honoria_. The
+Preface is memorable for its critical judgments on Homer, Virgil, and
+Ovid, still more memorable for its glowing praise of Chaucer. It closes
+as it was fitting that the last work of Dryden should close, with an
+apology, full of manliness and dignity, for the licentiousness of his
+comedies. For his short-comings in this matter he had lately been
+attacked by Collier, and in his reply he more than wins back any esteem
+that he may have lost by his transgression.
+
+
+It is with a poet, as with a man who designs to build, and is very
+exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand; but, generally
+speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short in the
+expense he first intended. He alters his mind as the work proceeds,
+and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought
+when he began. So has it happened to me. I have built a house, where
+I intended but a lodge; yet with better success than a certain nobleman,
+who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he
+had contrived.
+
+From translating the first of Homer's _Iliads_ (which I intended as
+an essay to the whole work) I proceeded to the translation of the
+twelfth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, because it contains, among
+other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the Trojan
+war. Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax
+and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not baulk them. When I had
+compassed them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth
+book (which is the masterpiece of the whole _Metamorphoses_), that I
+enjoined myself the pleasing task of rendering it into English. And
+now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into
+a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some
+beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the
+_Hunting of the Boar_, _Cinyras and Myrrha_, the good-natured story
+of _Baucis and Philemon_, with the rest, which I hope I have translated
+closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had
+in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent
+of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious
+and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age, if I may
+properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this
+concluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the
+reign of Queen Elizabeth; great masters in our language, and who saw
+much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately
+followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller
+of Fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other
+families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer
+was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two
+hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me that
+Spenser was his original, and many besides myself have heard our famous
+Waller [Footnote: "He first made writing easily an art"--was Dryden's
+verdict on Waller.--_English Garner_, iii. 492.] own that he derived
+the harmony of his numbers from the _Godfrey of Bulloigne_, which was
+turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.
+
+But to return. Having done with Ovid for this time, it came into my
+mind that our old English poet, Chaucer, in many things resembled him,
+and that with no disadvantage on the side of the modern author, as I
+shall endeavour to prove when I compare them; and as I am, and always
+have been, studious to promote the honour of my native country, so I
+soon resolved to put their merits to the trial, by turning some of the
+Canterbury Tales into our language, as it is now refined; for by this
+means, both the poets being set in the same light, and dressed in the
+same English habit, story to be compared with story, a certain judgment
+may be made betwixt them by the reader, without obtruding my opinion
+on him. Or if I seem partial to my countryman, and predecessor in the
+laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few; and besides many of the
+learned, Ovid has almost all the beaux, and the whole fair sex, his
+declared patrons. Perhaps I have assumed somewhat more to myself than
+they allow me, because I have adventured to sum up the evidence; but
+the readers are the jury, and their privilege remains entire, to decide
+according to the merits of the cause, or, if they please, to bring it
+to another hearing before some other court.
+
+In the meantime, to follow the thread of my discourse (as thoughts,
+according to Mr. Hobbes, have always some connection), so from Chaucer
+I was led to think on Boccace, who was not only his contemporary, but
+also pursued the same studies; wrote novels in prose, and many works
+in verse; particularly is said to have invented the octave rhyme, or
+stanza of eight lines, which ever since has been maintained by the
+practice of all Italian writers, who are, or at least assume the title
+of Heroic Poets; he and Chaucer, among other things, had this in common,
+that they refined their mother tongue; but with this difference, that
+Dante had began to file their language, at least in verse, before the
+time of Boccace, who likewise received no little help from his master
+Petrarch. But the reformation of their prose was wholly owing to Boccace
+himself, who is yet the standard of purity in the Italian tongue,
+though many of his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time
+it must needs happen. Chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our
+learned Mr. Rymer) first adorned and amplified our barren tongue from
+the Provencal, [Footnote: No one now believes this. An excellent
+discussion of the subject will be found in Professor Lounsbury's
+_Studies in Chaucer_, ii. 429-458.] which was then the most polished
+of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated
+by that great critic, who deserves no little commendation from us, his
+countrymen. For these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius in
+Chaucer and Boccace, I resolved to join them in my present work, to
+which I have added some original papers of my own, which, whether they
+are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most improper
+judge, and therefore I leave them wholly to the mercy of the reader.
+I will hope the best, that they will not be condemned; but if they
+should, I have the excuse of an old gentleman, who, mounting on
+horseback before some ladies, when I was present, got up somewhat
+heavily, but desired of the fair spectators that they would count
+four-score-and-eight before they judged him. By the mercy of God, I
+am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my
+limbs; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine. I
+think myself as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my soul, excepting
+only my memory, which is not impaired to any great degree; and if I
+lose not more of it, I have no great reason to complain. What judgment
+I had, increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they
+are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to
+choose or to reject; to run them into verse, or to give them the other
+harmony of prose. I have so long studied and practised both, that they
+are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me. In short, though
+I may lawfully plead some part of the old gentleman's excuse, yet I
+will reserve it till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains
+of allowance for the faults of this my present work, but those which
+are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader
+with the shortness of time in which I writ it, or the several intervals
+of sickness: they who think too well of their own performances, are
+apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost
+them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the
+reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a
+longer time to make their works more perfect, and why they had so
+despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested
+stuff upon them, as if they deserved no better.
+
+With this account of my present undertaking, I conclude the first part
+of this discourse: in the second part, as at a second sitting, though
+I alter not the draught, I must touch the same features over again,
+and change the dead colouring of the whole. In general, I will only
+say, that I have written nothing which savours of immorality or
+profaneness; at least, I am not conscious to myself of any such
+intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or
+a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my
+inadvertency; if the searchers find any in the cargo, let them be
+staved or forfeited, like contrabanded goods; at least, let their
+authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and
+not of my own manufacture. On the other side, I have endeavoured to
+choose such fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of
+them some instructive moral, which I could prove by induction, but the
+way is tedious; and they leap foremost into sight, without the reader's
+trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm, with a safe
+conscience, that I had taken the same care in all my former writings;
+for it must be owned, that supposing verses are never so beautiful or
+pleasing, yet if they contain anything which shocks religion, or good
+manners, they are at best what Horace says of good numbers without
+good sense:
+
+  _Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae._
+
+Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other
+right of self-defence, where I have been wrongfully accused, and my
+sense wire-drawn into blasphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a
+religious lawyer, [Footnote: Jeremy Collier. See conclusion of the
+_Preface_.] in a late pleading against the stage; in which he mixes
+truth with falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating
+strongly, that something may remain.
+
+I resume the thread of my discourse with the first of my translation,
+which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God to give me
+longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the
+whole _Ilias_; provided still that I meet with those encouragements
+from the public, which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with
+some cheerfulness. And this I dare assure the world beforehand, that
+I have found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil (though
+I say not the translation will be less laborious). For the Grecian is
+more according to my genius than the Latin poet. In the works of the
+two authors we may read their manners and inclinations, which are
+wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was
+violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was
+propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his
+thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of
+expressions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed
+him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined; so
+that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun
+heroic poetry; for nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman
+poem is but the second part of the _Ilias_; a continuation of the same
+story, and the persons already formed; the manners of Aeneas are those
+of Hector superadded to those which Homer gave him. The Adventures of
+Ulysses in the _Odysseis_ are imitated in the first six books of
+Virgil's _Aeneis_; and though the accidents are not the same (which
+would have argued him of a servile copying, and total barrenness of
+invention), yet the seas were the same in which both the heroes
+wandered; and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of
+Calypso. The six latter books of Virgil's poem are the four and twenty
+Iliads contracted; a quarrel occasioned by a lady, a single combat,
+battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not this in derogation to
+Virgil, neither do I contradict anything which I have formerly said
+in his just praise: for his Episodes are almost wholly of his own
+invention; and the form which he has given to the telling, makes the
+tale his own, even though the original story had been the same. But
+this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to design; and if
+invention be the first virtue of an Epic poet, then the Latin poem can
+only be allowed the second place. Mr. Hobbes, in the preface to his
+own bald translation of the _Ilias_ (studying poetry as he did
+mathematics, when it was too late), Mr. Hobbes, I say, begins the
+praise of Homer where he should have ended it. He tells us that the
+first beauty of an Epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the
+choice of words, and harmony of numbers; now the words are the colouring
+of the work, which in the order of nature is the last to be considered.
+The design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts are all
+before it; where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants
+or is imperfect in the imitation of human life; which is in the very
+definition of a poem. Words, indeed, like glaring colours, are the
+first beauties that arise, and strike the sight: but if the draught
+be false or lame, the figures ill-disposed, the manners obscure or
+inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours are
+but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best. Neither
+Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties; but in
+this last, which is expression, the Roman poet is at least equal to
+the Grecian, as I have said elsewhere; supplying the poverty of his
+language by his musical ear, and by his diligence. But to return: our
+two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and
+sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them
+excel in their several ways is, that each of them has followed his own
+natural inclination, as well in forming the design, as in the execution
+of it. The very heroes show their authors; Achilles is hot, impatient,
+revengeful, _Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer,_ &c. Aeneas
+patient, considerate, careful of his people, and merciful to his
+enemies; ever submissive to the will of heaven, _quo fata trahunt,
+retrahuntque, sequamur_. I could please myself with enlarging on this
+subject, but am forced to defer it to a fitter time. From all I have
+said I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer being
+more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according to the temper of
+the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. One warms
+you by degrees; the other sets you on fire all at once, and never
+intermits his heat. 'T is the same difference which Longinus makes
+betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and Tully. One
+persuades, the other commands. You never cool while you read Homer,
+even not in the second book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen);
+but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has
+made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine. From thence
+he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it in less
+compass than two months. This vehemence of his, I confess, is more
+suitable to my temper; and therefore I have translated his first book
+with greater pleasure than any part of Virgil; but it was not a pleasure
+without pains: the continual agitations of the spirits must needs be
+a weakening of any constitution, especially in age; and many pauses
+are required for refreshment betwixt the heats; the _Iliad_ of itself
+being a third part longer than all Virgil's works together.
+
+This is what I thought needful in this place to say of Homer. I proceed
+to Ovid and Chaucer, considering the former only in relation to the
+latter. With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer
+the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were
+not unlike: both of them were well-bred, well-natured, amorous, and
+libertine, at least in their writings, it may be also in their lives.
+Their studies were the same, philosophy and philology. Both of them
+were known in astronomy, of which Ovid's books of the Roman feasts,
+and Chaucer's treatise of the Astrolabe, are sufficient witnesses. But
+Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius,
+and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness: neither
+were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables; and
+most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries,
+or their predecessors. Boccace's _Decameron_ was first published, and
+from thence our Englishman has borrowed many of his Canterbury tales;
+[Footnote: It is doubtful whether Chaucer had any knowledge of the
+_Decameron_.] yet that of Palamon and Arcite was written in all
+probability by some Italian wit in a former age, as I shall prove
+hereafter. The tale of Grizild was the invention of Petrarch; by him
+sent to Boccace, from whom it came to Chaucer. Troilus and Cressida
+was also written by a Lombard author [Footnote: Boccaccio himself.],
+but much amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified;
+the genius of our countrymen in general being rather to improve an
+invention than to invent themselves, as is evident not only in our
+poetry, but in many of our manufactures.
+
+I find I have anticipated already, and taken up from Boccace before
+I come to him; but there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper
+of most kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no
+matter how they pay it afterwards; besides, the nature of a preface
+is rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned
+from the practice of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to
+Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them built
+on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something of his
+own, as the _Wife of Bath's Tale, The Cock and the Fox_, which I have
+translated, and some others, I may justly give our countryman the
+precedence in that part, since I can remember nothing of Ovid which
+was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners, under which name
+I comprehend the passions, and, in a larger sense, the descriptions
+of persons, and their very habits; for an example, I see Baucis and
+Philemon as perfectly before me, as if some ancient painter had drawn
+them; and all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, their humours,
+their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped
+with them at the Tabard in Southwark; yet even there too the figures
+in Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better light: which
+though I have not time to prove, yet I appeal to the reader, and am
+sure he will clear me from partiality. The thoughts and words remain
+to be considered in the comparison of the two poets; and I have saved
+myself one half of that labour, by owning that Ovid lived when the
+Roman tongue was in its meridian, Chaucer in the dawning of our
+language; therefore that part of the comparison stands not on an equal
+foot, any more than the diction of Ennius and Ovid, or of Chaucer and
+our present English. The words are given up as a post not to be defended
+in our poet, because he wanted the modern art of fortifying. The
+thoughts remain to be considered, and they are to be measured only by
+their propriety, that is, as they flow more or less naturally from the
+persons described, on such and such occasions. The vulgar judges, which
+are nine parts in ten of all nations, who call conceits and jingles
+wit, who see Ovid full of them, and Chaucer altogether without them,
+will think me little less than mad, for preferring the Englishman to
+the Roman; yet, with their leave, I must presume to say, that the
+things they admire are only glittering trifles, and so far from being
+witty, that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because they are
+unnatural. Would any man, who is ready to die for love, describe his
+passion like Narcissus? Would he think of _inopem me copia fecit_, and
+a dozen more of such expressions, poured on the neck of one another,
+and signifying all the same thing? If this were wit, was this a time
+to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the agony of death? This is
+just John Littlewit in _Bartholomew Fair_, [Footnote: Jonson's play
+of that name, act i. sc. i.] who had a conceit (as he tells you) left
+him in his misery; a miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet
+should endeavour to raise pity; but instead of this, Ovid is tickling
+you to laugh. Virgil never made use of such machines, when he was
+moving you to commiserate the death of Dido: he would not destroy what
+he was building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust
+in the pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more
+reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had altered his
+character, but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and
+resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this occasion?
+He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his death-bed. He had
+complained he was farther off from possession by being so near, and
+a thousand such boyisms, which Chaucer rejected as below the dignity
+of the subject. They, who think otherwise, would by the same reason
+prefer Lucan and Ovid to Homer and Virgil, and Martial to all four of
+them. As for the turn of words, in which Ovid particularly excels all
+poets, they are sometimes a fault, and sometimes a beauty, as they are
+used properly or improperly; but in strong passions always to be
+shunned, because passions are serious, and will admit no playing. The
+French have a high value for them; and I confess, they are often what
+they call delicate, when they are introduced with judgment; but Chaucer
+writ with more simplicity, and followed nature more closely, than to
+use them. I have thus far, to the best of my knowledge, been an upright
+judge betwixt the parties in competition, not meddling with the design
+nor the disposition of it, because the design was not their own, and
+in the disposing of it they were equal. It remains that I say somewhat
+of Chaucer in particular.
+
+In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold
+him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer or the
+Romans Virgil: he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in
+all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he
+knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence
+which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients,
+excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is sunk in
+his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came
+in his way, but swept like a drag net great and small. [Footnote:
+Cowley. See Johnson's criticism of the metaphysical poets.] There was
+plenty enough, but the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of
+sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men: all
+this proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment; neither
+did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets,
+but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing, and perhaps knew
+it was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason,
+though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed
+a good writer; and for ten impressions, which his works have had in
+so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely
+purchased once a twelvemonth; for as my last Lord Rochester said,
+though somewhat profanely, "Not being of God, he could not stand".
+
+Chaucer followed nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond
+her; and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and _nimis poeta_
+if we believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and
+affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us,
+but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was
+_auribus istius temporis accommodata_: they who lived with him, and
+some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in
+our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his
+contemporaries; there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it,
+which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true I cannot
+go so far as he who published the last edition of him; [Footnote: That
+of 1687, which was little more than a reprint of Speght's editions
+(1598, 1602).] for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears,
+and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but
+nine, but this opinion is not worth confuting, it is so gross and
+obvious an error that common sense (which is a rule in everything but
+matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality
+of numbers in every verse, which we call Heroic, was either not known,
+or not always practised in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to
+produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half
+a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make
+otherwise. We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry,
+and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be
+children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of
+time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even after
+Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller
+and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till
+these last appeared. I need say little of his parentage, life, and
+fortunes: they are to be found at large in all the editions of his
+works. He was employed abroad, and favoured by Edward the Third, Richard
+the Second, and Henry the Fourth, and was poet, as I suppose, to all
+three of them. In Richard's time, I doubt, he was a little dipt in the
+rebellion of the commons, [Footnote: There is no evidence for this
+'doubt', though in his Balade, _Lak of Stedfastnesse_, Chaucer speaks
+plainly both to Richard and his subjects.] and being brother-in-law
+to John of Gaunt, it was no wonder if he followed the fortunes of that
+family, and was well with Henry the Fourth when he had deposed his
+predecessor. Neither is it to be admired that Henry, who was a wise
+as well as a valiant prince, who claimed by succession, and was sensible
+that his title was not sound, but was rightfully in Mortimer, who had
+married the heir of York; it was not to be admired, I say, if that
+great politician should be pleased to have the greatest wit of those
+times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises. Augustus
+had given him the example, by the advice of Maecenas, who recommended
+Virgil and Horace to him, whose praises helped to make him popular
+while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious to
+posterity. As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some
+little bias towards the opinions of Wickliff, after John of Gaunt his
+patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman:
+[Footnote: The Plowman's Tale, which was printed as one of the
+Canterbury Tales in Speght's editions. It is now rejected by all
+authorities.] yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against
+the vices of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their
+pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest deserved the lashes which
+he gave them, both in that and in most of his Canterbury tales: neither
+has his contemporary Boccace spared them. Yet both these poets lived
+in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which
+is given by particular priests, reflects not on the sacred function.
+Chaucer's Monk, his Canon, and his Friar took not from the character
+of his Good Parson. A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad
+priests. We are only to take care that we involve not the innocent
+with the guilty in the same condemnation. The good cannot be too much
+honoured, nor the bad too coarsely used; for the corruption of the
+best becomes the worst. When a clergyman is whipped his gown is first
+taken off, by which the dignity of his order is secured; if he be
+wrongfully accused, he has his action of slander; and it is at the
+poet's peril if he transgress the law. But they will tell us that all
+kinds of satire, though never so well-deserved by particular priests,
+yet brings the whole order into contempt. Is, then, the peerage of
+England anything dishonoured when a peer suffers for his treason? If
+he be libelled, or any way defamed, he has his _Scandalum Magnatum_
+to punish the offender. They who use this kind of argument seem to be
+conscious to themselves of somewhat which has deserved the poet's lash,
+and are less concerned for their public capacity than for their private;
+at least there is pride at the bottom of their reasoning. If the faults
+of men in orders are only to be judged among themselves, they are all
+in some sort parties; for, since they say the honour of their order
+is concerned in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will
+be impartial judges? How far I may be allowed [Footnote: As a Catholic.]
+to speak my opinion in this case I know not, but I am sure a dispute
+of this nature caused mischief in abundance betwixt a King of England
+and an Archbishop of Canterbury, one standing up for the laws of his
+land, and the other for the honour (as he called it) of God's Church,
+which ended in the murder of the prelate, and in the whipping of his
+majesty from post to pillar for his penance. The learned and ingenious
+Dr. Drake has saved me the labour of inquiring into the esteem and
+reverence which the priests have had of old; and I would rather extend
+than diminish any part of it: yet I must needs say, that when a priest
+provokes me without any occasion given him, I have no reason, unless
+it be the charity of a Christian, to forgive him. _Prior laesit_ is
+justification sufficient in the Civil Law. If I answer him in his own
+language, self-defence, I am sure, must be allowed me; and if I carry
+it farther, even to a sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulged
+to human frailty. Yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but that
+I have followed Chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have
+enlarged on that subject with some pleasure, reserving to myself the
+right, if I shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort of
+priests, such as are more easily to be found than the good parson;
+such as have given the last blow to Christianity in this age, by a
+practice so contrary to their doctrine. But this will keep cold till
+another time. In the meanwhile, I take up Chaucer where I left him.
+He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature,
+because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the
+compass of his Canterbury tales the various manners and humours (as
+we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a single
+character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished
+from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very
+physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described
+their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them. The
+matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited
+to their different educations, humours, and callings that each of them
+would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious
+characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their
+discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their
+breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his
+persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as
+Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of
+the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook
+are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the
+mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed wife of Bath.
+But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before
+me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow.
+'Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's
+plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us,
+as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still
+remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by
+other names than those of Monks and Friars and Canons, and Lady Abbesses
+and Nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature,
+though everything is altered.
+
+May I have leave to do myself the justice (since my enemies will do
+me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet that they
+will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man), may
+I have leave, I say, to inform my reader that I have confined my choice
+to such tales of Chaucer as savour nothing of immodesty? If I had
+desired more to please than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the
+Shipman, the Merchant, the Summoner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath,
+in the prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends
+and readers as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But
+I will no more offend against good manners; I am sensible, as I ought
+to be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings, and make what
+reparation I am able by this public acknowledgment. If anything of
+this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I am so far
+from defending it that I disown it. _Totum hoc indictum volo_. Chaucer
+makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking, and Boccace
+makes the like; but I will follow neither of them. Our countryman, in
+the end of his characters, before the Canterbury tales, thus excuses
+the ribaldry, which is very gross in many of his novels.
+
+  But first, I pray you of your courtesie,
+  That ye ne arrette it nought my villanie,
+  Though that I plainly speak in this matere
+  To tellen yon her words, and eke her chere:
+  Ne though I speak her wordes properly,
+  For this ye knowen al so well as I,
+  Who-so shall tell a tale after a man,
+  He mote rehearse as nye as ever he can
+  Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
+  All speke he never so rudely and large.
+  Or elles he mot telle his tale untrue.
+  Or feine things, or finde wordes new:
+  He may not spare, although he were his brother,
+  He mot as well say o word as another,
+  Christ spake himself full broad in holy writ,
+  And well ye wot no villany is it.
+  Eke Plato saith, who so that can him rede,
+  The wordes mote be cousin to the dede.
+
+Yet if a man should have inquired of Boccace or of Chaucer, what need
+they had of introducing such characters where obscene words were proper
+in their mouths, but very indecent to be heard; I know not what answer
+they could have made; for that reason, such tale shall be left untold
+by me. You have here a specimen of Chaucer's language, which is so
+obsolete, that his sense is scarce to be understood; and you have
+likewise more than one example of his unequal numbers, [Footnote: The
+lines have been corrected in the text, and may easily be seen to be
+perfectly metrical.] which were mentioned before. Yet many of his
+verses consist of ten syllables, and the words not much behind our
+present English: as, for example, these two lines, in the description
+of the carpenter's young wife:--
+
+  Wincing she was, as is a jolly colt,
+  Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.
+
+I have almost done with Chaucer, when I have answered some objections
+relating to my present work. I find some people are offended that I
+have turned these tales into modern English; because they think them
+unworthy of my pains, and look on Chaucer as a dry, old-fashioned wit,
+not worth reviving. I have often heard the late Earl of Leicester say,
+that Mr. Cowley himself was of that opinion; who, having read him over
+at my lord's request, declared he had no taste of him. I dare not
+advance my opinion against the judgment of so great an author: but I
+think it fair, however, to leave the decision to the public. Mr. Cowley
+was too modest to set up for a dictator; and being shocked perhaps
+with his old style, never examined into the depth of his good sense.
+Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polished ere
+he shines. I deny not, likewise, that, living in our early times he
+writes not always of a piece, but sometimes mingles trivial things
+with those of greater moment. Sometimes also, though not often, he
+runs riot, like Ovid, and knows not when he has said enough. But there
+are more great wits besides Chaucer, whose fault is their excess of
+conceits, and those ill sorted. An author is not to write all he can,
+but only all he ought. Having observed this redundancy in Chaucer (as
+it is an easy matter for a man of ordinary parts to find a fault in
+one of greater), I have not tied myself to a literal translation; but
+have often omitted what I judged unnecessary, or not of dignity enough
+to appear in the company of better thoughts. I have presumed farther,
+in some places, and added somewhat of my own where I thought my author
+was deficient, and had not given his thoughts their true lustre, for
+want of words in the beginning of our language. And to this I was the
+more emboldened, because (if I may be permitted to say it of myself)
+I found I had a soul congenial to his, and that I had been conversant
+in the same studies. Another poet, in another age, may take the same
+liberty with my writings; if at least they live long enough to deserve
+correction. It was also necessary sometimes to restore the sense of
+Chaucer, which was lost or mangled in the errors of the press: let
+this example suffice at present; in the story of Palamon and Arcite,
+where the temple of Diana is described, you find these verses, in all
+the editions of our author:
+
+  There saw I Dane turned into a tree,
+  I mean not the goddess Diane,
+  But Venus daughter, which that hight Dane:
+
+Which, after a little consideration, I knew was to be reformed into
+this sense, that Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was turned into a
+tree. I durst not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some future Milbourn
+should arise, and say, I varied from my author, because I understood
+him not.
+
+But there are other judges who think I ought not to have translated
+Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion: they suppose
+there is a certain veneration due to his old language; and that it is
+a little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are
+farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in
+this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly
+be lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this
+opinion was that excellent person, whom I mentioned, the late Earl of
+Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as Mr. Cowley despised him. My
+lord dissuaded me from this attempt (for I was thinking of it some
+years before his death), and his authority prevailed so far with me,
+as to defer my undertaking while he lived, in deference to him: yet
+my reason was not convinced with what he urged against it. If the first
+end of a writer be to be understood, then as his language grows
+obsolete, his thoughts must grow obscure: _multa renascentur quae nunc
+cecidere; cadentque, quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
+quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi_. When an ancient
+word for its sound and significancy deserves to be revived, I have
+that reasonable veneration for antiquity, to restore it. All beyond
+this is superstition. Words are not like landmarks, so sacred as never
+to be removed; customs are changed, and even statutes are silently
+repealed, when the reason ceases for which they were enacted. As for
+the other part of the argument, that his thoughts will lose of their
+original beauty, by the innovation of words; in the first place, not
+only their beauty but their being is lost where they are no longer
+understood, which is the present case. I grant that something must be
+lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense
+will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maimed,
+when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few. How few are
+there who can read Chaucer, so as to understand him perfectly! And if
+imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure. 'Tis not for the
+use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these pains with him:
+let them neglect my version because they have no need of it. I made
+it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they,
+when that poetry and sense is put into words which they understand.
+I will go farther, and dare to add, that what beauties I lose in some
+places, I give to others which had them not originally; but in this
+I may be partial to myself; let the reader judge, and I submit to his
+decision. Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them, who,
+because they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of
+their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers
+do their grandam gold, only to look on it themselves, and hinder others
+from making use of it. In some I seriously protest, that no man ever
+had, or can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer, than myself. I
+have translated some part of his works, only that I might perpetuate
+his memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen. If I have
+altered him anywhere for the better, I must at the same time acknowledge
+that I could have done nothing without him: _Facile est inventis
+addere_, is no great commendation; and I am not so vain to think I
+have deserved a greater. I will conclude what I have to say of him
+singly, with this one remark: a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a
+kind of correspondence with some authors of the fair sex in France,
+has been informed by them that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old
+as Sibyl, and inspired like her by the same god of poetry, is at this
+time translating Chaucer into modern French. From which I gather that
+he has been formerly translated into the old Provencal (for how she
+should come to understand old English I know not). But the matter of
+fact being true, it makes me think that there is something in it like
+fatality; that, after certain periods of time, the fame and memory of
+great wits should be renewed, as Chaucer is both in France and England.
+If this be wholly chance, 'tis extraordinary, and I dare not call it
+more for fear of being taxed with superstition.
+
+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 of _Palamon and Arcite_, which is of the Epic kind, and perhaps
+not much inferior to the _Ilias_ or the _Aeneis_. 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 of _Absalom 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: His _Short View of the
+Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_ (1698) was largely
+directed against Dryden. See the account of it given in Macaulay's
+_Comic 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 the _Custom 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON.
+
+(1709-1784.)
+
+III. ON THE METAPHYSICAL POETS.
+
+
+The criticism of the 'metaphysical poets' occurs in the Life of Cowley,
+published as one of the _Lives of the Poets_ in 1780. The name
+'metaphysical poetry' was first devised by Dryden, in his _Essay 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 below
+Donne 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 of _discordia
+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 on _Knowledge_:
+
+  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 date
+  Of thine, like Meleager's fate.
+  The antiperistasis of age
+  More 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 one
+  To 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 grows
+    A 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 made
+  A mithridate, whose operation
+    Keeps 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 not
+    Debtor 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 true
+    This bravery is, since these times shew'd me you.
+                    --_Donne_.
+
+Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon Man as a
+Microcosm:
+
+  If men be worlds, there is in every one
+  Something to answer in some proportion
+  All the world's riches: and in good men, this
+  Virtue, 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.
+
+
+TO A LADY, WHO WROTE POESIES FOR RINGS.
+
+  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 accidents
+  Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
+  If from one subject they t' another move:
+  My members then, the father members were
+  From 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, here
+    Rages 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 owe
+    To 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 death
+  Shall 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 ball
+  A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
+  An 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 overflow
+  This 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 so
+  They 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 see
+  All, since the being of all things is He,
+  Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
+  Things, in proportion fit, by perspective
+  Deeds 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 fly
+      Incumbency?
+  To sell thyself dost thou intend
+      By 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 repay
+  As 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 paws
+  Tear 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.
+
+        OF HIS MISTRESS BATHING.
+
+  The fish around her crowded, as they do
+  To 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 clear
+    Among 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 herein
+  Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;
+    Which, ever since that charm, hath been
+  As hard as that which grav'd it was.
+                     --_Donne_.
+
+Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling.
+
+       ON AN INCONSTANT WOMAN.
+
+  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.
+
+  PHYSICK AND CHIRURGERY FOR A LOVER.
+
+  Gently, ah gently, madam, touch
+    The 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_.
+
+
+  THE WORLD AND A CLOCK.
+
+  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 look
+  Of life and motion; and with equal art
+  Made 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 ore
+  Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
+  Yet why should hallow'd vestals' sacred shrine
+  Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
+  These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be
+  Than a few embers, for a deity.
+
+    Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
+  No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:
+  He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
+  Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.
+  For wants he heat or light? or would have store
+  Of 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 run
+  The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.
+
+
+
+               DEATH, A VOYAGE.
+
+                               No family
+  E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,
+  With whom more venturers might boldly dare
+  Venture 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.
+
+
+A LOVER NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE.
+
+  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 return
+  Where 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_.
+
+   A LOVER'S HEART A HAND GRENADO.
+
+  Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
+    Into 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 POETICAL PROPAGATION OF LIGHT.
+
+  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 prevent
+   In 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 ground
+  We 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 rage
+  Of 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 flown
+  In 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 been
+  So much as of original sin,
+  Such charms thy beauty wears as might
+  Desires in dying confest saints excite.
+  Thou with strange adultery
+  Dost 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 still
+  As 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 divest
+  To-morrow's business, when the labourers have
+  Such 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 is
+  To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
+  Who when he opens his eyes, must shut them then
+  Again 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 possibility
+  Of 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 yet
+  A breach, but an expansion,
+    Like gold to airy thinness beat.
+
+  If they be two, they are two so
+    As stiff twin-compasses are two,
+  Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
+    To 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 must
+    Like 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.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
+
+(1772-1834)
+
+IV. ON POETIC GENIUS AND POETIC DICTION.
+
+
+The following passage forms Chapters xiv and xv of Coleridge's
+_Biographia 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 the _Lyrical 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 the _Lyrical Ballads;_ [Footnote:
+Published in 1798. It opened with the _Ancient Mariner_ and closed
+with Wordsworth's lines on _Tintern Abbey._ Among other poems written
+in Wordsworth's simplest style were _The Idiot Boy, The Thorn,_ and
+_We 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 the _Ancient Mariner,_ and was preparing, among
+other poems, the _Dark Ladie,_ and the _Christabel,_ 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 the _Lyrical Ballads_ were
+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, _may_ be 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 the _Theoria Sacra_ of 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 turns
+  Bodies 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 transforms
+  To bear them light on her celestial wings.
+
+  Thus does she, when from individual states
+  She doth abstract the universal kinds;
+  Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
+  Steal 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 the _Venus and Adonis_, and the
+_Lucrece_; 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 the _Venus and Adonis_ the 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 that _Poeta 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 the _Venus and Adonis_ this 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'd
+  Bend 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 flee
+  From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
+  Streaming 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 seen
+  _Flatter_ the mountain-tops with sovereign eye.
+                     --_Sonnet_ 33.
+
+
+
+  Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
+  Of 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 time
+  My 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.
+                     --_Sonnet_ 107.
+
+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 the _Lear, 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
+
+_Sonnet_ 98:
+
+  From you have I been absent in the spring,
+  When proud-pied April drest in all his trim
+  Hath 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 smell
+  Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
+  Could make me any summer's story tell,
+  Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew
+  Nor 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. The
+_Venus and Adonis_ did 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,
+
+  Must we be free or die, who speak the tongue,
+  Which Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold,
+  Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
+  Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM HAZLITT.
+
+(1778-1830.)
+
+V. ON POETRY IN GENERAL.
+
+
+This was the first of a series of lectures on English poets, delivered
+in 1818, and published in the same year. It has been reprinted in the
+collected edition of Hazlitt's works (Bohn). It is a striking sample
+of Hazlitt's brilliance as a writer; and it is free from the faults
+of temper, and consequent errors of judgment, which, especially when
+he is dealing with modern authors, must be held in some degree to mar
+his greatness as a critic. It has been chosen partly for these reasons;
+partly also for those assigned in the Introduction. There is perhaps
+no other passage in the long roll of his writings that so clearly marks
+his place in the development of English criticism.
+
+
+The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the
+natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting
+an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing, by
+sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, expressing it.
+In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter of
+it, next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, and
+afterwards of its connection with harmony of sound.  Poetry is the
+language of the imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever
+gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. It comes home to
+the bosoms and businesses of men; for nothing but what so comes home
+to them in the most general and intelligible shape can be a subject
+for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds
+with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have
+much respect for himself, or for anything else. It is not a mere
+frivolous accomplishment (as some persons have been led to imagine),
+the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours: it has
+been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose
+that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines
+of ten syllables with like endings: but wherever there is a sense of
+beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea,
+in the growth of a flower that "spreads its sweet leaves to the air,
+and dedicates its beauty to the sun",--_there_ is poetry, in its birth.
+If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its
+materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the
+most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty
+cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads
+of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century:
+but there is no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind
+of man, which he would be eager to communicate to others, or which
+they would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry.
+It is not a branch of authorship: it is "the stuff of which our life
+is made". The rest is "mere oblivion", a dead letter: for all that is
+worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope
+is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy,
+remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry.
+Poetry is that fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines,
+raises our whole being: without it "man's life is poor as beast's".
+Man is a poetical animal: and those of us who do not study the
+principles of poetry, act upon them all our lives, like Moliere's
+_Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, who had always spoken prose without knowing
+it. The child is a poet, in fact, when he first plays at Hide-and-seek,
+or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a
+poet when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the
+countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow; the city apprentice,
+when he gazes after the Lord Mayor's show; the miser, when he hugs his
+gold; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who
+paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant; or the
+tyrant, who fancies himself a god; the vain, the ambitious, the proud,
+the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king,
+the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of
+their own making; and the poet does no more than describe what all the
+others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and
+madness at second hand. "There is warrant for it." Poets alone have
+not "such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more
+than cooler reason" can.
+
+  The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
+  Are of imagination all compact.
+  One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
+  That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
+  Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
+  The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
+  Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n;
+  And, as imagination bodies forth
+  The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
+  Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
+  A local habitation and a name.
+  Such tricks hath strong imagination.
+
+If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. If it is
+a fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and fancy that they
+are, because we wish them so, there is no other nor better reality.
+Ariosto has described the loves of Angelica and Medoro: but was not
+Medoro, who carved the name of his mistress on the barks of trees, as
+much enamoured of her charms as he? Homer has celebrated the anger of
+Achilles: but was not the hero as mad as the poet? Plato banished the
+poets from his Commonwealth, lest their descriptions of the natural
+man should spoil his mathematical man, who was to be without passions
+and affections--who was neither to laugh nor weep, to feel sorrow nor
+anger, to be cast down nor elated by anything. This was a chimera,
+however, which never existed but in the brain of the inventor; and
+Homer's poetical world has outlived Plato's philosophical Republic.
+
+Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination and the
+passions are a part of man's nature. We shape things according to our
+wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most emphatical
+language that can be found for those creations of the mind "which
+ecstasy is very cunning in". Neither a mere description of natural
+objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct
+or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, without
+the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is not only
+a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shows us the object,
+throws a sparkling radiance on all around it: the flame of the passions,
+communicated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with a flash of
+lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our whole
+being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest other forms:
+feelings, as they suggest forms or other feelings. Poetry puts a spirit
+of life and motion into the universe. It describes the flowing, not
+the fixed. It does not define the limits of sense, or analyse the
+distinctions of the understanding, but signifies the excess of the
+imagination beyond the actual or ordinary impression of any object or
+feeling. The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite
+sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself, that
+is impatient of all limit, that (as flame bends to flame) strives to
+link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur, to
+enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to
+relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest
+manner, and by the most striking examples of the same quality in other
+instances. Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this reason "has
+something divine in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into
+sublimity, by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the
+soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and
+history do". It is strictly the language of the imagination; and the
+imagination is that faculty which represents objects, not as they are
+in themselves, but as they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings,
+into an infinite variety of shapes and combinations of power. This
+language is not the less true to nature, because it is false in point
+of fact; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys the
+impression which the object under the influence of passion makes on
+the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the senses in
+a state of agitation or fear, and the imagination will distort or
+magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of whatever is
+most proper to encourage the fear. "Our eyes are made the fools" of
+our other faculties. This is the universal law of the imagination:
+
+  That if it would but apprehend some joy,
+  It comprehends some bringer of that joy:
+  Or in the night imagining some fear,
+  How easy is each bush suppos'd a bear!
+
+When Iachimo says of Imogen:
+
+          ---The flame o' th' taper
+  Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
+  To see the enclosed lights--
+
+This passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame, to accord
+with the speaker's own feelings, is true poetry. The lover, equally
+with the poet, speaks of the auburn tresses of his mistress as locks
+of shining gold, because the least tinge of yellow in the hair has,
+from novelty and a sense of personal beauty, a more lustrous effect
+to the imagination than the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic
+stature to a tower: not that he is anything like so large, but because
+the excess of his size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or the
+usual size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a greater
+feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than another object of ten
+times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling makes up for
+the disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to the imagination,
+which have the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of
+terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens
+to avenge his cause, "for they are old like him", there is nothing
+extravagant or impious in this sublime identification of his age with
+theirs; for there is no other image which could do justice to the
+agonizing sense of his wrongs and his despair!
+
+Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling. As in
+describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with
+the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain,
+by blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most
+striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, which is the most impassioned
+species of it, strives to carry on the feeling to the utmost point of
+sublimity or pathos, by all the force of comparison or contrast: loses
+the sense of present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it:
+exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited indulgence of it: grapples
+with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint: throws
+us back upon the past, forward into the future: brings every moment
+of our being or object of nature in startling review before us: and
+in the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to the
+highest contemplations on human life. When Lear says of Edgar, "Nothing
+but his unkind daughters could have brought him to this", what a
+bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the imagination, that cannot
+be brought to conceive of any other cause of misery than that which
+has bowed it down, and absorbs all other sorrow in its own! His sorrow,
+like a flood, supplies the sources of all other sorrow. Again, when
+he exclaims in the mad scene, "The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche,
+and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!" it is passion lending occasion
+to imagination to make every creature in league against him, conjuring
+up ingratitude and insult in their least looked-for and most galling
+shapes, searching every thread and fibre of his heart, and finding out
+the last remaining image of respect or attachment in the bottom of his
+breast, only to torture and kill it! In like manner, the "So I am" of
+Cordelia gushes from her heart like a torrent of tears, relieving it
+of a weight of love and of supposed ingratitude, which had pressed
+upon it for years. What a fine return of the passion upon itself is
+that in Othello--with what a mingled agony of regret and despair he
+clings to the last traces of departed happiness, when he exclaims:
+
+                  ---O now, for ever,
+  Farewell the tranquil mind: farewell content!
+  Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,
+  That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
+  Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
+  The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
+  The royal banner; and all quality,
+  Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
+  And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
+  Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
+  Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!
+
+How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in
+its sounding course, when, in answer to the doubts expressed of his
+returning love, he says:
+
+  Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea,
+  Whose icy current and compulsive course
+  Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
+  To the Propontic and the Hellespont:
+  Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
+  Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
+  Till that a capable and wide revenge
+  Swallow them up.
+
+The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona is at that
+passage:
+
+  But there where I have garner'd up my heart ...
+  To be discarded thence!
+
+One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our
+sympathy without raising our disgust is that, in proportion as it
+sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it strengthens the
+desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by
+making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of passion
+lays bare and shows us the rich depths of the human soul: the whole
+of our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, of that
+which we desire and that which we dread, is brought before us by
+contrast; the action and reaction are equal; the keenness of immediate
+suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more
+intimate participation with the antagonist world of good: makes us
+drink deeper of the cup of human life: tugs at the heart-strings:
+loosens the pressure about them, and calls the springs of thought and
+feeling into play with tenfold force.
+
+Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part
+of our nature, as well as of the sensitive--of the desire to know, the
+will to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these
+different parts of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The
+domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural,
+is in this sense the least so, because it appeals almost exclusively
+to one of these faculties, our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and
+Lillo, [Footnote: For instance, _The Gamester_ and _George Barnwell_
+They are to be found respectively in vols. xiv. and xi. of the _British
+Theatre_.] for this reason, however affecting at the time, oppress and
+lie like a dead weight upon the mind, a load of misery which it is
+unable to throw off; the tragedy of Shakespeare, which is true poetry,
+stirs our inmost affections; abstracts evil from itself by combining
+it with all the forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings
+of the heart; and rouses the whole man within us.
+
+The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry is not anything
+peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is
+not an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground-work
+in the common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people
+flock to see a tragedy; but if there were a public execution in the
+next street, the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not then the
+difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty.
+Children are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain
+prose: nor do the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of
+murders and executions about the streets find it necessary to have
+them turned into penny ballads, before they can dispose of these
+interesting and authentic documents. The grave politician drives a
+thriving trade of abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom
+he makes his enemies for no other end than that he may live by them.
+The popular preacher makes less frequent mention of Heaven than of
+hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or
+rhetoric. We are as fond of indulging our violent passions as of reading
+a description of those of others. We are as prone to make a torment
+of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked,
+Why we do so, the best answer will be, Because we cannot help it. The
+sense of power is as strong a principle in the mind as the love of
+pleasure. Objects of terror and pity exercise the same despotic control
+over it as those of love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as to
+love, to despise as to admire, to express our hatred or contempt, as
+our love or admiration:
+
+  Masterless passion sways us to the mood
+  Of what it likes or loathes.
+
+Not that we like what we loathe: but we like to indulge our hatred and
+scorn of it, to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea of it by every
+refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illustration, to make it
+a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to others in all the splendour
+of deformity, to embody it to the senses, to stigmatize it by name,
+to grapple with it in thought--in action, to sharpen our intellect,
+to arm our will against it, to know the worst we have to contend with,
+and to contend with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest
+eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be
+given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful,
+mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect
+coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and
+of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant
+"satisfaction to the thought". This is equally the origin of wit and
+fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When Pope
+says of the Lord Mayor's show--
+
+  Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er,
+  But lives in Settle's numbers one day more!
+
+when Collins makes Danger, "with limbs of giant mould".
+
+       ----Throw him on the steep
+  Of some loose hanging rock asleep:
+
+when Lear calls out in extreme anguish--
+
+  Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
+  More hideous, when thou shew'st thee in a child,
+  Than the sea-monster!
+
+the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, and
+of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the thing
+ourselves, and show it to others as we feel it to exist, and as, in
+spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The imagination,
+by thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives an obvious relief
+to the indistinct and importunate cravings of the will. We do not wish
+the thing to be so; but we wish it to appear such as it is. For
+knowledge is conscious power; and the mind is no longer in this case
+the dupe, though it may be the victim, of vice or folly.
+
+Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and the
+passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd
+than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic
+critics for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common
+sense and reason; for the end and use of poetry, "both at the first
+and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature", seen through the
+medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium by means
+of literal truth or abstract reason. The painter of history might as
+well be required to represent the face of a person who has just trod
+upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a common portrait,
+as the poet to describe the most striking and vivid impressions which
+things can be supposed to make upon the mind, in the language of common
+conversation. Let who will strip nature of the colours and the shapes
+of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so; the impressions of common
+sense and strong imagination, that is, of passion and indifference,
+cannot be the same, and they must have a separate language to do justice
+to either. Objects must strike differently upon the mind, independently
+of what they are in themselves, as long as we have a different interest
+in them, as we see them in a different point of view, nearer or at a
+greater distance (morally or physically speaking) from novelty, from
+old acquaintance, from our ignorance of them, from our fear of their
+consequences, from contrast, from unexpected likeness. We can no more
+take away the faculty of the imagination, than we can see all objects
+without light or shade. Some things must dazzle us by their
+preternatural light; others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our
+curiosity to explore their obscurity. Those who would dispel these
+various illusions, to give us their drab-coloured creation in their
+stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the
+glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning
+nothing but a little gray worm: let the poet or the lover of poetry
+visit it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn and the crescent
+moon it has built itself a palace of emerald light. This is also one
+part of nature, one appearance which the glow-worm presents, and that
+not the least interesting; so poetry is one part of the history of the
+human mind, though it is neither science nor philosophy. It cannot be
+concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has
+a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip
+the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally
+visionary, the unknown and undefined: the understanding restores things
+to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful
+pretensions. Hence the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm
+is much the same; and both have received a sensible shock from the
+progress of experimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon
+that gives birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what
+we do not know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill
+them with what shapes we please--with ravenous beasts, with caverns
+vast, and drear enchantments--so in our ignorance of the world about
+us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no
+bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears:
+
+  And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
+  Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.
+
+There can never be another Jacob's Dream. Since that time, the heavens
+have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse
+to the imagination; nor will they return to us on the squares of the
+distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture
+brings the matter nearer to us. It is not only the progress of
+mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of civilization, that
+are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less
+awe of the preternatural world, but we can calculate more surely, and
+look with more indifference, upon the regular routine of this. The
+heroes of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants. At
+present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or evil, to
+the incursions of wild beasts or "bandit fierce", or to the unmitigated
+fury of the elements. The time has been that "our fell of hair would
+at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir as life were in it". But the
+police spoils all; and we now hardly so much as dream of a midnight
+murder. _Macbeth_ is only tolerated in this country for the sake of
+the music; and in the United States of America, where the philosophical
+principles of government are carried still further in theory and
+practice, we find that the _Beggar's Opera_ is hooted from the stage.
+Society, by degrees, is constructed into a machine that carries us
+safely and insipidly from one end of life to the other, in a very
+comfortable prose style:
+
+  Obscurity her curtain round them drew,
+  And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung.
+
+The remarks which have been here made, would, in some measure, lead
+to a solution of the question of the comparative merits of painting
+and poetry. I do not mean to give any preference, but it should seem
+that the argument which has been sometimes set up, that painting must
+affect the imagination more strongly, because it represents the image
+more distinctly, is not well founded. We may assume without much
+temerity that poetry is more poetical than painting. When artists or
+connoisseurs talk on stilts about the poetry of painting, they show
+that they know little about poetry, and have little love for the art.
+Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting
+embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists
+out of it, in any manner connected with it. But this last is the proper
+province of the imagination. Again, as it relates to passion, painting
+gives the event, poetry the progress of events; but it is during the
+progress, in the interval of expectation and suspense, while our hopes
+and fears are strained to the highest pitch of breathless agony, that
+the pinch of the interest lies:
+
+  Between the acting of a dreadful thing
+  And the first motion, all the interim is
+  Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream
+  The mortal instruments are then in council;
+  And the state of man, like to a little kingdom,
+  Suffers then the nature of an insurrection.
+
+But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over. Faces are
+the best part of a picture; but even faces are not what we chiefly
+remember in what interests us most. But it may be asked then, Is there
+anything better than Claude Lorraine's landscapes, than Titian's
+portraits, than Raphael's cartoons, or the Greek statues? Of the two
+first I shall say nothing, as they are evidently picturesque rather
+than imaginative. Raphael's cartoons are certainly the finest comments
+that ever were made on the Scriptures. Would their effect be the same
+if we were not acquainted with the text? But the New Testament existed
+before the cartoons. There is one subject of which there is no cartoon:
+Christ washing the feet of the disciples the night before His death.
+But that chapter does not need a commentary. It is for want of some
+such resting-place for the imagination that the Greek statues are
+little else than specious forms. They are marble to the touch and to
+the heart. They have not an informing principle within them. In their
+faultless excellence they appear sufficient to themselves. By their
+beauty they are raised above the frailties of passion or suffering.
+By their beauty they are deified. But they are not objects of religious
+faith to us, and their forms are a reproach to common humanity. They
+seem to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration.
+
+Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, combined
+with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the
+ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question
+of long standing in what the essence of poetry consists, or what it
+is that determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose,
+another in verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in a single
+line:
+
+  Thoughts that voluntary move
+  Harmonious numbers.
+
+As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the
+song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts
+that lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and
+change "the words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo". There is a
+striking instance of this adaptation of the movement of sound and
+rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's description of the Satyrs
+accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus:
+
+    So from the ground she fearless doth arise,
+    And walketh forth without suspect of crime.
+    They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime,
+    Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round,
+    Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme;
+    And with green branches strewing all the ground,
+  Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd.
+    And all the way their merry pipes they sound,
+    That all the woods and doubled echoes ring;
+    And with their horned feet do wear the ground,
+    Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring;
+    So towards old Sylvanus they her bring,
+    Who with the noise awaked, cometh out.
+
+On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in the
+ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether arbitrary
+and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, which are the
+voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their grammatical arrangements
+in common speech, is there any principle of natural imitation, or
+correspondence to the individual ideas or to the tone of feeling with
+which they are conveyed to others. The jerks, the breaks, the
+inequalities and harshnesses of prose are fatal to the flow of a
+poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs
+the reverie of an absent man. But poetry "makes these odds all even".
+It is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind,
+untying, as it were, "the secret soul of harmony". Wherever any object
+takes such a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood
+over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment
+of enthusiasm; wherever a movement of imagination or passion is
+impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the
+emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give
+the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually
+varied, according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it--this
+is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the
+musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a
+near connection between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing.
+As often as articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry
+begins. Where one idea gives a tone and colour to others, where one
+feeling melts others into it, there can be no reason why the same
+principle should not be extended to the sounds by which the voice
+utters these emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and lines into
+each other. It is to supply the inherent defect of harmony in the
+customary mechanism of language, to make the sound an echo to the
+sense, when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself--to mingle the
+tide of verse, "the golden cadences of poetry", with the tide of
+feeling, flowing and murmuring as it flows--in short, to take the
+language of the imagination from off the ground, and enable it to
+spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses:
+
+  Sailing with supreme dominion
+  Through the azure deep of air--
+
+without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses
+and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that
+poetry was invented. It is to common language what springs are to a
+carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain
+harmony by the modulations of the voice: in poetry the same thing is
+done systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been
+well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent
+upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose.
+The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way "sounding always
+the increase of his winning". Every prose writer has more or less of
+rhythmical adaptation, except poets who, when deprived of the regular
+mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left in
+their writings.
+
+An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is but fair
+that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail
+itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of
+syllables, that have been displayed in the invention and collocation
+of images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man of
+wit and shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four good lines
+of poetry are the well-known ones which tell the number of days in the
+months of the year:
+
+    Thirty days hath September, &c.
+
+But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken
+the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers'
+ends, besides the contents of the almanac. Pope's versification is
+tiresome from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakespeare's
+blank verse is the perfection of dramatic dialogue.
+
+All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the whole
+difference between poetry and prose. The _Iliad_ does not cease to be
+poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's _Campaign_ has been
+very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs
+from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite,
+familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary
+impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious
+processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or
+violent movements either of the imagination or the passions.
+
+I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible
+without absolutely being so; namely, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, _Robinson
+Crusoe_, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated
+some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power of
+poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the earth,
+which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is
+poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being
+"married to immortal verse". If it is of the essence of poetry to
+strike and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye
+of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought of
+afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be
+permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mixture of fancy and
+reality in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ was never equalled in any allegory.
+His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, what
+beauty, what truth of fiction! What deep feeling in the description
+of Christian's swimming across the water at last, and in the picture
+of the Shining Ones within the gates, with wings at their backs and
+garlands on their heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes! The
+writer's genius, though not "dipped in dews of Castalie", was baptized
+with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are no
+small part of it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of
+Lemnos was a subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies,
+what shall we say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the
+Greek hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it
+with the reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place
+of confinement. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for
+ever cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean
+rolls its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings
+of his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him.
+Thus he says:
+
+As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country,
+the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a
+sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods,
+the mountains, and deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked
+up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited
+wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures
+of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me
+wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in
+the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and
+look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still
+worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words,
+it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate.
+
+The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the _Odyssey_,
+it is true; but the relater had the true genius of a poet. It has been
+made a question whether Richardson's romances are poetry; and the
+answer perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not
+romance. The interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it
+is by an infinite number of little things, by incessant labour and
+calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows that have no rebound
+in them. The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a
+tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity
+and motion. The story does not "give an echo to the seat where love
+is throned". The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music.
+The fancy does not run on before the writer with breathless expectation,
+but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like
+those with which the Liliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal
+palace. Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would
+he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa,
+the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting
+in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles--she
+is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, however
+intensely they may be brought home to us, are not conductors to the
+imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in Richardson; but
+it is extracted from a _caput mortuum_ of circumstances: it does not
+evaporate of itself. His poetical genius is like Ariel confined in a
+pine-tree, and requires an artificial process to let it out. Shakespeare
+says:
+
+  Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
+  From whence 'tis nourished... our gentle flame
+  Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies
+  Each bound it chafes.
+
+I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of the
+principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of
+history--Homer, the Bible, Dante, and, let me add, Ossian. In Homer,
+the principle of action or life is predominant: in the Bible, the
+principle of faith and the idea of Providence; Dante is a
+personification of blind will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life
+and the lag end of the world. Homer's poetry is the heroic: it is full
+of life and action: it is bright as the day, strong as a river. In the
+vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature,
+and enters into all the relations of social life. He saw many countries,
+and the manners of many men; and he has brought them all together in
+his poem. He describes his heroes going to battle with a prodigality
+of life, arising from an exuberance of animal spirits: we see them
+before us, their number and their order of battle, poured out upon the
+plain "all plumed like ostriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as
+goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous as the sun
+at midsummer", covered with glittering armour, with dust and blood;
+while the gods quaff their nectar in golden cups, or mingle in the
+fray; and the old men assembled on the walls of Troy rise up with
+reverence as Helen passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer
+is wonderful; their splendour, their truth, their force and variety.
+His poetry is, like his religion, the poetry of number and form: he
+describes the bodies as well as the souls of men.
+
+The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith: it is
+abstract and disembodied: it is not the poetry of form, but of power;
+not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not divide into many, but
+aggrandizes into one. Its ideas of nature are like its ideas of God.
+It is not the poetry of social life, but of solitude: each man seems
+alone in the world, with the original forms of nature, the rocks, the
+earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or heroic enterprise,
+but of faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation to the power
+that governs the universe. As the idea of God was removed farther from
+humanity and a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and
+intense, as it became more universal, for the Infinite is present to
+everything: "If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is
+there also; if we turn to the east or the west, we cannot escape from
+it". Man is thus aggrandized in the image of his Maker. The history
+of the patriarchs is of this kind; they are founders of a chosen race
+of people, the inheritors of the earth; they exist in the generations
+which are to come after them. Their poetry, like their religious creed,
+is vast, unformed, obscure, and infinite; a vision is upon it; an
+invisible hand is suspended over it. The spirit of the Christian
+religion consists in the glory hereafter to be revealed; but in the
+Hebrew dispensation Providence took an immediate share in the affairs
+of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of this intimate communion between
+heaven and earth: it was this that let down, in the sight of the
+youthful patriarch, a golden ladder from the sky to the earth, with
+angels ascending and descending upon it, and shed a light upon the
+lonely place, which can never pass away. The story of Ruth, again, is
+as if all the depth of natural affection in the human race was involved
+in her breast. There are descriptions in the book of Job more prodigal
+of imagery, more intense in passion, than anything in Homer; as that
+of the state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him
+by night. The metaphors in the Old Testament are more boldly figurative.
+Things were collected more into masses, and gave a greater _momentum_
+to the imagination.
+
+Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim a
+place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from Gothic
+darkness and barbarism; and the struggle of thought in it, to burst
+the thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held, is felt
+in every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore
+which separates the ancient and the modern world; and saw the glories
+of antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while revelation opened
+its passage to the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been
+done before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to have been
+indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for
+the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry; but he is
+utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the
+sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified.
+In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he
+bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after
+him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies
+like a dead weight upon the mind--a benumbing stupor, a breathless
+awe, from the intensity of the impression--a terrible obscurity, like
+that which oppresses us in dreams--an identity of interest, which
+moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with
+the passions and imaginations of the human soul--that make amends for
+all other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to the mind
+are not much in themselves; they want grandeur, beauty, and order; but
+they become everything by the force of the character he impresses upon
+them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates,
+instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the
+nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples
+the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest
+of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to
+the flowery and glittering; the writer who relies most on his own
+power, and the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the
+imagination of his readers. Dante's only endeavour is to interest; and
+he interests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is
+himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which
+that emotion has been created; but he seizes on the attention, by
+showing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry
+accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation which
+is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object
+of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony
+in the _Inferno_, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from
+the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power
+is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate
+of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be
+endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning,
+not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the
+absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and
+mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy regions of the lower
+world, a tomb suddenly rises up with the inscription, "I am the tomb
+of Pope Anastasius the Sixth": and half the personages whom he has
+crowded into the _Inferno_ are his own acquaintance. All this, perhaps,
+tends to heighten the effect by the bold intermixture of realities,
+and by an appeal, as it were, to the individual knowledge and experience
+of the reader. He affords few subjects for picture. There is, indeed,
+one gigantic one, that of Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made
+a basrelief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted.
+
+Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot persuade
+myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is Ossian. He is a
+feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in the minds of his
+readers. As Homer is the first vigour and lustihead, Ossian is the
+decay and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection and
+regret of the past. There is one impression which he conveys more
+entirely than all other poets; namely, the sense of privation, the
+loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of country; he is even
+without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the
+departed; with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight
+sheds its faint lustre on his head; the fox peeps out of the ruined
+tower; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale; and the
+strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other
+times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the
+winter's wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the
+pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the substance, and
+the clinging to the shadow of all things, as in a mock-embrace, is
+here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for the loss of
+Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible to show that
+this writer was nothing, it would only be another instance of
+mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, another
+confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often complain, "Roll
+on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian!"
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB.
+
+(1775-1834)
+
+VI. ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.
+
+
+The essay on the _Artificial Comedy of the Last Century_ is one of the
+_Essays of Elia_, published in the _London Magazine_ between 1820 and
+1822. The paradox started by Lamb was taken up by Leigh Hunt in his
+edition of the _Comic Dramatists of the Restoration_, and was attacked
+by Macaulay in his well-known review of Hunt's work. It is
+characteristic of Lamb to have bound up his defence of these writers
+with an account of Kemble and other actors of the day. His peculiar
+strength lay in his power of throwing himself into the very mood and
+temper of the writers he admired, and no critic has more completely
+possessed the secret of living over again the life of a literary
+masterpiece. His genius was, in fact, akin to the genius of an actor,
+an actor who, not for the moment but permanently, becomes the part
+that he seeks to represent. And he was never so much at home as when
+he was illustrating his own reading of a drama from the tones and
+gestures of the stage. It may be doubted whether, under stress of this
+impulse, he was not led to force the analogy between Sheridan and the
+dramatists of the Restoration. The analogy doubtless exists, but in
+his wish to bring home to his readers the inner meaning of plays, then
+no longer acted, he was perhaps tempted to press a resemblance to
+works, familiar to every play-goer, further than it could fairly be
+made to go. The mistake, if mistake it were, is pardonable. And it
+serves to illustrate the essential nature of Lamb's genius as a critic,
+and of the new element that he brought into criticism. This was the
+invincible belief that poetry is not merely an art for the few, but
+something that finds an echo in the common instincts of all men,
+something that, coming from the heart, naturally clothes itself in
+fitting words and gives individual colour to each tone, gesture, and
+expression. These, therefore, we must study if we would penetrate to
+the open secret of the artist, if we would seize the vital spirit of
+his utterance and make it our own. Lamb's sense of poetic form, his
+instinct for subtle shades of difference, was far keener than Hazlitt's.
+And for that very reason he may be said to have seen yet more clearly
+than Hazlitt saw, how inseparable is the tie that binds poetry to life.
+It is not only in its deeper undertones, Lamb seems to remind us, but
+in its finest shades of voice and phrasing, that poetry is the echo
+of some mood or temper of the soul. This is the vein that he opened,
+and which, with wider scope and a touch still more delicate, has since
+been explored by Mr. Pater.
+
+The two shorter pieces speak for themselves. They are taken from the
+_Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_ (1808).
+
+
+The artificial comedy, or comedy of manners, is quite extinct on our
+stage. Congreve and Farquhar show their heads once in seven years only,
+to be exploded and put down instantly. The times cannot bear this. Is
+it for a few wild speeches, an occasional licence of dialogue? I think
+not altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not
+stand the moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle gallantry
+in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles us
+in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or
+ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such
+middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage libertine
+playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration, and of no after
+consequence, with the severe eyes which inspect real vices with their
+bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not
+reducible in life to the point of strict morality), and take it all
+for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him
+accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there is no appeal
+to the _dramatis persona_, his peers. We have been spoiled with--not
+sentimental comedy--but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures
+which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of
+common life; where the moral point is everything; where, instead of
+the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of
+old comedy), we recognize ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk,
+allies, patrons, enemies,--the same as in life,--with an interest in
+what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our
+moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise
+or slumber for a moment. What is there transacting, by no modification
+is made to affect us in any other manner than the same events or
+characters would do in our relationships of life. We carry our fireside
+concerns to the theatre with us. We do not go thither like our
+ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm
+our experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of
+fate. We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful
+privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neutral
+ground of character, which stood between vice and virtue; or which in
+fact was indifferent to neither, where neither properly was called in
+question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual
+moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted
+casuistry--is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests
+of society. The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare
+not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs
+at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representation of
+disorder, and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that our morality
+should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great blanket surtout of
+precaution against the breeze and sunshine.
+
+I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to answer for)
+I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of the
+strict conscience,--not to live always in the precincts of the law-
+courts,--but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a world
+with no meddling restrictions--to get into recesses, whither the hunter
+cannot follow me--
+
+                 Secret shades
+  Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
+  While yet there was no fear of Jove.
+
+I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and more healthy
+for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly for having respired the
+breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not know how it is with others,
+but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of Congreve's--
+nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's--comedies. I am the gayer
+at least for it; and I could never connect those sports of a witty
+fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to imitation
+in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as
+fairy-land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with few
+exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my
+virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as warmly
+as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play I am
+to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of police is the
+measure of political justice. The atmosphere will blight it; it cannot
+live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has no business,
+from which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy, and incapable of
+making a stand, as a Sweden-borgian bad spirit that has wandered
+unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels. But in its
+own world do we feel the creature is so very bad?--The Fainalls and
+the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own
+sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact, they do not appeal to
+it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They break through
+no laws or conscientious restraints. They know of none. They have got
+out of Christendom into the land--what shall I call it?-of
+cuckoldry--the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the
+manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene of things,
+which has no reference whatever to the world that is. No good person
+can be justly offended as a spectator, because no good person suffers
+on the stage. Judged morally, every character in these plays--the few
+exceptions only are mistakes--is alike essentially vain and worthless.
+The great art of Congreve is specially shown in this, that he has
+entirely excluded from his scenes--some little generosities in the
+part of Angelica [Footnote: In _Love for Love_] perhaps excepted--not
+only anything like a faultless character, but any pretensions to
+goodness or good feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly,
+or instinctively, the effect is as happy as the design (if design) was
+bold. I used to wonder at the strange power which his _Way of the
+World_ in particular possesses of interesting you all along in the
+pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing--for you
+neither hate nor love his personages--and I think it is owing to this
+very indifference for any, that you endure the whole. He has spread
+a privation of moral light, I will call it, rather than by the ugly
+name of palpable darkness, over his creations; and his shadows flit
+before you without distinction or preference. Had he introduced a good
+character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment
+to actual life and actual duties, the impertinent Goshen would have
+only lighted to the discovery of deformities, which now are none,
+because we think them none.
+
+Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his friend
+Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and strumpets,--the business of
+their brief existence, the undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No
+other spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is recognized;
+principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of
+things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them. No
+such effects are produced, in their world. When we are among them, we
+are amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages.
+No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings--for they
+have none among them. No peace of families is violated--for no family
+ties exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is stained--for
+none is supposed to have a being. No deep affections are disquieted,
+no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder--for affection's depth and
+wedded faith are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right
+nor wrong,--gratitude or its opposite,--claim or duty,--paternity or
+sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue, or how is she at all
+concerned about it, whether Sir Simon or Dapperwit steal away Miss
+Martha; or who is the father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's
+children?
+
+The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at
+the issues, for life or death, as at the battle of the frogs and mice.
+But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite as
+impertinently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme out of
+which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease
+excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of things for
+which there is neither reward nor punishment. We cling to the painful
+necessities of shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams.
+
+Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon growing old, it is
+something to have seen the _School for Scandal_ in its glory. This
+comedy grew out of Congreve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays
+of the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that
+it should be now _acted_, though it continues, at long intervals, to
+be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least,
+was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful
+solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice--to
+express it in a word--the downright _acted_ villany of the part, so
+different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,--the
+hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,--which made Jack so deservedly
+a favourite in that character, I must needs conclude the present
+generation of playgoers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I
+freely confess that he divided the palm with me with his better brother;
+that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are
+passages,--like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a
+pittance to a poor relation,--incongruities which Sheridan was forced
+upon by the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental comedy,
+either of which must destroy the other--but over these obstructions
+Jack's manner floated him so lightly, that a refusal from him no more
+shocked you, than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in reality
+any pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could,
+to get back into the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns.
+The highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character counteracted
+every disagreeable impression which you might have received from the
+contrast, supposing them real, between the two brothers. You did not
+believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in
+Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former a no less
+pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, I have said, is incongruous;
+a mixture of Congreve with sentimental incompatibilities; the gaiety
+upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the consummate art of Palmer
+to reconcile the discordant elements.
+
+A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do
+the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn
+which might tend to unrealize, and so to make the character fascinating.
+He must take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad man
+and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the deathbeds of
+those geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say
+have disappeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles,
+of St. Paul's Churchyard memory--(an exhibition as venerable as the
+adjacent cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at the
+hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the former,--and
+truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork is not to
+be despised,--so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of
+the rod,--taking it in like honey and butter,--with which the latter
+submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his
+lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon.
+What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the
+stroke of such a delicate mower?
+
+John Palmer was twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing
+to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter and his lady.
+You had the first intimation of a sentiment before it was on his lips.
+His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his
+fictitious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all of it.
+What was it to you if that half reality, the husband, was overreached
+by the puppetry--or the thin thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was
+persuaded it was dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and
+Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has passed from the stage
+in good time, that he did not live to this our age of seriousness. The
+pleasant old Teazle _King_, too, is gone in good time. His manner would
+scarce have passed current in our day. We must love or hate--acquit
+or condemn--censure or pity--exert our detestable coxcombry of moral
+judgment upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a
+downright revolting villain--no compromise--his first appearance must
+shock and give horror--his specious plausibilities, which the
+pleasurable faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty
+greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could come, or
+was meant to come, of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion.
+Charles (the real canting person of the scene--for the hypocrisy of
+Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions
+of a good heart centre in down right self-satisfaction) must be _loved_
+and Joseph _hated_. To balance one disagreeable reality with another,
+Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old
+bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently
+as much played off at you, as they were meant to concern anybody on
+the stage,--he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an
+injury--a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged--the genuine
+crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To realize him
+more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright
+pungency of life--must (or should) make you not mirthful but
+uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a
+neighbour or old friend.
+
+The delicious scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect
+you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a
+dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree and Sir
+Benjamin--those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your
+mirth--must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization into
+asps or amphisbaenas; and Mrs. Candour--O! frightful!--become a hooded
+serpent. Oh! who that remembers Parsons and Dodd--the wasp and butterfly
+of the _School for Scandal_--in those two characters; and charming
+natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentle woman as distinguished from the
+fine lady of comedy, in the latter part--would forego the true scenic
+delight--the escape from life--the oblivion of consequences--the holiday
+barring out of the pedant Reflection--those Saturnalia of two or three
+brief hours, well won from the world--to sit instead at one of our
+modern plays--to have his coward conscience (that forsooth must not
+be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals--dulled rather,
+and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be--and his moral vanity
+pampered with images of notional justice, notional beneficence, lives
+saved without the spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that cost
+the author nothing?
+
+No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in all its parts as
+this _manager's comedy_. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abington
+in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the original Charles, had retired when I
+first saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions,
+remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble,
+who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly.
+Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gaiety
+of person. He brought with him no sombre recollections of tragedy. He
+had not to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty
+declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. His
+failure in these parts was a passport to success in one of so opposite
+a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble
+made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His
+harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good-humour.
+He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed
+it, only served to convey the points of his dialogue with more
+precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one
+of his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he
+delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any
+of them could be altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant
+dialogue-the dialogue of Congreve or of Wycherley-because none
+understood it-half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in _Love for
+Love_, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged sometimes in the
+intervals of tragic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of
+an heroic character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always
+seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue.
+The relaxing levities of tragedy have not been touched by any since
+him--the playful court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the
+players in Hamlet--the sportive relief which he threw into the darker
+shades of Richard--disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods,
+his torpors--but they were the halting-stones and resting-place of his
+tragedy--politic savings, and fetches of the breath--husbandry of the
+lungs, where nature pointed him to be an economist--rather, I think,
+than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less painful than
+the eternal, tormenting, unappeasable vigilance,--the "lidless dragon
+eyes", of present fashionable tragedy.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII.--ON WEBSTER'S _DUCHESS OF MALFI_.
+
+
+All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the Duchess's
+death is ushered in, are not more remote from the conceptions of
+ordinary vengeance, than the strange character of suffering which they
+seem to bring upon their victims is beyond the imagination of ordinary
+poets. As they are not like inflictions _of this life_, so her language
+seems _not of this world_. She has lived among horrors till she is
+become "native and endowed unto that element". She speaks the dialect
+of despair, her tongue has a snatch of Tartarus and the souls in
+bale.--What are "Luke's iron crown", the brazen bull of Perillus,
+Procrustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the
+wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's
+dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to
+touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear,
+to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in
+with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit--this only a Webster
+can do. Writers of an inferior genius may "upon horror's head horrors
+accumulate", but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality,
+they "terrify babes with painted devils", but they know not how a soul
+is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their
+affrightments are without decorum.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.--ON FORD'S _BROKEN HEART_.
+
+
+I do not know where to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so
+solemn, and so surprising as this. This is indeed, according to Milton,
+to "describe high passions and high actions". The fortitude of the
+Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without
+expressing a groan, is a faint bodily image of this dilaceration of
+the spirit and exenteration of the inmost mind, which Calantha with
+a holy violence against her nature keeps closely covered, till the
+last duties of a wife and a queen are fulfilled. Stories of martyrdom
+are but of chains and the stake; a little bodily suffering; these
+torments
+
+  On the purest spirits prey
+  As on entrails, joints, and limbs,
+  With answerable pains, but more intense.
+
+What a noble thing is the soul in its strengths and in its weaknesses!
+who would be less weak than Calantha? who can be so strong? the
+expression of this transcendent scene almost bears me in imagination
+to Calvary and the Cross; and I seem to perceive some analogy between
+the scenical sufferings which I am here contemplating, and the real
+agonies of that final completion to which I dare no more than hint a
+reference.
+
+Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by
+parcels in metaphors or visible images, but directly where she has her
+full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and sufferings of
+the greatest minds. There is a grandeur of the soul above mountains,
+seas, and the elements. Even in the poor perverted reason of Giovanni
+and Annabella (in the play which precedes this) we discern traces of
+that fiery particle, which in the irregular starting out of the road
+of beaten action, discovers something of a right line even in obliquity
+and shows hints of an improvable greatness in the lowest descents and
+degradations of our nature.
+
+
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+(1792-1822)
+
+IX. A DEFENCE OF POETRY.
+
+
+_The Defence of Poetry_ was written in the early months of 1821, the
+year before Shelley's death. Its immediate occasion was an essay on
+_The Four Ages of Poetry_ by T L Peacock. But all allusions to Peacock's
+work were cut out by John Hunt when he prepared it--in vain, as things
+proved--for publication in _The Liberal_, and it remains, as Peacock
+said, "a defence without an attack". For all essential purposes, the
+_Defence_ can only be said to have gained by shaking off its local and
+temporary reference. It expresses Shelley's deepest thoughts about
+poetry, and marks, as clearly as any writing of the last hundred years,
+the width of the gulf that separates the ideals of recent poetry from
+those of the century preceding the French Revolution. It may be compared
+with Sidney's _Apologie_ on the one hand, and with Wordsworth's Preface
+to the _Lyrical Ballads_, or the more abstract parts of Carlyle's
+critical writings upon the other. The fundamental conceptions of Shelley
+are the same as those of the Elizabethan critic and of his own great
+contemporaries. But he differs from Sidney and Wordsworth, and perhaps
+from Carlyle also, in laying more stress upon the outward form, and
+particularly the musical element, of poetry, and from Sidney in laying
+less stress upon its directly moral associations. He thus attains to
+a wider and truer view of his subject, and, while insisting as strongly
+as Wordsworth insists upon the kinship between the matter of poetry
+and that of truth or science, he also recognizes, as Wordsworth commonly
+did not, that there is a harmony between the imaginative conception
+of that matter and its outward expression, and that beautiful thought
+must necessarily clothe itself in beauty of language and of sound.
+There is not in our literature any clearer presentment of the
+inseparable connection between the matter and form of poetry, nor of
+the ideal element which, under different shapes, is the life and soul
+of both. [See Shelley's letters to Peacock and Other of February 15
+and 22, and of March 20 and 21, 1821]
+
+
+According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action,
+which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered
+as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another,
+however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts
+so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as
+from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the
+principle of its own integrity. The one is the [Greek transliterated:
+to poiein], or the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects
+those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself;
+the other is the [Greek transliterated: to logizein], or principle of
+analysis, and its action regards the relations of things simply as
+relations; considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as
+the algebraical representations which conduct to certain general
+results. Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known;
+imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both
+separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and
+imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination as the
+instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to
+the substance.
+
+Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be "the expression of
+the imagination": and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man
+is an instrument over which a series of external and internal
+impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind
+over an Aolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing
+melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps
+within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and
+produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of
+the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite
+them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions
+of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even
+as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre.
+A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and
+motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact
+relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions
+which awakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression;
+and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away, so
+the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration
+of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation
+to the objects which delight a child, these expressions are what poetry
+is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what the
+child is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding
+objects in a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with
+plastic or pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect
+of those objects, and of his apprehension of them. Man in society,
+with all his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of
+the passions and pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions
+produces an augmented treasure of expressions; and language, gesture,
+and the imitative arts become at once the representation and the medium,
+the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and
+the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from
+its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the
+moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within
+the present, as the plant within the seed: and equality, diversity,
+unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the principles alone capable
+of affording the motives according to which the will of a social being
+is determined to action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute
+pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in
+reasoning, and love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in the
+infancy of society, observe a certain order in their words and actions,
+distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by
+them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it
+proceeds. But let us dismiss those more general considerations which
+might involve an inquiry into the principles of society itself, and
+restrict our view to the manner in which the imagination is expressed
+upon its forms.
+
+In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural
+objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm
+or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not
+the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song,
+in the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of
+natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to
+each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer
+and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any
+other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called
+taste by modern writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an
+order which approximates more or less closely to that from which this
+highest delight results; but the diversity is not sufficiently marked,
+as that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances
+where the predominance of this faculty of approximation to the beautiful
+(for so we may be permitted to name the relation between this highest
+pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom it exists in
+excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the word; and the
+pleasure resulting from the manner in which they express the influence
+of society or nature upon their own minds, communicates itself to
+others, and gathers a sort of reduplication from that community. Their
+language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before
+unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension,
+until the words which represent them, become, through time, signs for
+portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral
+thoughts; and then, if no new poets should arise to create afresh the
+associations which have been thus disorganized, language will be dead
+to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse. These similitudes or
+relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be "the same footsteps of
+nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world" [Footnote:
+_De Augment. Scient._, cap. I, lib. iii.]--and he considers the faculty
+which perceives them as the storehouse of axioms common to all
+knowledge. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a
+poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to
+apprehend the true and the beautiful; in a word, the good which exists
+in the relation subsisting, first between existence and perception,
+and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language
+near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the
+copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the
+works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the
+creations of poetry.
+
+But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible order,
+are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and
+architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are the institutors of
+laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts
+of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with
+the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies
+of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original
+religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus,
+have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the
+circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called,
+in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet
+essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not
+only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws
+according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds
+the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower
+and the fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets
+in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as
+surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of
+superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy rather
+than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the
+eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his
+conceptions, time and place and number are not. The grammatical forms
+which express the moods of time, and the difference of persons, and
+the distinction of place, are convertible with respect to the highest
+poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the choruses of Aschylus,
+and the book of Job, and Dante's Paradise, would afford, more than any
+other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did
+not forbid citation. The creations of sculpture, painting, and music
+are illustrations still more decisive.
+
+Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action are
+all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be called poetry
+by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of
+the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those
+arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are
+created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the
+invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of
+language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and
+passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and
+delicate combinations than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic
+and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation.
+For language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and has
+relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments, and
+conditions of art have relations among each other, which limit and
+interpose between conception and expression. The former is as a mirror
+which reflects, the latter as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of
+which both are mediums of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors,
+painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic powers of the great
+masters of these arts may yield in no degree to that of those who have
+employed language as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never
+equalled that of poets in the restricted sense of the term; as two
+performers of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar
+and a harp. The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long
+as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the
+restricted sense; but it can scarcely be a question whether, if we
+deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the
+vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them
+in their higher character of poets, any excess will remain.
+
+We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits of that
+art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expression of the
+faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the circle still
+narrower, and to determine the distinction between measured and
+unmeasured language; for the popular division into prose and verse is
+inadmissible in accurate philosophy.
+
+Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each other and
+towards that which they represent, and a perception of the order of
+those relations has always been found connected with a perception of
+the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language of poets
+has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound,
+without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less
+indispensable to the communication of its influence than the words
+themselves, without reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity
+of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that
+you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as
+seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a
+poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no
+flower--and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.
+
+An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in the
+language of poetical minds, together with its relation to music,
+produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony
+and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet should
+accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the harmony,
+which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed convenient
+and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as
+includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate
+upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his
+peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose writers
+is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has
+been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet--the truth and splendour
+of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense
+that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic,
+dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in
+thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any
+regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms,
+the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence
+of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.
+[Footnote: See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death
+particularly.] His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which
+satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his
+philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which distends, and
+then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind, and pours itself
+forth together with it into the universal element with which it has
+perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions in opinion are not
+only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words
+unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in
+the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical,
+and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of the
+eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed
+traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their
+subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the truth of things,
+than those who have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton
+(to confine ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very
+loftiest power.
+
+A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There
+is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a
+catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connection than time,
+place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of
+actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing
+in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other
+minds. The one is partial, and applies only to a definite period of
+time, and a certain combination of events which can never again recur;
+the other is universal, and contains within itself the germ of a
+relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible
+varieties of human nature. Time, which destroys the beauty and the use
+of the story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry which should
+invest them, augments that of poetry, and for ever develops new and
+wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence
+epitomes have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the
+poetry of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures
+and distorts that which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which
+makes beautiful that which is distorted.
+
+The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition
+as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be considered as a
+whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated
+portions; a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.
+And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were
+poets; and although the plan of these writers, especially that of Livy,
+restrained them from developing this faculty in its highest degree,
+they made copious and ample amends for their subjection by filling all
+the interstices of their subjects with living images.
+
+Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed
+to estimate its effects upon society.
+
+Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls
+open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.
+In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves nor their auditors
+are fully aware of the excellence of poetry: for it acts in a divine
+and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness; and it is
+reserved for future generations to contemplate and measure the mighty
+cause and effect in all the strength and splendour of their union.
+Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fulness of
+his fame; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as
+he does to all time, must be composed of his peers: it must be
+impanelled by Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations.
+A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its
+own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by
+the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and
+softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer and his
+contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements
+of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding
+civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his
+age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses
+were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and
+Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering
+devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal
+creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and
+enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until
+from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified
+themselves with the objects of their admiration. Nor let it be objected
+that these characters are remote from moral perfection, and that they
+can by no means be considered as edifying patterns for general
+imitation. Every epoch, under names more or less specious, has deified
+its peculiar errors; Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a
+semi-barbarous age; and Self-deceit is the veiled image of unknown
+evil, before which luxury and satiety lie prostrate. But a poet
+considers the vices of his contemporaries as the temporary dress in
+which his creations must be arrayed, and which cover without concealing
+the eternal proportions of their beauty. An epic or dramatic personage
+is understood to wear them around his soul, as he may the ancient
+armour or the modern uniform around his body; whilst it is easy to
+conceive a dress more graceful than either. The beauty of the internal
+nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture but that
+the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise,
+and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn.
+A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through
+the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest
+class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its
+naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of
+costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary music
+for mortal ears.
+
+The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry rests upon
+a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral
+improvement of man. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry
+has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and
+domestic life: nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate,
+and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But
+poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the
+mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended
+combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty
+of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not
+familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations
+clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those
+who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted
+content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which
+it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our
+nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which
+exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly
+good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself
+in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures
+of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good
+is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting
+upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination
+by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the
+power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other
+thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for
+ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the
+organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise
+strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do ill to embody his own
+conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of his place
+and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither. By
+this assumption of the inferior office of interpreting the effect, in
+which perhaps after all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he
+would resign a glory in a participation in the cause. There was little
+danger that Homer, or any of the eternal poets, should have so far
+misunderstood themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their
+widest dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great, is
+less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have frequently
+affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is diminished in
+exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to
+this purpose.
+
+Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval by the
+dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously
+with all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions of the poetical
+faculty; architecture, painting, music, the dance, sculpture,
+philosophy, and we may add, the forms of civil life. For although the
+scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many imperfections which
+the poetry existing in chivalry and Christianity has erased from the
+habits and institutions of modern Europe; yet never at any other period
+has so much energy, beauty, and virtue been developed; never was blind
+strength and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject to the
+will of man, or that will less repugnant to the dictates of the
+beautiful and the true, as during the century which preceded the death
+of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we
+records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity
+in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language,
+which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others, and the
+storehouse of examples to everlasting time. For written poetry existed
+at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, and it is an idle
+inquiry to demand which gave and which received the light, which all,
+as from a common focus, have scattered over the darkest periods of
+succeeding time. We know no more of cause and effect than a constant
+conjunction of events: poetry is ever found to coexist with whatever
+other arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal
+to what has already been established to distinguish between the cause
+and the effect.
+
+It was at the period here adverted to that the drama had its birth;
+and however a succeeding writer may have equalled or surpassed those
+few great specimens of the Athenian drama which have been preserved
+to us, it is indisputable that the art itself never was understood or
+practised according to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For
+the Athenians employed language, action, music, painting, the dance,
+and religious institutions to produce a common effect in the
+representation of the highest idealisms of passion and of power; each
+division in the art was made perfect in its kind by artists of the
+most consummate skill, and was disciplined into a beautiful proportion
+and unity one towards the other. On the modern stage a few only of the
+elements capable of expressing the image of the poet's conception are
+employed at once. We have tragedy without music and dancing; and music
+and dancing without the highest impersonations of which they are the
+fit accompaniment, and both without religion and solemnity. Religious
+institution has indeed been usually banished from the stage. Our system
+of divesting the actor's face of a mask, on which the many expressions
+appropriate to his dramatic character might be moulded into one
+permanent and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a partial
+and inharmonious effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where
+all the attention may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry.
+The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to
+great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the
+dramatic circle; but the comedy should be, as in _King Lear_, universal,
+ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principle
+which determines the balance in favour of _King Lear_ against the
+_OEdipus Tyrannus_ or the _Agamemnon_, or, if you will, the trilogies
+with which they are connected; unless the intense power of the choral
+poetry, especially that of the latter, should be considered as restoring
+the equilibrium. _King Lear_, if it can sustain this comparison, may
+be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing
+in the world; in spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was
+subjected by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has
+prevailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious _Autos_, has
+attempted to fulfill some of the high conditions of dramatic
+representation neglected by Shakespeare; such as the establishing a
+relation between the drama and religion, and the accommodating them
+to music and dancing; but he omits the observation of conditions still
+more important, and more is lost than gained by the substitution of
+the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms of a distorted
+superstition for the living impersonations of the truth of human
+passion.
+
+But I digress.--The connection of scenic exhibitions with the
+improvement or corruption of the manners of men has been universally
+recognized; in other words, the presence or absence of poetry in its
+most perfect and universal form has been found to be connected with
+good and evil in conduct or habit. The corruption which has been imputed
+to the drama as an effect, begins when the poetry employed in its
+constitution ends: I appeal to the history of manners whether the
+periods of the growth of the one and the decline of the other have not
+corresponded with an exactness equal to any example of moral cause and
+effect.
+
+The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have approached to its
+perfection, ever coexisted with the moral and intellectual greatness
+of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets are as mirrors in which
+the spectator beholds himself, under a thin disguise of circumstance,
+stript of all but that ideal perfection and energy which every one
+feels to be the internal type of all that he loves, admires, and would
+become. The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and
+passions so mighty that they distend in their conception the capacity
+of that by which they are conceived; the good affections are
+strengthened by pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow; and an exalted
+calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into
+the tumult of familiar life: even crime is disarmed of half its horror
+and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence
+of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of its
+willfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of their
+choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food for censure
+or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self-respect. Neither
+the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that which
+it resembles. The drama, so long as it continues to express poetry,
+is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightest
+rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity
+of these elementary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty,
+and multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the power of
+propagating its like wherever it may fall.
+
+But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with
+that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great
+masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment
+of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood, or a weak
+attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral
+truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some
+gross vice or weakness with which the author, in common with his
+auditors, are infected. Hence what has been called the classical and
+domestic drama. Addison's _Cato_ is a specimen of the one; and would
+it were not superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes
+poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning,
+ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.
+And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are
+unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion,
+which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and
+appetite. The period in our own history of the grossest degradation
+of the drama is the reign of Charles II., when all forms in which
+poetry had been accustomed to be expressed became hymns to the triumph
+of kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating
+an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle
+pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to
+be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit
+succeeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead
+of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to sympathetic
+merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever
+blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very
+veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster
+for which the corruption of society for ever brings forth new food,
+which it devours in secret.
+
+The drama being that form under which a greater number of modes of
+expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined than any other,
+the connection of poetry and social good is more observable in the
+drama than in whatever other form. And it is indisputable that the
+highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the
+highest dramatic excellence; and that the corruption or the extinction
+of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished, is a mark of
+a corruption of manners, and an extinction of the energies which sustain
+the soul of social life. But, as Machiavelli says of political
+institutions, that life may be preserved and renewed, if men should
+arise capable of bringing back the drama to its principles. And this
+is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense: all language,
+institution and form, require not only to be produced, but to be
+sustained: the office and character of a poet participates in the
+divine nature as regards providence, no less than as regards creation.
+
+Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance, first of
+the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of
+the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The
+bucolic writers, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants of
+Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most glorious
+reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious; like the odour of the
+tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness;
+whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale of June,
+which mingles the fragrance of all the flowers of the field, and adds
+a quickening and harmonizing spirit of its own which endows the sense
+with a power of sustaining its extreme delight. The bucolic and erotic
+delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness in
+statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners and
+institutions, which distinguished the epoch to which I now refer. Nor
+is it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication of it, to
+which this want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sensibility to
+the influence of the senses and the affections is to be found in the
+writings of Homer and Sophocles: the former, especially, has clothed
+sensual and pathetic images with irresistible attractions. Their
+superiority over these succeeding writers consists in the presence of
+those thoughts which belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not
+in the absence of those which are connected with the external: their
+incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the union of all. It
+is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which
+their imperfection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets,
+but inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered with
+any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their age. Had
+that corruption availed so as to extinguish in them the sensibility
+to pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them
+as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would have been achieved.
+For the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to
+pleasure; and, therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the imagination
+and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a
+paralysing venom, through the affections into the very appetites, until
+all become a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach
+of such a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which
+are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps
+of Astraa, departing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all the
+pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever still the light
+of life; the source of whatever of beautiful or generous or true can
+have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that those
+among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were
+delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and
+sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly
+have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever
+cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely
+disjointed, which descending through the minds of many men is attached
+to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence
+is sent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life
+of all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at
+once of its own and of social renovation. And let us not circumscribe
+the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the
+sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may have perceived
+the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and
+isolated portions: those who are more finely organized, or, born in
+a happier age, may recognize them as episodes to that great poem, which
+all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built
+up since the beginning of the world.
+
+The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in ancient
+Rome; but the actions and forms of its social life never seem to have
+been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The Romans appear
+to have considered the Greeks as the selectest treasuries of the
+selectest forms of manners and of nature, and to have abstained from
+creating in measured language, sculpture, music, or architecture
+anything which might bear a particular relation to their own condition,
+whilst it should bear a general one to the universal constitution of
+the world. But we judge from partial evidence, and we judge perhaps
+partially. Ennius, Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have
+been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil in a very high
+sense, a creator. The chosen delicacy of expressions of the latter are
+as a mist of light which conceal from us the intense and exceeding
+truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet
+Horace, Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of the
+Virgilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The
+institutions also, and the religion of Rome, were less poetical than
+those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence
+poetry in Rome seemed to follow, rather than accompany, the perfection
+of political and domestic society. The true poetry of Rome lived in
+its institutions; for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic they
+contained, could have sprung only from the faculty which creates the
+order in which they consist. The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus;
+the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the
+victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with
+Hannibal after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a
+refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from
+such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at
+once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination,
+beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according
+to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward ever-living
+fame. These things are not the less poetry, _quia carent vate sacro_.
+They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the
+memories of men. The Past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the
+theatre of everlasting generations with their harmony.
+
+At length the ancient system of religion and manners had fulfilled the
+circle of its revolutions. And the world would have fallen into utter
+anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among the authors
+of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion, who
+created forms of opinion and action never before conceived; which,
+copied into the imaginations of men, became as generals to the
+bewildered armies of their thoughts. It is foreign to the present
+purpose to touch upon the evil produced by these systems: except that
+we protest, on the ground of the principles already established, that
+no portion of it can be attributed to the poetry they contain.
+
+It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, and
+Isaiah had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus and his
+disciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers
+of this extraordinary person are all instinct with the most vivid
+poetry. But his doctrines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a
+certain period after the prevalence of a system of opinions founded
+upon those promulgated by him, the three forms into which Plato had
+distributed the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apotheosis, and
+became the object of the worship of the civilized world. Here it is
+to be confessed that "Light seems to thicken", and
+
+      "The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,
+  Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
+  And night's black agents to their preys do rouse".
+
+But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from the dust and blood of
+this fierce chaos! how the world, as from a resurrection, balancing
+itself on the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has reassumed its
+yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen to the music,
+unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind,
+nourishing its everlasting course with strength and swiftness.
+
+The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology and
+institutions of the Celtic [Footnote: The confusion between Celtic and
+Teutonic is constant in the writers of the eighteenth century and the
+early part of this.] conquerors of the Roman empire, outlived the
+darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory,
+and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is
+an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian
+doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of evil
+their agencies may have contained sprang from the extinction of the
+poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and
+superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had
+become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and
+yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others:
+lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud characterized a race amongst
+whom no one was to be found capable of creating in form, language, or
+institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not
+justly to be charged upon any class of events immediately connected
+with them, and those events are most entitled to our approbation which
+could dissolve it most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those who
+cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that many of these anomalies
+have been incorporated into our popular religion.
+
+It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry
+of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest themselves.
+The principle of equality had been discovered and applied by Plato in
+his Republic, as the theoretical rule of the mode in which the materials
+of pleasure and of power produced by the common skill and labour of
+human beings ought to be distributed among them. The limitations of
+this rule were asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility
+of each, or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines
+of Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual system
+of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, and the
+future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the sacred and eternal
+truths contained in these views to mankind, and Christianity, in its
+abstract purity, became the exoteric expression of the esoteric
+doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiquity. The incorporation of
+the Celtic nations with the exhausted population of the south, impressed
+upon it the figure of the poetry existing in their mythology and
+institutions. The result was a sum of the action and reaction of all
+the causes included in it; for it may be assumed as a maxim that no
+nation or religion can supersede any other without incorporating into
+itself a portion of that which it supersedes. The abolition of personal
+and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of women from a great part
+of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were among the consequences
+of these events.
+
+The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest political
+hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. The freedom
+of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became a religion,
+the idols of whose worship were ever present. It was as if the statues
+of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed with life and motion, and had
+walked forth among their worshippers; so that earth became peopled by
+the inhabitants of a diviner world. The familiar appearance and
+proceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was
+created as out of the wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is
+poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument
+of their art: _Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse_. The Provencal
+Trouveurs, or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells,
+which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is
+in the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming
+a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were superfluous to
+explain how the gentleness and the elevation of mind connected with
+these sacred emotions can render men more amiable, more generous and
+wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little world of
+self. Dante understood the secret things of love even more than
+Petrarch. His _Vita Nuova_ is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of
+sentiment and language: it is the idealized history of that period,
+and those intervals of his life which were dedicated to love. His
+apotheosis of Beatrice in Paradise, and the gradations of his own love
+and her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns himself to have
+ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious
+imagination of modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed
+the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the
+_Divine Drama_, in the measure of the admiration which they accord to
+the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual hymn of
+everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in Plato alone of
+all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the greatest
+writers of the renovated world; and the music has penetrated the caverns
+of society, and its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and
+superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare,
+Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and the great writers of our own age,
+have celebrated the dominion of love, planting, as it were, trophies
+in the human mind of that sublimest victory over sensuality and force.
+The true relation borne to each other by the sexes into which human
+kind is distributed has become less misunderstood; and if the error
+which confounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two
+sexes has been partially recognized in the opinions and institutions
+of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship of which
+chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets.
+
+The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the
+stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted
+notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have
+idealized are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets
+walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult
+question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction
+which must have subsisted in their minds between their own creeds and
+that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full
+extent of it by placing Rhipaus, whom Virgil calls _justissimus unus_,
+in Paradise, [Footnote: _Paradiso, xx_. 68.] and observing a most
+heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards and punishments. And
+Milton's poem contains within itself a philosophical refutation of
+that system, of which, by a strange and natural antithesis, it has
+been a chief popular support. Nothing can exceed the energy and
+magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed in _Paradise Lost_.
+It is a mistake to suppose that he could ever have been intended for
+the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning,
+and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish
+on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave,
+are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that
+ennobles his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours
+his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far
+superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has
+conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one
+who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible
+revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him
+to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of
+exasperating him to deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated
+the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to
+have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil.
+And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive
+proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He mingled, as it were, the
+elements of human nature as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged
+them in the composition of his great picture according to the laws of
+epic truth; that is, according to the laws of that principle by which
+a series of actions of the external universe and of intelligent and
+ethical beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeeding
+generations of mankind. The _Divina Commedia_ and _Paradise Lost_ have
+conferred upon modern mythology a systematic form; and when change and
+time shall have added one more superstition to the mass of those which
+have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commentators will be learnedly
+employed in elucidating the religion of ancestral Europe, only not
+utterly forgotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity
+of genius.
+
+Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, the second
+poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and intelligible
+relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the age in
+which he lived, and of the ages which followed it, developing itself
+in correspondence with their development. For Lucretius had limed the
+wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world; and
+Virgil, with a modesty that ill became his genius, had affected the
+fame of an imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he copied;
+and none among the flock of mock-birds, though their notes were sweet,
+Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or
+Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a single condition of epic truth.
+Milton was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest
+sense be refused to the _Aneid_ still less can it be conceded to the
+_Orlando Furioso_, the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, the _Lusiad, or the
+_Fairy Queen_.
+
+Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient religion
+of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their poetry probably
+in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unreformed worship
+of modern Europe. The one preceded and the other followed the
+Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante was the first religious
+reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony
+than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. Dante was
+the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in
+itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms.
+He was the congregator of those great spirits who presided over the
+resurrection of learning; the Lucifer of that starry flock which in
+the thirteenth century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a
+heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are
+instinct with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of
+inextinguishable thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of
+their birth, and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no
+conductor. All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which
+contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and
+the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is
+a fountain for ever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight;
+and after one person and one age has exhausted all its divine effluence
+which their peculiar relations enable them to share, another and yet
+another succeeds, and new relations are ever developed, the source of
+an unforeseen and an unconceived delight.
+
+The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio
+was characterized by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture.
+Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the superstructure of English
+literature is based upon the materials of Italian invention.
+
+But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history of
+poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have pointed out
+the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the word, upon
+their own and all succeeding times.
+
+But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners
+and mechanists on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of
+the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of
+reason is more useful. Let us examine, as the grounds of this
+distinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a
+general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and
+intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it acquiesces. There
+are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal, and permanent; the
+other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means
+of producing the former or the latter. In the former sense, whatever
+strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and
+adds spirit to sense, is useful. But a narrower meaning may be assigned
+to the word utility, confining it to express that which banishes the
+importunity of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding men
+with security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of
+superstition, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance
+among men as may consist with the motives of personal advantage.
+
+Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, have their
+appointed office in society. They follow the footsteps of poets, and
+copy the sketches of their creations into the book of common life.
+They make space, and give time. Their exertions are of the highest
+value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns
+of the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the
+superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions,
+let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced,
+the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst
+the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines labour,
+let them beware that their speculations, for want of correspondence
+with those first principles which belong to the imagination, do not
+tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes
+of luxury and want. They have exemplified the saying, "To him that
+hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that
+he hath shall be taken away". The rich have become richer, and the
+poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between
+the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the effects
+which must ever flow from an unmitigated exercise of the calculating
+faculty.
+
+It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the definition
+involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable
+defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, the pain of the
+inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior
+portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are
+often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good.
+Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy
+delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.
+This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from
+the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than
+the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, "It is better
+to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth". Not that
+this highest species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. The
+delight of love and friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration of nature,
+the joy of the perception, and still more of the creation of poetry,
+is often wholly unalloyed.
+
+The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense is true
+utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or
+poetical philosophers.
+
+The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau [Footnote:
+Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a poet.
+The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners.], and their disciples,
+in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, are entitled to the
+gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree of moral
+and intellectual improvement which the world would have exhibited had
+they never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked for
+a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women, and children burnt
+as heretics. We might not at this moment have been congratulating each
+other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain. But it exceeds all
+imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of
+the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare,
+Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton had ever existed; if Raphael and
+Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never
+been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had
+never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed
+down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had
+been extinguished together with its belief. The human mind could never,
+except by the intervention of these excitements, have been awakened
+to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of
+analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now
+attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and
+creative faculty itself.
+
+We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we know how
+to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical
+knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the
+produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought
+is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes.
+There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in
+morals, government, and political economy, or, at least, what is wiser
+and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let "_I dare
+not_ wait upon _I would_, like the poor cat in the adage". We want the
+creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous
+impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our
+calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can
+digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the
+limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of
+the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal
+world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.
+To what but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a degree
+disproportioned to the presence of the creative faculty, which is the
+basis of all knowledge, is to be attributed the abuse of all invention
+for abridging and combining labour, to the exasperation of the
+inequality of mankind? From what other cause has it arisen that the
+discoveries which should have lightened have added a weight to the
+curse imposed on Adam? Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which
+money is the visible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world.
+
+The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold: by one it creates
+new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; by the other it
+engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them according
+to a certain rhythm and order which may be called the beautiful and
+the good. The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than
+at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating
+principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceeds
+the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws
+of human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which
+animates it.
+
+Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and
+circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science,
+and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time
+the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from
+which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if
+blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren
+world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of
+life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things;
+it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the texture of the
+elements which compose it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty
+to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love,
+patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful universe
+which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the
+grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not
+ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the
+owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not
+like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination
+of the will. A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry". The greatest
+poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal,
+which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to
+transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour
+of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the
+conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach
+or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original
+purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the
+results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the
+decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated
+to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions
+of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day whether
+it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are
+produced by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended by
+critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful
+observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connection of
+the spaces between their suggestions by the intermixture of conventional
+expressions; a necessity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical
+faculty itself: for Milton conceived the _Paradise Lost_ as a whole
+before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for
+the muse having "dictated" to him the "unpremeditated song". And let
+this be an answer to those who would allege the fifty-six various
+readings of the first line of the _Orlando Furioso_. Compositions so
+produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. This instinct and
+intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the
+plastic and pictorial arts; a great statue or picture grows under the
+power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb; and the very mind
+which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to
+itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.
+
+Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest
+and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and
+feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding
+our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing
+unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression: so that
+even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be
+pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is,
+as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own;
+but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the
+coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled
+sands which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are
+experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and
+the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them
+is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love,
+patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions;
+and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe.
+Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most
+refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with
+the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the
+representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted chord,
+and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the
+sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes
+immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests
+the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and
+veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind,
+bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters
+abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns
+of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry
+redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.
+
+Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that
+which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most
+deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity
+and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable
+things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within
+the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an
+incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns
+to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through
+life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare
+the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
+
+All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the
+percipient. "The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven
+of hell, a hell of heaven." But poetry defeats the curse which binds
+us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And
+whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark
+veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being
+within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the
+familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which
+we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight
+the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.
+It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which
+we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated
+in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.
+It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso _--Non merita nome di
+creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta._
+
+A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure,
+virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best,
+the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his glory, let time
+be challenged to declare whether the fame of any other institutor of
+human life be comparable to that of a poet. That he is the wisest, the
+happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally
+incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless
+virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into
+the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men: and the
+exceptions, as they regard those who possessed the poetic faculty in
+a high yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confine
+rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the
+arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own
+persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and
+executioner, let us decide, without trial, testimony, or form, that
+certain motives of those who are "there sitting where we dare not
+soar", are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard,
+that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was
+a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine,
+that Spenser was a poet-laureate. It is inconsistent with this division
+of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample
+justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been
+weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins "were
+as scarlet, they are now white as snow"; they have been washed in the
+blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous
+chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been confused
+in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how
+little is, as it appears--or appears, as it is; look to your own
+motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.
+
+Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it
+is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and
+that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connection with the
+consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine that these are
+the necessary conditions of all mental causation, when mental effects
+are experienced unsusceptible of being referred to them. The frequent
+recurrence of the poetical power, it is obvious to suppose, may produce
+in the mind a habit of order and harmony correlative with its own
+nature and with its effects upon other minds. But in the intervals of
+inspiration, and they may be frequent without being durable, a poet
+becomes a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences
+under which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately
+organized than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his
+own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will avoid the
+one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned to this difference.
+And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny when he neglects to observe
+the circumstances under which these objects of universal pursuit and
+flight have disguised themselves in one another's garments.
+
+But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus cruelty,
+envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil have never formed
+any portion of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.
+
+I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set down
+these remarks according to the order in which they were suggested to
+my mind by a consideration of the subject itself, instead of observing
+the formality of a polemical reply; but if the view which they contain
+be just, they will be found to involve a refutation of the arguers
+against poetry, so far at least as regards the first division of the
+subject. I can readily conjecture what should have moved the gall of
+some learned and intelligent writers who quarrel with certain
+versifiers; I confess myself, like them, unwilling to be stunned by
+the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of the day. Bavius and Maevius
+undoubtedly are, as they ever were, insufferable persons. But it belongs
+to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather than confound.
+
+The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its elements
+and principles; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow limits
+assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, in a restricted
+sense, has a common source with all other forms of order and of beauty,
+according to which the materials of human life are susceptible of being
+arranged, and which is poetry in an universal sense.
+
+The second part [Footnote: It was never written.] will have for its
+object an application of these principles to the present state of the
+cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the attempt to idealize the
+modern forms of manners and opinions, and compel them into a
+subordination to the imaginative and creative faculty. For the
+literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever
+preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national
+will, has arisen, as it were, from a new birth. In spite of the low-
+thoughted envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will
+be a memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among
+such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have
+appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious
+liberty. The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the
+awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or
+institution is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the
+power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions
+respecting men and nature. The persons in whom this power resides may
+often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little
+apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the
+ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled
+to serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul.
+It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers
+of the present day without being startled with the electric life which
+burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the
+depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit,
+and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its
+manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the
+age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the
+mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present;
+the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which
+sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which
+is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
+the world.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS CARLYLE.
+
+(1795-1881.)
+
+X. GOETHE.
+
+
+The brief account here given of the work of Goethe was originally
+published as part of the introduction to the volume of translations
+called _German Romance_, which was published in 1827. It is now commonly
+printed as an appendix to the first volume of Carlyle's _Miscellanies_.
+Carlyle was probably never at his best when he gave himself to the
+study of a particular author. His genius rather lay in the more general
+aspects of his work, and in the force with which he gave an entirely
+new turn to the currents of English criticism. Of his studies upon
+particular authors, the essay on Burns is perhaps the most complete
+and the most penetrating. But it is too long for the purposes of this
+selection. Nor is it amiss that he should here be represented by a
+work which may remind us that, among his services to English letters,
+to have opened the stores of German poetry and thought was by no means
+the least memorable.
+
+
+Of a nature so rare and complex as Goethe's it is difficult to form
+a true comprehension; difficult even to express what comprehension one
+has formed. In Goethe's mind, the first aspect that strikes us is its
+calmness, then its beauty; a deeper inspection reveals to us its
+vastness and unmeasured strength. This man rules, and is not ruled.
+The stern and fiery energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in
+the centre of his being; a trembling sensibility has been inured to
+stand, without flinching or murmur, the sharpest trials. Nothing
+outward, nothing inward, shall agitate or control him. The brightest
+and most capricious fancy, the most piercing and inquisitive intellect,
+the wildest and deepest imagination; the highest thrills of joy, the
+bitterest pangs of sorrow: all these are his, he is not theirs. While
+he moves every heart from its steadfastness, his own is firm and still:
+the words that search into the inmost recesses of our nature, he
+pronounces with a tone of coldness and equanimity; in the deepest
+pathos he weeps not, or his tears are like water trickling from a rock
+of adamant. He is king of himself and of his world; nor does he rule
+it like a vulgar great man, like a Napoleon or Charles Twelfth, by the
+mere brute exertion of his will, grounded on no principle, or on a
+false one: his faculties and feelings are not fettered or prostrated
+under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly union
+under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of
+Nature were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together, under
+its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation.
+
+This is the true Rest of man; no stunted unbelieving callousness, no
+reckless surrender to blind Force, no opiate delusion; but the
+harmonious adjustment of Necessity and Accident, of what is changeable
+and what is unchangeable in our destiny; the calm supremacy of the
+spirit over its circumstances; the dim aim of every human soul, the
+full attainment of only a chosen few. It comes not unsought to any;
+but the wise are wise because they think no price too high for it.
+Goethe's inward home has been reared by slow and laborious efforts;
+but it stands on no hollow or deceitful basis: for his peace is not
+from blindness, but from clear vision; not from uncertain hope of
+alteration, but from sure insight into what cannot alter. His world
+seems once to have been desolate and baleful as that of the darkest
+sceptic: but he has covered it anew with beauty and solemnity, derived
+from deeper sources, over which Doubt can have no sway. He has inquired
+fearlessly, and fearlessly searched out and denied the False; but he
+has not forgotten, what is equally essential and infinitely harder,
+to search out and admit the True. His heart is still full of warmth,
+though his head is clear and cold; the world for him is still full of
+grandeur, though he clothes it with no false colours; his
+fellow-creatures are still objects of reverence and love, though their
+basenesses are plainer to no eye than to his. To reconcile these
+contradictions is the task of all good men, each for himself, in his
+own way and manner; a task which, in our age, is encompassed with
+difficulties peculiar to the time; and which Goethe seems to have
+accomplished with a success that few can rival. A mind so in unity
+with itself, even though it were a poor and small one, would arrest
+our attention, and win some kind regard from us; but when this mind
+ranks among the strongest and most complicated of the species, it
+becomes a sight full of interest, a study full of deep instruction.
+
+Such a mind as Goethe's is the fruit not only of a royal endowment by
+nature, but also of a culture proportionate to her bounty. In Goethe's
+original form of spirit we discern the highest gifts of manhood, without
+any deficiency of the lower: he has an eye and a heart equally for the
+sublime, the common, and the ridiculous; the elements at once of a
+poet, a thinker, and a wit. Of his culture we have often spoken already;
+and it deserves again to be held up to praise and imitation. This, as
+he himself unostentatiously confesses, has been the soul of all his
+conduct, the great enterprise of his life; and few that understand him
+will be apt to deny that he has prospered. As a writer, his resources
+have been accumulated from nearly all the provinces of human intellect
+and activity; and he has trained himself to use these complicated
+instruments with a light expertness which we might have admired in the
+professor of a solitary department. Freedom, and grace, and smiling
+earnestness are the characteristics of his works: the matter of them
+flows along in chaste abundance, in the softest combination; and their
+style is referred to by native critics as the highest specimen of the
+German tongue. On this latter point the vote of a stranger may well
+be deemed unavailing; but the charms of Goethe's style lie deeper than
+the mere words; for language, in the hands of a master, is the express
+image of thought, or rather it is the body of which thought is the
+soul; the former rises into being together with the latter, and the
+graces of the one are shadowed forth in the movements of the other.
+Goethe's language, even to a foreigner, is full of character and
+secondary meanings; polished, yet vernacular and cordial, it sounds
+like the dialect of wise, ancient, and true-hearted men: in poetry,
+brief, sharp, simple, and expressive; in prose, perhaps still more
+pleasing; for it is at once concise and full, rich, clear, unpretending
+and melodious; and the sense, not presented in alternating flashes,
+piece after piece revealed and withdrawn, rises before us as in
+continuous dawning, and stands at last simultaneously complete, and
+bathed in the mellowest and ruddiest sunshine. It brings to mind what
+the prose of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, Browne, would have been, had they
+written under the good, without the bad influences, of that French
+precision, which has polished and attenuated, trimmed and impoverished,
+all modern languages; made our meaning clear, and too often shallow
+as well as clear.
+
+But Goethe's culture as a writer is perhaps less remarkable than his
+culture as a man. He has learned not in head only, but also in heart:
+not from Art and Literature, but also by action and passion, in the
+rugged school of Experience. If asked what was the grand characteristic
+of his writings, we should not say knowledge, but wisdom. A mind that
+has seen, and suffered, and done, speaks to us of what it has tried
+and conquered. A gay delineation will give us notice of dark and
+toilsome experiences, of business done in the great deep of the spirit;
+a maxim, trivial to the careless eye, will rise with light and solution
+over long perplexed periods of our own history. It is thus that heart
+speaks to heart, that the life of one man becomes a possession to all.
+Here is a mind of the most subtle and tumultuous elements; but it is
+governed in peaceful diligence, and its impetuous and ethereal faculties
+work softly together for good and noble ends. Goethe may be called a
+Philosopher; for he loves and has practised as a man the wisdom which,
+as a poet, he inculcates. Composure and cheerful seriousness seem to
+breathe over all his character. There is no whining over human woes:
+it is understood that we must simply all strive to alleviate or remove
+them. There is no noisy battling for opinions; but a persevering effort
+to make Truth lovely, and recommend her, by a thousand avenues, to the
+hearts of all men. Of his personal manners we can easily believe the
+universal report, as often given in the way of censure as of praise,
+that he is a man of consummate breeding and the stateliest presence:
+for an air of polished tolerance, of courtly, we might almost say
+majestic repose, and serene humanity, is visible throughout his works.
+In no line of them does he speak with asperity of any man; scarcely
+ever even of a thing. He knows the good, and loves it; he knows the
+bad and hateful, and rejects it; but in neither case with violence:
+his love is calm and active; his rejection is implied, rather than
+pronounced; meek and gentle, though we see that it is thorough, and
+never to be revoked. The noblest and the basest he not only seems to
+comprehend, but to personate and body forth in their most secret
+lineaments: hence actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with
+all the circumstances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts
+where they originated and are entertained. This also is the spirit of
+our Shakespeare, and perhaps of every great dramatic poet. Shakespeare
+is no sectarian; to all he deals with equity and mercy; because he
+knows all, and his heart is wide enough for all. In his mind the world
+is a whole; he figures it as Providence governs it; and to him it is
+not strange that the sun should be caused to shine on the evil and the
+good, and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
+
+Goethe has been called the German Voltaire; but it is a name which
+does him wrong, and describes him ill. Except in the corresponding
+variety of their pursuits and knowledge, in which, perhaps, it does
+Voltaire wrong, the two cannot be compared. Goethe is all, or the best
+of all, that Voltaire was, and he is much that Voltaire did not dream
+of. To say nothing of his dignified and truthful character as a man,
+he belongs, as a thinker and a writer, to a far higher class than this
+_enfant gate du monde qu'il gata_. He is not a questioner and a
+despiser, but a teacher and a reverencer; not a destroyer, but a
+builder-up; not a wit only, but a wise man. Of him Montesquieu could
+not have said, with even epigrammatic truth: _Il a plus que personne
+l'esprit que tout le monde a_. Voltaire was the _cleverest_ of all
+past and present men; but a great man is something more, and this he
+surely was not.
+
+As poets, the two live not in the same hemisphere, not in the same
+world. Of Voltaire's poetry, it were blindness to deny the polished
+intellectual vigour, the logical symmetry, the flashes that from time
+to time give it the colour, if not the warmth, of fire: but it is in
+a far other sense than this that Goethe is a poet; in a sense of which
+the French literature has never afforded any example. We may venture
+to say of him, that his province is high and peculiar; higher than any
+poet but himself, for several generations, has so far succeeded in,
+perhaps even has steadfastly attempted. In reading Goethe's poetry,
+it perpetually strikes us that we are reading the poetry of our own
+day and generation. No demands are made on our credulity; the light,
+the science, the scepticism of the age, are not hid from us. He does
+not deal in antiquated mythologies, or ring changes on traditionary
+poetic forms; there are no supernal, no infernal influences, for _Faust_
+is an apparent rather than a real exception: but there is the barren
+prose of the nineteenth century, the vulgar life which we are all
+leading; and it starts into strange beauty in his hands; and we pause
+in delighted wonder to behold the flower of Poesy blooming in that
+parched and rugged soil. This is the end of his _Mignons_ and _Harpers_,
+of his _Tassos_ and _Meisters_. Poetry, as he views it, exists not in
+time or place, but in the spirit of man; and Art, with Nature, is now
+to perform for the poet, what Nature alone performed of old. The
+divinities and demons, the witches, spectres, and fairies, are vanished
+from the world, never again to be recalled: but the Imagination which
+created these still lives, and will forever live in man's soul; and
+can again pour its wizard light over the Universe, and summon forth
+enchantments as lovely or impressive, and which its sister faculties
+will not contradict. To say that Goethe has accomplished all this,
+would be to say that his genius is greater than was ever given to any
+man: for if it was a high and glorious mind, or rather series of minds,
+that peopled the first ages with their peculiar forms of poetry, it
+must be a series of minds much higher and more glorious that shall so
+people the present. The angels and demons that can lay prostrate our
+hearts in the nineteenth century must be of another and more cunning
+fashion than those that subdued us in the ninth. To have attempted,
+to have begun this enterprise, may be accounted the greatest praise.
+That Goethe ever meditated it, in the form here set forth, we have no
+direct evidence: but indeed such is the end and aim of high poetry at
+all times and seasons; for the fiction of the poet is not falsehood,
+but the purest truth; and if he would lead captive our whole being,
+not rest satisfied with a part of it, he must address us on interests
+that _are_, not that _were_, ours; and in a dialect which finds a
+response, and not a contradiction, within our bosoms.
+
+How Goethe has fulfilled these conditions in addressing us, an
+inspection of his works, but no description, can inform us. Let me
+advise the reader to study them, and see. If he come to the task with
+an opinion that poetry is an amusement, a passive recreation; that its
+highest object is to supply a languid mind with fantastic shows and
+indolent emotions, his measure of enjoyment is likely to be scanty,
+and his criticisms will be loud, angry, and manifold. But if he know
+and believe that poetry is the essence of all science, and requires
+the purest of all studies; if he recollect that the new may not always
+be the false; that the excellence which can be seen in a moment is not
+usually a very deep one; above all, if his own heart be full of feelings
+and experiences, for which he finds no name and no solution, but which
+lie in pain imprisoned and unuttered in his breast, till the Word be
+spoken, the spell that is to unbind them, and bring them forth to
+liberty and light; then, if I mistake not, he will find that in this
+Goethe there is a new world set before his eyes; a world of Earnestness
+and Sport, of solemn cliff and gay plain; some such temple--far
+inferior, as it may well be, in magnificence and beauty, but a temple
+of the same architecture--some such temple for the Spirit of our age,
+as the Shakespeares and Spensers have raised for the Spirit of theirs.
+
+This seems a bold assertion: but it is not made without deliberation,
+and such conviction as it has stood within my means to obtain. If it
+invite discussion, and forward the discovery of the truth in this
+matter, its best purpose will be answered. Goethe's genius is a study
+for other minds than have yet seriously engaged with it among us. By
+and by, apparently ere long, he will be tried and judged righteously;
+he himself, and no cloud instead of him; for he comes to us in such
+a questionable shape, that silence and neglect will not always serve
+our purpose. England, the chosen home of justice in all its senses,
+where the humblest merit has been acknowledged, and the highest fault
+not unduly punished, will do no injustice to this extraordinary man.
+And if, when her impartial sentence has been pronounced and sanctioned,
+it shall appear that Goethe's earliest admirers have wandered too far
+into the language of panegyric, I hope it may be reckoned no
+unpardonable sin. It is spirit-stirring rather than spirit-sharpening,
+to consider that there is one of the Prophets here with us in our own
+day: that a man who is to be numbered with the Sages and _Sacri Vates_,
+the Shakespeares, the Tassos, the Cervanteses of the world, is looking
+on the things which we look on, has dealt with the very thoughts which
+we have to deal with, is reigning in serene dominion over the
+perplexities and contradictions in which we are still painfully
+entangled.
+
+That Goethe's mind is full of inconsistencies and shortcomings, can
+be a secret to no one who has heard of the Fall of Adam. Nor would it
+be difficult, in this place, to muster a long catalogue of darknesses
+defacing our perception of this brightness: but it might be still less
+profitable than it is difficult; for in Goethe's writings, as in those
+of all true masters, an apparent blemish is apt, after maturer study,
+to pass into a beauty. His works cannot be judged in fractions, for
+each of them is conceived and written as a whole; the humble and common
+may be no less essential there than the high and splendid: it is only
+Chinese pictures that have no shade. There is a maxim, far better known
+than practised, that to detect faults is a much lower occupation than
+to recognize merits. We may add also, that though far easier in the
+execution, it is not a whit more certain in the result. What is the
+detecting of a fault, but the feeling of an incongruity, of a
+contradiction, which may exist in ourselves as well as in the object?
+Who shall say in which? None but he who sees this object as it is, and
+himself as he is. We have all heard of the critic fly; but none of us
+doubts the compass of his own vision. It is thus that a high work of
+art, still more that a high and original mind, may at all times
+calculate on much sorriest criticism. In looking at an extraordinary
+man, it were good for an ordinary man to be sure of _seeing_ him,
+before attempting to _oversee_ him. Having ascertained that Goethe is
+an object deserving study, it will be time to censure his faults when
+we have clearly estimated his merits; and if we are wise judges, not
+till then.
+
+
+
+
+WALTER PATER.
+
+(1839-1894)
+
+XI.--SANDRO BOTTICELLI.
+
+
+Of the critics who have written during the last sixty years, Mr. Pater
+is probably the most remarkable. His work is always weighted with
+thought, and his thought is always fused with imagination. He unites,
+in a singular degree of intensity, the two crucial qualities of the
+critic, on the one hand a sense of form and colour and artistic
+utterance, on the other hand a speculative instinct which pierces
+behind these to the various types of idea and mood and character that
+underlie them. He is equally alive to subtle resemblances and to subtle
+differences, and art is to him not merely an intellectual enjoyment,
+but something which is to be taken into the spirit of a man and to
+become part of his life. Of the _history_ of literature, and the
+problems that rise out of it, he takes but small account. But for the
+other function assigned by Carlyle to criticism, for criticism as a
+"creative art, aiming to reproduce under a different shape the existing
+product of the artist, and painting to the intellect what already lay
+painted to the heart and the imagination"--for this no man has done
+more than Mr. Pater. With wider knowledge and a clearer consciousness
+of the deeper issues involved, he may be said to have taken up the
+work of Lamb and to have carried it forward in a spirit which those
+who best love Lamb will be the most ready to admire.
+
+Of Mr. Pater's literary criticisms, those on Wordsworth and Coleridge
+are perhaps the most striking. But he was probably still more at home
+in interpreting the work of the great painters. And of his
+"appreciations" of painters none is more characteristic than his study
+of Botticelli. It was written in 1870, and published in _The
+Renaissance_ in 1873.
+
+
+In Leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned
+by name--Sandro Botticelli. This pre-eminence may be due to chance
+only, but to some it will appear a result of deliberate judgment; for
+people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his
+name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important.
+In the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much
+of that meditative subtlety, which is sometimes supposed peculiar to
+the great imaginative workmen of its close. Leaving the simple religion
+which had occupied the followers of Giotto for a century, and the
+simple naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and
+flowers only, he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the
+modern world, the writings of Dante and Boccaccio, and in new readings
+of his own of classical stories: or, if he painted religious incidents,
+painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment, which touches
+you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible
+subject. What is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality
+of pleasure, which his work has the property of exciting in us, and
+which we cannot get elsewhere? For this, especially when he has to
+speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question
+which a critic has to answer.
+
+In an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life
+is almost colourless. Criticism, indeed, has cleared away much of the
+gossip which Vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of Lippo and
+Lucrezia, and rehabilitated the character of Andrea del Castagno. But
+in Botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. He did not even
+go by his true name: Sandro is a nickname, and his true name is
+Filipepi, Botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first
+taught him art. Only two things happened to him--two things which he
+shared with other artists: he was invited to Rome to paint in the
+Sistine Chapel, and he fell in later life under the influence of
+Savonarola, passing apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of
+religious melancholy, which lasted till his death in 1515, according
+to the received date. Vasari says that he plunged into the study of
+Dante, and even wrote a comment on the _Divine Comedy_. But it seems
+strange that he should have lived on inactive so long; and one almost
+wishes that some document might come to light, which, fixing the date
+of his death earlier, might relieve one, in thinking of him, of his
+dejected old age.
+
+He is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story
+and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line
+and colour, the medium of abstract painting. So he becomes the
+illustrator of Dante. In a few rare examples of the edition of 1481,
+the blank spaces left at the beginning of every canto, for the hand
+of the illuminator, have been filled, as far as the nineteenth canto
+of the _Inferno_, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by
+way of experiment, for in the copy in the Bodleian Library, one of the
+three impressions it contains has been printed upside down, and much
+awry, in the midst of the luxurious printed page. Giotto, and the
+followers of Giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not
+learned to put that weight of meaning into outward things--light,
+colour, everyday gesture, which the poetry of the _Divine Comedy_
+involves, and before the fifteenth century Dante could hardly have
+found an illustrator. Botticelli's illustrations are crowded with
+incident, blending, with a naive carelessness of pictorial propriety,
+three phases of the same scene into one plate. The grotesques, so often
+a stumbling-block to painters, who forget that the words of a poet,
+which only feebly present an image to the mind, must be lowered in key
+when translated into visible form, make one regret that he has not
+rather chosen for illustration the more subdued imagery of the
+_Purgatorio_. Yet in the scene of those who "go down quick into hell",
+there is an inventive force about the fire taking hold on the upturned
+soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no mere translation
+of Dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while the scene of the
+Centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual circumstances
+of their appearance, Botticelli has gone off with delight on the thought
+of the Centaurs themselves, bright, small creatures of the woodland,
+with arch baby faces and _mignon_ forms, drawing their tiny bows.
+
+Botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have
+been a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work
+of that alert sense of outward things, which, in the pictures of that
+period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the
+hillsides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering
+reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and
+in his visionariness he resembles Dante. Giotto, the tried companion
+of Dante, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo even, do but transcribe, with more or
+less refining, the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary
+painters; they are almost impassive spectators of the action before
+them. But the genius of which Botticelli is the type usurps the data
+before it as the exponent of ideas, moods, visions of its own; in this
+interest it plays fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and
+isolating others, and always combining them anew. To him, as to Dante,
+the scene, the colour, the outward image or gesture, comes with all
+its incisive and importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by
+some subtle law of his own structure, a mood which it awakes in no one
+else, of which it is the double or repetition, and which it clothes,
+that all may share it, with visible circumstance.
+
+But he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante
+which, referring all human action to the simple formula of purgatory,
+heaven, and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths
+of Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor,
+Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some
+shadow of ecclesiastical censure. This Matteo Palmieri (two dim figures
+move under that name in contemporary history) was the reputed author
+of a poem, still unedited, _La Citta Divina_, which represented the
+human race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of
+Lucifer, were neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies, a fantasy of
+that earlier Alexandrian philosophy about which the Florentine intellect
+in that century was so curious. Botticelli's picture may have been
+only one of those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has
+recorded its impressions of the various forms of beatified
+existence--_Glorias_, as they were called, like that in which Giotto
+painted the portrait of Dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying
+in a picture the wayward dream of Palmieri, and the chapel where it
+hung was closed. Artists so entire as Botticelli are usually careless
+about philosophical theories, even when the philosopher is a Florentine
+of the fifteenth century, and his work a poem in _terza rima_. But
+Botticelli, who wrote a commentary on Dante, and became the disciple
+of Savonarola, may well have let such theories come and go across him.
+True or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment
+with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in
+a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss
+about them--the wistfulness of exiles, conscious of a passion and
+energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through
+all his varied work with a sentiment of ineffable melancholy.
+
+So just what Dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell,
+Botticelli accepts: that middle world in which men take no side in
+great conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals.
+He thus sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by
+any moral ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. His interest
+is neither in the untempered goodness of Angelico's saints, nor the
+untempered evil of Orcagna's _Inferno_; but with men and women, in
+their mixed and uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed
+sometimes by passion with a character of loveliness and energy, but
+saddened perpetually by the shadow upon them of the great things from
+which they shrink. His morality is all sympathy; and it is this
+sympathy, conveying into his work somewhat more than is usual of the
+true complexion of humanity, which makes him, visionary as he is, so
+forcible a realist.
+
+It is this which gives to his Madonnas their unique expression and
+charm. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite
+enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again,
+sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during
+that dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any
+collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into
+which the attendant angels depress their heads so naively. Perhaps you
+have sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking Madonnas, conformed
+to no acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and
+more, and often come back to you when the Sistine Madonna and the
+Virgins of Fra Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with
+those, you may have thought that there was something in them mean or
+abject even, for the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness,
+and the colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds
+in her hands the "Desire of all nations", is one of those who are
+neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies; and her choice is on her face.
+The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as
+when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise
+at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very
+caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and
+who has already that sweet look of devotion which men have never been
+able altogether to love, and which still makes the born saint an object
+almost of suspicion to his earthly brethren. Once, indeed, he guides
+her hand to transcribe in a book the words of her exaltation, the
+_Ave_, and the _Magnificat_, and the _Gaude Maria_, and the young
+angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from her dejection, are eager
+to hold the inkhorn and to support the book. But the pen almost drops
+from her hand, and the high cold words have no meaning for her, and
+her true children are those others, among whom, in her rude home, the
+intolerable honour came to her, with that look of wistful inquiry on
+their irregular faces which you see in startled animals--gipsy children,
+such as those who, in Apennine villages, still hold out their long
+brown arms to beg of you, but on Sundays become _enfants du choeur_,
+with their thick black hair nicely combed, and fair white linen on
+their sunburnt throats.
+
+What is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical
+subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the _Uffizii_,
+of Venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the
+middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its
+strange draperies, powdered all over in the Gothic manner with a quaint
+conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless
+nude studies of Ingres. At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by
+a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you
+have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may
+think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and
+the colour is cadaverous or at least cold. And yet, the more you come
+to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour
+is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon
+them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you
+will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that
+quaint design of Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper
+than the works of the Greeks themselves even of the finest period. Of
+the Greeks as they really were, of their difference from ourselves,
+of the aspects of their outward life, we know far more than Botticelli,
+or his most learned contemporaries; but for us long familiarity has
+taken off the edge of the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what
+we owe to the Hellenic spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's
+you have a record of the first impression made by it on minds turned
+back towards it, in almost painful aspiration, from a world in which
+it had been ignored so long; and in the passion, the energy, the
+industry of realization, with which Botticelli carries out his
+intention, is the exact measure of the legitimate influence over the
+human mind of the imaginative system of which this is perhaps the
+central subject. The light is indeed cold--mere sunless dawn; but a
+later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you can see the
+better for that quietness in the morning air each long promontory, as
+it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their labours until
+the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might think that
+the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long day of
+love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across
+the gray water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which she
+sails, the sea "showing his teeth", as it moves, in thin lines of foam,
+and sucking in, one by one, the falling roses, each severe in outline,
+plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a little, as Botticelli's
+flowers always are. Botticelli meant all this imagery to be altogether
+pleasurable, and it was partly an incompleteness of resources,
+inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and chilled it.
+But his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what is
+unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess
+of pleasure, as the depository of a great power over the lives of men.
+
+I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result
+of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain
+condition, its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a
+character of loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the
+shadow upon it of the great things from which it shrinks, and that
+this conveys into his work somewhat more than painting usually attains
+of the true complexion of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess
+of pleasure in other episodes besides that of her birth from the sea,
+but never without some shadow of death in the gray flesh and wan
+flowers. He paints Madonnas, but they shrink from the pressure of the
+divine child, and plead in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower
+humanity. The same figure--tradition connects it with Simonetta, the
+mistress of Giuliano de' Medici-appears again as Judith, returning
+home across the hill country, when the great deed is over, and the
+moment of revulsion come, when the olive branch in her hand is becoming
+a burthen; as _Justice_, sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look
+of self-hatred which makes the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide;
+and again as _Veritas_, in the allegorical picture of _Calumnia_, where
+one may note in passing the suggestiveness of an accident which
+identifies the image of Truth with the person of Venus. We might trace
+the same sentiment through his engravings; but his share in them is
+doubtful, and the object of this brief study has been attained if I
+have defined aright the temper in which he worked.
+
+But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli--a
+secondary painter--a proper subject for general criticism? There are
+a few great painters, like Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose work has
+become a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that
+they have absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro
+Botticelli; and, over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism,
+general criticism may be very well employed in that sort of
+interpretation which adjusts the position of these men to general
+culture, whereas smaller men can be the proper subjects only of
+technical or antiquarian treatment. But, besides those great men, there
+is a certain number of artists who have a distinct faculty of their
+own by which they convey to us a peculiar quality of pleasure which
+we cannot get elsewhere; and these, too, have their place in general
+culture, and must be interpreted to it by those who have felt their
+charm strongly, and are often the object of a special diligence and
+a consideration wholly affectionate, just because there is not about
+them the stress of a great name and authority. Of this select number
+Botticelli is one. He has the freshness, the uncertain and diffident
+promise, which belong to the earlier Renaissance itself, and make it
+perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the mind. In
+studying his work one begins to understand to how great a place in
+human culture the art of Italy had been called.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM ***
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