I was ware of the fairest medler tree
That ever yet in all my life I sie
As full of blossomes as it might be,
Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile
Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet
Here and there of buds and floures sweet.
And to the herber side was joyning
This faire tree, of which I haue you told,
And at the last the brid began to sing,
Whan he had eaten what he eat wold,
So passing sweetly, that by manifold
It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise,
And whan his song was ended in this wise,
The nightingale with so merry a note
Answered him, that all the wood rong
So sodainly, that as it were a sote,
I stood astonied, so was I with the song
Thorow rauished, that till late and long,
I ne wist in what place I was, ne where,
And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere.
Wherefore I waited about busily
On euery side, if I her might see,
And at the last I gan full well aspie
Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree,
On the further side euen right by me,
That gaue so passing a delicious smell,
According to the eglentere full well.
Whereof I had so inly great pleasure,
That as me thought I surely rauished was
Into Paradice, where my desire
Was for to be, and no ferther passe
As for that day, and on the sote grasse,
I sat me downe, for as for mine entent,
The birds song was more conuenient,
And more pleasaunt to me by manifold,
Than meat or drinke, or any other thing,
Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold,
The wholesome sauours eke so comforting,
That as I demed, sith the beginning
Of the world was neur seene or than
So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.
And as I sat the birds harkening thus,
Me thought that I heard voices sodainly,
The most sweetest and most delicious
That euer any wight I trow truly
Heard in their life, for the armony
And sweet accord was in so good musike,
That the uoice to angels was most like."
There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment: the whole is
an ebullition of natural delight "welling out of the heart," like water
from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art: there is a strength as
well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on nature,
that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in nature, and
reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and
patience of Griselda; the faith of Constance; and the heroic
perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through the
streets of Jewry,
"Oh _Alma Redemptoris mater_, loudly sung,"
and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of
this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer, except
Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of conception, never
swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not
even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed to give one or two
instances of what I mean. I will take the following from the Knight's
Tale. The distress of Arcite, in consequence of his banishment from his
love, is thus described:
"Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was,
Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas,
For sene his lady shall he never mo.
And shortly to concluden all his wo,
So mochel sorwe hadde never creature,
That is or shall be, while the world may dure.
His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft.
That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft.
His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold,
His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold,
And solitary he was, and ever alone,
And wailing all the night, making his mone.
And if he herde song or instrument,
Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent.
So feble were his spirites, and so low,
And changed so, that no man coude know
His speche ne his vois, though men it herd."
This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the
body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the
contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same kind is
his farewel to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and lost his
life in the combat:
"Alas the wo! alas the peines stronge,
That I for you have suffered, and so longe!
Alas the deth! alas min Emilie!
Alas departing of our compagnie;
Alas min hertes quene! alas my wif!
Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif!
What is this world? what axen men to have?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Alone withouten any compagnie."
The death of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes after triumph
and victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the
celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of the
three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments and
ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings of
the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of which is lost in
Dryden's version. For instance, such lines as the following are not
rendered with their true feeling.
"Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all
The purtreiture that was upon the wall
Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede--
That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace
In thilke colde and frosty region,
Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion.
First on the wall was peinted a forest,
In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,
With knotty knarry barrein trees old
Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold;
In which ther ran a romble and a swough,
As though a storme shuld bresten every bough."
And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter
painted on the wall, is this one:
"The statue of Mars upon a carte stood
Armed, and looked grim as he were wood.
A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete
With eyen red, and of a man he ete."
The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio; but the Clerk of Oxenforde,
who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch. This story has
gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb. In spite of the
barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment
remains unimpaired and unalterable. It is of that kind, "that heaves no
sigh, that sheds no tear"; but it hangs upon the beatings of the heart;
it is a part of the very being; it is as inseparable from it as the
breath we draw. It is still and calm as the face of death. Nothing can
touch it in its ethereal purity: tender as the yielding flower, it is
fixed as the marble firmament. The only remonstrance she makes, the only
complaint she utters against all the ill-treatment she receives, is that
single line where, when turned back naked to her father's house, she
says,
"Let me not like a worm go by the way."
The first outline given of the character is inimitable:
"Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable,
Wher as this markis shope his marriage,
Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable,
In which that poure folk of that village
Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage,
And of hir labour toke hir sustenance,
After that the erthe yave hem habundance.
Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man,
Which that was holden pourest of hem all:
But highe God sometime senden can
His grace unto a litel oxes stall:
Janicola men of that thorpe him call.
A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight,
And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight.
But for to speke of vertuous beautee,
Than was she on the fairest under Sonne:
Ful pourely yfostred up was she:
No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne;
Ful ofter of the well than of the tonne
She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese,
She knew wel labour, but non idel ese.
But though this mayden tendre were of age,
Yet in the brest of hire virginitee
Ther was enclosed sad and ripe corage:
And in gret reverence and charitee
Hire olde poure fader fostred she:
A few sheep spinning on the feld she kept,
She wolde not ben idel til she slept.
And whan she homward came she wolde bring
Wortes and other herbes times oft,
The which she shred and sethe for hire living,
And made hire bed ful hard, and nothing soft:
And ay she kept hire fadres lif on loft
With every obeisance and diligence,
That child may don to fadres reverence,
Upon Grisilde, this poure creature,
Ful often sithe this markis sette his sye, [sic]
As he on hunting rode paraventure:
And whan it fell that he might hire espie,
He not with wanton loking of folie
His eyen cast on hire, but in sad wise
Upon hire chere he wold him oft avise,
Commending in his herte hire womanhede,
And eke hire vertue, passing any wight
Of so yong age, as wel in chere as dede.
For though the people have no gret insight
In vertue, he considered ful right
Hire bountee, and disposed that he wold
Wedde hire only, if ever he wedden shold.
Grisilde of this (God wot) ful innocent,
That for hire shapen was all this array,
To fetchen water at a welle is went,
And cometh home as sone as ever she may.
For wel she had herd say, that thilke day
The markis shulde wedde, and, if she might,
She wolde fayn han seen som of that sight.
She thought, "I wol with other maidens stond,
That ben my felawes, in our dore, and see
The markisesse, and therto wol I fond
To don at home, as sone as it may be,
The labour which longeth unto me,
And than I may at leiser hire behold,
If she this way unto the castel hold."
And she wolde over the threswold gon,
The markis came and gan hire for to call,
And she set doun her water-pot anon
Beside the threswold in an oxes stall,
And doun upon hire knees she gan to fall.
And with sad countenance kneleth still,
Till she had herd what was the lordes will."
The story of the little child slain in Jewry, (which is told by the
Prioress, and worthy to be told by her who was "all conscience and
tender heart,") is not less touching than that of Griselda. It is simple
and heroic to the last degree. The poetry of Chaucer has a religious
sanctity about it, connected with the manners and superstitions of the
age. It has all the spirit of martyrdom.
It has also all the extravagance and the utmost licentiousness of
comic humour, equally arising out of the manners of the time. In this
too Chaucer resembled Boccaccio that he excelled in both styles, and
could pass at will "from grave to gay, from lively to severe"; but he
never confounded the two styles together (except from that involuntary
and unconscious mixture of the pathetic and humorous, which is almost
always to be found in nature,) and was exclusively taken up with what he
set about, whether it was jest or earnest. The Wife of Bath's Prologue
(which Pope has very admirably modernised) is, perhaps, unequalled as a
comic story. The Cock and the Fox is also excellent for lively strokes
of character and satire. January and May is not so good as some of the
others. Chaucer's versification, considering the time at which he wrote,
and that versification is a thing in a great degree mechanical, is not
one of his least merits. It has considerable strength and harmony, and
its apparent deficiency in the latter respect arises chiefly from the
alterations which have since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of
accenting the words of the language. The best general rule for reading
him is to pronounce the final _e_, as in reading Italian.
It was observed in the last Lecture that painting describes what the
object is in itself, poetry what it implies or suggests. Chaucer's
poetry is not, in general, the best confirmation of the truth of this
distinction, for his poetry is more picturesque and historical than
almost any other. But there is one instance in point which I cannot help
giving in this place. It is the story of the three thieves who go in
search of Death to kill him, and who meeting with him, are entangled in
their fate by his words, without knowing him. In the printed catalogue
to Mr. West's (in some respects very admirable) picture of Death on the
Pale Horse, it is observed, that "In poetry the same effect is produced
by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of description, touching, as it were
with fire, the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity;
but in painting, such indistinctness would be a defect, and imply that
the artist wanted the power to pourtray the conceptions of his fancy.
Mr. West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its
moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of
Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance
of super-human strength and energy. He has therefore exerted the utmost
force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure."--One might
suppose from this, that the way to represent a shadow was to make it as
substantial as possible. Oh, no! Painting has its prerogatives, (and
high ones they are) but they lie in representing the visible, not the
invisible. The moral attributes of Death are powers and effects of an
infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or physical
form can possibly represent, but by a courtesy of speech, or by a
distant analogy. The moral impression of Death is essentially visionary;
its reality is in the mind's eye. Words are here the only _things_; and
things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the understanding. The
less definite, the less bodily the conception, the more vast, unformed,
and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of
that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which
every where, and at some time or other, exerts its power over all
things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like Night, or Space, or Time. He
is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for
his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He
stalks on before us, and we do not mind him: he follows us close behind,
and we do not turn to look back at him. We do not see him making faces
at us in our life-time, nor perceive him afterwards sitting in
mock-majesty, a twin-skeleton, beside us, tickling our bare ribs, and
staring into our hollow eye-balls! Chaucer knew this. He makes three
riotous companions go in search of Death to kill him, they meet with an
old man whom they reproach with his age, and ask why he does not die, to
which he answers thus:
"Ne Deth, alas! ne will not han my lif.
Thus walke I like a restless caitiff,
And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knocke with my staf, erlich and late,
And say to hire, "Leve mother, let me in.
Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin,
Alas! when shall my bones ben at reste?
Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste,
That in my chambre longe time hath be,
Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me."
But yet to me she will not don that grace,
For which ful pale and welked is my face."
They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death to kill
him, and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of all
three. We hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have
encountered!
The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary. There is
nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve, "ancient Gower,"
Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Spenser flourished in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John Davies into Ireland, of
which he has left behind him some tender recollections in his
description of the bog of Allan, and a record in an ably written paper,
containing observations on the state of that country and the means of
improving it, which remain in full force to the present day. Spenser
died at an obscure inn in London, it is supposed in distressed
circumstances. The treatment he received from Burleigh is well known.
Spenser, as well as Chaucer, was engaged in active life; but the genius
of his poetry was not active: it is inspired by the love of ease, and
relaxation from all the cares and business of life. Of all the poets, he
is the most poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations to
preceding writers were less. He has in some measure borrowed the plan of
his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from Ariosto; but he has
engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy, and an endless voluptuousness
of sentiment, which are not to be found in the Italian writer. Farther,
Spenser is even more of an inventor in the subject-matter. There is an
originality, richness, and variety in his allegorical personages and
fictions, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology.
If Ariosto transports us into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry
is all fairy-land. In Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a company,
gay, fantastic, and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we wander in another
world, among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a
lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills and
fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but as we expected
to find it; and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth. He waves
his wand of enchantment--and at once embodies airy beings, and throws
a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two worlds of reality and
of fiction are poised on the wings of his imagination. His ideas,
indeed, seem more distinct than his perceptions. He is the painter of
abstractions, and describes them with dazzling minuteness. In the Mask
of Cupid he makes the God of Love "clap on high his coloured winges
_twain_": and it is said of Gluttony, in the Procession of the Passions,
"In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad."
At times he becomes picturesque from his intense love of beauty; as
where he compares Prince Arthur's crest to the appearance of the almond
tree:
"Upon the top of all his lofty crest,
A bunch of hairs discolour'd diversely
With sprinkled pearl and gold full richly drest
Did shake and seem'd to daunce for jollity;
Like to an almond tree ymounted high
On top of green Selenis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily;
Her tender locks do tremble every one
At every little breath that under heav'n is blown."
The love of beauty, however, and not of truth, is the moving principle
of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule
but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally
in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit's
cell--in the extremes of sensuality or refinement.
In reading the Faery Queen, you see a little withered old man by a
wood-side opening a wicket, a giant, and a dwarf lagging far behind, a
damsel in a boat upon an enchanted lake, wood-nymphs, and satyrs, and
all of a sudden you are transported into a lofty palace, with tapers
burning, amidst knights and ladies, with dance and revelry, and song,
"and mask, and antique pageantry." What can be more solitary, more shut
up in itself, than his description of the house of Sleep, to which
Archimago sends for a dream:
"And more to lull him in his slumber soft
A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,
Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the sound
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swound.
No other noise, nor people's troublous cries.
That still are wont t' annoy the walled town
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies
Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies."
It is as if "the honey-heavy dew of slumber" had settled on his pen in
writing these lines. How different in the subject (and yet how like in
beauty) is the following description of the Bower of Bliss:
"Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that mote delight a dainty ear;
Such as at once might not on living ground,
Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear,
To tell what manner musicke that mote be;
For all that pleasing is to living eare
Was there consorted in one harmonee:
Birds, voices, instruments, windes, waters, all agree.
The joyous birdes shrouded in chearefull shade
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet:
The angelical soft trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet.
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmur of the water's fall;
The water's fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all."
The remainder of the passage has all that voluptuous pathos, and languid
brilliancy of fancy, in which this writer excelled:
"The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay;
Ah! see, whoso fayre thing dost thou fain to see,
In springing flower the image of thy day!
Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly she
Doth first peep forth with bashful modesty,
That fairer seems the less ye see her may!
Lo! see soon after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosom she doth broad display;
Lo! see soon after, how she fades and falls away!
So passeth in the passing of a day
Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower;
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,
That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower
Of many a lady and many a paramour!
Gather therefore the rose whilst yet is prime,
For soon comes age that will her pride deflower;
Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time,
Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime. [2]
He ceased; and then gan all the quire of birds
Their divers notes to attune unto his lay,
As in approvance of his pleasing wordes.
The constant pair heard all that he did say,
Yet swerved not, but kept their forward way
Through many covert groves and thickets close,
In which they creeping did at last display [3]
That wanton lady with her lover loose,
Whose sleepy head she in her lap did soft dispose.
Upon a bed of roses she was laid
As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin;
And was arrayed or rather disarrayed,
All in a veil of silk and silver thin,
That hid no whit her alabaster skin,
But rather shewed more white, if more might be:
More subtle web Arachne cannot spin;
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee.
Her snowy breast was bare to greedy spoil
Of hungry eyes which n' ote therewith be fill'd,
And yet through languor of her late sweet toil
Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd,
That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd;
And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight
Moisten'd their fiery beams, with which she thrill'd
Frail hearts, yet quenched not; like starry light,
Which sparkling on the silent waves does seem more bright."
___
[2] Taken from Tasso.
[3] This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which
Spenser sometimes took with language.
___
The finest things in Spenser are, the character of Una, in the first
book; the House of Pride; the Cave of Mammon, and the Cave of Despair;
the account of Memory, of whom it is said, among other things,
"The wars he well remember'd of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine";
the description of Belphoebe; the story of Florimel and the Witch's son;
the Gardens of Adonis, and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and
Colin Clout's vision, in the last book. But some people will say that
all this may be very fine, but that they cannot understand it on account
of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it
would bite them: they look at it as a child looks at a painted dragon,
and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle.
If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle
with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a
pike-staff. It might as well be pretended that we cannot see Poussin's
pictures for the allegory, as that the allegory prevents us from
understanding Spenser. For instance, when Britomart, seated amidst the
young warriors, lets fall her hair and discovers her sex, is it
necessary to know the part she plays in the allegory, to understand the
beauty of the following stanza?
"And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest
Was for like need enforc'd to disarray.
Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest,
Her golden locks that were in trammels gay
Upbounden, did themselves adown display,
And raught unto her heels like sunny beams
That in a cloud their light did long time stay;
Their vapour faded, shew their golden gleams,
And through the persant air shoot forth their azure streams."
Or is there any mystery in what is said of Belphoebe, that her hair was
sprinkled with flowers and blossoms which had been entangled in it as
she fled through the woods? Or is it necessary to have a more distinct
idea of Proteus, than that which is given of him in his boat, with the
frighted Florimel at his feet, while
"------the cold icicles from his rough beard
Dropped adown upon her snowy breast!"
Or is it not a sufficient account of one of the sea-gods that pass by
them, to say--
"That was Arion crowned:--
So went he playing on the watery plain."
Or to take the Procession of the Passions that draw the coach of Pride,
in which the figures of Idleness, of Gluttony, of Lechery, of Avarice,
of Envy, and of Wrath speak, one should think, plain enough for
themselves; such as this of Gluttony:
"And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine;
His belly was up blown with luxury;
And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne;
And like a crane his neck was long and fine,
With which he swallowed up excessive feast,
For want whereof poor people oft did pine.
In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad;
For other clothes he could not wear for heat:
And on his head an ivy garland had,
From under which fast trickled down the sweat:
Still as he rode, he somewhat still did eat.
And in his hand did bear a bouzing can,
Of which he supt so oft, that on his seat
His drunken corse he scarce upholden can;
In shape and size more like a monster than a man."
Or this of Lechery:
"And next to him rode lustfull Lechery
Upon a bearded goat, whose rugged hair
And whaly eyes (the sign of jealousy)
Was like the person's self whom he did bear:
Who rough and black, and filthy did appear.
Unseemly man to please fair lady's eye:
Yet he of ladies oft was loved dear,
When fairer faces were bid standen by:
O! who does know the bent of woman's fantasy?
In a green gown he clothed was full fair,
Which underneath did hide his filthiness;
And in his hand a burning heart he bare,
Full of vain follies and new fangleness;
For he was false and fraught with fickleness;
And learned had to love with secret looks;
And well could dance; and sing with ruefulness;
And fortunes tell; and read in loving books;
And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks.
Inconstant man that loved all he saw,
And lusted after all that he did love;
Ne would his looser life be tied to law;
But joyed weak women's hearts to tempt and prove,
If from their loyal loves he might them move."
This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser:
"------Yet not more sweet
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;
High priest of all the Muses' mysteries!"
On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which do not
strictly belong to the Muses.
Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, as little
obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train
of votaries:
"The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy
Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer;
His garment neither was of silk nor say,
But painted plumes in goodly order dight,
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array
Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight:
As those same plumes so seem'd he vain and light,
That by his gait might easily appear;
For still he far'd as dancing in delight,
And in his hand a windy fan did bear
That in the idle air he mov'd still here and there.
And him beside march'd amorous Desire,
Who seem'd of riper years than the other swain,
Yet was that other swain this elder's sire,
And gave him being, common to them twain:
His garment was disguised very vain,
And his embroidered bonnet sat awry;
Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain,
Which still he blew, and kindled busily,
That soon they life conceiv'd and forth in flames did fly.
Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad
In a discolour'd coat of strange disguise,
That at his back a broad capuccio had,
And sleeves dependant _Albanese-wise_;
He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes,
And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way,
Or that the floor to shrink he did avise;
And on a broken reed he still did stay
His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay.
With him went Daunger, cloth'd in ragged weed,
Made of bear's skin, that him more dreadful made;
Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need
Strange horror to deform his grisly shade;
A net in th' one hand, and a rusty blade
In th' other was; this Mischiefe, that Mishap;
With th' one his foes he threat'ned to invade,
With th' other he his friends meant to enwrap;
For whom he could not kill he practiz'd to entrap.
Next him was Fear, all arm'd from top to toe,
Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby,
But fear'd each shadow moving to and fro;
And his own arms when glittering he did spy
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly,
As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel'd;
And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye,
'Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.
With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid,
Of chearfull look and lovely to behold;
In silken samite she was light array'd,
And her fair locks were woven up in gold;
She always smil'd, and in her hand did hold
An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew,
With which she sprinkled favours manifold
On whom she list, and did great liking shew,
Great liking unto many, but true love to few.
Next after them, the winged God himself
Came riding on a lion ravenous,
Taught to obey the menage of that elfe
That man and beast with power imperious
Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous:
His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind,
That his proud spoil of that same dolorous
Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind;
Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind.
Of which full proud, himself uprearing high,
He looked round about with stern disdain,
And did survey his goodly company:
And marshalling the evil-ordered train,
With that the darts which his right hand did strain,
Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake,
And clapt on high his colour'd winges twain,
That all his many it afraid did make:
Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take."
The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one
of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the triumph of Cupid at the
mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In
reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of
Rubens's allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming the
lion's whelps and lugging the bear's cubs along in his arms while yet an
infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to "go seek some other
play-fellows," has even more of this high picturesque character. Nobody
but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and he could not
have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over it! With all
this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The only jest in his poem
is an allegorical play upon words, where he describes Malbecco as
escaping in the herd of goats, "by the help of his fayre hornes on
hight." But he has been unjustly charged with a want of passion and of
strength. He has both in an immense degree. He has not indeed the pathos
of immediate action or suffering, which is more properly the dramatic;
but he has all the pathos of sentiment and romance--all that belongs
to distant objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His
strength, in like manner, is not strength of will or action, of bone and
muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable--but it assumes a character of
vastness and sublimity seen through the same visionary medium, and
blended with the appalling associations of preternatural agency. We need
only turn, in proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of
Mammon, or to the account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The
following stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly
house of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the
forms, the splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror.
"That house's form within was rude and strong,
Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift,
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung,
Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift,
And with rich metal loaded every rift,
That heavy ruin they did seem to threat:
And over them Arachne high did lift
Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net,
Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet.
Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold,
But overgrown with dust and old decay, [4]
And hid in darkness that none could behold
The hue thereof: for view of cheerful day
Did never in that house itself display,
But a faint shadow of uncertain light;
Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.
* * * * * * *
And over all sad Horror with grim hue
Did always soar, beating his iron wings;
And after him owls and night-ravens flew,
The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings;
Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift,
A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings,
That heart of flint asunder could have rift;
Which having ended, after him she flieth swift."
___
[4] "That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o'er-dusted."
_Troilus and Cressida_.
___
The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and power of
fancy; and the fine moral declamation of the owner of it, on the evils
of life, almost makes one in love with death. In the story of Malbecco,
who is haunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run away from his own
thoughts--
"High over hill and over dale he flies"--
the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are equally
striking.--It is not fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare, in point
of interest. A fairer comparison would be with Comus; and the result
would not be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one work of the same
allegorical kind, which has more interest than Spenser (with scarcely
less imagination): and that is the Pilgrim's Progress. The three first
books of the Faery Queen are very superior to the three last. One would
think that Pope, who used to ask if any one had ever read the Faery
Queen through, had only dipped into these last. The only things in them
equal to the former, are the account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the
delightful episode of Pastorella.
The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing; it is
less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned with
phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both ancient
and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license of
expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his complicated
rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native language. This
stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring rhymes, is borrowed from
the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to their language, which abounds
in similar vowel terminations, and is as little adapted to ours, from
the stubborn, unaccommodating resistance which the consonant endings of
the northern languages make to this sort of endless sing-song.--Not
that I would, on that account, part with the stanza of Spenser. We are,
perhaps, indebted to this very necessity of finding out new forms of
expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical
language rich and varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost
all later example. His versification is, at once, the most smooth and
the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds,
"in many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out"--that
would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly
relieved and enchanted by their continued variety of modulation--
dwelling on the pauses of the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of
harmony with the movement of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic
transitions of Shakspeare's blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of
Milton's; but it is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the
soul in pleasure, or holding it captive in the chains of suspense.
Spenser was the poet of our waking dreams; and he has invented not only
a language, but a music of his own for them. The undulations are
infinite, like those of the waves of the sea: but the effect is still
the same, lulling the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises
of the world, from which we have no wish to be ever recalled.
LECTURE III.
ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON.
In looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we are
sometimes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has since been
made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general. But this is
perhaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more contrary to the fact, than
the supposition that in what we understand by the _fine arts_, as
painting, and poetry, relative perfection is only the result of repeated
efforts in successive periods, and that what has been once well done,
constantly leads to something better. What is mechanical, reducible to
rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admits of gradual
improvement: what is not mechanical, or definite, but depends on
feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary, or retrograde,
and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a
vulgar error, which has grown up, like many others, from transferring an
analogy of one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the
account the difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the
difference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful
advances have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in
mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c. _i.e._ in things depending on
mere inquiry and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led
hastily to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the efforts of
the human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all other arts and
institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time. We look back upon the
theological creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries in natural
philosophy, with a smile of pity: science, and the arts connected with
it, have all had their infancy, their youth, and manhood, and seem to
contain in them no principle of limitation or decay: and, inquiring no
farther about the matter, we infer, in the intoxication of our pride,
and the height of our self-congratulation, that the same progress has
been made, and will continue to be made, in all other things which are
the work of man. The fact, however, stares us so plainly in the face,
that one would think the smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and
overturn our sanguine theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators,
the best painters, and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw,
appeared soon after the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of
society which was, in other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those
arts, which depend on individual genius and incommunicable power, have
always leaped at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn
of invention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in
general declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and
privilege of each, of science and of art:--of the one, never to attain
its utmost limit of perfection; and of the other, to arrive at it almost
at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto,
(Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it)--Raphael,
Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek
sculptors and tragedians,--all lived near the beginning of their arts
--perfected, and all but created them. These giant-sons of genius stand
indeed upon the earth, but they tower above their fellows; and the long
line of their successors, in different ages, does not interpose any
object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength
and stature they are unrivalled; in grace and beauty they have not been
surpassed. In after-ages, and more refined periods, (as they are called)
great men have arisen, one by one, as it were by throes and at
intervals; though in general the best of these cultivated and artificial
minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso and Pope, among poets; Guido
and Vandyke, among painters. But in the earlier stages of the arts, as
soon as the first mechanical difficulties had been got over, and the
language was sufficiently acquired, they rose by clusters, and in
constellations, never so to rise again!
The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of
thought within us, and with the world of sense around us--with what we
know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred shrine of
our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of nature. But the
pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the depths and soundings
of the human heart were as well understood three thousand, or three
hundred years ago, as they are at present: the face of nature, and "the
human face divine" shone as bright then as they have ever done. But it
is _their_ light, reflected by true genius on art, that marks out its
path before it, and sheds a glory round the Muses' feet, like that which
"Circled Una's angel face,
And made a sunshine in the shady place."
The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first
we come to--Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are no
others that can really be put in competition with these. The two last
have had justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their names are
blazoned in the very firmament of reputation; while the two first
(though "the fault has been more in their stars than in themselves that
they are underlings") either never emerged far above the horizon, or
were too soon involved in the obscurity of time. The three first of
these are excluded from Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets (Shakspeare
indeed is so from the dramatic form of his compositions): and the
fourth, Milton, is admitted with a reluctant and churlish welcome.
In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that
Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser, as the
poet of romance; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest use of
the term); and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer most frequently
describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them to be;
Shakspeare, as they would be; and Milton as they ought to be. As poets,
and as great poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning things
according to nature, was common to them all: but the principle or moving
power, to which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit,
or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the
marvellous; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with
every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the
highest. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser,
remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakspeare, every thing.--It has
been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the
other dramatic writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his
other qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as
much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the same
depth of passion, and another as great a power of language. This
statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded, even
if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that, upon his
own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare's genius was its
virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age, and not
his differing from them in one accidental particular. But to have done
with such minute and literal trifling.
The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic
quality, its power of communication with all other minds--so that it
contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no
one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was
just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the
least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in
himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He
not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he
could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their
conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or conflict
of passion, or turn of thought. He had "a mind reflecting ages past,"
and present:--all the people that ever lived are there. There was no
respect of persons with him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on
the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar: "All
corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids, matrons, nay,
the secrets of the grave," are hardly hid from his searching glance. He
was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at
pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own. He turned the
globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and
the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions,
follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives--as well those that they
knew, as those which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves.
The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his
fancy. Airy beings waited at his call, and came at his bidding. Harmless
fairies "nodded to him, and did him curtesies": and the night-hag
bestrode the blast at the command of "his so potent art." The world of
spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and women: and there
is the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the other; for if
the preternatural characters he describes could be supposed to exist,
they would speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them. He had only to
think of any thing in order to become that thing, with all the
circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether
real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and
feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring,
to be surrounded with all the same objects, "subject to the same skyey
influences," the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which
would occur in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands
before us with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery and
situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the
place, its strange noises, its hidden recesses, "his frequent haunts and
ancient neighbourhood," are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and
with all the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole "coheres
semblably together" in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this
author, you do not merely learn what his characters say,--you see their
persons. By something expressed or understood, you are at no loss to
decypher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the
grouping, the bye-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an
epithet paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the
history of the person represented. So (as it has been ingeniously
remarked) when Prospero describes himself as left alone in the boat with
his daughter, the epithet which he applies to her, "Me and thy _crying_
self," flings the imagination instantly back from the grown woman to the
helpless condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying
scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that he must have suffered
in the interval. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to
the reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm--"What! man,
ne'er pull your hat upon your brows!" Again, Hamlet, in the scene with
Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine
soliloquy on life by saying, "Man delights not me, nor woman neither,
though by your smiling you seem to say so." Which is explained by their
answer--"My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled
to think, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the
players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way":--as if while
Hamlet was making this speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg
had been really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at
the idea of the players crossing their minds. It is not "a combination
and a form" of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a
character, that will do this: but all the persons concerned must have
been present in the poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and
whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have
been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the
reader.--I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best
directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes. Thus to take one
example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet; and as Ophelia
had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against that
of any modern authority.
"_Ophelia_. My lord, as I was reading in my closet,
Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd,
No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,
Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous,
As if he had been sent from hell
To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.
_Polonius_. Mad for thy love!
_Oph_. My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.
_Pol_. What said he?
_Oph_. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard,
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face,
As he would draw it: long staid he so;
At last, a little shaking of my arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound,
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
For out of doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me."
_Act. II. Scene 1_.
How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered
melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with
strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is
difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the
prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's
death begins thus:
"There is a willow hanging o'er a brook,
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream."--
Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is
as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact,
white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear "hoary"
in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the
same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or
absent, before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech of Cleopatra,
when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence:--
"He's speaking now, or murmuring, where's my serpent of old Nile?" How
fine to make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own character, and
to make her feel that it is this for which Antony is in love with her!
She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk
another fight, "It is my birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor:
but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." What other poet
would have thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or
would have dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play
as it might have happened in fact.--That which, perhaps, more than any
thing else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all
others, is this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. Each of
his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the
rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not
fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify
himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one
to another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies.
By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out
of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth of the
person in whose name it is given. His plays alone are properly
expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters
are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak like men, not like
authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and
overheard what passed. As in our dreams we hold conversations with
ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelligence, and have no idea
of the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves make, till
we hear it: so the dialogues in Shakspeare are carried on without any
consciousness of what is to follow, without any appearance of
preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go like
sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by formal
inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis: all comes, or seems to
come, immediately from nature. Each object and circumstance exists in
his mind, as it would have existed in reality: each several train of
thought and feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort. In
the world of his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, and being
of its own!
Chaucer's characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but
they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical
propositions. They are consistent, but uniform; we get no new idea of
them from first to last; they are not placed in different lights, nor
are their subordinate _traits_ brought out in new situations; they are
like portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing
features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that
preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare's are
historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where
every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with
all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light
and shade. Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic,
Milton's epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as he
pleased, as was required for a particular purpose. He answered for his
characters himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon the stage,
are liable to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced to answer
for themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character. In
Shakspeare there is a continual composition and decomposition of its
elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by its
alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are brought in
contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not know the
result, the turn which the character will take in its new circumstances.
Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them
to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base
alloy. His imagination, "nigh sphered in Heaven," claimed kindred only
with what he saw from that height, and could raise to the same elevation
with itself. He sat retired and kept his state alone, "playing with
wisdom"; while Shakspeare mingled with the crowd, and played the host,
"to make society the sweeter welcome."
The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation of
character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying upon
itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself; it is
passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which the
individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him; subject
to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling into play all
the resources of the understanding and all the energies of the will;
irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from small beginnings
to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now stung to madness, now
sunk in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now raging like a
torrent. The human soul is made the sport of fortune, the prey of
adversity: it is stretched on the wheel of destiny, in restless ecstacy.
The passions are in a state of projection. Years are melted down to
moments, and every instant teems with fate. We know the results, we see
the process. Thus after Iago has been boasting to himself of the effect
of his poisonous suggestions on the mind of Othello, "which, with a
little act upon the blood, will work like mines of sulphur," he adds--
"Look where he comes! not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst yesterday."--
And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned with his
wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the turn of a
thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a flame; and
the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The dialogues in
Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and nearly all those
in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its highest pitch,
afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of passion. The interest in
Chaucer is quite different; it is like the course of a river, strong,
and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, it is like the
sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed by furious storms;
while in the still pauses of the blast, we distinguish only the cries of
despair, or the silence of death! Milton, on the other hand, takes the
imaginative part of passion--that which remains after the event, which
the mind reposes on when all is over, which looks upon circumstances
from the remotest elevation of thought and fancy, and abstracts them
from the world of action to that of contemplation. The objects of
dramatic poetry affect us by sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves,
as they take us by surprise, or force us upon action, "while rage with
rage doth sympathise"; the objects of epic poetry affect us through the
medium of the imagination, by magnitude and distance, by their
permanence and universality. The one fill us with terror and pity, the
other with admiration and delight. There are certain objects that strike
the imagination, and inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently
of any dramatic interest, that is, of any connection with the
vicissitudes of human life. For instance, we cannot think of the
pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Roman encampment, without
a certain emotion, a sense of power and sublimity coming over the mind.
The heavenly bodies that hang over our heads wherever we go, and "in
their untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust, and all
our cares forgotten," affect us in the same way. Thus Satan's address to
the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic interest; for though the second
person in the dialogue makes no answer and feels no concern, yet the eye
of that vast luminary is upon him, like the eye of heaven, and seems
conscious of what he says, like an universal presence. Dramatic poetry
and epic, in their perfection, indeed, approximate to and strengthen one
another. Dramatic poetry borrows aid from the dignity of persons and
things, as the heroic does from human passion, but in theory they are
distinct.--When Richard II. calls for the looking-glass to contemplate
his faded majesty in it, and bursts into that affecting exclamation:
"Oh, that I were a mockery-king of snow, to melt away before the sun of
Bolingbroke," we have here the utmost force of human passion, combined
with the ideas of regal splendour and fallen power. When Milton says of
Satan:
"------His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscur'd;"--
the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of
irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.
The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an
experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility;
or what is worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human
passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and
devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakspeare did
not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both
to nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one
and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the Moods of their own
Minds. They owe their power over the human mind to their having had a
deeper sense than others of what was grand in the objects of nature, or
affecting in the events of human life. But to the men I speak of there
is nothing interesting, nothing heroical, but themselves. To them the
fall of gods or of great men is the same. They do not enter into the
feeling. They cannot understand the terms. They are even debarred from
the last poor, paltry consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen
greatness; for their minds reject, with a convulsive effort and
intolerable loathing, the very idea that there ever was, or was thought
to be, any thing superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the
attention or admiration of the world, they look upon with the most
perfect indifference; and they are surprised to find that the world
repays their indifference with scorn. "With what measure they mete, it
has been meted to them again."--
Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his
conception of character or passion. "It glances from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven." Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the
most opposite extremes; or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats,
"puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." He seems always
hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; but the stroke,
like the lightning's, is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest
possible range, but from that very range he has his choice of the
greatest variety and aptitude of materials. He brings together images
the most alike, but placed at the greatest distance from each other;
that is, found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. From the
remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which they are
effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The more the
thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they have been kept
asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to become. Their
felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is made more dazzling
by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy prisoner in the same
instant. I will mention one or two which are very striking, and not much
known, out of Troilus and Cressida. AEneas says to Agamemnon,
"I ask that I may waken reverence,
And on the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus."