come to--Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. There are no others
that can really be put into competition with these. Of these four,
Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser as the
poet of romance; Shakespeare as the poet of Nature, in the largest use
of the term; and Milton as the poet of morality. Chaucer describes
things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them to be; Shakespeare, as
they would be; and Milton, as they ought to be. The characteristic of
Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of
Shakespeare, everything.
The peculiarity of Shakespeare's mind was its generic quality; its
power of communication with all other minds, so that it contained a
universe of thought and feeling within itself. He was just like any
other man, but he was like all other men. He was the least of an
egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he
was all that others were, or that they could become. His genius shone
equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the
monarch and the beggar. The world of spirits lay open to him, like
the world of real men and women; and there is the same truth in his
delineations of the one as of the other. Each of his characters is as
much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest, as well as
of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the
mind. His plays alone are properly expressions of the passions, not
descriptions of them.
Chaucer's characters are narrative; Shakespeare's, dramatic; Milton's,
epic. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character. In
Shakespeare there is a continual composition and decomposition of
its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by
its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are
brought in contact with it. Milton took only a few simple principles of
character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur.
The passion in Shakespeare is full of dramatic fluctuation. In Chaucer
it is like the course of a river--strong, full, and increasing; but
in Shakespeare it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and
loud-lashed by furious storms. Milton, on the other hand, takes only
the imaginative part of passion, that which remains after the event,
and abstracts it from the world of action to that of contemplation.
The great fault of a modern school of poetry [the Lake poets] is that
it would reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; or,
what is worse, would divest it both of imaginary splendour and human
passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and
devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakespeare did
not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both
to Nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one
and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the moods of their own
minds.
Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception
of character or passion. Its movement is rapid and devious, and unites
the most opposite extremes. He seems always hurrying from his subject,
even while describing it; but the stroke, like the lightning's, is
as sure as it is sudden. His language and versification are like the
rest of him. He has a magic power over words; they come winged at his
bidding, and seem to know their places. His language is hieroglyphical.
It translates thoughts into visible images. He had an equal genius for
comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies are better than his comedies,
because tragedy is better than comedy. His female characters are the
finest in the world. Lastly, Shakespeare was the least of a coxcomb of
anyone that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.
Shakespeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and
an indifference to personal reputation; in these respects, as in every
other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's works are a
perpetual invocation to the muses, a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts
constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a
perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand warm from the
touch of the ark of faith. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the
prophet vied with each other in his breast. He thought of nobler forms
and nobler things than those he found about him. He strives hard to say
the finest things in the world, and he does say them. In Milton there
is always an appearance of effort; in Shakespeare, scarcely any.
Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every
source of imitation; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other
writer. The power of his mind is stamped on every line. He describes
objects of which he could only have read in books with the vividness of
actual observation.
Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language, except
Shakespeare's, that deserves the name of verse. The sound of his lines
is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very
image.
_Dryden and Pope_
These are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry, as the
four poets of whom I have already treated were of the natural, and they
have produced a kind and degree of excellence which existed equally
nowhere else.
Pope was a man of exquisite faculties and of the most refined taste;
he was a wit and critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the
world. He was the poet not of Nature, but of art. He saw Nature only
dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth
in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others by
his own. His muse never wandered with safety but from his library to
his grotto, or from his grotto into his library back again. That which
was the nearest to him was the greatest; the fashion of the day bore
sway in his mind over the immutable laws of Nature. He had none of the
enthusiasm of poetry; he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion.
Yet within this narrow circle how much, and that how exquisite, was
contained! The wrong end of the magnifier is held to everything, but
still the exhibition is highly curious. If I had to choose, there are
one or two persons--and but one or two--that I should like to have been
better than Pope!
Dryden was a bolder and more various versifier than Pope; he had
greater strength of mind, but he had not the same delicacy of feeling.
Pope describes the thing, and goes on describing his own descriptions,
till he loses himself in verbal repetitions; Dryden recurs to the
object often, and gives us new strokes of character as well as of his
pencil.
_Thomson and Cowper_
Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets; the colours with which
he paints still seem wet. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing
around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. He puts his heart into his
subject, and it is for this reason that he is the most popular of all
our poets. But his verse is heavy and monotonous; it seems always
labouring uphill.
Cowper had some advantages over Thomson, particularly in simplicity
of style, in a certain precision of graphical description, and in a
more careful choice of topics. But there is an effeminacy about him
which shrinks from and repels common and hearty sympathy. He shakes
hands with Nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on; he is delicate
to fastidiousness, and glad to get back to the drawing-room and the
ladies, the sofa, and the tea-urn. He was a nervous man; but to be a
coward is not the way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love.
Still, he is a genuine poet, and deserves his reputation.
_Robert Burns_
Burns was not like Shakespeare in the range of his genius; but there is
something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character
about him. He was as much of a man, not a twentieth part as much of a
poet, as Shakespeare. He had an eye to see, a heart to feel--no more.
His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are
equal to anything; they come up to Nature, and they cannot go beyond
it. His strength is not greater than his weakness; his virtues were
greater than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius; his vices
to his situation.
Nothing could surpass Burns's love-songs in beauty of expression and in
true pathos, except some of the old Scottish ballads themselves. There
is in these a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic
imagery; a closer intimacy with Nature, a more infantine simplicity of
manners, a greater strength of affection, "thoughts that often lie too
deep for tears." The old English ballads are of a gayer turn. They are
adventurous and romantic; but they relate chiefly to good living and
good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes.
_Some Contemporary Poets_
Tom Moore is heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth.
Everything lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while, over all,
love waves his purple light. His levity at last oppresses; his variety
cloys, his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight.
Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Moore's is careless and dissipated.
His passion is always of the same unaccountable character, at once
violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is the passion of a mind
preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to, all other
things. There is nothing less poetical or more repulsive. But still
there is power; and power forces admiration. In vigour of style and
force of conception he surpasses every writer of the present day.
Walter Scott is deservedly the most popular of living poets. He differs
from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of
expression. The force of his mind is picturesque rather than moral. He
is to the great poet what an excellent mimic is to a great actor.
Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. His poetry is not
external, but internal; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his
own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Many of the "Lyrical
Ballads" are of inconceivable beauty, of perfect originality and
pathos. But his powers have been mistaken by the age. He cannot form a
whole. He has not the constructive faculty. His "Excursion" is a proof
of this; the line labours, the sentiment moves slowly, but the poem
stands stock-still.
The Lake school of poetry had its origin in the French Revolution,
or rather in the sentiments and opinions which produced that event.
The world was to be turned topsy-turvy, and poetry was to share its
fate. The paradox they set out with was that all things are by Nature
equally fit subjects for poetry, or rather, that the meanest and most
unpromising are best. They aimed at exciting attention by reversing
the established standards of estimation in the world. An adept in
this school of poetry is jealous of all excellence but his own. He is
slow to admire anything admirable, feels no interest in what is most
interesting to others, no grandeur in anything grand. He sees nothing
but himself and the universe. His egotism is, in some respects, a
madness. The effect of this has been perceived as something odd; but
the cause or principle has never been traced to its source before. The
proofs are to be found throughout many of the poems of Mr. Southey, Mr.
Coleridge, and Mr. Wordsworth.
I may say of Mr. Coleridge that he is the only person I ever knew who
answered to the idea of a man of genius. But his "Ancient Mariner" is
the only work that gives an adequate idea of his natural powers. In
it, however, he seems to "conceive of poetry but as a drunken dream,
reckless, careless, and heedless of past, present, and to come."
I have thus gone through my task. I have felt my subject sinking from
under me as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in nothing.
The interest has unavoidably decreased at almost every step of the
progress, like a play that has its catastrophe in the first or second
act. This, however, I could not help.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
In 1857 Oliver Wendell Holmes (see Vol. V, p. 87) leapt into fame
by his "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" papers in the "Atlantic
Monthly," then edited by Lowell. His "Professor" and "Poet"
series of papers followed, with hardly less success. In these
writings a robust idealism, humour, fancy, and tenderness are so
gently mixed as to amount to genius.
_Every Man His Own Boswell_
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'facts.'
They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know
fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead
after them into decent company like so many bulldogs, ready to let them
slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalisation, or
pleasant fancy? I allow no 'facts' at this table."
I continued, for I was in the talking vein, "This business of
conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens
one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. They are
the talkers that have what may be called jerky minds. After a jolting
half-hour with one of these jerky companions talking with a dull friend
affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after
holding a squirrel."
"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady boarders.
"Madam," said I, "all men are bores except when we want them. Talking
is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the
strings to stop the vibrations as in twanging them to bring out the
music. There is this, too, about talking," I continued; "it shapes our
thoughts for us; the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls
the pebbles on the shore. Writing or printing is like shooting with a
rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it, but talking is like
playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine--if it is within reach,
and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it."
The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior
excellence.
_The Ageing of Ideas_
"I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody
has made before me. I never wrote a 'good' line in my life, but the
moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. The rapidity
with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the
squares of their importance. A great calamity, for instance, is as old
as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward
through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before
its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning."
I wish I had not said all this then and there. The pale schoolmistress,
in her mourning dress, was looking at me with a wild sort of
expression; and all at once she melted away from her seat like an image
of snow; a sling shot could not have brought her down better. God
forgive me!
_The Confusion of Personality_
"We must remember that talking is one of the fine arts--the noblest,
the most important, and the most difficult. It is not easy at the best
for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's
thoughts, there are so many of them."
The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.
"When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together," I
continued, "it is natural that among the six there should be more or
less confusion and misapprehension."
Our landlady turned pale. No doubt she thought there was a screw
loose in my intellect, and that it involved the probable loss of a
boarder. Everybody looked up, and the old gentleman opposite slid the
carving-knife to one side, as it were, carelessly.
"I think," I said, "I can make it plain that there are at least six
personalities distinctly to be recognised as taking part in that
dialogue between John and Thomas.
THREE JOHNS
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike
him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but
often very unlike either.
THREE THOMASES
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
3. John's ideal Thomas.
"It follows that until a man can be found who knows himself as his
Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be
at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. No wonder
two disputants often get angry when there are six of them talking and
listening all at the same time."
A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by
a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at
table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to
boarding-houses, was on its way to me _viâ_ this unlettered Johannes.
He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that
there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical
inference was hasty and illogical--but in the meantime he had eaten the
peaches.
_More on Books_
"Some of you boarders ask me why I don't write a novel, or something
of that kind. Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first
place I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the
proper medium for such revelations. Again, I am terribly afraid I
should show up all my friends, and I am afraid all my friends would not
bear showing up very well. And sometimes I have thought I might be too
dull to write such a story as I should wish to write. And, finally, I
think it is very likely I _shall_ write a story one of these days.
"I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too
dull to write a good story. When one arrives at the full and final
conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most
tranquillising and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind.
"How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, 'I hate
books!' I did not recognise in him inferiority of literary taste
half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character, and fearless
acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think
there are a great many who read, with a mark to keep their place, that
really 'hate books,' but never had the wit to find it out, or the
manliness to own it."
_Dual Consciousness_
I am so pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain here,
perhaps for years.
"Do thoughts have regular cycles? Take this: All at once a conviction
flashes through us that we have been in the same precise circumstances
as at the present instant once or many times before."
When I mentioned this the Schoolmistress said she knew the feeling
well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she was a
ghost, sometimes.
The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it. He
had just lighted a cheroot the other day when a tremendous conviction
came over him that he had done just that same thing ever so many times
before.
"How do I account for it? Well, some think that one of the hemispheres
of the brain hangs fire, and the small interval between the perceptions
of the nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period,
and therefore the second perception appears to be the copy of another,
ever so old."
_The Race of Life_
"Nothing strikes one more in the race of life than to see how many give
out in the first half of the course. 'Commencement day' always reminds
me of the start of the 'Derby.' Here we are at Cambridge and a class is
first 'graduating.' Poor Harry! he was to have been there, but he has
paid forfeit.
"_Ten years gone._ First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or
three bolted. 'Cassock,' a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest.
'Meteor' has pulled up.
"_Twenty years._ Second corner turned. 'Cassock' has dropped from the
front, and 'Judex,' an iron-grey, has the lead. But look! how they have
thinned out! Down flat--five--six--how many? They will not get up again
in this race be very sure!
"_Thirty years._ Third corner turned. 'Dives,' bright sorrel, ridden
by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast--is getting
to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one that now
shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt
'Asteroid,' with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the
sort that lasts. 'Cassock' is now taking it easily in a gentle trot.
"_Forty years._ More dropping off, but places much as before.
"_Fifty years._ Race over. All that are on the course are coming
in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the
winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf
where there is no more jockeying, or straining for victory! Well, the
world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these
matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how!
"I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by
looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given
the name of Pearly Nautilus.
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
_Sensibility and Scholarship_
"Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which
they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. The side-door
opens at once into the sacred chambers. There is almost always at
least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a
mother's bosom. Be very careful to whom you entrust one of these keys
of the side-door. Some of those who come in at the side-door have a
scale of your whole nervous system, and can play on all the gamut of
your sensibilities in semi-tones. Married life is the school in which
the most accomplished artists in this department are found. Be very
careful to whom you give the side-door key.
"The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its
great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries,
if any; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of
manhood, and I think if we could ask Abraham to dine with us men of
letters next Saturday we should feel honoured by his company."
_A Growing Romance_
"I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating especially
to my early life, if I thought you would like to hear them."
The schoolmistress turned in her chair and said, "If we should _like_
to hear them--we should _love_ to."
So I drew my chair a shade nearer her, and went on to speak of voices
that had bewitched me.
"I wish you could hear my sister's voice," said the schoolmistress.
"If it is like yours it must be a pleasant one," said I.
Lately she has been walking early and has brought back roses in her
cheeks. I love the damask rose best of all flowers.
Our talk had been of trees, and I had been comparing the American
and the English elms in the walk we call the Mall. "Will you walk
out and look at those elms with me after breakfast?" I said to the
schoolmistress.
I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that she blushed. On the
contrary, she turned a little bit pale, but smiled brightly, and said,
"Yes, with pleasure." So she went to fetch her bonnet, and the old
gentleman opposite followed her with his eyes, and said he wished he
was a young fellow.
"This is the shortest way," she said, as we came to the corner.
"Then we won't take it," said I.