POWER AND OFFICE OF IMAGINATION.
9. What are the legitimate uses of the imagination,--that is to say,
of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which
cannot be perceived by the senses? Its first and noblest use is,[6] to
enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded
as belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in this.
It is given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses, in heaven,
and earth, and sea, as if they were now present,--the souls of the
righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the
inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most
desire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the
ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the
mountains that gird us round; but, above all, to call up the scenes
and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if
in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the Redeemer.
Its second and ordinary use is, to empower us to traverse the scenes
of all other history, and to force the facts to become again visible,
so as to make upon us the same impression which they would have made
if we had witnessed them; and, in the minor necessities of life, to
enable us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of
enjoyment, by investing it with happy associations, and, in any
present evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other
hours; and also to give to all mental truths some visible type, in
allegory, simile, or personification, which shall most deeply enforce
them; and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it
with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the
suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living
companionship, instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies
in the grass, and naiads in the wave.
[6] I should be glad if the reader who is interested in the question
here raised, would read, as illustrative of the subsequent statement,
the account of Tintoret's 'Paradise,' in the close of my Oxford lecture
on Michael Angelo and Tintoret, which I have printed separately to make
it generally accessible.
10. Yet, because we thus reverence the power and art of imagination,
let none of us despise the power and art of memory.
Let the reader consider seriously what he would give at any moment to
have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often
rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the
leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the
fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting
upon the lake; and then to bear away with him no darkness or feeble
sun-stain, (though even that is beautiful,) but a counterfeit which
should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect image of life indeed.
Or rather, (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus
sufficiently expressed,) let him consider that it would be in effect
nothing less than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment
into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied
spirit; and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the
present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very
bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them
in act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than ever was
granted to the companions of those transient acts of life, to see them
fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and
stayed on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning
purpose.--Conceive, so far as is possible, such power as this, and
then say whether the art which conferred it is to be spoken lightly
of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half-divine, a gift
which would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with
the felicities, of angels.[7]
[7] Passage written in opposition to the vulgar notion that the 'mere
imitation' of Nature is easy, and useless.
11. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I
do not mean by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation of
speaking his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation
between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's sayings
and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually
know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions,
but they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not
think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a
good dome at Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who has found
fault with his work,--"It cannot be better done;" Sir Isaac Newton
knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled
anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men, therefore, to
fall down and worship them. They have a curious under-sense of
powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but
_through_ them--that they could not do or be anything else than God
made them; and they see something divine and God-made in every other
man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
12. As far as I can observe, it is a constant law, that the greatest
men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and
the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age.
Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth century; Chaucer, England in the
fourteenth; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth; Tintoret, Venice in
the sixteenth; all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor
error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital
present. If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays
on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer that they
_are_ perfect plays, just because there is no care about centuries in
them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all
time--and this it is, not because Shakespeare sought to give universal
truth, but because painting, honestly and completely, from the men
about him, he painted that human nature which is indeed constant
enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being _at heart_ what a
rogue is in the nineteenth, and was in the twelfth; and an honest or
knightly man being in like manner very similar to other such at any
other time. And the work of these great idealists is, therefore,
always universal; not because it is not _portrait_, but because it is
_complete_ portrait, down to the heart, which is the same in all ages;
and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it
is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait--of the outside, the
manners and the dress, not of the heart. Thus Tintoret and Shakespeare
paint, both of them, simply Venetian and English nature, as they saw
it in their time, down to the root; and it does for _all_ time; but as
for any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of
thought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will
find it in neither of them,[8] nor in any other perfectly great man
that I know of.
[8] What vestige of Egyptian character is there, for instance, in
Cleopatra?--of Athenian in Theseus or Timon?--of old English in Imogen
or Cordelia?--of old Scottish in Macbeth?--or even of mediaeval Italian
in Petruchio, the Merchant of Venice, or Desdemona? And the Roman plays
appear definitely Roman only because the strength of Rome was the
eternal strength of the world,--pure family life, sustained by
agriculture, and defended by simple and fearless manhood.
13. I think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my
calling Scott the great representative of the mind of the age of
literature. Those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of
Wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of Tennyson,
may be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless
glance and reckless rhyme in which Scott poured out the fancies of his
youth; and those who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the
French novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the
influence of German philosophy, may be equally indignant at my
ascribing a principality to Scott among the literary men of Europe, in
an age which has produced De Balzac, and Goethe.[9]
[9] I knew nothing of Goethe when I put him with Balzac; but the
intolerable dulness which encumbers the depth of Wilhelm Meister, and
the cruel reserve which conceals from all but the intensest readers the
meaning of Faust, have made him, in a great degree, an evil influence in
European literature; and Evil is always second-rate.
But the mass of sentimental literature concerned with the analysis and
description of emotion, headed by the poetry of Byron, is altogether
of lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw.
The true seer feels as intensely as any one else; but he does not much
describe his feelings. He tells you whom he met, and what they said;
leaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what he feels,
but goes into little detail. And, generally speaking, pathetic writing
and careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this
plain recording of what people said, and did; or with the right
invention of what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that
to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a
story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage
concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what
happens; which to do, requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a
separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it
oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that
noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of
somebody sitting on the other side of the table. Even, therefore,
where this sentimental literature is first rate, as in passages of
Byron, Tennyson, and Keats, it ought not to be ranked so high as the
creative; and though perfection even in narrow fields is perhaps as
rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we have another "In
Memoriam" as another "Guy Mannering," I unhesitatingly receive as a
greater manifestation of power, the right invention of a few sentences
spoken by Pleydell and Mannering across their supper-table, than the
most tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse.
14. Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy;
but Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven.
Shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains, bear her from
breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon
her the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, and give the keys to the
keeping of the wildest surge that washes Capraja and Gorgona.[10]
[10] I leave this passage, as my friend has chosen it; but it is
unintelligible without the contexts, which show how all the emotions
described in the preceding passages of this section, are founded on
trust in the beneficence and rule of an Omnipotent Spirit.
15. In the highest poetry, there is no word so familiar, but a great
man will "bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him,
and answer some end for which no other word would have done equally
well. A common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to
apply the word 'whelp' to anyone, with a view of flattering him. There
is a certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it
agreeableness, but it seems difficult, at first hearing it, to use it
complimentarily. If the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty
seems increased; and when farther he is at one and the same moment to
be called a 'whelp' and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common
idealist might well be brought to a pause! But hear Shakespeare do
it:--
"Awake his warlike spirit,
And your great uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
While his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility."
16. Although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree
of simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses
us most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty.
That beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers, and
glittering streams, and blue sky and white clouds; and yet the thing
that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may
be a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space
of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near-at-hand
bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but
because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work,
and the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet
high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly
impressed by the aspect of it, and yet all the while the thoughts and
knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure
that we are not conscious of them.
17. Examine the nature of your own emotion, (if you feel it,) at the
sight of the Alps; and you find all the brightness of that emotion
hanging, like dew on a gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and
imperfect knowledge. First you have a vague idea of its size, coupled
with wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and
foundations; then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of
its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon
its side;--then, and in very sadness, a sense of strange companionship
with past generations, in seeing what they saw. They did not see the
clouds that are floating over your head, nor the cottage wall on the
other side of the field, nor the road by which you are travelling. But
they saw _that_. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same to
them as to you. They have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease
to look also, and the granite wall will be for others. Then, mingled
with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the
gifts and glories of the Alp;--the fancying forth of all the fountains
that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of
its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs,
and all the chalets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads
couched upon its pastures; while, together with the thoughts of these,
rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and
happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of the
everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. These images, and
far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion which you feel at
the sight of the Alps. You may not trace them in your heart, for there
is a great deal more in your heart, both of evil and good, than you
can ever trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all that.
Assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain
than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these are the
kind of images which cause you to do so; and observe, these are
nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the thing.
We call the power 'Imagination,' because it imagines or conceives; but
it is only noble imagination, if it imagines or conceives the _truth_.
And according to the degree of knowledge possessed, and of sensibility
to the pathetic or impressive character of the things known, will be
the degree of this imaginative delight.
18. So natural is it to the human heart to fix itself in hope rather
than in present possession, and so subtle is the charm which the
imagination casts over what is distant or denied, that there is often
a more touching power in the scenes which contain far-away promises of
something greater than themselves, than in those which exhaust the
treasures and powers of nature in an unconquerable and excellent
glory, leaving nothing more to be by fancy pictured or pursued. I do
not know that there is a district in the world more calculated to
illustrate this power of the expectant imagination than that which
surrounds the city of Fribourg in Switzerland, extending from it
towards Berne. It is of grey sandstone, considerably elevated, but
presenting no object of striking interest to the passing traveller; so
that as it is generally seen in the course of a hasty journey from the
Bernese Alps to those of Savoy, it is rarely regarded with any other
sensation than that of weariness, all the more painful because
accompanied with reaction from the high excitement caused by the
splendour of the Bernese Oberland. The traveller--foot-sore, feverish,
and satiated with glacier and precipice,--lies back in the corner of
the diligence, perceiving little more than that the road is winding
and hilly, and the country through which it passes, cultivated and
tame. Let him, however, only do this tame country the justice of
staying in it a few days, until his mind has recovered its tone, and
take one or two long walks through its fields, and he will have other
thoughts of it. It is, as I said, an undulating district of grey
sandstone, never attaining any considerable height, but having enough
of the mountain spirit to throw itself into continual succession of
bold slope and dale; elevated, also, just far enough above the sea to
render the pine a frequent forest tree along its irregular ridges.
Through this elevated tract the river cuts its way in a ravine some
five or six hundred feet in depth, which winds for leagues between the
gentle hills, unthought of until its edge is approached; and then,
suddenly, through the boughs of the firs, the eye perceives, beneath,
the green and gliding stream, and the broad walls of sandstone cliff
that form its banks; hollowed out where the river leans against them,
at its turns, into perilous over-hanging; and, on the other shore, at
the same spots, leaving little breadths of meadow between them and the
water, half overgrown with thicket, deserted in their sweetness,
inaccessible from above, and rarely visited by any curious wanderers
along the hardly traceable footpath which struggles for existence
beneath the rocks. And there the river ripples and eddies and murmurs
in an outer solitude. It is passing through a thickly peopled country;
but never was a stream so lonely. The feeblest and most far-away
torrent among the high hills has its companions; the goats browse
beside it; and the traveller drinks from it, and passes over it with
his staff; and the peasant traces a new channel for it down to his
mill-wheel. But this stream has no companions; it flows on in an
infinite seclusion, not secret, nor threatening, but a quietness of
sweet daylight and open air--a broad space of tender and deep
desolateness, drooped into repose out of the midst of human labour and
life; the waves plashing lowly, with none to hear them; and the wild
birds building in the boughs, with none to fray them away; and the
soft, fragrant herbs rising and breathing and fading, with no hand to
gather them;--and yet all bright and bare to the clouds above, and to
the fresh fall of the passing sunshine and pure rain. But above the
brows of these scarped cliffs, all is in an instant changed. A few
steps only beyond the firs that stretch their branches, angular, and
wild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the
ravine,--and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness;
the swathes of its corn glowing and burning from field to field: its
pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards, and flowery garden,
and goodly with steep-roofed storehouse and barn; its well-kept, hard,
park-like roads rising and falling from hillside to hillside, or
disappearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets of the wild
raspberry and rose, or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half
glade, half avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns
trustedly aside, unhindered, into the garden of some statelier house,
surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries,
and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening
to look upon in their delicate homeliness--delicate, yet in some sort,
rude; not like our English homes--trim, laborious, formal,
irreproachable in comfort--but with a peculiar carelessness and
largeness in all their detail, harmonizing with the outlawed
loveliness of their country. For there is an untamed strength even in
all that soft and habitable land. It is indeed gilded with corn, and
fragrant with deep grass, but it is not subdued to the plough or to
the scythe. It gives at its own free will; it seems to have nothing
wrested from it, nor conquered in it. It is not redeemed from
desertness, but unrestrained in fruitfulness,--a generous land, bright
with capricious plenty, and laughing from vale to vale in fitful
fulness, kind and wild. Nor this without some sterner element mingled
in the heart of it. For, along all its ridges stand the dark masses of
innumerable pines,[11] taking no part in its gladness; asserting
themselves for ever as fixed shadows, not to be pierced or banished
even in the intensest sunlight; fallen flakes and fragments of the
night, stayed in their solemn squares in the midst of all the rosy
bendings of the orchard boughs and yellow effulgence of the harvest,
and tracing themselves in black network and motionless fringes against
the blanched blue of the horizon in its saintly clearness. And yet
they do not sadden the landscape, but seem to have been set there
chiefly to show how bright everything else is round them; and all the
clouds look of pure silver, and all the air seems filled with a whiter
and more living sunshine, where they are pierced by the sable points
of the pines; and all the pastures look of more glowing green where
they run up between the purple trunks; and the sweet field footpaths
skirt the edges of the forest for the sake of its shade, sloping up
and down about the slippery roots, and losing themselves every now and
then hopelessly among the violets and ground-ivy and brown sheddings
of the fibrous leaves, and at last plunging into some open aisle,
where the light through the distant stems shows that there is a chance
of coming out again on the other side; and coming out indeed in a
little while from the scented darkness into the dazzling air and
marvellous landscape, which stretches still farther and farther in new
wilfulness of grove and garden, until at last the craggy mountains of
the Simmenthal rise out of it, sharp into the rolling of the southern
clouds.
[11] Almost the only pleasure I have, myself, in rereading my old books,
is my sense of having at least done justice to the pine. Compare the
passage in this book, No. 47.
19.[12] Although there are few districts of Northern Europe, however
apparently dull or tame, in which I cannot find pleasure; though the
whole of Northern France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most
travellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting Lincolnshire,
Leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts
aside, there is not an English county which I should not find
entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot,--yet all
my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills,
colouring with their far-away memories every lowland stone and herb.
The pleasant French coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me either
by what real mountain character it has in itself, (for in extent and
succession of promontory, the flanks of the French valleys have quite
the sublimity of true mountain distances,) or by its broken ground and
rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above against
the blue sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a wave
of the Seine, but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the
sandstones and forest pines of Fontainebleau; and with the hope of the
Alps, as one leaves Paris, with the horses' heads to the southwest,
the morning sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there be
no hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot deceive myself
into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be
the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the
landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness
and pain; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or Windsor
Terrace,--nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with their perpetual
summer--or of the Hesperides, (if they were flat, and not close to
Atlas,) golden apples and all, I would give away in an instant, for
one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady fern.
[12] This, and the following passage, have nothing to do with the
general statements in the book. They occur with reference only to my own
idiosyncrasy. I was much surprised when I found first how individual it
was, by a Pre-Raphaelite painter's declaring a piece of unwholesome
reedy fen to be more beautiful than Benvenue.
20. I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always
in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the
foot of the old tower of Calais Church. The large neglect, the noble
unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet
without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom,
eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea
grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not
falling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly
fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of
what any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having
no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace; yet neither asking for
pity; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly
garrulous of better days; but, useful still, going through its own
daily work,--as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing
his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth,
in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering
human souls together underneath it; the sound of its bells for prayer
still rolling through its rents; and the grey peak of it seen far
across the sea, principal of the three that rise above the waste of
surfy sand and hillocked shore,--the lighthouse for life, and the
belfry for labour, and this--for patience and praise.
I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts that come
about me at the sight of that old tower; for, in some sort, it is the
epitome of all that makes the continent of Europe interesting, as
opposed to new countries; and, above all, it completely expresses that
agedness in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new
into harmony. We in England have our new streets, our new inn, our
green shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it--a mere
_specimen_ of the Middle Ages put on a bit of velvet carpet, to be
shown; and which, but for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf
at once, under cover;--but, on the Continent, the links are unbroken
between the past and present; and, in such use as they can serve for,
the grey-headed wrecks are suffered to stay with men; while, in
unbroken line, the generations of spared buildings are seen
succeeding, each in its place. And thus, in its largeness, in its
permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, in its absence of
all pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, that Calais
tower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking
because usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of
feelings the exact reverse of these.[13]
[13] My friend won't write out the reverse! Our book is to be all jelly,
and no powder, it seems. Well, I'm very thankful she likes the
jelly,--at any rate, it makes me sure that _it_ is well made.