"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue?"
To return once more to the sea. Let any one look on the long wall of
Malamocco, which curbs the Adriatic, and pronounce between the sea
and its master. Surely that Roman work (I mean _Roman_ in conception
and performance), which says to the ocean, "Thus far shalt thou come,
and no further," and is obeyed, is not less sublime and poetical than
the angry waves which vainly break beneath it.
Mr. Bowles makes the chief part of a ship's poesy depend upon the
"_wind:_" then why is a ship under sail more poetical than a hog in a
high wind? The hog is all nature, the ship is all art, "coarse
canvass," "blue bunting," and "tall poles;" both are violently acted
upon by the wind, tossed here and there, to and fro, and yet nothing
but excess of hunger could make me look upon the pig as the more
poetical of the two, and then only in the shape of a griskin.
Will Mr. Bowles tell us that the poetry of an aqueduct consist in the
_water_ which it conveys? Let him look on that of Justinian, on those
of Rome, Constantinople, Lisbon, and Elvas, or even at the remains of
that in Attica.
We are asked, "What makes the venerable towers of Westminster Abbey
more poetical, as objects, than the tower for the manufactory of
patent shot, surrounded by the same scenery?" I will answer--the
_architecture_. Turn Westminster Abbey, or Saint Paul's into a powder
magazine, their poetry, as objects, remains the same; the Parthenon
was actually converted into one by the Turks, during Morosini's
Venetian siege, and part of it destroyed in consequence. Cromwell's
dragoons stalled their steeds in Worcester cathedral; was it less
poetical as an object than before? Ask a foreigner on his approach to
London, what strikes him as the most poetical of the towers before
him: he will point out Saint Paul's and Westminster Abbey, without,
perhaps, knowing the names or associations of either, and pass over
the "tower for patent shot,"--not that, for any thing he knows to the
contrary, it might not be the mausoleum of a monarch, or a Waterloo
column, or a Trafalgar monument, but because its architecture is
obviously inferior.
To the question, "Whether the description of a game of cards be as
poetical, supposing the execution of the artists equal, as a
description of a walk in a forest?" it may be answered, that the
_materials_ are certainly not equal; but that "the _artist_," who has
rendered the "game of cards poetical," is _by far the greater_ of the
two. But all this "ordering" of poets is purely arbitrary on the part
of Mr. Bowles. There may or may not be, in fact, different "orders"
of poetry, but the poet is always ranked according to his execution,
and not according to his branch of the art.
Tragedy is one of the highest presumed orders. Hughes has written a
tragedy, and a very successful one; Fenton another; and Pope none.
Did any man, however,--will even Mr. Bowles himself,--rank Hughes and
Fenton as poets above _Pope_? Was even Addison (the author of Cato),
or Rowe (one of the higher order of dramatists as far as success
goes), or Young, or even Otway and Southerne, ever raised for a
moment to the same rank with Pope in the estimation of the reader or
the critic, before his death or since? If Mr. Bowles will contend for
classifications of this kind, let him recollect that descriptive
poetry has been ranked as among the lowest branches of the art, and
description as a mere ornament, but which should never form the
"subject" of a poem. The Italians, with the most poetical language,
and the most fastidious taste in Europe, possess now five _great_
poets, they say, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and, lastly,
Alfieri[1]; and whom do they esteem one of the highest of these, and
some of them the very highest? Petrarch the _sonneteer_: it is true
that some of his Canzoni are _not less_ esteemed, but _not_ more; who
ever dreams of his Latin Africa?
[Footnote 1: Of these there is one ranked with the others for his
SONNETS, and _two_ for compositions which belong to _no class_ at
all? Where is Dante? His poem is not an epic; then what is it? He
himself calls it a "divine comedy;" and why? This is more than all
his thousand commentators have been able to explain. Ariosto's is not
an _epic_ poem; and if poets are to be _classed_ according to the
_genus_ of their poetry, where is he to be placed? Of these five,
Tasso and Alfieri only come within Aristotle's arrangement, and Mr.
Bowles's class-book. But the whole position is false. Poets are
classed by the power of their performance, and not according to its
rank in a gradus. In the contrary case, the forgotten epic poets of
all countries would rank above Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, Burns, Gray,
Dryden, and the highest names of various countries. Mr. Bowles's
title of "_invariable_ principles of poetry," is, perhaps, the most
arrogant ever prefixed to a volume. So far are the principles of
poetry from being "_invariable_," that they never were nor ever will
be settled. These "principles" mean nothing more than the
predilections of a particular age; and every age has its own, and a
different from its predecessor. It is now Homer, and now Virgil; once
Dryden, and since Walter Scott; now Corneille, and now Racine; now
Crebillon, now Voltaire. The Homerists and Virgilians in France
disputed for half a century. Not fifty years ago the Italians
neglected Dante--Bettinelli reproved Monti for reading "that
barbarian;" at present they adore him. Shakspeare and Milton have had
their rise, and they will have their decline. Already they have more
than once fluctuated, as must be the case with all the dramatists and
poets of a living language. This does not depend upon their merits,
but upon the ordinary vicissitudes of human opinions. Schlegel and
Madame de Stael have endeavoured also to reduce poetry to _two_
systems, classical and romantic. The effect is only beginning.]
Were Petrarch to be ranked according to the "order" of his
compositions, where would the best of sonnets place him? with Dante
and the others? no; but, as I have before said, the poet who
_executes_ best, is the highest, whatever his department, and will
ever be so rated in the world's esteem.
Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, high as he stands, I am not
sure that he would not stand higher; it is the corner-stone of his
glory: without it, his odes would be insufficient for his fame. The
depreciation of Pope is partly founded upon a false idea of the
dignity of his order of poetry, to which he has partly contributed by
the ingenuous boast,
"That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But _stoop'd_ to truth, and moralised his song."
He should have written "rose to truth." In my mind, the highest of
all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects
must be moral truth. Religion does not make a part of my subject; it
is something beyond human powers, and has failed in all human hands
except Milton's and Dante's, and even Dante's powers are involved in
his delineation of human passions, though in supernatural
circumstances. What made Socrates the greatest of men? His moral
truth--his ethics. What proved Jesus Christ the Son of God hardly
less than his miracles? His moral precepts. And if ethics have made a
philosopher the first of men, and have not been disdained as an
adjunct to his Gospel by the Deity himself, are we to be told that
ethical poetry, or didactic poetry, or by whatever name you term it,
whose object is to make men better and wiser, is not the _very first
order_ of poetry; and are we to be told this too by one of the
priesthood? It requires more mind, more wisdom, more power, than all
the "forests" that ever were "walked" for their "description," and
all the epics that ever were founded upon fields of battle. The
Georgics are indisputably, and, I believe, _undisputedly_ even a
finer poem than the Æneid. Virgil knew this; he did not order _them_
to be burnt.
"The proper study of mankind is man."
It is the fashion of the day to lay great stress upon what they call
"imagination" and "invention," the two commonest of qualities: an
Irish peasant with a little whiskey in his head will imagine and
invent more than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had
not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far
superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the
first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics. Pope has
not this defect; his moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious.
In speaking of artificial objects, I have omitted to touch upon one
which I will now mention. Cannon may be presumed to be as highly
poetical as art can make her objects. Mr. Bowles will, perhaps, tell
me that this is because they resemble that grand natural article of
sound in heaven, and simile upon earth--thunder. I shall be told
triumphantly, that Milton made sad work with his artillery, when he
armed his devils therewithal. He did so; and this artificial object
must have had much of the sublime to attract his attention for such a
conflict. He _has_ made an absurd use of it; but the absurdity
consists not in using _cannon_ against the angels of God, but any
_material_ weapon. The thunder of the clouds would have been as
ridiculous and vain in the hands of the devils, as the "villanous
saltpetre:" the angels were as impervious to the one as to the other.
The thunderbolts become sublime in the hands of the Almighty not as
such, but because _he_ deigns to use them as a means of repelling the
rebel spirits; but no one can attribute their defeat to this grand
piece of natural electricity: the Almighty willed, and they fell; his
word would have been enough; and Milton is as absurd, (and, in fact,
_blasphemous_,) in putting material lightnings into the hands of the
Godhead, as in giving him hands at all.
The artillery of the demons was but the first step of his mistake,
the thunder the next, and it is a step lower. It would have been fit
for Jove, but not for Jehovah. The subject altogether was essentially
unpoetical; he has made more of it than another could, but it is
beyond him and all men.
In a portion of his reply, Mr. Bowles asserts that Pope "envied
Phillips," because he quizzed his pastorals in the Guardian, in that
most admirable model of irony, his paper on the subject. If there was
any thing enviable about Phillips, it could hardly be his pastorals.
They were despicable, and Pope expressed his contempt. If Mr.
Fitzgerald published a volume of sonnets, or a "Spirit of Discovery,"
or a "Missionary," and Mr. Bowles wrote in any periodical journal an
ironical paper upon them, would this be "envy?" The authors of the
"Rejected Addresses" have ridiculed the sixteen or twenty "first
living poets" of the day, but do they "envy" them? "Envy" writhes, it
don't laugh. The authors of the Rejected Addresses may despise some,
but they can hardly "envy" any of the persons whom they have
parodied; and Pope could have no more envied Phillips than he did
Welsted, or Theobald, or Smedley, or any other given hero of the
Dunciad. He could not have envied him, even had he himself _not_ been
the greatest poet of his age. Did Mr. Ings "_envy_" Mr. Phillips when
he asked him, "How came your Pyrrhus to drive oxen and say, I am
_goaded_ on by love?" This question silenced poor Phillips; but it no
more proceeded from "envy" than did Pope's ridicule. Did he envy
Swift? Did he envy Bolingbroke? Did he envy Gay the unparalleled
success of his "Beggar's Opera?" We may be answered that these were
his friends--true: but does _friendship_ prevent _envy_? Study the
first woman you meet with, or the first scribbler, let Mr. Bowles
himself (whom I acquit fully of such an odious quality) study some of
his own poetical intimates: the most envious man I ever heard of is a
poet, and a high one; besides, it is an _universal_ passion.
Goldsmith envied not only the puppets for their dancing, and broke
his shins in the attempt at rivalry, but was seriously angry because
two pretty women received more attention than he did. _This is envy;_
but where does Pope show a sign of the passion? In that case Dryden
envied the hero of his Mac Flecknoe. Mr. Bowles compares, when and
where he can, Pope with Cowper--(the same Cowper whom in his edition
of Pope he laughs at for his attachment to an old woman, Mrs. Unwin;
search and you will find it; I remember the passage, though not the
page;) in particular he requotes Cowper's Dutch delineation of a
wood, drawn up, like a seedsman's catalogue[1], with an affected
imitation of Milton's style, as burlesque as the "Splendid Shilling."
These two writers, for Cowper is no poet, come into comparison in one
great work, the translation of Homer. Now, with all the great, and
manifest, and manifold, and reproved, and acknowledged, and
uncontroverted faults of Pope's translation, and all the scholarship,
and pains, and time, and trouble, and blank verse of the other, who
can ever read Cowper? and who will ever lay down Pope, unless for the
original? Pope's was "not Homer, it was Spondanus;" but Cowper's is
not Homer either, it is not even Cowper. As a child I first read
Pope's Homer with a rapture which no subsequent work could ever
afford, and children are not the worst judges of their own language.
As a boy I read Homer in the original, as we have all done, some of
us by force, and a few by favour; under which description I come is
nothing to the purpose, it is enough that I read him. As a man I have
tried to read Cowper's version, and I found it impossible. Has any
human reader ever succeeded?
[Footnote 1: I will submit to Mr. Bowles's own judgment a passage
from another poem of Cowper's, to be compared with the same writer's
Sylvan Sampler. In the lines to Mary,--
"Thy _needles_, once a shining store,
For my sake restless heretofore,
Now rust disused, and shine no more,
My Mary,"
contain a simple, household, "_indoor_," artificial, and ordinary
image; I refer Mr. Bowles to the stanza, and ask if these three lines
about "_needles_" are not worth all the boasted twaddling about
trees, so triumphantly re-quoted? and yet, in _fact_, what do they
convey? A homely collection of images and ideas, associated with the
darning of stockings, and the hemming of shirts, and the mending of
breeches; but will any one deny that they are eminently poetical and
pathetic as addressed by Cowper to his nurse? The trash of trees
reminds me of a saying of Sheridan's. Soon after the "Rejected
Address" scene in 1812, I met Sheridan. In the course of dinner, he
said, "Lord Byron, did you know that, amongst the writers of
addresses, was Whitbread himself?" I answered by an enquiry of what
sort of an address he had made. "Of that," replied Sheridan, "I
remember little, except that there was a _phoenix_ in it."--"A
phoenix!! Well, how did he describe it?"--"_Like a poulterer_,"
answered Sheridan: "it was green, and yellow, and red, and blue: he
did not let us off for a single feather." And just such as this
poulterer's account of a phoenix is Cowper's stick-picker's detail of
a wood, with all its petty minutiæ of this, that, and the other.]
And now that we have heard the Catholic repreached with envy,
duplicity, licentiousness, avarice--what was the Calvinist? He
attempted the most atrocious of crimes in the Christian code, viz.
suicide--and why? because he was to be examined whether he was fit
for an office which he seems to wish to have made a sinecure. His
connection with Mrs. Unwin was pure enough, for the old lady was
devout, and he was deranged; but why then is the infirm and then
elderly Pope to be reproved for his connection with Martha Blount:
Cowper was the almoner of Mrs. Throgmorton; but Pope's charities were
his own, and they were noble and extensive, far beyond his fortune's
warrant. Pope was the tolerant yet steady adherent of the most
bigoted of sects; and Cowper the most bigoted and despondent sectary
that ever anticipated damnation to himself or others. Is this harsh?
I know it is, and I do not assert it as my opinion of Cowper
_personally_, but to _show what might_ be said, with just as great an
appearance of truth and candour, as all the odium which has been
accumulated upon Pope in similar speculations. Cowper was a good man,
and lived at a fortunate time for his works.
[Footnote: One more poetical instance of the power of art, and even
its _superiority_ over nature, in poetry; and I have done:--the bust
of _Antinous_! Is there any thing in nature like this marble,
excepting the Venus? Can there be more _poetry_ gathered into
existence than in that wonderful creation of perfect beauty? But the
poetry of this bust is in no respect derived from nature, nor from
any association of moral exaltedness; for what is there in common
with moral nature, and the male minion of Adrian? The very execution
is _not natural_, but _super_-natural, or rather _super-artificial,_
for nature has never done so much.
Away, then, with this cant about nature, and "invariable principles
of poetry!" A great artist will make a block of stone as sublime as a
mountain, and a good poet can imbue a pack of cards with more poetry
than inhabits the forests of America. It is the business and the
proof of a poet to give the lie to the proverb, and sometimes to
"_make a silken purse out of a sow's ear_;" and to conclude with
another homely proverb, "a good workman will not find fault with his
tools."]
Mr. Bowles, apparently not relying entirely upon his own arguments,
has, in person or by proxy, brought forward the names of Southey and
Moore. Mr. Southey "agrees entirely with Mr. Bowles in his
_invariable_ principles of poetry." The least that Mr. Bowles can do
in return is to approve the "invariable principles of Mr. Southey." I
should have thought that the word "_invariable_" might have stuck in
Southey's throat, like Macbeth's "Amen!" I am sure it did in mine,
and I am not the least consistent of the two, at least as a voter.
Moore _(et tu, Brute!_) also approves, and a Mr. J. Scott. There is a
letter also of two lines from a gentleman in asterisks, who, it
seems, is a poet of "the highest rank:"--who _can_ this be? not my
friend, Sir Walter, surely. Campbell it can't be; Rogers it won't be.
"You have _hit the nail in_ the head, and * * * *
[Pope, I presume] _on_ the head also.
"I _remain_ yours, affectionately,
"(Five _Asterisks_.)"
And in asterisks let him remain. Whoever this person may be, he
deserves, for such a judgment of Midas, that "the nail" which Mr.
Bowles has "hit _in_ the head," should he driven through his own
ears; I am sure that they are long enough.
The attempt of the poetical populace of the present day to obtain an
ostracism against Pope is as easily accounted for as the Athenian's
shell against Aristides; they are tired of hearing him always called
"the Just." They are also fighting for life; for, if he maintains his
station, they will reach their own by falling. They have raised a
mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest architecture;
and, more barbarous than the barbarians from whose practice I have
borrowed the figure, they are not contented with their own grotesque
edifice, unless they destroy the prior, and purely beautiful fabric
which preceded, and which shames them and theirs for ever and ever. I
shall be told that amongst those I _have_ been (or it may be, still
_am_) conspicuous--true, and I am ashamed of it. I _have_ been
amongst the builders of this Babel, attended by a confusion of
tongues, but _never_ amongst the envious destroyers of the classic
temple of our predecessor. I have loved and honoured the fame and
name of that illustrious and unrivalled man, far more than my own
paltry renown, and the trashy jingle of the crowd of "Schools" and
upstarts, who pretend to rival, or even surpass him. Sooner than a
single leaf should be torn from his laurel, it were better that all
which these men, and that I, as one of their set, have ever written,
should
"Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row,
Befringe the rails of Bedlam, or Soho!"
There are those who will believe this, and those who will not. You,
sir, know how far I am sincere, and whether my opinion, not only in
the short work intended for publication, and in private letters which
can never be published, has or has not been the same. I look upon
this as the declining age of English poetry; no regard for others, no
selfish feeling, can prevent me from seeing this, and expressing the
truth. There can be no worse sign for the taste of the times than the
depreciation of Pope. It would be better to receive for proof Mr.
Cobbett's rough but strong attack upon Shakspeare and Milton, than to
allow this smooth and "candid" undermining of the reputation of the
most _perfect_ of our poets, and the purest of our moralists. Of his
power in the _passions_, in description, in the mock heroic, I leave
others to descant. I take him on his strong ground as an _ethical_
poet: in the former, none excel; in the mock heroic and the ethical,
none equal him; and in my mind, the latter is the highest of all
poetry, because it does that in _verse_, which the greatest of men
have wished to accomplish in prose. If the essence of poetry must be
a _lie_, throw it to the dogs, or banish it from your republic, as
Plato would have done. He who can reconcile poetry with truth and
wisdom, is the only true "_poet_" in its real sense, "the _maker_"
"the _creator_,"--why must this mean the "liar," the "feigner," the
"tale-teller?" A man may make and create better things than these.
I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet as Shakspeare
and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, places him immediately under
them.[1] I would no more say this than I would assert in the mosque
(once Saint Sophia's), that Socrates was a greater man than Mahomet.
But if I say that he is very near them, it is no more than has been
asserted of Burns, who is supposed
"To rival all but Shakspeare's name below."
[Footnote 1: If the opinions cited by Mr. Bowles, of Dr. Johnson
_against_ Pope, are to be taken as decisive authority, they will also
hold good against Gray, Milton, Swift, Thomson, and Dryden: in that
case what becomes of Gray's poetical, and Milton's moral character?
even of Milton's _poetical_ character, or, indeed, of _English_
poetry in general? for Johnson strips many a leaf from every laurel.
Still Johnson's is the finest critical work extant, and can never be
read without instruction and delight.]
I say nothing against this opinion. But of what "_order_," according
to the poetical aristocracy, are Burns's poems? There are his _opus
magnum_, "Tam O'Shanter," a _tale_; the Cotter's Saturday Night, a
descriptive sketch; some others in the same style: the rest are
songs. So much for the _rank_ of his _productions_; the _rank_ of
_Burns_ is the very first of his art. Of Pope I have expressed my
opinion elsewhere, as also of the effect which the present attempts
at poetry have had upon our literature. If any great national or
natural convulsion could or should overwhelm your country in such
sort, as to sweep Great Britain from the kingdoms of the earth, and
leave only that, after all, the most living of human things, a _dead
language_, to be studied and read, and imitated by the wise of future
and far generations, upon foreign shores; if your literature should
become the learning of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary
fashions, and national pride and prejudice; an Englishman, anxious
that the posterity of strangers should know that there had been such
a thing as a British Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the
preservation of Shakspeare and Milton; but the surviving world would
snatch Pope from the wreck, and let the rest sink with the people. He
is the moral poet of all civilisation; and as such, let us hope that
he will one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only poet
that never shocks; the only poet whose _faultlessness_ has been made
his reproach. Cast your eye over his productions; consider their
extent, and contemplate their variety:--pastoral, passion, mock
heroic, translation, satire, ethics,--all excellent, and often
perfect. If his great charm be his _melody_, how comes it that
foreigners adore him even in their diluted translations? But I have
made this letter too long. Give my compliments to Mr. Bowles.
Yours ever, very truly,