Sir Henry Clinton. Colonel Robinson. An Old British Officer.
SIR H. CLINTON.
Rebellion's tatter'd banner droops at last,
Wanting the breath of stirring confidence.
Discord, twin-brother to defeat, now lifts
Within the Congress walls her grating voice--
Fit sound for rebel ears--and in their camp,
Lean want breeds discontent and mutiny:
The while o'er our embattled squadrons waves
High-crested victory, and flaps her wings,
Fanning the fire of native valor. Soon
Shall peace revisit this oppressed land,
So long bestrid by war, whose iron heel
With her own life-blood madly stains her sides.
ROBINSON.
Our arms' success upon the southern shore,--
Whose thirsty sands are saturate with streams
From rebel wounds,--and the discomfiture
Of new-born hopes of aid from fickle France,
Brought on by Rodney's timely coming, have
Ev'n to the stoutest hearts struck black dismay.
OLD OFFICER.
Cast down they may be, but despair's unknown
To their determin'd spirits. Washington's
The same as when in seventy-six he pass'd
The Delaware, and in a darker hour
Than this is, rallied his dishearten'd troops,
And by a stroke of generalship, as shrewd
As bold, back turn'd the tide of victory.
ROBINSON.
But years of fruitless warfare, sucking up
Alike the people's blood and substance, weigh
Upon th' exhausted land, like heaped debts
Of failed enterprise, that clog the step
Of action.
OLD OFFICER.
Deem ye not the spirit dull'd,
Which first impell'd this people to take arms
And brave our mighty power; nor yet the hope
Extinct which has their roused energies
Upheld against such fearful odds. The blood
They've shed, is blood of martyrs--precious oil--
Rich fuel to the flame that's boldly lit
On Freedom's altar, and whose dear perfume,
Upward ascending, is by heroes snuff'd,
Strength'ning the soul of patriotic love
With ireful vengeance.
SIR H. CLINTON.
Whence, my vet'ran Colonel,
Comes it, that you, whose scarred body bears
The outward proofs of inward loyalty,
Do entertain for rebels such regard?
OLD OFFICER.
Custom of war has not so steel'd my heart,
But that its pulse will beat in admiration
Of noble deeds, ev'n though by foemen done.
Nor does my sworn allegiance to my king
Forbid all sympathy with men, who fight--
And fight too with a valiantness which naught
But conscious justice could inspire--for rights
Inherited from British ancestors.
SIR H. CLINTON.
Their yet unconquer'd souls, and the stern front
They have so long oppos'd in equal strife
To our war-practis'd soldiery, attest
Their valor: and for us to stint the meed
Of praise for gallant bearing in the field,
Were self-disparagement, seeing that still
They hold at bay our far-outnumb'ring host.
But for the justice of their cause,--the wrong,
Skill'd to bedeck itself in garb of right,
Oft cheats the conscience broad credulity,
And thus will vice, with virtue's armature
Engirt, fight often unabash'd. Unloose
The spurs, wherewith desire of change, the pride
Of will, hot blood of restless uncurb'd youth
Wanting a distant parent's discipline,
And bold ambition of aspiring chiefs,
Do prick them on to this unnatural war;
And then, how tam'd would be their fiery mettle,
Heated alone by patriotic warmth.
OLD OFFICER.
My General, I know this people well. {556}
And all the virtues which Old England claims,
As the foundations of her happiness
And greatness,--such as reverence of law
And custom, prudence, female chastity,
And with them, independence, fortitude,
Courage and sturdiness of purpose,--have
Been here transplanted from their native soil,
And flourish undegenerate. From these,--
Sources exhaustible but with the life
That feeds them,--their severe intents take birth,
And draw the lusty sustenance to mould
The limbs and body of their own fulfilment,
So that performance lag not after purpose.
They are our countrymen. They are, as well
In manly resolution as in blood,
The children of our fathers. Washington
Doth know no other language than the one
We speak: and never did an English tongue
Give voice unto a larger, wiser mind.
You'll task your judgment vainly to point out
Through all this desp'rate conflict, in his plans
A flaw, or fault in execution. He
In spirit is unconquerable, as
In genius perfect. Side by side I fought
With him in that disastrous enterprise,
Where brave young Braddock fell; and there I mark'd
The vet'ran's skill contend for mastery
With youthful courage in his wondrous deeds.
Well might the bloody Indian warrior pause,
Amid his massacre confounded, and
His baffled rifle's aim, till then unerring,
Turn from "that tall young man," and deem in awe
That the Great Spirit hover'd over him;
For he, of all our mounted officers,
Alone came out unscath'd from that dread carnage,
To guard our shatter'd army's swift retreat.
For years did his majestic form hold place
Upon my mind, stampt in that perilous hour,
In th' image of a strong-arm'd friend, until
I met him next, as a resistless foe.
'Twas at the fight near Princeton. In quick march,
Victorious o'er his van, onward we press'd;
When, moving with firm pace, led by the Chief
Himself, the central force encounter'd us.
One moment paus'd th' opposing hosts--and then
The rattling volley hid the death it bore:
Another--and the sudden cloud, uproll'd,
Display'd, midway between the adverse lines,
His drawn sword gleaming high, the Chief--as though
That crash of deadly music, and the burst
Of sulphurous vapor, had from out the earth
Summon'd the God of war. Doubly exposed
He stood unharm'd. Like eagles tempest-borne
Rush'd to his side his men; and had our souls
And arms with two-fold strength been braced, we yet
Had not withstood that onset. Thus does he
Keep ever with occasion even step,--
Now, warily before our eager speed
Retreating, tempting us with battle's promise
Only to toil us with a vain pursuit--
Now, wheeling rapidly about our flanks,
Startling our ears with sudden peal of war,
And fronting in the thickest of the fight
The common soldier's death, stirring the blood
Of faintest hearts to deeds of bravery
By his great presence,--and his every act,
Of heady onslaught as of backward march,
From thoughtful judgment first infer'd.
ROBINSON.
If that
You do report him truly, and your words
Be not the wings to float a brain-born vision,
But are true heralds who deliver that
Which will in corporal doings be avouch'd,
Then was this man born to command. And shall
Ingrate revolt be justified by fate,
And Britain's side bleed with the rending off
Of this vast member; they will find it so,
Who seek to gain a greater liberty
Than does befit man's passion-guided state.
Jove's bird as soon shall quail his cloud-wet plumage,
Sinking his sinewy wafture to the flight
Of common pinions,--or the silent tide
Break its mysterious law at the wind's bidding,
Remitting for a day its mighty flood
Upon this shore,--as that, one recogniz'd
To have all kingly qualities, shall not
Assert his natural supremacy,
And weaker men submit to his full sway.
Power does grow unto the palm that wields it.
The necks that bend to make ambition's seat,
Must still uphold its overtopping weight,
Or, moving, be crush'd under it.
OLD OFFICER.
And heads
That quit the roof of shelt'ring peace, and bare them
To war's fierce lightning for a principle,
Do crown the limbs of men, each one a rock
Baffling with loftiness ambition's step,
Whose ladder is servility. Were they
Susceptible of usurpation's sway,
This conflict had not been; and then the world
Had miss'd a Washington, whose greatness is
Of greatness born. Him have they rais'd because
Of his great worth; and he has headed them
For that they knew to value him. Had he
Been less, then they had pass'd him by; and had
Their souls lack'd nobleness, his tow'ring trunk,
Scanted of genial sap, had fail'd to reach
Its proper altitude. No smiling time
Is this for hypocritical ambition
To cheat men's minds with virtue's counterfeit.
What made him Washington, makes him the chief
Of this vast league,--and that's integrity,
The which his noble qualities enlinks
In one great arch, to bear the sudden weight
Of a new cause, and, strength'ning ever, hold
Compact 'gainst time's all-whelming step.
SIR H. CLINTON.
What now
You speak, you'll be reminded of, belike,
Ere many weeks are past. And well I know,
Your arm will not be backward, if there's need,
To prove your own words' falsity. Meanwhile,
Hold you in readiness for sudden march.
[_Exit Old Officer_.]
ROBINSON.
A better soldier than a prophet.
SIR H. CLINTON.
Yet,
Scarce does his liberal extolment stretch
Beyond its object's merits; for, were he
Not rooted in his compeers' confidence,
And in his generalship unmatched, this league
Had long since crumbled from within, and o'er {557}
Its sever'd bands our arms had quickly triumph'd.
In all his mighty spirit's ordinant,
The while his warriors, rang'd in council round him,
Listen to plans of learned generalship.
Within the Congress is his voiceless will
Potential as the wisest senator's.
Ever between their reeling cause and us,
Comes his stern brow to awe fell Ruin's spirit.
'Tis a grand game he plays, and, by my soul,
Worthy the game and player is the stake.
A fair broad continent is't for a kingdom:
If he can win't, he's welcome to't.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
ENGLISH POETRY.
CHAP. II.
I have heard it remarked, that the study of our early poets was like a
journey through a country of rich groves and pleasant gardens. There
surely _is_ something pleasing in the study of old poetry. A ripeness
of feeling meets us on the yellow and stained page, which, gradually
mingling with the legitimate feelings of our own hearts, "makes us to
glow with a rich fervor."
But this pleasure, like all other exquisite pleasures, is rather of
the inexpressible kind. To impart it, condensation is necessary: and
to condense it, is like bottling fragrance, or gathering foam into a
beaker.
The reader may therefore prepare himself for nothing more than a
straight forward story--broken in upon at intervals, by such rambling
episodes of "remark" as I may think suitable.
I. Geoffry Chaucer, the poet
"That made first to dystylle and rayne
The gold dewe dropys of speche and eloquence,
Into our tunge thrugh his excellence."[1]
has ever stood first among the writers who have drunk at "the well of
English undefiled."[2] He has been called the father of English verse,
and properly. He travelled several times into the countries of the
south, and, as great minds are seldom idle ones, we might infer,
without the proof which exists in so many shapes, that he became a
pupil to the Italian masters.
[Footnote 1: Lydgate.]
[Footnote 2: The term "well of English undefiled," was applied to
Chaucer by Spenser, because he arranged and settled the
language--stripping it of many barbarisms and foreign incumbrances. I
am aware that he introduced as many foreign words as he cast out; but
the rejected were corrupt fragments of the Norman French, which yet
(though soft compared with the Saxon,) bore in part a mark of its
parentage; and the selections made for the purpose of replacing them,
were from the _Langue D'Oc_--the most beautifully musical of all
tongues. He consequently did not _defile_ the English language.]
He was a student, and returned to England laden with the fruits of his
study. It was his fate to come between the scholars of that and
preceding ages, who worked their religious and scientific instructions
into _heavy_ Latin metre, and the court minions, who sang to their
mistresses and patrons in Norman French, and lay a solid foundation
out of the scattered fragments of real English poetry. With little
fancy, less imagination, and the little of the first clipped, by his
matter-of-fact employment as _wool inspector_, he has succeeded in
story-telling better than any of his successors. In a tale, the more
vivid the picture drawn, the more interesting the tale. To be minute
and particular in description, is to beget a vivid picture: and this
is the secret of Chaucer's popularity. He writes as if he were taking
an inventory of, rather than describing, things around him. Ages
after, when this same talent for descending skilfully into
particulars, was used in the description of natural scenery and of the
workings of the human breast, it gave Spenser's Pastorals, and the
tragedies of Shakspeare and poor Shelly, a beauty which in the first
two, men have long ago learned to appreciate, and which in the course
of time, will place the last on the seat to which he is entitled. The
whole secret of Chaucer's charm is, as I have said, particularity. If
he had used this talent in describing the many workings of the human
heart, he would probably have failed--for no man can describe that of
which he is ignorant.[3] If he had turned his attention to pastoral
poetry, he _might_ have succeeded; and indeed, in the descriptions of
nature scattered throughout his various poems, he has succeeded
admirably. But something more is wanting than this power of
description, in the song of a shepherd. From his wild and unrestrained
life among the hills of a legendary country--surrounded as he is, by
"kids and lambs, and blithe birds," we not only look for minuteness of
description, but affecting plaintiveness and imaginative imbodyings.
This last is one great aid to Spenser's pastoral poetry. But I am
anticipating my subject.
[Footnote 3: Chaucer has the reputation of being a great "painter of
characters;" but he excels in describing manner, bearing, dress,
&c.--not in picturing the workings of the "human heart."]
Chaucer was the founder of a style which after poets have often
attempted to imitate. Dryden and Pope have paraphrased his works; and
Keates tells us that he is too weak to do other than "stammer where
Dan Chaucer sung." The Canterbury tales were modelled after, and for
the most part copied from the Decameron of Boccacio. The prologue to
these is the most perfect thing of its kind extant. His satires are
strong, and chiefly aimed against the enemies of Wickliffe, and his
patron John of Lancaster. Chaucer was a philosopher too--a great one
for his age. His treatise on the Astrolabe, intended for the benefit
of his son, manifests more information than we would look for in the
reign of Edward III. His satires against the opponents of Wickliffe
are rather political than religious. In religious matters he seems to
have possessed a praiseworthy spirit of toleration--a quality unknown
for ages after to the "agents elect" of a peace-loving Christ.[4]
Altogether, Chaucer was a wonderful man, and certainly, for his time,
a poet as "parfite" and as "gentil" as his own knight.[5] His
Canterbury tales are his _great_ works: they gave a tone to English
poetry. In these days, when all literature has lost its freshness, it
would be a pleasant thing if we could
"Call up him that left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball and of Algarsife,
And who had Canacè to wife, {558}
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartan king did ride."[6]
I should like to believe in the Pythagorean doctrine, if only for the
pleasant consciousness that old Geoffry Chaucer had left his spirit
behind him. He died on the 25th of October, (the same day of the same
month on which died King Alfred,) in the year 1400; and was buried in
Westminster Abbey, where for a long time these words were upon his
tomb:
"Galfridus Chaucer, vates et fama poesis
Maternæ hac sacra sum tumulatis humo."
[Footnote 4: It is in a letter to his son, where he is remarking upon
the merits of the different sects that we find this odd
similitude--"There are many roads leading to Rome." He was not narrow
brained enough to believe that there was but one.]
[Footnote 5: "He was a veray parfite gentil knight."--_Prol. Can.
Tales._]
[Footnote 6: Milton's Il Pensoroso, in allusion to the Squire's tale
in Chaucer.]
II. Before passing on to the celebrated poets of the time of Henry
VIII, I will make a few remarks upon the ancient ballad of "Chevy
Chase."
Little or nothing more than the name of the author of this fine old
heroic ballad, is at present known. Dr. Percy's conjecture with regard
to the date of its composition, may or may not be correct. But I will
assume it as an accurate one. The manuscript copy belonging to the
Harleian Library, has the name of Richard Sheale attached to it.
Sheale perhaps lived in the reign of Henry VI, and as probably was
from the north country. He may indeed have been a minstrel in the
Percy family; but this is mere conjecture. In reference to some of the
characteristics of this ballad, it strikes me that Sir Philip Sidney's
remark, in his "Apology for Poetry," is in very bad taste. After
regretting that so fine and stirring an old song should be "apparelled
in the dust and cobwebb of that uncivill age," he asks, "what would it
not work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" Dr. Percy
speaks of the song as one "recommended to the most refined, and
endeared to the most simple reader, by genuine strokes of nature and
artless passion." Are gorgeous eloquence and nature fit comates? Would
the natural and manly simplicity, for which the greatest works of man
are so renowned, be well exchanged for the diffuse and ornate style of
a Grecian lyric poet? I think not. As for this old ballad's roughness,
I think _that_ rather a merit. Bating some uncouthness, I think the
language really better, much better adapted to the subject than our
own more polished diction might be possibly. Dr. Johnson, in a paper
of the Rambler, treats of the adaptation of sound to meaning; and
quotes many examples illustrating his ground, from Greek, Latin and
English poetry. He certainly is correct to a certain extent, if not
wholly, and I will apply his rules to the present case.
"Through the hunt and battle, the author's style is fiery and severe,
with the exception of a stanza or more, in which Percy and Douglass
rest upon their swords, and after the manner of Homer's heroes,
applaud each the other's gallantry. The poet in this place, seems to
pause in the same graceful rest which he has given his heroes. But the
battle renews; and his metre _personates_ its stormy vigor. At last
the minstrel sinks from his high place into the hollows of grief; for
the 'weeping widows' are before us, with 'birch and hazel biers,'
carrying the dead men to their burial. And then with what skill does
he shake off individual tenderness, and proclaim the 'national
regret!'"
All in all--beauty on beauty-- Chevy Chase has never been matched, and
does much better "unapparelled in the gorgeous eloquence of a Pindar."
Truly, the obscure author of this one ballad stands alone--the father
of English heroic poetry.
"Res gestæ, regumque, ducumque, et tristia bella,
Quo scribi possent numero monstravit Homerus."
But he has attained excellence, without following the path which Homer
"has shown;" and without using Homer's "numbers," has sung a great
song.
III. Next on the list of those poets to whom the English language and
English literature are indebted, stand Wyatt and Surrey. With regard
to the first, I will hardly say more than that he was an Anacreon
compared with his contemporaries. Rather gentle in his genius, he
wrote love verses intuitively, and added in no slight degree to the
melody of the language.
But Surrey added more. His love for the fair haired Lady Geraldine
sent him "knight-erranting" among the romances and romantic grounds of
Italy; and he is said to have been so well acquainted with the Tuscan
tongue, and so well read in Italian authors, as to be a marvel, even
in the days when Venice was the Paris of young English noblemen, and
the Appenines their Switzerland. It may be as well to quote a few
lines from Surrey's poems, as he has the reputation of having
introduced much of the southern softness into English verse.
"_Lines writ by Henry Howard Lord Surrey--being a complaynt that hys
Ladie, after she knew of hys love, kept her face always hydden from
hym._
"I never sawe my ladie laye apart
Her cornet blacke, in colde, nor yet in heate,
Sith first she knew my griefe was growen so greate,
(Whyche other fansies dryveth from my harte,
That to myself, I do the thought reserve,--
The which, unwares, did wound my woful brest;)
But on her face, mine eies mote never rest:
Yet synce I knew I dyd her love and serve,
Her golden tresses--cladd allway with blacke,
Her smyling lookes, that had thus evermore,
And that restraynes which I desire so sore:
So doth this cornet governe me alacke!
In sommer sunne, in winter's breathe, a frost
Wherebye the lyghte of her fayre lookes I lost."
The reader will recognize this as a paraphrase, or indeed almost
literal version of one of Petrarch's _canzoni_. He may, if curious
enough, amuse himself by studying it with the original, not for the
purpose of detecting the very visible theft, but for comparing a
specimen of English verse, while not nearly escaped from its rudeness,
with the Tuscan of perhaps the most musical of all bards.
The sonnet, so frequently used by Surrey, and after him by Shakspeare
and nearly every other English poet, was (according to Sir W. Jones,)
introduced from Arabia into Italy: thence, with other stanzaic
structures into England by Chaucer, who in one of his visits to the
south, is reported to have met Petrarch and made his friendship, in
Genoa. Surrey was doubtless the most skilful sonnet-weaver of his day,
and though too fond of the inversion, for which Milton is so much
blamed, for the most part pleases both ear and understanding. His end
was an unfortunate one. Henry VIII added the poet lover to the list of
those whom tyranny brought to the scaffold. He was beheaded in the
year 1500.
{559} IV. Sir Philip Sidney was famous throughout all Europe for his
intellectual and personal accomplishments. He was spoken of as a
candidate for the throne of Poland on the death of Sigismond Augustus,
but Elizabeth was unwilling to lose the "prime jewel of all England,"
and retained him at the English court. It is more than probable that
he would have been defeated; for the claim of a Duke of Anjou, pleaded
by so wily an advocate as Montluc, "the happy embassador," would have
been more than strong enough to vanquish that of an honest,
open-minded British gentleman.
The character of Sir Philip Sidney was without reproach. Not unlike
Lord Surrey in his renown, he was yet more a hero than his illustrious
precursor. Lord Surrey was an accomplished and illustrious patrician,
the first of his age; but Sidney was a refinement upon nobility. He
was like the abstract and essence of romantic fiction, having the
courage (but not the barbarity) of the _preux chevaliers_ of ancient
time--their unwearied patience--their tender and stainless attachment.
He was a hero of chivalry, without the grossness and frailty of the
flesh. He lived beloved and admired, and died universally and
deservedly lamented. He is the last of those who have passed into a
marvel; and he is now remembered almost as the ideal personification
of a true knight.
Sir Philip Sidney's poetry was not without the faults of his time. It
abounds with conceits and strained similes, and the versification is
occasionally cramped. Nevertheless, many of his sonnets contain
beautiful images and deep sentiment, (such as the 31, 82, 84, and
others,) though a little impoverished by this alloy. But Sidney's
reputation was won upon crimson fields, as well as upon poetic
mountains. He wooed Bellona, as well as the Muses; and his last great
act, when dying at Zutphen, is of itself enough to justify the high
admiration of his countrymen.[7]
[Footnote 7: Vid. article "_Poetry_," in No. LXXXIII of Edin. Review,
April 1825.]
V. Edmond Spenser--Dryden's "father," and Southey's "dear master"--the
poet who "threw a rainbow across the heaven of poetry," was born in
London. He found, at the age of eighteen or thereabout, that a cousin
whom he loved would not receive his suit, and went into Cumberland,
where, to pour out his sorrow, he wrote the most mournful portions of
the "Shepherd's Calendar." He was for some time Secretary in
Ireland,[8] under Lord Grey de Wilton, where his Fairy Queen was
conceived and partly written; and died A.D. 1598, aged forty-five
years.
[Footnote 8: If I mistake not, Edmund Burke spent a portion of his
boyhood within sight of the garden where Spenser composed much of his
Fairy Queen. What better spot could there be for the education of
genius? This life, among scenes constantly exciting associations of
the most poetical and refined nature, may have assisted in giving
Burke's mind the poetic coloring for which it was so remarkable.]
Spenser and the other "fathers" of the English schools of poetry
should rather be called "masters of ceremonies," for they certainly
did not _beget_ their different orders of composition. Italy was the
cradle of these orders, not England. I will however adopt the first
and common title, and call Spenser father of the English allegorical
and pastoral poetry. And on these I will say a few words before I
proceed to his more striking excellencies.
The ancients were particularly fond of allegory. A field as vast as
could be desired was here opened for their poets. The whole heathen
mythology was a splendid allegory. Virgil's Ænead may be called an
allegory. As Eneas conducted the remnant of his countrymen from the
Trojan ruins to a new settlement in Italy, so Augustus, from the ruins
of the aristocracy, modelled a completely new government. I have not
leisure to pursue the parallel. Homer has in the Odyssey many
allegorical fables; as for instance those of Circe and Calypso. In
imitation of these, Virgil introduced his Dido. Going farther on we
find the love of allegory increasing in Italy. Ariosto's Alcina and
the Armida of Tasso are "copies from the copy" of Virgil; and coming
on English ground we find Spenser stealing from Tasso. As for the
kinds of poetry in which allegory should be used--In an epic, persons
of the "imaginary life," such as Virgil's
"_Strife_ that shakes
Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes,"
and Spenser's "gnawing JEALOUSY sitting alone and biting his bitter
lips"--should by no means enter into the action of the poem. Virgil
knew this and made them nothing more than "_gate posts to his entrance
into Hades_."[9] The introduction of allegorical personages into the
drama is unpardonable. Even in ages when men were laid open by
superstition to the insinuating beauty of allegory; when the ignorant
imagined every rock to be the pent-house of some spirit; when the
timid walked abroad in fear and trembling, and when in consequence of
this feeling allegorical paintings even of a wild sort seemed natural
and agreeable to truth, its introduction into the drama met with but
little applause. Æschylus has often been criticised severely for his
frequent errors of this sort; one of which is his introduction of
STRENGTH, as a character who assists Vulcan in binding Prometheus to
his rock.
[Footnote 9: All lavish embellishment--such as Tasso's description of
the bower of bliss, in his "Jerusalem," which the reader will find
transplanted into the second book of Spenser's Fairy Queen--should
likewise be excluded from the epic. This species of poem--the grandest
of _all_ species--should be superior to such embellishment.]
Though excluded from epic and dramatic poetry, it may be used with
great aptness in poems of a descriptive nature. We thus find that
pastoral poetry often admits of an allegorical vein. Spenser knew
this, and has given us a happy instance in that eclogue of his
Shepherd's Calendar, in which he represents the union of the rivers
Briqoq and Mulla. He has still happier instances in _Æcloga tertia_
and in _Æcloga quinta_.
Spenser likewise acted as master of ceremonies to pastoral poetry in
its introduction to English literature. The great father of this order
was Theocritus. His follower was Virgil, who combined very skilfully
the _merum rus_ of the Idyllia with his own courtly grace. Tasso in
his Aminta imitated Virgil, and was in turn imitated by a host of
contemporary and subsequent poets among his countrymen. Without
copying Tasso in this as in other things, Spenser became the head of
English pastoral poetry, and has never yet been excelled.
{560} Mr. Pope's remarks in the preface to his pastorals are evidently
correct. "The simplest states of life and feeling best suit this style
of poetry." Spenser's early pastorals, written
"amongst the cooly shade
Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore,"
are minute and beautiful pictures of the country and of country life.
Indeed, one of his poems may be likened to a country scene. Here are
musical brooks; there old woods cloaked in ornamental foliage; here a
succession of bold thoughts shaped into a chain of tall hills; there
the low vale of quiet unobtrusive beauty--all this, too, mellowed by
the gawsy twilight of love. Such are Spenser's early pictures, but
after mingling with the world, and losing his primitive simplicity of
temper, the elegance and refinement which gave such a charm to the
"Fairy Queen," spoiled his rural poetry. It was no longer a picture of
nature: his plant was a hot house one: his fruit had the _hortus
siccus_ flavor: his nightingales were caged, and sang from an embayed
window. This difference may be seen by comparing "Colin come home
again" with its predecessors.
But the Fairy Queen is his wonderful work. The elegant and sometimes
magnificent beauty of that lay, where the "great bard"
"In sage and solemn tunes hath sung
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear"--
has elevated his name to the high place which it fills with such
brilliancy. Every poetic palate will relish "the grapes of hidden
meaning so abundant under the vine-leaves of his exquisite allegory."
On the whole, as for Spenser as a _natural_ poet, all unite in
pronouncing him imaginative, bold, and even witty: as an artist, or
_educated_ poet, skilful, elegant, and full. His language is, for the
most part, rich and expressive; his verse (remarkably various in
arrangement) could scarcely be more melodious and pleasing. I will
close this portion of my remarks with a quotation, the source of which
I forget, but which I find pencilled upon the margin of my Chaucer.
"Spenser and Chaucer, instead of being forced into death by their
antiquated language, will, by their use of it, perpetuate its
remembrance. The ancient English is their servant. They are not and
never will be its victims."
VI. These are biographical times. A moiety of centuries ago, not even
a Shakspeare could find a biographer willing to follow the windings of
his career. We know nothing more of him _certainly_ than that he
remained on the Avon with his wife Anne Hatheway--his senior by eight
years--and three children, the last two of which were twins--until
ambition led him to London. That there his plays were written; and his
evenings spent with Ned Alleyne, Ben Jonson, Marlow and others, in
drinking canary wine, and in "tilting in the lists of literary
controversie." We have little knowledge of their pleasant
discussions--
"words--
Spoke in the mermaid"--
but in such a company, wit and humor must have been gods of the
entertainment. We are told that in table debate, "Jonson was like a
great Spanish gallion, and Shakspeare an English man of war. Master
Jonson was built far higher in learning; solid but slow in his
performances. Shakspeare lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could
turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness
of his wit and invention." We can easily fancy the plethoric Ben
writhing and chafing under the quickness of his adversary's attacks.
Within the last twenty years Shakspeare has become popular with the
German critics--the best perhaps of the age. The critical mania has
been imparted to the English, and I have observed lately in the
English Magazines several articles pretty much in the German tone. One
writer, for example, is engaged in building up a "life" of the poet
from rather strange _materiel_--his sonnets. This idea was started by
Schlegel, I believe--and is certainly a happy one: for all authors
have sorrows, and at times must seek relief by giving them utterance.
Indeed the works of an author's leisure moments are usually all of one
piece--all of the same tone--all harping upon the one black thread in
his fortune. Shakspeare asks in one of his sonnets--
"Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed
That every word doth almost tell my name
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument."
This brooding and inward looking is a common habit.[10] Chatterton,
Kirk White, and Dermody, have dissected their very hearts. Byron lives
in his vagrant "Childe," and bating some most disgusting affectation
in his Corsair--Lara--Giaour. Shelley groans with his
Prometheus--breathes in his Laon--and draws his own image with the
life of his Helen.[11] This may have been the case with Shakspeare.
Giving free scope to his heart's inmost workings, he has given
posterity, in his sonnets, a record of feeling so expressed as to
render it easy to build upon it a fabric of fact--a true and accurate
'life.'
[Footnote 10: Bulwer says in the Disowned, that his _effort_ is, at
all times to "avoid a self-picture in his writings." The very fact
that an _effort_ must be made, proves the existence of this yearning
egotism. In writings never intended for the world's eye there is no
drawback to the inclination, and it is followed. Shakspeare's sonnets
were not "writ for the world."]
[Footnote 11: This self-identity is not so visible in the tragedies of
Byron and Shelley, for the simple reason, perhaps, that these are more
the works of art--more the creatures of the brain than heart--abound
more in skill than feeling.]
His sonnets, as they now stand, are hardly intelligible, but when
placed in proper order, tell one unbroken story. We learn, _inter
alia_ that Shakspeare had a _male_ friend whom he loved most dearly:
that this friend "broke a two-fold truth"--and the question is, in
what manner. Searching farther we gain the clew, and find that the
poet had imbodied his vision of poetic loveliness--his _Iris en
air_--in one, whom in the midst of his dream of purity and beauty
unearthly, he found "as black as hell and as dark as night." That
friend wins her to his arms, and this is where he is "led to riot" and
to break a "two-fold truth." The poet finally discovers her wretched
nature and asks--
"Why should my heart think that a several plot
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?"
Then pauses in the midst of the deeply affecting {561} portraiture of
self-feeling, to whisper the exquisite self-excuse: "How could
Love's eye be true
That is so vexed with watching and with tears."
Perhaps self-portraiture might be even detected in his plays. Goethe's
comprehension of the incomprehensible Hamlet, (viz. That with a great
and philosophic mind he was too shrinking and sensitive for the
execution of his high resolves--in a word, that like a porcelain jar
attempting to enfold the roots of an oak, until shattered in the
attempt, his shrinking nature tottered under the pressure of a purpose
too mighty,) may have been a picture of Shakspeare's self: violent
ambition acting upon the poet's fine nature, as other passions did
upon that of Hamlet.
I have occupied so much space with that part of Shakspeare's history
little known, that it has given me an excuse for shunning the beaten
track altogether. I will however quote Dryden's eulogy, as it is short
and famous for its pith.[12]
"He was the man who of all modern and perhaps all ancient poets, had
the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were
still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily:
when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater
commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles
of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I
cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury
to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat,
insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clinches, his serious
swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great
occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject
for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of
poets,
'Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cupressi.'"
[Footnote 12: Dryden lauds the "commixture of comedy and tragedy," of
which Shakspeare has been so often guilty. This always seemed to me
unhappy. The "tragi-comic feeling" is at best an April day matter--a
fit of the hystericks--neither downright weeping, nor hearty laughter.
Or, yielding that sorrow is deeply impressed on the mind by the
melancholy pictures of the one portion, will a sudden transition to
merriment wipe it away? Dryden says, "why should we imagine the soul
of man more heavy than his senses? Does not the eye pass from an
unpleasant object to a pleasant in a very moment?" Receiving this
sophistry as genuine wisdom, it follows of course, that all actual
grief is transient. I would it were so. There would _then_ be no need
for the fountain of Lethe or the poppies of Ennor. One does not forget
the fall of the sod when his _eye_ turns from the newly covered grave
to the glitter and glare of life.
The mixture certainly is unhappy. Perhaps, as Coleridge has surmised,
it was the fruit of a proud carelesness. The poet, in the hour of
composition, feels that he has just written successfully. He is elated
and runs riot for awhile heedless, or, it may be, scarcely conscious
of what he writes. On this principle we may account for a prodigious
deal of extravagance, otherwise unaccountable.]
VII. Of Ben Jonson I will hardly say much. His "learning and
heavy-headedness" would scarcely render him the 'rare Ben' that he
once was, in this age of _learned professors_ and _profound scholars._
His learning gave him an undue admiration of Aristotle, and in his
plays he has followed the Grecian model too closely. Unity of time and
place is particularly inculcated in the rules of the Grecian schools;
and in France this had long been strictly observed. It was made matter
of minute inquiry in tragedy, whether such and such transactions could
be gone through while a talkative hero ranted so many verses. Or, in
comedy, whether an unfortunate shepherdess could go through the _Juno
Lucina fer opem_ ceremony, while a lewd city clerk stood by, and made
so many studied surmises--_sotto voce_. Unless unity of time and place
was observed in a drama, these 'line and rule Greekling Franks' damned
it. The consequence was that one plot--one method--Aristotle's [Greek:
go êythos]--was worked upon by successive dramatists, too timid to
'blanch the beaten track,' until it was threadbare. These fetters
which Shakspeare snapped, Jonson hugged.
Old Ben, as he was called, was once young, but the history of his
youth is rather cloudy. It seems probable, however, that the accounts
delivered us by his contemporaries, are true, notwithstanding Mr.
Gifford's sweeping denial. Following them, we learn, that Ben's
step-father was a bricklayer; that Ben himself "served at the trade,"
until he left it from weariness, and joined a company of strolling
players: that he enlisted and went with the English army into
Flanders, where he "killed his man, and bore off the spoils." His
prime and after life were spent in literary pursuits.
Old Ben was a quarrelsome, peevish companion; his body that of a
bloated giant; his face filthy, with a scorbutic affection, or, as
Decker quaintly says, "a face par-boiled, punched full of eyelet
holes, like the cover of a warming pan." His literary quarrels with
Decker, Marston, and other "men of London," eventuated in a surly
retreat on the part of Jonson. He was driven from comedy to Tragedy,
and we find him closing one of his poetic defences with the consoling
reflection, that
"There's something come into my thought,
That must and shall be sung, high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof."
But the poet "died of sack," and lies in Westminster with a plain slab
above him, on which are these words:
"O RARE BEN JONSON!"
VIII. I pass with reluctance over the contemporaries of Spenser and
Shakspeare; contemporaries who aided in gaining for the Elizabethan
age the title of "_Augustan_."[13] I will not, however, leave this
ground, without quoting a few verses, imitated from the Italian of
Petrarch, by Elizabeth herself. The lines begin a little poem,
composed by the queen, "upon Mount Zeur's departure."[14] They are not
wanting in music:
"I grieve, yet dare not shew my discontent;
I love, and yet am forst to seem to hate;
I doe, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seeme starke mute, but inwardly do prate;
I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself my other self I turned."
[Footnote 13: It was for wit that the reign of Augustus was
celebrated. The age preceding, was that of strength. The Elizabethan
age combined these.]
[Footnote 14: Ashmol. muss. MSS. p. 142.]
Passing on, we find "the melancholy Cowley." Cowley has ever been a
favorite with lovers; for love maddens men, and madness will always
find pleasant aliment in the metaphysical and metaphorical love verses
of this unnatural poet. The following is a loose paraphrase of one of
Anacreon's wine songs; so loose that {562} we may as well style it
original, and adduce it as a specimen not only of Cowley's strange
conceits, but also of all the poetry in England, or rather at the
court of the King, during the reign of Charles II.[15] The sample is a
happy one.
[Footnote 15: Cowley died in 1667, too early to have thoroughly
imbibed the peculiarities of the "poets of the restoration," if he had
remained in England before. But this was not the case; he was
secretary to the Earl of St. Albans, in Paris, during the
Protectorature, and there acquired these peculiarities.]
"DRINKING.
The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck from the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself, (which one would think,
Should have but little need of drink,)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun, (and one would guess
By his drunken, fiery face no less,)
Drinks up the sea; and when he's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun:
They drink and dance by their own light;
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round;
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high;
Fill all the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?"
The question in the last line, is easily answered. If in no other way,
by the ridiculous death of Polycrates' minion, the immortal Anacreon,
who lost his mortality through the agency of an ingrate grape stone.
IX. To praise such men as Shakspeare and Milton, is like praising
Hercules. However, I am not one of those who think it idle to cry out
"O deare moon, O choyce stars!" when we look upon these in their
loveliness. And, leaving this question of the utility or inutility of
panegyric, to be discussed elsewhere, I will continue _pari passu_
upon the same track which I have hitherto pursued.--Of,
"A genius universal as his theme;
Astonishing as chaos; as the bloom
Of blowing Eden, fair; as heaven, sublime,"
Milton was fully equal to the vast labor, at his daring in undertaking
which, his friend old Andrew Marvel so marvelled. Like Amphion, he
sung of the wonders of creation; of Gods and immortal essences. His
Satan is a magnificent creation; a personification of all gloom and
all grandeur. Vast strength, angelic fashioning, revenge that nothing
can soothe, endurance that never shrinks, the intellect of heaven and
the pride of earth, ambition immeasurably high, and a courage which
quails not even before God, go to constitute a creation essentially
_ideal_. Satan is not like Macbeth or Lear, real in himself, literally
true, and only lifted into poetry by circumstance: but he is
altogether moulded in a dream of the imagination. Heaven, and earth,
and hell, are explored for gifts to make him eminent and peerless. He
is compounded of all; and at last stands up before us, with the starry
grandeur of darkness upon his forehead, but having the passions of
clay within his heart, and his home and foundation in the depths
below. It is thus gleaning, as it were, from every element, and
compounding them all in one grand design, which constitutes the poetry
of the character. Perhaps Ariel and Caliban are as purely ideal, as
the hero of Milton, and approach as nearly to him as any other
fiction; but the latter is incontestably a grander formation, and a
mightier agent, and moves through the perplexities of his career, with
a power that defies competition. And these are his comrades of
Pandemonium: Moloch, who changed the pleasant valley of Hinnom into
black Gehenna; Belial, the "manna tongued," than whom "a fairer person
lost not heaven;" Azaziel, Chemos, Peor, and the wonderful Astarte;
"_To whose bright image, nightly by the moon,
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs._"
Rimmon, too--he so dreaded by the "men of Abbana and Pharphar;" and
the wily Mammon,
"_The least erected spirit that fell
From heaven....
... admiring more,
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoyed;
A vision beatific._"
These, all these, are splendid creations of the human intellect; and
how rich and poetic is his account of Mulsiber, who "dropt from the
zenith like _a falling star_." Of this description it has been
written, that "music and poetry run clasped together down a stream of
divine verse." But it is most in his Satan, that Milton's way becomes
the "_terribile via_" of Michael Angelo, which no one before or since
has been able to tread.
Comparisons have been instituted between Milton and Dantè; but however
excellent the Florentine may be, he had not the grasp, nor the soaring
power of the English poet. The images of Dantè, pass by like the
phantasms on a wall, clear indeed, and picturesque; but although true,
in a great measure to fact, wanting in reality. They have complexion
and shape, but not flesh or blood. Milton's earthly creatures have the
flush of living beauty upon them, and shew the changes of human
infirmity. They inhale the odors of the garden of Paradise, and wander
at will over lawns and flowers: they listen to God; they talk to
angels; they love, and are tempted, and fall! and with all this there
is a living principle about them, and (although Milton's faculty was
by no means generally dramatic,) they are brought before the reader,
and made, not the shadows of what once existed, but present probable
truths. His fiercer creations possess the grandeur of dreams, but they
have vitality within them also, and in character and substance are as
solid as the rock.[16]
[Footnote 16: Vide art. "_Poetry_," No. 82, Edin. Rev. April, 1825.
This article is another proof how difficult a matter it is to write of
poetry, without becoming poetical.]
His "Il Pensoroso," L'Allegro, and many of his sonnets, are enriched
by an antique vein. "Barbaric pearl and gold," crusted with age,
mingle with the airy and twinkling gems of his fancy. His spirit was,
at times, idle, dreaming, and voluptuous. He sometimes seems as though
he had slumbered through summer evenings in caves or forests, by
solitary streams, or by the murmuring ocean.
Dr. Blair's parallel between Homer and Milton, throws more light upon
the true character of Milton's mind, so far as sublimity is concerned,
than anything I have seen. "Homer's (sublimity) is generally
accompanied with fire and impetuosity; Milton's possesses {563} more
of a calm and amazing grandeur. Homer warms and hurries us along;
Milton fixes us in a state of astonishment and elevation. Homer's
sublimity appears most in the description of actions; Milton's in that
of wonderful and stupendous objects." I would further apply a remark
which I have seen in the "table talk" of Coleridge, the poet, upon the
sublimity of Schiller, and that of Shakspeare. "Both are sublime, but
Homer's is the _material_ sublime."
These remarks are confined to his sublimity; but beauty, tender
beauty, was on the catalogue of his excellencies. I heard a lady once
liken Milton's mind to a sea shell. The wildest and most terrible
blasts, the gentlest and most honeyed breathings issue from the same
secret depths.
Milton has many singularities. One which, Addison I believe, praises,
is a habit of repeating in the answer the words of the question. Take
for example, these lines in Comus:
"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night."[17]
[Footnote 17: The reader will remember a beautiful instance of this in
"Alroy," a work brimful of genius.]
He was also a pedant; but pedantry should only call forth censure,
when coupled with weakness. He used inversion to excess; about the
propriety of which no two critics agree. And any other faults than
these excusable ones, it would be difficult to discover.
In his Sampson Agonistes, he manifested great solidity and power: in
his Lycidas, the most exquisitely pathetic elegance; in his Comus, a
fine wandering philosophy. All these qualities were united in his
Paradise Lost, and (in not so great a degree, however,) in the
"Paradise Regained."
As a man, John Milton has been accused of time-serving. The truth of
this charge is rather problematical. Milton was no more a time-server,
so far at least as I am able to discover, than _any_ timid old man
living in his troubled age, would have been, from fear. Terror led him
into acts assuredly mean; but that terror should be his excuse; it
overruled a natural soundness and rectitude of heart. However,
meanness it was, and the reason that he has had his fame injured, is a
simple one. A beautiful thing, when at all tainted, is more disgusting
than if a greater taint were upon one less beautiful.
"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
X. Butler,[18] the comic satirist, was well drugged with the burlesque
sentiments and humorous conceits so prevalent in the reign of Charles
the second.
[Footnote 18: I will quote here a paragraph upon the "effect (of the
restoration) on national literature and national feeling." "The
restoration of Charles the second was fatal to poetry. That prince
brought with him a long train of wits; and large bands of exiled
courtiers flocked round him, who knew the points of a ruff, and were
connoisseurs in silk stockings and Flanders lace; but of English
literature they were utterly ignorant. Adversity had taught them
nothing, except hatred for their countrymen at home, and contempt for
their taste in all things. French fashions, French literature, French
morals, prevailed; and the wholesome examples of conjugal love and
social integrity, were fast melting away and disappearing before the
dazzling influence of a vicious court. The time of the English exiles
had been employed in patching their broken fortunes and rendering
themselves agreeable to their French patrons. Had they been reduced
simply to banishment, and left to ponder on the past, it is possible
that they might have taken a lesson from misfortune, which would have
strengthened the relaxed state of their moral constitution, and
awakened them to the high gratification derivable from the works of
intellect alone. But they had no example, and little motive. Their
King was utterly without any character, and the French did not require
any sterling accomplishments to admit them to the full benefits of
their society. They were, however, compelled to turn their wit to
present account, and so they contented themselves with paying court to
their hosts, with emulating their gallantry, with play, and other such
ordinary palliatives, as offer themselves most readily to the unhappy.
If our exiles ever thought seriously, it was how they might circumvent
old Noll and his Roundheads, not how they might endure
philosophically, or qualify themselves for prosperity again. Under all
circumstances, it was scarcely possible to avoid adopting the tone and
manners of the people with whom they lived. They _did_ adopt them, and
the literature of the age of Charles the second, may be considered as
one consequence of the exile of the Stuarts."]
Hudibras is well known as a rough satire, but few, even of those
familiar with that poem, I presume, ever thought of giving Butler
credit for the refinement of thought and style so frequently entwined
about masses of obscurity and ridiculous vulgarity. These silver
threads are often visible to the searching eye, and lead the student
to believe, that had the satirist not fallen into the vein, since his
day called Hudibrastic, he would have taken fair place among the
followers of Wyat.
Butler was, in his intercourse with the world, dull and unmoved,
wholly wanting in the rich humor for which his writings are so famous.
King Charles could scarcely be persuaded, that a man, to all
appearances, so stupid, could be the author of so much written wit.
XI. Waller is the next of those who produced any, the least
improvement in English literature; and he, indeed, rather should be
called a versifier than a poet; for there is assuredly none of the
divine afflatus about him. He wrote _prose_ in metre, and metre too of
great polish. He has been celebrated for the music of his numbers,
and, as usual, accused of borrowing from the well-head of all
melodious versification--the Italian schools. Tasso, translated by old
Fairfax, was his model.
XII. And now John Dryden starts up in my path, at first a Polyphemus
blinded by ill taste, and although a giant, never aiming his blows
aright--afterward a clear sighted and skilful Longinus. His taste
became pure with age, and before his death, he had become an admirable
critic.[19] In translation, satire and lyric poetry, he was unrivalled
until the coming of Pope. Indeed in the last, he has never been
rivalled. Satire is, perhaps, the only species of poetry into which
logic may be happily introduced. In every other, it straightens and
curbs the genius. If this be true, the Anglo-latins before the time of
Surrey, made a great mistake in their choice of subjects. The heavy
and operose reasoning with which their metrical folios on the trinity
&c. abound, would have been of assistance in satire. Dryden's logical
talent rendered his great political satire "Absolom and Achitophel,"
the best perhaps of his works. His McFlecnoe was thought inimitable,
until Pope made it the model of his Dunciad, and drew a picture better
than the original.
[Footnote 19: Of twenty-seven plays written by Dryden, nineteen were
in rhyme. These nineteen were his earliest works--and the very fact
that they are in rhyme, proves a want of taste. The remaining eight
were written later when his taste had ripened.]
In one night, Dryden began and completed the {564} greatest ode in the
English language. The ode to St. Cecilia stands an unrivalled example
of lyric excellence. The ode by Pope with the same title, that by
Addison sung on the same day, fall far short of it, as do Cowley's
famous paraphrases from Pindar. Indeed, Campbell's Last Man is the
only lyric poem in the language at all akin in merit to that of
Dryden.
Pindar full of the spirit of his age, committed no extravagance in the
opinion of those who heard him at the Olympic games. But being
regarded as the father of lyric poetry, his wildness was imitated in
after ages, when that spirit was departed. This led to a great many
extravagant absurdities in Italy and in England. Poets made Pindar
their master and forgot Horace. The odes of the fifteenth century are
scarcely intelligible; and how those who preach simplicity, and
complain that Shelly's obscurity renders his poetry a sealed book,
can, as I have sometimes heard them do--applaud Cowley for the beauty
of his Pindarics is rather wonderful. In this unnatural state the ode
fell into Dryden's hands, and he new-modelled it with strange
felicity.
As a translator, Dryden shunned the latitude of those who, like
Cowley, paraphrased instead of translating, and at the same time
avoided the opposite evil. His translations are sufficiently accurate
to convey the original author's meaning, and sufficiently polished to
please an ear not too fastidious. He has fallen into error by carrying
out what he calls his principle of adaptation too far. It was his
opinion that "translation should be adapted to the present." For
example, that the sailors of Virgil should speak the sea phrases of
modern times, in order to make the description seem natural to the
modern reader. This principle he carried on shore too, and many
laughable instances of its application are to be found in his version
of the Æneid. He translates--
"Læva tibi tellus, et longo læva petantur
Æquora circuitu: dextrum fuge et littas"--
"Tack to the larboard and stand off to sea
Veer starboard sea and land."
A direction which Scott suspects would have been unintelligible not
only to Palinurus, but to the best pilot in the British navy.
He often too gives precedence in the arrangement of his verse to the
name that should be deferred, as in this line,
"The angels, _God_, the virgin and the saints, &c."
which as Mr. Ezekiel Sanford wittily enough observes reminds one of
the clown, who in giving an account of his hunt, begins with--"the dog
and I, and dad." In describing the appeal of the vagabond Trojans, he
falls into an odd blunder. We find
"Diamond buckles sparkling in their shoes."
A new version this, of _Pulchra Sicyona!_ However, this is _descending
into the cobbler's criticism on the painting of Apelles_. Cibber in
his parallel between Dryden and Pope yields to the first greater
genius, to the latter more elegance--and the remark seems a just one.
But I must leave this ground, haunted as it is with the genius of
"glorious John Dryden."
Dryden was hard and haughty in appearance. He had a deep thick brow--a
wide forehead, rather full at the temples. His mouth was spoiled by
wrinkles which gave him a too determined and stern appearance. He died
leaving two sons by Lady Elizabeth Howard, both of whom manifested
talent, and became scholars and gentlemen of reputation.
XIII. The poets between Dryden and Pope, did little toward the
advancement of English poetry. Although many of these were men of no
mean capability, and met with merited honor in their day, their
excellencies are not great enough to entitle them to a prominent place
in a paper whose limits enforce _selection_. It is perhaps better for
them that they are not admitted, as my applause even might, like paint
on the brush of a bad artist, injure rather than assist. Let them pass
then:--the odd and witty Prior; the melodious and animated Lansdown;
the pointed Congreve; the elaborate and particular Addison; the
penetrating Rowe; the easy and sweet Parnell--one and every one.
Alexander Pope, of a family at whose head was the Earl of Downe, lived
fifty-five years, during the greater part of which time he was a
distinguished contributor to his country's literature in pastoral,
lyric and didactic poetry--and most of all in satire and translation.
In noticing Cibber's parallel, I have already touched upon Pope's
peculiar excellence--elegance.
It was said by Warburton in the early part of that strange career
which ended in a steady friendship for Pope, that "Dryden borrowed
from the ancients through want of leisure; Pope from _want of
genius_," and on this latter, the enemies of the abused poet have
harped severely. One prominent argument which they adduce is the
seeming difficulty with which he wrote! "His polish," say they, "is
but the labored polish of a common hand. There are none of the sudden
and strong outbreaks of great genius. He piles his thoughts with the
labor of an ant building its hill." They shew his manuscript, lined
and interlined, corrected and re-corrected, until no eye can detect
the real reading, and forget that Isocrates was engaged nine years on
one short panegyric. It would strike me that Pope's numerous
corrections evinced fertility of mind. That the constant aim toward
excellence, was but the yearning of great genius after perfection.
This yearning did not display itself in Dryden, to whom belonged even
greater genius, for the simple reason that he had no leisure for it.
_He_ was Old Jacob Tonson's hack, and depended on his writings for
subsistence, while Pope was the receiver of annuities which rendered
him wholly independent. As a didactic writer, Pope stands conspicuous
among the philosophic poets, not only of England, but of the world.
Neither Virgil nor Lucretius can in this, boast superiority. And
Akenside, Armstrong, and even Boileau, fall far beneath. I have
remarked, that logic suited no order of poetry, except the satirical:
I do not contradict myself here. Lucretius pleases us with his bold
and original conceptions, no matter how faulty they are, Virgil, by
the poetic elegance which he throws upon his disjointed philosophy.
And Pope is the more pleasing for his want of method. Virgil's mode of
reasoning is the most orderly and best arranged of the three, and
consequently his didactic poems resemble more the Anglo-Latin
treatises of the twelfth and following centuries, than those of the
others do. In brief, sprightly carelesness of restraint, and _want of
method_, render Pope's "Essay on Criticism," and the "De rerum natura"
of Lucretius more agreeable to the {565} reader than the best of
Virgil's Georgics. In satire, Pope was superior to Dryden, chiefly I
presume, in consequence of the latter's want of leisure to perfect the
reasoning which enters so importantly into that species of
composition. As a translator, he was unhappy in his choice of authors.
Virgil would have suited his style of genius far better than Homer.
His anglicized Greek lines wear too much frippery of dress. A happy
mean yet remains to be filled, between the extreme polish of Pope's
Homer, and the naked abruptness of both Chapman and Cowper. There was
a degree of hypocrisy in Pope's mode of publishing his letters which
should be censured. (Vide Quarrels of Authors.)
Pope perfected the music and elegance of the English verse. Drawn out
of chaos by old Chaucer; softened by Spenser; twisted into pliancy by
Surrey; subtilized by Cowley; smoothed by Waller; strongly and
beautifully modelled by Dryden;--it still wanted the finishing touch,
and this, Pope gave. But he was more than an accomplished linguist. A
skilful satirist, a touching eulogist, a philosophic tutor, and in
fine, in spite of bodily infirmities, a good and amiable man,[20] his
life was like the passage of a health-infusing river through the sands
of the earth. Useful to all within reach of its influence; when the
stream curdled in its bed, the loss was deeply felt. And although the
poet's works remain among us, it is only as the cedar and palm remain
upon the banks of the once living stream. "So good a man was he, his
presence doubled their beauty."[21]
L. L.
[Footnote 20: I have been particular in noticing Pope's goodness of
heart, because the devotees of Addison have spoken of him as "twisted
in body and mind--as peevish as he was deformed."]
[Footnote 21: Surgeons and critics love new subjects, and the latter
have so raked up from the dunghills of the forgotten past, poets (God
save the mark!) innumerable. To mention in this paper the names of one
half would be bringing sad company to old Chaucer and his great
successors; however, the other half is made up of no mean names.
_Lydgate_, _James I_, of Scotland, _Skelton_, _Gawin_, _Douglass_,
Lord _Rochford_, Lord _Vaux_, _Gascoigne_, _Marlowe_, _Churchyard_,
_Tuberville_, _Sir Walter Raleigh_, _Silvester_, (translator of Du
Bartal,) _Fairfax_, _Beaumont and Fletcher_, _Chapman_, _Carew_,
_Quarles_, _Drummond_, _Lovelace_, (the cavalier and lover of Althea,)
_Herrick_, _Marvel_, _Cotton_, _Walton_, _Lee_, _Shadwell_, and one or
two others, I have passed over with regret.]
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
HANS PHAALL--A TALE.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
By late accounts from Rotterdam that city seems to be in a singularly
high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed phenomena have there
occurred of a nature so completely unexpected, so entirely novel, so
utterly at variance with pre-conceived opinions, as to leave no doubt
on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all Physics
in a ferment, all Dynamics and Astronomy together by the ears.
It appears that on the ---- day of ----, (I am not positive about the
date) a vast crowd of people, for purposes not specifically mentioned,
were assembled in the great square of the Exchange in the goodly and
well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm--unusually so for
the season--there was hardly a breath of air stirring, and the
multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then besprinkled with
friendly showers of momentary duration. These occasionally fell from
large white masses of cloud which chequered in a fitful manner the
blue vault of the firmament. Nevertheless about noon a slight but
remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly; the clattering
of ten thousand tongues succeeded; and in an instant afterwards ten
thousand faces were upturned towards the heavens, ten thousand pipes
descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand mouths, and
a shout which could be compared to nothing but the roaring of Niagara
resounded long, loud, and furiously, through all the environs of
Rotterdam.
The origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently evident. From
behind the huge bulk of one of those sharply-defined masses of cloud
already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue
space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid body or substance,
so oddly shaped, so _outré_ in appearance, so whimsically put
together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be
sufficiently admired by the host of sturdy burghers who stood
open-mouthed and thunderstruck below. What could it be? In the name of
all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend?
No one knew--no one could imagine--no one, not even the burgomaster
Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk, had the slightest clue by which to
unravel the mystery: so, as nothing more reasonable could be done,
every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the left corner of
his mouth, and, cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon,
puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly--then waddled
back, grunted, paused, and finally--puffed again.
In the meantime, however, lower and still lower towards the goodly
city, came the object of so much curiosity, and the cause of so much
smoke. In a very few minutes it arrived near enough to be accurately
discerned. It appeared to be--yes! it _was_ undoubtedly a species of
balloon: but surely no _such_ balloon had ever been seen in Rotterdam
before. For who, let me ask, ever heard of a balloon entirely
manufactured of dirty newspapers? No man in Holland certainly--yet
here under the very noses of the people, or rather, so to speak, at
some distance _above_ their noses, was the identical thing in
question, and composed, I have it on the best authority, of the
precise material which no one had ever known to be used for a similar
purpose. It was too bad--it was not to be borne: it was an insult--an
egregious insult to the good sense of the burghers of Rotterdam. As to
the shape of the phenomenon it was even still more reprehensible,
being little or nothing better than a huge foolscap turned upside
down. And this similitude was by no means lessened, when, upon nearer
inspection, there was perceived a large tassel depending from its
apex, and around the upper rim or base of the cone a circle of little
instruments, resembling sheep-bells, which kept up a continual
tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse. Suspended by
blue ribbands to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung by way
of car an enormous drab beaver hat, with a brim superlatively broad,
and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a silver buckle. It
is, however, somewhat remarkable, that many citizens of Rotterdam
swore to having seen the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the
whole assembly seemed to regard it with {566} eyes of familiarity,
while the vrow Grettel Phaall, upon sight of it, uttered an
exclamation of joyful surprise, and declared it to be the identical
hat of her good man himself. Now this was a circumstance the more to
be observed, as Phaall, with three companions, had actually
disappeared from Rotterdam about five years before, in a very sudden
and unaccountable manner, and up to the date of this narrative all
attempts had failed of obtaining any intelligence concerning them
whatsoever. To be sure, some bones which were thought to be human, and
mixed up with a quantity of odd-looking rubbish, had been lately
discovered in a retired situation to the east of Rotterdam; and some
people went so for as to imagine that in this spot a foul murder had
been committed, and that the sufferers were in all probability Hans
Phaall and his associates. But to return.
The balloon, for such no doubt it was, had now descended to within a
hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently
distinct view of the person of its occupant. This was in truth a very
droll little somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in
height--but this altitude, little as it was, would have been enough to
destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny car,
but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the
breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon. The body of the
little man was more than proportionally broad, giving to his entire
figure a rotundity highly grotesque. His feet, of course, could not be
seen at all, although a horny substance of suspicious nature was
occasionally protruded through a rent in the bottom of the car, or, to
speak more properly, in the top of the hat. His hands were enormously
large. His hair was extremely gray, and collected into a cue behind.
His nose was prodigiously long, crooked and inflammatory--his eyes
full, brilliant, and acute--his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled
with age, were broad, puffy, and double--but of ears of any kind or
character, there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion
of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout
of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver
buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright yellow material; a
white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of his head; and, to
complete his equipment, a blood red silk handkerchief enveloped his
throat, and fell down, in a dainty manner, upon his bosom in a
fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent dimensions.
Having descended, as I said before, to about one hundred feet from the
surface of the earth, the little old gentleman was suddenly seized
with a fit of trepidation, and appeared altogether disinclined to make
any nearer approach to _terra firma_. Throwing out, therefore, a
quantity of sand from a canvass bag, which he lifted with great
difficulty, he became stationary in an instant. He then proceeded, in
a hurried and agitated manner, to extract from a side pocket of his
surtout a large morocco pocket-book. This he poised suspiciously in
his hand--then eyed it with an air of extreme surprise, and was
evidently astonished at its weight. He at length opened it, and,
drawing therefrom a huge letter sealed with red sealing-wax, and tied
carefully with red tape, let it fall precisely at the feet of the
burgomaster Superbus Von Underduk. His Excellency stooped to take it
up. But the aeronaut, still greatly discomposed, and having apparently
no farther business to detain him in Rotterdam, began at this moment
to make busy preparations for departure; and, it being necessary to
discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to re-ascend, the half
dozen bags of sand which he threw out, one after another, without
taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled every one of them,
most unfortunately, upon the back of the burgomaster, and rolled him
over and over no less than one and twenty times, in the face of every
man in Rotterdam. It is not to be supposed, however, that the great
Underduk suffered this impertinence on the part of the little old man
to pass off with impunity. It is said, on the contrary, that, during
the period of each and every one of his one and twenty
circumvolutions, he emitted no less than one and twenty distinct and
furious whiffs from his pipe, to which he held fast the whole time
with all his might, and to which he intends holding fast until the day
of his death.
In the meantime the balloon arose like a lark, and, soaring far away
above the city, at length drifted quietly behind a cloud similar to
that from which it had so oddly emerged, and was thus lost forever to
the wondering eyes of the good citizens of Rotterdam. All attention
was now directed to the letter, whose descent and the consequences
attending thereupon had proved so fatally subversive of both person
and personal dignity, to his Excellency the illustrious burgomaster
Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk. That functionary, however, had not
failed, during his circumgyratory movement, to bestow a thought upon
the important object of securing the packet in question, which was
seen, upon inspection, to have fallen into the most proper hands,
being actually directed to himself and Professor Rub-a-dub, in their
official capacities of President and Vice-President of the Rotterdam
College of Astronomy. It was accordingly opened by those dignitaries
upon the spot, and found to contain the following extraordinary and
indeed very serious communication.
To their Excellencies Von Underduk and Rub-a-dub, President, and
Vice-President of the States' College of Astronomers in the city
of Rotterdam.
Your Excellencies may perhaps be able to remember an humble artizan by
name Hans Phaall, and by occupation a mender of bellows, who, with
three others, disappeared from Rotterdam, about five years ago, in a
manner which must have been considered by all parties at once sudden,
and extremely unaccountable. If, however, it so please your
Excellencies, I, the writer of this communication, am the identical
Hans Phaall himself. It is well known to most of my fellow citizens,
that for the period of forty years, I continued to occupy the little
square brick building at the head of the alley called Sauerkraut, and
in which I resided at the time of my disappearance. My ancestors have
also resided therein time out of mind, they, as well as myself,
steadily following the respectable and indeed lucrative profession of
mending of bellows. For, to speak the truth, until of late years that
the heads of all the people have been set agog with the troubles and
politics, no better business than my own could an honest citizen of
Rotterdam either desire or deserve. Credit was good, employment was
never wanting, and on all hands there was no lack of either money or
good will. But, as I was saying, we soon began to feel the terrible
effects {567} of liberty, and long speeches, and radicalism, and all
that sort of thing. People who were formerly the very best customers
in the world had now not a moment of time to think of us at all. They
had, so they said, as much as they could do to read about the
revolutions, and keep up with the march of intellect, and the spirit
of the age. If a fire wanted fanning it could readily be fanned with a
newspaper; and, as the government grew weaker, I have no doubt that
leather and iron acquired durability in proportion, for in a very
short time there was not a pair of bellows in all Rotterdam that ever
stood in need of a stitch or required the assistance of a hammer. This
was a state of things not to be endured. I soon grew as poor as a rat,
and, having a wife and children to provide for, my burdens at length
became intolerable, and I spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the
speediest and most convenient method of putting an end to my life.
Duns, in the meantime left me little leisure for contemplation. My
house was literally besieged from morning till night, so that I began
to rave, and foam, and fret like a caged tiger against the bars of his
enclosure. There were three fellows in particular, who worried me
beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my door, and
threatening me with the utmost severity of the law. Upon these three I
internally vowed the bitterest revenge, if ever I should be so happy
as to get them within my clutches, and I believe nothing in the world
but the pleasure of this anticipation prevented me from putting my
plan of suicide into immediate execution, by blowing my brains out
with a blunderbuss. I thought it best, however, to dissemble my wrath,
and to treat them with promises and fair words, until, by some good
turn of fate, an opportunity of vengeance should be afforded me.
One day, having given my creditors the slip, and feeling more than
usually dejected, I continued for a long time to wander about the most
obscure streets without any object whatever, until at length I chanced
to stumble against the corner of a bookseller's stall. Seeing a chair
close at hand, for the use of customers, I threw myself doggedly into
it, and hardly knowing why, opened the pages of the first volume which
came within my reach. It proved to be a small pamphlet treatise on
Speculative Astronomy, written either by Professor Encke of Berlin, or
by a Frenchman of somewhat similar name. I had some little tincture of
information on matters of this nature, and soon became more and more
absorbed in the contents of the book, reading it actually through
twice before I awoke, as it were, to a recollection of what was
passing around me. By this time it began to grow dark, and I directed
my steps towards home. But the treatise had made an indelible
impression on my mind, and as I sauntered along the dusky streets, I
revolved carefully over in my memory the wild and sometimes
unintelligible reasonings of the writer. There were some particular
passages which affected my imagination in a powerful and extraordinary
manner. The longer I meditated upon these, the more intense grew the
interest which had been excited within me. The limited nature of my
education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects
connected with Natural Philosophy, so far from rendering me diffident
of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing me to
mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence,
merely served as a farther stimulus to imagination; and I was vain
enough, or perhaps reasonable enough, to doubt whether those crude
ideas which, arising in ill-regulated minds, have all the appearance,
may not often in effect possess also the force--the reality--and other
inherent properties of instinct or intuition: and whether, to proceed
a step farther, profundity itself might not, in matters of a purely
speculative nature, be detected as a legitimate source of falsity and
error. In other words, I believed, and still do believe, that truth is
frequently, of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases,
the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the
actual situations wherein she may be found. Nature herself seemed to
afford me corroboration of these ideas. In the contemplation of the
heavenly bodies it struck me very forcibly that I could not
distinguish a star with nearly as much precision, when I gazed upon it
with earnest, direct and undeviating attention, as when I suffered my
eye only to glance in its vicinity alone. I was not, of course, at
that time aware that this apparent paradox was occasioned by the
centre of the visual area being less susceptible of feeble impressions
of light than the exterior portions of the retina. This knowledge, and
some of another kind, came afterwards in the course of an eventful
period of five years, during which I have dropped the prejudices of my
former humble situation in life, and forgotten the bellows-mender in
far different occupations. But at the epoch of which I speak, the
analogy which the casual observation of a star offered to the
conclusions I had already drawn, struck me with the force of positive
confirmation, and I then finally made up my mind to the course which I
afterwards pursued.
It was late when I reached home, and I went immediately to bed. My
mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole
night buried in meditation. Arising early in the morning, and
contriving again to escape the vigilance of my creditors, I repaired
eagerly to the bookseller's stall, and laid out what little ready
money I possessed, in the purchase of some volumes of Mechanics and
Practical Astronomy. Having arrived at home safely with these, I
devoted every spare moment to their perusal, and soon made such
proficiency in studies of this nature as I thought sufficient for the
execution of my plan. In the intervals of this period I made every
endeavor to conciliate the three creditors who had given me so much
annoyance. In this I finally succeeded--partly by selling enough of my
household furniture to satisfy a moiety of their claim, and partly by
a promise of paying the balance upon completion of a little project
which I told them I had in view, and for assistance in which I
solicited their services. By these means--for they were ignorant
men--I found little difficulty in gaining them over to my purpose.
Matters being thus arranged, I contrived, by the aid of my wife, and
with the greatest secrecy and caution, to dispose of what property I
had remaining, and to borrow, in small sums, under various pretences,
and without paying any attention to my future means of repayment, no
inconsiderable quantity of ready money. With the means thus accruing I
proceeded to purchase at intervals, cambric muslin, very fine, in
pieces of twelve yards each--twine--a lot of the varnish of {568}
caoutchouc--a large and deep basket of wicker-work, made to order--and
several other articles necessary in the construction and equipment of
a balloon of extraordinary dimensions. This I directed my wife to make
up as soon as possible, and gave her all requisite information as to
the particular method of proceeding. In the meantime I worked up the
twine into a net-work of sufficient dimensions, rigged it with a hoop
and the necessary cords, bought a quadrant, a compass, a spyglass, a
common barometer with some important modifications, and two
astronomical instruments not so generally known. I then took
opportunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation east of
Rotterdam, five iron-bound casks, to contain about fifty gallons each,
and one of a larger size--six tinned ware tubes, three inches in
diameter, properly shaped, and ten feet in length--a quantity of _a
particular metallic substance or semi-metal_ which I shall not
name--and a dozen demijohns of _a very common acid_. The gas to be
formed from these latter materials is a gas never yet generated by any
other person than myself--or at least never applied to any similar
purpose. The secret I would make no difficulty in disclosing, but that
it of right belongs to a citizen of Nantz in France, by whom it was
conditionally communicated to myself. The same individual submitted to
me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a method of
constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain animal, through
which substance any escape of gas was nearly an impossibility. I found
it however altogether too expensive, and was not sure, upon the whole,
whether cambric muslin with a coating of gum caoutchouc was not
equally as good. I mention this circumstance, because I think it
probable that hereafter the individual in question may attempt a
balloon ascension with the novel gas and material, I have spoken of,
and I do not wish to deprive him of the honor of a very singular
invention.
On the spot which I intended each of the smaller casks to occupy
respectively during the inflation of the balloon, I privately dug a
hole two feet deep--the holes forming in this manner a circle of
twenty-five feet in diameter. In the centre of this circle, being the
station designed for the large cask, I also dug a hole three feet in
depth. In each of the five smaller holes, I deposited a canister
containing fifty pounds, and in the larger one a keg holding one
hundred and fifty pounds of cannon powder. These--the keg and the
canisters--I connected in a proper manner with covered trains; and
having let into one of the canisters the end of about four feet of
slow-match, I covered up the hole, and placed the cask over it,
leaving the other end of the match protruding about an inch, and
barely visible beyond the cask. I then filled up the remaining holes,
and placed the barrels over them in their destined situation.
Besides the articles above enumerated, I conveyed to the depôt, and
there secreted one of M. Grimm's improvements upon the apparatus for
condensation of the atmospheric air. I found this machine, however, to
require considerable alteration before it could be adapted to the
purposes to which I intended making it applicable. But with severe
labor, and unremitting perseverance, I at length met with entire
success in all my preparations. My balloon was soon completed. It
would contain more than forty thousand cubic feet of gas; would take
me up, I calculated, easily with all my implements, and, if I managed
rightly with one hundred and seventy-five pounds of ballast into the
bargain. It had received three coats of varnish, and I found the
cambric muslin to answer all the purposes of silk itself--quite as
strong and a good deal less expensive.
Every thing being now ready, I exacted from my wife an oath of secrecy
in relation to all my actions from the day of my first visit to the
bookseller's stall, and, promising, on my part, to return as soon as
circumstances would admit, I gave her all the money I had left, and
bade her farewell. Indeed I had little fear on her account. She was
what people call a notable woman, and could manage matters in the
world without my assistance. I believe, to tell the truth, she always
looked upon me as an idle body, a mere makeweight, good for nothing
but building castles in the air, and was rather glad to get rid of me.
It was a dark night when I bade her good bye, and, taking with me, as
_aids-de-camp_, the three creditors who had given me so much trouble,
we carried the balloon, with the car and accoutrements, by a
roundabout way, to the station where the other articles were
deposited. We there found them all unmolested, and I proceeded
immediately to business.
It was the first of April. The night, as I said before, was
dark--there was not a star to be seen, and a drizzling rain falling at
intervals rendered us very uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was
concerning my balloon, which in spite of the varnish with which it was
defended, began to grow rather heavy with the moisture: my powder also
was liable to damage. I therefore kept my three duns working with
great diligence, pounding down ice around the central cask, and
stirring the acid in the others. They did not cease, however,
importuning me with questions as to what I intended to do with all
this apparatus, and expressed much dissatisfaction at the terrible
labor I made them undergo. They could not perceive, so they said, what
good was likely to result from their getting wet to the skin merely to
take a part in such horrible incantations. I began to get uneasy, and
worked away with all my might--for I verily believe the idiots
supposed that I had entered into a compact with the devil, and that,
in short, what I was now doing was nothing better than it should be. I
was, therefore, in great fear of their leaving me altogether. I
contrived, however, to pacify them by promises of immediate payment as
soon as I could bring the present business to a termination. To these
speeches they gave of course their own interpretation--fancying, no
doubt, that at all events I should come into possession of vast
quantities of ready money; and provided I paid them all I owed, and a
trifle more, in consideration of their services, I dare say they cared
very little what became of either my soul or my carcase.
In about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently
inflated. I attached the car therefore, and put all my implements in
it--not forgetting the condensing apparatus, a copious supply of
water, and a large quantity of provisions, such as pemmican, in which
much nutriment is contained in comparatively little bulk. I also
secured in the car a pair of pigeons and a cat. It was now nearly
day-break, and I thought {569} it high time to take my departure.
Dropping a lighted cigar on the ground, as if by accident, I took the
opportunity, in stooping to pick it up, of igniting privately the
piece of slow match, whose end, as I said before, protruded a very
little beyond the lower rim of one of the smaller casks. This
manoeuvre was totally unperceived on the part of the three duns, and,
jumping into the car, I immediately cut the single cord which held me
to the earth, and was pleased to find that I shot upwards, rapidly
carrying with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of leaden
ballast, and able to have carried up as many more.
Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when,
roaring and rumbling up after me in the most horrible and tumultuous
manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire, and smoke, and sulphur, and
legs and arms, and gravel, and burning wood, and blazing metal, that
my very heart sunk within me, and I fell down in the bottom of the
car, trembling with unmitigated terror. Indeed I now perceived that I
had entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences of
the shock were yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less than a
second, I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my temples, and,
immediately thereupon, a concussion, which I shall never forget, burst
abruptly through the night, and seemed to rip the very firmament
asunder. When I afterwards had time for reflection, I did not fail to
attribute the extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself,
to its proper cause--my situation directly above it, and in the exact
line of its greatest power. But at the time I thought only of
preserving my life. The balloon at first collapsed--then furiously
expanded--then whirled round and round with horrible velocity--and
finally, reeling and staggering like a drunken man, hurled me with
great force over the rim of the car, and left me dangling, at a
terrific height, with my head downwards, and my face outwards from the
balloon, by a piece of slender cord about three feet in length, which
hung accidentally through a crevice near the bottom of the
wicker-work, and in which, as I fell, my left foot became most
providentially entangled. It is impossible--utterly impossible--to
form any adequate idea of the horror of my situation. I gasped
convulsively for breath--a shudder resembling a fit of the ague
agitated every nerve and muscle in my frame--I felt my eyes starting
from their sockets--a horrible nausea overwhelmed me--my brain
reeled--and I fainted away.
How long I remained in this state, it is impossible to say. It must,
however, have been no inconsiderable time, for when, at length, I
partially recovered the sense of existence, I found the day breaking,
and the balloon at a prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and
not a trace of land to be discovered far and wide within the limits of
the vast horizon. My sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were
by no means so rife with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed
there was much of incipient madness in the calm survey which I began
to take of my situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one
after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to
the swelling of the veins, and the horrible blackness of the finger
nails. I afterwards carefully examined my head, shaking it repeatedly,
and feeling it with minute attention, until I succeeded in satisfying
myself that it was not--as I had more than half suspected--larger than
my balloon. Then, in a knowing manner, I felt in both my breeches
pockets, and missing therefrom a set of tablets and a tooth-pick case,
I endeavored to account for their disappearance, and, not being able
to do so, felt inexpressibly chagrined. It now occurred to me that I
suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left ankle, and a dim
consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. But,
strange to say! I was neither astonished nor horror-stricken. If I
felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of chuckling satisfaction at
the cleverness I was about to display in extricating myself from this
dilemma; and I never, for a moment, looked upon my ultimate safety as
a question susceptible of doubt. For a few minutes I remained wrapped
in the profoundest meditation. I have a distinct recollection of
frequently compressing my lips, putting my fore-finger to the side of
my nose, and making use of other gesticulations and grimaces common to
men who, at ease in their arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of
intricacy or importance. Having, as I thought, sufficiently collected
my ideas, I now, with great caution and deliberation, put my hands
behind my back, and unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to
the waistband of my inexpressibles. This buckle had three teeth,
which, being somewhat rusty, turned with great difficulty upon their
axis. I brought them however, after some trouble, at right angles to
the body of the buckle, and was glad to find them remain firm in that
position. Holding the instrument thus obtained, within my teeth, I now
proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat. I had to rest several times
before I could accomplish this manoeuvre--but it was at length
accomplished. To one end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle,
and the other end I tied, for greater security, tightly around my
wrist. Drawing now, my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion of
muscular force, I succeeded, at the very first trial, in throwing the
buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had anticipated, in the
circular rim of the wicker-work.
My body was now inclined towards the side of the car, at an angle of
about forty-five degrees--but it must not be understood that I was
therefore only forty-five degrees below the perpendicular. So far from
it, I still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon--for the
change of situation which I had acquired, had forced the bottom of the
car considerably outwards from my position, which was accordingly one
of the most imminent and dangerous peril. It should be remembered,
however, that when I fell, in the first instance, from the car, if I
had fallen with my face turned towards the balloon, instead of turned
outwardly from it as it actually was--or if, in the second place, the
cord by which I was suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge,
instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the car,--I say it may
readily be conceived that, in either of these supposed cases, I should
have been unable to accomplish even as much as I had now accomplished,
and the wonderful adventures of Hans Phaall would have been utterly
lost to posterity. I had therefore every reason to be
grateful--although, in point of fact, I was still too stupid to be
anything at all, and hung for, I suppose, a quarter of an hour, in
that extraordinary manner, without making the slightest farther
exertion whatsoever, and in a singularly tranquil state of idiotic
enjoyment. But {570} this feeling did not fail to die rapidly away,
and thereunto succeeded horror, and dismay, and a chilling sense of
utter helplessness and ruin. In fact, the blood so long accumulating
in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up
my spirits with madness and delirium, had now begun to retire within
their proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus added to my
perception of the danger, merely served to deprive me of the
self-possession and courage to encounter it. But this weakness was,
luckily for me, of no very long duration. In good time came to my
rescue the spirit of despair, and amid horrible curses and convulsive
struggles, I jerked my way bodily upwards, till at length, clutching
with a vice-like grip the long-desired rim, I writhed my person over
it, and fell headlong and shuddering within the car. It was not until
sometime afterwards that I recovered myself sufficiently to attend to
the ordinary cares of the balloon. I then, however, examined it with
attention, and found it, to my great relief, uninjured. My implements
were all safe, and I had fortunately lost neither ballast nor
provisions. Indeed, I had so well secured them in their places, that
such an accident was entirely out of the question. Looking at my
watch, I found it six o'clock. I was still rapidly ascending, and my
barometer showed a present altitude of three and three quarter miles.
Immediately beneath me in the ocean, lay a small black object,
slightly oblong in shape, seemingly about the size, and in every way
bearing a great resemblance to one of those childish toys called a
domino. Bringing my spy-glass to bear upon it, I plainly discerned it
to be a British ninety-four gun ship, close-hauled, and pitching
heavily in the sea with her head to the W. S. W. Besides this ship, I
saw nothing but the ocean and the sky, and the sun, which had long
arisen.
It is now high time that I should explain to your Excellencies the
object of my perilous voyage. Your Excellencies will bear in mind,
that distressed circumstances in Rotterdam, had at length driven me to
the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to
life itself I had any positive disgust--but that I was harassed beyond
endurance by the adventitious miseries attending my situation. In this
state of mind--wishing to live, yet wearied with life--the treatise at
the stall of the bookseller opened a resource to my imagination. I
then finally made up my mind. I determined to depart, yet live--to
leave the world, yet continue to exist--in short, to drop enigmas, I
resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage, if I could--to the
moon. Now, lest I should be supposed more of a madman than I actually
am, I will detail, as well as I am able, the considerations which led
me to believe that an achievement of this nature, although without
doubt difficult, and incontestably full of danger, was not absolutely,
to a bold spirit, beyond the confines of the possible.
The moon's actual distance from the earth was the first thing to be
attended to. Now the mean or average interval between the _centres_ of
the two planets is 59.9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or only
about 237000 miles. I say the mean or average interval. But it must be
borne in mind, that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of
eccentricity, amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the major semi-axis
of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being situated in its
focus, if I could, in any manner, contrive to meet the moon, as it
were, in its perigee, the above-mentioned distance would be materially
diminished. But to say nothing, at present, of this possibility, it
was very certain, that at all events, from the 237000 miles I should
have to deduct the radius of the earth, say 4000, and the radius of
the moon, say 1080, in all 5080, leaving an actual interval to be
traversed, under average circumstances, of 231920 miles. Now this, I
reflected, was no very extraordinary distance. Travelling on land has
been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of thirty miles per hour, and
indeed a much greater speed may be anticipated. But even at this
velocity, it would take me no more than 322 days to reach the surface
of the moon. There were, however, many particulars inducing me to
believe that my average rate of travelling might possibly very much
exceed that of thirty miles per hour, and, as these considerations did
not fail to make a deep impression upon my mind, I will mention them
more fully hereafter.
The next point to be regarded, was a matter of far greater importance.
From indications afforded by the barometer, we find that, in
ascensions from the surface of the earth, we have, at the height of
1000 feet, left below us, about one-thirtieth of the entire mass of
atmospheric air--that at 10600, we have ascended through nearly one
third--and that at 18000, which is not far from the elevation of
Cotopaxi, we have surmounted one half of the material, or, at all
events, one half the _ponderable_ body of air incumbent upon our
globe. It is also calculated, that at an altitude not exceeding the
hundredth part of the earth's diameter--that is, not exceeding eighty
miles--the rarefaction would be so excessive, that animal life could,
in no manner, be sustained, and moreover, that the most delicate means
we possess of ascertaining the presence of the atmosphere, would be
inadequate to assure us of its existence. But I did not fail to
perceive that these latter calculations are founded altogether on our
experimental knowledge of the properties of air, and the mechanical
laws regulating its dilation and compression in what may be called,
comparatively speaking, _the immediate vicinity_ of the earth itself;
and, at the same time, it is taken for granted, that animal life is,
and must be, essentially _incapable of modification_ at any given
unattainable distance from the surface. Now all such reasoning, and
from such data, must of course be simply analogical. The greatest
height ever reached by man, was that of 25000 feet, attained in the
aeronautic expedition of Messieurs Gay-Lussac and Biot. This is a
moderate altitude, even when compared with the eighty miles in
question; and I could not help thinking that the subject admitted room
for doubt, and great latitude for speculation.
But, in point of fact, an ascension being made to any stated altitude,
the ponderable quantity of air surmounted in any _farther_ ascension,
is by no means in proportion to the additional height ascended, (as
may be plainly seen from what has been stated before) but in a ratio
constantly decreasing. It is therefore evident that, ascend as high as
we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which
no atmosphere is to be found. It _must exist_, I argued, it _may_
exist in a state of infinite rarefaction.
On the other hand, I was aware that arguments have {571} not been
wanting to prove the existence of a real and definite limit to the
atmosphere, beyond which there is absolutely no air whatsoever. But a
circumstance which has been left out of view by those who contend for
such a limit, seemed to me, although no positive refutation of their
creed, still a point worthy very serious investigation. On comparing
the intervals between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its
perihelion, after giving credit, in the most exact manner, for all the
disturbances or perturbations due to the attractions of the planets,
it appears that the periods are gradually diminishing--that is to
say--the major axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter, in a
slow but perfectly regular decrease. Now this is precisely what ought
to be the case, if we suppose a resistance experienced by the comet
from an extremely _rare etherial medium_ pervading the regions of its
orbit. For it is evident that such a medium must, in retarding its
velocity, increase its centripetal, by weakening its centrifugal
force. In other words, the sun's attraction would be constantly
attaining greater power, and the comet would be drawn nearer at every
revolution. Indeed, there is no other way of accounting for the
variation in question. But again. The real diameter of the same
comet's nebulosity, is observed to contract rapidly as it approaches
the sun, and dilate with equal rapidity in its departure towards its
aphelion. Was I not justifiable in supposing, with M. Valz, that this
apparent condensation of volume has its origin in the compression of
the same etherial medium I have spoken of before, and which is only
denser in proportion to its solar vicinity? The lenticular-shaped
phenomenon, also, called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy of
attention. This radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and which cannot
be mistaken for any meteoric lustre, extends from the horizon
obliquely upwards, and follows generally the direction of the sun's
equator. It appeared to me evidently, in the nature of a rare
atmosphere extending from the sun outwards, beyond the orbit of Venus
at least, and I believed indefinitely farther. Indeed, this medium I
could not suppose confined to the path of the comet's ellipse, or the
immediate neighborhood of the sun. It was easy, on the contrary, to
imagine it pervading the entire regions of our planetary system,
condensed into what we call atmosphere at the planets themselves, and
in some of them modified by considerations, so to speak, purely
geological.
Having adopted this view of the subject, I had little farther
hesitation. Granting that on my passage I should meet with atmosphere
_essentially_ the same as at the surface of the earth, I conceived
that, by means of the very ingenious apparatus of M. Grimm, I should
readily be enabled to condense it in sufficient quantities for the
purpose of respiration. This would remove the chief obstacle in a
journey to the moon. I had indeed spent some money and great labor in
adapting the apparatus to the purposes intended, and I confidently
looked forward to its successful application, if I could manage to
complete the voyage within any reasonable period. This brings me back
to the _rate_ at which it might be possible to travel.
It is true that balloons, in the first stage of their ascensions from
the earth, are known to rise with a velocity comparatively moderate.
Now the power of elevation lies altogether in the superior lightness
of the gas in the balloon, compared with the atmospheric air; and, at
first sight, it does not appear probable that, as the balloon acquires
altitude, and consequently arrives successively in atmospheric strata
of densities rapidly diminishing--I say it does not appear at all
reasonable that, in this its progress upwards, the original velocity
should be accelerated. On the other hand, I was not aware that, in any
recorded ascension, a diminution was apparent in the absolute rate of
ascent--although such should have been the case, if on account of
nothing else, on account of the escape of gas through balloons
ill-constructed, and varnished with no better material than the
ordinary varnish. It seemed, therefore, that the effect of such an
escape was only sufficient to counterbalance the effect of some
accelerating power. I now considered, that provided in my passage I
found the medium I had imagined, and provided it should prove to be
actually and _essentially_ what we denominate atmospheric air, it
could make comparatively little difference at what extreme state of
rarefaction I should discover it--that is to say, in regard to my
power of ascending--for the gas in the balloon would not only be
itself subject to a rarefaction partially similar, but, _being what it
was_, would still, at all events, continue specifically lighter than
any compound whatever of mere nitrogen and oxygen. In the meantime the
force of gravitation would be constantly diminishing, in proportion to
the squares of the distances, and thus, with a velocity prodigiously
accelerating, I should at length arrive in those distant regions where
the power of the earth's attractions would be superseded by the
moon's. In accordance with these ideas, I did not think it worth while
to encumber myself with more provisions than would be sufficient for a
period of forty days.
There was still, however, another difficulty which occasioned me some
little disquietude. It has been observed, that in all balloon
ascensions to any considerable height, besides the pain attending
respiration, great uneasiness is invariably experienced about the head
and body, often accompanied with bleeding at the nose, and other
symptoms of an alarming kind, and growing more and more inconvenient
in proportion to the altitude attained. This was a reflection of a
nature somewhat startling. Was it not probable that these symptoms
would increase indefinitely, or at least until terminated by death
itself? I finally thought not. Their origin was to be looked for in
the progressive removal of the _customary_ atmospheric pressure upon
the surface of the body, and consequent distension of the superficial
blood-vessels--not in any positive disorganization of the animal
system, as in the case of difficulty in breathing, where the
atmospheric density is _chemically insufficient_ for the purpose of a
due renovation of blood in a ventricle of the heart. Unless for
default of this renovation, I could see no reason, therefore, why life
could not be sustained even in a _vacuum_--for the expansion and
compression of chest, commonly called breathing, is action purely
muscular, and the _cause_, not the _effect_, of respiration. In a
word, I conceived that, as the body should become habituated to the
want of atmospheric pressure, these sensations of pain would gradually
diminish, and to endure them while they continued, I relied strongly
upon the iron hardihood of my constitution.
Thus, it may please your Excellencies, I have {572} detailed some,
though by no means all the considerations which led me to form the
project of a lunar voyage. I shall now proceed to lay before you, the
result of an attempt so apparently audacious in conception, and, at
all events, so utterly unparalleled in the annals of human kind.
Having attained the altitude before mentioned, that is to say, three
miles and three quarters, I threw out from the car a quantity of
feathers, and found that I still ascended with sufficient
rapidity--there was, therefore, no necessity for discharging any
ballast. I was glad of this, for I wished to retain with me as much
weight as I could carry, for reasons which will be explained in the
sequel. I as yet suffered no bodily inconvenience, breathing with
great freedom, and feeling no pain whatever in the head. The cat was
lying very demurely upon my coat, which I had taken off, and eyeing
the pigeons with an air of _non chalance_. These latter being tied by
the leg, to prevent their escape, were busily employed in picking up
some grains of rice scattered for them in the bottom of the car.
At twenty minutes past six o'clock, the barometer showed an elevation
of 26,400 feet, or five miles to a fraction. The prospect seemed
unbounded. Indeed, it is very easily calculated by means of spherical
geometry, what a great extent of the earth's area I beheld. The convex
surface of any segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the
sphere itself, as the versed sine of the segment is to the diameter of
the sphere. Now in my case, the versed sine--that is to say, the
_thickness_ of the segment beneath me, was about equal to my
elevation, or the elevation of the point of sight above the surface.
"As five miles, then, to eight thousand," would express the proportion
of the earth's area seen by me. In other words, I beheld as much as a
sixteen-hundredth part of the whole surface of the globe. The sea
appeared unruffled as a mirror, although, by means of the spy-glass, I
could perceive it to be in a state of violent agitation. The ship was
no longer visible, having drifted away, apparently, to the eastward. I
now began to experience, at intervals, severe pain in the head,
especially about the ears--still, however, breathing with tolerable
freedom. The cat and pigeons seemed to suffer no inconvenience
whatsoever.
At twenty minutes before seven, the balloon entered within a long
series of dense cloud, which put me to great trouble, by damaging my
condensing apparatus, and wetting me to the skin. This was, to be
sure, a singular _rencontre_, for I had not believed it possible that
a cloud of this nature could be sustained at so great an elevation. I
thought it best, however, to throw out two five pound pieces of
ballast, reserving still a weight of one hundred and sixty-five
pounds. Upon so doing, I soon rose above the difficulty, and perceived
immediately, that I had obtained a great increase in my rate of
ascent. In a few seconds after my leaving the cloud, a flash of vivid
lightning shot from one end of it to the other, and caused it to
kindle up, throughout its vast extent, like a mass of ignited and
glowing charcoal. This, it must be remembered, was in the broad light
of day. No fancy may picture the sublimity which might have been
exhibited by a similar phenomenon taking place amid the darkness of
the night. Hell itself might then have found a fitting image. Even as
it was, my hair stood on end, while I gazed afar down within the
yawning abysses, letting imagination descend, as it were, and stalk
about in the strange vaulted halls, and ruddy gulfs, and red ghastly
chasms of the hideous, and unfathomable fire. I had indeed made a
narrow escape. Had the balloon remained a very short while longer
within the cloud--that is to say--had not the inconvenience of getting
wet determined me to discharge the ballast, inevitable ruin would have
been the consequence. Such perils, although little considered, are
perhaps the greatest which must be encountered in balloons. I had by
this time, however, attained too great an elevation to be any longer
uneasy on this head.