METAPHOR.
“Die Sinnlichkeit erzeugt, auf der ersten stufe der
Wortschöpfung, ein _Abbild_; die Einbildungskraft, auf
der zweiten, ein _Symbol_; der Verstand, endlich, auf der
dritten, ein _Zeichen_ für das object.”--HEYSE, _System der
Sprachwissenschaft_, s. 95.
“Every language is a dictionary of faded metaphors.”--RICHTER.
If it be impossible for us to _know_ any single particle of matter
in itself; if we are unable to do more than express the _relations_
of any single external phenomenon; how can we hope to give an
accurate nomenclature to the _noumena_, the inward emotions, the
immaterial conceptions, the abstract entities which we cannot touch
or handle, and which have an existence only for the intellect
and the heart? How can we make the modulations of the voice the
symbols[152] for the passions of the soul?
In mathematics there is a line, known as the _asymptote_, which
continually approaches to a curve, but, being produced for ever,
does not cut it, though the distance between the asymptote and
the curve becomes, in the course of this approach, less than any
assignable quantity. Language, in relation to thought, must ever be
regarded as an _asymptote_. They can no more _perfectly_ coincide
than any two particles of matter can be made absolutely to touch
each other. No power of language enables man to reveal the features
of the mystic Isis, on whose statue was inscribed: “I am all which
hath been, which is, and shall be, and no mortal hath ever lifted
my veil.” Now, as ever, a curtain of shadow must hang between--
That hidden life, and what we see and hear.
No single virtue, no single faculty, no single spiritual truth, no
single metaphysical conception, can be expressed without the aid
of analogy or metaphor. Metaphor--the transference of a word from
its usual meaning to an analogous one--is the intellectual agent
of language, just as onomatopœia is the mechanical agent. Metaphor
and catachresis (_i.e._, the use of the same word to express two
different things which are supposed to present some analogy to each
other, as when “sweet” is applied to sounds) have been called the
two channels of expression which irrigate the wide field of human
intelligence. By their means language, though poor in vocables,
was rich in thought, and resembled in its power the one coin[153]
of the Wandering Jew, which always sufficed for all his needs, and
always took the impress of the sovereign regnant in the countries
through which he passed.
We might have easily conjectured that such would be the case. “Man,
by the action of all his faculties, is carried out of himself and
towards the exterior world; the phenomena of the exterior world are
those which strike him first, and those, therefore, are the ones
which receive the first names, which names are, so to speak, tinted
with the colours of the objects they express. But, afterwards,
when man turns his attention inwards, he sees distinctly those
intellectual phenomena, of which he had previously had only a
confused perception, and when he wishes to express those new
phenomena of the soul and of thought, analogy leads him to apply
the signs which he is looking for to the signs which he already
possesses; for analogy is the law of every nascent or developed
language; hence come the metaphors into which analysis resolves the
majority of the signs for the most abstract moral ideas.”[154]
To call things which we have never seen before by the name of that
which appears to us most nearly to resemble them, is a practice of
every-day life. That children at first call all men “father,” and
all women “mother,” is an observation as old as Aristotle.[155]
The Romans gave the name of Lucanian _ox_ to the elephant, and
_camelopardus_ to the giraffe, just as the New Zealanders are
stated to have called “horses” large _dogs_. The astonished Caffirs
gave the name of _cloud_ to the first parasol which they had seen;
and similar instances might be adduced almost indefinitely. They
prove that it is an instinct, if it be not a necessity to borrow
for the unknown the names already used for things known.
But although we can absolutely trace this process in so many
cases, that we are entitled to _infer_, with Locke, that _every_
word expressing facts which do not fall under the senses, is yet
ultimately derived from sensible ideas, we cannot expect to
_prove_ this in every particular instance. When a standard of value
is once introduced among nations, it is almost always a coinage of
the precious metals; but when public credit is firmly established,
a paper currency is allowed freely to circulate. And so in language
many terms have become purely arbitrary, and in themselves
valueless, which now pass unquestioned in their conventional
meaning, but have lost all traces of the process to which they owed
their origin, and retain no longer the impress of the thought which
they originally conveyed.
Illustrations are not far to seek; indeed, we can hardly utter
a sentence which will not supply them, of which the very word
“illustration” is itself an instance. Thus, in Hebrew, the words
for “anger” and “the nose” are identical,[156] and even in
Greek, πρᾷος τὴν ῥίνα, “gentle in nose,” is used for “of gentle
disposition.” Every reader of the Bible will recognise that “a
melting of the heart” is the metaphor for despair; a “loosening
of the reins” for fear; a “high carriage of the head” for pride;
“stiffness of neck” for obstinacy; “thirst” or “pallor” for fear;
a “turning of the face” for favour. It is this word-painting, this
eagerness[157] for graphic touches, that gives to Hebrew its vivid,
picturesque, impetuous character. It is interesting to observe how
necessary to them it became. Even when they have by long usage
learnt to accept a special word as the sign of some moral sentiment
or mental emotion, they love to add to it _also_ a picture of the
physical circumstance. This is the explanation of such apparent
pleonasms, as “he opened his mouth and said,” “he answered and
said,” “he was angry and his visage fell,” “he was angry and
his visage was enflamed.” It is the result of that vital energy
which enkindled the soul of prophets and poets; which exalted
the intellect of a nation, fully conscious that it had a mighty
mission to perform. Spontaneous imagery is the characteristic of
all passionate thought.
The Hebrews were not the only nation which sought for open and
confessed metaphors in their style, when the bright colours of
the original picture-word had grown too dim to recall the image
which they once presented. We feel instinctively that certain
states of mind can only be described by a comparison with the
natural appearance which offers the nearest analogy to them. “A
lamb is innocence; a snake is subtle spite. Flowers express to
us the delicate affections. Light and darkness are our familiar
expressions for knowledge and ignorance. Visible distance behind
and before us is respectively our image of memory and of hope.”[158]
Again, to take the first group of English words which present
themselves, what is “imagination” or “reflection” but the summoning
up of a picture before the inward eye? What is “comprehension” but
a grasping; “disgust” but an unpleasant taste; “insinuation” but
a getting into the bosom of anything? Courage is “good heart;”
“rectitude” a perpendicular position; “austerity” is dryness;
“superciliousness” a raising of the eyebrow; “humility” is
something cognate to the ground; “fortune” is the falling of a
lot; “_virtue_” is that which becomes a _man_; “humanity” is the
proper characteristic of our race; “courtesy” is borrowed from
palaces; “calamity” is the hurrying of the wind among the reeds.
What are “aversion”[159] and “inclination” but a turning away
from, and a bending towards? “Error” is a wandering out of the way;
“envy” is looking upon another with an evil eye; an “emotion” is a
movement of the soul; “influence” recalls the ripple circling on
the surface of a stream; “heaven” is the canopy _heaved_ over our
heads; “hell” is the _hollow_ space beneath our feet; “religion” is
a solemn study, or a binding, or a new[160] choice; an “angel” is
a messenger; the “spirit” is but a breath of air.
The last etymology reminds us that we can carry our proofs of
what we assert into still higher regions, even the transcendental
regions of human faith and worship. “Mystery” is derived from “mu,”
the imitation of closing the lips; “priest” from “presbuteros,”
elder; “sacrament” is deduced from the meaning “oath;” “baptism” is
dipping; “propitiation” is bringing near; “wisdom” is that which
we have seen; even the word for God himself, in Sanskrit as in
Chinese, means but the bright ether[161] or starry sky.
To illustrate this necessity of metaphor any farther would be
superfluous, since the materials for doing so are sufficiently
abundant for any student who wishes to pursue the subject. The
philosophical examination of the thoughts which are thus involved
in concrete images is a most valuable inquiry, and one which
opens a field of inexhaustible interest. The metaphors which
we are thus forced to adopt are a living memorial[162] of the
quick perceptions, the poetic intuitions, the deep insight of
our ancestors: or are else a perpetuation of their unaccountable
caprices of feeling or fancy, their vulgar errors and groundless
suppositions. It sometimes happens that in all languages, the same
analogy has been thus seized upon for a transitive “application,”
as in the words רוּחַ, πνεῦμα, _anima, spirit_, which all mean
‘wind;’ but, more frequently, different aspects of the same
phenomenon have led to a different nomenclature; thus, “to think”
is in Hebrew “to _speak_;” and among the savages of the Pacific it
is “to speak in the stomach;” while in French it means “to weigh,”
and in Greek it is often described by a word borrowed from the deep
purpling[163] of an agitated sea.
We call an expression metaphoric when it is applied in such a way
that we glide lightly over its primary and obvious meaning to
attach to it one which is secondary and more indirect. We call
an expression a _catachresis_ when it is used inappropriately,
although custom may have sanctioned the use of it in the
inappropriate sense; _e.g._, when we speak of “an arm of the sea,”
the word “arm” is a catachresis; and when Shakspeare uses the
phrase “To take up arms against a sea of troubles,” it is only the
use of this figure twice in the same line that forces on us a sense
of incongruity.
Catachresis, as well as metaphor, has given rise to a large set of
terms, phrases, and expressions; and it is in one sense bolder
than metaphor, because it takes words without any modification to
apply them to fresh emergencies. Thus, very often words applicable
to one sense are adopted to express the sensations of another.
That there is[164] an analogy between the manners in which they
are affected no one will deny. The plant “heliotrope” recalls by
its smell the taste which has given it its vulgar name; the king
of Hanover knew from the overture to a piece of music, that the
scene of it was supposed to be a wood; Saunderson, who was born
blind, compared the colour _red_ to the blowing of a trumpet, or
the crowing of a cock. There is, therefore, no inherent absurdity,
though there is much affectation, in such lines as Ford’s--
What’s that I _saw_? a sound?
and Donne’s--
A loud perfume;
and Herbert’s--
His beams shall help my song, and both so twine,
Till e’en his beams sing and my music shine.
It is against catachresis rather than against metaphor that
philosophers should have inveighed. “There is,” says Seneca, “a
vast number of things without names, which we call, not by proper
designations, but by borrowed and adapted ones. We apply the word
‘foot,’ both to our own foot and that of a couch, and of a sail,
and of a page, though these things are naturally distinct. But
this results from the poverty of language.” “It is a ridiculous
sterility,” says Voltaire, “to have been ignorant how to express
otherwise an _arm_ of the sea, an _arm_ of a balance, an _arm_ of a
chair; it is a poverty of intellect which leads us to speak equally
of the _head_ of a nail, and the _head_ of an army.” It is this
very frequent use of homonyms which leads to such great uncertainty
about the meaning of many Hebrew words. Catachresis ought to be
sparingly applied, and it possesses none of the advantages which
arise from metaphor.
When the Megarians wanted assistance from the Spartans, they threw
down an empty meal-bag before the assembly, and declared that
“it lacked meal.” The Laconic criticism “that the mention of the
sack was superfluous,” cannot be considered a fair one, because
the action gave far more point to the request. When the Scythian
ambassadors wished to prove to Darius the hopelessness of invading
their country, instead of making a long harangue, they argued
with infinitely more force by merely bringing him a bird, a mouse,
a frog, and two arrows, to imply, that unless he could soar like
a bird, burrow like a mouse, and hide in the marshes like a frog,
he would never be able to escape their shafts. The tall poppyheads
that Tarquinius lopped off with his stick in the presence of the
messenger of Sextus, conveyed more vividly the intended lesson
than any amount of diabolical advice; and turning[165] to Jewish
history, we shall find that the prophets found it necessary to
illustrate even _their_ language (metaphorical as it was) by living
pictures--the rending of a garment, the hiding of a girdle, the
pushing with iron horns--in order to bring home a vivid sense of
conviction to the gross hearts of the people whom they taught.
But when such outward illustrations are impossible, we adopt
a shadow of them by painting with words. When we speak of the
cornfields standing so thick with corn, that they laugh and sing;
when we speak of the harvests thirsting, or of the green fields
sleeping in the quiet sunshine; when we speak of the thunderbolts
of eloquence, or the dewy close of tender music, our language is
understood perhaps with more rapidity, and our meaning expressed
with greater clearness, than if we were to translate the same
phrases into more prosaic and less imaginative expression.
Even the unimaginative[166]Aristotle observed the fact. Mere
names, he says, carry to the mind of the hearer their specific
meaning, and there they end; but metaphors do more than this, for
they awaken new thoughts. Let us take Aristotle’s own example of
the word “age,” and instead of Solomon’s fine expression, “when
the almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper be a burden,”
substitute “when the hair is white, and the body decrepit;” who
does not see that the force and poetry of the passage is evaporated
at once?
And, in point of fact, we do not go at all nearer to truth by a
substitution of terms that imply no direct figure. Eloquence,
for instance, has in all ages been compared to thunder[167] and
lightning, because the effect of it upon the mind is closely
analogous to that produced by the bursting of a storm; and when,
out of dislike to such expressions, we talk of eloquence as having
been passionate, or forcible, or effective, the impressions we
convey are not nearly so powerful, or nearly so descriptive. And in
many cases we must rest content to leave our emotions unexpressed,
if we will not condescend to use the assistance of figurative
terms. “Language,” says Mr. Carlyle, “is the flesh-garment of
Thought. I said that Imagination wove this flesh-garment; and does
she not? Metaphors are her stuff. Examine Language. What, if you
except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it
all but metaphors recognised as such, or no longer recognised;
still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colourless? If
those same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures in the
flesh-garment, Language--then are metaphors its muscles, and
tissues, and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you
shall in vain seek for: is not your very _attention_[168] a
_stretching-to_?”
Our minds are simply not adapted to deal familiarly with the
abstract; we yearn for the concrete, and the successful adoption of
it often constitutes the power and beauty of rhetoric and poetry.
For the attributes of poetry cannot better be summed up than by
saying with Milton, that it is “simple, _sensuous_, passionate.”
It has been said, that “good writing and brilliant discourse are
perpetual allegories.” The Bible more than any other book abounds
in this energy of style, this matchless vivacity of description;
and hence of all books it is the most fresh and living, the one
which speaks most musically to the ear, most thrillingly to the
heart,--the one whose rich bloom of eloquence is least dimmed by
being transfused into other tongues, and the rapid wings of its
words the least broken and injured by the process of many hundred
years. The idioms of all language approach each other most nearly
in passages of the greatest eloquence and power: here the syllogism
of emotion transcends the syllogism of logic, and grammatical
formulæ are fused and calcined in the flame of passion.
This concreteness of style, and liberal use of simple metaphor, is
nowhere so beautifully conspicuous as in the teaching of our Lord,
and he doubtless adopted it for the express purpose that--
They might learn who bind the sheaf,
Or crush the grape, or dig the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef.
“Consider the[169]lilies how they grow; they toil not, they spin
not; and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these. If, then, God so clothe the grass, which
to-day is in the field, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how
much more will he clothe you, oh ye of little faith!”
“Let us here adopt,” says Dr. Campbell, “a little of the tasteless
manner of modern paraphrasts, by the substitution of more general
terms, one of their many processes of infrigidating, and let us
observe the effect produced by this change. ‘Consider the flowers
how they gradually increase in their size; they do no manner of
work, and yet I declare unto you, that no king whatever, in his
most splendid habit, is dressed up like them. If, then, God in his
providence doth so adorn the vegetable productions which continue
but a little time on the land, and are afterwards devoted to the
meanest uses, how much more will he provide clothing for you!’
How spiritless[170] is the same sentiment rendered by these small
variations! The very particularising of to-day and to-morrow is
infinitely more expressive of transitoriness than any description
wherein the terms are general, that can be substituted in its room.”
Philosophers, then, have been mistaken in complaining of metaphors
as a proof[171] of poverty. Tropes, it has been said, would
disappear, if we had in every case a direct and independent
expression, and metaphor is a coin struck only for the earth. How
this may be we know not; although, if there be mysteries even for
the angels, then for them also will the gracious analogies of a
sublime symbolism be no less necessary. For us at any rate, since
it is impossible to find a direct word for every phenomenon,
metaphor is our only resource; the figure is necessitated by
the non-existence of the proper term. Because poetry abounds in
figures, it does not follow that it is “the dark murmur of a lie,
instead of the clear cry of truth,” but that it deals for the most
part with thoughts which transcend the exigencies of ordinary
expression. We must not complain of the lunar beam of genius,
because it has not the brightness of the sun. Our choice lies
between an enchanting and beautiful twilight, or a darkness which
may be felt.
If any one wishes to compare the difference between metaphorical
language and the phraseology which studiously avoids the use of
metaphor, and clings as far as possible to bare fact, let him
contrast the nomenclature of science with the parallel nomenclature
of the people.
The terminology of science is of necessity “conventional,[172]
precise, constant; copious in words and minute in distinctions,
according to the needs of the science;” but this very necessity
kills the imagination, and leaves an uninviting argot in the place
of warm and glowing human speech. It is absurd to quarrel with
and ridicule the language of science, since in its researches
an inaccurate or ill-defined name--a name that _connotes_ many
other things, or in itself involves an unproven theory--may be
productive of the most disastrous consequences. But, at the same
time, the mere nomenclature, in becoming steady and determinate,
is too often uncouth and inharmonious,[173] and we see that
if the language of common life were equally invariable, and
unelastic, imagination would be cancelled, and genius crushed.
Metaphor is no longer possible in a language which has the power
of expressing everything. Such “lexical superfetations” as
“chrysanthemum leukanthemum,” and “platykeros,” may be necessary
to science, but who would exchange them for the popular names
of “Reine Marguerite,” and “Stagbeetle” (_cerf volant_)? And is
there not something almost repulsive in such a term as “Myosotis
scorpioeides” (scorpion-shaped mouse’s ear!) when compared with the
sweet vulgar names “Forget-me-not,” “Yeux de la Sainte Vierge,” and
“Plus je vous vois, plus je vous aime?” The language of science is
only picturesque, when, as in the case of astronomy, it borrows
from shepherd philosophers such names as the “chariot,” “the
serpent,” “the bear,” and “the milky way.”
Language, then, is a plummet[174] which can never fathom the
abysses of existence; and yet by its means we can learn more of the
world of spirit than the senses can ever tell us about the visible
and the material. When we speak of any sensible object, we only
adopt a convenient name for a certain synthesis of properties, and
we do not thereby advance a single step towards the knowledge of
the thing in its abstract essence. The very existence of substance
as an absolute entity, an _ens per se existens_, the postulated
residuum after the abstraction of all[175] separate qualities which
are cognisable by the senses, is entirely denied by idealists,
who would reduce all outward things to a mere relation, or a
modification of the sentient subject. Nature itself is with them
nothing more than “an apocalypse of the mind.” We speak of “gold,”
and we mean thereby an object of which perhaps our first and main
conceptions are that it is heavy, yellow, and valuable as a medium
of exchange; yet the property which we call “heavy” is one which
we can easily conceive capable of modification; the property of
yellowness ceases when light no longer falls upon the metal; and
the property of value is one purely conventional and continually
varying. What, then, have we left except a philosophical figment--a
something with the properties of nothing? We cannot assert the
existence of any substance corresponding to the name “gold”
apart from these and other properties, which, as we have seen,
are mere relations. What, then, do we really learn from language
even about the external world, the world of phenomena and of
fact? When, on the other hand, we speak of “imagination,” we name
one of the noblest faculties of the intellect, from the analogy
afforded by the property of the glassy wave, which “refreshes and
reflects” the flowers upon its banks; yet who shall say that our
metaphor (“imagination”) gives us a less clear[176] and definable
conception than is conveyed by our general term (“gold”)?
Nothing can be known of itself, but sensible things can only be
named from the manner in which they affect the senses, and things
invisible can only be pictured forth analogically, from the manner
in which they affect the soul. And God has given us an intellect
capable of observing the analogies of which the world is full,
and not only of observing them, but of applying to them with
perfect comprehension the words by which we describe our physical
sensations. In the wise and noble language of the son[177] of
Sirach: “ALL THINGS ARE DOUBLE ONE AGAINST ANOTHER, AND HE HATH
MADE NOTHING IMPERFECT.” There _is_ a close, though mysterious,
analogy between physical and intellectual phenomena. The continual
metaphors by which we compare our thoughts and emotions to the
changes of the outer world--sadness to a cloudy sky, calm to
the silvery rays of the moonlight, anger to waves agitated by
the wind--are not, as Schelling observed, a mere play of the
imagination, but are an expression in two different languages of
the same thought of the Creator, and the one serves to interpret
the other. “Nature is visible spirit, spirit invisible nature.” It
could have been no result of accident, no working of blind chance,
that made the mind of man a mirror of the things whereby he is
surrounded, and that created the world of matter under the guidance
of laws which are an exact analogon of the laws of mind. Thus the
Universe itself, with all that it contains, is a mighty emblem, and
man is the analogist who, by the Word that lighteth him, is enabled
to decipher it.
Two worlds are ours: ’tis only sin
Forbids us to descry
The mystic heaven and earth within
Plain as the sea and sky.
The stars and the mountains, the oceans and winds, may exist
for nobler and sublimer purposes than “to furnish man with the
dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech,” but for _us_ at
least it should be our first and chief cause of thankfulness to
God when we commemorate the glories of the world in which he has
placed us, that it is by the reflection of those glories that we
grow conscious of ourselves, exactly as it is by the reverberation
of a luminous ray that we become aware of the presence of holy
Light.
But, in those primeval ages which saw the birth of language, the
instinctive perception of this harmony, and the application of
the perceived analogy to the purposes of language, was far more
quick and vivid than it can be now, when our minds are obscured
by discussion, dried up by logic, and too often choked by the
unnecessary gold of a vocabulary inexhaustible and ready made.
“As we go back in history,” says Mr. Emerson, “language becomes
more picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all poetry; or all
spiritual facts are represented by natural symbols.” To the primal
man his words were like the fragments of coloured glass in the
kaleidoscope, readily admitting of a thousand new uses, “changing
their place and their effect with every emotion which agitated his
language, and lending themselves with a lustre ever-new to all the
new combinations of his thought.”
The dawn of language took place in the bright infancy, in the
joyous boyhood of the world; the glory-clouds still lingered among
the valleys, upon the hills, and those splendors of creative power
which had smitten asunder the mists that swathed the primeval
chaos had not yet ceased to quiver in the fresh and radiant air.
Everything was new; the soil was clad in the vernal luxuriance
of green and untrodden herbage, and a blissful innocence gave to
the new child of Heaven a life of “happy yesterdays and confident
to-morrows.” He looked at all things with the large open eyes of
childish wonderment, and the[178] simplest facts of the eternal
Order were to him miraculous events. To him “the warmth, the west
wind, the ornaments of springtide returned unforeseen, and the
sunrise, was but a long phenomenon which might in the morning fail
the longings of night. If an arch of resplendent colours unfolded
itself from heaven to earth, and there broke into a shower of
brilliant atoms, sowing the soil with a dust of precious stones, it
announced a message and a promise of God. If the moon disappeared
in an eclipse, it was devoured by a black dragon; the thunder
was the wrath of the Almighty, and the manna was his bread. The
adolescent race had all the delicacy of tact, and all the freshness
of sentiment, which in youthful souls identifies itself with the
poetry of things. In fact, life was itself a poesy full of mystery
and full of grace.”
And this delicacy of tact, this youthfulness of sensation, this
ever-fresh capacity for that wonder which is the parent of all
knowledge and all thought, was allied most closely to religion and
to poetic insight. “They seem to me,” says Plato,[179] “to frame a
right genealogy, who make Iris the daughter of Thaumas.”
Upon the breast of new-created earth
Man walked; and when and wheresoe’er he moved,
Alone or mated,--solitude was not.
He heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice
Of God, and Angels to his sight appeared
Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise;
Or through the groves gliding like morning mists
Enkindled by the sun. He sate and talked
With winged messengers who daily brought
To his small island in the ethereal deep
Tidings of joy and love. From those pure heights
(Whether of actual vision, _sensible_
_To thought and feeling, or that in this sort_
_Have condescendingly been shadowed forth_
_Communications spiritually maintained,_
_And intuitions moral and divine_)
Fell human kind--to banishment condemned
That flowing years repealed not.
For what is religion but reverence, and love, and worship? And
what is poetry but the delicate perception of new truths, and new
relations--the eloquent[180] soliloquy of wonder and of thought?
“In wonder[181] all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and
admiration fills up the interspace. But the first wonder is the
offspring of ignorance; the last is the parent of adoration.
The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge; the last is its
euthanasy and apotheosis.”
To the early language nothing was common or unclean, as to
the youthful nations nothing was vulgar. With them it was no
degradation for a king to labour in his vineyard and tend his
flocks, or for a princess to join her maidens in washing the
palace-clothes. Homer describes the cooking of a dish or the
cleansing of a chamber with the same minute circumstantiality,
with the same lively yet dignified delight, with the same sense
that everything human has its own divine side, as he describes the
falling of a hero, or the armour of a god. And the feeling which
inspired him with this catholicity of admiration for every human
action was a right and noble one; it was the same feeling which
actuated the Christian poet in the quaint lines--
A servant in this cause
Makes service half divine;
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws
Makes that, and the action, fine.
It is only in the fastidious conventionality of later ages that
a false shame quenches enthusiasm, and “the quotidian ague of
frigid impertinences” infects the healthy veins of our mental
constitution. Then it is that reverence perishes, and simple
acts must be veiled in metaphysical euphuisms, and simple
thoughts overlaid with galimatias, with tortured acceptations,
with uncouth archaisms. ‘It[182] must always be the same. After
the beautiful period of Spanish literature come Gongora and his
_cultorists_; after Tasso and Ariosto, the Chevalier Marin and
his pale cortège of mannered _seicentisti_, armed with points and
conceits; after Shakspeare, _euphuism_; after the admirable French
of the sixteenth century, after the language of Rabelais, of Des
Periers, of Marot, of Henri Estienne, of Amyot, of Montaigne,
comes “préciosité,”[183] so vain, so affected, so puerile, so
pretentious, so unreal, so false.’
Thus the language of nations is the type of their moral as well
as of their intellectual character. As long as men are noble and
simple, their language will be rich in power and truth; when they
fall into corruption and sensuality, their words will degenerate
into the dingy and miserable counters, which have no intrinsic
value, and only serve as a worthless and conventional medium of
exchange. In the pedantry of Statius, in the puerility of Martial,
in the conceits of Seneca, in the poets who could go into emulous
raptures on the beauty of a lap-dog, and the apotheosis of a
eunuch’s hair, we read the handwriting of an empire’s condemnation.
Even a past[184] literature is full of power to save a people from
utter degeneracy. It is the true poet after all who, more than the
financier, more than the merchant, more than the statesman, more
than the soldier, saves his countrymen from ruin, elevates their
conduct by purifying their thoughts, keeps their feet upon the
mountain, and turns their eyes towards the sun.
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held.