Discord—a Rending—in Lear; between his misplaced confidence and its
requital—between his misplaced displeasure and the true love that is
working towards his weal. And, again, between the Desert and the Reward
of Cordelia—with more in the same Play.
NORTH.
Schiller says of Tragic Fate,
“The great gigantic Destiny
That exalts Man in crushing him.”
Welcker has, I believe, written on the Fate of the Greek Tragedy, which
I desire to see.
TALBOYS.
Are Waves breaking against a Rock the true image of Tragedy?
NORTH.
Hardly; any more than a man running his head against a post, or stone
wall is. The two antagonistic Forces, Talboys, must each of them have,
or seem to have, the possibility of yielding; the Conflict or Strife
must have a certain play. Therefore I inquire—Is the Greek Fate the most
excellent of Dramatic means? and is the Greek Fate inflexible? And,
granting that the Hellenic Fate is thoroughly sublime and fitting to
Greek Tragedy, and withal inflexible—does it follow that Modern Tragedy
must have a like overhanging tyrannical Necessity?
TALBOYS.
No.
NORTH.
No. The Greek Tragedy representing a received religious Mythology, we
may conceive the poetical, or esthetical _hardness_ of a Fate known for
unalterable, to have been tempered by the inherent Awe—the Holiness.
There is a certain swallowing-up of human interests, hopes,
passions—this turmoiling, struggling life—in a revealed Infinitude. Our
Stage is human—built on the Moral Nature of Man, and on his terrestrial
Manner of Being. It stands _under_ the Heavens—_upon_ the Earth. In
Hamlet, the Ghost, with his command of Revenge, represents the
Impassive, Inflexible—with a breath freezing the movable human blood
into stillness—everything else is in agitation.
TALBOYS.
Say it again, sir.
NORTH.
Beg my pardon and your own, fully and unconditionally, Talboys, this
very instant, for talking slightingly of the Greek Drama.
TALBOYS.
Not guilty, my Lord. Of all Dramas that ever were dramatised on the
Stage of this unintelligible world, the Greek Drama is the most
dramatic, saving and excepting Shakspeare’s.
NORTH.
Ay, wonderful, my dear Talboys, to see the holy affections demonstrated
mighty on the heathen Proscenium. Antigone! Daughter and Sister. Or in
another House, Orestes, Electra.
TALBOYS.
Macbeth murders a King, who happens to be his kinsman; but Clytemnestra
murders her husband, who happens to be a King—the profounder and more
interior crime.
NORTH.
We see how grave are the undertakings of Poetry, which engages itself to
please, that it may accomplish sublimer aims. By pleasure she wins you
to your greater good—to Love and Intelligence. The heathen Legislator,
the heathen Philosopher, the heathen Poet, looks upon Man with love and
awe. He desires and conceives his welfare—his wellbeing—HIS HAPPINESS.
TALBOYS.
And the Poet, you believe, sir, with intenser love—with more solemn
awe—with more penetrant intuition.
NORTH.
I do. And he has his way clearer before him.
TALBOYS.
The Legislator, sir, will alchemise the most refractory of all
substances—Man. His materials are in truth the lowest and grossest, and
most external relations of Man’s life.
NORTH.
They are.
TALBOYS.
And these he would, with instrumentality of low, gross, outward means,
subjugate or subdue under his own most spiritual intuitions.
NORTH.
A vain task, my dear Talboys, for an impossible. He must lower his
intuition—his aim—to his means and materials. The Philosopher walks in a
more etherial region. Compared to the Legislator, he is at advantage.
But he has his own difficulties. He must _think Feelings_!
TALBOYS.
He might as well try, sir, to trace outline, and measure capacity of a
mist which varies its form momently, and, without determinate boundary
loses itself in the contiguous air. His work is to define the
indefinite.
NORTH.
And then he comes from the Schools, which in qualifying disqualify
also—from the Schools of the Senses—of the Physical Arts—of Natural
Philosophy—of Logical, Metaphysical, Mathematical Science. These have
quickened, strengthened, and sharpened his wit; they have lifted him at
last from emotions to notions; but—Love is understood by loving—Hate by
hating—and only so! Sensations—notions—EMOTIONS! I say, Talboys, that in
all these inferior schools you may understand a part by itself, and
ascend by items to the Sum, the All. But in the Philosophy of the Will,
you must from the centre look along the radii, and with a sweep command
the circumference. You must know as it were Nothing, or All.
TALBOYS.
Ay, indeed, sir; looking at the Doctrines of the Moral Philosophers, you
are always dissatisfied—and why?
NORTH.
Because they contradict your self-experience. Sometimes they speak as
you feel. Your self-intelligence answers, and from time to time,
acknowledges and avouches a strain or two; but then comes discord. The
Sage stands on a radius. If he looks along the radius towards the
circumference, he sees in the same direction with him who stands at the
centre; but in every other direction, inversely or transversely. Every
work of a Philosopher gives you the notion of glimpses caught, snatched
in the midst of clouds and of rolling darknesses. The truth is, Talboys,
that the Moral Philosopher is in the Moral Universe a schoolboy; he is
gaining, from time to time, information by which, if he shall persevere
and prosper, he shall at last understand. Hitherto he but prepares to
understand. If he knows this, good; but if the schoolboy who has
mastered his Greek Alphabet, will forthwith proceed to expound Homer and
Plato, what sort of an _ex cathedrâ_ may we not expect? Rather, what
expectation can approach the burlesque that is in store!
TALBOYS.
All are not such.
NORTH.
The Moral Sage may be the Schoolboy in the Magisterial Chair. With only
this difference, that he of the beard has been installed in form, and
the Doctor’s hat set on his head by the hand of authority. But the
ground of confusion is the same. He will from initial glimpses of
information expound the world. He will—and the worst of it is that—he
must.
TALBOYS.
A Legislator, a Philosopher, a Poet, all know that the stability and
welfare of a man—of a fellowship of men—is Virtue. But see how they deal
with it.
NORTH.
Don’t look to me, Talboys; go on of yourself and for yourself—I am a
pupil.
TALBOYS.
The Legislator, sir, can hardly do more than reward Valour in war; and
punish overt crime. The Philosopher will have Good either tangible, like
an ox, or a tree, or a tower, or a piece of land; or a rigorous and
precise rational abstraction, like the quantities of a mathematician.
For Good, _substantial and impalpable_, go to the Poet. For Good—for
Virtue—_concrete_, go to the Poet.
NORTH.
The Philosopher separates Virtue from all other motions and states of
the human will. The Poet loses or hides Virtue in the other motions and
states of the human will. Orestes, obeying the Command of Apollo,
avenges his Father, by slaying his Mother, and her murderous and
adulterous Paramour. So awfully, solemnly, terribly—with such
implication and involution in human affections and passions, works and
interests and sufferings, the Poet demonstrates Virtue.
TALBOYS.
And we go along with Orestes, sir; the Greeks did—if our feebler soul
cannot.
NORTH.
Yes, Talboys, we do go along with Orestes. He does that which he _must_
do—which he is under a moral obligation to do—under a moral necessity of
doing. Necessity! ay, an Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine as that which
links the Chain of Causes and Events in the natural universe—which
compels the equable and unalterable celestial motions beheld by our
eyes—such a bounden, irresistible agency sends on the son of the
murdered, with hidden sword, against the bosom that has lulled, fed,
_made_ him!—HE MUST.
TALBOYS.
Love, hate, horror—the furies of kinned shed blood ready to spring up
from the black inscrutable earth wetted by the red drops, and to dog the
heels of the new Slayer—of the divinely-appointed Parricide! So a Poet
teaches Virtue.
NORTH.
Ay, even so; convulsing your soul—convulsing the worlds, he shows you
LAW—the archaic, the primal, sprung, ere Time, from the bosom of
Jupiter—LAW the bond of the worlds, LAW the inviolate violated, and
avenging her Violation, vindicating her own everlasting stability,
purity, divinity.
TALBOYS.
Divine Law and humble, faithful, acquiescent human Obedience! Obedience
self-sacrificing, blind to the consequences, hearing the God, hearing
the Ghost, deaf to all other Voices—deaf to fear, deaf to pity!
NORTH.
Now call in the Philosopher, and hear what he has to preach. Something
exquisite and unintelligible about the Middle between two Extremes!
TALBOYS.
Shade of the Stagyrite!
NORTH.
The pure Earth shakes crime from herself, and the pure stars follow
their eternal courses. The Mother slays the children of a brother for
the father’s repast. And the sun, stopt in the heavens, veils his
resplendent face. So a Poet inculcates Law—Law running through all
things, and binding all things in Unity and in Sympathy—Law entwined in
the primal relations of Man with Man. To reconcile Man with Law—to make
him its “willing bondsman”—is the great Moral and Political Problem—the
first Social need of the day—the innermost craving need of all time
since the Fall. The Poet is its greatest teacher—a wily preceptor, who
lessons you, unaware, unsuspecting of the supreme benefit purposed
you—done you—by him, the Hierophant of Harmonia.
TALBOYS.
You ordered me, sir, some few or many hours ago—some Short or Long Time
since—to swear that after this Morning’s Breakfast I would never more so
much as confidentially whisper into a friend’s ear the words—Othello!
Desdemona! And I swore it. I am now eager to swear it over again; but I
begin, sir, to entertain the most serious apprehensions that that time
will never arrive.
NORTH.
What time?
TALBOYS.
_After_ Breakfast. We have been sitting here, sir, _before_ Breakfast
for ages, in the Wren’s Nest. During our incubation, what a succession
of changes may there not have been in Europe! Revolution on
Revolution—blood poured out like water——Hark, the Tocsin!
NORTH.
The Gong.
TALBOYS.
The _Breakfast_ Gong! The tremulous thunder meets an answering chord
within me. Six o’Clock in the Morning—and no victuals have I gorged
since Eleven Yestreen. Good-by to the Wren’s Nest—the very Cave of
Famine. This is Turkey-egg—Goose-egg—Swan-egg—Ostrich-egg day. I see
Buller eyeing open-mouthed, with premeditating mastication, my pile of
muffins. Gormandising sans Grace. Take care you don’t trip, sir, over
the precipice—’twould be an ugly fall—into the basin. Now we are out of
danger. But don’t skip, sir—don’t skip—till we emerge—on the open
ground—then we may dance among the daisies.
LETTER FROM MAJOR-GENERAL SIR WILLIAM NAPIER.
CLAPHAM, LONDON, _April 11, 1850_.
SIR,—The writer of the article headed “_The Ministerial Measures_,” in
your Magazine, has been so complimentary to me that I feel ashamed of
pointing out an error.
He says I wrote my History on _Whig principles_. Had he said _Radical
principles_, I should not have winced, though I really endeavoured to
write it on the principles of truth and knowledge of the subject. But
for Whig principles! God save the mark!—I never thought of them save to
censure; and really my History is throughout, by implication, and in
many places directly, condemnatory of the Whigs’ policy, and of their
extreme arrogance, and presumptuous, erroneous views of the Peninsular
War.
I trust the writer will, therefore, acquit me of any such foolish,
factious design as writing a history upon Whig principles.
I remain, Sir, your obedient Servant,
W. NAPIER, _Major-General_.
_To the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine._
[We gladly give place to the gallant General’s communication. The
writer of the article in question meant simply to convey his
impression, that the able and eloquent History of Sir William Napier
was not constructed on _Tory_ principles; and consequently, that the
letter which he embodied in his paper was to be regarded as the
testimony of a political opponent.]
_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
-----
Footnote 1:
_Correspondence respecting the demands made upon the Greek Government,
and respecting the Islands of Cervi and Sapienza._ Presented to both
Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty. February 1850.
Footnote 2:
Protestant heresy.
Footnote 3:
This is now the case in Germany.
Footnote 4:
_Journal de la Campagne de Russie en 1812._ Par M. DE FEZENSAC,
Lieutenant-General. Librairie Militaire, Paris 1850.
Footnote 5:
_Essays; Political, Historical, and Miscellaneous._ By ARCHIBALD
ALISON, LL.D. Author of “The History of Europe,” &c. Three vols. 8vo.
William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.
Footnote 6:
Vide the _Economist_ newspaper of January 19, 1850.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
600 declined only ½ per lb.; No. 40, declined only ½d. per lb.; No.
however, 40, however,
638 of doing. Necessity! ay, an of doing. Necessity! ay, an
Αναζκη—stern, strong, adamantine Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine
as that as that
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.