This position is to be made good, not solely or perhaps chiefly, yet

with no small force, from the allegorical structure of the poem. Most

of us, perhaps, are rather disposed to undervalue this contrivance;

and even among the genuine admirers of Spenser, there are not a few

who on purpose leave it out of their thoughts; finding, as they say,

that it only embarrasses their enjoyment of the poetry. This is

certainly far from reasonable: it is a relic of childish feeling, and

mere love of amusement, which ill becomes any one who is old enough to

appreciate the real beauties of Spenser. Yet it is so natural, so

obviously to be expected, that we must suppose a scholar and

philosopher (for such Spenser was, as well as a poet) to have been

aware of it, and to have made up his mind to it, with all its

disadvantages, for some strong reason or other. And what reason so

likely as the hope of being seriously useful, both to himself and his

readers?

To _himself_, because the constant recurrence to his allegory would

serve as a check upon a fancy otherwise too luxuriant, and would

prevent him from indulging in such liberties as the Italian poets, in

other respects his worthy masters, were too apt to take. The

consequence is, that even in his freest passages, and those which one

would most wish unwritten, Spenser is by no means a _seductive_ poet.

Vice in him, however truly described, is always made contemptible or

odious. The same may be said of Milton and Shakespeare; but Milton was

of a cast of mind originally austere and rigorous. He looked on vice

as a judge; Shakespeare, as a satirist. Spenser was far more indulgent

than either, and acted therefore the more wisely in setting himself a

rule, which should make it essential to the plan of his poem to be

always recommending some virtue; and remind him, like a voice from

heaven, that the place on which he was standing was holy ground.

Then as to the benefit which the _readers_ of the _Faerie Queene_ may

derive from its allegorical form; a good deal surely is to be gained

from the mere habit of looking at things with a view to something

beyond their qualities merely sensible; to their sacred and moral

meaning, and to the high associations they were intended to create in

us. Neither the works nor the word of God, neither poetry nor

theology, can be duly comprehended without constant mental exercise of

this kind. The comparison of the Old Testament with the New is nothing

else from beginning to end. And without something of this sort,

poetry, and all the other arts, would indeed be relaxing to the tone

of the mind. The allegory obviates this ill effect, by serving as a

frequent remembrancer of this higher application. Not that it is

necessary to bend and strain everything into conformity with it; a

little leaven, of the genuine kind, will go a good way towards

leavening the whole lump. And so it is in the _Faerie Queene_; for one

stanza of direct allegory there are perhaps fifty of poetical

embellishment; and it is in these last, after all, that the chief

moral excellency of the poem lies; as we are now about to show.

But to be understood rightly, we would premise, that there is a

disposition,--the very reverse of that which leads to parody and

caricature,--which is common indeed to all generous minds, but is

perhaps unrivalled in Spenser. As parody and caricature debase what is

truly noble, by connecting it with low and ludicrous associations; so

a mind, such as we are now speaking of, ennobles what of itself might

seem trivial; its thoughts and language, on all occasions, taking a

uniform and almost involuntary direction towards the best and highest

things.

This, however, is a subject which can be hardly comprehended without

examples. The first which occurs to us is the passage which relates

the origin of Belphoebe.

Her birth was of the womb of morning dew,

And her conception of the joyous prime,

And all her whole creation did her show

Pure and unspotted from all loathly crime

That is ingenerate in fleshly slime.

So was this Virgin born, so was she bred,

So was she trained up from time to time,

In all chaste virtue and true bounti-hed,

Till to her due perfection she was ripenèd.

It is evident how high and sacred a subject was present to the poet's

mind in composing this stanza; and any person who is well read in the

Bible, with a clue like this may satisfy himself that all Spenser's

writings are replete with similar tacit allusions to the language and

the doctrines of sacred writ; allusions breathed, if we may so speak,

rather than uttered, and much fitter to be silently considered, than

to be dragged forward for quotation or minute criticism. Of course,

the more numerous and natural such allusions are, the more entirely

are we justified in the denomination we have ventured to bestow on

their author, of a truly 'sacred' poet.

It may be felt, as some derogation from this high character, what he

has himself avowed--that much of his allegory has a turn designedly

given it in honour of Queen Elizabeth; a turn which will be called

courtly or adulatory according to the humour of the critic. But, in

the first place, such was the custom of the times; it was adopted even

in sermons by men whose sincerity it would be almost sacrilege to

question. Then, the merits of Queen Elizabeth in respect of the

Protestant cause were of that dazzling order, which might excuse a

little poetical exuberance in her praise. And, what is very deserving

of consideration, it is certain that the most gentle and generous

spirits are commonly found laying themselves open to this charge of

excessive compliment in addressing princes and patrons. Witness the

high style adopted by the venerable Hooker, in speaking of this very

Queen Elizabeth: 'Whose sacred power, matched with incomparable

goodness of nature, hath hitherto been God's most happy instrument, by

him miraculously kept for works of so miraculous preservation and

safety unto others,' &c. Another instance of the same kind may be seen

in Jeremy Taylor's dedication of his _Worthy Communicant_ to the

Princess of Orange. Nor is it any wonder it should be so, since such

men feel most ardently the blessing and benefit as well as the

difficulty of whatever is right in persons of such exalted station;

and are also most strongly tempted to bear their testimony against the

illiberal and envious censures of the vulgar. All these things, duly

weighed, may seem to leave little, if anything, in the panegyrical

strains of this greatest of laureates, to be excused by the common

infirmity of human nature; little to detract from our deliberate

conviction that he was seriously guided, in the exercise of his art,

by a sense of duty, and zeal for what is durably important.

Spenser then was essentially a _sacred_ poet; but the delicacy and

insinuating gentleness of his disposition were better fitted to the

veiled than the direct mode of instruction. His was a mind which would

have shrunk more from the chance of debasing a sacred subject by

unhandsome treatment, than of incurring ridicule by what would be

called unseasonable attempts to hallow things merely secular. It was

natural therefore for him to choose not a scriptural story, but a tale

of chivalry and romance; and the popular literature, and, in no small

measure, the pageantry and manners of his time, would join to attract

his efforts that way. In this way too he was enabled, with more

propriety and grace, to introduce allusions, political or courtly, to

subjects with which his readers were familiar; thus agreeably

diversifying his allegory, and gratifying his affection for his

friends and patrons, without the coarseness of direct compliment.

In Milton, most evidently, a great difference was to be expected: both

from his own character and from that of the times in which he lived.

Religion was in those days the favourite topic of discussion; and it

is indeed painful to reflect, how sadly it was polluted by

intermixture with earthly passions: the most awful turns and most

surprising miracles of the Jewish history being made to serve the base

purposes of persons, of whom it is hard to say whether they were more

successful in misleading others, or in deceiving themselves. It was an

effort worthy of a manly and devout spirit to rescue religion from

such degradation, by choosing a subject, which, being scriptural,

would suit the habit of the times, yet, from its universal and eternal

importance, would give least opportunity for debasing temporary

application. Then it was the temper of the man always to speak out.

He carried it to a faulty excess, as his prose works too amply

demonstrate. The more unfashionable his moral was, the more he would

have disdained to veil it: neither had he the shrinking delicacy of

Spenser to keep him back, through fear of profaning things hallowed by

an unworthy touch.

Thus the great epic poem of our language came to be, avowedly, a

sacred poem. One hardly dares to wish any thing other than it is in

such a composition; yet it may be useful to point out in what respects

the moral infirmity of the times, or of the author, has affected the

work; so that we are occasionally tempted to regret even Milton's

choice. But as the leading error of his mind appears to have been

_intellectual_ pride, and as the leading fault of the generation with

which he acted was unquestionably _spiritual_ pride, so the main

defects of his poetry may probably be attributed to the same causes.

There is a studious undervaluing of the female character, which may be

most distinctly perceived by comparing the character of Eve with that

of the Lady in Comus: the latter conceived, as we imagine, before the

mind of the poet had become so deeply tainted with the fault here

imputed to him. A remarkable instance of it is his describing Eve as

unwilling, or unworthy, to discourse herself with the angel.

Such pleasure she reserved,

Adam relating; she sole auditress.--

The sentiment may be natural enough, since the primaeval curse upon

women: but does it not argue rather too strong a sense of her original

inferiority, to put it into her mind before the fall?

What again can be said for the reproachful and insulting tone, in

which, more than once, the good angels are made to address the bad

ones? or of the too attractive colours, in which, perhaps

unconsciously, the poet has clothed the Author of Evil himself? It is

a well-known complaint among many of the readers of _Paradise Lost_,

that they can hardly keep themselves from sympathizing, in some sort,

with Satan, as the hero of the poem. The most probable account of

which surely is, that the author himself partook largely of the

haughty and vindictive republican spirit which he has assigned to the

character, and consequently, though perhaps unconsciously, drew the

portrait with a peculiar zest.

These blemishes are in part attributable to the times in which he

lived: but there is another now to be mentioned, which cannot be so

accounted for: we mean a want of purity and spirituality in his

conceptions of Heaven and heavenly joys. His Paradise is a vision not

to be surpassed; but his attempts to soar higher are embarrassed with

too much of earth still clinging as it were to his wings. Remarks of

this kind are in general best understood by comparison, and we invite

our readers to compare Milton with Dante, in their descriptions of

Heaven. The one as simple as possible in his imagery, producing

intense effect by little more than various combinations of _three_

leading ideas--light, motion, and music--as if he feared to introduce

anything more gross and earthly, and would rather be censured, as

doubtless he often is, for coldness and poverty of invention. Whereas

Milton, with very little selection or refinement, transfers to the

immediate neighbourhood of God's throne the imagery of Paradise and

Earth. Indeed he seems himself to have been aware of something

unsatisfactory in this, and has inserted into the mouth of an angel,

a kind of apology for it:

Though what if earth

Be but the shadow of heav'n, and things therein

Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?

These are blemishes, and sometimes almost tempt us to wish that even

Milton had taken some subject not so immediately and avowedly

connected with religion. But they do not affect his claim to be

considered as the very lodestar and pattern of that class of sacred

poets in England. As such we have here considered him next to Spenser;

not that there were wanting others of the same order before him. In

fact, most of the distinguished names in the poetical annals of

Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I, might be included in the list. It

may be enough just to recollect Drayton and Cowley, Herbert, Crashaw

and Quarles.

The mention of these latter names suggests the remark, how very

desirable it is to encourage as indulgent and, if we may so term it,

_catholic_ a spirit as may be, in poetical criticism. From having been

over-praised in their own days, they are come now to be as much

undervalued; yet their quaintness of manner and constrained imagery,

adopted perhaps in compliance with the taste of their age, should

hardly suffice to overbalance their sterling merits. We speak

especially of Crashaw and Quarles: for Herbert is a name too venerable

to be more than mentioned in our present discussion.

After Milton, sacred poetry seems to have greatly declined, both in

the number and merit of those who cultivated it. No other could be

expected from the conflicting evils of those times: in which one party

was used to brand everything sacred with the name of Puritanism, and

the other to suspect every thing poetical of being contrary to

morality and religion.

Yet most of the great names of that age, especially among the

Romanists, as Dryden, Pope, and before them Habington, continued to

dedicate some of their poetry to religion. By their faith they were

remote from the controversies which agitated the established church,

and their devotion might indulge itself without incurring the

suspicion of a fanatical spirit. Then the solemnity of their worship

is fitted to inspire splendid and gorgeous strains, such as Dryden's

paraphrase of the Veni Creator; and their own fallen fortunes in

England, no less naturally, would fill them with a sense of decay very

favourable to the plaintive tenderness of Habington and Crashaw.

A feeling of this kind, joined to the effect of distressing languor

and sickness, may be discerned, occasionally, in the writings of

Bishop Ken; though he was far indeed from being a Romanist. We shall

hardly find, in all ecclesiastical history, a greener spot than the

later years of this courageous and affectionate pastor; persecuted

alternately by both parties, and driven from his station in his

declining age; yet singing on, with unabated cheerfulness, to the

last. His poems are not popular, nor probably ever will be, for

reasons already touched upon; but whoever in earnest loves his three

well-known hymns, and knows how to value such unaffected strains of

poetical devotion, will find his account, in turning over his four

volumes, half narrative and half lyric, and all avowedly on sacred

subjects; the narrative often cumbrous, and the lyric verse not seldom

languid and redundant: yet all breathing such an angelic spirit,

interspersed with such pure and bright touches of poetry, that such a

reader as we have supposed will scarcely find it in his heart to

criticize them.

Between that time and ours, the form of sacred poetry which has

succeeded best in attracting public attention, is the didactic: of

which Davies in Queen Elizabeth's reign, Sir Richard Blackmore in King

William's, Young in the middle, and Cowper in the close, of the last

century, may fairly be taken as specimens, differing from each other

according to the differences of their respective literary eras.

Davies, with his Lucretian majesty (although he wants the moral pathos

of the Roman poet), representing aptly enough the age of Elizabeth;

Blackmore, with his easy paragraphs, the careless style of King

Charles's days; Young, with his pointed sentences, transferring to

graver subjects a good deal of the manner of Pope; and Cowper, with

his agreeable but too unsparing descriptions, coming nearer to the

present day, which appears, both in manners and in scenery, to delight

in Dutch painting, rather than in what is more delicately classical.

With regard to the indirect, and, perhaps, more effective, species of

sacred poetry, we fear it must be acknowledged, to the shame of the

last century, that there is hardly a single specimen of it (excepting,

perhaps, Gray's Elegy, and possibly some of the most perfect of

Collins's poems) which has obtained any celebrity. We except the

writers of our own times, who do not fall within the scope of this

inquiry.

To Spenser, therefore, upon the whole, the English reader must revert,

as being, pre-eminently, the sacred poet of his country: as most

likely, in every way, to answer the purposes of his art; especially in

an age of excitation and refinement, in which the gentler and more

homely beauties, both of character and of scenery, are too apt to be

despised: with passion and interest enough to attract the most ardent,

and grace enough to win the most polished; yet by a silent preference

everywhere inculcating the love of better and more enduring things;

and so most exactly fulfilling what he has himself declared to be 'the

general end of all his book'--'to fashion a gentleman, or noble

person, in virtuous and gentle discipline': and going the straight way

to the accomplishment of his own high-minded prayer:

That with the glory of so goodly sight,

The hearts of men, which fondly here admire

Fair-seeming shows, and feed on vain delight,

Transported with celestial desire

Of those fair forms, may lift themselves up higher,

And learn to love, with zealous humble duty,

Th' eternal fountain of that heavenly beauty.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

1801-1890

POETRY

WITH REFERENCE TO ARISTOTLE'S POETICS (1829).

_The Theatre of the Greeks; or the History, Literature, and Criticism

of the Grecian Drama. With an original Treatise on the Principal

Tragic and Comic Metres._ Second Edition. Cambridge. 1827.

This work is well adapted for the purpose it has in view--the

illustration of the Greek drama. It has been usual for the young

student to engage in a perusal of this difficult branch of classical

literature, with none of that previous preparation or collateral

assistance which it pre-eminently requires. Not to mention his

ordinary want of information as regards the history of the drama,

which, though necessary to the full understanding the nature of that

kind of poetry, may still seem too remotely connected with the

existing Greek plays to be an actual deficiency; nor, again, his

ignorance of the dramatic dialect and metres, which, without external

helps, may possibly be overcome by minds of superior talent while

engaged upon them; at least without some clear ideas of the usages of

the ancient stage, the Greek dramas are but partially intelligible.

The circumstances under which the representation was conducted, the

form and general arrangements of the theatre, the respective offices

and disposition of the actors, the nature and duties of the chorus,

the proprieties of the scene itself, are essential subjects of

information, yet they are generally neglected. The publication before

us is a compilation of the most useful works or parts of works on the

criticism, history, and antiquities of the drama; among which will be

found extracts from Bentley's _Dissertation on the Epistles of

Phalaris_ and from Schlegel's work on Dramatic Literature; the more

important parts of Twining's Translation of Aristotle's _Poetics_, and

critical remarks, by Dawes, Porson, Elmsley, Tate, and the writers in

the _Museum Criticum_.

If we were disposed to find fault with a useful work, we should

describe it as over-liberal of condensed critical information. Such

ample assistance is given to the student, that little is left to

exercise his own personal thought and judgement. This is a fault of

not a few publications of the present day, written for our

universities. From a false estimate of the advantages of accurate

scholarship, the reader is provided with a multitude of minute facts,

which are useful to his mind, not when barely remembered, but chiefly

when he has acquired them for himself. It is of comparatively trifling

importance, whether the scholar knows the force of [Greek: ou mê] or

[Greek: alla gar]; but it may considerably improve his acumen or

taste, to have gone through a process of observation, comparison, and

induction, more or less original and independent of grammarians and

critics. It is an officious aid which renders the acquisition of a

language mechanical. Commentators are of service to stimulate the

mind, and suggest thought; and though, when we view the wide field of

criticism, it is impossible they should do more, yet, when that field

is narrowed to the limit of academical success, there is a danger of

their indulging indolence, or confirming the contracted views of

dullness. These remarks are not so much directed against a valuable

work like the present, the very perusal of which may be made an

exercise for the mind, as against an especial fault of the age. The

uses of knowledge in forming the intellectual and moral character, are

too commonly overlooked; and the possession itself being viewed as a

peculiar good, short ways are on all subjects excogitated for avoiding

the labour of learning; whereas the very length and process of the

journey is in many the chief, in all an important advantage.

But, dismissing a train of thought which would soon lead us very far

from the range of subjects which the _Theatre of the Greeks_

introduces to our notice, we propose to offer some speculations of our

own on Greek tragedy and poetry in general, founded on the doctrine of

Aristotle as contained in the publication before us. A compilation of

standard works, (and such in its general character is the _Greek

Theatre_,) scarcely affords the occasion of lengthened criticism on

itself; whereas it may be of use to the classical student to add some

further illustrations of the subject which is the common basis of the

works compiled.

Aristotle considers the excellence of a tragedy to depend upon its

_plot_--and, since a tragedy, as such, is obviously the exhibition of

an _action_, no one can deny his statement to be abstractedly true.

Accordingly he directs his principal attention to the economy of the

fable; determines its range of subjects, delineates its proportions,

traces its progress from a complication of incidents to their just

and satisfactory arrangement, investigates the means of making a train

of events striking or affecting, and shows how the exhibition of

character may be made subservient to the purposes of the action. His

treatise is throughout interesting and valuable. It is one thing,

however, to form the beau idéal of a tragedy on scientific principles;

another to point out the actual beauty of a particular school of

dramatic composition. The Greek tragedians are not generally

felicitous in the construction of their plots. Aristotle, then, rather

tells us what tragedy should be, than what Greek tragedy really was.

And this doubtless was the intention of the philosopher. Since,

however, the Greek drama has obtained so extended and lasting a

celebrity, and yet its excellence does not fall under the strict rules

of the critical art, we should inquire in what it consists.

That the charm of Greek tragedy does not ordinarily arise from

scientific correctness of plot, is certain as a matter of fact. Seldom

does any great interest arise from the action; which, instead of being

progressive and sustained, is commonly either a mere necessary

condition of the drama, or a convenience for the introduction of

matter more important than itself. It is often stationary--often

irregular--sometimes either wants or outlives the catastrophe. In the

plays of Aeschylus it is always simple and inartificial--in four out

of the seven there is hardly any plot at all;--and, though it is of

more prominent importance in those of Sophocles, yet even here the

_Oedipus at Colonus_ is a mere series of incidents, and the _Ajax_ a

union of two separate tales; while in the _Philoctetes_, which is

apparently busy, the circumstances of the action are but slightly

connected with the _dénouement_. The carelessness of Euripides in the

construction of his plots is well known. The action then will be more

justly viewed as the vehicle for introducing the personages of the

drama, than as the principal object of the poet's art; it is not in

the plot, but in the characters, sentiments, and diction, that the

actual merit and poetry of the composition is placed. To show this to

the satisfaction of the reader, would require a minuter investigation

of details than our present purpose admits; yet a few instances in

point may suggest others to the memory. E. g. in neither the _Oedipus

Coloneus_ nor the _Philoctetes_, the two most beautiful plays of

Sophocles, is the plot striking; but how exquisite is the delineation

of the characters of Antigone and Oedipus, in the former tragedy,

particularly in their interview with Polynices, and the various

descriptions of the scene itself which the Chorus furnishes! In the

_Philoctetes_, again, it is the contrast between the worldly wisdom of

Ulysses, the inexperienced frankness of Neoptolemus, and the

simplicity of the afflicted Philoctetes, which constitutes the

principal charm of the drama. Or we may instance the spirit and nature

displayed in the grouping of the characters in the _Prometheus_ which

is almost without action;--the stubborn enemy of the new dynasty of

gods; Oceanus trimming, as an accomplished politician, with the change

of affairs; the single-hearted and generous Nereids; and Hermes the

favourite and instrument of the usurping potentate. So again, the

beauties of the _Thebae_ are almost independent of the plot;--it is

the Chorus which imparts grace and interest to the actionless scene;

and the speech of Antigone at the end, one of the most simply striking

in any play, has, scientifically speaking, no place in the tragedy,

which should already have been brought to its conclusion. Amid the

multitude of the beauties of the irregular Euripides, it is obvious to

notice the characters of Alcestis and the Clytemnestra of the

_Electra_; the soliloquies of _Medea_; the picturesque situation of

Ion, the minister of the Pythian temple; the opening scene of the

_Orestes_; and the dialogues between Phaedra and her attendant in the

_Hippolytus_, and the old man and Antigone in the _Phoenissae_;--passages

which are either unconnected with the development of the plot, or of

an importance superior to it. Thus the Greek drama, as a fact, was

modelled on no scientific principle. It was a pure recreation of the

imagination, revelling without object or meaning beyond its own

exhibition. Gods, heroes, kings, and dames, enter and retire: they may

have a good reason for appearing--they may have a very poor one;

whatever it is, still we have no right to ask for it;--the question is

impertinent. Let us listen to their harmonious and majestic

language--to the voices of sorrow, joy, compassion, or religious

emotion--to the animated odes of the chorus. Why interrupt so divine a

display of poetical genius by inquiries degrading it to the level of

every-day events, and implying incompleteness in the action till a

catastrophe arrives? The very spirit of beauty breathes through every

part of the composition. We may liken the Greek drama to the music of

the Italian school; in which the wonder is, how so much richness of

invention in detail can be accommodated to a style so simple and

uniform. Each is the development of grace, fancy, pathos, and taste,

in the respective media of representation and sound.

However true then it may be, that one or two of the most celebrated

dramas answer to the requisitions of Aristotle's doctrine, still for

the most part, Greek Tragedy has its own distinct and peculiar praise,

which must not be lessened by a criticism conducted on principles,

whether correct or not, still leading to excellence of another

character. This being, as we hope, shown, we shall be still bolder,

and proceed to question even the sufficiency of the rules of Aristotle

for the production of dramas of the highest order. These rules, it

would appear, require a plot not merely natural and unaffected, as a

vehicle of more poetical matter, but one laboured and complicated as

the sole legitimate channel of tragic effect; and thus tend to

withdraw the mind of the poet from the spontaneous exhibition of

pathos or imagination, to a minute diligence in the formation of a

plan. To explain our views on the subject, we will institute a short

comparison between three tragedies, the _Agamemnon_, the _Oedipus_,

and the _Bacchae_, one of each of the tragic poets, where, by

reference to Aristotle's principles, we think it will be found that

the most perfect in plot is not the most poetical.

Of these the action of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ is frequently instanced

by the critic as a specimen of judgement and skill in the selection

and combination of the incidents; and in this point of view it is

truly a masterly composition. The clearness, precision, certainty,

and vigour, with which the line of the action moves on to its

termination, is admirable. The character of Oedipus too is finely

drawn, and identified with the development of the action.

The _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus presents us with the slow and difficult

birth of a portentous secret--an event of old written in the resolves

of destiny, a crime long meditated in the bosom of the human agents.

The Chorus here has an importance altogether wanting in the Chorus of

the _Oedipus_. They throw a pall of ancestral honour over the bier of

the hereditary monarch, which would have been unbecoming in the case

of the upstart king of Thebes. Till the arrival of Agamemnon, they

occupy our attention, as the prophetic organ, not commissioned indeed

but employed by heaven, to proclaim the impending horrors. Succeeding

to the brief intimation of the watcher who opens the play, they seem

oppressed with forebodings of woe and crime which they can neither

justify nor analyse. The expression of their anxiety forms the stream

in which the plot flows--every thing, even news of joy, takes a

colouring from the depth of their gloom. On the arrival of the king,

they retire before Cassandra, a more regularly commissioned

prophetess; who, speaking first in figure, then in plain terms, only

ceases that we may hear the voice of the betrayed monarch himself,

informing us of the striking of the fatal blow. Here then the very

simplicity of the fable constitutes its especial beauty. The death of

Agamemnon is intimated at first--it is accomplished at last:

throughout we find but the growing in volume and intensity of one and

the same note--it is a working up of one musical ground, by fugue and

imitation, into the richness of combined harmony. But we look in vain

for the progressive and thickening incidents of the _Oedipus_.

The action of the _Bacchae_ is also simple. It is the history of the

reception of the worship of Bacchus in Thebes; who, first depriving

Pentheus of his reason, and thereby drawing him on to his ruin,

establishes his divinity. The interest of the scene arises from the

gradual process by which the derangement of the Theban king is

effected, which is powerfully and originally described. It would be

comic, were it unconnected with religion. As it is, it exhibits the

grave irony of a god triumphing over the impotent presumption of man,

the sport and terrible mischievousness of an insulted deity. It is an

exemplification of the adage, _quem deus vult perdere, prius

dementat_. So delicately balanced is the action along the verge of the

sublime and grotesque, that it is both solemn and humorous, without

violence to the propriety of the composition: the mad and merry fire

of the Chorus, the imbecile mirth of old Cadmus and Tiresias, and the

infatuation of Pentheus, who is ultimately induced to dress himself in

female garb to gain admittance among the Bacchae, are made to

harmonize with the terrible catastrophe which concludes the life of

the intruder. Perhaps the victim's first discovery of the disguised

deity is the finest conception in this splendid drama. His madness

enables him to discern the emblematic horns on the head of Bacchus,

which were hid from him when in his sound mind; yet this discovery,

instead of leading him to an acknowledgement of the divinity,

provides him only with matter for a stupid and perplexed

astonishment.

[Greek: kai tauros hêmin prosthen hêgeisthai dokeis,

kai sô kerate krati prospephykenai.

all' ê pot' êstha thêr; tetaurôsai gar oun.][18]

This play is on the whole the most favourable specimen of the genius

of Euripides--not breathing the sweet composure, the melodious

fullness, the majesty and grace of Sophocles; nor rudely and

overpoweringly tragic as Aeschylus; but brilliant, versatile,

imaginative, as well as deeply pathetic.

[18]

A Bull, thou seem'st to lead us; on thy head

Horns have grown forth: wast heretofore a beast?

For such thy semblance now.

Here then are two dramas of extreme poetical power, but deficient in

skilfulness of plot. Are they on that account to be rated below the

_Oedipus_, which, in spite of its many beauties, has not even a share

of the richness and sublimity of either?

Aristotle, then, it must be allowed, treats dramatic composition more

as an exhibition of ingenious workmanship, than as a free and

unfettered effusion of genius. The inferior poem may, on his

principle, be the better tragedy. He may indeed have intended solely

to delineate the outward framework most suitable to the reception of

the spirit of poetry, not to discuss the nature of poetry itself. If

so, it cannot be denied that, the poetry being given equal in the two

cases, the more perfect plot will merit the greater share of praise.

And it may seem to agree with this view of his meaning, that he

pronounces Euripides, in spite of the irregularity of his plots, to

be, after all, the most tragic of the Greek dramatists, inasmuch (i.

e.) as he excels in his appeal to those passions which the outward

form of the drama merely subserves. Still there is surely too much

stress laid by the philosopher upon the artificial part; which, after

all, leads to negative, more than to positive excellence; and should

rather be the natural and (so to say) unintentional result of the

poet's feeling and imagination, than be separated from them as the

direct object of his care. Perhaps it is hardly fair to judge of

Aristotle's sentiments by the fragment of his work which has come down

to us. Yet as his natural taste led him to delight in the explication

of systems, and in those large and connected views which his vigorous

talent for thinking through subjects supplied, we may be allowed to

suspect him of entertaining too cold and formal conceptions of the

nature of poetical composition, as if its beauties were less subtle

and delicate than they really are. A word has power to convey a world

of information to the imagination, and to act as a spell upon the

feelings: there is no need of sustained fiction--often no room for

it.[19] Some confirmation of the judgement we have ventured to pass on

the greatest of analytical philosophers, is the account he gives of

the source of poetical pleasure; which he almost identifies with a

gratification of the reasoning faculty, placing it in the satisfaction

derived from recognizing in fiction a resemblance to the realities of

life--[Greek: symbainei theôrountas manthanein kai syllogizesthai, ti

hekaston.][20]

[19] The sudden inspiration, e. g. of the blind Oedipus, in

the second play bearing his name, by which he is enabled,

[Greek: athiktos hêgêtêros] ['without a guide'], to lead the

way to his place of death, in our judgement, produces more

poetical effect than all the skilful intricacy of the plot of

the _Tyrannus_. The latter excites an interest which scarcely

lasts beyond the first reading--the former _decies repetita

placebit_.

[20] In seeing the picture one is at the same time

learning,--gathering the meaning of things.

But as we have treated, rather unceremoniously, a deservedly high

authority, we will try to compensate for our rudeness, by illustrating

his general doctrine of the nature of poetry, which we hold to be most

true and philosophical.

Poetry, according to Aristotle, is a representation of the ideal.

Biography and history represent individual characters and actual

facts; poetry, on the contrary, generalizing from the phenomena of

nature and life, supplies us with pictures drawn not after an existing

pattern, but after a creation of the mind. _Fidelity_ is the primary

merit of biography and history; the essence of poetry is _fiction_.

_Poesis nihil aliud est_ (says Bacon) _quam historiae imitatio ad

placitum_. It delineates that perfection which the imagination

suggests, and to which as a limit the present system of divine

Providence actually tends. Moreover, by confining the attention to one

series of events and scene of action, it bounds and finishes off the

confused luxuriance of real nature; while, by a skilful adjustment of

circumstances, it brings into sight the connexion of cause and effect,

completes the dependence of the parts one on another, and harmonizes

the proportions of the whole. It is then but the type and model of

history or biography, if we may be allowed the comparison, bearing

some resemblance to the abstract mathematical formula of physics,

before it is modified by the contingencies of gravity and friction.

Hence, while it recreates the imagination by the superhuman loveliness

of its views, it provides a solace for the mind broken by the

disappointments and sufferings of actual life; and becomes, moreover,

the utterance of the inward emotions of a right moral feeling, seeking

a purity and a truth which this world will not give.

It follows that the poetical mind is one full of the eternal forms of

beauty and perfection; these are its material of thought, its

instrument and medium of observation--these colour each object to

which it directs its view. It is called imaginative or creative, from

the originality and independence of its modes of thinking, compared

with the common-place and matter-of-fact conceptions of ordinary

minds, which are fettered down to the particular and individual. At

the same time it feels a natural sympathy with everything great and

splendid in the physical and moral world; and selecting such from the

mass of common phenomena, incorporates them, as it were, into the

substance of its own creations. From living thus in a world of its

own, it speaks the language of dignity, emotion, and refinement.

Figure is its necessary medium of communication with man; for in the

feebleness of ordinary words to express its ideas, and in the absence

of terms of abstract perfection, the adoption of metaphorical language

is the only poor means allowed it for imparting to others its intense

feelings. A metrical garb has, in all languages, been appropriated to

poetry--it is but the outward development of the music and harmony

within. The verse, far from being a restraint on the true poet, is the

suitable index of his sense, and is adopted by his free and deliberate

choice.

We shall presently show the applicability of our doctrine to the

various departments of poetical composition; first, however, it will

be right to volunteer an explanation which may save it from much

misconception and objection. Let not our notion be thought arbitrarily

to limit the number of poets, generally considered such. It will be

found to lower particular works, or parts of works, rather than the

writers themselves; sometimes to condemn only the vehicle in which the

poetry is conveyed. There is an ambiguity in the word poetry, which is

taken to signify both the talent itself, and the written composition

which is the result of it. Thus there is an apparent, but no real

contradiction, in saying a poem may be but partially poetical; in some

passages more so than in others; and sometimes not poetical at all. We

only maintain--not that writers forfeit the name of poet who fail at

times to answer to our requisitions, but--that they are poets only so

far forth and inasmuch as they do answer to them. We may grant, for

instance, that the vulgarities of old Phoenix in the ninth _Iliad_, or

of the nurse of Orestes in the _Choephoroe_, or perhaps of the

grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, are in themselves unworthy of their

respective authors, and refer them to the wantonness of exuberant

genius; and yet maintain that the scenes in question contain much

_incidental_ poetry. Now and then the lustre of the true metal catches

the eye, redeeming whatever is unseemly and worthless in the rude ore;

still the ore is not the metal. Nay sometimes, and not unfrequently in

Shakespeare, the introduction of unpoetical matter may be necessary

for the sake of relief, or as a vivid expression of recondite

conceptions, and (as it were) to make friends with the reader's

imagination. This necessity, however, cannot make the additions in

themselves beautiful and pleasing. Sometimes, on the other hand, while

we do not deny the incidental beauty of a poem, we are ashamed and

indignant on witnessing the unworthy substance in which that beauty is

imbedded. This remark applies strongly to the immoral compositions to

which Lord Byron devoted his last years. Now to proceed with our

proposed investigation.

We will notice _descriptive poetry_ first. Empedocles wrote his

physics in verse, and Oppian his history of animals. Neither were

poets--the one was an historian of nature, the other a sort of

biographer of brutes. Yet a poet may make natural history or

philosophy the material of his composition. But under his hands they

are no longer a bare collection of facts or principles, but are

painted with a meaning, beauty, and harmonious order not their own.

Thomson has sometimes been commended for the novelty and minuteness of

his remarks upon nature. This is not the praise of a poet; whose

office rather is to represent _known_ phenomena in a new connexion or

medium. In _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ the poetical magician

invests the commonest scenes of a country life with the hues, first of

a mirthful, then of a pensive mind.[21] Pastoral poetry is a

description of rustics, agriculture, and cattle, softened off and

corrected from the rude health of nature. Virgil, and much more Pope

and others, have run into the fault of colouring too highly;--instead

of drawing generalized and ideal forms of _shepherds_, they have given

us pictures of _gentlemen_ and _beaux_. Their composition may be

poetry, but it is not pastoral poetry.

[21] It is the charm of the descriptive poetry of a religious

mind, that nature is viewed in a moral connexion. Ordinary

writers (e. g.) compare aged men to trees in autumn--a gifted

poet will reverse the metaphor. Thus:--

'How quiet shows the woodland scene!

Each flower and tree, its duty done,

Reposing in decay serene,

_Like weary men when age is won_,' &c.

The difference between poetical and historical _narrative_ may be

illustrated by the 'Tales Founded on Facts', generally of a religious

character, so common in the present day, which we must not be thought

to approve, because we use them for our purpose. The author finds in

the circumstances of the case many particulars too trivial for public

notice, or irrelevant to the main story, or partaking perhaps too much

of the peculiarity of individual minds:--these he omits. He finds

connected events separated from each other by time or place, or a

course of action distributed among a multitude of agents; he limits

the scene or duration of the tale, and dispenses with his host of

characters by condensing the mass of incident and action in the

history of a few. He compresses long controversies into a concise

argument--and exhibits characters by dialogue--and (if such be his

object) brings prominently forward the course of Divine Providence by

a fit disposition of his materials. Thus he selects, combines,

refines, colours--in fact, _poetizes_. His facts are no longer

_actual_ but _ideal_--a tale _founded on_ facts is a tale _generalized

from_ facts. The authors of _Peveril of the Peak_, and of _Brambletye

House_, have given us their respective descriptions of the profligate

times of Charles II. Both accounts are interesting, but for different

reasons. That of the latter writer has the fidelity of history;

Walter Scott's picture is the hideous reality unintentionally softened

and decorated by the poetry of his own mind. Miss Edgeworth sometimes

apologizes for certain incidents in her tales, by stating they took

place 'by one of those strange chances which occur in life, but seem

incredible when found in writing'. Such an excuse evinces a

misconception of the principle of fiction, which, being the

_perfection_ of the actual, prohibits the introduction of any such

anomalies of experience. It is by a similar impropriety that painters

sometimes introduce unusual sunsets, or other singular phenomena of

lights and forms. Yet some of Miss Edgeworth's works contain much

poetry of narrative. _Manoeuvring_ is perfect in its way--the plot and

characters are natural, without being too real to be pleasing.

_Character_ is made poetical by a like process. The writer draws

indeed from experience; but unnatural peculiarities are laid aside,

and harsh contrasts reconciled. If it be said, the fidelity of the

imitation is often its greatest merit, we have only to reply, that in

such cases the pleasure is not poetical, but consists in the mere

recognition. All novels and tales which introduce real characters, are

in the same degree unpoetical. Portrait-painting, to be poetical,

should furnish an abstract representation of an individual; the

abstraction being more rigid, inasmuch as the painting is confined to

one point of time. The artist should draw independently of the

accidents of attitude, dress, occasional feeling, and transient

action. He should depict the general spirit of his subject--as if he

were copying from memory, not from a few particular sittings. An

ordinary painter will delineate with rigid fidelity, and will make a

caricature. But the learned artist contrives so to temper his

composition, as to sink all offensive peculiarities and hardnesses of

individuality, without diminishing the striking effect of the

likeness, or acquainting the casual spectator with the secret of his

art. Miss Edgeworth's representations of the Irish character are

actual, and not poetical--nor were they intended to be so. They are

interesting, because they are faithful. If there is poetry about them,

it exists in the personages themselves, not in her representation of

them. She is only the accurate reporter in word of what was poetical

in fact. Hence, moreover, when a deed or incident is striking in

itself, a judicious writer is led to describe it in the most simple

and colourless terms, his own being unnecessary; e. g. if the

greatness of the action itself excites the imagination, or the depth

of the suffering interests the feelings. In the usual phrase, the

circumstances are left to 'speak for themselves'.

Let it not be said that our doctrine is adverse to that individuality

in the delineation of character, which is a principal charm of

fiction. It is not necessary for the ideality of a composition to

avoid those minuter shades of difference between man and man, which

give to poetry its plausibility and life; but merely such violation of

general nature, such improbabilities, wanderings, or coarsenesses, as

interfere with the refined and delicate enjoyment of the imagination;

which would have the elements of beauty extracted out of the confused

multitude of ordinary actions and habits, and combined with

consistency and ease. Nor does it exclude the introduction of

imperfect or odious characters. The original conception of a weak or

guilty mind may have its intrinsic beauty. And much more so, when it

is connected with a tale which finally adjusts whatever is

reprehensible in the personages themselves. Richard and Iago are

subservient to the plot. Moral excellence of character may sometimes

be even a fault. The Clytemnestra of Euripides is so interesting, that

the divine vengeance, which is the main subject of the drama, seems

almost unjust. Lady Macbeth, on the contrary, is the conception of one

deeply learned in the poetical art. She is polluted with the most

heinous crimes, and meets the fate she deserves. Yet there is nothing

in the picture to offend the taste, and much to feed the imagination.

Romeo and Juliet are too good for the termination to which the plot

leads--so are Ophelia and the bride of Lammermoor. In these cases

there is something inconsistent with correct beauty, and therefore

unpoetical. We do not say the fault could be avoided without

sacrificing more than would be gained; still it is a fault. It is

scarcely possible for a poet satisfactorily to connect innocence with

ultimate unhappiness, when the notion of a future life is excluded.

Honours paid to the memory of the dead are some alleviation of the

harshness. In his use of the doctrine of a future life, Southey is

admirable. Other writers are content to conduct their heroes to

temporal happiness--Southey refuses present comfort to his Ladurlad,

Thalaba, and Roderick, but carries them on through suffering to

another world. The death of his hero is the termination of the action;

yet so little in two of them, at least, does this catastrophe excite

sorrowful feelings, that some readers may be startled to be reminded

of the fact. If a melancholy is thrown over the conclusion of the

_Roderick_, it is from the peculiarities of the hero's previous

history.

Opinions, feelings, manners, and customs, are made poetical by the

delicacy or splendour with which they are expressed. This is seen in

the _ode_, _elegy_, _sonnet_, and _ballad_; in which a single idea

perhaps, or familiar occurrence, is invested by the poet with pathos

or dignity. The ballad of _Old Robin Gray_ will serve, for an

instance, out of a multitude; again, Lord Byron's _Hebrew Melody_,

beginning 'Were my bosom as false', &c.; or Cowper's _Lines on his

Mother's Picture_; or Milman's 'Funeral Hymn' in the _Martyr of

Antioch_; or Milton's _Sonnet on his Blindness_; or Bernard Barton's

_Dream_. As picturesque specimens, we may name Campbell's _Battle of

the Baltic_; or Joanna Baillie's _Chough and Crow_; and for the more

exalted and splendid style, Gray's _Bard_; or Milton's _Hymn on the

Nativity_; in which facts, with which every one is familiar, are made

new by the colouring of a poetical imagination. It must all along be

observed, that we are not adducing instances for their own sake; but

in order to illustrate our general doctrine, and to show its

applicability to those compositions which are, by universal consent,

acknowledged to be poetical.

The department of poetry we are now speaking of, is of much wider

extent than might at first sight appear. It will include such

moralizing and philosophical poems as Young's _Night Thoughts_, and

Byron's _Childe Harold_.[22] There is much bad taste, at present, in

the judgement passed on compositions of this kind. It is the fault of

the day to mistake mere eloquence for poetry; whereas, in direct

opposition to the conciseness and simplicity of the poet, the talent

of the orator consists in making much of a single idea. '_Sic dicet

ille ut verset saepe multis modis eandem et unam rem, ut haereat in

eadem commoreturque sententia._' This is the great art of Cicero

himself, who, whether he is engaged in statement, argument, or

raillery, never ceases till he has exhausted the subject; going round

about it, and placing it in every different light, yet without

repetition to offend or weary the reader. This faculty seems to

consist in the power of throwing off harmonious sentences, which,

while they have a respectable proportion of meaning, yet are

especially intended to charm the ear. In popular poems, common ideas

are unfolded with copiousness, and set off in polished verse--and this

is called poetry. In the _Pleasures of Hope_ we find this done with

exquisite taste; but it is in his minor poems that the author's

powerful and free poetical genius rises to its natural elevation. In

_Childe Harold_, too, the writer is carried through his Spenserian

stanza with the unweariness and equable fullness of accomplished

eloquence; opening, illustrating, and heightening one idea, before he

passes on to another. His composition is an extended funeral oration

over buried joys and pleasures. His laments over Greece, Rome, and the

fallen in various engagements, have quite the character of panegyrical

orations; while by the very attempt to describe the celebrated

buildings and sculptures of antiquity, he seems to confess that _they_

are the poetical text, his the rhetorical comment. Still it is a work

of splendid talent, though, as a whole, not of the highest poetical

excellence. Juvenal is, perhaps, the only ancient author who

habitually substitutes declamation for poetry.[23]

[22] We would here mention Rogers's _Italy_, if such a

cursory notice could convey our high opinion of its merit.

[23] The difference between oratory and poetry is well

illustrated by a passage in a recent tragedy.

_Col._ Joined! by what tie?

_Rien._ By hatred--

By danger--the two hands that tightest grasp

Each other--the two cords that soonest knit

A fast and stubborn tie; your true love knot

Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch

Of pliant interest, or the dust of time,

Or the pin-point of temper, loose or rot

Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate,

They are sure weavers--they work for the storm,

The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; their knot

Endures till death.

The idea is good, and if expressed in a line or two, might

have been poetry--spread out into nine or ten lines, it

yields but a languid and ostentatious declamation.

The _philosophy of mind_ may equally be made subservient to poetry, as

the philosophy of nature. It is a common fault to mistake a mere

knowledge of the heart for poetical talent. Our greatest masters have

known better;--they have subjected metaphysics to their art. In

_Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Richard_, and _Othello_, the philosophy of mind

is but the material of the poet. These personages are ideal; they are

effects of the contact of a given internal character with given

outward circumstances, the results of combined conditions determining

(so to say) a moral curve of original and inimitable properties.

Philosophy is exhibited in the same subserviency to poetry in many

parts of Crabbe's _Tales of the Hall_. In the writings of this author

there is much to offend a refined taste; but at least in the work in

question there is much of a highly poetical cast. It is a

representation of the action and re-action of two minds upon each

other and upon the world around them. Two brothers of different

characters and fortunes, and strangers to each other, meet. Their

habits of mind, the formation of those habits by external

circumstances, their respective media of judgement, their points of

mutual attraction and repulsion, the mental position of each in

relation to a variety of trifling phenomena of every-day nature and

life, are beautifully developed in a series of tales moulded into a

connected narrative. We are tempted to single out the fourth book,

which gives an account of the childhood and education of the younger

brother, and which for variety of thought as well as fidelity of

description is in our judgement beyond praise. The Waverley novels

would afford us specimens of a similar excellence. One striking

peculiarity of these tales is the author's practice of describing a

group of characters bearing the same general features of mind, and

placed in the same general circumstances; yet so contrasted with each

other in minute differences of mental constitution, that each diverges

from the common starting-place into a path peculiar to himself. The

brotherhood of villains in _Kenilworth_, of knights in _Ivanhoe_, and

of enthusiasts in _Old Mortality_ are instances of this. This bearing

of character and plot on each other is not often found in Byron's

poems. The Corsair is intended for a remarkable personage. We pass by

the inconsistencies of his character, considered by itself. The grand

fault is that, whether it be natural or not, we are obliged to accept

the author's word for the fidelity of his portrait. We are told, not

shown, what the hero was. There is nothing in the plot which results

from his peculiar formation of mind. An every-day bravo might equally

well have satisfied the requirements of the action. Childe Harold,

again, if he is any thing, is a being professedly isolated from the

world, and uninfluenced by it. One might as well draw Tityrus's stags

grazing in the air, as a character of this kind; which yet, with more

or less alteration, passes through successive editions in his other

poems. Byron had very little versatility or elasticity of genius; he

did not know how to make poetry out of existing materials. He declaims

in his own way, and has the upper hand as long as he is allowed to go

on; but, if interrogated on principles of nature and good sense, he is

at once put out and brought to a stand. Yet his conception of

Sardanapalus and Myrrha is fine and ideal, and in the style of

excellence which we have just been admiring in Shakespeare and Scott.

These illustrations of Aristotle's doctrine may suffice.

Now let us proceed to a fresh position; which, as before, shall first

be broadly stated, then modified and explained. How does originality

differ from the poetical talent? Without affecting the accuracy of a

definition, we may call the latter the originality of right moral

feeling.

Originality may perhaps be defined as the power of abstracting for

oneself, and is in thought what strength of mind is in action. Our

opinions are commonly derived from education and society. Common minds

transmit as they receive, good and bad, true and false; minds of

original talent feel a continual propensity to investigate subjects

and strike out views for themselves;--so that even old and established

truths do not escape modification and accidental change when subjected

to this process of mental digestion. Even the style of original

writers is stamped with the peculiarities of their minds. When

originality is found apart from good sense, which more or less is

frequently the case, it shows itself in paradox and rashness of

sentiment, and eccentricity of outward conduct. Poetry, on the other

hand, cannot be separated from its good sense, or taste, as it is

called; which is one of its elements. It is originality energizing in

the world of beauty; the originality of grace, purity, refinement, and

feeling. We do not hesitate to say, that poetry is ultimately founded

on correct moral perception;--that where there is no sound principle

in exercise there will be no poetry, and that on the whole

(originality being granted) in proportion to the standard of a

writer's moral character, will his compositions vary in poetical

excellence. This position, however, requires some explanation.[24]

[24] A living prelate, in his Academical Prelections, even

suggests the converse of our position--'_Neque enim facile

crediderim de eo qui semel hac imbutus fuerit disciplina, qui

in id tota mentis acie assuefactus fuerit incumbere, ut quid

sit in rebus decens, quid pulchrum, quid congruum, penitus

intueretur, quin idem harum rerum perpetuum amorem foveat, et

cum ab his studiis discesserit, etiam ad reliqua vitae

officia earum imaginem quasi animo infixam transferat._'

Of course, then, we do not mean to imply that a poet must necessarily

_display_ virtuous and religious feeling;--we are not speaking of the

actual _material_ of poetry, but of its _sources_. A right moral state

of heart is the formal and scientific condition of a poetical mind.

Nor does it follow from our position that every poet must in fact be a

man of consistent and practical principle; except so far as good

feeling commonly produces or results from good practice. Burns was a

man of inconsistent practice--still, it is known, of much really sound

principle at bottom. Thus his acknowledged poetical talent is in no

wise inconsistent with the truth of our doctrine, which will refer the

beauty which exists in his compositions to the remains of a virtuous

and diviner nature within him. Nay, further than this, our theory

holds good even though it be shown that a bad man may write a poem. As

motives short of the purest lead to actions intrinsically good, so

frames of mind short of virtuous will produce a partial and limited

poetry. But even where it is exhibited, the poetry of a vicious mind

will be inconsistent and debased; i. e. so far only such, as the

traces and shadows of holy truth still remain upon it. On the other

hand, a right moral feeling places the mind in the very centre of that

circle from which all the rays have their origin and range; whereas

minds otherwise placed command but a portion of the whole circuit of

poetry. Allowing for human infirmity and the varieties of opinion,

Milton, Spenser, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Southey, may be considered,

as far as their writings go, to approximate to this moral centre. The

following are added as further illustrations of our meaning. Walter

Scott's centre is chivalrous honour; Shakespeare exhibits the [Greek:

êthos], the physiognomy of an unlearned and undisciplined piety; Homer

the religion of nature and the heart, at times debased by polytheism.

All these poets are religious:--the occasional irreligion of Virgil's

poetry is painful to the admirers of his general taste and delicacy.

Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_ is a magnificent composition, and has

high poetical beauties; but to a delicate judgement there is something

intrinsically unpoetical in the end to which it is devoted, the

praises of revel and sensuality. It corresponds to a process of

clever reasoning erected on an untrue foundation--the one is a

fallacy, the other is out of taste. Lord Byron's _Manfred_ is in parts

intensely poetical; yet the refined mind naturally shrinks from the

spirit which here and there reveals itself, and the basis on which the

fable is built. From a perusal of it we should infer, according to the

above theory, that there was right and fine feeling in the poet's

mind, but that the central and consistent character was wanting. From

the history of his life we know this to be the fact. The connexion

between want of the religious principle and want of poetical feeling,

is seen in the instances of Hume and Gibbon; who had radically

unpoetical minds. Rousseau is not an exception to our doctrine, for

his heart was naturally religious. Lucretius too had much poetical

talent; but his work evinces that his miserable philosophy was rather

the result of a bewildered judgement than a corrupt heart.

According to the above theory, revealed religion should be especially

poetical--and it is so in fact. While its disclosures have an

originality in them to engage the intellect, they have a beauty to

satisfy the moral nature. It presents us with those ideal forms of

excellence in which a poetical mind delights, and with which all grace

and harmony are associated. It brings us into a new world--a world of

overpowering interest, of the sublimest views, and the tenderest and

purest feelings. The peculiar grace of mind of the New Testament

writers is as striking as the actual effect produced upon the hearts

of those who have imbibed their spirit. At present we are not

concerned with the practical, but the poetical nature of revealed

truth. With Christians a poetical view of things is a duty--we are bid

to colour all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in

every event, and a superhuman tendency. Even our friends around are

invested with unearthly brightness--no longer imperfect men, but

beings taken into divine favour, stamped with his seal, and in

training for future happiness. It may be added that the virtues

peculiarly Christian are especially poetical;--meekness, gentleness,

compassion, contentment, modesty, not to mention the devotional

virtues: whereas the ruder and more ordinary feelings are the

instruments of rhetoric more justly than of poetry--anger,

indignation, emulation, martial spirit, and love of independence.

A few remarks on poetical composition, and we have done.--The art of

composition is merely accessory to the poetical talent. But where that

talent exists it necessarily gives its own character to the style, and

renders it perfectly different from all others. As the poet's habits

of mind lead to contemplation rather than communication with others,

he is more or less obscure, according to the particular style of

poetry he has adopted; less so, in epic or narrative and dramatic

representation--more so, in odes and choruses. He will be obscure,

moreover, from the depth of his feelings, which require a congenial

reader to enter into them--and from their acuteness, which shrinks

from any formal accuracy in the expression of them. And he will be

obscure, not only from the carelessness of genius and from the

originality of his conceptions, but (it may be) from natural

deficiency in the power of clear and eloquent expression, which, we

must repeat, is a talent distinct from poetry, though often mistaken

for it.

Dexterity in composition, or _eloquence_ as it may be called in a

contracted sense of the word, is however manifestly more or less

necessary in every branch of literature, though its elements may be

different in each. _Poetical_ eloquence consists, first in the power

of illustration--which the poet uses, not as the orator, voluntarily,

for the sake of clearness or ornament; but almost by constraint, as

the sole outlet and expression of intense inward feeling. The

spontaneous power of comparison is in some poetical minds entirely

wanting; these of course cannot show to advantage as poets.--Another

talent necessary to composition is the power of unfolding the meaning

in an orderly manner. A poetical mind is often too impatient to

explain itself justly; it is overpowered by a rush of emotions, which

sometimes want of power, sometimes the indolence of inward enjoyment

prevents it from describing. Nothing is more difficult than to analyse

the feelings of our own minds; and the power of doing so, whether

natural or acquired, is clearly distinct from experiencing them. Yet,

though distinct from the poetical talent, it is obviously necessary to

its exhibition. Hence it is a common praise bestowed upon writers,

that they express what we have often felt but could never describe.

The power of arrangement, which is necessary for an extended poem, is

a modification of the same talent;--being to poetry what method is to

logic. Besides these qualifications, poetical compositions requires

that command of language which is the mere effect of practice. The

poet is a compositor; words are his types; he must have them within

reach, and in unlimited abundance. Hence the need of careful labour to

the accomplished poet--not in order that his diction may attract, but

that language may be subjected to him. He studies the art of

composition as we might learn dancing or elocution; not that we may

move or speak according to rule, but that by the very exercise our

voice and carriage may become so unembarrassed as to allow of our

doing what we will with them.

A talent for composition then is no essential part of poetry, though

indispensable to its exhibition. Hence it would seem that attention to

the language _for its own sake_ evidences not the true poet but the

mere artist. Pope is said to have tuned our tongue. We certainly owe

much to him--his diction is rich, musical, and expressive. Still he is

not on this account a poet; he elaborated his composition for its own

sake. If we give him poetical praise on this account, we may as

appropriately bestow it on a tasteful cabinet-maker. This does not

forbid us to ascribe the grace of his verse to an inward principle of

poetry, which supplied him with archetypes of the beautiful and

splendid to work by. But a similar internal gift must direct the skill

of every fancy-artist who subserves the luxuries and elegancies of

life. On the other hand, though Virgil is celebrated as a master of

composition, yet his style is so identified with his conceptions, as

their outward development, as to preclude the possibility of our

viewing the one apart from the other. In Milton, again, the harmony of

the verse is but the echo of the inward music which the thoughts of

the poet breathe. In Moore's style the ornament continually outstrips

the sense. Cowper and Walter Scott, on the other hand, are slovenly in

their versification. Sophocles writes, on the whole, without studied

attention to the style; but Euripides frequently affects a simplicity

and prettiness which exposed him to the ridicule of the comic poets.

Lastly, the style of Homer's poems is perfect in their particular

department. It is free, manly, simple, perspicuous, energetic, and

varied. It is the style of one who rhapsodized without deference to

hearer or judge, in an age prior to the temptations which more or less

prevailed over succeeding writers--before the theatre had degraded

poetry into an exhibition, and criticism narrowed it into an art.

THOMAS CARLYLE

1795-1881

THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKESPEARE (1840)

The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old

ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain

rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific

knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world

vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving

wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with

the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see

our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character

of Poet; a character which does not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure

belonging to all ages; whom all ages possess, when once he is

produced, whom the newest age as the oldest may produce;--and will

produce, always when Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in

no age is it other than possible that he may be shaped into a Poet.

Hero, Prophet, Poet,--many different names, in different times and

places, do we give to Great Men; according to varieties we note in

them, according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves!

We might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark

again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the

different _sphere_ constitutes the grand origin of such distinction;

that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will,

according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess,

I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be _all_ sorts of

men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas,

would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic

warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy

there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator,

Philosopher;--in one or the other degree, he could have been, he is

all these. So too I cannot understand how a Mirabeau, with that great

glowing heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears

that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and

touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education

led him thitherward. The grand fundamental character is that of Great

Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like

Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical

men withal; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and

geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear

deep-seeing eye: there it lies; no man whatever, in what province

soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did

diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can easily believe it;

they had done things a little harder than these! Burns, a gifted

song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau. Shakespeare,--one

knows not what _he_ could not have made, in the supreme degree.

True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not make all

great men, more than all other men, in the self-same mould. Varieties

of aptitude doubtless; but infinitely more of circumstance; and far

oftenest it is the _latter_ only that are looked to. But it is as with

common men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a vague

capability of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman; and make him

into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: he is then and thenceforth that

and nothing else. And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a

street-porter staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at

hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of cloth and

small Whitechapel needle,--it cannot be considered that aptitude of

Nature alone has been consulted here either!--The Great Man also, to

what shall he be bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become

Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inexplicably complex

controversial-calculation between the world and him! He will read the

world and its laws; the world with its laws will be there to be read.

What the world, on _this_ matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said,

the most important fact about the world.--

* * * * *

Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them.

In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; _Vates_ means

both Prophet and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well

understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they

are still the same; in this most important respect especially, That

they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the

Universe; what Goethe calls 'the open secret'. 'Which is the great

secret?' asks one.--'The _open_ secret,'--open to all, seen by almost

none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the

Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of

Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, from the

starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the Appearance of

Man and his work, is but the _vesture_, the embodiment that renders it

visible. This divine mystery _is_ in all times and in all places;

veritably is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked; and

the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as the

realized Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace

matter,--as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some

upholsterer had put together! It could do no good, at present, to

_speak_ much about this; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do

not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful

pity;--a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise!

But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the _Vates_,

whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither

to make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message;

he is to reveal that to us,--that sacred mystery which he more than

others lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows

it;--I might say, he has been driven to know it; without consent asked

of _him_, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once

more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man

too could not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live in the

shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the

very fact of things. A man, once more, in earnest with the Universe,

though all others were but toying with it. He is a _Vates_, first of

all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet,

participators in the 'open secret,' are one.

With respect to their distinction again: The _Vates_ Prophet, we might

say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good

and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the _Vates_ Poet on what the Germans

call the æsthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may

call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to

love. But indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot

be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love: how

else shall he know what it is we are to do? The highest Voice ever

heard on this Earth said withal, 'Consider the lilies of the field;

they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was

not arrayed like one of these.' A glance, that, into the deepest deep

of Beauty. 'The lilies of the field,'--dressed finer than earthly

princes, springing up there in the humble furrow-field; a beautiful

_eye_ looking out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty! How

could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks

and is, were not inwardly Beauty?--In this point of view, too, a

saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning:

'The Beautiful', he intimates, 'is higher than the Good; the Beautiful

includes in it the Good.' The _true_ Beautiful; which however, I have

said somewhere, 'differs from the _false_, as Heaven does from

Vauxhall!' So much for the distinction and identity of Poet and

Prophet.--

In ancient and also in modern periods, we find a few Poets who are

accounted perfect; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with.

This is noteworthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an

illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect Poet! A vein

of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men; no man is made altogether

of Poetry. We are all poets when we _read_ a poem well. The

'imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante,' is not that the same

faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one but Shakespeare can

embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of _Hamlet_ as Shakespeare

did: but every one models some kind of story out of it; every one

embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where

there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all

definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has _so_ much

more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become

noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbours. World-Poets too,

those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in

the same way. One who rises _so_ far above the general level of Poets

will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to

do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets,

all men, have some touches of the Universal; no man is wholly made of

that. Most Poets are very soon forgotten: but not the noblest

Shakespeare or Homer of them can be remembered _for ever_;--a day

comes when he too is not!

Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true

Poetry and true Speech not Poetical: what is the difference? On this

point many things have been written, especially by late German

Critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. They say,

for example, that the Poet has an _infinitude_ in him; communicates an

_Unendlichkeit_, a certain character of 'infinitude', to whatsoever he

delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is

worth remembering: if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be

found in it. For my own part, I find considerable meaning in the old

vulgar distinction of Poetry being _metrical_, having music in it,

being a Song. Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say

this as soon as anything else: If your delineation be authentically

_musical_, musical not in word only, but in heart and substance, in

all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it,

then it will be poetical; if not, not.--Musical: how much lies in

that! A _musical_ thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated

into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it,

namely the _melody_ that lies hidden in it; the inward harmony of

coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be,

here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious;

naturally utter themselves in Song. The meaning of Song goes deep. Who

is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on

us? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the

edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that!

Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in

it: not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent;--the rhythm

or _tune_ to which the people there _sing_ what they have to say!

Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent of their

own,--though they only _notice_ that of others. Observe too how all

passionate language does of itself become musical,--with a finer music

than the mere accent; the speech of a man even in zealous anger

becomes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. It seems somehow

the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but

wrappages and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of all

things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feeling they

had of the inner structure of Nature; that the soul of all her voices

and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call

_musical Thought_. The Poet is he who _thinks_ in that manner. At

bottom, it turns still on power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity

and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you

see musically; the heart of Nature _being_ everywhere music, if you

can only reach it.

The _Vates_ Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, seems to

hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the _Vates_ Prophet; his

function, and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The

Hero taken as Divinity; the Hero taken as Prophet; then next the Hero

taken only as Poet: does it not look as if our estimate of the Great

Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him

first for a god, then for one god-inspired; and now in the next stage

of it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition

that he is a Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or

such-like!--It looks so; but I persuade myself that intrinsically it

is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man

still there is the _same_ altogether peculiar admiration for the

Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time was.

I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it

is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of

Splendour, Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising _higher_; not

altogether that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in

our like, is getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical

Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last for

ever, does indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in

all provinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great men, all

crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight,

hardly recognizable. Men worship the shows of great men; the most

disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. The

dreariest, fatallest faith; believing which, one would literally

despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon!

A Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show of _him_: yet is

he not obeyed, _worshipped_ after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and

Diademed of the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and

ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns;--a strange

feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that,

on the whole, this is the man! In the secret heart of these people it

still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of

uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and

flashing sun-eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of

a dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do

not we feel it so? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality,

and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us,--as, by God's blessing,

they shall one day be; were faith in the shows of things entirely

swept out, replaced by clear faith in the _things_, so that a man

acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the other non-extant;

what a new livelier feeling towards this Burns were it!

Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets,

if not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakespeare and Dante are

Saints of Poetry; really, if we will think of it, _canonized_, so that

it is impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world,

working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such

result. Dante and Shakespeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in

a kind of royal solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the

general feeling of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as

of complete perfection, invests these two. They _are_ canonized,

though no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it! Such, in spite of

every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our

indestructible reverence for heroism.--We will look a little at these

Two, the Poet Dante and the Poet Shakespeare: what little it is

permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange

itself in that fashion.

* * * * *

Many volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his

Book; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as it

were, irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering,

sorrowstricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived; and

the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes.

It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After

all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The

Book;--and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto,

which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine,

whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face; perhaps of all faces

that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with

the simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow and pain, the

known victory which is also deathless;--significant of the whole

history of Dante! I think it is the mournfullest face that ever was

painted from reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face.

There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle

affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp

contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft

ethereal soul looking out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as

from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! Withal it is a silent pain too,

a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain

of the thing that is eating-out his heart,--as if it were withal a

mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and

strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in protest, and

lifelong unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection all

converted into indignation: an implacable indignation; slow, equable,

silent, like that of a god! The eye too, it looks out as in a kind of

_surprise_, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was of such a sort? This

is Dante: so he looks, this 'voice of ten silent centuries', and sings

us 'his mystic unfathomable song'.

The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds well enough with

this Portrait and this Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper

class of society, in the year 1265. His education was the best then

going; much school-divinity, Aristotelean logic, some Latin

classics,--no inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things:

and Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt,

learned better than most all that was learnable. He has a clear

cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety; this best fruit of

education he had contrived to realize from these scholastics. He knows

accurately and well what lies close to him; but, in such a time,

without printed books or free intercourse, he could not know well what

was distant: the small clear light, most luminous for what is near,

breaks itself into singular _chiaroscuro_ striking on what is far off.

This was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone

through the usual destinies; been twice out campaigning as a soldier

for the Florentine State, been on embassy; had in his thirty-fifth

year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the

Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain

Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank,

and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant

intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account

of this; and then of their being parted; of her being wedded to

another, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure in

Dante's Poem; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all

beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last

in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole

strength of affection loved. She died: Dante himself was wedded; but

it seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest

man, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make

happy.

We will not complain of Dante's miseries: had all gone right with him

as he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podestà, or whatsoever they

call it, of Florence, well accepted among neighbours,--and the world

had wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence

would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb

centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries

(for there will be ten of them and more) had no _Divina Commedia_ to

hear! We will complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for

this Dante; and he, struggling like a man led towards death and

crucifixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give _him_ the choice of

his happiness! He knew not, more than we do, what was really happy,

what was really miserable.

In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some

other confused disturbances rose to such a height, that Dante, whose

party had seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly

forth into banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and

wandering. His property was all confiscated and more; he had the

fiercest feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight

of God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated; tried even

by warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad

only had become worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in

the Florence Archives, dooming this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be

burnt alive. Burnt alive; so it stands, they say: a very curious

civic document. Another curious document, some considerable number of

years later, is a Letter of Dante's to the Florentine Magistrates,

written in answer to a milder proposal of theirs, that he should

return on condition of apologizing and paying a fine. He answers, with

fixed stern pride: 'If I cannot return without calling myself guilty,

I will never return, _nunquam revertar_.'

For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron

to patron, from place to place; proving, in his own bitter words, 'How

hard is the path, _Come è duro calle_.' The wretched are not cheerful

company. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with

his moody humours, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports

of him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for

his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della

Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (_nebulones

ac histriones_) making him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he

said: 'Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself

so entertaining; while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and

have nothing to amuse us with at all?' Dante answered bitterly: 'No,

not strange; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, _Like to

Like_;'--given the amuser, the amusee must also be given! Such a man,

with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not

made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be evident to him

that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit, in this

earth. The earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no

living heart to love him now; for his sore miseries there was no

solace here.

The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him;

that awful reality over which, after all, this Time-world, with its

Florences and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. Florence

thou shalt never see: but Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt

surely see! What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life

altogether? ETERNITY: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou

and all things bound! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made

its home more and more in that awful other world. Naturally his

thoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact important for him. Bodied

or bodiless, it is the one fact important for all men:--but to Dante,

in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape; he

no more doubted of that _Malebolge_ Pool, that it all lay there with

its gloomy circles, with its _alti guai_, and that he himself should

see it, than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if we went

thither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in

speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into 'mystic

unfathomable song'; and this his _Divine Comedy_, the most remarkable

of all modern Books, is the result.

It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see,

a proud thought for him at times, That he, here in exile, could do

this work; that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from

doing it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that

it was great; the greatest a man could do. 'If thou follow thy star,

_Se tu segui tua stella_,'--so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in

his extreme need, still say to himself: 'Follow thou thy star, thou

shalt not fail of a glorious heaven!' The labour of writing, we find,

and indeed could know otherwise, was great and painful for him; he

says, This Book, 'which has made me lean for many years.' Ah yes, it

was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil,--not in sport, but in

grim earnest. His Book, as indeed most good Books are, has been

written, in many senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole

history, this Book. He died after finishing it; not yet very old, at

the age of fifty-six;--broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies

buried in his death-city Ravenna: _Hic claudor Dantes patriis extorris

ab oris_. The Florentines begged back his body, in a century after;

the Ravenna people would not give it. 'Here am I Dante laid, shut out

from my native shores.'

* * * * *

I said, Dante's Poem was a Song: it is Tieck who calls it 'a mystic

unfathomable Song'; and such is literally the character of it.

Coleridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a

sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words,

there is something deep and good in the meaning too. For body and

soul, word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. Song:

we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech! All _old_ Poems, Homer's

and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness,

that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not _sung_ is properly no

Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,--to the great

injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most

part! What we want to get at is the _thought_ the man had, if he had

any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he _could_ speak it out

plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion

of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark,

become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that

we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and

listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,--whose speech _is_ Song.

Pretenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is

for most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business,

that of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be

rhymed;--it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it

was aiming at. I would advise all men who _can_ speak their thought,

not to sing it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious

men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love

the true song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall

we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing

hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing.

I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his _Divine Comedy_ that

it is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there

is a _canto fermo_; it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his

simple _terza rima_, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along

naturally with a sort of _lilt_. But I add, that it could not be

otherwise; for the essence and material of the work are themselves

rhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it

musical;--go _deep_ enough, there is music everywhere. A true inward

symmetry, what one calls an architectural harmony, reigns in it,

proportionates it all: architectural; which also partakes of the

character of music. The three kingdoms, _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_,

_Paradiso_, look out on one another like compartments of a great

edifice; a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled up there, stern,

solemn, awful; Dante's World of Souls! It is, at bottom, the

_sincerest_ of all Poems; sincerity, here too, we find to be the

measure of worth. It came deep out of the author's heart of hearts;

and it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. The people

of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, used to say, '_Eccovi l'

uom ch' è stato all' Inferno_, See, there is the man that was in

Hell!' Ah, yes, he had been in Hell;--in Hell enough, in long severe

sorrow and struggle; as the like of him is pretty sure to have been.

Commedias that come-out _divine_ are not accomplished otherwise.

Thought, true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the

daughter of Pain? Born as out of the black whirlwind;--true _effort_,

in fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is Thought.

In all ways we are 'to become perfect through _suffering_.'--But, as I

say, no work known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has

all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It had made

him 'lean' for many years. Not the general whole only; every

compartment of it is worked-out, with intense earnestness, into truth,

into clear visuality. Each answers to the other; each fits in its

place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. It is the

soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the Middle Ages, rendered for

ever rhythmically visible there. No light task; a right intense one:

but a task which is _done_.

Perhaps one would say, _intensity_, with the much that depends on it,

is the prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come

before us as a large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even

sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but

partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses,

concentered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great

not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through

all objects he pierces as it were down into the heart of Being. I know

nothing so intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the

outermost development of his intensity, consider how he paints. He has

a great power of vision; seizes the very type of a thing; presents

that and nothing more. You remember that first view he gets of the

Hall of Dite: _red_ pinnacle, red-hot cone of iron glowing through the

dim immensity of gloom;--so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and

for ever! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a

brevity, an abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, more

condensed; and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation,

spontaneous to the man. One smiting word; and then there is silence,

nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent than words. It is

strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true likeness

of a matter: cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the

blustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it is 'as the sails

sink, the mast being suddenly broken'. Or that poor Sordello, with the

_cotto aspetto_, 'face _baked_', parched brown and lean; and the

'fiery snow' that falls on them there, a 'fiery snow without wind',

slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs; square

sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in

torment; the lids laid open there; they are to be shut at the Day of

Judgement, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how

Cavalcante falls--at hearing of his Son, and the past tense '_fue_!'

The very movements in Dante have something brief; swift, decisive,

almost military. It is of the inmost essence of his genius this sort

of painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent,

passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent 'pale rages',

speaks itself in these things.

For though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a

man, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him; it is

physiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a

likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of

doing it, as very characteristic of him. In the first place, he could

not have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it,

unless he had, what we may call, _sympathized_ with it,--had sympathy

in him to bestow on objects. He must have been _sincere_ about it too;

sincere and sympathetic: a man without worth cannot give you the

likeness of any object; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and

trivial hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may we not say that

intellect altogether expresses itself in this power of discerning what

an object is? Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will come

out here. Is it even of business, a matter to be done? The gifted man

is he who _sees_ the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as

surplusage: it is his faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that

he discern the true _likeness_, not the false superficial one, of the

thing he has got to work in. And how much of _morality_ is in the kind

of insight we get of anything; 'the eye seeing in all things what it

brought with it the faculty of seeing!' To the mean eye all things are

trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael,

the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No

most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. In the

commonest human face there lies more than Raphael will take away with

him.

Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness

as of fire in dark night; taken on the wider scale, it is everyway

noble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what

qualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a ground of

eternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into

our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too: _della bella

persona, che mi fu tolta_; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a

solace that _he_ will never part from her! Saddest tragedy in these

_alti guai_. And the racking winds, in that _aer bruno_, whirl them

away again, to wail for ever!--Strange to think: Dante was the friend

of this poor Francesca's father; Francesca herself may have sat upon

the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet

also infinite rigour of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante

discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion is that of his

_Divine Comedy's_ being a poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel;

putting those into Hell whom he could not be avenged upon on earth! I

suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any

man, it was in Dante's. But a man who does not know rigour cannot pity

either. His very pity will be cowardly, egoistic,--sentimentality, or

little better. I know not in the world an affection equal to that of

Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love: like

the wail of Aeolean harps, soft, soft; like a child's young

heart;--and then that stern, sore-saddened heart! These longings of

his towards his Beatrice; their meeting together in the _Paradiso_;

his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been purified

by death so long, separated from him so far:--one likens it to the

gong of angels; it is among the purest utterances of affection,

perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of a human soul.

For the _intense_ Dante is intense in all things; he has got into the

essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occasion too

as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity.

Morally great, above all, we must call him; it is the beginning of

all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love;--as indeed,

what are they but the _inverse_ or _converse_ of his love? '_A Dio

spiacenti, ed a' nemici sui_, Hateful to God and to the enemies of

God:' lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion; '_Non

ragionam di lor_, We will not speak of _them_, look only and pass.' Or

think of this: 'They have not the _hope_ to die, _Non han speranza di

morte_.' One day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of

Dante, that he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full

surely _die_; 'that Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.'

Such words are in this man. For rigour, earnestness and depth, he is

not to be paralleled in the modern world; to seek his parallel we must

go into the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique Prophets there.

I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring the

_Inferno_ to the two other parts of the Divine _Commedia_. Such

preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and

is like to be a transient feeling. The _Purgatorio_ and _Paradiso_,

especially the former, one would almost say, is even more excellent

than it. It is a noble thing that _Purgatorio_, 'Mountain of

Purification'; an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If Sin

is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in

Repentance too is man purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act.

It is beautiful how Dante works it out. The _tremolar dell' onde_,

that 'trembling' of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of

morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an

altered mood. Hope has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company

still with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of daemons and reprobate

is under foot; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher,

to the Throne of Mercy itself. 'Pray for me,' the denizens of that

Mount of Pain all say to him. 'Tell my Giovanna to pray for me,' my

daughter Giovanna; 'I think her mother loves me no more!' They toil

painfully up by that winding steep, 'bent-down like corbels of a

building,' some of them,--crushed together so 'for the sin of pride';

yet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have reached

the top, which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have been admitted

in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; the whole Mountain

shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has

perfected repentance, and got its sin and misery left behind! I call

all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought.

But indeed the Three compartments mutually support one another, are

indispensable to one another. The _Paradiso_, a kind of inarticulate

music to me, is the redeeming side of the _Inferno_; the _Inferno_

without it were untrue. All three make up the true Unseen World, as

figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing for ever

memorable, for ever true in the essence of it, to all men. It was

perhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in

this of Dante's; a man _sent_ to sing it, to keep it long memorable.

Very notable with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day

reality, into the Invisible one; and in the second or third stanza, we

find ourselves in the World of Spirits; and dwell there, as among

things palpable, indubitable! To Dante they _were_ so; the real world,

as it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely

higher Fact of a World. At bottom, the one was as _preter_natural as

the other. Has not each man a soul? He will not only be a spirit, but

is one. To the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact; he believes

it, sees it; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say

again, is the saving merit, now as always.

Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, an emblematic

representation of his Belief about this Universe:--some Critic in a

future age, like those Scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased

altogether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an 'Allegory',

perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, of

the soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge world-wide

architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to

be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns;

that these two differ not by _preferability_ of one to the other, but

by incompatibility absolute and infinite; that the one is excellent

and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and

the Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with

everlasting Pity,--all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had

it, is emblemed there. Emblemed: and yet, as I urged the other day,

with what entire truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming!

Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems;

was there, in our Modern European Mind, any thought at all of their

being emblems! Were they not indubitable awful facts; the whole heart

of man taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere

confirming them? So is it always in these things. Men do not believe

an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who

considers this of Dante to have been all got-up as an Allegory, will

commit one sore mistake!--Paganism we recognized as a veracious

expression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the

Universe; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us.

But mark here the difference of Paganism and Christianism; one great

difference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature; the

destinies, efforts, combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in

this world; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law

of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of

the _first_ Thought of men,--the chief recognized virtue, Courage,

Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but

for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only!--

* * * * *

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very

strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's

writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only

the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the

smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning

methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past

inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all

things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they

lived by stands here, in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of

his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation

of all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they; but also

is not he precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not

dead, yet living voiceless.

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at once of one

of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had

hitherto realized for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is

another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard

Christianism' half articulately spoken in the Arab desert, seven

hundred years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among

men, is sung, and emblemed forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men.

In the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess

it? As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For

the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul,

differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer

is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in

swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day, and

for ever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on

this Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his

thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity;

they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in

Saint-Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. The

oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours,

does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak to all men's

hearts. It is the one sole secret of continuing long memorable. Dante,

for depth of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too; his words,

like theirs, come from his very heart. One need not wonder if it were

predicted that his Poem might be the most enduring thing our Europe

has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All

cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer arrangement

never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable

heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of

importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognizable

combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has made much;

great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies of opinion

and practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought.

Homer yet _is_, veritably present face to face with every open soul of

us; and Greece, where is _it_? Desolate for thousands of years; away,

vanished; a bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and

existence of it all gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King

Agamemnon! Greece was; Greece, except in the _words_ it spoke, is not.

The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his 'uses'. A human

soul who has once got into that primal element of _Song_, and sung

forth fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our

existence; feeding through long times the life-_roots_ of all

excellent human things whatsoever,--in a way that 'utilities' will not

succeed well in calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the

quantity of gas-light it saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no

value. One remark I may make: the contrast in this respect between the

Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we

saw, had his Arabians at Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem

to be yet very much where they were. Shall we say, then, Dante's

effect on the world was small in comparison? Not so: his arena is far

more restricted; but also it is far nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less

but more important. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in the

coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies,

crudities, follies: on the great masses alone can he act, and there

with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble,

the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither does he grow

obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure star, fixed there

in the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages kindle

themselves: he is the possession of all the chosen of the world for

uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive Mahomet. In

this way the balance may be made straight again.

But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the

world by what _we_ can judge of their effect there, that a man and his

work are measured. Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man _do_ his

work; the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will grow its

own fruit; and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian

Conquests, so that it 'fills all Morning and Evening Newspapers', and

all Histories, which are a kind of distilled Newspapers; or not

embodied so at all;--what matters that? That is not the real fruit of

it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only as he did something, was

something. If the great Cause of Man, and Man's work in God's Earth,

got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no matter how many

scimitars he drew, how many gold piastres pocketed, and what uproar

and blaring he made in this world,--_he_ was but a loud-sounding

inanity and futility; at bottom, he _was_ not at all. Let us honour

the great empire of _Silence_, once more! The boundless treasury which

we do _not_ jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men!

It is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for each of us to do, in

these loud times.-- --

* * * * *