great masters (or reputed masters) of the Epopee, he found himself at
no loss to characterize the last of the triad--no matter what
qualities he imputed to the first and the second, he knew himself safe
in imputing them all to the third. The mighty modern had everything
that his predecessors were ever _thought_ to have, as well as
something beside.[5] So he expressed the surpassing grandeur of
Milton, by saying that in him nature had embodied, by concentration as
in one focus, whatever excellencies she had scattered separately
amongst her earlier favourites. But, in strict regard to the facts,
this is far from being a faithful statement of the relations between
Milton and his elder brothers of the _Epos_: in sublimity, if that is
what Dryden meant by 'loftiness of thought,' it is not so fair to
class Milton with the greatest of poets, as to class him apart,
retired from all others, sequestered, 'sole-sitting by the shores of
old romance.' In other poets, in Dante for example, there may be rays,
gleams, sudden coruscations, casual scintillations, of the sublime;
but for any continuous and sustained blaze of the sublime, it is in
vain to look for it, _except_ in Milton, making allowances (as before)
for the inspired sublimities of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and of the great
Evangelist's Revelations. As to Homer, no critic who writes from
personal and _direct_ knowledge on the one hand, or who understands
the value of words on the other, ever contended in any critical sense
for sublimity, as a quality to which he had the slightest pretensions.
What! not Longinus? If he did, it would have been of little
consequence; for he had no field of comparison, as we, knowing no
literature but one--whereas we have a range of seven or eight. But he
did not: [Greek: To hypsêlon],[6] or the elevated, in the Longinian
sense, expressed all, no matter of what origin, of what tendency,
which gives a character of life and animation to composition--whatever
raises it above the dead level of flat prosaic style. Emphasis, or
what in an artist's sense gives _relief_ to a passage, causing it to
stand forward, and in advance of what surrounds it--that is the
predominating idea in the 'sublime' of Longinus. And this explains
what otherwise has perplexed his modern interpreters--viz. that
amongst the elements of his sublime, he ranks even the pathetic, _i. e._
(say they) what by connecting itself with the depressing passion
of grief is the very counter-agent to the elevating affection of the
sublime. True, most sapient sirs, my very worthy and approved good
masters: but that very consideration should have taught you to look
back, and reconsider your translation of the capital word [Greek:
hypsos]. It was rather too late in the day, when you had waded
half-seas over in your translation, to find out either that you
yourselves were ignoramuses, or that your principal was an ass.
'Returning were as tedious as go o'er.' And any man might guess how
you would settle such a dilemma. It is, according to you, a little
oversight of your principal: '_humanum aliquid passus est._' We, on
the other hand, affirm that, if an error at all on the part of
Longinus, it is too monstrous for any man to have 'overlooked.' As
long as he could see a pike-staff, he must have seen that. And,
therefore, we revert to _our_ view of the case--viz. that it is
yourselves who have committed the blunder, in translating by the Latin
word _sublimis_[7] at all, but still more after it had received new
determinations under modern usage.
[Footnote 5: The beauty of this famous epigram lies in the _form_ of
the conception. The first had A; the second had B; and when nature, to
furnish out a third, should have given him C, she found that A and B
had already exhausted her cycle; and that she could distinguish her
third great favourite only by giving him both A and B in combination.
But the filling up of this outline is imperfect: for the A
(_loftiness_) and the B (_majesty_) are one and the same quality,
under different names.]
[Footnote 6: Because the Latin word _sublimis_ is applied to objects
soaring upwards, or floating aloft, or at an aerial altitude, and
because the word does _sometimes_ correspond to our idea of the
sublime (in which the notion of height is united with the notion of
moral grandeur), and because, in the excessive vagueness and lawless
latitudinarianism of our common Greek Lexicons, the word [Greek:
hypsos] is translated, _inter alia_, by [Greek: to] _sublime_,
_sublimitas_, &c. Hence it has happened that the title of the little
essay ascribed to Longinus, [Greek: Peri hypsous], is usually rendered
into English, _Concerning the sublime_. But the idea of the Sublime,
as defined, circumscribed, and circumstantiated, in English
literature--an idea altogether of English growth--the _sublime byway
of polar antithesis to the Beautiful_, had no existence amongst
ancient critics; consequently it could have no expression. It is a
great thought, a true thought, a demonstrable thought, that the
Sublime, as thus ascertained, and in contraposition to the Beautiful,
grew up on the basis of _sexual_ distinctions, the Sublime
corresponding to the male, the Beautiful, its anti-pole, corresponding
to the female. Behold! we show you a mystery.]
[Footnote 7: No word has ever given so much trouble to modern critics
as this very word (now under discussion) of the _sublime_. To those
who have little Greek and _no_ Latin, it is necessary in the first
place that we should state what are the most obvious elements of the
word. According to the noble army of etymologists, they are these two
Latin words--_sub_, under, and _limus_, mud. Oh! gemini! who would
have thought of groping for the sublime in such a situation as
that?--unless, indeed, it were that writer cited by Mr. Coleridge, and
just now referred to by ourselves, who complains of frivolous modern
readers, as not being able to raise and sequester their thoughts to
the abstract consideration of dung. Hence it has followed, that most
people have quarrelled with the etymology. "Whereupon the late Dr.
Parr, of pedantic memory, wrote a huge letter to Mr. Dugald Stewart,
but the marrow of which lies in a nutshell, especially being rather
hollow within. The learned doctor, in the first folio, grapples with
the word _sub_, which, says he, comes from the Greek--so much is
clear--but from what Greek, Bezonian? The thoughtless world, says he,
trace it to [Greek: hypo] (hypo), sub, _i. e._ under; but I, Ego,
Samuel Parr, the Birmingham doctor, trace it to [Greek: hyper]
(hyper), super, _i. e._ above; between which the difference is not
less than between a chestnut horse and a horse-chestnut. To this
learned Parrian dissertation on mud, there cannot be much reasonably
to object, except its length in the first place; and, secondly, that
we ourselves exceedingly doubt the common interpretation of _limus_.
Most unquestionably, if the sublime is to be brought into any relation
at all to mud, we shall all be of one mind--that it must be found
_above_. But to us it appears--that when the true modern idea of mud
was in view, _limus_ was not the word used. Cicero, for instance, when
he wishes to call Piso 'filth, mud,' &c. calls him _Cænum_: and, in
general, _limus_ seems to have involved the notion of something
adhesive, and rather to express _plaister_, or artificially prepared
cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly,
our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition;
and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having
room to defend it, for the present we forbear to state it.]
Now, therefore, after this explanation, recurring to the Longinian
critiques upon Homer, it will avail any idolator of Homer but little,
it will affect us not much, to mention that Longinus makes frequent
reference to the _Iliad_, as the great source of the sublime--
'A quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis';
for, as respected Grecian poets, and as respected _his_ sense of the
word, it cannot be denied that Homer was such. He was the great
well-head of inspiration to the Pagan poets of after times, who,
however (_as a body_), moved in the narrowest circle that has ever yet
confined the natural freedom of the poetic mind. But, in conceding
this, let it not be forgotten how much we concede--we concede as much
as Longinus demanded; that is, that Homer furnished an ideal or model
of fluent narration, picturesque description, and the first outlines
of what could be called characteristic delineations of persons.
Accordingly, uninventive Greece--for we maintain loudly that Greece,
in her poets, _was_ uninventive and sterile beyond the example of
other nations--received, as a traditional inheritance, the characters
of the Paladins of the Troad.[8] Achilles is always the
all-accomplished and supreme amongst these Paladins, the Orlando of
ancient romance; Agamemnon, for ever the Charlemagne; Ajax, for ever
the sullen, imperturbable, columnar champion, the Mandricardo, the
_Bergen-op-Zoom_ of his faction, and corresponding to our modern
'Chicken' in the pugilistic ring, who was so called (as the books of
the Fancy say) because he was a 'glutton'; and a 'glutton' in this
sense--that he would take any amount of cramming (_i. e._ any possible
quantum of 'milling,' or 'punishment'). Ulysses, again, is uniformly,
no matter whether in the solemnities of the tragic scene, or the
festivities of the Ovidian romance, the same shy cock, but also sly
cock, with the least thought of a white feather in his plumage; Diomed
is the same unmeaning double of every other hero, just as Rinaldo is
with respect to his greater cousin, Orlando; and so of Teucer,
Meriones, Idomeneus, and the other less-marked characters. The Greek
drama took up these traditional characters, and sometimes deepened,
saddened, exalted the features--as Sophocles, for instance, does with
his 'Ajax Flagellifer'--Ajax the knouter of sheep--where, by the way,
the remorse and penitential grief of Ajax for his own self-degradation,
and the depth of his affliction for the triumph which he had afforded to
his enemies--taken in connection with the tender fears of his wife,
Tecmessa, for the fate to which his gloomy despair was too manifestly
driving him; her own conscious desolation, and the orphan weakness of
her son, in the event which she too fearfully anticipates--the final
suicide of Ajax; the brotherly affection of Teucer to the widow and the
young son of the hero, together with the unlooked-for sympathy of
Ulysses, who, instead of exulting in the ruin of his antagonist, mourns
over it with generous tears--compose a situation, and a succession of
situations, not equalled in the Greek tragedy; and, in that instance, we
see an effort, rare in Grecian poetry, of conquest achieved by
idealisation over a mean incident--viz. the hallucination of brain in
Ajax, by which he mistakes the sheep for his Grecian enemies, ties them
up for flagellation, and scourges them as periodically as if he were a
critical reviewer. But really, in one extremity of this madness, where
he fixes upon an old ram for Agamemnon, as the leader of the flock, the
[Greek: anax andrôn Agamemnôn], there is an extravagance of the
ludicrous against which, though not exhibited scenically, but simply
narrated, no solemnity of pathos could avail; even in narration, the
violation of tragical dignity is insufferable, and is as much worse than
the hyper-tragic horrors of _Titus Andronicus_ (a play which is usually
printed, without reason, amongst those of Shakspeare) as absolute farce
or contradiction of all pathos must inevitably be a worse indecorum than
physical horrors which simply outrage it by excess. Let us not,
therefore, hear of the judgment displayed upon the Grecian stage, when
even Sophocles, the chief master of dramatic economy and scenical
propriety, could thus err by an aberration so far transcending the most
memorable violation of stage decorum which has ever been charged upon
the English drama.
[Footnote 8: There is a difficulty in assigning any term as
comprehensive enough to describe the Grecian heroes and their
antagonists, who fought at Troy. The seven chieftains against Thebes
are described sufficiently as Theban captains; but, to say _Trojan_
chieftains, would express only the heroes of one side; _Grecian_,
again, would be liable to that fault equally, and to another far
greater, of being under no limitation as to time. This difficulty must
explain and (if it can) justify our collective phrase of the Paladins
of the Troad.]
From Homer, therefore, were left, as a bequest to all future poets,
the romantic adventures which grow, as so many collateral
dependencies,
'From the tale of Troy divine';
and from Homer was derived also the discrimination of the leading
characters, which, after all, were but coarsely and rudely
discriminated; at least, for the majority. In one instance only we
acknowledge an exception. We have heard a great modern poet dwelling
with real and not counterfeit enthusiasm upon the character (or rather
upon the general picture, as made up both of character and position),
which the course of the _Iliad_ assigns gradually to Achilles. The
view which he took of this impersonation of human grandeur, combining
all gifts of intellect and of body, matchless speed, strength,
inevitable eye, courage, and the immortal beauty of a god, being also,
by his birth-right, half-divine, and consecrated to the imagination by
his fatal interweaving with the destinies of Troy, and to the heart by
the early death which to _his own knowledge_[9] impended over his
magnificent career, and so abruptly shut up its vista--the view, we
say, which our friend took of the presiding character throughout the
_Iliad_, who is introduced to us in the very first line, and who is
only eclipsed for seventeen books, to emerge upon us with more awful
lustre;--the view which he took was--that Achilles, and Achilles only,
in the Grecian poetry, was a great idea--an idealised creation; and we
remember that in this respect he compared the Homeric Achilles with
the Angelica of Ariosto. Her only he regarded as an idealisation in
the _Orlando Furioso_. And certainly in the luxury and excess of her
all-conquering beauty, which drew after her from 'ultimate Cathay' to
the camps of the baptised in France, and back again, from the palace
of Charlemagne, drew half the Paladins, and 'half Spain militant,' to
the portals of the rising sun; that sovereign beauty which (to say
nothing of kings and princes withered by her frowns) ruined for a time
the most princely of all the Paladins, the supreme Orlando, crazed him
with scorn,
'And robbed him of his noble wits outright'--
in all this, we must acknowledge a glorification of power not unlike
that of Achilles:--
'Irresistible Pelides, whom, unarm'd,
No strength of man or wild beast could withstand;
Who tore the lion as the lion tears the kid;
Ran on embattl'd armies clad in iron;
And, weaponless himself,
Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer'd cuirass,
Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail,
Adamantéan proof;
But safest he who stood aloof,
When insupportably his foot advanced
Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Priamides
Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turn'd
Their plated backs under his heel,
Or, groveling, soil'd their crested helmets in the dust.'
These are the words of Milton in describing that 'heroic Nazarete,'
'God's champion'--
'Promis'd by heavenly message twice descending';
heralded, like Pelides,
'By an angel of his birth,
Who from his father's field
Rode up in flames after his message told';
these are the celestial words which describe the celestial prowess of
the Hebrew monomachist, the irresistible Sampson; and are hardly less
applicable to the 'champion paramount' of Greece confederate.
[Footnote 9: 'To his own knowledge'--see, for proof of this, the
gloomy serenity of his answer to his dying victim, when, predicting
his approaching end:--
'Enough; I know my fate: to die--to see no more
My much-lov'd parents, and my native shore,' &c. &c.]
This, therefore, this unique conception, with what power they might,
later Greek poets adopted; and the other Homeric characters they
transplanted somewhat monotonously, but at times, we are willing to
admit, and have already admitted, improving and solemnizing the
original epic portraits when brought upon the stage. But all this
extent of obligation amongst later poets of Greece to Homer serves
less to argue his opulence than their penury. And if, quitting the one
great blazing jewel, the Urim and Thummim of the _Iliad_, you descend
to individual passages of poetic effect; and if amongst these a fancy
should seize you of asking for a specimen of the _Sublime_ in
particular, what is it that you are offered by the critics? Nothing
that we remember beyond one single passage, in which the god Neptune
is described in a steeple chase, and 'making play' at a terrific
pace. And certainly enough is exhibited of the old boy's hoofs, and
their spanking qualities, to warrant our backing him against a
railroad for a rump and dozen; but, after all, there is nothing to
grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the steam of a
blue-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting, in
which, like the conceited snipe[10] upon the Liverpool railroad, he
thinks himself to run a match with Sampson; and, whilst affecting to
admire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he
admires his own flourish of admiration; and, in the very agony of his
frosty raptures, is quite at leisure to look out for a little private
traffic of rapture on his own account. But it won't do; this old
critical posture-master (whom, if Aurelian hanged, surely he knew what
he was about) may as well put up his rapture pipes, and (as Lear says)
'not squiny' at us; for let us ask Master Longinus, in what earthly
respect do these great strides of Neptune exceed Jack with his
seven-league boots? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that Jack
has the advantage. Or, again look at the Koran: does any man but a
foolish Oriental think that passage sublime where Mahomet describes
the divine pen? It is, says he, made of mother-of-pearl; so much for
the 'raw material,' as the economists say. But now for the size: it
can hardly be called a 'portable' pen at all events, for we are told
that it is so tall of its age, that an Arabian 'thoroughbred horse
would require 500 years for galloping down the slit to the nib. Now
this Arabic sublime is _in this instance_ quite a kin brother to the
Homeric.
[Footnote 10: On the memorable inaugural day of the Liverpool
railroad, when Mr. Huskisson met with so sad a fate, a snipe or a
plover tried a race with Sampson, one of the engines. The race
continued neck and neck for about six miles, after which, the snipe
finding itself likely to come off second best, found it convenient to
wheel off, at a turn of the road, into the solitudes of Chat Moss.]
However, it is likely that we shall here be reminded of our own
challenge to the Longinian word [Greek: hypsêlon] as not at all
corresponding, or even alluding to the modern word sublime. But in
this instance, the distinction will not much avail that critic--for no
matter by what particular _word_ he may convey his sense of its
quality, clear it is, by his way of illustrating its peculiar merit,
that, in his opinion, these huge strides of Neptune's have something
supernaturally grand about them. But, waiving this solitary instance
in Homer of the sublime, according to his idolatrous critics--of the
pseudo sublime according to ourselves--in all other cases where
Longinus, or any other Greek writer has cited Homer as the great
exemplary model of [Greek: hypsos] in composition, we are to
understand him according to the Grecian sense of that word. He must
then be supposed to praise Homer, not so much for any ideal grandeur
either of thought, image, or situation, as in a general sense for his
animated style of narration, for the variety and spirited effect with
which he relieves the direct formal narration in his own person by
dialogue between the subjects of his narration, thus ventriloquising
and throwing his own voice as often as he can into the surrounding
objects--or again for the similes and allusive pictures by which he
points emphasis to a situation or interest to a person.
Now then we have it: when you describe Homer, or when you hear him
described as a lively picturesque old boy [by the way, why does
everybody speak of Homer as old?], full of life, and animation, and
movement, then you say (or you hear say) what is true, and not much
more than what is true. Only about that word picturesque we demur a
little: as a chirurgeon, he certainly _is_ picturesque; for Howship
upon gunshot wounds is a joke to him when he lectures upon _traumacy_,
if we may presume to coin that word, or upon traumatic philosophy (as
Mr. M'Culloch says so grandly, Economic Science). But, apart from
this, we cannot allow that simply to say [Greek: Zakunthos nemoessa],
woody Zacynthus, is any better argument of picturesqueness than Stony
Stratford, or Harrow on the Hill. Be assured, reader, that the Homeric
age was not ripe for the picturesque. _Price on the Picturesque_, or,
_Gilpin on Forest Scenery_, would both have been sent post-haste to
Bedlam in those days; or perhaps Homer himself would have tied a
millstone about their necks, and have sunk them as public nuisances by
woody Zante. Besides, it puts almost an extinguisher on any little
twinkling of the picturesque that might have flared up at times from
this or that suggestion, when each individual had his own regular
epithet stereotyped to his name like a brass plate upon a door:
Hector, the tamer of horses; Achilles, the swift of foot; the ox-eyed,
respectable Juno. Some of the 'big uns,' it is true, had a dress and
an undress suit of epithets: as for instance, Hector was also [Greek:
korythaiolos], Hector with the tossing or the variegated plumes.
Achilles again was [Greek: dios] or divine. But still the range was
small, and the monotony was dire.
And now, if you come in good earnest to picturesqueness, let us
mention a poet in sober truth worth five hundred of Homer, and that is
Chaucer. Show us a piece of Homer's handywork that comes within a
hundred leagues of that divine prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_, or
of 'The Knight's Tale,' of the 'Man of Law's Tale,' or of the 'Tale of
the Patient Griseldis,' or, for intense life of narration and festive
wit, to the 'Wife of Bath's Tale.' Or, passing out of the _Canterbury
Tales_ for the picturesque in human manner and gesture, and play of
countenance, never equalled as yet by Pagan or Christian, go to the
_Troilus and Cresseid_, and, for instance, to the conversation between
Troilus and Pandarus, or, again, between Pandarus and Cresseid.
Rightly did a critic of the 17th century pronounce Chaucer a miracle
of natural genius, as having 'taken into the compass of his
_Canterbury Tales_, the various manners and humours of the whole
English nation in his age; not a single character has escaped him.'
And this critic then proceeds thus--'The matter and manner of these
tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different
educations, humours, and calling, that each of them would be improper
in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are
distinguished by their several sorts of gravity. Even the ribaldry of
the low characters is different. But there is such a variety of game
springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know
not which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the
proverb, that here is God's plenty.' And soon after he goes on to
assert (though Heaven knows in terms far below the whole truth), the
superiority of Chaucer to Boccaccio. And, in the meantime, who was
this eulogist of Chaucer? Why, the man who himself was never equalled
upon this earth, unless by Chaucer, in the art of fine narration: it
is John Dryden whom we have been quoting.
Between Chaucer and Homer--as to the main art of narration, as to the
picturesque life of the manners, and as to the exquisite delineation
of character--the interval is as wide as between Shakespeare, in
dramatic power, and Nic. Rowe.