Byron's mistake about Hallam in the Pindar story may be worth placing among
absurdities. For elucidation, suppose that some poet were now to speak--
{274}
"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Eve gave to Adam in his birthday suit--"
and some critic were to call it nonsense, would that critic be laughing at
Milton? Payne Knight,[436] in his _Taste_, translated part of Gray's _Bard_
into Greek. Some of his lines are
[Greek: therma d' ho tengon dakrua stonachais]
[Greek: oulon melos phoberai]
[Greek: eeide phonai.]
Literally thus:
"Wetting warm tears with groans,
Continuous chant with fearful
Voice he sang."
On which Hallam remarks: "The twelfth line [our first] is nonsense." And so
it is, a poet can no more wet his tears with his groans than wet his ale
with his whistle. Now this first line is from Pindar, but is only part of
the sense; in full it is:
[Greek: therma de tengon dakrua stonachais]
[Greek: horthion phonase.]
Pindar's [Greek: tengon] must be Englished by _shedding_, and he stands
alone in this use. He says, "shedding warm tears, he cried out loud, with
groans." Byron speaks of
"Classic Hallam, much renowned for Greek:"
and represents him as criticising _the Greek_ of all Payne's lines, and not
discovering that "the lines" were Pindar's {275} until after publication.
Byron was too much of a scholar to make this blunder himself: he either
accepted the facts from report, or else took satirical licence. And why
not? If you want to laugh at a person, and he will not give occasion, whose
fault is it that you are obliged to make it? Hallam did criticise some of
Payne Knight's Greek; but with the caution of his character, he remarked
that possibly some of these queer phrases might be "critic-traps" justified
by some one use of some one author. I remember well having a Latin essay to
write at Cambridge, in which I took care to insert a few monstrous and
unusual idioms from Cicero: a person with a Nizolius,[437] and without
scruples may get scores of them. So when my tutor raised his voice against
these oddities, I was up to him, for I came down upon him with Cicero,
chapter and verse, and got round him. And so my own solecisms, many of
them, passed unchallenged.
Byron had more good in his nature than he was fond of letting out: whether
he was a soured misanthrope, or whether his _vein_ lay that way in poetry,
and he felt it necessary to fit his demeanor to it, are matters far beyond
me. Mr. Crabb Robinson[438] told me the following story more than once. He
was at Charles Lamb's chambers in the Temple when Wordsworth came in, with
the new _Edinburgh Review_ in his hand, and fume on his countenance. "These
reviewers," said he, "put me out of patience! Here is a young man--they say
he is a lord--who has written a volume of poetry; and these fellows, just
because he is a lord, set upon him, laugh at him, and sneer at his writing.
The young man will do something, if he goes on as he has begun. But these
reviewers seem to think {276} that nobody may write poetry, unless he lives
in a garret." Crabb Robinson told this long after to Lady Byron, who said,
"Ah! if Byron had known that, he would never have attacked Wordsworth. He
went one day to meet Wordsworth at dinner; when he came home I said, 'Well,
how did the young poet get on with the old one?' 'Why, to tell you the
truth,' said he, 'I had but one feeling from the beginning of the visit to
the end, and that was--_reverence_!'" Lady Byron told my wife that her
husband had a very great respect for Wordsworth. I suppose he would have
said--as the Archangel said to his Satan--"Our difference is po[li =
e]tical."
I suspect that Fielding would, if all were known, be ranked among the
unlucky railers at supposed paradox. In his _Miscellanies_ (1742, 8vo) he
wrote a satire on the Chrysippus or Guinea, an animal which multiplies
itself by division, like the polypus. This he supposes to have been drawn
up by Petrus Gualterus, meaning the famous usurer, Peter Walter. He calls
it a paper "proper to be read before the R----l Society": and next year,
1743, a quarto reprint was made to resemble a paper in the _Philosophical
Transactions_. So far as I can make out, one object is ridicule of what the
zoologists said about the polypus: a reprint in the form of the
_Transactions_ was certainly satire on the Society, not on Peter Walter and
his knack of multiplying guineas.
Old poets have recognized the quadrature of the circle as a well-known
difficulty. Dante compares himself, when bewildered, to a geometer who
cannot find the principle on which the circle is to be measured:
"Quale e 'l geometra che tutto s' affige
Per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritruova,
Pensando qual principio ond' egli indige."[439]
{277} And Quarles[440] speaks as follows of the _summum bonum_:
"Or is't a tart idea, to procure
An edge, and keep the practic soul in ure,
Like that dear chymic dust, or puzzling quadrature?"
The poetic notion of the quadrature must not be forgotten. Aristophanes, in
the _Birds_, introduces a geometer who announces his intention to _make a
square circle_. Pope, in the _Dunciad_, delivers himself as follows, with a
Greek pronunciation rather strange in a translator of Homer. Probably Pope
recognized, as a general rule, the very common practice of throwing back
the accent in defiance of quantity, seen in o'rator, au'ditor, se'nator,
ca'tenary, etc.
"Mad _Mathesis_ alone was unconfined,
Too mad for mere material chains to bind,--
Now to pure space lifts her ecstatic stare,
Now, running round the circle, finds it square."
The author's note explains that this "regards the wild and fruitless
attempts of squaring the circle." The poetic idea seems to be that the
geometers try to make a square circle. Disraeli quotes it as "finds _its_
square," but the originals do not support this reading.