learning to produce a treatise on any aspect of poetry, which would not
be full of interest and instruction, and the present volume is a
contribution, and in some respects a memorable contribution, to a
particularly attractive subject of critical inquiry. Its purpose is to
trace the history of descriptive poetry in its relation, that is to say,
to natural objects and more particularly to landscape, by illustrating
its characteristics at different periods, and among different nations.
Beginning with the Homeric poems, Mr. Palgrave reviews successively the
“landscape” of the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, the mediæval
Italians, the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, and of our own poets, from the
predecessors of Chaucer to Lord Tennyson. That a work, covering an area
so immense, should be far less satisfactory in some portions than in
others is no more than what might be expected, and Mr. Palgrave would
probably be himself the first to admit that, except when he is dealing
with the classical poetry of Hellas, of ancient and mediæval Italy, and
of our own country, his treatise has no pretension to adequacy. Even
within these bounds there is much which is irrelevant, and much which is
surprisingly defective. Where, as in a subject like this, the material
at the author’s disposal is necessarily so superabundant, surely the
utmost care should have been taken both to keep within the limits of the
theme proposed, and to select the most pertinent and typical
illustrations. But when Mr. Palgrave illustrates “Homeric landscape” by
the simile describing the heifers frisking about the drove of cows in
the fold-yard, and the “Sophoclean landscape” by the simile of the
blast-impelled wave rolling up the shingle, he lays himself open to the
imputation of drawing at random on his commonplace book. Indeed, the
pleasure with which lovers of classical poetry will read this book
cannot fail to be mingled with the liveliest surprise and
disappointment. Take the Homeric poems. If a reader, tolerably well
versed in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, were asked for illustrations of the
power with which natural phenomena are described, to what would he turn?
Certainly not to Mr. Palgrave’s meagre and trivial examples, three of
which alone have any title to pertinence. He would turn to the winter
landscape in _Iliad_, xii. 278-286, to the lifting of the cloud from
the landscape in _Iliad_, xvi. 296:--
ὡς δ’ ὁτ’ αφ’ ὑψηλης κορυφης ορεος μεγαλοιο
κινηση πυκινην νεφελην στεροπηγερετα Ζευς,
εκ τ’ εφανεν πασαι σκοπιαι και πρωονες ακροι
και ναπαι, ουρανοθεν δ’ αρ’ ὑπερῥαγη ασπετος αιθηρ.
“As when Zeus, the gatherer of the lightning, moves a thick
cloud from the high head of some mighty mountain, and all the
cliffs and the jutting crags and the dells start into light,
and the immeasurable heaven breaks open to its highest”;
to the descent of the wind on the sea, _Ib._ xi. 305-308:--
ὡς ὁποτε Ζεφυρος νεφεα στυφελιξη
αργεσταο Νοτοιο, βαθειη λαιλαπι τυπτων;
πολλον δε τροφι κυμα κυλινδεται, ὑψοσε δ’ αχνη
σκιδναται εξ ανεμοιο πολυπλαγκτοιο ιωης.
“As when the west wind buffets the cloudlets of the brightening
south wind, lashing them with furious squall, and the big wave
swells up and rolls along, and the spray is scattered on high
by the blast of the careering gale”;
or to the pictures of the billow-buffeted headland, and the wave
bursting on the ship in _Iliad_, xv. 618-628; or to the storm-cloud
coming over the sea in _Iliad_, iv. 277; or to the descent of the wind
on the standing corn, _Iliad_, ii. 147. He would point, above all, to
the description of Calypso’s grotto, in _Odyssey_, v. 63-74; to that of
the harbour of Phorcys, in _Odyssey_, xiii. 97-112; to the fountain in
the grove, xvii. 205-211. Mr. Palgrave comments justly on Homer’s minute
observation of nature; but he only gives one illustration, where it is
noticed in _Odyssey_, vi. 94, that the sea, in beating on the coast,
“washed the pebbles clean.” He might have added with propriety many
others: as the “earth blackening behind the plough,” in _Iliad_, xviii.
548; the bats in the cave, _Odyssey_, xxiv. 5-8; the birds escaping from
the vultures, _Iliad_, xxii. 304, 305; the wasps “wriggling as far as
the middle,” σφηκες μεσον αιολοι, _Iliad_, xii. 167; the dogs
and the lions, _Iliad_, xviii. 585, 586.
Mr. Palgrave observes that Homer “was not only familiar with the sea,
but loved it with a love somewhat unusual in poets.” We venture to
submit that there is not a line in Homer indicating that he “loved” the
sea, except for poetical purposes; like most of the Greeks he probably
dreaded it; his real feeling towards it is no doubt indicated in his own
words:--
ου γαρ εγω γε τι φημι κακωτερον αλλο θαλασσης ανδρα
γε συγχευαι.
--nothing crushes a man’s spirit more than the sea. Mr. Palgrave justly
points out that Hesiod’s rude prosaic style and matter are not congenial
to the poetic landscape, yet it is only fair to Hesiod to say, that his
poetry is not without vivid touches of natural description, as the
winter scene in _Works and Days_, 504 sqq., and his description of the
beginning of spring, 565-569, show. Professor Palgrave next glances at
the treatment of nature in the lyric poets, and very properly cites the
lovely fragment of Alcman:
βαλε δη βαλε κηρυλος ειην
ὁς τ’ επι κυματος ανθος ἁμ’ αλκυονεσσι ποτηται,
νηλεγες ητορ εχων, ἁλιπορφυρος ειαρος ορνις,--
but in translating it makes a truly extraordinary blunder.
“Would I were the kingfisher, as he flies, with his mates _in
his feeble age_, between wind and water.”
νηλεγες ητορ meaning, as we need hardly say, “reckless heart”;
it is exactly Byron’s, “With all her _reckless_ birds upon the wing.” In
the quotations from Sappho, Ibycus, and Pindar, Mr. Palgrave has been
judicious and happy, but surely he ought to have found place for the
lovely flower cradle of Iamus in the sixth Olympic Ode, and for the
moonlight evening in the third Olympian,--only seven words, but what a
picture!--while, in the popular poetry, the omission of the Swallow Song
is inexplicable.[32] Nor can we forgive him the omission of the
magnificent simile of the spring wind clearing away the clouds, in the
thirteenth of the fragments attributed to Solon.
But it is in dealing with the Greek dramatists that Mr. Palgrave is most
defective in illustration. It is not to the opening of the _Prometheus_,
or to the conclusion, or, indeed, to any of the passages from this poet
which Mr. Palgrave cites, that we must turn for Æschylean landscape, or
for illustration of this poet’s power of natural description. It is to
his brief picture--his pictures of scenery, though singularly vivid, are
always brief--of the airy seat “against which the watery clouds drift
into snow,”
λισσας αιγιλιψ απροσδεικτος οιοφρων κρεμας
γυπιας πετρα (_Supplices_, 772-3),
where almost every word is a perfect picture, literally beggaring mere
translation; it is to his description, so magical in its rhythm, of the
mid-day sea slumbering in summer calm (_Agamemnon_, 548-50),
η θαλπος, ευτε ποντος εν μεσημβριναις
κοιταις ακυμων νηνεμοις ευδοι πεσων,
to his picture of the keen brisk wind, clearing the clouds away, to
bring into relief against the sky the dark masses of waves tossing on
the horizon (_Agamemnon_, 1152-54), to his world-famous
ποντιων κυματων
ανηριθμον γελασμα.
“The multitudinous laughter of the ocean waves.”
--_Prometheus_, 89-90.
Mr. Palgrave has, of course, cited with reference to Sophocles the great
chorus in the _Œdipus Coloneus_, but he has omitted to notice that,
if Sophocles has not elsewhere given us so elaborate a piece of natural
description, innumerable touches in the dramas, and more particularly
in the fragments, show that he observed nature almost as minutely as
Shakespeare. Nothing could be more vivid than the touches of description
in the _Philoctetes_. From Euripides Mr. Palgrave cites nothing,
observing that he rarely goes beyond somewhat conventional phrases.
Surely Mr. Palgrave must have forgotten the magnificent description of
Parnassus, as seen from the plain, in the _Phœnissæ_, the glorious
description of a moonlight night, as represented on the tapestry, in the
_Ion_, the vivid touches of natural description in the _Bacchæ_, that of
the meadow in the _Hippolytus_, and the chorus about Athens in the
_Medea_, to say nothing of the charming rural picture in the fragments
of the _Phaeton_.[33] To say of Aristophanes that, in his treatment of
nature, he rarely goes beyond somewhat common phrases, is to say what is
refuted, not merely in the chorus referred to by Mr. Palgrave, but in
the _Frogs_ and in the _Birds_. He stands next to Homer in his keen
sensibility to the charm of nature. Shelley himself might have written
the choruses referred to. In dealing with the Alexandrian poets Mr.
Palgrave passes over Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus entirely, and
yet the fine picture of Delos given by Callimachus in the Hymn to Delos
is one of the gems of ancient description, and Apollonius Rhodius
abounds with the most graphic and charming delineations of scenery and
natural objects. What a beautiful description of early morning is
this!--
ημος δ’ ουρανοθεν χαροπη ὑπολαμπεται ηως
εκ περατης ανιουσα, διαγλαυσσουσι δ’ αταρποι,
και πεδια δροσοεντα φαεινη λαμπεται αιγλη.
_Argon._ i. 1280-1283.
“What time from heaven the bright glad morn coming up from the
East begins to shine, and path and road are all agleam, and the
dew-bespangled plains are flashing with the radiant light.”
How vivid too, and with the vividness of modern poetry, are his
descriptions of the cave of Hades and its neighbourhood (ii. 729-750),
and the Great Syrtis (iv. 1230-1245)! In his selections from the Greek
Anthology Mr. Palgrave is much happier; but here again he has many
omissions, and among them the most remarkable illustration of Greek
nature-painting to be found in that collection--namely, Meleager’s idyll
giving an elaborate description of a spring day, which might have been
written by Thomson (_Pal. Anthology_, ix. 363). It may be observed in
passing that ουρεσιφοιτα κρινα (_Pal. Anth._, v. 144) can
hardly mean “lilies that wander over the hills,” but lilies “that haunt
the hills,” and that ξουθαι μελισσαι in Theocritus, vii. 142,
probably means “buzzing” bees, not “tawny.”
In dealing with the Roman poets Mr. Palgrave is, with one exception,
most unsatisfactory. From the poets preceding Lucretius, amply as the
fragments would serve his purpose, he gives only one illustration. We
should have expected the vivid picture given by Accius in his
_Œnomaus_ of the early morning:
“Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem,
Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient,
Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas
Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent.”
“Perchance before the dawn that heralds the burning rays, what
time rustics bring forth the oxen from their sleep into the
cornfields, to break up the red dew-spangled soil with the
ploughshare, and turn up the clods from the soft soil”;
or the wonderfully graphic description of a sudden storm at sea, in the
fragments of the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius:
“Profectione læti piscium lasciviam
Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.
Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare,
Tenebræ conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occæcat nigror,
Flamma inter nubes coruscat, cælum tonitru contremit,
Grando mixta imbri largifico subita præcipitans cadit,
Undique omnes venti erumpunt, sævi existunt turbines,
Fervit æstu pelagus.”
“Glad at heart when they set out they gaze at the sporting
fish, and are never weary of looking at them. Meanwhile, hard
upon sunset, the sea ruffles, darkness gathers thick, the
blackness of the storm-clouded night hides everything, flame
flashes between the clouds, heaven shakes with thunder, hail,
mingled with streaming rain, dashes suddenly down, from every
quarter all the winds tear forth, wild whirlwinds rise, the sea
boils with the seething waters.”
With Lucretius, indeed, he deals fully, and this portion of his work
leaves little to be desired. But a reference to the lines to Sirmio and
one illustration from the _Peleus and Thetis_ exhaust his examples from
Catullus. We should have expected the picture of the stream leaping from
the mossy rock into the valley beneath, in the Epistle to Manlius, of
the morning chasing away the shadows in the _Attis_, and the lovely
flower pictures in the Epithalamia. In dealing with Virgil most of Mr.
Palgrave’s citations are practically irrelevant; scarcely any of the
passages which best illustrate Virgil’s power of landscape painting
being even referred to. “The _Æneid_,” says Mr. Palgrave, “may be
briefly dismissed. Natural description can have but little place in an
epic.” And yet what are the passages to which any one, who wishes to
illustrate the charm and power of Virgil’s pictures of scenery, would
naturally turn? Surely to these: the description of the rocky recess
which sheltered Æneas’s ships (_Æneid_, i. 159-168), a picture worthy of
Salvator; the picture of Ætna (iii. 570-582), which rivals the picture
of it given by Pindar, a picture praised so justly by Mr. Palgrave
himself; the description of a calm night (iv. 522-527); the
wave-buffeted, gull-haunted rock (v. 124-128); and, above all, the
scenery at the mouth of the Tiber, bathed in the rays of the morning
sun, a picture unexcelled even by Tennyson. Nor even in the _Georgics_
is any reference made to the superb description of a storm in harvest
time (i. 216-334), or to the magnificent winter piece (iii. 349-370).
The remarks about the indifference of Propertius to natural scenery are
most unjust. What a charming picture is this!--
“Grata domus Nymphis humida Thyniasin,
Quam supra nullæ pendebant debita curæ
Roscida desertis poma sub arboribus;
Et circum irriguo surgebant lilia prato
Candida purpureis mixta papaveribus.”
_El._, I. xx. 35-39.
It may be conceded that Ovid is conventional and commonplace in his
treatment of nature; but why is Valerius Flaccus, with his bold, vivid
touches, left unnoticed? Why does one citation suffice for the many
exquisite cameos which ought to have been given from Statius? Another
inexplicable omission in Mr. Palgrave’s work is the poem entitled
_Rosæ_, attributed to Ausonius--a lovely poem, infinitely more beautiful
than the epigram quoted by Mr. Palgrave from the Latin Anthology, and
rivalling the fragment given by him from Tiberianus. Most readers would
agree with him in his estimate of Claudian, but he might have added the
fine description of Olympus in the _De Consulatu Theodori_, 200-210:
“Ut altus Olympi
Vertex, qui spatio ventos hiemesque relinquit,
Perpetuum nullâ temeratus nube serenum
Celsior exsurgit pluviis, auditque ruentes
Sub pedibus nimbos, et rauca tonitrua calcat;”
which Goldsmith, by the way, has borrowed and paraphrased in the
_Deserted Village_, together with its sublime application:
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles round its head.
Space does not serve to follow Mr. Palgrave through his chapters on
Italian, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon poetry, in all of which his omissions
are as remarkable as his citations; so we must content ourselves with
making a few remarks on his treatment of the English poets. It is
pleasing to see that, guided by Gray, he has done justice to Lydgate,
but he has not noticed the distinguishing peculiarity of this poet in
his description, his extraordinary sensitive appreciation of colour.
Among the Scotch poets of the fifteenth century a prominent place should
have been given to Henryson who is not even mentioned. Mr. Palgrave
hurries over the Elizabethan poets with too much expedition, and the
poets of the eighteenth century fare even worse. Great injustice is done
to Thomson. Why did not Mr. Palgrave, instead of citing what he calls
Thomson’s “cold” tropical landscape, for the purpose of contrasting it
unfavourably with Tennyson’s picture in _Enoch Arden_, give us instead
the Summer morning--
“At first faint gleaming in the dappled East
... Young day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide,
The dripping rock, the mountain’s misty tops
Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn,
Blue through the dusk the smoking currents shine,”
or
“The clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky”;
or the rainbow in the _Lines to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton_? Dyer
may be somewhat prosaic, but he is not a poet to be despatched in a
treatise on descriptive poetry, without citation, in a few contemptuous
lines: how vivid is his picture of a calm in the tropics!--
“The dewy feather, on the cordage hung,
Moves not; the flat sea shines, like yellow gold
Fused in the fire”;
or his
“Rocks in ever-wild
Posture of falling”;
or the charming landscape in _Grongar Hill_ with such touches as these:
“The windy summit wild and high
Roughly rushing on the sky”;
or
“Rushing from the woods the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires.”
As Wordsworth said, “Dyer’s beauties are innumerable and of a high
order.” It is very surprising that nothing should have been said about
Shenstone and the Wartons, about Scott of Amwell, Jago, Crowe and
Bowles, all of whom are, in various ways, remarkable as descriptive
poets. And certainly Mr. Palgrave does scant justice to Cowper; his
touch may be prosaic, but he always had his eye on the object, and his
landscape lives. Surely, by the way, Mr. Palgrave is mistaken in
supposing that Shelley apparently understood Alastor to mean a
“wanderer”; he understood it, as the preface shows, to mean, what it
means so often in Greek, “one under the spell of an avenging deity.”
Here we must break off. Mr. Palgrave’s is an important work, and it is
the duty, therefore, of a critic to review it seriously, in the hope
that, should it reach a second edition, which may be confidently
anticipated, Mr. Palgrave may be disposed to do a little more justice to
his most interesting subject.
Since this article was written Mr. Palgrave’s lamented death
has unhappily rendered all hope of what was anticipated in the
last paragraph, vain. But the review has been reprinted, and
with some additions, in the hope that it may not be
unacceptable as a contribution, however slight and imperfect,
to a subject of great interest to lovers of poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 32: See Bergk, Poet. Lyr. _Carm._ Pop. xxix.]
[Footnote 33: Nauck, _Trag. Græc. Frag._, p. 473.]
AN APPRECIATION OF PROFESSOR PALGRAVE
A familiar figure in literary circles, a fine critic, a graceful and
scholarly minor poet, and one whose name will long be held in
affectionate remembrance by lovers of English poetry, has passed away in
the person of Francis Turner Palgrave. It would be absurd to place him
beside Matthew Arnold--to whose genius, to whose characteristic
accomplishments, to whose authority and influence, he had no pretension.
And yet it may be questioned whether, after Arnold, any other critic of
our time contributed so much to educate public taste where, in this
country, it most needs such education. If, as a nurse of poets and in
poetic achievement, England stands second to no nation in Europe, in no
nation in the world has the standard of popular taste been so low, has
the insensibility to what is excellent, and the perverse preference of
what is mediocre to what is of the first order, been so signally, so
deplorably, conspicuous. The generation which produced Wordsworth
preferred Moore, and no less a person than the author of _Vanity Fair_
wrote:--“Old daddy Wordsworth may bless his stars if he ever gets high
enough in Heaven to black Tommy Moore’s boots.” While the readers of
Keats might have been numbered on his fingers, Robert Montgomery’s
_Satan_ and _Omnipresence of the Deity_ were going through their twelfth
editions. During many years, for ten readers of Browning’s poems there
were a hundred thousand for Martin Tupper’s _Proverbial Philosophy_,
while the popularity of Mrs. Browning was as a wan shadow to the
meridian splendour of Eliza Cook. Whoever will turn to the criticism of
current reviews and magazines forty years ago will have no difficulty in
understanding the diathesis described by Matthew Arnold as “on the side
of beauty and taste, vulgarity; on the side of morality and feeling,
coarseness; on the side of mind and spirit, unintelligence.” Whoever
will turn to nine out of the ten Anthologies, most in vogue before 1861,
will understand, that the same instinct which in the Dark Ages led man
to prefer Sedulius and Avitus to Catullus and Horace, Statius to Virgil,
and Hroswitha to Terence, led these editors to analogous selections.
Making every allowance for the co-operation of other causes, it would
hardly be an exaggeration to say that the appearance of the _Golden
Treasury of Songs and Lyrics_ in 1861 initiated an era in popular taste.
It remains now incomparably the best selection of its kind in
existence. Its distinctive feature is the characteristic which
differentiates it from all the anthologies which preceded or have
followed it. It was to include nothing which was not first-rate; there
was to be no compromise with the second-rate; if its gems varied, as
gems do in value, each was to be of the first water. With patient and
scrupulous diligence, the whole body of English poetry, from Surrey to
Wordsworth, was explored and sifted. After due rejections, each piece in
the residue was considered, weighed, tested. And here Mr. Palgrave had
assistance, more invaluable than any other anthologist in the world has
had--that of the illustrious poet to whom the volume was dedicated. It
may be safely said of Tennyson that nature and culture had qualified him
for being as great a critic as he was a poet. His taste was probably
infallible; his touchstones and standards were derived not merely from
the masters who had taught him his own art, but from a wonderfully
catholic and sympathetic communion with all that was best in every
sphere of influential artistic activity. The consequence is, that a book
like the _Golden Treasury_, especially when taken in conjunction with
the notes, which form an admirable commentary on the text, may be said
to lay something more than the foundation of a sound critical education.
What the _Golden Treasury_ is to readers of a maturer age the
_Children’s Treasury_ is to younger readers. It is a great pity that
such inferior works as many which we could name are allowed, in our
schools, to supplant such a work as Palgrave’s. The same exquisite taste
and nice discernment mark his other anthologies, his selections from
Herrick, and Tennyson, and, though perhaps in a less degree, his
_Treasury of English Sacred Poetry_, and his recently published
supplement to the _Golden Treasury_. It is probably impossible to
over-estimate the salutary influence which these works have exercised.
There is no arguing on matters of taste, and exception might easily be
taken, sometimes, to his dicta as a critic. But this at least must be
conceded by everybody, that in the best and most comprehensive sense of
the term he was a man of classical temper, taste, and culture, and that
he had all the insight and discernment, all the instincts and
sympathies, which are the result of such qualifications. He had no taint
of vulgarity, of charlatanism, of insincerity. He never talked or wrote
the cant of the cliques or of the multitude. He understood and clung to
what was excellent; he had no toleration for what was common and second
rate; he was not of the crowd. He belonged to the same type of men as
Matthew Arnold and William Cory, a type peculiar to our old Universities
before things took the turn which they are taking now. It will be long
before we shall have such critics again, and their loss is
incalculable.
As a scholar Palgrave was rather elegant than profound or exact, and, to
judge from a series of lectures delivered by him as Professor of Poetry
at Oxford, on _Landscape in Classical Poetry_, and afterwards published
in a work which is here reviewed, his acquaintance with the Greek and
Roman poets was, if scholarly and sympathetic, somewhat superficial. But
he was getting old, and perhaps he had lost his memory or his notes. As
a poet he was the author of four volumes, the earliest, published in
1864, entitled _Idylls and Songs_, and the latest, published in 1892,
_Amenophis; and other Poems_. But his most ambitious effort appeared in
1882, _Visions of England_, written with the laudable purpose of
stirring up in the young the spirit of patriotism. His poetry may be
described, not inaptly, in the sentence in which Dr. Johnson sums up the
characteristics of Addison’s verses:--“Polished and pure, the production
of a mind too judicious to commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous
to attain excellence.” Perhaps they served their end in procuring for
him the honourable appointment which he filled competently for ten
years--that of the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. It may be said of
him as was said of Southey, he was a good man and not a bad poet, or of
Agricola, _decentior quam sublimior fuit_. But as a critic of Belles
Lettres he was excellent.
ANCIENT GREEK AND MODERN LIFE[34]
[Footnote 34: _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius._ By S. H. Butcher,
Litt. D., LL.D. London.]