"And most his might he sheddeth ever in May"--
renowning here, as we saw that he does elsewhere, the whole month, as
love's own segment of the zodiacal circle. The time of the poem itself
is accordingly 'the thridde night of May.' Wordsworth has rendered,
"But most his might he sheds _on the eve of May._"
Why so? Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt
than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary,
and why with a word lose, or obscure, or hazard the appropriation of the
month entire, so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is
Eve here taken strictly--the night before May-day, like the _Pervigilium
Veneris_? Or loosely, on the verge of May, answerably to 'ayenes May'
afterwards? To the former sense, we might be inclined to propose on the
contrary part,
"But sheds his might most on the morrow of May,"
_i.e._ in prose on May-day morning, consonantly to all the testimonies.
Chaucer says that the coming-on of the love-month produces in the heart
of the lover
"A maner easè medled with grevaunce."
That is to say, _a kind of_ joy or pleasure, (Fr. _aise_,) mixed with
sadness. He insists, by this expression, upon the strangeness of the
kind, peculiar to the willing sufferers under this unique passion,
"love's pleasing smart." Did Wordsworth, by intention or
misapprehension, leave out this turn of expression, by which, in an age
less forward than ours in sentimental researches, Chaucer drew notice to
the contradictory nature of the internal state which he described? As
if Chaucer had said, "_al_ maner esè," Wordsworth says, "all kinds of
pleasure mixed with sorrowing."
In the next line he adds to the intuitions of his master, one of his own
profound intuitions, if we construe aright--
"And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long."
That ever long! The sweetest of thoughts are never satisfied with their
own deliciousness. Earthly delight, or heavenly delight upon earth,
penetrating the soul, stirs in it the perception of its native
illimitable capacity for delight. Bliss, which should wholly possess the
blest being, plays traitor to itself, turns into a sort of divine
dissatisfaction, and brings forth from its teeming and infinite bosom a
brood of winged wishes, bright with hues which memory has bestowed, and
restless with innate aspirations. Such is our commentary on the truly
Wordsworthian line, but it is not a line answerable to Chaucer's--
"And lusty thoughtès full of gret longinge."
Is this hypercriticism? It is the only criticism that can be tolerated
betwixt two such rivals as Chaucer and Wordsworth. The scales that weigh
poetry should turn with a grain of dust, with the weight of a sunbeam,
for they weigh spirit. Or is it saying that Wordsworth has not done his
work as well as it was possible to be done? Rather it is inferring, from
the failure of the work in his hand, that he and his colleagues have
attempted that which was impossible to be done. We will not here hunt
down line by line. We put before the reader the means of comparing verse
with verse. We have, with 'a thoughtful heart of love,' made the
comparison, and feel throughout that the modern will not, cannot, do
justice to the old English. The quick sensibility which thrills through
the antique strain deserts the most cautious version of it. In short, we
fall back upon the old conviction, that verse is a sacred, and song an
inspired thing; that the feeling, the thought, the word, and the musical
breath spring together out of the soul in one creation; that a
translation is a thing not given in _rerum natura_; consequently that
there is nothing else to be done with a great poet saving to leave him
in his glory.
And our friend John Dryden? Oh, he is safe enough; for the new
translators all agree that his are no translations at all of Chaucer,
but original and excellent poems of his own.
A language that is half Chaucer's, and half that of his renderer, is in
great danger to be the language of nobody. But Chaucer's has its own
energy and vivacity which attaches you, and as soon as you have
undergone the due transformation by sympathy, carries you effectually
with it. In the moderate versions that are best done, you miss this
indispensable force of attraction. But Dryden boldly and freely gives
you himself, and along you sweep, or are swept rejoicingly along. "The
grand charge to which his translations are amenable," says Mr Horne,
"is, that he acted upon an erroneous principle." Be it so. Nevertheless,
they are among the glories of our poetical literature. Mr Horne's,
literal as he supposes them to be, are unreadable. He, too, acts on an
erroneous principle; and his execution betrays throughout the unskilful
hand of a presumptuous apprentice. But he has "every respect for the
genius, and for every thing that belongs to the memory, of Dryden;" and
thus magniloquently eulogizes his most splendid achievement:--"The fact
is, Dryden's version of the 'Knight's Tale' would be most appropriately
read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes, walking up and
down a battlement, and waving a long, gleaming spear, to the roll and
sweep of his sonorous numbers."
* * * * *
_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._