O, say, what angry power Elpenor led
To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?
How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined,
Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?
I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the
nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is it
that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant
to us in the other instances?
For a very simple reason. They are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at all,
for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion--a passion which
never could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity. Ulysses
wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing his
mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in anywise
what was _not_ a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceit
in the last, jar upon us instantly like the most frightful discord in
music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written
the passage.[60]
Therefore we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort,
even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no discord
in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther
questioning, I will endeavour to state the main bearings of this
matter.
The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I said
above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully
with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or over-clouded,
or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less noble state,
according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it
is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his
perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them; and it
is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of
being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly,
the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a
grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong
enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost
efforts of the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow,
white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even
if he melts, losing none of his weight.
So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly,
because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately
the primrose,[61] because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man
who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is
anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield,
or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives
rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever
nothing else than itself--a little flower apprehended in the very
plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the
associations and passions may be that crowd around it. And, in
general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the
men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and
the poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there are
always some subjects which _ought_ to throw him off his balance; some,
by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and
brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the
language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild
in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker
things.
And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing,
and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and
see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think
strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who,
strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences
stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see
is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of
prophetic inspiration.
I separate these classes, in order that their character may be clearly
understood; but of course they are united each to the other by
imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the
influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into
the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less
man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. That is
to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much of
the past and future, and of all things beside and around that which
immediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His mind is
made up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways are
stedfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at once
unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a rock
with deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be moved.
The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at once
carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want to do
before; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears; he
is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come and
go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, to
a great extent, impassive (as shallow people think Dante stern),
receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre
of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches the
feeling, as it were, from far off.
Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, and
can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that
will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and
Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves
subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as
choosing to be so; and therefore admit certain expressions and modes
of thought which are in some sort diseased or false.
Now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon, or are
even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces: we
are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley's above quoted,
not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully
describe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold,
that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever
untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in
literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in
cool blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may
speak wisely and truly of "raging waves of the sea foaming out their
own shame";[62] but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of
the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods,"
"ravenous billows," etc.; and it is one of the signs of the highest
power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his
eyes fixed firmly on the _pure fact_, out of which if any feeling
conies to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.
To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man in
despair desiring that his body may be cast into the sea,
_Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away_,
Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay.
Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged, expression.
"Mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true; "changing" is as
familiar as may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and the
whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which
I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether
equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and
massiveness of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally of
ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it does
not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word "mound" is heavy,
large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant,
nor missing the sight of it. Then the term "changing" has a peculiar
force also. Most people think of waves as rising and falling. But if
they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do
not rise and fall. They change. Change both place and form, but they
do not fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now
higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself
together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same
wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one
knows not how,--becomes another wave.
The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still more
perfectly,--"foam that passed away." Not merely melting, disappearing,
but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave. Then, having
put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, the poet
leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the
opposite fact,--the image of the green mounds that do not change, and
the white and written stones that do not pass away; and thence to
follow out also the associated images of the calm life with the quiet
grave, and the despairing life with the fading foam--
Let no man move his bones.