123. Cf. K. Philips: "Still shew'd how much the good outshone the
great."
We append, as a curiosity of criticism, Dr. Johnson's comments on
this ode, from his _Lives of the Poets_. The Life of Gray has been
called "the worst in the series," and perhaps this is the worst part
of it:[4]
"My process has now brought me to the _wonderful_ 'Wonder of
Wonders,' the two Sister Odes, by which, though either vulgar
ignorance or common-sense at first universally rejected them, many
have been since persuaded to think themselves delighted. I am one of
those that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find
the meaning of the first stanza of 'The Progress of Poetry.'
"Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of spreading sound
and running water. A 'stream of music' may be allowed; but where does
'music,' however 'smooth and strong,' after having visited the
'verdant vales, roll down the steep amain,' so as that 'rocks and
nodding groves rebellow to the roar?' If this be said of music, it is
nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose.
"The second stanza, exhibiting Mars's car and Jove's eagle, is
unworthy of further notice. Criticism disdains to chase a schoolboy
to his commonplaces.
"To the third it may likewise be objected that it is drawn from
mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real
life. Idalia's 'velvet-green' has something of cant. An epithet or
metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn
from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily
compounded. 'Many-twinkling' was formerly censured as not analogical;
we may say 'many-spotted,' but scarcely 'many-spotting.' This stanza,
however, has something pleasing.
"Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell
something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by
Hyperion; the second describes well enough the universal prevalence
of poetry; but I am afraid that the conclusion will not arise from
the premises. The caverns of the North and the plains of Chili are
not the residences of 'Glory and generous Shame.' But that Poetry and
Virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing that I can
forgive him who resolves to think it true.
"The third stanza sounds big with 'Delphi,' and 'Ægean,' and
'Ilissus,' and 'Mæander,' and with 'hallowed fountains,' and 'solemn
sound;' but in all Gray's odes there is a kind of cumbrous splendour
which we wish away. His position is at last false: in the time of
Dante and Petrarch, from whom we derive our first school of poetry,
Italy was overrun by 'tyrant power' and 'coward vice;' nor was our
state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts.
"Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of
Shakespeare. What is said of that mighty genius is true; but it is
not said happily: the real effects of this poetical power are put out
of sight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is sufficient to fill
the mind, fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the
genuine.
"His account of Milton's blindness, if we suppose it caused by study
in the formation of his poem, a supposition surely allowable, is
poetically true and happily imagined. But the _car_ of Dryden, with
his _two coursers_, has nothing in it peculiar; it is a car in which
any other rider may be placed."
[Footnote 4: Sir James Mackintosh well says of Johnson's criticisms:
"Wherever understanding alone is sufficient for poetical criticism,
the decisions of Johnson are generally right. But the beauties of
poetry must be _felt_ before their causes are investigated. There is
a poetical sensibility, which in the progress of the mind becomes as
distinct a power as a musical ear or a picturesque eye. Without a
considerable degree of this sensibility, it is as vain for a man of
the greatest understanding to speak of the higher beauties of poetry
as it is for a blind man to speak of colours. To adopt the warmest
sentiments of poetry, to realize its boldest imagery, to yield to
every impulse of enthusiasm, to submit to the illusions of fancy, to
retire with the poet into his ideal worlds, were dispositions wholly
foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. As
in his judgment of life and character, so in his criticism on poetry,
he was a sort of Free-thinker. He suspected the refined of
affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it
for granted that the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the
world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English
poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and
vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse; beyond that school his
unforced admiration perhaps scarcely soared; and his highest effort
of criticism was accordingly the noble panegyric on Dryden."
W. H. Prescott, the historian, also remarks that Johnson, as a
critic, "was certainly deficient in sensibility to the more delicate,
the minor beauties of poetic sentiment. He analyzes verse in the
cold-blooded spirit of a chemist, until all the aroma which
constituted its principal charm escapes in the decomposition. By this
kind of process, some of the finest fancies of the Muse, the lofty
dithyrambics of Gray, the ethereal effusions of Collins, and of
Milton too, are rendered sufficiently vapid."]
[Illustration: PINDAR.]
[Illustration: EDWARD I.]