“I could have wished him fall on softer ground
For his good parts.”
Bacon’s monument, in St. Michael’s Church at St. Alban’s, was erected
by _his_ secretary, Sir Thomas Meautys. Bacon did not appear at his
trial; but there are several striking parallels between his letters of
confession and the speech you have just heard.
Another posthumously published tragedy of Chapman’s, the “Revenge for
Honor,” is, in conception, the most original of them all, and the plot
seems to be of his own invention. It has great improbabilities, but as
the story is Oriental, we find it easier to forgive them. It is, on the
whole, a very striking play, and with more variety of character in it
than is common with Chapman.
In general he seems to have been led to the choice of his heroes (and
these sustain nearly the whole weight of the play in which they figure)
by some half-conscious sympathy of temperament. They are impetuous,
have an overweening self-confidence, and an orotund way of expressing
it that fitted them perfectly to be the mouth-pieces for an eloquence
always vehement and impassioned, sometimes rising to a sublimity of
self-assertion. Where it is fine, it is nobly fine, but too often it
raves itself into a kind of fury recalling Hamlet’s word “robustious,”
and seems to be shouted through a speaking-trumpet in a gale of wind.
He is especially fond of describing battles, and the rush of his
narration is then like a charge of cavalry. Of his first tragedy,
“Bussy d’Ambois,” Dryden says, with that mixture of sure instinct and
hasty judgment which makes his prose so refreshing: “I have sometimes
wondered in the reading what has become of those glaring colors which
amazed me in ‘Bussy d’Ambois’ upon the theatre; but when I had taken
up what I supposed a falling star, I found I had been cozened with a
jelly, nothing but a cold dull mass, which glittered no longer than
it was shooting; a dwarfish thought dressed up in gigantic words,
repetition in abundance, looseness of expression, and gross hyperbole;
the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into ten; and, to sum up
all, incorrect English, and a hideous mingle of false poetry and true
nonsense; or, at best, a scantling of wit which lay gasping for life
and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish.”
There _is_ hyperbole in Chapman, and perhaps Dryden saw it the more
readily and disliked it the more that his own tragedies are full of
it. But Dryden was always hasty, not for the first time in speaking of
Chapman. I am pretty safe in saying that he had probably only run his
eye over “Bussy d’Ambois,” and that it did not happen to fall on any
of those finely inspired passages which are not only more frequent in
it than in any other of Chapman’s plays, but of a more purely poetical
quality. Dryden was irritated by a consciousness of his own former
barbarity of taste, which had led him to prefer Sylvester’s translation
of Du Bartas. What he says as to the success of “Bussy d’Ambois” on the
stage is interesting.
In saying that the sense of “one line is prodigiously expanded into
ten,” Dryden certainly puts his finger on one of Chapman’s faults. He
never knew when to stop. But it is not true that the sense is expanded,
if by that we are to understand that Chapman watered his thought to
make it fill up. There is abundance of thought in him, and of very
suggestive thought too, but it is not always in the right place. He is
the most sententious of our poets--sententious to a fault, as we feel
in his continuation of “Hero and Leander.” In his annotations to the
sixteenth book of his translation of the Iliad, he seems to have been
thinking of himself in speaking of Homer. He says: “And here have we
ruled a case against our plain and smug writers, that, because their
own unwieldiness will not let them rise themselves, would have every
man grovel like them.... But herein this case is ruled against such men
that they affirm these hyperthetical or superlative sort of expressions
and illustrations are too bold and bumbasted, and out of that word
is spun that which they call our fustian, their plain writing being
stuff nothing so substantial, but such gross sowtege or hairpatch as
every goose may eat oats through.... But the chief end why I extend
this annotation is only to entreat your note here of Homer’s manner of
writing, which, to utter his after-store of matter and variety, is so
presse and puts on with so strong a current that it far overruns the
most laborious pursuer if he have not a poetical foot and Poesy’s quick
eye to guide it.”
Chapman has indeed a “great after-store of matter” which encumbers
him, and does sometimes “far overrun the most laborious pursuer,” but
many a poetical foot, with Poesy’s quick eye to guide it, has loved to
follow. He has kindled an enthusiasm of admiration such as no other
poet of his day except Shakespeare has been able to kindle. In this
very play of “Bussy d’Ambois” there is a single line of which Charles
Lamb says that “in all poetry I know nothing like it.” When Chapman
_is_ fine, it is in a way all his own. There is then an incomparable
amplitude in his style, as when, to quote a phrase from his translation
of Homer, the Lightener Zeus “lets down a great sky out of heaven.”
There is a quality of northwestern wind in it, which, if sometimes too
blusterous, is yet taken into the lungs with an exhilarating expansion.
Hyperbole is overshooting the mark. No doubt Chapman sometimes did
this, but this excess is less depressing than its opposite, and at
least proves vigor in the bowman. His bow was like that of Ulysses,
which none could bend but he, and even where the arrow went astray, it
sings as it flies, and one feels, to use his own words, as if it were
“the shaft
Shot at the sun by angry Hercules,
And into splinters by the thunder broken.”
Dryden taxes Chapman with “incorrect English.” This is altogether
wrong. His English is of the best, and far less licentious than
Dryden’s own, which was also the best of its kind. Chapman himself says
(or makes Montsurry in “Bussy d’Ambois” say for him):--
“Worthiest poets
Shun common and plebeian forms of speech,
Every illiberal and affected phrase,
To clothe their matter, and together tie
Matter and form with art and decency.”
And yet I should say that if Chapman’s English had any fault, it comes
of his fondness for homespun words, and for images which, if not
essentially vulgar, become awkwardly so by being forced into company
where they feel themselves out of place. For example, in the poem
which prefaces his Homer, full of fine thought, fitly uttered in his
large way, he suddenly compares the worldlings he is denouncing to
“an itching horse leaning to a block or a May-pole.” He would have
justified himself, I suppose, by Homer’s having compared Ajax to an
ass, for I think he really half believed that the spirit of Homer had
entered into him and replaced his own. So in “Bussy,”--
“Love is a razor cleansing if well used,
But fetcheth blood still being the least abused.”
But I think the incongruity is to be explained as an unconscious
reaction (just as we see men of weak character fond of strong language)
against a partiality he felt in himself for costly phrases. His fault
is not the purple patch upon frieze, but the patch of frieze upon
purple. In general, one would say that his style was impetuous like the
man himself, and wants the calm which is the most convincing evidence
of great power that has no misgivings of itself. I think Chapman
figured forth his own ideal in his “Byron:”--
“Give me a spirit that on this life’s rough sea
Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is; there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.”
Professor Minto thinks that the rival poet of whom Shakespeare speaks
in his eighty-sixth sonnet was Chapman, and enough confirmation of this
theory may be racked out of dates and other circumstances to give it at
least some probability. However this may be, the opening line of the
sonnet contains as good a characterization of Chapman’s style as if it
had been meant for him:--
“Was it the proud full sail of his great verse?”
I have said that Chapman was generally on friendly terms with his
brother poets. But there is a passage in the preface to the translation
of the Iliad which marks an exception. He says: “And much less I weigh
the frontless detractions of some stupid ignorants, that, no more
knowing me than their beastly ends, and I ever (to my knowledge) blest
from their sight, whisper behind me vilifyings of my translation,
out of the French affirming them, when, both in French and all other
languages but his own, our with-all-skill-enriched Poet is so poor and
unpleasing that no man can discern from whence flowed his so generally
given eminence and admiration.” I know not who was intended, but the
passage piques my curiosity. In what is said about language there
is a curious parallel with what Ben Jonson says of Shakespeare, and
the “generally given eminence and admiration” applies to him also.
The “with-all-skill-enriched” reminds me of another peculiarity of
Chapman--his fondness for compound words. He seems to have thought that
he condensed more meaning into a phrase if he dovetailed all its words
together by hyphens. This sometimes makes the verses of his translation
of Homer difficult to read musically, if not metrically.
Chapman has been compared with Seneca, but I see no likeness in their
manner unless we force an analogy between the rather braggart Hercules
of the one and d’Ambois of the other. The most famous passage in
Seneca’s tragedies is, I suppose, the answer of Medea when asked what
remains to her in her desertion and danger: “_Medea superest_.” This is
as unlike Chapman as he is unlike Marlowe or Webster. His genius never
could have compressed itself into so laconic a casket. Here would have
been a chance for him to dilate like Teneriffe or Atlas, and he would
have done it ample justice. If ever there was a case in which Buffon’s
saying that the style is the man fitted exactly, it is in that of
Chapman. Perhaps I ought to have used the word “mannerism” instead of
“style,” for Chapman had not that perfect control of his matter which
“style” implies. On the contrary, his matter seems sometimes to do
what it will with him, which is the characteristic of mannerism. I can
think of no better example of both than Sterne, alternately victim of
one and master of the other. His mannerism at last becomes irritating
affectation, but when he throws it off, his style is perfect in
simplicity of rhythm. There is no more masterly page of English prose
than that in the “Sentimental Journey” describing the effect of the
chorus, “O Cupid, King of Gods and Men,” on the people of Abdera.
As a translator, and he translated a great deal besides Homer, Chapman
has called forth the most discordant opinions. It is plain from his
prefaces and annotations that he had discussed with himself the
various theories of translation, and had chosen that which prefers the
spirit to the letter. “I dissent,” he says, speaking of his translation
of the Iliad, “from all other translators and interpreters that ever
essayed exposition of this miraculous poem, especially where the
divine rapture is most exempt from capacity in grammarians merely
and grammatical critics, and where the inward sense or soul of the
sacred muse is only within eyeshot of a poetical spirit’s inspection.”
This rapture, however, is not to be found in his translation of the
Odyssey, he being less in sympathy with the quieter beauties of that
exquisite poem. Cervantes said long ago that no poet is translatable,
and he said truly, for his thoughts will not _sing_ in any language
but their own. Even where the languages are of common parentage, like
English and German, the feat is impossible. Who ever saw a translation
of one of Heine’s songs into English from which the genius had not
utterly vanished? We cannot translate the music; above all, we cannot
translate the indefinable associations which have gathered round the
poem, giving it more meaning to us, perhaps, than it ever had for the
poet himself. In turning it into our own tongue the translator has
made it foreign to us for the first time. Why, we do not like to hear
any one read aloud a poem that we love, because he translates it into
something unfamiliar as he reads. But perhaps it is fair, and this is
sometimes forgotten, to suppose that a translation is intended only
for such as have no knowledge of the original, and to whom it will
be a new poem. If that be so, there can be no question that a free
reproduction, a transfusion into the moulds of another language, with
an absolute deference to its associations, whether of the ear or of the
memory, is the true method. There are no more masterly illustrations
of this than the versions from the Greek, Persian, and Spanish of the
late Mr. Fitzgerald. His translations, however else they may fail, make
the same vivid impression on us that an original would. He has aimed at
translating the genius, in short, letting all else take care of itself,
and has succeeded. Chapman aimed at the same thing, and I think has
also succeeded. You all remember Keats’s sonnet on first looking in his
Homer.
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.”
Whether Homer or not, his translation is at least not Milton, as
those in blank verse strive without much success to be. If the Greek
original had been lost, and we had only Chapman, would it not enable
us to divine some of the chief qualities of that original? I think it
would; and I think this perhaps the fairest test. Commonly we open
a translation as it were the door of a house of mourning. It is the
burial-service of our poet that is going on there. But Chapman’s poem
makes us feel as if Homer late in life had married an English wife, and
we were invited to celebrate the coming of age of their only son. The
boy, as our country people say, and as Chapman would have said, favors
his mother; there is very little Greek in him; and yet a trick of the
gait now and then, and certain tones of voice, recall the father. If
not so tall as he, and without his dignity, he is a fine stalwart
fellow, and looks quite able to make his own way in the world. Yes, in
Chapman’s poem there is life, there is energy, and the consciousness
of them. Did not Dryden say admirably well that it was such a poem as
we might fancy Homer to have written before he arrived at years of
discretion? Its defect is, I should say, that in it Homer is translated
into Chapman rather than into English.
Chapman is a poet for intermittent rather than for consecutive reading.
He talks too loud and is too emphatic for continuous society. But
when you leave him, you feel that you have been in the company of an
original, and hardly know why you should not say a great man. From
his works, one may infer an individuality of character in him such as
we can attribute to scarce any other of his contemporaries, though
originality was far cheaper then than now. A lofty, impetuous man,
ready to go off without warning into what he called a “holy fury,” but
capable of inspiring an almost passionate liking. Had only the best
parts of what he wrote come down to us, we should have reckoned him a
far greater poet than we can fairly call him. His fragments are truly
Cyclopean.
V