It is a remarkable fact, that the very finest epigram in the English
language happens also to be the worst. _Epigram_ I call it in the
austere Greek sense; which thus far resembled our modern idea of an
epigram, that something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in the
management of the leading thought at its close, but otherwise nothing
tending towards the comic or the ludicrous. The epigram I speak of is the
well-known one of Dryden dedicated to the glorification of Milton. It is
irreproachable as regards its severe brevity. Not one word is there that
could be spared; nor could the wit of man have cast the movement of the
thought into a better mould. There are three couplets. In the first
couplet we are reminded of the fact that this earth had, in three
different stages of its development, given birth to a trinity of
transcendent poets; meaning narrative poets, or, even more narrowly, epic
poets. The duty thrown upon the second couplet is to characterize these
three poets, and to value them against each other, but in such terms as
that, whilst nothing less than the very highest praise should be assigned
to the two elder poets in this trinity--the Greek and the Roman--
nevertheless, by some dexterous artifice, a higher praise than the highest
should suddenly unmask itself, and drop, as it were, like a diadem from
the clouds upon the brows of their English competitor. In the kind of
expectation raised, and in the extreme difficulty of adequately meeting
this expectation, there was pretty much the same challenge offered to
Dryden as was offered, somewhere about the same time, to a British
ambassador when dining with his political antagonists. One of these--the
ambassador of France--had proposed to drink his master, Louis XIV., under
the character of the sun, who dispensed life and light to the whole
political system. To this there was no objection; and immediately, by way
of intercepting any further draughts upon the rest of the solar system,
the Dutch ambassador rose, and proposed the health of their high
mightinesses the Seven United States, as the moon and six [1] planets, who
gave light in the absence of the sun. The two foreign ambassadors,
Monsieur and Mynheer, secretly enjoyed the mortification of their English
brother, who seemed to be thus left in a state of bankruptcy, 'no funds'
being available for retaliation, or so they fancied. But suddenly our
British representative toasted _his_ master as Joshua, the son of
Nun, that made the sun and moon stand still. All had seemed lost for
England, when in an instant of time both her antagonists were checkmated.
Dryden assumed something of the same position. He gave away the supreme
jewels in his exchequer; apparently nothing remained behind; all was
exhausted. To Homer he gave A; to Virgil he gave B; and, behold! after
these were given away, there remained nothing at all that would not have
been a secondary praise. But, in a moment of time, by giving A _and_
B to Milton, at one sling of his victorious arm he raised him above Homer
by the whole extent of B, and above Virgil by the whole extent of A. This
felicitous evasion of the embarrassment is accomplished in the second
couplet; and, finally, the third couplet winds up with graceful effect, by
making a _resume_, or recapitulation of the logic concerned in the
distribution of prizes just announced. Nature, he says, had it not in her
power to provide a third prize separate from the first and second; her
resource was, to join the first and second in combination: 'To make a
third, she joined the former two.'
Such is the abstract of this famous epigram; and, judged simply by the
outline and tendency of the thought, it merits all the vast popularity
which it has earned. But in the meantime, it is radically vicious as
regards the filling in of this outline; for the particular quality in
which Homer is accredited with the pre-eminence, viz., _loftiness of
thought_, happens to be a mere variety of expression for that quality,
viz. _majesty_, in which the pre-eminence is awarded to Virgil. Homer
excels Virgil in the very point in which lies Virgil's superiority to
Homer; and that synthesis, by means of which a great triumph is reserved
to Milton, becomes obviously impossible, when it is perceived that the
supposed analytic elements of this synthesis are blank reiterations of
each other.
Exceedingly striking it is, that a thought should have prospered for one
hundred and seventy years, which, on the slightest steadiness of
examination, turns out to be no thought at all, but mere blank vacuity.
There is, however, this justification of the case, that the mould, the set
of channels, into which the metal of the thought is meant to run, really
_has_ the felicity which it appears to have: the form is perfect; and
it is merely in the _matter_, in the accidental filling up of the mould,
that a fault has been committed. Had the Virgilian point of excellence
been _loveliness_ instead of _majesty_, or any word whatever suggesting
the common antithesis of sublimity and beauty; or had it been power on the
one side, matched against grace on the other, the true lurking tendency of
the thought would have been developed, and the sub-conscious purpose of
the epigram would have fulfilled itself to the letter.
_N.B._--It is not meant that _loftiness of thought_ and _majesty_ are
expressions so entirely interchangeable, as that no shades of difference
could be suggested; it is enough that these 'shades' are not substantial
enough, or broad enough, to support the weight of opposition which the
epigram assigns to them. _Grace_ and _elegance_, for instance, are far
from being in all relations synonymous; but they are so to the full extent
of any purposes concerned in this epigram. Nevertheless, it is probable
enough that Dryden had moving in his thoughts a relation of the word
_majesty_, which, if developed, would have done justice to his meaning. It
was, perhaps, the decorum and sustained dignity of the _composition_--the
workmanship apart from the native grandeur of the materials--the majestic
style of the artistic treatment as distinguished from the original
creative power--which Dryden, the translator of the Roman poet, familiar
therefore with his weakness and with his strength, meant in this place to
predicate as characteristically observable in Virgil.