(an expression which might have been Mr Tennyson’s), on which I have
already commented; and to one who is penetrated with a sense of the real
simplicity of Homer, this subtle sophistication of the thought is, I
think, very perceptible even in such lines as these,
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,
which I have seen quoted as perfectly Homeric. Perfect simplicity can be
obtained only by a genius of which perfect simplicity is an essential
characteristic.
So true is this, that when a genius essentially subtle, or a genius
which, from whatever cause, is in its essence not truly and broadly
simple, determines to be perfectly plain, determines not to admit a
shade of subtlety or curiosity into its expression, it cannot ever then
attain real simplicity; it can only attain a semblance of
simplicity[66]. French criticism, richer in its vocabulary than ours,
has invented a useful word to distinguish this semblance (often very
beautiful and valuable) from the real quality. The real quality it calls
_simplicité_, the semblance _simplesse_. The one is natural simplicity,
the other is artificial simplicity. What is called simplicity in the
productions of a genius essentially not simple, is, in truth,
_simplesse_. The two are distinguishable from one another the moment
they appear in company. For instance, let us take the opening of the
narrative in Wordsworth’s _Michael_:
Upon the forest-side in Grasmere Vale
There dwelt a shepherd, Michael was his name;
An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength; his mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs;
And in his shepherd’s calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Now let us take the opening of the narrative in Mr Tennyson’s _Dora_:
With Farmer Allan at the farm abode
William and Dora. William was his son,
And she his niece. He often looked at them,
And often thought, ‘I’ll make them man and wife’.
The simplicity of the first of these passages is _simplicité_; that of
the second, _simplesse_. Let us take the end of the same two poems:
first, of _Michael_:
The cottage which was named the Evening Star
Is gone, the ploughshare has been through the ground
On which it stood; great changes have been wrought
In all the neighbourhood: yet the oak is left
That grew beside their door: and the remains
Of the unfinished sheepfold may be seen
Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Ghyll.
And now, of _Dora_:
So those four abode
Within one house together; and as years
Went forward, Mary took another mate:
But Dora lived unmarried till her death.
A heedless critic may call both of these passages simple if he will.
Simple, in a certain sense, they both are; but between the simplicity of
the two there is all the difference that there is between the simplicity
of Homer and the simplicity of Moschus.
But, whether the hexameter establish itself or not, whether a truly
simple and rapid blank verse be obtained or not, as the vehicle for a
standard English translation of Homer, I feel sure that this vehicle
will not be furnished by the ballad-form. On this question about the
ballad-character of Homer’s poetry, I see that Professor Blackie
proposes a compromise: he suggests that those who say Homer’s poetry is
pure ballad-poetry, and those who deny that it is ballad-poetry at all,
should split the difference between them; that it should be agreed that
Homer’s poems are ballads _a little_, but not so much as some have said.
I am very sensible to the courtesy of the terms in which Mr Blackie
invites me to this compromise; but I cannot, I am sorry to say, accept
it; I cannot allow that Homer’s poetry is ballad-poetry at all. A want
of capacity for sustained nobleness seems to me inherent in the
ballad-form when employed for epic poetry. The more we examine this
proposition, the more certain, I think, will it become to us. Let us but
observe how a great poet, having to deliver a narrative very weighty and
serious, instinctively shrinks from the ballad-form as from a form not
commensurate with his subject-matter, a form too narrow and shallow for
it, and seeks for a form which has more amplitude and impressiveness.
Everyone knows the _Lucy Gray_ and the _Ruth_ of Wordsworth. Both poems
are excellent; but the subject-matter of the narrative of _Ruth_ is much
more weighty and impressive to the poet’s own feeling than that of the
narrative of _Lucy Gray_, for which latter, in its unpretending
simplicity, the ballad-form is quite adequate. Wordsworth, at the time
he composed _Ruth_, his great time, his _annus mirabilis_, about 1800,
strove to be simple; it was his mission to be simple; he loved the
ballad-form, he clung to it, because it was simple. Even in _Ruth_ he
tried, one may say, to use it; he would have used it if he could: but
the gravity of his matter is too much for this somewhat slight form; he
is obliged to give to his form more amplitude, more augustness, to shake
out its folds.
The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
That is beautiful, no doubt, and the form is adequate to the
subject-matter. But take this, on the other hand:
I, too, have passed her on the hills,
Setting her little water-mills
By spouts and fountains wild;
Such small machinery as she turned,
Ere she had wept, ere she had mourned,
A young and happy child.
Who does not perceive how the greater fulness and weight of his matter
has here compelled the true and feeling poet to adopt a form of more
_volume_ than the simple ballad-form?
It is of narrative poetry that I am speaking; the question is about the
use of the ballad-form for _this_. I say that for this poetry (when in
the grand style, as Homer’s is) the ballad-form is entirely inadequate;
and that Homer’s translator must not adopt it, because it even leads
him, by its own weakness, away from the grand style rather than towards
it. We must remember that the matter of narrative poetry stands in a
different relation to the vehicle which conveys it, is not so
independent of this vehicle, so absorbing and powerful in itself, as the
matter of purely emotional poetry. When there comes in poetry what I may
call the _lyrical cry_, this transfigures everything, makes everything
grand; the simplest form may be here even an advantage, because the
flame of the emotion glows through and through it more easily. To go
again for an illustration to Wordsworth; our great poet, since Milton,
by his performance, as Keats, I think, is our great poet by his gift and
promise; in one of his stanzas to the Cuckoo, we have:
And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.
Here the lyrical cry, though taking the simple ballad-form, is as grand
as the lyrical cry coming in poetry of an ampler form, as grand as the
An innocent life, yet far astray!
of _Ruth_; as the