Illi ardua cervix,
Argutumque caput, brevis alvus, obesaque terga,
Luxuriatque toris animosum pectus, &c.[109]
Here the poet is plainly concerned more with the setting forth of the
separate parts than with the effect of the whole. His object is to tell
us the characteristics of a handsome colt and a good cow, so that we may
judge of their excellence according to the number of these
characteristics which they possess. Whether or not all these can be
united into a vivid picture was a matter of indifference to him.
Except for this purpose, elaborate pictures of bodily objects, unless
helped out by the above-mentioned Homeric device of making an actual
series out of their coexistent parts, have always been considered by the
best critics as ineffective trifles, requiring little or no genius.
“When a poetaster,” says Horace, “can do nothing else, he falls to
describing a grove, an altar, a brook winding through pleasant meadows,
a rushing river, or a rainbow.”
Lucus et ara Dianæ,
Et properantis aquæ per amœnos ambitus agros,
Aut flumen Rhenum, aut pluvius describitur arcus.[110]
Pope, when a man, looked back with contempt on the descriptive efforts
of his poetic childhood. He expressly enjoined upon every one, who would
not prove himself unworthy the name of poet, to abandon as early as
possible this fondness for description. A merely descriptive poem he
declared to be a feast made up of sauces.[111] Herr Von Kleist, I know,
prided himself very little on his “Spring.” Had he lived, he would have
refashioned it altogether. He wanted to introduce into it some plan, and
was meditating how he could best make the crowd of pictures, which
seemed to have been drawn at random from the whole vast range of fresh
creation, rise in some natural order and follow each other in fitting
sequence. He would, at the same time, have done what Marmontel,
doubtless with reference to his Eclogues, recommended to several German
poets. He would have converted a series of pictures scantily interwoven
with mental emotions, into a series of emotions sparingly interspersed
with images.[112]