TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. ON THE REV. W.L. BOWLES'S STRICTURES ON THE LIFE
AND WRITINGS OF POPE.
* * * * *
"I'll play at _Bowls_ with the sun and moon."--OLD SONG.
"My mither's auld, Sir, and she has rather forgotten hersel in
speaking to my Leddy, that canna weel bide to be contradickit,
(as I ken nobody likes it, if they could help themsels.)"
TALES OF MY LANDLORD, _Old Mortality_, vol. ii. p. 163.
* * * * *
Ravenna, February 7. 1821.
Dear Sir,
In the different pamphlets which you have had the goodness to send
me, on the Pope and Bowles' controversy, I perceive that my name is
occasionally introduced by both parties. Mr. Bowles refers more than
once to what he is pleased to consider "a remarkable circumstance,"
not only in his letter to Mr. Campbell, but in his reply to the
Quarterly. The Quarterly also and Mr. Gilchrist have conferred on me
the dangerous honour of a quotation; and Mr. Bowles indirectly makes
a kind of appeal to me personally, by saying, "Lord Byron, _if he
remembers_ the circumstance, will _witness_"--_(witness_ IN ITALICS,
an ominous character for a testimony at present).
I shall not avail myself of a "non mi ricordo," even after so long a
residence in Italy;--I _do_ "remember the circumstance,"--and have no
reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do), as correctly as
the distance of time and the impression of intervening events will
permit me. In the year 1812, more than three years after the
publication of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," I had the honour
of meeting Mr. Bowles in the house of our venerable host of "Human
Life," &c. the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the
Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr. Bowles calls this
"soon after" the publication; but to me three years appear a
considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I recollect
nothing of "the rest of the company going into another room,"--nor,
though I well remember the topography of our host's elegant and
classically furnished mansion, could I swear to the very room where
the conversation occurred, though the "taking _down_ the poem" seems
to fix it in the library. Had it been "taken _up_" it would probably
have been in the drawing-room. I presume also that the "remarkable
circumstance" took place _after_ dinner; as I conceive that neither
Mr. Bowles's politeness nor appetite would have allowed him to detain
"the rest of the company" standing round their chairs in the "other
room," while we were discussing "the Woods of Madeira," instead of
circulating its vintage. Of Mr. Bowles's "good humour" I have a full
and not ungrateful recollection; as also of his gentlemanly manners
and agreeable conversation. I speak of the _whole_, and not of
particulars; for whether he did or did not use the precise words
printed in the pamphlet, I cannot say, nor could he with accuracy. Of
"the tone of seriousness" I certainly recollect nothing: on the
contrary, I thought Mr. Bowles rather disposed to treat the subject
lightly: for he said (I have no objection to be contradicted if
incorrect), that some of his good-natured friends had come to him and
exclaimed, "Eh! Bowles! how came you to make the Woods of Madeira?"
&c. &c. and that he had been at some pains and pulling down of the
poem to convince them that he had never made "the Woods" do any thing
of the kind. He was right, and _I was wrong,_ and have been wrong
still up to this acknowledgment; for I ought to have looked twice
before I wrote that which involved an inaccuracy capable of giving
pain. The fact was, that, although I had certainly before read "the
Spirit of Discovery," I took the quotation from the review. But the
mistake was mine, and not the _review's,_ which quoted the passage
correctly enough, I believe. I blundered--God knows how--into
attributing the tremors of the lovers to "the Woods of Madeira," by
which they were surrounded. And I hereby do fully and freely declare
and asseverate, that the Woods did _not_ tremble to a kiss, and that
the lovers did. I quote from memory--
------"A kiss
Stole on the listening silence, &c. &c.
They [the lovers] trembled, even as if the power," &c.
And if I had been aware that this declaration would have been in the
smallest degree satisfactory to Mr. Bowles, I should not have waited
nine years to make it, notwithstanding that "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers" had been suppressed some time previously to my meeting him
at Mr. Rogers's. Our worthy host might indeed have told him as much,
as it was at his representation that I suppressed it. A new edition
of that lampoon was preparing for the press, when Mr. Rogers
represented to me, that "I was _now_ acquainted with many of the
persons mentioned in it, and with some on terms of intimacy;" and
that he knew "one family in particular to whom its suppression would
give pleasure." I did not hesitate one moment, it was cancelled
instantly; and it is no fault of mine that it has ever been
republished. When I left England, in April, 1816, with no very
violent intentions of troubling that country again, and amidst scenes
of various kinds to distract my attention,--almost my last act, I
believe, was to sign a power of attorney, to yourself, to prevent or
suppress any attempts (of which several had been made in Ireland) at
a republication. It is proper that I should state, that the persons
with whom I was subsequently acquainted, whose names had occurred in
that publication, were made my acquaintances at their own desire, or
through the unsought intervention of others. I never, to the best of
my knowledge, sought a personal introduction to any. Some of them to
this day I know only by correspondence; and with one of those it was
begun by myself, in consequence, however, of a polite verbal
communication from a third person.
I have dwelt for an instant on these circumstances, because it has
sometimes been made a subject of bitter reproach to me to have
endeavoured to _suppress_ that satire. I never shrunk, as those who
know me know, from any personal consequences which could be attached
to its publication. Of its subsequent suppression, as I possessed the
copyright, I was the best judge and the sole master. The
circumstances which occasioned the suppression I have now stated; of
the motives, each must judge according to his candour or malignity.
Mr. Bowles does me the honour to talk of "noble mind," and "generous
magnanimity;" and all this because "the circumstance would have been
explained had not the book been suppressed." I see no "nobility of
mind" in an act of simple justice; and I hate the word
"_magnanimity,"_ because I have sometimes seen it applied to the
grossest of impostors by the greatest of fools; but I would have
"explained the circumstance," notwithstanding "the suppression of the
book," if Mr. Bowles had expressed any desire that I should. As the
"gallant Galbraith" says to "Baillie Jarvie," "Well, the devil take
the mistake, and all that occasioned it." I have had as great and
greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once a
month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about
correcting one or the other, at least after the first eight and forty
hours had gone over them.
I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, of whom you have
my opinion more at large in the unpublished letter _on_ or _to_ (for
I forget which) the editor of "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine;"--and
here I doubt that Mr. Bowles will not approve of my sentiments.
Although I regret having published "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers," the part which I regret the least is that which regards
Mr. Bowles with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that
publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I
should express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's
edition of his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I
requested that _he_ would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on
Bowles's Pope are in the first edition of "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers;" and are quite as severe and much more poetical than my
own in the second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to it, I
omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, and replaced them with my own, by which
the work gained less than Mr. Bowles. I have stated this in the
preface to the second edition. It is many years since I have read
that poem; but the Quarterly Review, Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, and Mr.
Bowles himself, have been so obliging as to refresh my memory, and
that of the public. I am grieved to say, that in reading over those
lines, I repent of their having so far fallen short of what I meant
to express upon the subject of Bowles's edition of Pope's Works. Mr.
Bowles says, that "Lord Byron _knows_ he does _not_ deserve this
character." I know no such thing. I have met Mr. Bowles occasionally,
in the best society in London; he appeared to me an amiable,
well-informed, and extremely able man. I desire nothing better than
to dine in company with such a mannered man every day in the week:
but of "his character" I know nothing personally; I can only speak to
his manners, and these have my warmest approbation. But I never judge
from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civilest
gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I ever saw
was All Pacha. Of Mr. Bowles's "_character_" I will not do him the
_injustice_ to judge from the edition of Pope, if he prepared it
heedlessly; nor the _justice,_ should it be otherwise, because I
would neither become a literary executioner nor a personal one. Mr.
Bowles the individual, and Mr. Bowles the editor, appear the two most
opposite things imaginable.
"And he himself one--antithesis."
I won't say "vile," because it is harsh; nor "mistaken," because it
has two syllables too many: but every one must fill up the blank as
he pleases.
What I saw of Mr. Bowles increased my surprise and regret that he
should ever have lent his talents to such a task. If he had been a
fool, there would have been some excuse for him; if he had been a
needy or a bad man, his conduct would have been intelligible: but he
is the opposite of all these; and thinking and feeling as I do of
Pope, to me the whole thing is unaccountable. However, I must call
things by their right names. I cannot call his edition of Pope a
"candid" work; and I still think that there is an affectation of that
quality not only in those volumes, but in the pamphlets lately
published.
"Why _yet_ he doth _deny_ his prisoners."
Mr. Bowles says, that "he has seen passages in his letters to Martha
Blount which were never published by me, and I _hope never will_ be
by others; which are so _gross_ as to imply the _grossest_
licentiousness." Is this fair play? It may, or it may not be that
such passages exist; and that Pope, who was not a monk, although a
Catholic, may have occasionally sinned in word and deed with woman in
his youth: but is this a sufficient ground for such a sweeping
denunciation? Where is the unmarried Englishman of a certain rank of
life, who (provided he has not taken orders) has not to reproach
himself between the ages of sixteen and thirty with far more
licentiousness than has ever yet been traced to Pope? Pope lived in
the public eye from his youth upwards; he had all the dunces of his
own time for his enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, who have not
the apology of dulness for detraction, since his death; and yet to
what do all their accumulated hints and charges amount?--to an
equivocal _liaison_ with Martha Blount, which might arise as much
from his infirmities as from his passions; to a hopeless flirtation
with Lady Mary W. Montagu; to a story of Cibber's; and to two or
three coarse passages in his works. _Who_ could come forth clearer
from an invidious inquest on a life of fifty-six years? Why are we to
be officiously reminded of such passages in his letters, provided
that they exist. Is Mr. Bowles aware to what such rummaging among
"letters" and "stories" might lead? I have myself seen a collection
of letters of another eminent, nay, pre-eminent, deceased poet, so
abominably gross, and elaborately coarse, that I do not believe that
they could be paralleled in our language. What is more strange, is,
that some of these are couched as _postscripts_ to his serious and
sentimental letters, to which are tacked either a piece of prose, or
some verses, of the most hyperbolical indecency. He himself says,
that if "obscenity (using a much coarser word) be the sin against the
Holy Ghost, he most certainly cannot be saved." These letters are in
existence, and have been seen by many besides myself; but would his
_editor_ have been "_candid_" in even alluding to them? Nothing would
have even provoked _me_, an indifferent spectator, to allude to them,
but this further attempt at the depreciation of Pope.
What should we say to an editor of Addison, who cited the following
passage from Walpole's letters to George Montagu? "Dr. Young has
published a new book, &c. Mr. Addison sent for the young Earl of
Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in what peace a Christian could
die; unluckily he died of _brandy:_ nothing makes a Christian die in
peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath where you are."
Suppose the editor introduced it with this preface: "One circumstance
is mentioned by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed
_flagitious_. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison sent for the young
Earl of Warwick, when dying, to show him in what peace a Christian
could die; but unluckily he died drunk," &c. &c. Now, although there
might occur on the subsequent, or on the same page, a faint show of
disbelief, seasoned with the expression of "the _same candour_" (the
_same_ exactly as throughout the book), I should say that this editor
was either foolish or false to his trust; such a story ought not to
have been admitted, except for one brief mark of crushing
indignation, unless it were _completely proved._ Why the words "_if
true_?" that "_if"_ is not a peacemaker. Why talk of "Cibber's
testimony" to his licentiousness? to what does this amount? that Pope
when very young was _once_ decoyed by some noblemen and the player to
a house of carnal recreation. Mr. Bowles was not always a clergyman;
and when he was a very young man, was he never seduced into as much?
If I were in the humour for story-telling, and relating little
anecdotes, I could tell a much better story of Mr. Bowles than
Cibber's, upon much better authority, viz. that of Mr. Bowles
himself. It was not related by _him_ in my presence, but in that of a
third person, whom Mr. Bowles names oftener than once in the course
of his replies. This gentleman related it to me as a humorous and
witty anecdote; and so it was, whatever its other characteristics
might be. But should I, for a youthful frolic, brand Mr. Bowles with
a "libertine sort of love," or with "licentiousness?" is he the less
now a pious or a good man, for not having always been a priest? No
such thing; I am willing to believe him a good man, almost as good a
man as Pope, but no better.
The truth is, that in these days the grand "_primum mobile"_ of
England is _cant;_ cant political, cant poetical, cant religious,
cant moral; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of
life. It is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for
those who can only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say
_cant,_ because it is a thing of words, without the smallest
influence upon human actions; the English being no wiser, no better,
and much poorer, and more divided amongst themselves, as well as far
less moral, than they were before the prevalence of this verbal
decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well
ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that
he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure in which Pope was
embarking) sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; but all
men of the world who know what life is, or at least what it was to
them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the
charge of "a libertine sort of love;" while the more serious will
look upon those who bring forward such charges upon an insulated fact
as fanatics or hypocrites, perhaps both. The two are sometimes
compounded in a happy mixture.
Mr. Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently of a "second
tumbler of _hot_ white-wine negus." What does he mean? Is there any
harm in negus? or is it the worse for being _hot_? or does Mr. Bowles
drink negus? I had a better opinion of him. I hoped that whatever
wine he drank was neat; or, at least, that, like the ordinary in
Jonathan Wild, "he preferred _punch,_ the rather as there was nothing
against it in Scripture." I should be sorry to believe that Mr.
Bowles was fond of negus; it is such a "candid" liquor, so like a
wishy-washy compromise between the passion for wine and the propriety
of water. But different writers have divers tastes. Judge Blackstone
composed his "Commentaries" (he was a poet too in his youth) with a
bottle of port before him. Addison's conversation was not good for
much till he had taken a similar dose. Perhaps the prescription of
these two great men was not inferior to the very different one of a
soi-disant poet of this day, who, after wandering amongst the hills,
returns, goes to bed, and dictates his verses, being fed by a
by-stander with bread and butter during the operation.
I now come to Mr. Bowles's "invariable principles of poetry." These
Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce "unanswerable;"
and they are "unanswered," at least by Campbell, who seems to have
been astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being offered to
ally himself to a king of France because "he hated the word league;"
which proves that the Padishan understood French. Mr. Campbell has no
need of my alliance, nor shall I presume to offer it; but I do hate
that word "_invariable_." What is there of _human_, be it poetry,
philosophy, wit, wisdom, science, power, glory, mind, matter, life,
or death, which is "_invariable_?" Of course I put things divine out
of the question. Of all arrogant baptisms of a book, this title to a
pamphlet appears the most complacently conceited. It is Mr.
Campbell's part to answer the contents of this performance, and
especially to vindicate his own "Ship," which Mr. Bowles most
triumphantly proclaims to have struck to his very first fire.
"Quoth he, there was a _Ship;_
Now let me go, thou grey-haired loon,
Or my staff shall make thee skip."
It is no affair of mine, but having once begun, (certainly not by my
own wish, but called upon by the frequent recurrence to my name in
the pamphlets,) I am like an Irishman in a "row," "any body's
customer." I shall therefore say a word or two on the "Ship."
Mr. Bowles asserts that Campbell's "Ship of the Line" derives all its
poetry, not from "_art_," but from "_nature_." "Take away the waves,
the winds, the sun, &c. &c. _one_ will become a stripe of blue
bunting; and the other a piece of coarse canvass on three tall
poles." Very true; take away the "waves," "the winds," and there will
be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other purpose;
and take away "the sun," and we must read Mr. Bowles's pamphlet by
candle-light. But the "poetry" of the "Ship" does _not_ depend on
"the waves," &c.; on the contrary, the "Ship of the Line" confers its
own poetry upon the waters, and heightens _theirs._ I do not deny,
that the "waves and winds," and above all "the sun," are highly
poetical; we know it to our cost, by the many descriptions of them in
verse: but if the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if the
winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the sun shone neither
upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor fortresses, would its beams be equally
poetical? I think not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take away
"the Ship of the line" "swinging round" the "calm water," and the
calm water becomes a somewhat monotonous thing to look at,
particularly if not transparently _clear_; witness the thousands who
pass by without looking on it at all. What was it attracted the
thousands to the launch? they might have seen the poetical "calm
water" at Wapping, or in the "London Dock," or in the Paddington
Canal, or in a horse-pond, or in a slop-basin, or in any other vase.
They might have heard the poetical winds howling through the chinks
of a pigsty, or the garret window; they might have seen the sun
shining on a footman's livery, or on a brass warming pan; but could
the "calm water," or the "wind," or the "sun," make all, or any of
these "poetical?" I think not. Mr. Bowles admits "the Ship" to be
poetical, but only from those accessaries: now if they _confer_
poetry so as to make one thing poetical, they would make other things
poetical; the more so, as Mr. Bowles calls a "ship of the line"
without them,--that is to say, its "masts and sails and
streamers,"--"blue bunting," and "coarse canvass," and "tall poles."
So they are; and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is
grass, and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of much
poesy.
Did Mr. Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? I presume that he has, at
least upon a sea-piece. Did any painter ever paint the sea _only_,
without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunct? Is
the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical
object, with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing
monotony? Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the poem of
the Shipwreck, is it the storm or the ship which most interests? both
_much_ undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for
the tempest? It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in
itself was never esteemed a high order of that art.
I look upon myself as entitled to talk of naval matters, at least to
poets:--with the exception of Walter Scott, Moore, and Southey,
perhaps, who have been voyagers, I have _swam_ more miles than all
the rest of them together now living ever _sailed_, and have lived
for months and months on shipboard; and, during the whole period of
my life abroad, have scarcely ever passed a month out of sight of the
ocean: besides being brought up from two years till ten on the brink
of it. I recollect, when anchored off Cape Sigeum in 1810, in an
English frigate, a violent squall coming on at sunset, so violent as
to make us imagine that the ship would part cable, or drive from her
anchorage. Mr. Hobhouse and myself, and some officers, had been up
the Dardanelles to Abydos, and were just returned in time. The aspect
of a storm in the Archipelago is as poetical as need be, the sea
being particularly short, dashing, and dangerous, and the navigation
intricate and broken by the isles and currents. Cape Sigeum, the
tumuli of the Troad, Lemnos, Tenedos, all added to the associations
of the time. But what seemed the most "_poetical_" of all at the
moment, were the numbers (about two hundred) of Greek and Turkish
craft, which were obliged to "cut and run" before the wind, from
their unsafe anchorage, some for Tenedos, some for other isles, some
for the main, and some it might be for eternity. The sight of these
little scudding vessels, darting over the foam in the twilight, now
appearing and now disappearing between the waves in the cloud of
night, with their peculiarly _white_ sails, (the Levant sails not
being of "_coarse canvass_," but of white cotton,) skimming along as
quickly, but less safely than the sea-mews which hovered over them;
their evident distress, their reduction to fluttering specks in the
distance, their crowded succession, their _littleness_, as contending
with the giant element, which made our stout forty-four's _teak_
timbers (she was built in India) creak again; their aspect and their
motion, all struck me as something far more "poetical" than the mere
broad, brawling, shipless sea, and the sullen winds, could possibly
have been without them.
The Euxine is a noble sea to look upon, and the port of
Constantinople the most beautiful of harbours, and yet I cannot but
think that the twenty sail of the line, some of one hundred and forty
guns, rendered it more "poetical" by day in the sun, and by night
perhaps still more, for the Turks illuminate their vessels of war in
a manner the most picturesque, and yet all this is _artificial_. As
for the Euxine, I stood upon the Symplegades--I stood by the broken
altar still exposed to the winds upon one of them--I felt all the
"_poetry_" of the situation, as I repeated the first lines of Medea;
but would not that "poetry" have been heightened by the _Argo_? It
was so even by the appearance of any merchant vessel arriving from
Odessa. But Mr. Bowles says, "Why bring your ship off the stocks?"
for no reason that I know, except that ships are built to be
launched. The water, &c. undoubtedly HEIGHTENS the poetical
associations, but it does not _make_ them; and the ship amply repays
the obligation: they aid each other; the water is more poetical with
the ship--the ship less so without the water. But even a ship laid up
in dock, is a grand and a poetical sight. Even an old boat, keel
upwards, wrecked upon the barren sand, is a "poetical" object, (and
Wordsworth, who made a poem about a washing tub and a blind boy, may
tell you so as well as I,) whilst a long extent of sand and unbroken
water, without the boat, would be as like dull prose as any pamphlet
lately published.
What makes the poetry in the image of the "_marble waste of Tadmor_,"
or Grainger's "Ode to Solitude," so much admired by Johnson? Is it
the "_marble_" or the "_waste,_" the _artificial_ or the _natural_
object? The "waste" is like all other _wastes_; but the "_marble_" of
Palmyra makes the poetry of the passage as of the place.
The beautiful but barren Hymettus, the whole coast of Attica, her
hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, &c. &c. are
in themselves poetical, and would be so if the name of Athens, of
Athenians, and her very ruins, were swept from the earth. But am I to
be told that the "nature" of Attica would be _more_ poetical without
the "art" of the Acropolis? of the Temple of Theseus? and of the
still all Greek and glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial
genius? Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the
Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands? The COLUMNS of Cape
Colonna, or the Cape itself? The rocks at the foot of it, or the
recollection that Falconer's _ship_ was bulged upon them? There are a
thousand rocks and capes far more picturesque than those of the
Acropolis and Cape Sunium in themselves; what are they to a thousand
scenes in the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia Minor, Switzerland, or
even of Cintra in Portugal, or to many scenes of Italy, and the
Sierras of Spain? But it is the "_art_," the columns, the temples,
the wrecked vessel, which give them their antique and their modern
poetry, and not the spots themselves. Without them, the _spots_ of
earth would be unnoticed and unknown; buried, like Babylon and
Nineveh, in indistinct confusion, without poetry, as without
existence; but to whatever spot of earth these ruins were
transported, if they were _capable_ of transportation, like the
obelisk, and the sphinx, and the Memnon's head, _there_ they would
still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in the pride of
their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the robbery of ruins
from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture; but why did I do
so? The _ruins_ are as poetical in Piccadilly as they were in the
Parthenon; but the Parthenon and its rock are less so without them.
Such is the poetry of art.
Mr. Bowles contends again that the pyramids of Egypt are poetical,
because of "the association with boundless deserts," and that a
"pyramid of the same dimensions" would not be sublime in "Lincoln's
Inn Fields:" not _so_ poetical certainly; but take away the
"pyramids," and what is the "_desert?"_ Take away Stone-henge from
Salisbury plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow heath, or any
other unenclosed down. It appears to me that St. Peter's, the
Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, the
Venus di Medicis, the Hercules, the dying Gladiator, the Moses of
Michael Angelo, and all the higher works of Canova, (I have already
spoken of those of ancient Greece, still extant in that country, or
transported to England,) are as _poetical_ as Mont Blanc or Mount
Ætna, perhaps still more so, as they are direct manifestations of
mind, and _presuppose_ poetry in their very conception; and have,
moreover, as being such, a something of actual life, which cannot
belong to any part of inanimate nature, unless we adopt the system of
Spinosa, that the world is the Deity. There can be nothing more
poetical in its aspect than the city of Venice: does this depend upon
the sea, or the canals?--
"The dirt and sea-weed whence proud Venice rose?"
Is it the canal which runs between the palace and the prison, or the
"Bridge of Sighs," which connects them, that render it poetical? Is
it the "Canal Grande," or the Rialto which arches it, the churches
which tower over it, the palaces which line, and the gondolas which
glide over the waters, that render this city more poetical than Rome
itself? Mr. Bowles will say, perhaps, that the Rialto is but marble,
the palaces and churches only stone, and the gondolas a "coarse"
black cloth, thrown over some planks of carved wood, with a shining
bit of fantastically formed iron at the prow, "_without_" the water.
And I tell him that without these, the water would be nothing but a
clay-coloured ditch; and whoever says the contrary, deserves to be at
the bottom of that, where Pope's heroes are embraced by the mud
nymphs. There would be nothing to make the canal of Venice more
poetical than that of Paddington, were it not for the artificial
adjuncts above mentioned; although it is a perfectly natural canal,
formed by the sea, and the innumerable islands which constitute the
site of this extraordinary city.
The very Cloaca of Tarquin at Rome are as poetical as Richmond Hill;
many will think more so: take away Rome, and leave the Tibur and the
seven hills, in the nature of Evander's time. Let Mr. Bowles, or Mr.
Wordsworth, or Mr. Southey, or any of the other "naturals," make a
poem upon them, and then see which is most poetical, their
production, or the commonest guide-book, which tells you the road
from St. Peter's to the Coliseum, and informs you what you will see
by the way. The ground interests in Virgil, because it _will_ be
_Rome_, and not because it is Evander's rural domain.
Mr. Bowles then proceeds to press Homer into his service, in answer
to a remark of Mr. Campbell's, that "Homer was a great describer of
works of art." Mr. Bowles contends, that all his great power, even in
this, depends upon their connection with nature. The "shield of
Achilles derives its poetical interest from the subjects described on
it." And from what does the _spear_ of Achilles derive its interest?
and the helmet and the mail worn by Patroclus, and the celestial
armour, and the very brazen greaves of the well-booted Greeks? Is it
solely from the legs, and the back, and the breast, and the human
body, which they enclose? In that case, it would have been more
poetical to have made them fight naked; and Gulley and Gregson, as
being nearer to a state of nature, are more poetical boxing in a pair
of drawers than Hector and Achilles in radiant armour, and with
heroic weapons.
Instead of the clash of helmets, and the rushing of chariots, and the
whizzing of spears, and the glancing of swords, and the cleaving of
shields, and the piercing of breast-plates, why not represent the
Greeks and Trojans like two savage tribes, tugging and tearing, and
kicking and biting, and gnashing, foaming, grinning, and gouging, in
all the poetry of martial nature, unencumbered with gross, prosaic,
artificial arms; an equal superfluity to the natural warrior, and his
natural poet. Is there any thing unpoetical in Ulysses striking the
horses of Rhesus with _his bow_ (having forgotten his thong), or
would Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, or smack them
with his hand, as being more unsophisticated?
In Gray's Elegy, is there an image more striking than his "shapeless
sculpture?" Of sculpture in general, it may be observed, that it is
more poetical than nature itself, inasmuch as it represents and
bodies forth that ideal beauty and sublimity which is never to be
found in actual nature. This at least is the general opinion. But,
always excepting the Venus di Medicis, I differ from that opinion, at
least as far as regards female beauty; for the head of Lady
Charlemont (when I first saw her nine years ago) seemed to possess
all that sculpture could require for its ideal. I recollect seeing
something of the same kind in the head of an Albanian girl, who was
actually employed in mending a road in the mountains, and in some
Greek, and one or two Italian, faces. But of _sublimity_, I have
never seen any thing in human nature at all to approach the
expression of sculpture, either in the Apollo, the Moses, or other of
the sterner works of ancient or modern art.
Let us examine a little further this "babble of green fields" and of
bare nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for the
poetical purposes of the fine arts. In landscape painting, the great
artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents
and composes one. Nature, in her actual aspect, does not furnish him
with such existing scenes as he requires. Even where he presents you
with some famous city, or celebrated scene from mountain or other
nature, it must be taken from some particular point of view, and with
such light, and shade, and distance, &c. as serve not only to
heighten its beauties, but to shadow its deformities. The poetry of
nature alone, _exactly_ as she appears, is not sufficient to bear him
out. The very sky of his painting is not the _portrait_ of the sky of
nature; it is a composition of different _skies_, observed at
different times, and not the whole copied from any _particular_ day.
And why? Because nature is not lavish of her beauties; they are
widely scattered, and occasionally displayed, to be selected with
care, and gathered with difficulty.
Of sculpture I have just spoken. It is the great scope of the
sculptor to heighten nature into heroic beauty, _i.e._ in plain
English, to surpass his model. When Canova forms a statue, he takes a
limb from one, a hand from another, a feature from a third, and a
shape, it may be, from a fourth, probably at the same time improving
upon all, as the Greek of old did in embodying his Venus.
Ask a portrait painter to describe his agonies in accommodating the
faces with which nature and his sitters have crowded his
painting-room to the principles of his art: with the exception of
perhaps ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which he can
venture to give without shading much and adding more. Nature,
exactly, simply, barely nature, will make no great artist of any
kind, and least of all a poet--the most artificial, perhaps, of all
artists in his very essence. With regard to natural imagery, the
poets are obliged to take some of their best illustrations from
_art_. You say that a "fountain is as clear or clearer than _glass_"
to express its beauty:--
"O fons Bandusiæ, splendidior vitro!"
In the speech of Mark Antony, the body of Cæsar is displayed, but so
also is his _mantle_:--
"You all do know this _mantle_," &c.
* * * * *
"Look! in this place ran Cassius' _dagger_ through."
If the poet had said that Cassius had run his _fist_ through the rent
of the mantle, it would have had more of Mr. Bowles's "nature" to
help it; but the artificial _dagger_ is more poetical than any
natural _hand_ without it. In the sublime of sacred poetry, "Who is
this that cometh from Edom? with _dyed garments_ from Bozrah?" Would
"the comer" be poetical without his "_dyed garments?_" which strike
and startle the spectator, and identify the approaching object.
The mother of Sisera is represented listening for the "_wheels of his
chariot_." Solomon, in his Song, compares the nose of his beloved to
"a tower," which to us appears an eastern exaggeration. If he had
said, that her stature was like that of a "tower's," it would have
been as poetical as if he had compared her to a tree.
"The virtuous Marcia _towers_ above her sex,"
is an instance of an artificial image to express a _moral_
superiority. But Solomon, it is probable, did not compare his
beloved's nose to a "tower" on account of its length, but of its
symmetry; and making allowance for eastern hyperbole, and the
difficulty of finding a discreet image for a female nose in nature,
it is perhaps as good a figure as any other.
Art is _not_ inferior to nature for poetical purposes. What makes a
regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass
of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the _art_ and
artificial symmetry of their position and movements. A Highlander's
plaid, a Mussulman's turban, and a Roman toga, are more poetical than
the tattooed or untattooed buttocks of a New Sandwich savage,
although they were described by William Wordsworth himself like the
"idiot in his glory."
I have seen as many mountains as most men, and more fleets than the
generality of landsmen; and, to my mind, a large convoy with a few
sail of the line to conduct them is as noble and as poetical a
prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I prefer the "mast
of some great ammiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch fir or the
alpine tannen; and think that _more_ poetry _has been_ made out of
it. In what does the infinite superiority of "Falconer's Shipwreck"
over all other shipwrecks consist? In his admirable application of
the terms of his art; in a poet-sailor's description of the sailor's
fate. These _very terms_, by his application, make the strength and
reality of his poem. Why? because he was a poet, and in the hands of
a poet, _art_ will not be found less ornamental than nature. It is
precisely in general nature, and in stepping out of his element, that
Falconer fails; where he digresses to speak of ancient Greece, and
"such branches of learning."
In Dyer's Grongar Hill, upon which his fame rests, the very
appearance of nature herself is moralised into an artificial image:
"Thus is nature's _vesture_ wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought;
Thus she _dresses green and gay_,
To disperse our cares away."
And here also we have the telescope; the misuse of which, from
Milton, has rendered Mr. Bowles so triumphant over Mr. Campbell:--
"So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through Hope's deluding _glass_."