English Critical Essays: Nineteenth Century
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Title: English Critical Essays: Nineteenth Century
Editor: Edmund D. Jones
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The World's Classics
CCVI
ENGLISH CRITICAL ESSAYS
NINETEENTH CENTURY
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
EDINBURGH GLASGOW LEIPZIG
COPENHAGEN NEW YORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY
CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI
HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY
ENGLISH CRITICAL ESSAYS
NINETEENTH CENTURY
SELECTED AND EDITED BY
EDMUND D. JONES
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
_The present selection of English Critical Essays (Nineteenth Century)
was first published in 'The World's Classics' in 1916 and reprinted in
1919, 1920, 1921, 1924 and 1928._
PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Legend for reading accented characters:
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PREFACE
The essays here brought together are meant to illustrate English
literary criticism during the nineteenth century. A companion volume
representative of Renaissance and Neo-classic criticism will, it is
hoped, be issued at a future date. Meanwhile this volume may well go
forth alone. For the nineteenth century forms an epoch in English
literature whose beginnings are more clearly defined than those of
most literary epochs. The publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_ in
1798, and of Wordsworth's Preface to the second edition in 1800, show
the Romantic Movement grown conscious and deliberate, with results
that have coloured the whole stream of English poetry and criticism
ever since.
The greater part of the present collection deals with general
principles rather than with criticisms of individual books or authors.
The nineteenth century, having discarded the dogmas and 'rules' of
Neo-classicism, had perforce to investigate afresh the Theory of
Poetry, and though no systematic treatment of the subject in all its
bearings appeared, some valuable contributions were made, the most
notable of which came from the poets themselves.
The extracts from the _Biographia Literaria_ are placed next to the
Wordsworthian doctrines which they criticize; otherwise the
arrangement of the essays is chronological.
American criticism is represented--inadequately, but, it is hoped, not
unworthily--by the last two essays.
In the preparation of this volume I have received much valuable help
from Mr. J. C. Smith, which I now gratefully acknowledge.
EDMUND D. JONES.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850
Poetry and Poetic Diction. (1800) 1
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, 1772-1834
Wordsworth's Theory of Diction. (1817) 40
Metrical Composition. (1817) 57
WILLIAM BLAKE, 1757-1827
The Canterbury Pilgrims. (1809) 85
CHARLES LAMB, 1775-1834
On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, Considered with Reference
to their Fitness for Stage Representation. (1811) 95
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 1792-1822
A Defence of Poetry. (1821) 120
WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1778-1830
My First Acquaintance with Poets. (1823) 164
JOHN KEBLE, 1792-1866
Sacred Poetry. (1825) 191
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 1801-1890
Poetry with reference to Aristotle's Poetics. (1829) 223
THOMAS CARLYLE, 1795-1881
The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakespeare. (1840) 254
JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT, 1784-1859
An Answer to the Question: What is Poetry? (1844) 300
MATTHEW ARNOLD, 1822-1888
The Choice of Subjects in Poetry. (1853) 356
JOHN RUSKIN, 1819-1900
Of the Pathetic Fallacy. (1856) 378
JOHN STUART MILL, 1806-1873
Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties. (1833, revised 1859) 398
WALTER BAGEHOT, 1826-1877
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, Pure, Ornate and
Grotesque Art in English Poetry. (1864) 430
WALTER HORATIO PATER, 1839-1894
Coleridge's Writings. (1866) 492
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1803-1882
Shakespeare; or, the Poet. (1850) 535
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, 1819-1891
Wordsworth. (1875) 558
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
1770-1850
POETRY AND POETIC DICTION
[Preface to the Second Edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800]
The first Volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general
perusal. It was published, as an experiment, which, I hoped, might be
of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement
a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation,
that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted,
which a Poet may rationally endeavour to impart.
I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of
those Poems: I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with
them would read them with more than common pleasure: and, on the other
hand, I was well aware, that by those who should dislike them, they
would be read with more than common dislike. The result has differed
from my expectation in this only, that a greater number have been
pleased than I ventured to hope I should please.
* * * * *
Several of my Friends are anxious for the success of these Poems, from
a belief, that, if the views with which they were composed were
indeed realized, a class of Poetry would be produced, well adapted to
interest mankind permanently, and not unimportant in the quality, and
in the multiplicity of its moral relations: and on this account they
have advised me to prefix a systematic defence of the theory upon
which the Poems were written. But I was unwilling to undertake the
task, knowing that on this occasion the Reader would look coldly upon
my arguments, since I might be suspected of having been principally
influenced by the selfish and foolish hope of _reasoning_ him into an
approbation of these particular Poems: and I was still more unwilling
to undertake the task, because, adequately to display the opinions,
and fully to enforce the arguments, would require a space wholly
disproportionate to a preface. For, to treat the subject with the
clearness and coherence of which it is susceptible, it would be
necessary to give a full account of the present state of the public
taste in this country, and to determine how far this taste is healthy
or depraved; which, again, could not be determined, without pointing
out in what manner language and the human mind act and re-act on each
other, and without retracing the revolutions, not of literature alone,
but likewise of society itself. I have therefore altogether declined
to enter regularly upon this defence; yet I am sensible, that there
would be something like impropriety in abruptly obtruding upon the
Public, without a few words of introduction, Poems so materially
different from those upon which general approbation is at present
bestowed.
It is supposed, that by the act of writing in verse an Author makes a
formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of
association; that he not only thus apprises the Reader that certain
classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that
others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth
by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excited
very different expectations: for example, in the age of Catullus,
Terence, and Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian; and in our
own country, in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and
that of Donne and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope. I will not take upon me
to determine the exact import of the promise which, by the act of
writing in verse, an Author in the present day makes to his reader:
but it will undoubtedly appear to many persons that I have not
fulfilled the terms of an engagement thus voluntarily contracted. They
who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of
many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its
conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings
of strangeness and awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, and
will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts
can be permitted to assume that title. I hope therefore the reader
will not censure me for attempting to state what I have proposed to
myself to perform; and also (as far as the limits of a preface will
permit) to explain some of the chief reasons which have determined me
in the choice of my purpose: that at least he may be spared any
unpleasant feeling of disappointment, and that I myself may be
protected from one of the most dishonourable accusations which can be
brought against an Author; namely, that of an indolence which
prevents him from endeavouring to ascertain what is his duty, or, when
his duty is ascertained, prevents him from performing it.
The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose
incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe
them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language
really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a
certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above
all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in
them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature:
chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a
state of excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally chosen,
because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a
better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under
restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in
that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of
greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately
contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of
rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the
necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily
comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that
condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and
permanent forms of nature. The language, too, of these men has been
adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects,
from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because
such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best
part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank
in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse,
being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their
feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions.
Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and
regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical
language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets,
who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their
art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of
men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in
order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of
their own creation.[1]
[1] It is worth while here to observe, that the affecting
parts of Chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure
and universally intelligible even to this day.
I cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the
triviality and meanness, both of thought and language, which some of
my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical
compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is
more dishonourable to the Writer's own character than false refinement
or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time,
that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From
such verses the Poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at
least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy
_purpose_. Not that I always began to write with a distinct purpose
formally conceived; but habits of meditation have, I trust, so
prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such
objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry
along with them a _purpose_. If this opinion be erroneous, I can have
little right to the name of a Poet. For all good poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true,
Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any
variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than
usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our
continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our
thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past
feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general
representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to
men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings
will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be
originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be
produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of
those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such
a nature, and in such connexion with each other, that the
understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree
enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.
It has been said that each of these poems has a purpose. Another
circumstance must be mentioned which distinguishes these Poems from
the popular Poetry of the day; it is this, that the feeling therein
developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the
action and situation to the feeling.
A sense of false modesty shall not prevent me from asserting, that the
Reader's attention is pointed to this mark of distinction, far less
for the sake of these particular Poems than from the general
importance of the subject. The subject is indeed important! For the
human mind is capable of being excited without the application of
gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception
of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not
further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion
as he possesses this capability. It has therefore appeared to me, that
to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best
services in which, at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but this
service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day.
For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting
with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind,
and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state
of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the
great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing
accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their
occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the
rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency
of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the
country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder
writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are
driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German
Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.--When
I think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation, I am
almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble endeavour made in these
volumes to counteract it; and, reflecting upon the magnitude of the
general evil, I should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy,
had I not a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible
qualities of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the
great and permanent objects that act upon it, which are equally
inherent and indestructible; and were there not added to this
impression a belief, that the time is approaching when the evil will
be systematically opposed, by men of greater powers, and with far more
distinguished success.
Having dwelt thus long on the subjects and aim of these Poems, I shall
request the Reader's permission to apprise him of a few circumstances
relating to their _style_, in order, among other reasons, that he may
not censure me for not having performed what I never attempted. The
Reader will find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur
in these volumes; and are utterly rejected, as an ordinary device to
elevate the style, and raise it above prose. My purpose was to
imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt the very language of men;
and assuredly such personifications do not make any natural or regular
part of that language. They are, indeed, a figure of speech
occasionally prompted by passion, and I have made use of them as such;
but have endeavoured utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of
style, or as a family language which Writers in metre seem to lay
claim to by prescription. I have wished to keep the Reader in the
company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall
interest him. Others who pursue a different track will interest him
likewise; I do not interfere with their claim, but wish to prefer a
claim of my own. There will also be found in these volumes little of
what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to
avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done for
the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language
of men; and further, because the pleasure which I have proposed to
myself to impart, is of a kind very different from that which is
supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry. Without
being culpably particular, I do not know how to give my Reader a more
exact notion of the style in which it was my wish and intention to
write, than by informing him that I have at all times endeavoured to
look steadily at my subject; consequently, there is I hope in these
Poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed in
language fitted to their respective importance. Something must have
been gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all
good poetry, namely, good sense: but it has necessarily cut me off
from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from
father to son have long been regarded as the common inheritance of
Poets. I have also thought it expedient to restrict myself still
further, having abstained from the use of many expressions, in
themselves proper and beautiful, but which have been foolishly
repeated by bad Poets, till such feelings of disgust are connected
with them as it is scarcely possible by any art of association to
overpower.
If in a poem there should be found a series of lines, or even a single
line, in which the language, though naturally arranged, and according
to the strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of prose, there
is a numerous class of critics, who, when they stumble upon these
prosaisms, as they call them, imagine that they have made a notable
discovery, and exult over the Poet as over a man ignorant of his own
profession. Now these men would establish a canon of criticism which
the Reader will conclude he must utterly reject, if he wishes to be
pleased with these volumes. And it would be a most easy task to prove
to him, that not only the language of a large portion of every good
poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except
with reference to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good
prose, but likewise that some of the most interesting parts of the
best poems will be found to be strictly the language of prose when
prose is well written. The truth of this assertion might be
demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost all the poetical
writings, even of Milton himself. To illustrate the subject in a
general manner, I will here adduce a short composition of Gray, who
was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to
widen the space of separation betwixt Prose and Metrical composition,
and was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure
of his own poetic diction.
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
_A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire;_
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
_I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain_.
It will easily be perceived, that the only part of this Sonnet which
is of any value is the lines printed in Italics; it is equally
obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word
'fruitless' for fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of
these lines does in no respect differ from that of prose.
By the foregoing quotation it has been shown that the language of
Prose may yet be well adapted to Poetry; and it was previously
asserted, that a large portion of the language of every good poem can
in no respect differ from that of good Prose. We will go further. It
may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any
_essential_ difference between the language of prose and metrical
composition. We are fond of tracing the resemblance between Poetry and
Painting, and, accordingly, we call them Sisters: but where shall we
find bonds of connexion sufficiently strict to typify the affinity
betwixt metrical and prose composition? They both speak by and to the
same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said
to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost
identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry[2] sheds
no tears 'such as Angels weep', but natural and human tears; she can
boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from
those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of
them both.
[2] I here use the word 'Poetry' (though against my own
judgement) as opposed to the word Prose, and synonymous with
metrical composition. But much confusion has been introduced
into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and Prose,
instead of the more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of
Fact, or Science. The only strict antithesis to Prose is
Metre; nor is this, in truth, a _strict_ antithesis, because
lines and passages of metre so naturally occur in writing
prose, that it would be scarcely possible to avoid them, even
were it desirable.
If it be affirmed that rhyme and metrical arrangement of themselves
constitute a distinction which overturns what has just been said on
the strict affinity of metrical language with that of prose, and paves
the way for other artificial distinctions which the mind voluntarily
admits, I answer that the language of such Poetry as is here
recommended is, as far as is possible, a selection of the language
really spoken by men; that this selection, wherever it is made with
true taste and feeling, will of itself form a distinction far greater
than would at first be imagined, and will entirely separate the
composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life; and, if
metre be superadded thereto, I believe that a dissimilitude will be
produced altogether sufficient for the gratification of a rational
mind. What other distinction would we have? Whence is it to come? And
where is it to exist? Not, surely, where the Poet speaks through the
mouths of his characters: it cannot be necessary here, either for
elevation of style, or any of its supposed ornaments: for, if the
Poet's subject be judiciously chosen, it will naturally, and upon fit
occasion, lead him to passions the language of which, if selected
truly and judiciously, must necessarily be dignified and variegated,
and alive with metaphors and figures. I forbear to speak of an
incongruity which would shock the intelligent Reader, should the Poet
interweave any foreign splendour of his own with that which the
passion naturally suggests: it is sufficient to say that such addition
is unnecessary. And, surely, it is more probable that those passages,
which with propriety abound with metaphors and figures, will have
their due effect, if, upon other occasions where the passions are of a
milder character, the style also be subdued and temperate.
But, as the pleasure which I hope to give by the Poems now presented
to the Reader must depend entirely on just notions upon this subject,
and, as it is in itself of high importance to our taste and moral
feelings, I cannot content myself with these detached remarks. And if,
in what I am about to say, it shall appear to some that my labour is
unnecessary, and that I am like a man fighting a battle without
enemies, such persons may be reminded, that, whatever be the language
outwardly holden by men, a practical faith in the opinions which I am
wishing to establish is almost unknown. If my conclusions are
admitted, and carried as far as they must be carried if admitted at
all, our judgements concerning the works of the greatest Poets both
ancient and modern will be far different from what they are at
present, both when we praise, and when we censure: and our moral
feelings influencing and influenced by these judgements will, I
believe, be corrected and purified.
Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is
meant by the word Poet? What is a Poet? To whom does he address
himself? And what language is to be expected from him?--He is a man
speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively
sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater
knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are
supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own
passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the
spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar
volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe,
and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them. To
these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than
other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of
conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the
same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts
of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more
nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than anything
which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are
accustomed to feel in themselves:--whence, and from practice, he has
acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks
and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his
own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him
without immediate external excitement.
But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest
Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it
will suggest to him, must often, in liveliness and truth, fall short
of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual
pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the Poet thus
produces, or feels to be produced, in himself.
However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of
a Poet, it is obvious, that while he describes and imitates passions,
his employment is in some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom
and power of real and substantial action and suffering. So that it
will be the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to those of
the persons whose feelings he describes, nay, for short spaces of
time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even
confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the
language which is thus suggested to him by a consideration that he
describes for a particular purpose, that of giving pleasure. Here,
then, he will apply the principle of selection which has been already
insisted upon. He will depend upon this for removing what would
otherwise be painful or disgusting in the passion; he will feel that
there is no necessity to trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more
industriously he applies this principle, the deeper will be his faith
that no words, which _his_ fancy or imagination can suggest, will be
to be compared with those which are the emanations of reality and
truth.
But it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit
of these remarks, that, as it is impossible for the Poet to produce
upon all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as
that which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he
should consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who does
not scruple to substitute excellencies of another kind for those which
are unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his
original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to
which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage
idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who
speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a
matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as
gravely about a _taste_ for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were
a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or
Sherry. Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the most
philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth, not
individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon
external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth
which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to
the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same
tribunal. Poetry is the image of man and nature. The obstacles which
stand in the way of the fidelity of the Biographer and Historian, and
of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which
are to be encountered by the Poet who comprehends the dignity of his
art. The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity
of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that
information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a
physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as
a Man. Except this one restriction, there is no object standing
between the Poet and the image of things; between this, and the
Biographer and Historian, there are a thousand.
Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered
as a degradation of the Poet's art. It is far otherwise. It is an
acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgement the
more sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and
easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it
is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand
elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and
lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but what is propagated by
pleasure: I would not be misunderstood; but wherever we sympathize
with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried
on by subtle combinations with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that
is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular
facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by
pleasure alone. The Man of science, the Chemist and Mathematician,
whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with,
know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the
Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is
pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge. What then
does the Poet? He considers man and the objects that surround him as
acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite
complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature
and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity
of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and
deductions, which from habit acquire the quality of intuitions; he
considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and
sensations, and finding everywhere objects that immediately excite in
him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are
accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment.
To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these
sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our
daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the Poet principally
directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially
adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of
the fairest and most interesting properties of nature. And thus the
Poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him
through the whole course of his studies, converses with general
nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and
length of time, the Man of science has raised up in himself, by
conversing with those particular parts of nature which are the objects
of his studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of science
is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary
part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the
other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us,
and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our
fellow-beings. The Man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown
benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet,
singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in
the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion.
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the
impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.
Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said of
man, 'that he looks before and after.' He is the rock of defence for
human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him
relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of
language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently
gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed; the Poet binds
together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as
it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of
the Poet's thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of man
are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever
he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings.
Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge--it is as immortal as
the heart of man. If the labours of Men of science should ever create
any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in
the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then
no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the
Man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he
will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects
of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the
Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet's art
as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come
when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under
which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective
sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying
and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now
called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as
it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine
spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus
produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.--It is
not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion
of Poetry which I have attempted to convey, will break in upon the
sanctity and truth of his pictures by transitory and accidental
ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts, the
necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of
his subject.
What has been thus far said applies to Poetry in general; but
especially to those parts of composition where the Poet speaks through
the mouths of his characters; and upon this point it appears to
authorize the conclusion that there are few persons of good sense, who
would not allow that the dramatic parts of composition are defective,
in proportion as they deviate from the real language of nature, and
are coloured by a diction of the Poet's own, either peculiar to him as
an individual Poet or belonging simply to Poets in general; to a body
of men who, from the circumstance of their compositions being in
metre, it is expected will employ a particular language.
It is not, then, in the dramatic parts of composition that we look
for this distinction of language; but still it may be proper and
necessary where the Poet speaks to us in his own person and character.
To this I answer by referring the Reader to the description before
given of a Poet. Among the qualities there enumerated as principally
conducing to form a Poet, is implied nothing differing in kind from
other men, but only in degree. The sum of what was said is, that the
Poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness
to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and a greater
power in expressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him
in that manner. But these passions and thoughts and feelings are the
general passions and thoughts and feelings of men. And with what are
they connected? Undoubtedly with our moral sentiments and animal
sensations, and with the causes which excite these; with the
operations of the elements, and the appearances of the visible
universe; with storm and sunshine, with the revolutions of the
seasons, with cold and heat, with loss of friends and kindred, with
injuries and resentments, gratitude and hope, with fear and sorrow.
These, and the like, are the sensations and objects which the Poet
describes, as they are the sensations of other men, and the objects
which interest them. The Poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human
passions. How, then, can his language differ in any material degree
from that of all other men who feel vividly and see clearly? It might
be _proved_ that it is impossible. But supposing that this were not
the case, the Poet might then be allowed to use a peculiar language
when expressing his feelings for his own gratification, or that of
men like himself. But Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men.
Unless therefore we are advocates for that admiration which subsists
upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do
not understand, the Poet must descend from this supposed height; and,
in order to excite rational sympathy, he must express himself as other
men express themselves. To this it may be added, that while he is only
selecting from the real language of men, or, which amounts to the same
thing, composing accurately in the spirit of such selection, he is
treading upon safe ground, and we know what we are to expect from him.
Our feelings are the same with respect to metre; for, as it may be
proper to remind the Reader, the distinction of metre is regular and
uniform, and not, like that which is produced by what is usually
called POETIC DICTION, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices
upon which no calculation whatever can be made. In the one case, the
Reader is utterly at the mercy of the Poet, respecting what imagery or
diction he may choose to connect with the passion; whereas, in the
other, the metre obeys certain laws, to which the Poet and Reader both
willingly submit because they are certain, and because no interference
is made by them with the passion, but such as the concurring testimony
of ages has shown to heighten and improve the pleasure which co-exists
with it.
It will now be proper to answer an obvious question, namely, Why,
professing these opinions, have I written in verse? To this, in
addition to such answer as is included in what has been already said,
I reply, in the first place, Because, however I may have restricted
myself, there is still left open to me what confessedly constitutes
the most valuable object of all writing, whether in prose or verse;
the great and universal passions of men, the most general and
interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature
before me--to supply endless combinations of forms and imagery. Now,
supposing for a moment that whatever is interesting in these objects
may be as vividly described in prose, why should I be condemned for
attempting to superadd to such description the charm which, by the
consent of all nations, is acknowledged to exist in metrical language?
To this, by such as are yet unconvinced, it may be answered that a
very small part of the pleasure given by Poetry depends upon the
metre, and that it is injudicious to write in metre, unless it be
accompanied with the other artificial distinctions of style with which
metre is usually accompanied, and that, by such deviation, more will
be lost from the shock which will thereby be given to the Reader's
associations than will be counterbalanced by any pleasure which he can
derive from the general power of numbers. In answer to those who still
contend for the necessity of accompanying metre with certain
appropriate colours of style in order to the accomplishment of its
appropriate end, and who also, in my opinion, greatly underrate the
power of metre in itself, it might, perhaps, as far as relates to
these Volumes, have been almost sufficient to observe, that poems are
extant, written upon more humble subjects, and in a still more naked
and simple style, which have continued to give pleasure from
generation to generation. Now, if nakedness and simplicity be a
defect, the fact here mentioned affords a strong presumption that
poems somewhat less naked and simple are capable of affording pleasure
at the present day; and, what I wished _chiefly_ to attempt, at
present, was to justify myself for having written under the impression
of this belief.
But various causes might be pointed out why, when the style is manly,
and the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will
long continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who proves
the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. The end of
Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of
pleasure; but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and
irregular state of the mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state,
succeed each other in accustomed order. If the words, however, by
which this excitement is produced be in themselves powerful, or the
images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with
them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried beyond
its proper bounds. Now the co-presence of something regular, something
to which the mind has been accustomed in various moods and in a less
excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and
restraining the passion by an intertexture of ordinary feeling, and of
feeling not strictly and necessarily connected with the passion. This
is unquestionably true; and hence, though the opinion will at first
appear paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest language, in
a certain degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a sort of
half-consciousness of unsubstantial existence over the whole
composition, there can be little doubt but that more pathetic
situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater
proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical
composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose. The metre of the old
ballads is very artless; yet they contain many passages which would
illustrate this opinion; and, I hope, if the following Poems be
attentively perused, similar instances will be found in them. This
opinion may be further illustrated by appealing to the Reader's own
experience of the reluctance with which he comes to the re-perusal of
the distressful parts of _Clarissa Harlowe_, or the _Gamester_; while
Shakespeare's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon
us, as pathetic, beyond the bounds of pleasure--an effect which, in a
much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to be ascribed
to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable surprise
from the metrical arrangement.--On the other hand (what it must be
allowed will much more frequently happen) if the Poet's words should
be incommensurate with the passion, and inadequate to raise the Reader
to a height of desirable excitement, then (unless the Poet's choice of
his metre has been grossly injudicious), in the feelings of pleasure
which the Reader has been accustomed to connect with metre in general,
and in the feeling, whether cheerful or melancholy, which he has been
accustomed to connect with that particular movement of metre, there
will be found something which will greatly contribute to impart
passion to the words, and to effect the complex end which the Poet
proposes to himself.
If I had undertaken a SYSTEMATIC defence of the theory here
maintained, it would have been my duty to develop the various causes
upon which the pleasure received from metrical language depends. Among
the chief of these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be
well known to those who have made any of the Arts the object of
accurate reflection; namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from
the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the
great spring of the activity of our minds, and their chief feeder.
From this principle the direction of the sexual appetite, and all the
passions connected with it, take their origin: it is the life of our
ordinary conversation; and upon the accuracy with which similitude in
dissimilitude, and dissimilitude in similitude are perceived, depend
our taste and our moral feelings. It would not be a useless employment
to apply this principle to the consideration of metre, and to show
that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure, and to point out
in what manner that pleasure is produced. But my limits will not
permit me to enter upon this subject, and I must content myself with a
general summary.
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of
reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion,
kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is
gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In
this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood
similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind,
and in whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various
pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are
voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of
enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious to preserve in a state of
enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought to profit by the lesson
held forth to him, and ought especially to take care, that, whatever
passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if his
Reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be accompanied with
an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of harmonious metrical
language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind association
of pleasure which has been previously received from works of rhyme or
metre of the same or similar construction, an indistinct perception
perpetually renewed of language closely resembling that of real life,
and yet, in the circumstance of metre, differing from it so
widely--all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight,
which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling
always found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper
passions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and impassioned
poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with
which the Poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a
principal source of the gratification of the Reader. All that it is
_necessary_ to say, however, upon this subject, may be effected by
affirming, what few persons will deny, that, of two descriptions,
either of passions, manners, or characters, each of them equally well
executed, the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be
read a hundred times where the prose is read once.
Having thus explained a few of my reasons for writing in verse, and
why I have chosen subjects from common life, and endeavoured to bring
my language near to the real language of men, if I have been too
minute in pleading my own cause, I have at the same time been treating
a subject of general interest; and for this reason a few words shall
be added with reference solely to these particular poems, and to some
defects which will probably be found in them. I am sensible that my
associations must have sometimes been particular instead of general,
and that, consequently, giving to things a false importance, I may
have sometimes written upon unworthy subjects; but I am less
apprehensive on this account, than that my language may frequently
have suffered from those arbitrary connexions of feelings and ideas
with particular words and phrases, from which no man can altogether
protect himself. Hence I have no doubt, that, in some instances,
feelings, even of the ludicrous, may be given to my Readers by
expressions which appeared to me tender and pathetic. Such faulty
expressions, were I convinced they were faulty at present, and that
they must necessarily continue to be so, I would willingly take all
reasonable pains to correct. But it is dangerous to make these
alterations on the simple authority of a few individuals, or even of
certain classes of men; for where the understanding of an Author is
not convinced, or his feelings altered, this cannot be done without
great injury to himself: for his own feelings are his stay and
support; and, if he set them aside in one instance, he may be induced
to repeat this act till his mind shall lose all confidence in itself,
and become utterly debilitated. To this it may be added, that the
critic ought never to forget that he is himself exposed to the same
errors as the Poet, and, perhaps, in a much greater degree: for there
can be no presumption in saying of most readers, that it is not
probable they will be so well acquainted with the various stages of
meaning through which words have passed, or with the fickleness or
stability of the relations of particular ideas to each other; and,
above all, since they are so much less interested in the subject, they
may decide lightly and carelessly.
Long as the Reader has been detained, I hope he will permit me to
caution him against a mode of false criticism which has been applied
to Poetry, in which the language closely resembles that of life and
nature. Such verses have been triumphed over in parodies, of which Dr.
Johnson's stanza is a fair specimen:--
I put my hat upon my head
And walked into the Strand,
And there I met another man
Whose hat was in his hand.
Immediately under these lines let us place one of the most
justly-admired stanzas of the 'Babes in the Wood.'
These pretty Babes with hand in hand
Went wandering up and down;
But never more they saw the Man
Approaching from the Town.
In both these stanzas the words, and the order of the words, in no
respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversation. There are
words in both, for example, 'the Strand', and 'the Town', connected
with none but the most familiar ideas; yet the one stanza we admit as
admirable, and the other as a fair example of the superlatively
contemptible. Whence arises this difference? Not from the metre, not
from the language, not from the order of the words; but the _matter_
expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is contemptible. The proper method
of treating trivial and simple verses, to which Dr. Johnson's stanza
would be a fair parallelism, is not to say, this is a bad kind of
poetry, or, this is not poetry; but, this wants sense; it is neither
interesting in itself, nor can _lead_ to anything interesting; the
images neither originate in that sane state of feeling, which arises
out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the Reader. This
is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses. Why trouble
yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the
genus? Why take pains to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is
self-evident that he is not a man?
One request I must make of my reader, which is, that in judging these
Poems he would decide by his own feelings genuinely, and not by
reflection upon what will probably be the judgement of others. How
common is it to hear a person say, I myself do not object to this
style of composition, or this or that expression, but, to such and
such classes of people it will appear mean or ludicrous! This mode of
criticism, so destructive of all sound unadulterated judgement, is
almost universal: let the Reader then abide, independently, by his own
feelings, and, if he finds himself affected, let him not suffer such
conjectures to interfere with his pleasure.
If an Author, by any single composition, has impressed us with respect
for his talents, it is useful to consider this as affording a
presumption, that on other occasions where we have been displeased,
he, nevertheless, may not have written ill or absurdly; and further,
to give him so much credit for this one composition as may induce us
to review what has displeased us, with more care than we should
otherwise have bestowed upon it. This is not only an act of justice,
but, in our decisions upon poetry especially, may conduce, in a high
degree, to the improvement of our own taste; for an _accurate_ taste
in poetry, and in all the other arts, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has
observed, is an _acquired_ talent, which can only be produced by
thought and a long-continued intercourse with the best models of
composition. This is mentioned, not with so ridiculous a purpose as to
prevent the most inexperienced Reader from judging for himself, (I
have already said that I wish him to judge for himself;) but merely to
temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest, that, if Poetry be a
subject on which much time has not been bestowed, the judgement may be
erroneous; and that, in many cases, it necessarily will be so.
Nothing would, I know, have so effectually contributed to further the
end which I have in view, as to have shown of what kind the pleasure
is, and how that pleasure is produced, which is confessedly produced
by metrical composition essentially different from that which I have
here endeavoured to recommend: for the Reader will say that he has
been pleased by such composition; and what more can be done for him?
The power of any art is limited; and he will suspect, that, if it be
proposed to furnish him with new friends, that can be only upon
condition of his abandoning his old friends. Besides, as I have said,
the Reader is himself conscious of the pleasure which he has received
from such composition, composition to which he has peculiarly attached
the endearing name of Poetry; and all men feel an habitual gratitude,
and something of an honourable bigotry, for the objects which have
long continued to please them: we not only wish to be pleased, but to
be pleased in that particular way in which we have Been accustomed to
be pleased. There is in these feelings enough to resist a host of
arguments; and I should be the less able to combat them successfully,
as I am willing to allow, that, in order entirely to enjoy the Poetry
which I am recommending, it would be necessary to give up much of what
is ordinarily enjoyed. But, would my limits have permitted me to point
out how this pleasure is produced, many obstacles might have been
removed, and the Reader assisted in perceiving that the powers of
language are not so limited as he may suppose; and that it is possible
for poetry to give other enjoyments, of a purer, more lasting, and
more exquisite nature. This part of the subject has not been
altogether neglected, but it has not been so much my present aim to
prove, that the interest excited by some other kinds of poetry is less
vivid, and less worthy of the nobler powers of the mind, as to offer
reasons for presuming, that if my purpose were fulfilled, a species of
poetry would be produced, which is genuine poetry; in its nature well
adapted to interest mankind permanently, and likewise important in
the multiplicity and quality of its moral relations.
From what has been said, and from a perusal of the Poems, the Reader
will be able clearly to perceive the object which I had in view: he
will determine how far it has been attained; and, what is a much more
important question, whether it be worth attaining: and upon the
decision of these two questions will rest my claim to the approbation
of the Public.
APPENDIX
ON POETIC DICTION
Perhaps, as I have no right to expect that attentive perusal, without
which, confined, as I have been, to the narrow limits of a preface, my
meaning cannot be thoroughly understood, I am anxious to give an exact
notion of the sense in which the phrase poetic diction has been used;
and for this purpose, a few words shall here be added, concerning the
origin and characteristics of the phraseology, which I have condemned
under that name.
The earliest poets of all nations generally wrote from passion excited
by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully
as they did, their language was daring, and figurative. In succeeding
times, Poets, and Men ambitious of the fame of Poets, perceiving the
influence of such language, and desirous of producing the same effect
without being animated by the same passion, set themselves to a
mechanical adoption of these figures of speech, and made use of them,
sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied them to
feelings and thoughts with which they had no natural connexion
whatsoever. A language was thus insensibly produced, differing
materially from the real language of men in _any situation_. The
Reader or Hearer of this distorted language found himself in a
perturbed and unusual state of mind: when affected by the genuine
language of passion he had been in a perturbed and unusual state of
mind also: in both cases he was willing that his common judgement and
understanding should be laid asleep, and he had no instinctive and
infallible perception of the true to make him reject the false; the
one served as a passport for the other. The emotion was in both cases
delightful, and no wonder if he confounded the one with the other, and
believed them both to be produced by the same, or similar causes.
Besides, the Poet spake to him in the character of a man to be looked
up to, a man of genius and authority. Thus, and from a variety of
other causes, this distorted language was received with admiration;
and Poets, it is probable, who had before contented themselves for the
most part with misapplying only expressions which at first had been
dictated by real passion, carried the abuse still further, and
introduced phrases composed apparently in the spirit of the original
figurative language of passion, yet altogether of their own invention,
and characterized by various degrees of wanton deviation from good
sense and nature.
It is indeed true, that the language of the earliest Poets was felt to
differ materially from ordinary language, because it was the language
of extraordinary occasions; but it was really spoken by men, language
which the Poet himself had uttered when he had been affected by the
events which he described, or which he had heard uttered by those
around him. To this language it is probable that metre of some sort or
other was early superadded. This separated the genuine language of
Poetry still further from common life, so that whoever read or heard
the poems of these earliest Poets felt himself moved in a way in which
he had not been accustomed to be moved in real life, and by causes
manifestly different from those which acted upon him in real life.
This was the great temptation to all the corruptions which have
followed: under the protection of this feeling succeeding Poets
constructed a phraseology which had one thing, it is true, in common
with the genuine language of poetry, namely, that it was not heard in
ordinary conversation; that it was unusual. But the first Poets, as I
have said, spake a language which, though unusual, was still the
language of men. This circumstance, however, was disregarded by their
successors; they found that they could please by easier means: they
became proud of modes of expression which they themselves had
invented, and which were uttered only by themselves. In process of
time metre became a symbol or promise of this unusual language, and
whoever took upon him to write in metre, according as he possessed
more or less of true poetic genius, introduced less or more of this
adulterated phraseology into his compositions, and the true and the
false were inseparably interwoven until, the taste of men becoming
gradually perverted, this language was received as a natural language:
and at length, by the influence of books upon men, did to a certain
degree really become so. Abuses of this kind were imported from one
nation to another, and with the progress of refinement this diction
became daily more and more corrupt, thrusting out of sight the plain
humanities of nature by a motley masquerade of tricks, quaintnesses,
hieroglyphics, and enigmas.
It would not be uninteresting to point out the causes of the pleasure
given by this extravagant and absurd diction. It depends upon a great
variety of causes, but upon none, perhaps, more than its influence in
impressing a notion of the peculiarity and exaltation of the Poet's
character, and in flattering the Reader's self-love by bringing him
nearer to a sympathy with that character; an effect which is
accomplished by unsettling ordinary habits of thinking, and thus
assisting the Reader to approach to that perturbed and dizzy state of
mind in which if he does not find himself, he imagines that he is
_balked_ of a peculiar enjoyment which poetry can and ought to bestow.
The sonnet quoted from Gray, in the Preface, except the lines printed
in Italics, consists of little else but this diction, though not of
the worst kind; and indeed, if one may be permitted to say so, it is
far too common in the best writers both ancient and modern. Perhaps in
no way, by positive example, could more easily be given a notion of
what I mean by the phrase _poetic diction_ than by referring to a
comparison between the metrical paraphrase which we have of passages
in the Old and New Testament, and those passages as they exist in our
common Translation. See Pope's 'Messiah' throughout; Prior's 'Did
sweeter sounds adorn my flowing tongue,' &c. &c. 'Though I speak with
the tongues of men and of angels,' &c. &c. 1 Corinthians, chap. xiii.
By way of immediate example take the following of Dr. Johnson:--
Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,
Observe her labours, Sluggard, and be wise;
No stern command, no monitory voice,
Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice;
Yet, timely provident, she hastes away
To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;
When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,
She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain.
How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours,
Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers?
While artful shades thy downy couch enclose,
And soft solicitation courts repose,
Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight,
Year chases year with unremitted flight,
Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow,
Shall spring to seize thee, like an ambush'd foe.
From this hubbub of words pass to the original. 'Go to the Ant, thou
Sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide,
overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth
her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O Sluggard? when
wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? Yet a little sleep, a little
slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty
come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.' Proverbs,
chap. vi.
One more quotation, and I have done. It is from Cowper's _Verses
supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk_:
Religion! what treasure untold
Resides in that heavenly word!
More precious than silver and gold,
Or all that this earth can afford.
But the sound of the church-going bell
These valleys and rocks never heard,
Ne'er sighed at the sound of a knell,
Or smiled when a sabbath appeared.
Ye winds, that have made me your sport,
Convey to this desolate shore
Some cordial endearing report
Of a land I must visit no more.
My Friends, do they now and then send
A wish or a thought after me?
O tell me I yet have a friend,
Though a friend I am never to see.
This passage is quoted as an instance of three different styles of
composition. The first four lines are poorly expressed; some Critics
would call the language prosaic; the fact is, it would be bad prose,
so bad, that it is scarcely worse in metre. The epithet 'church-going'
applied to a bell, and that by so chaste a writer as Cowper, is an
instance of the strange abuses which Poets have introduced into their
language, till they and their Readers take them as matters of course,
if they do not single them out expressly as objects of admiration. The
two lines 'Ne'er sighed at the sound', &c., are, in my opinion, an
instance of the language of passion wrested from its proper use, and,
from the mere circumstance of the composition being in metre, applied
upon an occasion that does not justify such violent expressions; and I
should condemn the passage, though perhaps few Readers will agree with
me, as vicious poetic diction. The last stanza is throughout admirably
expressed: it would be equally good whether in prose or verse, except
that the Reader has an exquisite pleasure in seeing such natural
language so naturally connected with metre. The beauty of this stanza
tempts me to conclude with a principle which ought never to be lost
sight of, and which has been my chief guide in all I have
said,--namely, that in works of _imagination and sentiment_, for of
these only have I been treating, in proportion as ideas and feelings
are valuable, whether the composition be in prose or in verse, they
require and exact one and the same language. Metre is but adventitious
to composition, and the phraseology for which that passport is
necessary, even where it may be graceful at all, will be little valued
by the judicious.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
1772-1834
WORDSWORTH'S THEORY OF DICTION
[_Biographia Literaria_, chap. xvii, 1817]
As far as Mr. Wordsworth in his preface contended, and most ably
contended, for a reformation in our poetic diction, as far as he has
evinced the truth of passion, and the _dramatic_ propriety of those
figures and metaphors in the original poets, which, stripped of their
justifying reasons, and converted into mere artifices of connexion or
ornament, constitute the characteristic falsity in the poetic style of
the moderns; and as far as he has, with equal acuteness and clearness,
pointed out the process by which this change was effected, and the
resemblances between that state into which the reader's mind is thrown
by the pleasureable confusion of thought from an unaccustomed train of
words and images; and that state which is induced by the natural
language of impassioned feeling; he undertook a useful task, and
deserves all praise, both for the attempt and for the execution. The
provocations to this remonstrance in behalf of truth and nature were
still of perpetual recurrence before and after the publication of this
preface. I cannot likewise but add, that the comparison of such poems
of merit, as have been given to the public within the last ten or
twelve years, with the majority of those produced previously to the
appearance of that preface, leave no doubt on my mind, that Mr.
Wordsworth is fully justified in believing his efforts to have been by
no means ineffectual. Not only in the verses of those who have
professed their admiration of his genius, but even of those who have
distinguished themselves by hostility to his theory, and depreciation
of his writings, are the impressions of his principles plainly
visible. It is possible, that with these principles others may have
been blended, which are not equally evident; and some which are
unsteady and subvertible from the narrowness or imperfection of their
basis. But it is more than possible, that these errors of defect or
exaggeration, by kindling and feeding the controversy, may have
conduced not only to the wider propagation of the accompanying truths,
but that, by their frequent presentation to the mind in an excited
state, they may have won for them a more permanent and practical
result. A man will borrow a part from his opponent the more easily, if
he feels himself justified in continuing to reject a part. While there
remain important points in which he can still feel himself in the
right, in which he still finds firm footing for continued resistance,
he will gradually adopt those opinions, which were the least remote
from his own convictions, as not less congruous with his own theory
than with that which he reprobates. In like manner with a kind of
instinctive prudence, he will abandon by little and little his weakest
posts, till at length he seems to forget that they had ever belonged
to him, or affects to consider them at most as accidental and 'petty
annexments', the removal of which leaves the citadel unhurt and
unendangered.
My own differences from certain supposed parts of Mr. Wordsworth's
theory ground themselves on the assumption, that his words had been
rightly interpreted, as purporting that the proper diction for poetry
in general consists altogether in a language taken, with due
exceptions, from the mouths of men in real life, a language which
actually constitutes the natural conversation of men under the
influence of natural feelings. My objection is, first, that in any
sense this rule is applicable only to certain classes of poetry;
secondly, that even to these classes it is not applicable, except in
such a sense, as hath never by any one (as far as I know or have read)
been denied or doubted; and lastly, that as far as, and in that degree
in which it is practicable, yet as a rule it is useless, if not
injurious, and therefore either need not, or ought not to be
practised. The poet informs his reader that he had generally chosen
low and rustic life; but not _as_ low and rustic, or in order to
repeat that pleasure of doubtful moral effect, which persons of
elevated rank and of superior refinement oftentimes derive from a
happy imitation of the rude unpolished manners and discourse of their
inferiors. For the pleasure so derived may be traced to three exciting
causes. The first is the naturalness, in fact, of the things
represented. The second is the apparent naturalness of the
representation, as raised and qualified by an imperceptible infusion
of the author's own knowledge and talent, which infusion does, indeed,
constitute it an imitation as distinguished from a mere copy. The
third cause may be found in the reader's conscious feeling of his
superiority awakened by the contrast presented to him; even as for the
same purpose the kings and great barons of yore retained sometimes
actual clowns and fools, but more frequently shrewd and witty fellows
in that character. These, however, were not Mr. Wordsworth's objects.
He chose low and rustic life, 'because in that condition the essential
passions of the heart find a better soil, in which they can attain
their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more
emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary
feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently
may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated;
because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary
feelings; and from the necessary character of rural occupations are
more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and lastly, because in
that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful
and permanent forms of nature.'
Now it is clear to me, that in the most interesting of the poems, in
which the author is more or less dramatic, as the _Brothers_,
_Michael_, _Ruth_, the _Mad Mother_, &c., the persons introduced are
by no means taken from low or rustic life in the common acceptation of
those words; and it is not less clear, that the sentiments and
language, as far as they can be conceived to have been really
transferred from the minds and conversation of such persons, are
attributable to causes and circumstances not necessarily connected
with 'their occupations and abode'. The thoughts, feelings, language,
and manners of the shepherd-farmers in the vales of Cumberland and
Westmoreland, as far as they are actually adopted in those poems, may
be accounted for from causes, which will and do produce the same
results in every state of life, whether in town or country. As the two
principal I rank that INDEPENDENCE, which raises a man above
servitude, or daily toil for the profit of others, yet not above the
necessity of industry and a frugal simplicity of domestic life; and
the accompanying unambitious, but solid and religious, EDUCATION,
which has rendered few books familiar, but the Bible, and the liturgy
or hymnbook. To the latter cause, indeed, which is so far accidental,
that it is the blessing of particular countries and a particular age,
not the product of particular places or employments, the poet owes the
show of probability, that his personages might really feel, think, and
talk with any tolerable resemblance to his representation. It is an
excellent remark of Dr. Henry More's that 'a man of confined
education, but of good parts, by constant reading of the Bible will
naturally form a more winning and commanding rhetoric than those that
are learned: the intermixture of tongues and of artificial phrases
debasing their style'.
It is, moreover, to be considered that to the formation of healthy
feelings, and a reflecting mind, negations involve impediments not
less formidable than sophistication and vicious intermixture. I am
convinced, that for the human soul to prosper in rustic life a certain
vantage-ground is pre-requisite. It is not every man that is likely to
be improved by a country life or by country labours. Education, or
original sensibility, or both, must pre-exist, if the changes, forms,
and incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant. And where
these are not sufficient, the mind contracts and hardens by want of
stimulants: and the man becomes selfish, sensual, gross, and
hard-hearted. Let the management of the POOR LAWS in Liverpool,
Manchester, or Bristol be compared with the ordinary dispensation of
the poor rates in agricultural villages, where the farmers are the
overseers and guardians of the poor. If my own experience have not
been particularly unfortunate, as well as that of the many respectable
country clergymen with whom I have conversed on the subject, the
result would engender more than scepticism concerning the desirable
influences of low and rustic life in and for itself. Whatever may be
concluded on the other side, from the stronger local attachments and
enterprising spirit of the Swiss, and other mountaineers, applies to a
particular mode of pastoral life, under forms of property that permit
and beget manners truly republican, not to rustic life in general, or
to the absence of artificial cultivation. On the contrary the
mountaineers, whose manners have been so often eulogized, are in
general better educated and greater readers than men of equal rank
elsewhere. But where this is not the case, as among the peasantry of
North Wales, the ancient mountains, with all their terrors and all
their glories, are pictures to the blind, and music to the deaf.
I should not have entered so much into detail upon this passage, but
here seems to be the point, to which all the lines of difference
converge as to their source and centre;--I mean, as far as, and in
whatever respect, my poetic creed does differ from the doctrines
promulgated in this preface. I adopt with full faith the principle of
Aristotle, that poetry, as poetry, is essentially ideal, that it
avoids and excludes all accident; that its apparent individualities
of rank, character, or occupation must be representative of a class;
and that the persons of poetry must be clothed with generic
attributes, with the common attributes of the class: not with such as
one gifted individual might possibly possess, but such as from his
situation it is most probable beforehand that he would possess. If my
premises are right and my deductions legitimate, it follows that there
can be no poetic medium between the swains of Theocritus and those of
an imaginary golden age.
The characters of the vicar and the shepherd-mariner in the poem of
_The Brothers_, that of the shepherd of Green-head Ghyll in the
_Michael_, have all the verisimilitude and representative quality,
that the purposes of poetry can require. They are persons of a known
and abiding class, and their manners and sentiments the natural
product of circumstances common to the class. Take Michael for
instance:
An old man stout of heart, and strong of limb:
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength: his mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs,
And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes
When others heeded not, he heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.
The shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him, and he to himself would say,
The winds are now devising work for me!
And truly at all times the storm, that drives
The traveller to a shelter, summon'd him
Up to the mountains. He had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So liv'd he, until his eightieth year was pass'd.
And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the shepherd's thoughts.
Fields, where with chearful spirits he had breath'd
The common air; the hills, which he so oft
Had climb'd with vigorous steps; which had impress'd
So many incidents upon his mind
Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear;
Which, like a book, preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals, whom he had sav'd,
Had fed or shelter'd, linking to such acts,
So grateful in themselves, the certainty
Of honourable gain; these fields, these hills
Which were his living being, even more
Than his own blood--what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasureable feeling of blind love.
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
On the other hand, in the poems which are pitched at a lower note, as
the _Harry Gill_, _Idiot Boy_, the feelings are those of human nature
in general; though the poet has judiciously laid the scene in the
country, in order to place himself in the vicinity of interesting
images, without the necessity of ascribing a sentimental perception of
their beauty to the persons of his drama. In _The Idiot Boy_, indeed,
the mother's character is not so much a real and native product of a
'situation where the essential passions of the heart find a better
soil, in which they can attain their maturity and speak a plainer and
more emphatic language', as it is an impersonation of an instinct
abandoned by judgement. Hence the two following charges seem to me not
wholly groundless: at least, they are the only plausible objections,
which I have heard to that fine poem. The one is, that the author has
not, in the poem itself, taken sufficient care to preclude from the
reader's fancy the disgusting images of ordinary morbid idiocy, which
yet it was by no means his intention to represent. He has even by the
'burr, burr, burr', uncounteracted by any preceding description of the
boy's beauty, assisted in recalling them. The other is, that the
idiocy of the boy is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother, as
to present to the general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the
blindness of anile dotage, than an analytic display of maternal
affection in its ordinary workings.
In _The Thorn_, the poet himself acknowledges in a note the necessity
of an introductory poem, in which he should have portrayed the
character of the person from whom the words of the poem are supposed
to proceed: a superstitious man moderately imaginative, of slow
faculties and deep feelings, 'a captain of a small trading vessel, for
example, who, being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an
annuity, or small independent income, to some village or country town
of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed
to live. Such men having nothing to do become credulous and talkative
from indolence'. But in a poem, still more in a lyric poem--and the
Nurse in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ alone prevents me from
extending the remark even to dramatic poetry, if indeed even the Nurse
itself can be deemed altogether a case in point--it is not possible to
imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourser, without repeating the
effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I dare assert,
that the parts--(and these form the far larger portion of the
whole)--which might as well or still better have proceeded from the
poet's own imagination, and have been spoken in his own character, are
those which have given, and which will continue to give, universal
delight; and that the passages exclusively appropriate to the supposed
narrator, such as the last couplet of the third stanza;[3] the seven
last lines of the tenth;[4] and the five following stanzas, with the
exception of the four admirable lines at the commencement of the
fourteenth, are felt by many unprejudiced and unsophisticated hearts,
as sudden and unpleasant sinkings from the height to which the poet
had previously lifted them, and to which he again re-elevates both
himself and his reader.
[3]
I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.
[4]
Nay, rack your brain--'tis all in vain,
I'll tell you every thing I know;
But to the Thorn, and to the Pond
Which is a little step beyond,
I wish that you would go:
Perhaps, when you are at the place,
You something of her tale may trace.
I'll give you the best help I can:
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I'll tell you all I know.
'Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden's true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,
And she was happy, happy still
Whene'er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fix'd the wedding-day,
The morning that must wed them both;
But Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And, with this other maid, to church
Unthinking Stephen went--
Poor Martha! on that woeful day
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent;
A fire was kindled in her breast,
Which might not burn itself to rest.
They say, full six months after this,
While yet the summer leaves were green,
She to the mountain-top would go,
And there was often seen.
'Tis said a child was in her womb,
As now to any eye was plain;
She was with child, and she was mad;
Yet often she was sober sad
From her exceeding pain.
Oh me! ten thousand times I'd rather
That he had died, that cruel father!
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
Last Christmas when we talked of this,
Old farmer Simpson did maintain,
That in her womb the infant wrought
About its mother's heart, and brought
Her senses back again:
And, when at last her time drew near,
Her looks were calm, her senses clear.
No more I know, I wish I did,
And I would tell it all to you:
For what became of this poor child
There's none that ever knew:
And if a child was born or no,
There's no one that could ever tell;
And if 'twas born alive or dead,
There's no one knows, as I have said:
But some remember well,
That Martha Ray about this time
Would up the mountain often climb.
If then I am compelled to doubt the theory, by which the choice of
characters was to be directed, not only _à priori_, from grounds of
reason, but both from the few instances in which the poet himself need
be supposed to have been governed by it, and from the comparative
inferiority of those instances; still more must I hesitate in my
assent to the sentence which immediately follows the former citation;
and which I can neither admit as particular fact, nor as general rule.
'The language, too, of these men is adopted (purified indeed from what
appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of
dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best
objects from which the best part of language is originally derived;
and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow
circle of their intercourse, being less under the action of social
vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and
unelaborated expressions.' To this I reply; that a rustic's language,
purified from all provincialism and grossness, and so far
reconstructed as to be made consistent with the rules of
grammar--(which are in essence no other than the laws of universal
logic, applied to psychological materials)--will not differ from the
language of any other man of common sense, however learned or refined
he may be, except as far as the notions, which the rustic has to
convey, are fewer and more indiscriminate. This will become still
clearer, if we add the consideration--(equally important though less
obvious)--that the rustic, from the more imperfect development of his
faculties, and from the lower state of their cultivation, aims almost
solely to convey insulated facts, either those of his scanty
experience or his traditional belief; while the educated man chiefly
seeks to discover and express those connexions of things, or those
relative bearings of fact to fact, from which some more or less
general law is deducible. For facts are valuable to a wise man,
chiefly as they lead to the discovery of the indwelling law, which is
the true being of things, the sole solution of their modes of
existence, and in the knowledge of which consists our dignity and our
power.
As little can I agree with the assertion, that from the objects with
which the rustic hourly communicates the best part of language is
formed. For first, if to communicate with an object implies such an
acquaintance with it, as renders it capable of being discriminately
reflected on; the distinct knowledge of an uneducated rustic would
furnish a very scanty vocabulary. The few things and modes of action
requisite for his bodily conveniences would alone be individualized;
while all the rest of nature would be expressed by a small number of
confused general terms. Secondly, I deny that the words and
combinations of words derived from the objects, with which the rustic
is familiar, whether with distinct or confused knowledge, can be
justly said to form the best part of language. It is more than
probable, that many classes of the brute creation possess
discriminating sounds, by which they can convey to each other notices
of such objects as concern their food, shelter, or safety. Yet we
hesitate to call the aggregate of such sounds a language, otherwise
than metaphorically. The best part of human language, properly so
called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It
is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal
acts, to processes and results of imagination, the greater part of
which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man; though in
civilized society, by imitation and passive remembrance of what they
hear from their religious instructors and other superiors, the most
uneducated share in the harvest which they neither sowed nor reaped.
If the history of the phrases in hourly currency among our peasants
were traced, a person not previously aware of the fact would be
surprised at finding so large a number, which three or four centuries
ago were the exclusive property of the universities and the schools;
and, at the commencement of the Reformation, had been transferred from
the school to the pulpit, and thus gradually passed into common life.
The extreme difficulty, and often the impossibility, of finding words
for the simplest moral and intellectual processes of the languages of
uncivilized tribes has proved perhaps the weightiest obstacle to the
progress of our most zealous and adroit missionaries. Yet these tribes
are surrounded by the same nature as our peasants are; but in still
more impressive forms; and they are, moreover, obliged to
particularize many more of them. When, therefore, Mr. Wordsworth adds,
'accordingly, such a language'--(meaning, as before, the language of
rustic life purified from provincialism)--'arising out of repeated
experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more
philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for
it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves
and their art in proportion as they indulge in arbitrary and
capricious habits of expression;' it may be answered, that the
language, which he has in view, can be attributed to rustics with no
greater right, than the style of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir
Roger L'Estrange. Doubtless, if what is peculiar to each were omitted
in each, the result must needs be the same. Further, that the poet,
who uses an illogical diction, or a style fitted to excite only the
low and changeable pleasure of wonder by means of groundless novelty,
substitutes a language of folly and vanity, not for that of the
rustic, but for that of good sense and natural feeling.
Here let me be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions,
which I controvert, are contained in the sentences--'_a selection of
the_ REAL _language of men_';--'_the language of these men_' (i. e.
men in low and rustic life) '_I propose to myself to imitate, and, as
far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men._' '_Between the
language of prose and that of metrical composition, there neither is,
nor can be, any essential difference._' It is against these
exclusively that my opposition is directed.
I object, in the very first instance, to an equivocation in the use of
the word 'real'. Every man's language varies, according to the extent
of his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or
quickness of his feelings. Every man's language has, first, its
individualities; secondly, the common properties of the class to which
he belongs; and thirdly, words and phrases of universal use. The
language of Hooker, Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke differs from the
common language of the learned class only by the superior number and
novelty of the thoughts and relations which they had to convey. The
language of Algernon Sidney differs not at all from that, which every
well-educated gentleman would wish to write, and (with due allowance
for the undeliberateness, and less connected train, of thinking
natural and proper to conversation) such as he would wish to talk.
Neither one nor the other differ half so much from the general
language of cultivated society, as the language of Mr. Wordsworth's
homeliest composition differs from that of a common peasant. For
'real' therefore, we must substitute ordinary, or _lingua communis_.
And this, we have proved, is no more to be found in the phraseology of
low and rustic life than in that of any other class. Omit the
peculiarities of each and the result of course must be common to all.
And assuredly the omissions and changes to be made in the language of
rustics, before it could be transferred to any species of poem, except
the drama or other professed imitation, are at least as numerous and
weighty, as would be required in adapting to the same purpose the
ordinary language of tradesmen and manufacturers. Not to mention, that
the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every
county, nay in every village, according to the accidental character of
the clergyman, the existence or non-existence of schools; or even,
perhaps, as the exciseman, publican, and barber happen to be, or not
to be, zealous politicians, and readers of the weekly newspaper _pro
bono publico_. Anterior to cultivation the _lingua communis_ of every
country, as Dante has well observed, exists everywhere in parts, and
nowhere as a whole.
Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of
the words, _in a state of excitement_. For the nature of a man's
words, where he is strongly affected by joy, grief, or anger, must
necessarily depend on the number and quality of the general truths,
conceptions and images, and of the words expressing them, with which
his mind had been previously stored. For the property of passion is
not to create; but to set in increased activity. At least, whatever
new connexions of thoughts or images, or (which is equally, if not
more than equally, the appropriate effect of strong excitement)
whatever generalizations of truth or experience the heat of passion
may produce; yet the terms of their conveyance must have pre-existed
in his former conversations, and are only collected and crowded
together by the unusual stimulation. It is indeed very possible to
adopt in a poem the unmeaning repetitions, habitual phrases, and other
blank counters, which an unfurnished or confused understanding
interposes at short intervals, in order to keep hold of his subject,
which is still slipping from him, and to give him time for
recollection; or, in mere aid of vacancy, as in the scanty companies
of a country stage the same player pops backwards and forwards, in
order to prevent the appearance of empty spaces, in the procession of
_Macbeth_, or _Henry VIII_. But what assistance to the poet, or
ornament to the poem, these can supply, I am at a loss to conjecture.
Nothing assuredly can differ either in origin or in mode more widely
from the apparent tautologies of intense and turbulent feeling, in
which the passion is greater and of longer endurance than to be
exhausted or satisfied by a single representation of the image or
incident exciting it. Such repetitions I admit to be a beauty of the
highest kind; as illustrated by Mr. Wordsworth himself from the song
of Deborah. _At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet
he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead._
METRICAL COMPOSITION
[_Biographia Literaria_, chap. xviii, 1817]
I conclude, therefore, that the attempt is impracticable; and that,
were it not impracticable, it would still be useless. For the very
power of making the selection implies the previous possession of the
language selected. Or where can the poet have lived? And by what rules
could he direct his choice, which would not have enabled him to select
and arrange his words by the light of his own judgement? We do not
adopt the language of a class by the mere adoption of such words
exclusively, as that class would use, or at least understand; but
likewise by following the order, in which the words of such men are
wont to succeed each other. Now this order, in the intercourse of
uneducated men, is distinguished from the diction of their superiors
in knowledge and power, by the greater disjunction and separation in
the component parts of that, whatever it be, which they wish to
communicate. There is a want of that prospectiveness of mind, that
surview, which enables a man to foresee the whole of what he is to
convey, appertaining to any one point; and by this means so to
subordinate and arrange the different parts according to their
relative importance, as to convey it at once, and as an organized
whole.
Now I will take the first stanza, on which I have chanced to open, in
the _Lyrical Ballads_. It is one the most simple and the least
peculiar in its language.
In distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
Weep in the public roads, alone.
But such a one, on English ground,
And in the broad highway, I met;
Along the broad highway he came,
His cheeks with tears were wet:
Sturdy he seem'd, though he was sad;
And in his arms a lamb he had.
The words here are doubtless such as are current in all ranks of life;
and of course not less so in the hamlet and cottage than in the shop,
manufactory, college, or palace. But is this the order, in which the
rustic would have placed the words? I am grievously deceived, if the
following less compact mode of commencing the same tale be not a far
more faithful copy. 'I have been in a many parts, far and near, and I
don't know that I ever saw before a man crying by himself in the
public road; a grown man I mean, that was neither sick nor hurt,' &c.,
&c. But when I turn to the following stanza in _The Thorn_:
At all times of the day and night
This wretched woman thither goes,
And she is known to every star,
And every wind that blows:
And there, beside the thorn, she sits,
When the blue day-light's in the skies:
And when the whirlwind's on the hill,
Or frosty air is keen and still;
And to herself she cries,
Oh misery! Oh misery!
Oh woe is me! Oh misery!
and compare this with the language of ordinary men; or with that which
I can conceive at all likely to proceed, in real life, from such a
narrator, as is supposed in the note to the poem; compare it either in
the succession of the images or of the sentences; I am reminded of the
sublime prayer and hymn of praise, which MILTON, in opposition to an
established liturgy, presents as a fair specimen of common extemporary
devotion, and such as we might expect to hear from every self-inspired
minister of a conventicle! And I reflect with delight, how little a
mere theory, though of his own workmanship, interferes with the
processes of genuine imagination in a man of true poetic genius, who
possesses, as Mr. Wordsworth, if ever man did, most assuredly does
possess,
The Vision and the Faculty Divine.
* * * * *
One point then alone remains, but that the most important; its
examination having been, indeed, my chief inducement for the preceding
inquisition. '_There neither is nor can be any essential difference
between the language of prose and metrical composition._' Such is Mr.
Wordsworth's assertion. Now prose itself, at least in all
argumentative and consecutive works, differs, and ought to differ,
from the language of conversation; even as reading ought to differ
from talking. Unless therefore the difference denied be that of the
mere words, as materials common to all styles of writing, and not of
the style itself in the universally admitted sense of the term, it
might be naturally presumed that there must exist a still greater
between the ordonnance of poetic composition and that of prose, than
is expected to distinguish prose from ordinary conversation.
There are not, indeed, examples wanting in the history of literature,
of apparent paradoxes that have summoned the public wonder as new and
startling truths, but which, on examination, have shrunk into tame and
harmless truisms; as the eyes of a cat, seen in the dark, have been
mistaken for flames of fire. But Mr. Wordsworth is among the last men,
to whom a delusion of this kind would be attributed by any one who had
enjoyed the slightest opportunity of understanding his mind and
character. Where an objection has been anticipated by such an author
as natural, his answer to it must needs be interpreted in some sense
which either is, or has been, or is capable of being controverted. My
object then must be to discover some other meaning for the term
'_essential difference_' in this place, exclusive of the indistinction
and community of the words themselves. For whether there ought to
exist a class of words in the English, in any degree resembling the
poetic dialect of the Greek and Italian, is a question of very
subordinate importance. The number of such words would be small
indeed, in our language; and even in the Italian and Greek, they
consist not so much of different words, as of slight differences in
the forms of declining and conjugating the same words; forms,
doubtless, which having been, at some period more or less remote, the
common grammatic flexions of some tribe or province, had been
accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general admiration of
certain master intellects, the first established lights of
inspiration, to whom that dialect happened to be native.
Essence, in its primary signification, means the principle of
individuation, the inmost principle of the possibility of any thing,
as that particular thing. It is equivalent to the idea of a thing,
whenever we use the word, idea, with philosophic precision. Existence,
on the other hand, is distinguished from essence, by the
superinduction of reality. Thus we speak of the essence, and essential
properties of a circle; but we do not therefore assert, that any
thing, which really exists, is mathematically circular. Thus too,
without any tautology we contend for the existence of the Supreme
Being; that is, for a reality correspondent to the idea. There is,
next, a secondary use of the word essence, in which it signifies the
point or ground of contradistinction between two modifications of the
same substance or subject. Thus we should be allowed to say, that the
style of architecture of Westminster Abbey is essentially different
from that of St. Paul's, even though both had been built with blocks
cut into the same form, and from the same quarry. Only in this latter
sense of the term must it have been denied by Mr. Wordsworth (for in
this sense alone is it affirmed by the general opinion) that the
language of poetry (i. e. the formal construction, or architecture, of
the words and phrases) is essentially different from that of prose.
Now the burthen of the proof lies with the oppugner, not with the
supporters of the common belief. Mr. Wordsworth, in consequence,
assigns as the proof of his position, 'that not only the language of a
large portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character,
must necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect
differ from that of good prose, but likewise that some of the most
interesting parts of the best poems will be found to be strictly the
language of prose, when prose is well written. The truth of this
assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost
all the poetical writings even of Milton himself.' He then quotes
Gray's sonnet:--
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
_A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire._
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And newborn pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear,
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
_I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain_,
and adds the following remark:--'It will easily be perceived, that the
only part of this Sonnet, which is of any value, is the lines printed
in italics. It is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in
the use of the single word "fruitless" for "fruitlessly", which is so
far a defect, the language of these lines does in no respect differ
from that of prose.'
An idealist defending his system by the fact, that when asleep we
often believe ourselves awake, was well answered by his plain
neighbour, 'Ah, but when awake do we ever believe ourselves
asleep?'--Things identical must be convertible. The preceding passage
seems to rest on a similar sophism. For the question is not, whether
there may not occur in prose an order of words, which would be equally
proper in a poem; nor whether there are not beautiful lines and
sentences of frequent occurrence in good poems, which would be equally
becoming as well as beautiful in good prose; for neither the one nor
the other has ever been either denied or doubted by any one. The true
question must be, whether there are not modes of expression, a
construction, and an order of sentences, which are in their fit and
natural place in a serious prose composition, but would be
disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and, vice
versa, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be an
arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection of
(what are called) _figures of speech_, both as to their kind, their
frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight
would be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that
in both cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other
frequently will and ought to exist.
And first from the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance
in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to hold
in check the workings of passion. It might be easily explained
likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the
very state, which it counteracts; and how this balance of antagonists
became organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term) by
a supervening act of the will and judgement, consciously and for the
foreseen purpose of pleasure. Assuming these principles, as the data
of our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate conditions, which
the critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First, that,
as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased
excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural
language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are formed
into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and for
the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of present
volition should throughout the metrical language be proportionately
discernible. Now these two conditions must be reconciled and
co-present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an
interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and of
voluntary purpose. Again, this union can be manifested only in a
frequency of forms and figures of speech (originally the offspring of
passion, but now the adopted children of power), greater than would be
desired or endured, where the emotion is not voluntarily encouraged
and kept up for the sake of that pleasure, which such emotion, so
tempered and mastered by the will, is found capable of communicating.
It not only dictates, but of itself tends to produce, a more frequent
employment of picturesque and vivifying language, than would be
natural in any other case, in which there did not exist, as there does
in the present, a previous and well understood, though tacit,
_compact_ between the poet and his reader, that the latter is entitled
to expect, and the former bound to supply, this species and degree of
pleasurable excitement. We may in some measure apply to this union the
answer of POLIXENES, in the _Winter's Tale_, to PERDITA'S neglect of
the streaked gilly-flowers, because she had heard it said:
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
_Pol._ Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, ev'n that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art,
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
_A gentler scion to the wildest stock;_
And make conceive a bark of ruder kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art,
Which does mend nature--change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.
Secondly, I argue from the EFFECTS of metre. As far as metre acts in
and for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility
both of the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it
produces by the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick
reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited,
which are too slight indeed to be at any one moment objects of
distinct consciousness, yet become considerable in their aggregate
influence. As a medicated atmosphere, or as wine during animated
conversation, they act powerfully, though themselves unnoticed. Where,
therefore, correspondent food and appropriate matter are not provided
for the attention and feelings thus roused, there must needs be a
disappointment felt; like that of leaping in the dark from the last
step of a staircase, when we had prepared our muscles for a leap of
three or four.
The discussion on the powers of metre in the preface is highly
ingenious and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any
statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the
contrary Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers
which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of) its
combination with other elements of poetry. Thus the previous
difficulty is left unanswered, what the elements are with which it
must be combined, in order to produce its own effects to any
pleasureable purpose. Double and tri-syllable rhymes, indeed, form a
lower species of wit, and, attended to exclusively for their own sake,
may become a source of momentary amusement; as in poor Smart's distich
to the Welsh Squire who had promised him a hare:
Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader!
Hast sent the hare? or hast thou swallowed her?
But for any poetic purposes, metre resembles (if the aptness of the
simile may excuse its meanness) yeast, worthless or disagreeable by
itself, but giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is
proportionately combined.
The reference to _The Children in the Wood_ by no means satisfies my
judgement. We all willingly throw ourselves back for awhile into the
feelings of our childhood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such
recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equally endear to
us poems, which Mr. Wordsworth himself would regard as faulty in the
opposite extreme of gaudy and technical ornament. Before the invention
of printing, and in a still greater degree, before the introduction of
writing, metre, especially alliterative metre (whether alliterative at
the beginning of the words, as in _Piers Plowman_, or at the end, as
in rhymes), possessed an independent value as assisting the
recollection, and consequently the preservation, of _any_ series of
truths or incidents. But I am not convinced by the collation of facts,
that _The Children in the Wood_ owes either its preservation, or its
popularity, to its metrical form. Mr. Marshal's repository affords a
number of tales in prose inferior in pathos and general merit, some of
as old a date, and many as widely popular. _Tom Hickathrift_, _Jack
the Giant-killer_, _Goody Two-shoes_, and _Little Red Riding-hood_ are
formidable rivals. And that they have continued in prose, cannot be
fairly explained by the assumption, that the comparative meanness of
their thoughts and images precluded even the humblest forms of metre.
The scene of _Goody Two-shoes_ in the church is perfectly susceptible
of metrical narration; and, among the [Greek: Thaumata thaumastotata]
even of the present age, I do not recollect a more astonishing image
than that of the '_whole rookery, that flew out of the giant's
beard_', scared by the tremendous voice, with which this monster
answered the challenge of the heroic _Tom Hickathrift_!
If from these we turn to compositions universally, and independently
of all early associations, beloved and admired, would _The Maria_,
_The Monk_, or _The Poor Man's Ass_ of Sterne, be read with more
delight, or have a better chance of immortality, had they without any
change in the diction been composed in rhyme, than in their present
state? If I am not grossly mistaken, the general reply would be in the
negative. Nay, I will confess, that, in Mr. Wordsworth's own volumes,
the _Anecdote for Fathers_, _Simon Lee_, _Alice Fell_, _The Beggars_,
and _The Sailor's Mother_, notwithstanding the beauties which are to
be found in each of them where the poet interposes the music of his
own thoughts, would have been more delightful to me in prose, told and
managed, as by Mr. Wordsworth they would have been, in a moral essay,
or pedestrian tour.
Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the attention, and therefore
excites the question: Why is the attention to be thus stimulated? Now
the question cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre itself:
for this we have shown to be conditional, and dependent on the
appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions, to which the metrical
form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other answer that can
be rationally given, short of this: I write in metre, because I am
about to use a language different from that of prose. Besides, where
the language is not such, how interesting soever the reflections are,
that are capable of being drawn by a philosophic mind from the
thoughts or incidents of the poem, the metre itself must often become
feeble. Take the last three stanzas of _The Sailor's Mother_, for
instance. If I could for a moment abstract from the effect produced on
the author's feelings, as a man, by the incident at the time of its
real occurrence, I would dare appeal to his own judgement, whether in
the metre itself he found a sufficient reason for their being written
metrically?
And, thus continuing, she said,
I had a son, who many a day
Sailed on the seas; but he is dead;
In Denmark he was cast away;
And I have travelled far as Hull, to see
What clothes he might have left, or other property.
The bird and cage they both were his:
'Twas my son's bird; and neat and trim
He kept it: many voyages
This singing-bird hath gone with him;
When last he sailed he left the bird behind;
As it might be, perhaps, from bodings of his mind.
He to a fellow-lodger's care
Had left it, to be watched and fed,
Till he came back again; and there
I found it when my son was dead;
And now, God help me for my little wit!
I trail it with me, Sir! he took so much delight in it.
If disproportioning the emphasis we read these stanzas so as to make
the rhymes perceptible, even tri-syllable rhymes could scarcely
produce an equal sense of oddity and strangeness, as we feel here in
finding rhymes at all in sentences so exclusively colloquial. I would
further ask whether, but for that visionary state, into which the
figure of the woman and the susceptibility of his own genius had
placed the poet's imagination (a state, which spreads its influence
and colouring over all, that co-exists with the exciting cause, and in
which
The simplest, and the most familiar things
Gain a strange power of spreading awe around them),
I would ask the poet whether he would not have felt an abrupt downfall
in these verses from the preceding stanza?
The ancient spirit is not dead;
Old times, thought I, are breathing there;
Proud was I that my country bred
Such strength, a dignity so fair:
She begged an alms, like one in poor estate;
I looked at her again, nor did my pride abate.
It must not be omitted, and is besides worthy of notice, that those
stanzas furnish the only fair instance that I have been able to
discover in all Mr. Wordsworth's writings, of an actual adoption, or
true imitation, of the real and very language of low and rustic life,
freed from provincialisms.
Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes elsewhere assigned,
which render metre the proper form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and
defective without metre. Metre, therefore, having been connected with
poetry most often and by a peculiar fitness, whatever else is combined
with metre must, though it be not itself essentially poetic, have
nevertheless some property in common with poetry, as an intermedium of
affinity, a sort (if I may dare borrow a well-known phrase from
technical chemistry) of _mordaunt_ between it and the superadded
metre. Now poetry, Mr. Wordsworth truly affirms, does always imply
PASSION: which word must be here understood in its most general sense,
as an excited state of the feelings and faculties. And as every
passion has its proper pulse, so will it likewise have its
characteristic modes of expression. But where there exists that degree
of genius and talent which entitles a writer to aim at the honours of
a poet, the very act of poetic composition itself is, and is allowed
to imply and to produce, an unusual state of excitement, which of
course justifies and demands a correspondent difference of language,
as truly, though not perhaps in as marked a degree, as the excitement
of love, fear, rage, or jealousy. The vividness of the descriptions or
declamations in DONNE or DRYDEN is as much and as often derived from
the force and fervour of the describer, as from the reflections, forms
or incidents, which constitute their subject and materials. The wheels
take fire from the mere rapidity of their motion. To what extent, and
under what modifications, this may be admitted to act, I shall attempt
to define in an after remark on Mr. Wordsworth's reply to this
objection, or rather on his objection to this reply, as already
anticipated in his preface.
Fourthly, and as intimately connected with this, if not the same
argument in a more general form, I adduce the high spiritual instinct
of the human being impelling us to seek unity by harmonious
adjustment, and thus establishing the principle, that all the parts of
an organized whole must be assimilated to the more important and
essential parts. This and the preceding arguments may be strengthened
by the reflection, that the composition of a poem is among the
imitative arts; and that imitation, as opposed to copying, consists
either in the interfusion of the same throughout the radically
different, or of the different throughout a base radically the same.
Lastly, I appeal to the practice of the best poets, of all countries
and in all ages, as authorizing the opinion, (deduced from all the
foregoing,) that in every import of the word essential, which would
not here involve a mere truism, there may be, is, and ought to be an
essential difference between the language of prose and of metrical
composition.
In Mr. Wordsworth's criticism of Gray's Sonnet, the readers' sympathy
with his praise or blame of the different parts is taken for granted
rather perhaps too easily. He has not, at least, attempted to win or
compel it by argumentative analysis. In my conception at least, the
lines rejected as of no value do, with the exception of the two first,
differ as much and as little from the language of common life, as
those which he has printed in italics as possessing genuine
excellence. Of the five lines thus honourably distinguished, two of
them differ from prose, even more widely than the lines which either
precede or follow, in the position of the words.
_A different object do these eyes require;_
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
_And in my breast the imperfect joys expire._
But were it otherwise, what would this prove, but a truth, of which no
man ever doubted? Videlicet, that there are sentences, which would be
equally in their place both in verse and prose. Assuredly it does not
prove the point, which alone requires proof; namely, that there are
not passages, which would suit the one and not suit the other. The
first line of this sonnet is distinguished from the ordinary language
of men by the epithet to '_morning_'. (For we will set aside, at
present, the consideration, that the particular word '_smiling_' is
hackneyed and (as it involves a sort of personification) not quite
congruous with the common and material attribute of _shining_.) And,
doubtless, this adjunction of epithets for the purpose of additional
description, where no particular attention is demanded for the quality
of the thing, would be noticed as giving a poetic cast to a man's
conversation. Should the sportsman exclaim, '_Come boys! the rosy
morning calls you up_', he will be supposed to have some song in his
head. But no one suspects this, when he says, 'A wet morning shall not
confine us to our beds.' This then is either a defect in poetry, or it
is not. Whoever should decide in the affirmative, I would request him
to re-peruse any one poem, of any confessedly great poet from Homer to
Milton, or from Aeschylus to Shakespeare; and to strike out (in
thought I mean) every instance of this kind. If the number of these
fancied erasures did not startle him, or if he continued to deem the
work improved by their total omission, he must advance reasons of no
ordinary strength and evidence, reasons grounded in the essence of
human nature. Otherwise, I should not hesitate to consider him as a
man not so much proof against all authority, as dead to it.
The second line,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;--
has indeed almost as many faults as words. But then it is a bad line,
not because the language is distinct from that of prose, but because
it conveys incongruous images, because it confounds the cause and the
effect, the real thing with the personified representative of the
thing; in short, because it differs from the language of good sense!
That the 'Phoebus' is hackneyed, and a school-boy image, is an
accidental fault, dependent on the age in which the author wrote, and
not deduced from the nature of the thing. That it is part of an
exploded mythology, is an objection more deeply grounded. Yet when the
torch of ancient learning was rekindled, so cheering were its beams,
that our eldest poets, cut off by Christianity from all accredited
machinery, and deprived of all acknowledged guardians and symbols of
the great objects of nature, were naturally induced to adopt, as a
poetic language, those fabulous personages, those forms of the
supernatural in nature, which had given them such dear delight in the
poems of their great masters. Nay, even at this day what scholar of
genial taste will not so far sympathize with them, as to read with
pleasure in Petrarch, Chaucer, or Spenser, what he would perhaps
condemn as puerile in a modern poet?
I remember no poet, whose writings would safelier stand the test of
Mr. Wordsworth's theory, than Spenser. Yet will Mr. Wordsworth say,
that the style of the following stanza is either undistinguished from
prose, and the language of ordinary life? Or that it is vicious, and
that the stanzas are blots in the _Faerie Queene_?
By this the northern wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the steadfast starre,
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wild deep wandering are:
And chearful chanticleer with his note shrill
Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery carre
In haste was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that night so long his roome did fill.
Book I, Can. 2, St. 2.
At last the golden orientall gate
Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre,
And Phoebus fresh, as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre,
And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy ayre:
Which when the wakeful elfe perceived, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sun-bright armes and battailous array;
For with that pagan proud he combat will that day.
Book I, Can. 5, St. 2.
On the contrary to how many passages, both in hymn books and in blank
verse poems, could I (were it not invidious) direct the reader's
attention, the style of which is most unpoetic, because, and only
because, it is the style of prose? He will not suppose me capable of
having in my mind such verses, as
I put my hat upon my head
And walk'd into the Strand;
And there I met another man,
Whose hat was in his hand.
To such specimens it would indeed be a fair and full reply, that these
lines are not bad, because they are unpoetic; but because they are
empty of all sense and feeling; and that it were an idle attempt to
prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is evident that he is not a
man. But the sense shall be good and weighty, the language correct and
dignified, the subject interesting and treated with feeling; and yet
the style shall, notwithstanding all these merits, be justly blamable
as prosaic, and solely because the words and the order of the words
would find their appropriate place in prose, but are not suitable to
metrical composition. The _Civil Wars_ of Daniel is an instructive,
and even interesting work; but take the following stanzas (and from
the hundred instances which abound I might probably have selected
others far more striking):
And to the end we may with better ease
Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to show
What were the times foregoing near to these,
That these we may with better profit know.
Tell how the world fell into this disease;
And how so great distemperature did grow;
So shall we see with what degrees it came;
How things at full do soon wax out of frame.
Ten kings had from the Norman conqu'ror reign'd
With intermixt and variable fate,
When England to her greatest height attain'd
Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state;
After it had with much ado sustain'd
The violence of princes, with debate
For titles and the often mutinies
Of nobles for their ancient liberties.
For first, the Norman, conqu'ring all by might,
By might was forc'd to keep what he had got;
Mixing our customs and the form of right
With foreign constitutions he had brought;
Mast'ring the mighty, humbling the poorer wight,
By all severest means that could be wrought;
And, making the succession doubtful, rent
His new-got state, and left it turbulent.
Book I, St. vii, viii, and ix.
Will it be contended on the one side, that these lines are mean and
senseless? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that
reason unpoetic? This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the
'_well-languaged Daniel_'; but likewise, and by the consent of his
contemporaries no less than of all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic
Daniel.' Yet those, who thus designate this wise and amiable writer,
from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction to his metre in the
majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and
interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that there are to
be found throughout his poems, and especially in his _Epistles_ and in
his _Hymen's Triumph_, many and exquisite specimens of that style
which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both. A
fine and almost faultless extract, eminent, as for other beauties, so
for its perfection in these species of diction, may be seen in Lamb's
_Dramatic Specimens_, &c., a work of various interest from the nature
of the selections themselves, (all from the plays of Shakespeare's
contemporaries), and deriving a high additional value from the notes,
which are full of just and original criticism, expressed with all the
freshness of originality.
Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory that
aims to identify the style of prose and verse,--(if it does not indeed
claim for the latter a yet nearer resemblance to the average style of
men in the viva voce intercourse of real life)--we might anticipate
the following as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I
have indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole
acknowledged difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye
only. The existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the
merit of a poem, must at length be conceded, when a number of
successive lines can be rendered, even to the most delicate ear,
unrecognizable as verse, or as having even been intended for verse, by
simply transcribing them as prose; when if the poem be in blank verse,
this can be effected without any alteration, or at most by merely
restoring one or two words to their proper places, from which they
have been transplanted[5] for no assignable cause or reason but that
of the author's convenience; but if it be in rhyme, by the mere
exchange of the final word of each line for some other of the same
meaning, equally appropriate, dignified and euphonic.
[5] As the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the
Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, 'I wish you a good
morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir, and I wish you the same,' into
two blank-verse heroics:--
To you a good morning, good Sir! I wish.
You, Sir! I thank: to you the same wish I.
In those parts of Mr. Wordsworth's works which I have
thoroughly studied, I find fewer instances in which this
would be practicable than I have met in many poems, where an
approximation of prose has been sedulously and on system
guarded against. Indeed excepting the stanzas already quoted
from _The Sailor's Mother_, I can recollect but one instance:
viz. a short passage of four or five lines in _The Brothers_,
that model of English pastoral, which I never yet read with
unclouded eye.--'James, pointing to its summit, over which
they had all purposed to return together, informed them that
he would wait for them there. They parted, and his comrades
passed that way some two hours after, but they did not find
him at the appointed place, _a circumstance of which they
took no heed_: but one of them, going by chance into the
house, which at this time was James's house, learnt _there_,
that nobody had seen him all that day.' The only change which
has been made is in the position of the little word _there_
in two instances, the position in the original being clearly
such as is not adopted in ordinary conversation. The other
words printed in _italics_ were so marked because, though
good and genuine English, they are not the phraseology of
common conversation either in the word put in apposition, or
in the connexion by the genitive pronoun. Men in general
would have said, 'but that was a circumstance they paid no
attention to, or took no notice of;' and the language is, on
the theory of the preface, justified only by the narrator's
being the _Vicar_. Yet if any ear _could_ suspect, that these
sentences were ever printed as metre, on those very words
alone could the suspicion have been grounded.
The answer or objection in the preface to the anticipated remark 'that
metre paves the way to other distinctions', is contained in the
following words. 'The distinction of rhyme and metre is voluntary and
uniform, and not, like that produced by (what is called) poetic
diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon which no
calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is
utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he
may choose to connect with the passion.' But is this a poet, of whom a
poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of
a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so
deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are
supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader
at the mercy of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it
not his own fault? The ultimate end of criticism is much more to
establish the principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass
judgement on what has been written by others; if indeed it were
possible that the two could be separated. But if it be asked, by what
principles the poet is to regulate his own style, if he do not adhere
closely to the sort and order of words which he hears in the market,
wake, high-road, or plough-field? I reply; by principles, the
ignorance or neglect of which would convict him of being no poet, but
a silly or presumptuous usurper of the name! By the principles of
grammar, logic, psychology! In one word, by such a knowledge of the
facts, material and spiritual, that most appertain to his art, as, if
it have been governed and applied by good sense, and rendered
instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and reward of our
past conscious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and acquires the
name of TASTE. By what rule that does not leave the reader at the
poet's mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter to distinguish
between the language suitable to suppressed, and the language, which
is characteristic of indulged, anger? Or between that of rage and that
of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search of angry or
jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy their words?
Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding upon the all
in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by observation?
And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As eyes, for
which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and to
which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? There is
not, I firmly believe, a man now living, who has, from his own inward
experience, a clearer intuition than Mr. Wordsworth himself, that the
last mentioned are the true sources of genial discrimination. Through
the same process and by the same creative agency will the poet
distinguish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very
act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, what
differences of style it at once inspires and justifies; what
intermixture of conscious volition is natural to that state; and in
what instances such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere
creatures of an arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of
ornament or connexion. For, even as truth is its own light and
evidence, discovering at once itself and falsehood, so is it the
prerogative of poetic genius to distinguish by parental instinct its
proper offspring from the changelings, which the gnomes of vanity or
the fairies of fashion may have laid in its cradle or called by its
names. Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be
poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be [Greek:
morphôsis], not [Greek: poiêsis]. The rules of the IMAGINATION are
themselves the very powers of growth and production. The words to
which they are reducible, present only the outlines and external
appearance of the fruit. A deceptive counterfeit of the superficial
form and colours may be elaborated; but the marble peach feels cold
and heavy, and children only put it to their mouths. We find no
difficulty in admitting as excellent, and the legitimate language of
poetic fervour self-impassioned, Donne's apostrophe to the Sun in the
second stanza of his _Progress of the Soul_.
Thee, eye of heaven! this great soul envies not;
By thy male force is all, we have, begot.
In the first East thou now beginn'st to shine,
Suck'st early balm and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein'd career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night this western world of mine:
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
Who before thee one day began to be,
And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive thee!
Or the next stanza but one:
Great destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast mark'd out a path and period
For ev'ry thing! Who, where we offspring took,
Our way and ends see'st at one instant: thou
Knot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless brow
Ne'er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look,
And show my story in thy eternal book, &c.
As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of
unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudo-poesy,
or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which
bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to
abstract terms. Such are the Odes to Jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion,
and the like, in Dodsley's collection and the magazines of that day,
which seldom fail to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two
Suttons, commencing with
INOCULATION, heavenly maid! descend!
It is not to be denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets
of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory
deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once
read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory
period of Cowley's preface to his _Pindaric Odes, written in imitation
of the style and manner of the odes of Pindar_. 'If (says Cowley) a
man should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be
thought that one madman had translated another: as may appear, when
he, that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of
him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving.' I then
proceeded with his own free version of the second Olympic, composed
for the charitable purpose of rationalizing the Theban Eagle.
Queen of all harmonious things,
Dancing words and speaking strings,
What God, what hero, wilt thou sing?
What happy man to equal glories bring?
Begin, begin thy noble choice,
And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice.
Pisa does to Jove belong,
Jove and Pisa claim thy song.
The fair first-fruits of war, th' Olympic games,
Alcides offer'd up to Jove;
Alcides too thy strings may move!
But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy prove?
Join Theron boldly to their sacred names;
Theron the next honour claims;
Theron to no man gives place,
Is first in Pisa's and in Virtue's race;
Theron there, and he alone,
Ev'n his own swift forefathers has outgone.
One of the company exclaimed, with the full assent of the rest, that
if the original were madder than this, it must be incurably mad. I
then translated the ode from the Greek, and as nearly as possible,
word for word; and the impression was, that in the general movement of
the periods, in the form of the connexions and transitions, and in the
sober majesty of lofty sense, it appeared to them to approach more
nearly, than any other poetry they had heard, to the style of our
Bible in the prophetic books. The first strophe will suffice as a
specimen:
Ye harp-controling hymns! (or) ye hymns the sovereigns of harps!
What God? what Hero?
What Man shall we celebrate?
Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,
But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,
The first-fruits of the spoils of war.
But Theron for the four-horsed car,
That bore victory to him,
It behoves us now to voice aloud:
The Just, the Hospitable,
The Bulwark of Agrigentum,
Of renowned fathers
The Flower, even him
Who preserves his native city erect and safe.
But are such rhetorical caprices condemnable only for their deviation
from the language of real life? and are they by no other means to be
precluded, but by the rejection of all distinctions between prose and
verse, save that of metre? Surely good sense, and a moderate insight
into the constitution of the human mind, would be amply sufficient to
prove, that such language and such combinations are the native produce
neither of the fancy nor of the imagination; that their operation
consists in the excitement of surprise by the juxtaposition and
apparent reconciliation of widely different or incompatible things. As
when, for instance, the hills are made to reflect the image of a
voice. Surely, no unusual taste is requisite to see clearly, that this
compulsory juxtaposition is not produced by the presentation of
impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any
sympathy with the modifying powers with which the genius of the poet
had united and inspirited all the objects of his thought; that it is
therefore a species of wit, a pure work of the will, and implies a
leisure and self-possession both of thought and of feeling,
incompatible with the steady fervour of a mind possessed and filled
with the grandeur of its subject. To sum up the whole in one sentence.
When a poem, or a part of a poem, shall be adduced, which is evidently
vicious in the figures and contexture of its style, yet for the
condemnation of which no reason can be assigned, except that it
differs from the style in which men actually converse, then, and not
till then, can I hold this theory to be either plausible, or
practicable, or capable of furnishing either rule, guidance, or
precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as well as
more naturally, have been deduced in the author's own mind from
considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things,
confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of ONE country
nor of ONE age.
WILLIAM BLAKE
1757-1827
THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS (1809)
SIR GEFFREY CHAUCER AND THE NINE-AND-TWENTY PILGRIMS ON THEIR JOURNEY
TO CANTERBURY[6]
[6] From _A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures_.
The time chosen is early morning, before sunrise, when the jolly
company are just quitting the Tabarde Inn. The Knight and Squire with
the Squire's Yeoman lead the Procession; next follow the youthful
Abbess, her Nun, and three Priests; her greyhounds attend her:
Of small hounds had she that she fed
With roast flesh, milk, and wastel bread.
Next follow the Friar and Monk; then the Tapiser, the Pardoner, and
the Sompnour and Manciple. After these 'Our Host', who occupies the
centre of the cavalcade, directs them to the Knight as the person who
would be likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their
order. After the Host follow the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer,
the Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the Poor
Parson, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the
Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reeve comes as Chaucer has
described:
And ever he rode hinderest of the rout.
These last are issuing from the gateway of the Inn the Cook and the
Wife of Bath are both taking their morning's draught of comfort.
Spectators stand at the gateway of the Inn, and are composed of an old
Man, a Woman, and Children.
The Landscape is an eastward view of the country, from the Tabarde Inn
in Southwark, as it may be supposed to have appeared in Chaucer's
time, interspersed with cottages and villages. The first beams of the
Sun are seen above the horizon; some buildings and spires indicate the
situation of the Great City. The Inn is a Gothic building, which
Thynne in his Glossary says was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde, by
Winchester. On the Inn is inscribed its title, and a proper advantage
is taken of this circumstance to describe the subject of the Picture.
The words written over the gateway of the Inn are as follow: 'The
Tabarde Inn, by Henry Baillie, the lodgynge-house for Pilgrims who
journey to Saint Thomas's Shrine at Canterbury.'
The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose
all ages and nations. As one age falls, another rises, different to
mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we see the same
characters repeated again and again, in animals, vegetables, minerals,
and in men. Nothing new occurs in identical existence; Accident ever
varies, Substance can never suffer change nor decay.
Of Chaucer's characters, as described in his _Canterbury Tales_, some
of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters
themselves for ever remain unaltered; and consequently they are the
physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which
Nature never steps. Names alter, things never alter. I have known
multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery,
who in this deistical age are deists. As Newton numbered the stars,
and as Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes
of men.
The Painter has consequently varied the heads and forms of his
personages into all Nature's varieties; the horses he has also varied
to accord to their riders; the costume is correct according to
authentic monuments.
The Knight and Squire with the Squire's Yeoman lead the Procession, as
Chaucer has also placed them first in his Prologue. The Knight is a
true Hero, a good, great and wise man; his whole-length portrait on
horseback, as written by Chaucer, cannot be surpassed. He has spent
his life in the field, has ever been a conqueror, and is that species
of character which in every age stands as the guardian of man against
the oppressor. His son is like him, with the germ of perhaps greater
perfection still, as he blends literature and the arts with his
warlike studies. Their dress and their horses are of the first rate,
without ostentation, and with all the true grandeur that unaffected
simplicity when in high rank always displays. The Squire's Yeoman is
also a great character, a man perfectly knowing in his profession:
And in his hand he bare a mighty bow.
Chaucer describes here a mighty man, one who in war is the worthy
attendant on noble heroes.
The Prioress follows these with her female Chaplain:
Another Nonne also with her had she,
That was her Chaplaine, and Priests three.
This Lady is described also as of the first rank, rich and honoured.
She has certain peculiarities and little delicate affectations, not
unbecoming in her, being accompanied with what is truly grand and
really polite; her person and face Chaucer has described with
minuteness; it is very elegant, and was the beauty of our ancestors
till after Elizabeth's time, when voluptuousness and folly began to be
accounted beautiful.
Her companion and her three Priests were no doubt all perfectly
delineated in those parts of Chaucer's work which are now lost; we
ought to suppose them suitable attendants on rank and fashion.
The Monk follows these with the Friar. The Painter has also grouped
with these the Pardoner and the Sompnour and the Manciple, and has
here also introduced one of the rich citizens of London--characters
likely to ride in company, all being above the common rank in life, or
attendants on those who were so.
For the Monk is described by Chaucer, as a man of the first rank in
society, noble, rich, and expensively attended; he is a leader of the
age, with certain humorous accompaniments in his character, that do
not degrade, but render him an object of dignified mirth, but also
with other accompaniments not so respectable.
The Friar is a character of a mixed kind:
A friar there was, a wanton and a merry;
but in his office he is said to be a 'full solemn man'; eloquent,
amorous, witty and satirical; young, handsome and rich; he is a
complete rogue, with constitutional gaiety enough to make him a
master of all the pleasures of the world:
His neck was white as the flour de lis,
Thereto strong he was as a champioun.
It is necessary here to speak of Chaucer's own character, that I may
set certain mistaken critics right in their conception of the humour
and fun that occur on the journey. Chaucer is himself the great
poetical observer of men, who in every age is born to record and
eternize its acts. This he does as a master, as a father and superior,
who looks down on their little follies from the Emperor to the Miller,
sometimes with severity, oftener with joke and sport.
Accordingly Chaucer has made his Monk a great tragedian, one who
studied poetical art. So much so that the generous Knight is, in the
compassionate dictates of his soul, compelled to cry out:
'Ho,' quoth the Knyght, 'good Sir, no more of this;
That ye have said is right ynough, I wis,
And mokell more; for little heaviness
Is right enough for much folk, as I guesse.
I say, for me, it is a great disease,
Whereas men have been in wealth and ease,
To heare of their sudden fall, alas!
And the contrary is joy and solas.'
The Monk's definition of tragedy in the proem to his tale is worth
repeating:
Tragedie is to tell a certain story,
As old books us maken memory,
Of hem that stood in great prosperity,
And be fallen out of high degree,
Into miserie, and ended wretchedly.
Though a man of luxury, pride and pleasure, he is a master of art and
learning, though affecting to despise it. Those who can think that
the proud huntsman and noble housekeeper, Chaucer's Monk, is intended
for a buffoon or burlesque character, know little of Chaucer.
For the Host who follows this group, and holds the centre of the
cavalcade, is a first-rate character, and his jokes are no trifles;
they are always, though uttered with audacity, and equally free with
the Lord and the Peasant--they are always substantially and weightily
expressive of knowledge and experience; Henry Baillie, the keeper of
the greatest Inn of the greatest City, for such was the Tabarde Inn in
Southwark near London, our Host, was also a leader of the age.
By way of illustration I instance Shakespeare's Witches in _Macbeth_.
Those who dress them for the stage, consider them as wretched old
women, and not, as Shakespeare intended, the Goddesses of Destiny;
this shows how Chaucer has been misunderstood in his sublime work.
Shakespeare's Fairies also are the rulers of the vegetable world, and
so are Chaucer's; let them be so considered, and then the poet will be
understood, and not else.
But I have omitted to speak of a very prominent character, the
Pardoner, the Age's Knave, who always commands and domineers over the
high and low vulgar. This man is sent in every age for a rod and
scourge, and for a blight, for a trial of men, to divide the classes
of men; he is in the most holy sanctuary, and he is suffered by
Providence for wise ends, and has also his great use, and his grand
leading destiny.
His companion the Sompnour is also a Devil of the first magnitude,
grand, terrific, rich, and honoured in the rank of which he holds the
destiny. The uses to society are perhaps equal of the Devil and of the
Angel; their sublimity who can dispute?
In daunger had he at his own gise,
The young girls of his diocese,
And he knew well their counsel, &c.
The principal figure in the next group is the Good Parson; an Apostle,
a real Messenger of Heaven, sent in every age for its light and its
warmth. This man is beloved and venerated by all, and neglected by
all: he serves all, and is served by none. He is, according to
Christ's definition, the greatest of his age: yet he is a Poor Parson
of a town. Read Chaucer's description of the Good Parson, and bow the
head and the knee to Him, Who in every age sends us such a burning and
a shining light. Search, O ye rich and powerful, for these men and
obey their counsel; then shall the golden age return. But alas! you
will not easily distinguish him from the Friar or the Pardoner; they
also are 'full solemn men', and their counsel you will continue to
follow.
I have placed by his side the Sergeant-at-Lawe, who appears delighted
to ride in his company, and between him and his brother the Ploughman;
as I wish men of law would always ride with them, and take their
counsel, especially in all difficult points. Chaucer's Lawyer is a
character of great venerableness, a Judge and a real master of the
jurisprudence of his age.
The Doctor of Physic is in this group; and the Franklin, the
voluptuous country gentleman, contrasted with the Physician, and, on
his other hand, with two Citizens of London. Chaucer's characters
live age after age. Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass
on, each sustaining one of these characters; nor can a child be born
who is not one or other of these characters of Chaucer. The Doctor of
Physic is described as the first of his profession, perfect, learned,
completely Master and Doctor in his art. Thus the reader will observe
that Chaucer makes every one of his characters perfect in his kind;
every one is an Antique Statue, the image of a class and not of an
imperfect individual.
This group also would furnish substantial matter, on which volumes
might be written. The Franklin is one who keeps open table, who is the
genius of eating and drinking, the Bacchus; as the Doctor of Physic is
the Aesculapius, the Host is the Silenus, the Squire is the Apollo,
the Miller is the Hercules, &c. Chaucer's characters are a description
of the eternal Principles that exist in all ages. The Franklin is
voluptuousness itself, most nobly portrayed:
It snewed in his house of meat and drink.
The Ploughman is simplicity itself, with wisdom and strength for its
stamina. Chaucer has divided the ancient character of Hercules between
his Miller and his Ploughman. Benevolence is the Ploughman's great
characteristic; he is thin with excessive labour, and not with old age
as some have supposed:
He would thresh, and thereto dike and delve,
For Christe's sake, for every poore wight,
Withouten hire, if it lay in his might.
Visions of these eternal principles or characters of human life appear
to poets in all ages; the Grecian gods were the ancient Cherubim of
Phoenicia; but the Greeks, and since them the Moderns, have neglected
to subdue the gods of Priam. These gods are visions of the eternal
attributes, or divine names, which, when erected into gods, become
destructive to humanity. They ought to be the servants, and not the
masters of man or of society. They ought to be made to sacrifice to
man, and not man compelled to sacrifice to them; for, when separated
from man or humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the Vine of Eternity?
They are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers.
The Ploughman of Chaucer is Hercules in his supreme Eternal State,
divested of his Spectrous Shadow, which is the Miller, a terrible
fellow, such as exists in all times and places for the trial of men,
to astonish every neighbourhood with brutal strength and courage, to
get rich and powerful, to curb the pride of Man.
The Reeve and the Manciple are two characters of the most consummate
worldly wisdom. The Shipman, or Sailor, is a similar genius of
Ulyssean art, but with the highest courage superadded.
The Citizens and their Cook are each leaders of a class. Chaucer has
been somehow made to number four citizens, which would make his whole
company, himself included, thirty-one. But he says there was but
nine-and-twenty in his company:
Full nine and twenty in a company.
The Webbe, or Weaver, and the Tapiser, or Tapestry Weaver, appear to
me to be the same person; but this is only an opinion, for 'full nine
and twenty' may signify one more or less. But I daresay that Chaucer
wrote 'A Webbe Dyer', that is a Cloth Dyer:
A Webbe Dyer and a Tapiser.
The Merchant cannot be one of the Three Citizens, as his dress is
different, and his character is more marked, whereas Chaucer says of
his rich citizens:
All were yclothed in o liverie.
The characters of Women Chaucer has divided into two classes, the Lady
Prioress and the Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of
men? The Lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the Wife
of Bath, in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact;
because she is also a scourge and a blight. I shall say no more of
her, nor expose what Chaucer has left hidden; let the young reader
study what he has said of her: it is useful as a scarecrow. There are
of such characters born too many for the peace of the world.
I come at length to the Clerk of Oxenford. This character varies from
that of Chaucer, as the contemplative philosopher varies from the
poetical genius. There are always these two classes of learned sages,
the poetical and the philosophical. The Painter has put them side by
side, as if the youthful clerk had put himself under the tuition of
the mature poet. Let the Philosopher always be the servant and scholar
of Inspiration, and all will be happy.
CHARLES LAMB
1775-1834
ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE,
CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR FITNESS FOR STAGE REPRESENTATION
(1811)
Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the
affected attitude of a figure, which I do not remember to have seen
before, and which upon examination proved to be a whole-length of the
celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so far with some good
Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated
ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction
of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of
the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this
harlequin figure the following lines:
To paint fair Nature, by divine command,
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,
A Shakespeare rose: then, to expand his fame
Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came.
Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew,
The Actor's genius bade them breathe anew;
Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,
Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day:
And till Eternity with power sublime
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time,
Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine,
And earth irradiate with a beam divine.
It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to attempt
anything like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and
nonsense. But the reflection it led me into was a kind of wonder, how,
from the days of the actor here celebrated to our own, it should have
been the fashion to compliment every performer in his turn, that has
had the luck to please the town in any of the great characters of
Shakespeare, with the notion of possessing a _mind congenial with the
poet's_: how people should come thus unaccountably to confound the
power of originating poetical images and conceptions with the faculty
of being able to read or recite the same when put into words;[7] or
what connexion that absolute mastery over the heart and soul of man,
which a great dramatic poet possesses, has with those low tricks upon
the eye and ear, which a player by observing a few general effects,
which some common passion, as grief, anger, &c. usually has upon the
gestures and exterior, can so easily compass. To know the internal
workings and movements of a great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for
instance, the _when_ and the _why_ and the _how far_ they should be
moved; to what pitch a passion is becoming; to give the reins and to
pull in the curb exactly at the moment when the drawing in or the
slackening is most graceful; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a
vastly different extent from that which is employed upon the bare
imitation of the signs of these passions in the countenance or
gesture, which signs are usually observed to be most lively and
emphatic in the weaker sort of minds, and which signs can after all
but indicate some passion, as I said before, anger, or grief,
generally; but of the motives and grounds of the passion, wherein it
differs from the same passion in low and vulgar natures, of these the
actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the eye
(without a metaphor) can speak, or the muscles utter intelligible
sounds. But such is the instantaneous nature of the impressions which
we take in at the eye and ear at a playhouse, compared with the slow
apprehension oftentimes of the understanding in reading, that we are
apt not only to sink the play-writer in the consideration which we pay
to the actor, but even to identify in our minds in a perverse manner,
the actor with the character which he represents. It is difficult for
a frequent playgoer to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person
and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady Macbeth, while we are in reality
thinking of Mrs. S. Nor is this confusion incidental alone to
unlettered persons, who, not possessing the advantage of reading, are
necessarily dependent upon the stage-player for all the pleasure which
they can receive from the drama, and to whom the very idea of _what an
author is_ cannot be made comprehensible without some pain and
perplexity of mind: the error is one from which persons otherwise not
meanly lettered, find it almost impossible to extricate themselves.
[7] It is observable that we fall into this confusion only in
_dramatic_ recitations. We never dream that the gentleman who
reads Lucretius in public with great applause, is therefore a
great poet and philosopher; nor do we find that Tom Davies,
the bookseller, who is recorded to have recited the _Paradise
Lost_ better than any man in England in his day (though I
cannot help thinking there must be some mistake in this
tradition), was therefore, by his intimate friends, set upon
a level with Milton.
Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget the very high degree of
satisfaction which I received some years back from seeing for the
first time a tragedy of Shakespeare performed, in which these two
great performers sustained the principal parts. It seemed to embody
and realize conceptions which had hitherto assumed no distinct shape.
But dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile pleasure,
this sense of distinctness. When the novelty is past, we find to our
cost that instead of realizing an idea, we have only materialized and
brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. We have
let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable substance.
How cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its free conceptions
thus crampt and pressed down to the measure of a strait-lacing
actuality, may be judged from that delightful sensation of freshness
with which we turn to those plays of Shakespeare which have escaped
being performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of the same
writer which have happily been left out in performance. How far the
very custom of hearing anything _spouted_, withers and blows upon a
fine passage, may be seen in those speeches from _Henry the Fifth_,
&c. which are current in the mouths of school-boys from their being to
be found in _Enfield Speakers_, and such kind of books. I confess
myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in
_Hamlet_, beginning 'To be or not to be', or to tell whether it be
good, bad, or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by
declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place
and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a
perfect dead member.
It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the
plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage,
than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguished
excellence is a reason that they should be so. There is so much in
them, which comes not under the province of acting, with which eye,
and tone, and gesture, have nothing to do.
The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion, and the turns of
passion; and the more coarse and palpable the passion is, the more
hold upon the eyes and ears of the spectators the performer obviously
possesses. For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where two persons
talk themselves into a fit of fury, and then in a surprising manner
talk themselves out of it again, have always been the most popular
upon our stage. And the reason is plain, because the spectators are
here most palpably appealed to, they are the proper judges in this war
of words, they are the legitimate ring that should be formed round
such 'intellectual prize-fighters'. Talking is the direct object of
the imitation here. But in all the best dramas, and in Shakespeare
above all, how obvious it is, that the form of _speaking_, whether it
be in soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and often a highly
artificial one, for putting the reader or spectator into possession of
that knowledge of the inner structure and workings of mind in a
character, which he could otherwise never have arrived at _in that
form of composition_ by any gift short of intuition. We do here as we
do with novels written in the _epistolary form_. How many
improprieties, perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put up with
in _Clarissa_ and other books, for the sake of the delight which that
form upon the whole gives us.
But the practice of stage representation reduces everything to a
controversy of elocution. Every character, from the boisterous
blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of womanhood, must
play the orator. The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those
silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night; the more intimate and
sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus
with their married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful
in the reading, as when we read of those youthful dalliances in
Paradise
As beseem'd
Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league
Alone:
by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are these things
sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large
assembly; when such speeches as Imogen addresses to her lord, come
drawling out of the mouth of a hired actress, whose courtship, though
nominally addressed to the personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed
at the spectators, who are to judge of her endearments and her returns
of love.
The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the days of
Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had the greatest
ambition to distinguish themselves. The length of the part may be one
of their reasons. But for the character itself, we find it in a play,
and therefore we judge it a fit subject of dramatic representation.
The play itself abounds in maxims and reflections beyond any other,
and therefore we consider it as a proper vehicle for conveying moral
instruction. But Hamlet himself--what does he suffer meanwhile by
being dragged forth as a public schoolmaster, to give lectures to the
crowd! Why, nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does, are transactions
between himself and his moral sense, they are the effusions of his
solitary musings, which he retires to holes and corners and the most
sequestered parts of the palace to pour forth; or rather, they are the
silent meditations with which his bosom is bursting, reduced to _words_
for the sake of the reader, who must else remain ignorant of what is
passing there. These profound sorrows, these light-and-noise-abhorring
ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls and
chambers, how can they be represented by a gesticulating actor, who
comes and mouths them out before an audience, making four hundred
people his confidants at once? I say not that it is the fault of the
actor so to do; he must pronounce them _ore rotundo_, he must
accompany them with his eye, he must insinuate them into his auditory
by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. _He must be
thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that all
the while the spectators are judging of it._ And this is the way to
represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet.
It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast quantity of
thought and feeling to a great portion of the audience, who otherwise
would never earn it for themselves by reading, and the intellectual
acquisition gained this way may, for aught I know, be inestimable; but
I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet
is made another thing by being acted. I have heard much of the wonders
which Garrick performed in this part; but as I never saw him, I must
have leave to doubt whether the representation of such a character
came within the province of his art. Those who tell me of him, speak
of his eye, of the magic of his eye, and of his commanding voice:
physical properties, vastly desirable in an actor, and without which
he can never insinuate meaning into an auditory,--but what have they
to do with Hamlet? what have they to do with intellect? In fact, the
things aimed at in theatrical representation, are to arrest the
spectator's eye upon the form and the gesture, and so to gain a more
favourable hearing to what is spoken: it is not what the character is,
but how he looks; not what he says, but how he speaks it. I see no
reason to think that if the play of _Hamlet_ were written over again
by some such writer as Banks or Lillo, retaining the process of the
story, but totally omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine
features of Shakespeare, his stupendous intellect; and only taking
care to give us enough of passionate dialogue, which Banks or Lillo
were never at a loss to furnish; I see not how the effect could be
much different upon an audience, nor how the actor has it in his power
to represent Shakespeare to us differently from his representation of
Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still be a youthful accomplished prince,
and must be gracefully personated; he might be puzzled in his mind,
wavering in his conduct, seemingly-cruel to Ophelia, he might see a
ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly when he found it to be
his father; all this in the poorest and most homely language of the
servilest creeper after nature that ever consulted the palate of an
audience; without troubling Shakespeare for the matter: and I see not
but there would be room for all the power which an actor has, to
display itself. All the passions and changes of passion might remain:
for those are much less difficult to write or act than is thought, it
is a trick easy to be attained, it is but rising or falling a note or
two in the voice, a whisper with a significant foreboding look to
announce its approach, and so contagious the counterfeit appearance of
any emotion is, that let the words be what they will, the look and
tone shall carry it off and make it pass for deep skill in the
passions.
It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare's plays being _so
natural_; that everybody can understand him. They are natural indeed,
they are grounded deep in nature, so deep that the depth of them lies
out of the reach of most of us. You shall hear the same persons say
that George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is very natural,
that they are both very deep; and to them they are the same kind of
thing. At the one they sit and shed tears, because a good sort of
young man is tempted by a naughty woman to commit _a trifling
peccadillo_, the murder of an uncle or so, that is all, and so comes
to an untimely end, which is _so moving_; and at the other, because a
blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills his innocent white wife: and the
odds are that ninety-nine out of a hundred would willingly behold the
same catastrophe happen to both the heroes, and have thought the rope
more due to Othello than to Barnwell. For of the texture of Othello's
mind, the inward construction marvellously laid open with all its
strengths and weaknesses, its heroic confidences and its human
misgivings, its agonies of hate springing from the depths of love,
they see no more than the spectators at a cheaper rate, who pay their
pennies a-piece to look through the man's telescope in Leicester-fields,
see into the inward plot and topography of the moon. Some dim thing or
other they see, they see an actor personating a passion, of grief, or
anger, for instance, and they recognize it as a copy of the usual
external effects of such passions; for at least as being true to _that
symbol of the emotion which passes current at the theatre for it_, for
it is often no more than that: but of the grounds of the passion, its
correspondence to a great or heroic nature, which is the only worthy
object of tragedy,--that common auditors know any thing of this, or
can have any such notions dinned into them by the mere strength of an
actor's lungs,--that apprehensions foreign to them should be thus
infused into them by storm, I can neither believe, nor understand how
it can be possible.
We talk of Shakespeare's admirable observation of life, when we should
feel, that not from a petty inquisition into those cheap and every-day
characters which surrounded him, as they surround us, but from his own
mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of Ben Jonson's, the very 'sphere
of humanity', he fetched those images of virtue and of knowledge, of
which every one of us recognizing a part, think we comprehend in our
natures the whole; and oftentimes mistake the powers which he
positively creates in us, for nothing more than indigenous faculties
of our own minds which only waited the action of corresponding virtues
in him to return a full and clear echo of the same.
To return to Hamlet.--Among the distinguishing features of that
wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) is that
soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius
with harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews
with Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed
in the latter case with a profound artifice of love, to alienate
Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the
breaking off of that loving intercourse, which can no longer find a
place amidst business so serious as that which he has to do) are parts
of his character, which to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet,
the most patient consideration of his situation is no more than
necessary; they are what we _forgive afterwards_, and explain by the
whole of his character, but _at the time_ they are harsh and
unpleasant. Yet such is the actor's necessity of giving strong blows
to the audience, that I have never seen a player in this character,
who did not exaggerate and strain to the utmost these ambiguous
features,--these temporary deformities in the character. They make him
express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly degrades his
gentility, and which no explanation can render palatable; they make
him show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's father,--contempt
in its very grossest and most hateful form; but they get applause by
it: it is natural, people say; that is, the words are scornful, and
the actor expresses scorn, and that they can judge of: but why so much
scorn, and of that sort, they never think of asking.
So to Ophelia.--All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, rant and rave
at her as if she had committed some great crime, and the audience are
highly pleased, because the words of the part are satirical, and they
are enforced by the strongest expression of satirical indignation of
which the face and voice are capable. But then, whether Hamlet is
likely to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady whom he loved
so dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, that in all such deep
affections as had subsisted between Hamlet and Ophelia, there is a
stock of _supererogatory love_, (if I may venture to use the
expression) which in any great grief of heart, especially where that
which preys upon the mind cannot be communicated, confers a kind of
indulgence upon the grieved party to express itself, even to its
heart's dearest object, in the language of a temporary alienation; but
it is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, and so it always
makes itself to be felt by that object: it is not anger, but grief
assuming the appearance of anger,--love awkwardly counterfeiting hate,
as sweet countenances when they try to frown: but such sternness and
fierce disgust as Hamlet is made to show, is no counterfeit, but the
real face of absolute aversion,--of irreconcilable alienation. It may
be said he puts on the madman; but then he should only so far put on
this counterfeit lunacy as his own real distraction will give him
leave; that is, incompletely, imperfectly; not in that confirmed
practised way, like a master of his art, or, as Dame Quickly would
say, 'like one of those harlotry players.'
I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure which
Shakespeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not at all to
differ from that which the audience receive from those of other
writers; and, _they being in themselves essentially so different from
all others_, I must conclude that there is something in the nature of
acting which levels all distinctions. And in fact, who does not speak
indifferently of the _Gamester_ and of _Macbeth_ as fine stage
performances, and praise the Mrs. Beverley in the same way as the Lady
Macbeth of Mrs. S.? Belvidera, and Calista, and Isabella, and
Euphrasia, are they less liked than Imogen, or than Juliet, or than
Desdemona? Are they not spoken of and remembered in the same way? Is
not the female performer as great (as they call it) in one as in the
other? Did not Garrick shine, and was not he ambitious of shining in
every drawling tragedy that his wretched day produced,--the
productions of the Hills and the Murphys and the Browns,--and shall he
have that honour to dwell in our minds for ever as an inseparable
concomitant with Shakespeare? A kindred mind! O who can read that
affecting sonnet of Shakespeare which alludes to his profession as a
player:
Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public custom breeds--
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand--
Or that other confession:
Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to thy view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear--
Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness in our sweet
Shakespeare, and dream of any congeniality between him and one that,
by every tradition of him, appears to have been as mere a player as
ever existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest players'
vices,--envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after applause; one
who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even of the
women-performers that stood in his way; a manager full of managerial
tricks and stratagems and finesse: that any resemblance should be
dreamed of between him and Shakespeare,--Shakespeare who, in the
plenitude and consciousness of his own powers, could with that noble
modesty, which we can neither imitate nor appreciate, express himself
thus of his own sense of his own defects:
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest;
Desiring _this man's art, and that man's scope_.
I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer
of Shakespeare. A true lover of his excellences he certainly was not;
for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless
scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the rest of them,
that
With their darkness durst affront his light,
have foisted into the acting plays of Shakespeare? I believe it
impossible that he could have had a proper reverence for Shakespeare,
and have condescended to go through that interpolated scene in Richard
the Third, in which Richard tries to break his wife's heart by telling
her he loves another woman, and says, 'if she survives this she is
immortal.' Yet I doubt not he delivered this vulgar stuff with as much
anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine parts; and for acting, it is
as well calculated as any. But we have seen the part of Richard lately
produce great fame to an actor by his manner of playing it, and it
lets us into the secret of acting, and of popular judgements of
Shakespeare derived from acting. Not one of the spectators who have
witnessed Mr. C.'s exertions in that part, but has come away with a
proper conviction that Richard is a very wicked man, and kills little
children in their beds, with something like the pleasure which the
giants and ogres in children's books are represented to have taken in
that practice; moreover, that he is very close and shrewd and devilish
cunning, for you could see that by his eye.
But is in fact this the impression we have in reading the Richard of
Shakespeare? Do we feel anything like disgust, as we do at that
butcher-like representation of him that passes for him on the stage? A
horror at his crimes blends with the effect which we feel, but how is
it qualified, how is it carried off, by the rich intellect which he
displays, his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast
knowledge and insight into characters, the poetry of his part,--not an
atom of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s way of acting it.
Nothing but his crimes, his actions, is visible; they are prominent
and staring; the murderer stands out, but where is the lofty genius,
the man of vast capacity,--the profound, the witty, accomplished
Richard?
The truth is, the Characters of Shakespeare are so much the objects of
meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their actions,
that while we are reading any of his great criminal characters,--Macbeth,
Richard, even Iago,--we think not so much of the crimes which they
commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual
activity, which prompts them to overleap those moral fences. Barnwell
is a wretched murderer; there is a certain fitness between his neck
and the rope; he is the legitimate heir to the gallows; nobody who
thinks at all can think of any alleviating circumstances in his case
to make him a fit object of mercy. Or to take an instance from the
higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin is Glenalvon! Do we
think of anything but of the crime which he commits, and the rack
which he deserves? That is all which we really think about him.
Whereas in corresponding characters in Shakespeare so little do the
actions comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner
mind in all its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is
exclusively attended to, the crime is comparatively nothing. But when
we see these things represented, the acts which they do are
comparatively everything, their impulses nothing. The state of sublime
emotion into which we are elevated by those images of night and horror
which Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn prelude with which he
entertains the time till the bell shall strike which is to call him to
murder Duncan,--when we no longer read it in a book, when we have
given up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading possesses
over seeing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before our eyes
actually preparing to commit a murder, if the acting be true and
impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K.'s performance of that
part, the painful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to
prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing
semblance of reality, give a pain and an uneasiness which totally
destroy all the delight which the words in the book convey, where the
deed doing never presses upon us with the painful sense of presence:
it rather seems to belong to history,--to something past and
inevitable, if it has anything to do with time at all. The sublime
images, the poetry alone, is that which is present to our minds in the
reading.
So to see Lear acted--to see an old man tottering about the stage with
a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy
night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want
to take him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling
which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of
Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they
mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to
represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to
represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan
of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures.
The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in
intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano:
they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his
mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare.
This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on;
even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but
corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we
read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear,--we are in his mind, we are
sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and
storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty
irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes
of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth,
at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks,
or tones, to do with that sublime identification of his age with that
of the _heavens themselves_, when in his reproaches to them for
conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that 'they
themselves are old'. What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What
has the voice or the eye to do with such things? But the play is
beyond all art, as the tamperings with it show: it is too hard and
stony; it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough
that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too. Tate has
put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his
followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty beast about
more easily. A happy ending!--as if the living martyrdom that Lear had
gone through,--the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair
dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If
he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's
burden after, why all this pudder and preparation,--why torment us
with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of
getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over
again his misused station,--as if at his years, and with his
experience, anything was left but to die.
Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage. But how
many dramatic personages are there in Shakespeare, which though more
tractable and feasible (if I may so speak) than Lear, yet from some
circumstance, some adjunct to their character, are improper to be
shown to our bodily eye. Othello for instance. Nothing can be more
soothing, more flattering to the nobler parts of our natures, than to
read of a young Venetian lady of highest extraction, through the force
of love and from a sense of merit in him whom she loved, laying aside
every consideration of kindred, and country, and colour, and wedding
with _a coal-black Moor_--(for such he is represented, in the
imperfect state of knowledge respecting foreign countries in those
days, compared with our own, or in compliance with popular notions,
though the Moors are now well enough known to be by many shades less
unworthy of a white woman's fancy)--it is the perfect triumph of
virtue over accidents, of the imagination over the senses. She sees
Othello's colour in his mind. But upon the stage, when the imagination
is no longer the ruling faculty, but we are left to our poor
unassisted senses, I appeal to every one that has seen Othello played,
whether he did not, on the contrary, sink Othello's mind in his
colour; whether he did not find something extremely revolting in the
courtship and wedded caresses of Othello and Desdemona; and whether
the actual sight of the thing did not over-weigh all that beautiful
compromise which we make in reading;--and the reason it should do so
is obvious, because there is just so much reality presented to our
senses as to give a perception of disagreement, with not enough of
belief in the internal motives--all that which is unseen--to overpower
and reconcile the first and obvious prejudices.[8] What we see upon a
stage is body and bodily action; what we are conscious of in reading
is almost exclusively the mind, and its movements: and this I think
may sufficiently account for the very different sort of delight with
which the same play so often affects us in the reading and the seeing.
[8] The error of supposing that because Othello's colour does
not offend us in the reading, it should also not offend us in
the seeing, is just such a fallacy as supposing that an Adam
and Eve in a picture shall affect us just as they do in the
poem. But in the poem we for a while have Paradisaical senses
given us, which vanish when we see a man and his wife without
clothes in the picture. The painters themselves feel this, as
is apparent by the awkward shifts they have recourse to, to
make them look not quite naked; by a sort of prophetic
anachronism, antedating the invention of fig-leaves. So in
the reading of the play, we see with Desdemona's eyes; in the
seeing of it, we are forced to look with our own.
It requires little reflection to perceive, that if those characters in
Shakespeare which are within the precincts of nature, have yet
something in them which appeals too exclusively to the imagination, to
admit of their being made objects to the senses without suffering a
change and a diminution,--that still stronger the objection must lie
against representing another line of characters, which Shakespeare has
introduced to give a wildness and a supernatural elevation to his
scenes, as if to remove them still farther from that assimilation to
common life in which their excellence is vulgarly supposed to consist.
When we read the incantations of those terrible beings the Witches in
_Macbeth_, though some of the ingredients of their hellish composition
savour of the grotesque, yet is the effect upon us other than the most
serious and appalling that can be imagined? Do we not feel spell-bound
as Macbeth was? Can any mirth accompany a sense of their presence? We
might as well laugh under a consciousness of the principle of Evil
himself being truly and really present with us. But attempt to bring
these beings on to a stage, and you turn them instantly into so many
old women, that men and children are to laugh at. Contrary to the old
saying, that 'seeing is believing', the sight actually destroys the
faith; and the mirth in which we indulge at their expense, when we see
these creatures upon a stage, seems to be a sort of indemnification
which we make to ourselves for the terror which they put us in when
reading made them an object of belief,--when we surrendered up our
reason to the poet, as children, to their nurses and their elders; and
we laugh at our fears, as children who thought they saw something in
the dark, triumph when the bringing in of a candle discovers the
vanity of their fears. For this exposure of supernatural agents upon a
stage is truly bringing in a candle to expose their own delusiveness.
It is the solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in these
terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in good company, deceives no
spectators,--a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human
dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and
a well-dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous child against any
apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the impenetrable skin of Achilles
with his impenetrable armour over it, 'Bully Dawson would have fought
the devil with such advantages.'
Much has been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of the vile mixture
which Dryden has thrown into the _Tempest_: doubtless without some
such vicious alloy, the impure ears of that age would never have sate
out to hear so much innocence of love as is contained in the sweet
courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda. But is the _Tempest_ of
Shakespeare at all a subject for stage representation? It is one thing
to read of an enchanter, and to believe the wondrous tale while we are
reading it; but to have a conjurer brought before us in his
conjuring-gown, with his spirits about him, which none but himself and
some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to
see, involves such a quantity of the _hateful incredible_, that all
our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such
gross attempts upon the senses to be in the highest degree childish
and inefficient. Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they
cannot even be painted,--they can only be believed. But the elaborate
and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands,
in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. That
which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much to the life
of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher faculties,
positively destroys the illusion which it is introduced to aid. A
parlour or a drawing-room,--a library opening into a garden,--a garden
with an alcove in it,--a street, or the piazza of Covent Garden, does
well enough in a scene; we are content to give as much credit to it as
it demands; or rather, we think little about it,--it is little more
than reading at the top of a page, 'Scene, a Garden;' we do not
imagine ourselves there, but we readily admit the imitation of
familiar objects. But to think by the help of painted trees and
caverns, which we know to be painted, to transport our minds to
Prospero, and his island and his lonely cell;[9] or by the aid of a
fiddle dexterously thrown in, in an interval of speaking, to make us
believe that we hear those supernatural noises of which the isle was
full:--the Orrery Lecturer at the Haymarket might as well hope, by his
musical glasses cleverly stationed out of sight behind his apparatus,
to make us believe that we do indeed hear the chrystal spheres ring
out that chime, which if it were to inwrap our fancy long, Milton
thinks,
Time would run back and fetch the age of gold,
And speckled vanity
Would sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould;
Yea Hell itself would pass away,
And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day.
The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not more
impossible to be shown on a stage, than the Enchanted Isle, with its
no less interesting and innocent first settlers.
[9] It will be said these things are done in pictures. But
pictures and scenes are very different things. Painting is a
world of itself, but in scene-painting there is the attempt
to deceive; and there is the discordancy, never to be got
over, between painted scenes and real people.
The subject of Scenery is closely connected with that of the Dresses,
which are so anxiously attended to on our stage. I remember the last
time I saw Macbeth played, the discrepancy I felt at the changes of
garment which he varied--the shiftings and re-shiftings, like a Romish
priest at mass. The luxury of stage-improvements, and the importunity
of the public eye, require this. The coronation robe of the Scottish
monarch was fairly a counterpart to that which our king wears when he
goes to the Parliament-house,--just so full and cumbersome, and set
out with ermine and pearls. And if things must be represented, I see
not what to find fault with in this. But in reading, what robe are we
conscious of? Some dim images of royalty--a crown and sceptre, may
float before our eyes, but who shall describe the fashion of it? Do we
see in our mind's eye what Webb or any other robe-maker could pattern?
This is the inevitable consequence of imitating everything, to make
all things natural. Whereas the reading of a tragedy is a fine
abstraction. It presents to the fancy just so much of external
appea
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