together in a strange confusion.
If the metaphors were reduced to painting, we should find it a very
difficult task, if not altogether impracticable, to represent with any
propriety outrageous Fortune using her slings and arrows, between which
indeed there is no sort of analogy in nature. Neither can any figure be
more ridiculously absurd than that of a man taking arms against a sea,
exclusive of the incongruous medly of slings, arrows, and seas, justled
within the compass of one reflection. What follows is a strange rhapsody
of broken images, of sleeping, dreaming, and shifting off a _coil_, which
last conveys no idea that can be represented on canvass. A man may be
exhibited shuffling off his garments or his chains: but how he should
shuffle off a _coil_, which is another name for noise and tumult, we
cannot comprehend. Then we have “long-lived Calamity,” and “Time armed
with whips and scorns;” and patient “Merit spurned at by Unworthiness;”
and “Misery with a bare bodkin going to make his own _quietus_,” which
at best is but a mean metaphor. These are followed by figures “sweating
under fardles of burdens,” “puzzled with doubts,” “shaking with fears,”
and “flying from evils.” Finally, we see “resolution sicklied o’er with
pale thought,” a conception like that of representing health by sickness;
and a “current of pith turned away, so as to lose the name of action,”
which is both an error in fancy and a solecism in sense. In a word, this
soliloquy may be compared to the _ægri somnia_, and the _tabula, cujus
vanæ fingentur species_.
But while we censure the chaos of broken, incongruous metaphors, we
ought also to caution the young poet against the opposite extreme of
pursuing a metaphor until the spirit is quite exhausted in a succession
of cold conceits; such as we see in the following letter, said to be
sent by Tamerlane to the Turkish emperor Bajazet. “Where is the monarch
that dares oppose our arms? Where is the potentate who does not glory in
being numbered among our vassals? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman
mariner, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wrecked
in the gulph of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldest
furl the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the
port of sincerity and justice, which is the harbour of safety; lest the
tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of that punishment
thou hast deserved.”
But if these laboured conceits are ridiculous in poetry, they are still
more inexcusable in prose: such as we find them frequently occur in
Strada’s Bellum Belgicum. “Vix descenderat a prætoriâ navi Cæsar, cum
fœda ilico exorta in portu tempestas, classem impetu disjecit, prætoriam
hausit; quasi non vecturam amplius Cæsarem Cæsarisque fortunam.” “Cæsar
had scarcely set his feet on shore, when a terrible tempest arising,
shattered the fleet even in the harbour, and sent to the bottom the
prætorian ship, as if he resolved it should no longer carry Cæsar and his
fortunes.”
Yet this is modest in comparison of the following flowers: “Alii, pulsis
è tormento catenis discerpti sectique, dimidiato corpore pugnabant sibi
superstites, ac peremptæ partis ultores.” “Others, dissevered and cut in
twain by chain-shot, fought with one half of their bodies that remained,
in revenge for the other half that was slain.”
Homer, Horace, and even the chaste Virgil, is not free from conceits. The
latter, speaking of a man’s hand cut off in battle, says,
Te decisa suum, Laride, dextera quærit:
Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant:
thus enduing the amputated hand with sense and volition. This, to be
sure, is a violent figure, and hath been justly condemned by some
accurate critics; but we think they are too severe in extending the same
censure to some other passages in the most admired authors.
Virgil in his Sixth Eclogue says,
Omnia quæ, Phœbo quondam meditante, beatus
Audiit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,
Ille canit.
Whate’er when Phœbus bless’d the Arcadian plain
Eurotas heard and taught his bays the strain,
The senior sung——
And Pope has copied the conceit in his Pastorals,
Thames heard the numbers as he flow’d along,
And bade his willows learn the mourning song.
Vida thus begins his First Eclogue:
Dicite, vos, Musæ, et juvenum memorate querelas;
Dicite: nam moras ipsas ad carmina cautes,
Et requiêsse suos perhibent vaga flumina cursus.
Say, heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse;
Begin, ye daughters of immortal verse;
Exulting rocks have own’d the power of song,
And rivers listen’d as they flow’d along.
Racine adopts the same bold figure in his Phædra:
Le flot qui l’apporta recule épouvanté:
The wave that bore him, backwards shrunk appall’d.
Even Milton has indulged himself in the same licence of expression—
——As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabæan odour from the spicy shore
Of Araby the bless’d; with such delay
Well pleased, they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer’d with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
Shakspeare says,
——I’ve seen
The ambitious ocean swell, and rage, and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds.
And indeed more correct writers, both ancient and modern, abound with the
same kind of figure, which is reconciled to propriety, and even invested
with beauty, by the efficacy of the prosopopœia, which personifies
the object. Thus, when Virgil says Enipeus heard the songs of Apollo,
he raises up, as by enchantment, the idea of a river god crowned with
sedges, his head raised above the stream, and in his countenance the
expression of pleased attention. By the same magic we see, in the couplet
quoted from Pope’s Pastorals, old father Thames leaning upon his urn, and
listening to the poet’s strain.
Thus in the regions of poetry, all nature, even the passions and
affections of the mind, may be personified into picturesque figures for
the entertainment of the reader. Ocean smiles or frowns, as the sea is
calm or tempestuous; a triton rules on every angry billow; every mountain
has its nymph; every stream its naiad; every tree its hamadryad; and
every art its genius. We cannot therefore assent to those who censure
Thomson as licentious for using the following figure:
O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills!
On which the Power of Cultivation lies,
And joys to see the wonders of his toil.
We cannot conceive a more beautiful image than that of the Genius of
Agriculture distinguished by the implements of his art, imbrowned with
labour, glowing with health, crowned with a garland of foliage, flowers,
and fruit, lying stretched at his ease on the brow of a gentle swelling
hill, and contemplating with pleasure the happy effects of his own
industry.
Neither can we join issue against Shakspeare for this comparison, which
hath likewise incurred the censure of the critics:
——The noble sister of Poplicola,
The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,
That’s curdled by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian’s temple——
This is no more than illustrating a quality of the mind, by comparing it
with a sensible object. If there is no impropriety in saying such a man
is true as steel, firm as a rock, inflexible as an oak, unsteady as the
ocean, or in describing a disposition cold as ice, or fickle as the wind;
and these expressions are justified by constant practice; we shall hazard
an assertion, that the comparison of a chaste woman to an icicle is
proper and picturesque, as it obtains only in the circumstances of cold
and purity; but that the addition of its being curdled from the purest
snow, and hanging on the temple of Diana, the patroness of virginity,
heightens the whole into a most beautiful simile, that gives a very
respectable and amiable idea of the character in question.
The simile is no more than an extended metaphor, introduced to illustrate
and beautify the subject: it ought to be apt, striking, properly pursued,
and adorned with all the graces of poetical melody. But a simile of this
kind ought never to proceed from the mouth of a person under any great
agitation of spirit; such as a tragic character overwhelmed with grief,
distracted by contending cares, or agonising in the pangs of death. The
language of passion will not admit simile, which is always the result of
study and deliberation. We will not allow a hero the privilege of a dying
swan, which is said to chant its approaching fate in the most melodious
strain; and therefore nothing can be more ridiculously unnatural than the
representation of a lover dying upon the stage with a laboured simile in
his mouth.
The orientals, whose language was extremely figurative, have been very
careless in the choice of their similes: provided the resemblance
obtained in one circumstance, they minded not whether they disagreed with
the subject in every other respect. Many instances of this defect in
congruity may be culled from the most sublime parts of Scripture.
Homer has been blamed for the bad choice of his similes on some
particular occasions. He compares Ajax to an ass in the Iliad, and
Ulysses to a steak broiling on the coals in the Odyssey. His admirers
have endeavoured to excuse him, by reminding us of the simplicity of the
age in which he wrote; but they have not been able to prove that any
ideas of dignity or importance were, even in those days, affixed to the
character of an ass, or the quality of a beef-collop; therefore they were
very improper illustrations for any situation, in which a hero ought to
be represented.
Virgil has degraded the wife of king Latinus, by comparing her, when she
was actuated by the Fury, to a top which the boys lash for diversion.
This doubtless is a low image, though in other respects the comparison is
not destitute of propriety; but he is much more justly censured for the
following simile, which has no sort of reference to the subject. Speaking
of Turnus, he says,
——medio dux agmine Turnus
Vertitur arma tenens, et toto vertice supra est.
Ceu septem surgens sedatis amnibus altus
Per tacitum Ganges; aut pingui flumine Nilus
Cum refluit campis, et jam se condidit alveo.
But Turnus, chief amidst the warrior train,
In armour towers the tallest on the plain.
The Ganges, thus by seven rich streams supplied,
A mighty mass devolves in silent pride.
Thus Nilus pours from his prolific urn,
When from the fields o’erflow’d his vagrant streams return.
These, no doubt, are majestic images; but they bear no sort of
resemblance to a hero glittering in armour at the head of his forces.
Horace has been ridiculed by some shrewd critics for this comparison,
which, however, we think is more defensible than the former. Addressing
himself to Munatius Plancus, he says,
Albus ut obscuro detergit nubila cœlo
Sæpe Notus, neque parturit imbres
Perpetuos: sic tu sapiens finire memento
Tristitiam, vitæque labores
Molli, Plance, mero.
As Notus often, when the welkin lowers,
Sweeps off the clouds, nor teems perpetual showers,
So let thy wisdom, free from anxious strife,
In mellow wine dissolve the cares of life.
_Dunkin._
The analogy, it must be confessed, is not very striking; but nevertheless
it is not altogether void of propriety. The poet reasons thus: as the
south wind, though generally attended with rain, is often known to dispel
the clouds, and render the weather serene; so do you, though generally on
the rack of thought, remember to relax sometimes, and drown your cares in
wine. As the south wind is not always moist, so you ought not always to
be dry.
A few instances of inaccuracy, or mediocrity, can never derogate from
the superlative merit of Homer and Virgil, whose poems are the great
magazines replete with every species of beauty and magnificence,
particularly abounding with similes which astonish, delight, and
transport the reader.
Every simile ought not only to be well adapted to the subject, but also
to include every excellence of description, and to be coloured with the
warmest tints of poetry. Nothing can be more happily hit off than the
following in the Georgics, to which the poet compares Orpheus lamenting
his lost Eurydice.
Qualis populeâ mœrens Philomela sub umbrâ
Amissos queritur fœtus, quos durus arator
Observans nido implumes detraxit; at illa
Flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
Integrat, et mœstis late loca questibus implet.
So Philomela from the umbrageous wood
In strains melodious mourns her tender brood,
Snatch’d from the nest by some rude ploughman’s hand,
On some lone bough the warbler takes her stand;
The live-long night she mourns the cruel wrong;
And hill and dale resound the plaintive song.
Here we not only find the most scrupulous propriety, and the happiest
choice, in comparing the Thracian bard to Philomel the poet of the grove;
but also the most beautiful description, containing a fine touch of the
pathos, in which last particular indeed Virgil, in our opinion, excels
all other poets, whether ancient or modern.
One would imagine that nature had exhausted itself in order to embellish
the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Milton with similes and metaphors. The
first of these very often uses the comparison of the wind, the whirlwind,
the hail, the torrent, to express the rapidity of his combatants: but
when he comes to describe the velocity of the immortal horses that drew
the chariot of Juno, he raises his ideas to the subject, and, as Longinus
observes, measures every leap by the whole breadth of the horizon.
Οσσον δ’ ηεροειδες ανηρ ιδεν οφθαλμοισιν
Ημενος εν σκοπιῃ, λευσσων επι οινοπα ποντον,
Τοσσον επιθρωσκουσι θεων ὑψηχεες ἱπποι.
Far as a watchman from some rock on high
O’er the wide main extends his boundless eye;
Through such a space of air, with thundering sound,
At every leap the immortal coursers bound.
The celerity of this goddess seems to be a favourite idea with the
poet; for in another place he compares it to the thought of a traveller
revolving in his mind the different places he had seen, and passing
through them in imagination more swift than the lightning flies from east
to west.
Homer’s best similes have been copied by Virgil, and almost every
succeeding poet, howsoever they may have varied in the manner of
expression. In the third book of the Iliad, Menelaus seeing Paris, is
compared to a hungry lion espying a hind or goat:
Ωστε λεων εχαρη μεγαλῳ επι σωματι κυρσας,
Εὑρων η ελαφον κεραον, η αγριον αιγα, &c.
So joys the lion, if a branching deer
Or mountain goat his bulky prize appear.
In vain the youths oppose, the mastiffs bay;
The lordly savage rends the panting prey.
Thus fond of vengeance, with a furious bound,
In clanging arms he leaps upon the ground.
The Mantuan bard, in the tenth book of the Æneid, applies the same simile
to Mezentius, when he beholds Acron in the battle.
Impastus stabula alta leo ceu sæpe peragrans
(Suadet enim vesana fames) si forte fugacem
Conspexit capream, aut surgentem in cornua cervum;
Gaudet hians immane, comasque arrexit, et hæret
Visceribus super accumbens: lavit improba teter
Ora cruor.—
Then as a hungry lion, who beholds
A gamesome goat who frisks about the folds,
Or beamy stag that grazes on the plain;
He runs, he roars, he shakes his rising mane;
He grins and opens wide his greedy jaws,
The prey lies panting underneath his paws:
He fills his famish’d maw, his mouth runs o’er
With unchew’d morsels, while he churns the gore.
_Dryden._
The reader will perceive that Virgil has improved the simile in one
particular, and in another fallen short of his original. The description
of the lion shaking his mane, opening his hideous jaws distained with
the blood of his prey, is great and picturesque: but, on the other
hand, he has omitted the circumstance of devouring it without being
intimidated, or restrained by the dogs and youths that surround him; a
circumstance that adds greatly to our idea of his strength, intrepidity,
and importance.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Ανθρωποι, φησι, μιαροι, και αλαστορες, και κολακες, ηκρωτηριασμενοι
τας ἑαυτων ἑκαστοι πατριδας, την ελευθεριαν προπεπωκοτες, προτερον
Φιλιππῳ, νυν δ’ Αλεξανδρῳ, τῃ γαστρι μετρουντες και τοις αισχιστοις την
ευδαιμονιαν, την δ’ ελευθεριαν, και το μηδενα εχειν δεσποτην αυτων, ἁ
τοις προτεροις Ἑλλησιν οροι των αγαθων ησαν και κανονες, &c. &c.
XVII.
ON HYPERBOLE.
Of all the figures in poetry, that called the hyperbole is managed with
the greatest difficulty. The hyperbole is an exaggeration with which the
muse is indulged, for the better illustration of her subject when she is
warmed into enthusiasm. Quintilian calls it an ornament of the bolder
kind. Demetrius Phalereus is still more severe. He says, the hyperbole is
of all forms of speech the most frigid. Μαλιστα δε ἡ Ὑπερβολη ψυχροτατον
παντων: but this must be understood with some grains of allowance. Poetry
is animated by the passions; and all the passions exaggerate. Passion
itself is a magnifying medium. There are beautiful instances of hyperbole
in the Scripture, which a reader of sensibility cannot read without being
strongly affected. The difficulty lies in choosing such hyperboles as the
subject will admit of; for, according to the definition of Theophrastus,
the frigid in style is that which exceeds the expression suitable to the
subject. The judgment does not revolt against Homer for representing the
horses of Ericthonius running over the standing corn without breaking off
the heads, because the whole is considered as a fable, and the north wind
is represented as their sire; but the imagination is a little startled,
when Virgil, in imitation of this hyperbole, exhibits Camilla as flying
over it without even touching the tops.
Illa vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret
Gramina:——
This elegant author, we are afraid, has upon some other occasions
degenerated into the frigid, in straining to improve upon his great
master.
Homer in the Odyssey, a work which Longinus does not scruple to charge
with bearing the marks of old age, describes a storm in which all the
four winds were concerned together.
Συν δ’ Ευρος τε Νοτος τ’ επεσε, Ζεφυρος τε δυσαης,
Και Βορεης αιθρηγενετης μεγα λυμα κυλινδων.
We know that such a contention of contrary blasts could not possibly
exist in nature; for even in hurricanes the winds blow alternately
from different points of the compass. Nevertheless, Virgil adopts the
description, and adds to its extravagance.
Incubuêre mari, totumque à sedibus imis
Una Eurusque Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis
Africus.
Here the winds not only blow together, but they turn the whole body of
the ocean topsy turvy.—
East, west, and south, engage with furious sweep,
And from its lowest bed upturn the foaming deep.
The north wind, however, is still more mischievous.——
——Stridens Aquilone procella
Velum adversa ferit, fluctusque ad sidera tollit.
The sail then Boreas rends with hideous cry,
And whirls the maddening billows to the sky.
The motion of the sea between Scylla and Charybdis is still more
magnified; and Ætna is exhibited as throwing out volumes of flames, which
brush the stars.[12] Such expressions as these are not intended as a real
representation of the thing specified; they are designed to strike the
reader’s imagination; but they generally serve as marks of the author’s
sinking under his own ideas, who, apprehensive of injuring the greatness
of his own conception, is hurried into excess and extravagance.
Quintilian allows the use of hyperbole, when words are wanting to express
any thing in its just strength or due energy: then, he says, it is better
to exceed in expression, than fall short of the conception: but he
likewise observes, that there is no figure or form of speech so apt to
run into fustian. Nec alia magis via in κακοζηλιαν itur.
If the chaste Virgil has thus trespassed upon poetical probability,
what can we expect from Lucan but hyperboles even more ridiculously
extravagant? He represents the winds in contest, the sea in suspense,
doubting to which it shall give way. He affirms that its motion would
have been so violent as to produce a second deluge, had not Jupiter kept
it under by the clouds; and as to the ship,
Nubila tanguntur velis, et terra carina.
during this dreadful uproar, _the sails touch the clouds, while the keel
strikes the ground_.
This image of dashing water at the stars, sir Richard Blackmore has
produced in colours truly ridiculous. Describing spouting whales in his
Prince Arthur, he makes the following comparison:
Like some prodigious water-engine made
To play on heaven, if fire should heaven invade.
The great fault in all these instances is a deviation from propriety,
owing to the erroneous judgment of the writer, who, endeavouring
to captivate the admiration with novelty, very often shocks the
understanding with extravagance. Of this nature is the whole description
of the Cyclops, both in the Odyssey of Homer and in the Æneid of Virgil.
It must be owned however that the Latin poet with all his merit is more
apt than his great original to dazzle us with false fire, and practise
upon the imagination with gay conceits, that will not bear the critic’s
examination. There is not in any of Homer’s works now subsisting
such an example of the false sublime, as Virgil’s description of the
thunder-bolts forging under the hammers of the Cyclops.
Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, rutili tres ignis et alitis Austri.
Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more,
Of winged southern winds, and cloudy store,
As many parts, the dreadful mixture frame.
_Dryden._
This is altogether a fantastic piece of affectation, of which we can form
no sensible image, and serves to chill the fancy, rather than warm the
admiration, of a judging reader.
Extravagant hyperbole is a weed that grows in great plenty through the
works of our admired Shakspeare. In the following description, which
hath been much celebrated, one sees he has had an eye to Virgil’s
thunder-bolts.
O, then I see queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fancy’s midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies,
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon spokes made of long spinners’ legs.
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider’s web;
The collars, of the _moonshine’s watery beams_, &c.
Even in describing fantastic beings, there is a propriety to be observed;
but surely nothing can be more revolting to common sense, than this
numbering of the _moon beams_ among the other implements of queen Mab’s
harness, which, though extremely slender and diminutive, are nevertheless
objects of the touch, and may be conceived capable of use.
The ode and satire admit of the boldest hyperboles: such exaggerations
suit the impetuous warmth of the one; and in the other have a good effect
in exposing folly, and exciting horror against vice. They may be likewise
successfully used in Comedy, for moving and managing the powers of
ridicule.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Speaking of the first he says,
Tollimur in cœlum curvato gurgite, et idem
Subductâ ad manes imos descendimus undâ.
Of the other,
Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit.
XVIII.
ON VERSIFICATION.
Verse is an harmonious arrangement of long and short syllables, adapted
to different kinds of poetry, and owes its origin entirely to the
measured cadence, or music, which was used when the first songs or
hymns were recited. This music, divided into different parts, required
a regular return of the same measure, and thus every _strophe_,
_antistrophe_, and _stanza_, contained the same number of feet. To
know what constituted the different kinds of rhythmical feet among the
ancients, with respect to the number and quantity of their syllables,
we have nothing to do but to consult those who have written on grammar
and prosody: it is the business of a schoolmaster rather than the
accomplishment of a man of taste.