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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:05 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:05 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11496-0.txt b/11496-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86b5657 --- /dev/null +++ b/11496-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1486 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +POETRY + +By + +_Arthur Quiller-Couch_ + + + + + "Trust in good verses then: + They only shall aspire, + When pyramids, as men + Are lost i'the funeral fire." + +As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his _Republic_, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.--"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony." + + * * * * * + +The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe--that its stability rests on +ordered motion--that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +_whom_?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "_How?_" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer. + +For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them-- + + _At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches._ + +So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his _Parliament of +Foules_ telling, out of Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and-- + + _Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is, + In regard of the hevenes quantit�: + And after shewed he him the nyn� sper�s, + And after that the melodye herde he + That cometh of thilke sper�s thry�s-three + That welle is of musicke and melodye + In this world heer, and cause of armonye._ + +While Shakespeare in the last Act of _The Merchant of Venice_ makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only: + + _There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest + But in his motion like an angel sings, + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims..._ + +And Milton in _Arcades_ goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer): + + _then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony + That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres + And sing to those that hold the vital shears + And turn the adamantine spindle round + Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune._ + +From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides: + + _For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, + And like a girdle clips her solid waist, + Music and Measure both doth understand; + For his great Crystal Eye is always cast + Up to the Moon, and on her fix�d fast; + And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere, + So daunceth he about the centre here._ + +This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode, + + _Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, + And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong._ + +Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best." + + * * * * * + +"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_-- + +_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"_ + +To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to _do_ these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done." + +Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me--Are you anybody in particular?" + +Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares: + + _"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of + the world stood, or ever the wind blew, + + Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of + paradise were laid, + + Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever_ _the moveable powers + were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were + gathered together, + + Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures + of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot._ + + Then _did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me + alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and + by none other."_ + +It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of _Paradise Lost_ that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort. + +A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead, + + _Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees._" + +The claim (as Man must think) is a just one--for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he _feels_ in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass--and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence--or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:-- + +_The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it...._ + + _But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by; + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious soul that was the King, + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing!_ + +We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, _Abba, Father_"--_And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father._ In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts--the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes--is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at _Poetry_. + + * * * * * + +But an objection may be raised. "_Is_ the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's _thoughts_ about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?" + +The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not _things_, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more--since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words. + + * * * * * + +As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their +disappointment. + +Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of +the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul. + +Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree. + +So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_ +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_ +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants." + +"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator." + +Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of +logic. + +Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim. + +But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata, +sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclop�dia +Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of �schylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of-- + + _Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day,..._ + +or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony-- + + _thoughts that move +Harmonious numbers,_ + +or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme. + +We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" (_πα̂σαι τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι μιμήσεις τὸ σύνολον_). "What?" we +say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad name among +men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind that there +are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among them), let +us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry imitates +or copies. It is "the Universal" (_τό καθόλου_): and as soon as we +realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track as Aristotle, +after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or a slavish +imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena as they +pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better than +they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens." + + * * * * * + +Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, _I will +compose poetry_. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment. + +The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia +Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"-- + + _From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms, + And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + This doth She when from things particular + She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._ + +But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's _Duchess of +Malfy_ and Shakespeare's _Macbeth_. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration--but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a _virtuoso_ in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth--she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens--that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me--as I penetrate the Fourth Act--the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth--which (let it be added) was a great deal. + + * * * * * + +Turn from _The Duchess of Malfy_ to _Macbeth_, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which--for a while--has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon--what happens? A knocking on the door--a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Be�lzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning _pede claudo_, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome _In girum imus noctu, ecce!_ steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, _Ecce ut consumimur igni!_ + + * * * * * + +This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers--that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind--that, as the height is, so will be the fall--or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet--and this is the point--_a man like +ourselves_ (_ομοιος_). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault--or, at least, some +mistake--of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not _like ourselves_. What happens to them may serve +for _The Police News_. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God. + + * * * * * + +It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy. + +For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating +poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:-- + +"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him." + + * * * * * + +This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have _Vespasian's_ +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned _Cyrus of Xenophon_ than +the true _Cyrus in Justine_, and the fayned _�neas in Virgil_ than the +true _�neas_ in _Dares Phrygius._" + + * * * * * + +But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?--a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet +abstracts:-- + + _Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_ + +(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.) + + * * * * * + +Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way--at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: _the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it._ This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never _seem +to condescend_; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +_is_ any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it--as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street--and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise +it_. + + * * * * * + +And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +_στοργή_ rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its fatherhood. +Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest expectation of +the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the whole creation +groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And not only +they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet has tears +that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrim� rerum, et +mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things pierce the +soul." + +And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot +but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive? + +Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '_all there_.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. _Μη̂νιν +ἄειδε θεά ... Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μου̂σα_.--Surely the dear fellow might +remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he does remember, +and is only bringing it up against me that in the intervals of doing my +work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and tell him that it is +likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any business of his, +since it was only my work that I ever asked for recognition. They say +that I used to go about begging a dinner on the strength of it. Did +I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is over sometime ago, and +_his_ kitchen is safe!" + +To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:-- + + _When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green + and gold, + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink + and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_ + +The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul--_φυχαγωγία_ (a beautiful +word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the mischief of +the notion did not end with making the schooldays of children unhappy: +it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning them into prigs +dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers of the Church +lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the face of the +Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine amusement +with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to be +overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare +the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner." + + * * * * * + +"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:-- + + _This doth She when from things particular, + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which bodiless and immaterial are, + And can be lodged but only in our minds._ + +--the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:-- + + _This does She, when from individual states + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds,_ + +--which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '_Labor improbus +omnia vincit_' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history--Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon--that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all--that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of _examples_, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full." + + * * * * * + +The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid--as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful _corv�e_ of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is.... + + _Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave, + Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._ + +But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:-- + +_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._ + +Or-- + + _The multitudinous sea incarnadine, + Making the green one red._ + +Or-- + +_In the dark backward and abysm of time._ + +Or this from Lear:-- + + _My face I'll grime with filth, + Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots + And with presented nakedness outface + The winds and persecutions of the sky._ + +Or (for vividness) this, from _Antony and Cleopatra_, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:-- + + _O! withered is the garland of the war, + The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls + Are level now with men; the odds is gone, + And there is nothing left remarkable + Beneath the visiting moon ..._ + +"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:-- + + _No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded + By such poor passion as the maid that milks + And does the meanest chares. It were for me + To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; + To tell them that this world did equal theirs + Till they had stolen my jewel._ + +When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one. + + * * * * * + +I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that +is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496-0.txt or 11496-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +POETRY + +By + +_Arthur Quiller-Couch_ + + + + "Trust in good verses then: + They only shall aspire, + When pyramids, as men + Are lost i'the funeral fire." + +As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his _Republic_, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.--"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony." + + * * * * * + +The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe--that its stability rests on +ordered motion--that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +_whom_?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "_How?_" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer. + +For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them-- + + _At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches._ + +So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his _Parliament of +Foules_ telling, out of Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and-- + + _Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is, + In regard of the hevenes quantit: + And after shewed he him the nyn spers, + And after that the melodye herde he + That cometh of thilke spers thrys-three + That welle is of musicke and melodye + In this world heer, and cause of armonye._ + +While Shakespeare in the last Act of _The Merchant of Venice_ makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only: + + _There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest + But in his motion like an angel sings, + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims..._ + +And Milton in _Arcades_ goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer): + + _then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony + That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres + And sing to those that hold the vital shears + And turn the adamantine spindle round + Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune._ + +From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides: + + _For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, + And like a girdle clips her solid waist, + Music and Measure both doth understand; + For his great Crystal Eye is always cast + Up to the Moon, and on her fixd fast; + And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere, + So daunceth he about the centre here._ + +This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode, + + _Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, + And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong._ + +Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best." + + * * * * * + +"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_-- + +_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"_ + +To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to _do_ these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done." + +Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me--Are you anybody in particular?" + +Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares: + + _"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of + the world stood, or ever the wind blew, + + Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of + paradise were laid, + + Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever_ _the moveable powers + were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were + gathered together, + + Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures + of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot._ + + Then _did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me + alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and + by none other."_ + +It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of _Paradise Lost_ that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort. + +A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead, + + _Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees._" + +The claim (as Man must think) is a just one--for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he _feels_ in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass--and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence--or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:-- + +_The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it...._ + + _But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by; + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious soul that was the King, + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing!_ + +We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, _Abba, Father_"--_And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father._ In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts--the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes--is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at _Poetry_. + + * * * * * + +But an objection may be raised. "_Is_ the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's _thoughts_ about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?" + +The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not _things_, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more--since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words. + + * * * * * + +As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their +disappointment. + +Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of +the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul. + +Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree. + +So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_ +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_ +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants." + +"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator." + +Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of +logic. + +Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim. + +But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata, +sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclopdia +Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of schylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of-- + + _Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day,..._ + +or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony-- + + _thoughts that move +Harmonious numbers,_ + +or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme. + +We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" ([Greek: _pasai tynchhanoysin ohysai mimhseis to hynolon_]). +"What?" we say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad +name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind +that there are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among +them), let us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry +imitates or copies. It is "the Universal" ([Greek: _tho chathholoy_]): +and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track +as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or +a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena +as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better +than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens." + + * * * * * + +Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, _I will +compose poetry_. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment. + +The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia +Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"-- + + _From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms, + And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + This doth She when from things particular + She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._ + +But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's _Duchess of +Malfy_ and Shakespeare's _Macbeth_. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration--but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a _virtuoso_ in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth--she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens--that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me--as I penetrate the Fourth Act--the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth--which (let it be added) was a great deal. + + * * * * * + +Turn from _The Duchess of Malfy_ to _Macbeth_, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which--for a while--has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon--what happens? A knocking on the door--a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Belzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning _pede claudo_, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome _In girum imus noctu, ecce!_ steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, _Ecce ut consumimur igni!_ + + * * * * * + +This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers--that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind--that, as the height is, so will be the fall--or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet--and this is the point--_a man like +ourselves_ ([Greek: _omoios_]). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault--or, at least, some +mistake--of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not _like ourselves_. What happens to them may serve +for _The Police News_. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God. + + * * * * * + +It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy. + +For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating +poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:-- + +"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him." + + * * * * * + +This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have _Vespasian's_ +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned _Cyrus of Xenophon_ than +the true _Cyrus in Justine_, and the fayned _neas in Virgil_ than the +true _neas_ in _Dares Phrygius._" + + * * * * * + +But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?--a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet +abstracts:-- + + _Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_ + +(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.) + + * * * * * + +Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way--at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: _the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it._ This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never _seem +to condescend_; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +_is_ any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it--as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street--and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise +it_. + + * * * * * + +And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +[Greek: _storgh_] rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its +fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest +expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the +whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And +not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet +has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrim +rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things +pierce the soul." + +And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot +but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive? + +Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '_all there_.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: +_Mnin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa_.]--Surely the dear +fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he +does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the +intervals of doing my work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and +tell him that it is likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any +business of his, since it was only my work that I ever asked for +recognition. They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the +strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is +over sometime ago, and _his_ kitchen is safe!" + +To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:-- + + _When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green + and gold, + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink + and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_ + +The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul--[Greek: _phychagghia_] (a +beautiful word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the +mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of +children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning +them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers +of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the +face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine +amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to +be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare +the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner." + + * * * * * + +"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:-- + + _This doth She when from things particular, + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which bodiless and immaterial are, + And can be lodged but only in our minds._ + +--the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:-- + + _This does She, when from individual states + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds,_ + +--which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '_Labor improbus +omnia vincit_' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history--Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon--that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all--that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of _examples_, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full." + + * * * * * + +The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid--as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful _corve_ of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is.... + + _Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave, + Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._ + +But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:-- + +_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._ + +Or-- + + _The multitudinous sea incarnadine, + Making the green one red._ + +Or-- + +_In the dark backward and abysm of time._ + +Or this from Lear:-- + + _My face I'll grime with filth, + Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots + And with presented nakedness outface + The winds and persecutions of the sky._ + +Or (for vividness) this, from _Antony and Cleopatra_, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:-- + + _O! withered is the garland of the war, + The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls + Are level now with men; the odds is gone, + And there is nothing left remarkable + Beneath the visiting moon ..._ + +"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:-- + + _No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded + By such poor passion as the maid that milks + And does the meanest chares. It were for me + To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; + To tell them that this world did equal theirs + Till they had stolen my jewel._ + +When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one. + + * * * * * + +I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that +is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496-8.txt or 11496-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<hr class="title"> + +<h1>POETRY</h1> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2><i>Arthur Quiller-Couch</i></h2> + +<center> +<div class="figure2c"> + <img src="images/title2.png" width="225" height="228" alt=""><br> +</div> +</center> + + + + +<hr class="title"> + +<center> +<div class="figure1c"> + <img src="images/top2.png" width="404" height="36" alt=""><br> + <img src="images/left2.png" width="38" height="114" alt="" class="figure2l"> + <img src="images/right2.png" width="38" height="114" alt="" class="figure2r"> + + <p class="caption1">"Trust in good verses then:</p> + <p class="caption2">They only shall aspire,</p> + <p class="caption1">When pyramids, as men</p> + <p class="caption2">Are lost i'the funeral fire."</p> + + <img src="images/bottom2.png" width="404" height="36" alt=""><br> + +</div> +</center> + + +<p>As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his <i>Republic</i>, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.—"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe—that its stability rests on +ordered motion—that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +<i>whom</i>?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "<i>How?</i>" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer.</p> + +<p>For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them—</p> + +<blockquote> +At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order,<br> +And they will not faint in their watches.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his <i>Parliament of +Foules</i> telling, out of Cicero's <i>Somnium Scipionis</i>, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and—</p> + +<blockquote> +Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is,<br> +In regard of the hevenes quantité:<br> +And after shewed he him the nynè sperés,<br> +And after that the melodye herde he<br> +That cometh of thilke sperés thryés-three<br> +That welle is of musicke and melodye<br> +In this world heer, and cause of armonye.<br> +</blockquote> + + +<p>While Shakespeare in the last Act of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only:</p> + +<blockquote><i>There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest<br> +But in his motion like an angel sings,<br> +Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims...</i><br></blockquote> + +<p>And Milton in <i>Arcades</i> goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer):</p> + +<blockquote> +<span style="text-indent: 10em;">then listen I</span><br> +To the celestial Sirens' harmony<br> +That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres<br> +And sing to those that hold the vital shears<br> +And turn the adamantine spindle round<br> +Of which the fate of gods and men is wound.<br> +Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie<br> +To lull the daughters of Necessity,<br> +And keep unsteady Nature to her law,<br> +And the low world in measured motion draw<br> +After the heavenly tune.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the <i>Orchestra</i> of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides:</p> + +<blockquote><i>For lo, the sea that fleets about the land,<br> +And like a girdle clips her solid waist,<br> +Music and Measure both doth understand;<br> +For his great Crystal Eye is always cast<br> +Up to the Moon, and on her fixèd fast;<br> +And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere,<br> +So daunceth he about the centre here.</i><br></blockquote> + +<p>This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."—The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,' " he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode,</p> + +<blockquote> +Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,<br> +And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,—all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"—all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson—all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst <i>thou</i>," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the <i>Book of Job</i>—</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic"><i>"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"</i></p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to <i>do</i> these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me—Are you anybody in particular?"</p> + + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of +the world stood, or ever the wind blew,</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of +paradise were laid,</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever the moveable powers +were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were +gathered together,</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures +of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic"><span style="font-style: normal">Then</span> did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me +alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and +by none other."</p> +</blockquote> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of <i>Paradise Lost</i> that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead,</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +<p class="p0">Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course</p> +<p class="p1">With rocks, and stones, and trees."</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The claim (as Man must think) is a just one—for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he <i>feels</i> in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass—and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence—or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it....</p> + +</blockquote> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +<p class="p1">But little did the infant dream</p> +<p class="p0">That all the treasures of the world were by;</p> +<p class="p1">And that himself was so the cream</p> +<p class="p0">And crown of all which round about did lie.</p> +<p class="p1">Yet thus it was: the Gem,</p> +<p class="p4">The Diadem,</p> +<p class="p3">The ring enclosing all</p> +<p class="p1">That stood upon this earthly ball,</p> +<p class="p3">The heavenly Eye,</p> +<p class="p2">Much wider than the sky</p> +<p class="p3">Wherein they all included were,</p> +<p class="p2">The glorious soul that was the King,</p> +<p class="p3">Made to possess them, did appear</p> +<p class="p4">A small and little thing!</p> + +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, <i>Abba, Father</i>"—<i>And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father.</i> In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts—the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes—is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at <i>Poetry</i>.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But an objection may be raised. "<i>Is</i> the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's <i>thoughts</i> about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?"</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not <i>things</i>, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere <i>words</i>, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for <i>reason</i> and for <i>speech</i>, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it—then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more—since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore—others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics—yet on the whole to their +disappointment.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"—or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the <i>Parmenides</i>, to Book vii. of <i>The Republic</i> and others of +the <i>Dialogues</i> and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for <i>His</i> +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to <i>comprehend</i> +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to <i>apprehend</i>; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, <i>apprehend</i> and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries <i>per saltum</i>, neglecting the military road of +logic.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But first we note that—<i>securus judicat orbis terrarum</i>—in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names—<i>ballata, +sonata</i>—imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of Æschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +Seasons return; but not to me returns<br> +Day,...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,—as we certainly have harmony—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +<span style="text-indent: 2.5em;">thoughts that move</span><br> +Harmonious numbers,<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +<i>concerto</i> has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's <i>Poetics</i>, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" (<i>πασαι τυγχανουσιν +ουσαι μιμησεις +το συνολον</i><a name="FNanchor1"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a></sup>). +"What?" we say—"Nothing better than <i>that</i>?"—for "imitation" has a bad +name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind +that there are imitations and imitations (the <i>Imitatio Christi</i> among +them), let us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry +imitates or copies. It is "the Universal" (<i>το +χαθολου</i><a name="FNanchor2"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a></sup>): +and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track +as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or +a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena +as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better +than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the <i>Poetics</i>, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, <i>I will +compose poetry</i>. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +<i>denuding</i> not an <i>investing</i> of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem <i>is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth</i>. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his <i>Biographia +Literaria</i>). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.' "—</p> + +<blockquote> +From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms,<br> +And draws a kind of Quintessence from things,<br> +Which to her proper nature she transforms<br> +To bear them light on her celestial wings.<br> +This doth She when from things particular<br> +She doth abstract the Universal kinds....<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's <i>Duchess of +Malfy</i> and Shakespeare's <i>Macbeth</i>. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration—but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a <i>virtuoso</i> in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth—she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens—that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me—as I penetrate the Fourth Act—the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth—which (let it be added) was a great deal.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Turn from <i>The Duchess of Malfy</i> to <i>Macbeth</i>, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which—for a while—has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon—what happens? A knocking on the door—a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Beëlzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning <i>pede claudo</i>, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome <i>In girum imus noctu, ecce!</i> steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, <i>Ecce ut consumimur igni!</i></p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers—that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind—that, as the height is, so will be the fall—or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet—and this is the point—<i>a man like +ourselves</i> (<i>ομοιος</i><a name="FNanchor3"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a></sup>). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault—or, at least, some +mistake—of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not <i>like ourselves</i>. What happens to them may serve +for <i>The Police News</i>. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of <i>Paradise Lost</i>), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to <i>Epic</i>, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," <i>i.e.</i> by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +<i>Samson Agonistes</i>) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">For my part I always consider Milton's <i>Macbeth</i> the most fascinating +poem—certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play—ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:—</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. <i>Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular</i>. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have <i>Vespasian's</i> +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned <i>Cyrus of Xenophon</i> than +the true <i>Cyrus in Justine</i>, and the fayned <i>Æneas in Virgil</i> than the +true <i>Æneas</i> in <i>Dares Phrygius.</i>"</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?—a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring—yellow, red, brown—and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So—and just so, save more deftly—the Poet +abstracts:—</p> + +<blockquote> +Where is the prime of Summer—the green prime—<br> +The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three<br> +On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime<br> +Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.)</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way—at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: <i>the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it.</i> This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never <i>seem +to condescend</i>; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +<i>is</i> any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it—as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street—and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's <i>Elegy</i>, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, <i>but so as we recognise +it</i>.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised—the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +<i>στοργη</i><a name="FNanchor4"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a></sup> rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its +fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest +expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the +whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And +not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet +has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: <i>Sunt lacrimæ +rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt</i>—"Tears are for Life, mortal things +pierce the soul."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">And why not? For the complete man—<i>totus homo</i>—has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," <i>felices</i>, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," <i>beati</i>; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating <i>and delightful</i> beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, <i>there cannot +but be pleasure</i>, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The <i>enthusiasm</i> of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is—an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive?</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow—so different from us—is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '<i>all there</i>.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. <i> +Μηνιν αειδε +θεα ... Ανδρα μοι +εννεπε, Μουσα</i>.<a name="FNanchor5"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_5">[5]</a></sup>—Surely the dear +fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he +does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the +intervals of doing my work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and +tell him that it is likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any +business of his, since it was only my work that I ever asked for +recognition. They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the +strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is +over sometime ago, and <i>his</i> kitchen is safe!"</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:—</p> + +<blockquote> +When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green and gold,<br> +The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould—<br> +They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start,<br> +For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of <i>teaching</i>. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything—but Literature especially—out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) <i>how</i> he teaches us, or rather <i>educates</i>. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men—drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal—is <i>educative</i> in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul—<i>φυχαγωγια</i><a name="FNanchor6"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a></sup> +(a beautiful word)—is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the +mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of +children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning +them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers +of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the +face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine +amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to +be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much <i>Philosophus</i> as to compare +the Philosopher, in <i>mooving</i>, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."—For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="p0">This doth She when from things particular,</p> +<p class="p0">She doth abstract the Universal kinds,</p> +<p class="p2">Which bodiless and immaterial are,</p> +<p class="p0">And can be lodged but only in our minds.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>—the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="p0">This does She, when from individual states</p> +<p class="p0">She doth abstract the Universal kinds,</p> +<p class="p2">Which then reclothed in divers names and fates</p> +<p class="p0">Steal access through our senses to our minds,</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>—which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '<i>Labor improbus +omnia vincit</i>' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history—Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon—that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all—that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of <i>examples</i>, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid—as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful <i>corvée</i> of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +<i>Venus and Adonis</i> we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is....</p> + +<blockquote> +Upon this promise did he raise his chin,<br> +Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave,<br> +Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in....<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>But in his later plays—so fast the images teem—he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:—</p> + +<blockquote>Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care.<br></blockquote> + +<p>Or—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +The multitudinous sea incarnadine,<br> +Making the green one red.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +In the dark backward and abysm of time.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or this from Lear:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<span style="text-indent: 5em;">My face I'll grime with filth,</span><br> +Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots<br> +And with presented nakedness outface<br> +The winds and persecutions of the sky.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or (for vividness) this, from <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:—</p> + +<blockquote> +O! withered is the garland of the war,<br> +The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls<br> +Are level now with men; the odds is gone,<br> +And there is nothing left remarkable<br> +Beneath the visiting moon ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:—</p> + +<blockquote> +No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded<br> +By such poor passion as the maid that milks<br> +And does the meanest chares. It were for me<br> +To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;<br> +To tell them that this world did equal theirs<br> +Till they had stolen my jewel.<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending <i>passion</i> in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids—<i>totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;</i> when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet—a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but <i>solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur</i>"—these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"—that +is to say, creates—which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes—using man's highest instruments, thought and speech—harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. <i>"Non c'e' in mondo,</i>" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, <i>"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"</i>—"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet."</p> + +<hr class="title"> + +<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0;">Footnotes</h2> +<h4 style="margin-top: 0;">(Original images of Greek text added for this HTML edition.)</h4><br> + +<a name="Footnote_1"></a> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig1.png" width="595" alt="" class="figurefn"> + + +<a name="Footnote_2"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 10px;"><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig2.png" width="130" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_3"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig3.png" width="78" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_4"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig4.png" width="87" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_5"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 4px;"><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig5.png" width="635" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_6"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig6.png" width="136" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<hr class="title"> + +<center>THE END</center> + +<hr class="title"> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496-h.htm or 11496-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +POETRY + +By + +_Arthur Quiller-Couch_ + + + + "Trust in good verses then: + They only shall aspire, + When pyramids, as men + Are lost i'the funeral fire." + +As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his _Republic_, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.--"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony." + + * * * * * + +The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe--that its stability rests on +ordered motion--that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +_whom_?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "_How?_" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer. + +For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them-- + + _At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches._ + +So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his _Parliament of +Foules_ telling, out of Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and-- + + _Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is, + In regard of the hevenes quantite: + And after shewed he him the nyne speres, + And after that the melodye herde he + That cometh of thilke speres thryes-three + That welle is of musicke and melodye + In this world heer, and cause of armonye._ + +While Shakespeare in the last Act of _The Merchant of Venice_ makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only: + + _There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest + But in his motion like an angel sings, + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims..._ + +And Milton in _Arcades_ goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer): + + _then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony + That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres + And sing to those that hold the vital shears + And turn the adamantine spindle round + Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune._ + +From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides: + + _For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, + And like a girdle clips her solid waist, + Music and Measure both doth understand; + For his great Crystal Eye is always cast + Up to the Moon, and on her fixed fast; + And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere, + So daunceth he about the centre here._ + +This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode, + + _Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, + And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong._ + +Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best." + + * * * * * + +"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_-- + +_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"_ + +To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to _do_ these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done." + +Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me--Are you anybody in particular?" + +Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares: + + _"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of + the world stood, or ever the wind blew, + + Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of + paradise were laid, + + Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever_ _the moveable powers + were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were + gathered together, + + Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures + of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot._ + + Then _did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me + alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and + by none other."_ + +It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of _Paradise Lost_ that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort. + +A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead, + + _Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees._" + +The claim (as Man must think) is a just one--for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he _feels_ in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass--and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence--or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:-- + +_The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it...._ + + _But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by; + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious soul that was the King, + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing!_ + +We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, _Abba, Father_"--_And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father._ In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts--the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes--is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at _Poetry_. + + * * * * * + +But an objection may be raised. "_Is_ the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's _thoughts_ about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?" + +The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not _things_, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more--since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words. + + * * * * * + +As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their +disappointment. + +Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of +the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul. + +Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree. + +So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_ +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_ +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants." + +"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator." + +Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of +logic. + +Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim. + +But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata, +sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclopaedia +Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of AEschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of-- + + _Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day,..._ + +or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony-- + + _thoughts that move +Harmonious numbers,_ + +or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme. + +We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" ([Greek: _pasai tynchhanoysin ohysai mimheseis to hynolon_]). +"What?" we say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad +name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind +that there are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among +them), let us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry +imitates or copies. It is "the Universal" ([Greek: _tho chathholoy_]): +and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track +as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or +a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena +as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better +than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens." + + * * * * * + +Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, _I will +compose poetry_. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment. + +The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia +Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"-- + + _From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms, + And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + This doth She when from things particular + She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._ + +But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's _Duchess of +Malfy_ and Shakespeare's _Macbeth_. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration--but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a _virtuoso_ in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth--she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens--that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me--as I penetrate the Fourth Act--the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth--which (let it be added) was a great deal. + + * * * * * + +Turn from _The Duchess of Malfy_ to _Macbeth_, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which--for a while--has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon--what happens? A knocking on the door--a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Beelzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning _pede claudo_, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome _In girum imus noctu, ecce!_ steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, _Ecce ut consumimur igni!_ + + * * * * * + +This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers--that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind--that, as the height is, so will be the fall--or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet--and this is the point--_a man like +ourselves_ ([Greek: _omoios_]). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault--or, at least, some +mistake--of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not _like ourselves_. What happens to them may serve +for _The Police News_. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God. + + * * * * * + +It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy. + +For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating +poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:-- + +"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him." + + * * * * * + +This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have _Vespasian's_ +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned _Cyrus of Xenophon_ than +the true _Cyrus in Justine_, and the fayned _AEneas in Virgil_ than the +true _AEneas_ in _Dares Phrygius._" + + * * * * * + +But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?--a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet +abstracts:-- + + _Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_ + +(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.) + + * * * * * + +Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way--at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: _the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it._ This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never _seem +to condescend_; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +_is_ any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it--as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street--and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise +it_. + + * * * * * + +And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +[Greek: _storghe_] rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its +fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest +expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the +whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And +not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet +has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrimae +rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things +pierce the soul." + +And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot +but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive? + +Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '_all there_.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: +_Menin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa_.]--Surely the dear +fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he +does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the +intervals of doing my work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and +tell him that it is likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any +business of his, since it was only my work that I ever asked for +recognition. They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the +strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is +over sometime ago, and _his_ kitchen is safe!" + +To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:-- + + _When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green + and gold, + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink + and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_ + +The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul--[Greek: _phychagoghia_] (a +beautiful word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the +mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of +children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning +them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers +of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the +face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine +amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to +be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare +the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner." + + * * * * * + +"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:-- + + _This doth She when from things particular, + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which bodiless and immaterial are, + And can be lodged but only in our minds._ + +--the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:-- + + _This does She, when from individual states + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds,_ + +--which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '_Labor improbus +omnia vincit_' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history--Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon--that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all--that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of _examples_, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full." + + * * * * * + +The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid--as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful _corvee_ of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is.... + + _Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave, + Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._ + +But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:-- + +_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._ + +Or-- + + _The multitudinous sea incarnadine, + Making the green one red._ + +Or-- + +_In the dark backward and abysm of time._ + +Or this from Lear:-- + + _My face I'll grime with filth, + Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots + And with presented nakedness outface + The winds and persecutions of the sky._ + +Or (for vividness) this, from _Antony and Cleopatra_, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:-- + + _O! withered is the garland of the war, + The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls + Are level now with men; the odds is gone, + And there is nothing left remarkable + Beneath the visiting moon ..._ + +"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:-- + + _No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded + By such poor passion as the maid that milks + And does the meanest chares. It were for me + To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; + To tell them that this world did equal theirs + Till they had stolen my jewel._ + +When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one. + + * * * * * + +I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that +is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496.txt or 11496.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e9cdc4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11496 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11496) diff --git a/old/11496-0.txt b/old/11496-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86b5657 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11496-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1486 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +POETRY + +By + +_Arthur Quiller-Couch_ + + + + + "Trust in good verses then: + They only shall aspire, + When pyramids, as men + Are lost i'the funeral fire." + +As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his _Republic_, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.--"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony." + + * * * * * + +The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe--that its stability rests on +ordered motion--that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +_whom_?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "_How?_" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer. + +For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them-- + + _At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches._ + +So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his _Parliament of +Foules_ telling, out of Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and-- + + _Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is, + In regard of the hevenes quantit�: + And after shewed he him the nyn� sper�s, + And after that the melodye herde he + That cometh of thilke sper�s thry�s-three + That welle is of musicke and melodye + In this world heer, and cause of armonye._ + +While Shakespeare in the last Act of _The Merchant of Venice_ makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only: + + _There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest + But in his motion like an angel sings, + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims..._ + +And Milton in _Arcades_ goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer): + + _then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony + That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres + And sing to those that hold the vital shears + And turn the adamantine spindle round + Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune._ + +From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides: + + _For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, + And like a girdle clips her solid waist, + Music and Measure both doth understand; + For his great Crystal Eye is always cast + Up to the Moon, and on her fix�d fast; + And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere, + So daunceth he about the centre here._ + +This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode, + + _Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, + And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong._ + +Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best." + + * * * * * + +"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_-- + +_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"_ + +To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to _do_ these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done." + +Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me--Are you anybody in particular?" + +Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares: + + _"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of + the world stood, or ever the wind blew, + + Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of + paradise were laid, + + Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever_ _the moveable powers + were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were + gathered together, + + Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures + of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot._ + + Then _did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me + alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and + by none other."_ + +It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of _Paradise Lost_ that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort. + +A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead, + + _Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees._" + +The claim (as Man must think) is a just one--for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he _feels_ in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass--and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence--or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:-- + +_The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it...._ + + _But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by; + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious soul that was the King, + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing!_ + +We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, _Abba, Father_"--_And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father._ In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts--the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes--is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at _Poetry_. + + * * * * * + +But an objection may be raised. "_Is_ the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's _thoughts_ about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?" + +The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not _things_, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more--since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words. + + * * * * * + +As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their +disappointment. + +Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of +the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul. + +Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree. + +So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_ +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_ +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants." + +"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator." + +Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of +logic. + +Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim. + +But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata, +sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclop�dia +Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of �schylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of-- + + _Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day,..._ + +or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony-- + + _thoughts that move +Harmonious numbers,_ + +or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme. + +We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" (_πα̂σαι τυγχάνουσιν οὖσαι μιμήσεις τὸ σύνολον_). "What?" we +say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad name among +men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind that there +are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among them), let +us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry imitates +or copies. It is "the Universal" (_τό καθόλου_): and as soon as we +realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track as Aristotle, +after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or a slavish +imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena as they +pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better than +they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens." + + * * * * * + +Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, _I will +compose poetry_. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment. + +The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia +Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"-- + + _From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms, + And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + This doth She when from things particular + She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._ + +But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's _Duchess of +Malfy_ and Shakespeare's _Macbeth_. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration--but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a _virtuoso_ in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth--she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens--that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me--as I penetrate the Fourth Act--the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth--which (let it be added) was a great deal. + + * * * * * + +Turn from _The Duchess of Malfy_ to _Macbeth_, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which--for a while--has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon--what happens? A knocking on the door--a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Be�lzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning _pede claudo_, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome _In girum imus noctu, ecce!_ steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, _Ecce ut consumimur igni!_ + + * * * * * + +This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers--that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind--that, as the height is, so will be the fall--or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet--and this is the point--_a man like +ourselves_ (_ομοιος_). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault--or, at least, some +mistake--of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not _like ourselves_. What happens to them may serve +for _The Police News_. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God. + + * * * * * + +It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy. + +For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating +poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:-- + +"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him." + + * * * * * + +This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have _Vespasian's_ +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned _Cyrus of Xenophon_ than +the true _Cyrus in Justine_, and the fayned _�neas in Virgil_ than the +true _�neas_ in _Dares Phrygius._" + + * * * * * + +But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?--a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet +abstracts:-- + + _Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_ + +(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.) + + * * * * * + +Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way--at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: _the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it._ This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never _seem +to condescend_; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +_is_ any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it--as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street--and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise +it_. + + * * * * * + +And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +_στοργή_ rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its fatherhood. +Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest expectation of +the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the whole creation +groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And not only +they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet has tears +that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrim� rerum, et +mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things pierce the +soul." + +And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot +but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive? + +Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '_all there_.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. _Μη̂νιν +ἄειδε θεά ... Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μου̂σα_.--Surely the dear fellow might +remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he does remember, +and is only bringing it up against me that in the intervals of doing my +work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and tell him that it is +likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any business of his, +since it was only my work that I ever asked for recognition. They say +that I used to go about begging a dinner on the strength of it. Did +I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is over sometime ago, and +_his_ kitchen is safe!" + +To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:-- + + _When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green + and gold, + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink + and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_ + +The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul--_φυχαγωγία_ (a beautiful +word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the mischief of +the notion did not end with making the schooldays of children unhappy: +it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning them into prigs +dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers of the Church +lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the face of the +Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine amusement +with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to be +overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare +the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner." + + * * * * * + +"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:-- + + _This doth She when from things particular, + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which bodiless and immaterial are, + And can be lodged but only in our minds._ + +--the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:-- + + _This does She, when from individual states + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds,_ + +--which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '_Labor improbus +omnia vincit_' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history--Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon--that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all--that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of _examples_, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full." + + * * * * * + +The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid--as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful _corv�e_ of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is.... + + _Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave, + Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._ + +But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:-- + +_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._ + +Or-- + + _The multitudinous sea incarnadine, + Making the green one red._ + +Or-- + +_In the dark backward and abysm of time._ + +Or this from Lear:-- + + _My face I'll grime with filth, + Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots + And with presented nakedness outface + The winds and persecutions of the sky._ + +Or (for vividness) this, from _Antony and Cleopatra_, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:-- + + _O! withered is the garland of the war, + The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls + Are level now with men; the odds is gone, + And there is nothing left remarkable + Beneath the visiting moon ..._ + +"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:-- + + _No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded + By such poor passion as the maid that milks + And does the meanest chares. It were for me + To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; + To tell them that this world did equal theirs + Till they had stolen my jewel._ + +When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one. + + * * * * * + +I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that +is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496-0.txt or 11496-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/11496-0.zip b/old/11496-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8087f24 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11496-0.zip diff --git a/old/11496-8.txt b/old/11496-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..42d1fa4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11496-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1485 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +POETRY + +By + +_Arthur Quiller-Couch_ + + + + "Trust in good verses then: + They only shall aspire, + When pyramids, as men + Are lost i'the funeral fire." + +As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his _Republic_, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.--"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony." + + * * * * * + +The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe--that its stability rests on +ordered motion--that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +_whom_?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "_How?_" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer. + +For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them-- + + _At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches._ + +So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his _Parliament of +Foules_ telling, out of Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and-- + + _Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is, + In regard of the hevenes quantit: + And after shewed he him the nyn spers, + And after that the melodye herde he + That cometh of thilke spers thrys-three + That welle is of musicke and melodye + In this world heer, and cause of armonye._ + +While Shakespeare in the last Act of _The Merchant of Venice_ makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only: + + _There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest + But in his motion like an angel sings, + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims..._ + +And Milton in _Arcades_ goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer): + + _then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony + That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres + And sing to those that hold the vital shears + And turn the adamantine spindle round + Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune._ + +From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides: + + _For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, + And like a girdle clips her solid waist, + Music and Measure both doth understand; + For his great Crystal Eye is always cast + Up to the Moon, and on her fixd fast; + And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere, + So daunceth he about the centre here._ + +This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode, + + _Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, + And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong._ + +Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best." + + * * * * * + +"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_-- + +_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"_ + +To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to _do_ these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done." + +Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me--Are you anybody in particular?" + +Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares: + + _"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of + the world stood, or ever the wind blew, + + Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of + paradise were laid, + + Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever_ _the moveable powers + were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were + gathered together, + + Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures + of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot._ + + Then _did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me + alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and + by none other."_ + +It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of _Paradise Lost_ that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort. + +A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead, + + _Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees._" + +The claim (as Man must think) is a just one--for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he _feels_ in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass--and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence--or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:-- + +_The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it...._ + + _But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by; + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious soul that was the King, + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing!_ + +We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, _Abba, Father_"--_And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father._ In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts--the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes--is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at _Poetry_. + + * * * * * + +But an objection may be raised. "_Is_ the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's _thoughts_ about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?" + +The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not _things_, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more--since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words. + + * * * * * + +As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their +disappointment. + +Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of +the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul. + +Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree. + +So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_ +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_ +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants." + +"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator." + +Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of +logic. + +Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim. + +But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata, +sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclopdia +Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of schylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of-- + + _Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day,..._ + +or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony-- + + _thoughts that move +Harmonious numbers,_ + +or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme. + +We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" ([Greek: _pasai tynchhanoysin ohysai mimhseis to hynolon_]). +"What?" we say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad +name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind +that there are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among +them), let us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry +imitates or copies. It is "the Universal" ([Greek: _tho chathholoy_]): +and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track +as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or +a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena +as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better +than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens." + + * * * * * + +Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, _I will +compose poetry_. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment. + +The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia +Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"-- + + _From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms, + And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + This doth She when from things particular + She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._ + +But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's _Duchess of +Malfy_ and Shakespeare's _Macbeth_. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration--but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a _virtuoso_ in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth--she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens--that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me--as I penetrate the Fourth Act--the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth--which (let it be added) was a great deal. + + * * * * * + +Turn from _The Duchess of Malfy_ to _Macbeth_, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which--for a while--has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon--what happens? A knocking on the door--a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Belzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning _pede claudo_, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome _In girum imus noctu, ecce!_ steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, _Ecce ut consumimur igni!_ + + * * * * * + +This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers--that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind--that, as the height is, so will be the fall--or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet--and this is the point--_a man like +ourselves_ ([Greek: _omoios_]). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault--or, at least, some +mistake--of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not _like ourselves_. What happens to them may serve +for _The Police News_. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God. + + * * * * * + +It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy. + +For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating +poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:-- + +"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him." + + * * * * * + +This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have _Vespasian's_ +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned _Cyrus of Xenophon_ than +the true _Cyrus in Justine_, and the fayned _neas in Virgil_ than the +true _neas_ in _Dares Phrygius._" + + * * * * * + +But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?--a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet +abstracts:-- + + _Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_ + +(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.) + + * * * * * + +Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way--at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: _the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it._ This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never _seem +to condescend_; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +_is_ any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it--as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street--and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise +it_. + + * * * * * + +And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +[Greek: _storgh_] rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its +fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest +expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the +whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And +not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet +has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrim +rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things +pierce the soul." + +And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot +but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive? + +Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '_all there_.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: +_Mnin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa_.]--Surely the dear +fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he +does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the +intervals of doing my work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and +tell him that it is likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any +business of his, since it was only my work that I ever asked for +recognition. They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the +strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is +over sometime ago, and _his_ kitchen is safe!" + +To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:-- + + _When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green + and gold, + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink + and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_ + +The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul--[Greek: _phychagghia_] (a +beautiful word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the +mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of +children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning +them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers +of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the +face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine +amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to +be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare +the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner." + + * * * * * + +"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:-- + + _This doth She when from things particular, + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which bodiless and immaterial are, + And can be lodged but only in our minds._ + +--the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:-- + + _This does She, when from individual states + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds,_ + +--which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '_Labor improbus +omnia vincit_' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history--Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon--that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all--that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of _examples_, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full." + + * * * * * + +The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid--as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful _corve_ of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is.... + + _Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave, + Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._ + +But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:-- + +_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._ + +Or-- + + _The multitudinous sea incarnadine, + Making the green one red._ + +Or-- + +_In the dark backward and abysm of time._ + +Or this from Lear:-- + + _My face I'll grime with filth, + Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots + And with presented nakedness outface + The winds and persecutions of the sky._ + +Or (for vividness) this, from _Antony and Cleopatra_, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:-- + + _O! withered is the garland of the war, + The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls + Are level now with men; the odds is gone, + And there is nothing left remarkable + Beneath the visiting moon ..._ + +"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:-- + + _No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded + By such poor passion as the maid that milks + And does the meanest chares. It were for me + To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; + To tell them that this world did equal theirs + Till they had stolen my jewel._ + +When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one. + + * * * * * + +I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that +is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496-8.txt or 11496-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<hr class="title"> + +<h1>POETRY</h1> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2><i>Arthur Quiller-Couch</i></h2> + +<center> +<div class="figure2c"> + <img src="images/title2.png" width="225" height="228" alt=""><br> +</div> +</center> + + + + +<hr class="title"> + +<center> +<div class="figure1c"> + <img src="images/top2.png" width="404" height="36" alt=""><br> + <img src="images/left2.png" width="38" height="114" alt="" class="figure2l"> + <img src="images/right2.png" width="38" height="114" alt="" class="figure2r"> + + <p class="caption1">"Trust in good verses then:</p> + <p class="caption2">They only shall aspire,</p> + <p class="caption1">When pyramids, as men</p> + <p class="caption2">Are lost i'the funeral fire."</p> + + <img src="images/bottom2.png" width="404" height="36" alt=""><br> + +</div> +</center> + + +<p>As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his <i>Republic</i>, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.—"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe—that its stability rests on +ordered motion—that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +<i>whom</i>?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "<i>How?</i>" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer.</p> + +<p>For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them—</p> + +<blockquote> +At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order,<br> +And they will not faint in their watches.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his <i>Parliament of +Foules</i> telling, out of Cicero's <i>Somnium Scipionis</i>, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and—</p> + +<blockquote> +Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is,<br> +In regard of the hevenes quantité:<br> +And after shewed he him the nynè sperés,<br> +And after that the melodye herde he<br> +That cometh of thilke sperés thryés-three<br> +That welle is of musicke and melodye<br> +In this world heer, and cause of armonye.<br> +</blockquote> + + +<p>While Shakespeare in the last Act of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only:</p> + +<blockquote><i>There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest<br> +But in his motion like an angel sings,<br> +Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims...</i><br></blockquote> + +<p>And Milton in <i>Arcades</i> goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer):</p> + +<blockquote> +<span style="text-indent: 10em;">then listen I</span><br> +To the celestial Sirens' harmony<br> +That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres<br> +And sing to those that hold the vital shears<br> +And turn the adamantine spindle round<br> +Of which the fate of gods and men is wound.<br> +Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie<br> +To lull the daughters of Necessity,<br> +And keep unsteady Nature to her law,<br> +And the low world in measured motion draw<br> +After the heavenly tune.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the <i>Orchestra</i> of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides:</p> + +<blockquote><i>For lo, the sea that fleets about the land,<br> +And like a girdle clips her solid waist,<br> +Music and Measure both doth understand;<br> +For his great Crystal Eye is always cast<br> +Up to the Moon, and on her fixèd fast;<br> +And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere,<br> +So daunceth he about the centre here.</i><br></blockquote> + +<p>This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."—The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,' " he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode,</p> + +<blockquote> +Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,<br> +And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,—all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"—all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson—all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst <i>thou</i>," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the <i>Book of Job</i>—</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic"><i>"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"</i></p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to <i>do</i> these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me—Are you anybody in particular?"</p> + + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares:</p> + +<blockquote> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of +the world stood, or ever the wind blew,</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of +paradise were laid,</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever the moveable powers +were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were +gathered together,</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures +of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic"><span style="font-style: normal">Then</span> did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me +alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and +by none other."</p> +</blockquote> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of <i>Paradise Lost</i> that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead,</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +<p class="p0">Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course</p> +<p class="p1">With rocks, and stones, and trees."</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The claim (as Man must think) is a just one—for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he <i>feels</i> in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass—and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence—or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it....</p> + +</blockquote> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +<p class="p1">But little did the infant dream</p> +<p class="p0">That all the treasures of the world were by;</p> +<p class="p1">And that himself was so the cream</p> +<p class="p0">And crown of all which round about did lie.</p> +<p class="p1">Yet thus it was: the Gem,</p> +<p class="p4">The Diadem,</p> +<p class="p3">The ring enclosing all</p> +<p class="p1">That stood upon this earthly ball,</p> +<p class="p3">The heavenly Eye,</p> +<p class="p2">Much wider than the sky</p> +<p class="p3">Wherein they all included were,</p> +<p class="p2">The glorious soul that was the King,</p> +<p class="p3">Made to possess them, did appear</p> +<p class="p4">A small and little thing!</p> + +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, <i>Abba, Father</i>"—<i>And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father.</i> In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts—the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes—is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at <i>Poetry</i>.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But an objection may be raised. "<i>Is</i> the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's <i>thoughts</i> about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?"</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not <i>things</i>, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere <i>words</i>, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for <i>reason</i> and for <i>speech</i>, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it—then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more—since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore—others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics—yet on the whole to their +disappointment.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"—or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the <i>Parmenides</i>, to Book vii. of <i>The Republic</i> and others of +the <i>Dialogues</i> and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for <i>His</i> +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to <i>comprehend</i> +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to <i>apprehend</i>; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, <i>apprehend</i> and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries <i>per saltum</i>, neglecting the military road of +logic.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But first we note that—<i>securus judicat orbis terrarum</i>—in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names—<i>ballata, +sonata</i>—imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the <i>Encyclopædia +Britannica</i>, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of Æschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +Seasons return; but not to me returns<br> +Day,...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,—as we certainly have harmony—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +<span style="text-indent: 2.5em;">thoughts that move</span><br> +Harmonious numbers,<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +<i>concerto</i> has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's <i>Poetics</i>, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" (<i>πασαι τυγχανουσιν +ουσαι μιμησεις +το συνολον</i><a name="FNanchor1"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a></sup>). +"What?" we say—"Nothing better than <i>that</i>?"—for "imitation" has a bad +name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind +that there are imitations and imitations (the <i>Imitatio Christi</i> among +them), let us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry +imitates or copies. It is "the Universal" (<i>το +χαθολου</i><a name="FNanchor2"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a></sup>): +and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track +as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or +a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena +as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better +than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the <i>Poetics</i>, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, <i>I will +compose poetry</i>. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +<i>denuding</i> not an <i>investing</i> of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem <i>is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth</i>. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his <i>Biographia +Literaria</i>). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.' "—</p> + +<blockquote> +From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms,<br> +And draws a kind of Quintessence from things,<br> +Which to her proper nature she transforms<br> +To bear them light on her celestial wings.<br> +This doth She when from things particular<br> +She doth abstract the Universal kinds....<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's <i>Duchess of +Malfy</i> and Shakespeare's <i>Macbeth</i>. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration—but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a <i>virtuoso</i> in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth—she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens—that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me—as I penetrate the Fourth Act—the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth—which (let it be added) was a great deal.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Turn from <i>The Duchess of Malfy</i> to <i>Macbeth</i>, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which—for a while—has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon—what happens? A knocking on the door—a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Beëlzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning <i>pede claudo</i>, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome <i>In girum imus noctu, ecce!</i> steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, <i>Ecce ut consumimur igni!</i></p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers—that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind—that, as the height is, so will be the fall—or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet—and this is the point—<i>a man like +ourselves</i> (<i>ομοιος</i><a name="FNanchor3"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a></sup>). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault—or, at least, some +mistake—of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not <i>like ourselves</i>. What happens to them may serve +for <i>The Police News</i>. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of <i>Paradise Lost</i>), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to <i>Epic</i>, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," <i>i.e.</i> by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +<i>Samson Agonistes</i>) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy.</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">For my part I always consider Milton's <i>Macbeth</i> the most fascinating +poem—certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play—ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:—</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. <i>Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular</i>. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have <i>Vespasian's</i> +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned <i>Cyrus of Xenophon</i> than +the true <i>Cyrus in Justine</i>, and the fayned <i>Æneas in Virgil</i> than the +true <i>Æneas</i> in <i>Dares Phrygius.</i>"</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?—a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring—yellow, red, brown—and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So—and just so, save more deftly—the Poet +abstracts:—</p> + +<blockquote> +Where is the prime of Summer—the green prime—<br> +The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three<br> +On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime<br> +Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.)</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way—at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: <i>the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it.</i> This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never <i>seem +to condescend</i>; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +<i>is</i> any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it—as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street—and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's <i>Elegy</i>, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, <i>but so as we recognise +it</i>.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised—the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +<i>στοργη</i><a name="FNanchor4"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a></sup> rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its +fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest +expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the +whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And +not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet +has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: <i>Sunt lacrimæ +rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt</i>—"Tears are for Life, mortal things +pierce the soul."</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">And why not? For the complete man—<i>totus homo</i>—has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," <i>felices</i>, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," <i>beati</i>; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating <i>and delightful</i> beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, <i>there cannot +but be pleasure</i>, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The <i>enthusiasm</i> of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is—an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive?</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow—so different from us—is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '<i>all there</i>.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. <i> +Μηνιν αειδε +θεα ... Ανδρα μοι +εννεπε, Μουσα</i>.<a name="FNanchor5"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_5">[5]</a></sup>—Surely the dear +fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he +does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the +intervals of doing my work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and +tell him that it is likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any +business of his, since it was only my work that I ever asked for +recognition. They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the +strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is +over sometime ago, and <i>his</i> kitchen is safe!"</p> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:—</p> + +<blockquote> +When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green and gold,<br> +The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould—<br> +They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start,<br> +For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of <i>teaching</i>. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything—but Literature especially—out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) <i>how</i> he teaches us, or rather <i>educates</i>. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men—drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal—is <i>educative</i> in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul—<i>φυχαγωγια</i><a name="FNanchor6"></a><sup><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a></sup> +(a beautiful word)—is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the +mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of +children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning +them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers +of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the +face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine +amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to +be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much <i>Philosophus</i> as to compare +the Philosopher, in <i>mooving</i>, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."—For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="p0">This doth She when from things particular,</p> +<p class="p0">She doth abstract the Universal kinds,</p> +<p class="p2">Which bodiless and immaterial are,</p> +<p class="p0">And can be lodged but only in our minds.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>—the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="p0">This does She, when from individual states</p> +<p class="p0">She doth abstract the Universal kinds,</p> +<p class="p2">Which then reclothed in divers names and fates</p> +<p class="p0">Steal access through our senses to our minds,</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>—which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '<i>Labor improbus +omnia vincit</i>' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history—Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon—that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all—that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of <i>examples</i>, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full."</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid—as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful <i>corvée</i> of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +<i>Venus and Adonis</i> we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is....</p> + +<blockquote> +Upon this promise did he raise his chin,<br> +Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave,<br> +Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in....<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>But in his later plays—so fast the images teem—he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:—</p> + +<blockquote>Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care.<br></blockquote> + +<p>Or—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +The multitudinous sea incarnadine,<br> +Making the green one red.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or—</p> + +<blockquote class="ind"> +In the dark backward and abysm of time.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or this from Lear:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<span style="text-indent: 5em;">My face I'll grime with filth,</span><br> +Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots<br> +And with presented nakedness outface<br> +The winds and persecutions of the sky.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Or (for vividness) this, from <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:—</p> + +<blockquote> +O! withered is the garland of the war,<br> +The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls<br> +Are level now with men; the odds is gone,<br> +And there is nothing left remarkable<br> +Beneath the visiting moon ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:—</p> + +<blockquote> +No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded<br> +By such poor passion as the maid that milks<br> +And does the meanest chares. It were for me<br> +To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;<br> +To tell them that this world did equal theirs<br> +Till they had stolen my jewel.<br> +</blockquote> + +<br> +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending <i>passion</i> in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids—<i>totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;</i> when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet—a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one.</p> + +<hr> + +<div class="para"> + <img src="images/para.png" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="pic">I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but <i>solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur</i>"—these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"—that +is to say, creates—which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes—using man's highest instruments, thought and speech—harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. <i>"Non c'e' in mondo,</i>" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, <i>"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"</i>—"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet."</p> + +<hr class="title"> + +<h2 style="margin-bottom: 0;">Footnotes</h2> +<h4 style="margin-top: 0;">(Original images of Greek text added for this HTML edition.)</h4><br> + +<a name="Footnote_1"></a> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor1">[1]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig1.png" width="595" alt="" class="figurefn"> + + +<a name="Footnote_2"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 10px;"><a href="#FNanchor2">[2]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig2.png" width="130" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_3"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor3">[3]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig3.png" width="78" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_4"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor4">[4]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig4.png" width="87" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_5"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 4px;"><a href="#FNanchor5">[5]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig5.png" width="635" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<a name="Footnote_6"></a> +<br> +<br> +<div class="para" style="margin-top: 6px;"><a href="#FNanchor6">[6]</a></div> +<img src="images/Fig6.png" width="136" alt="" class="figurefn"> + +<hr class="title"> + +<center>THE END</center> + +<hr class="title"> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496-h.htm or 11496-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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b/old/11496-h/images/top2.png diff --git a/old/11496.txt b/old/11496.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c5c8e4a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11496.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1485 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poetry + +Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11496] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +POETRY + +By + +_Arthur Quiller-Couch_ + + + + "Trust in good verses then: + They only shall aspire, + When pyramids, as men + Are lost i'the funeral fire." + +As the tale is told by Plato, in the tenth book of his _Republic_, one +Er the son of Arminius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days +afterwards, when they collected the bodies for burial, his body alone +showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to +the funeral pile; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to +life and told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he +related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but most wonderful of all was the great Spindle of +Necessity which he saw reaching up into heaven with the planets +revolving around it in whorls of graduated width and speed, yet all +concentric and so timed that all complete the full circle punctually +together.--"The Spindle turns on the knees of Necessity: and on the rim +of each whorl sits perched a Siren, who goes round with it, hymning a +single note; the eight notes together forming one harmony." + + * * * * * + +The fable is a pretty one: but Er the Pamphylian comes back to report no +more than the one thing Man already grasps for a certainty amid his +welter of guesswork about the Universe--that its stability rests on +ordered motion--that the "firmament" stands firm on a balance of active +and tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks "By +_whom_?": Philosophy inclines rather to guess "_How?_" Natural Science, +allowing that these questions are probably unanswerable, contents itself +with mapping and measuring what it can of the various forces. But all +agree about the harmony: and when a Newton discovers a single rule of it +for us, he but makes our assurance surer. + +For uncounted centuries before ever hearing of "Gravitation" men knew +of the sun that he rose and set at hours which, though mysteriously +appointed, could be accurately predicted; of the moon that she regularly +waxed and waned, drawing the waters of the earth in a flow and ebb, the +gauge of which and the time-table could be advertised beforehand in the +almanack; of the stars, that they swung as by clockwork around the pole. +Says the son of Sirach concerning them-- + + _At the word of the Holy one they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches._ + +So evident is this celestial harmony that men, seeking to account for it +by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their experience, +supposed an actual Music of the Spheres inaudible to mortals; Plato (who +learned of Pythagoras) inventing his Octave of Sirens, spinning in the +whorls of the great planets and intoning as they spin; Chaucer (who +learned of Dante and makes the spheres nine) in his _Parliament of +Foules_ telling, out of Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, how the great +Scipio Africanus visited his descendant in a dream and-- + + _Shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is, + In regard of the hevenes quantite: + And after shewed he him the nyne speres, + And after that the melodye herde he + That cometh of thilke speres thryes-three + That welle is of musicke and melodye + In this world heer, and cause of armonye._ + +While Shakespeare in the last Act of _The Merchant of Venice_ makes all +the stars vocal, and not the planets only: + + _There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest + But in his motion like an angel sings, + Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims..._ + +And Milton in _Arcades_ goes straight back to Plato (save that his +spheres are nine, as with Chaucer): + + _then listen I + To the celestial Sirens' harmony + That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres + And sing to those that hold the vital shears + And turn the adamantine spindle round + Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie + To lull the daughters of Necessity, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measured motion draw + After the heavenly tune._ + +From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have +occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies +(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of +a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides: + + _For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, + And like a girdle clips her solid waist, + Music and Measure both doth understand; + For his great Crystal Eye is always cast + Up to the Moon, and on her fixed fast; + And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere, + So daunceth he about the centre here._ + +This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world +solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular +notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote +"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.") +"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with +them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and +one of the two most important truths in the world. This Universe is not +a Chaos. (If it were, by the way, we should be unable to reason about it +at all.) It stands and is continually renewed upon an ascertained +harmony: and what Plato called "Necessity" is the duty in all things of +obedience to that harmony, the Duty of which Wordsworth sings in his +noble Ode, + + _Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, + And his most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong._ + +Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this +macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at +all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the +microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the +"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective" +knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all +"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter +and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas, +to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and +Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet +again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the +Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he +apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some +corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far +as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his +own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be +interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing +his best." + + * * * * * + +"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine, +"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one +of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the +best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to +pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_," +demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_-- + +_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands +of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazaroth in his season? Or canst thou +guide Arcturus with his sons?"_ + +To this, fallen and arraigned man, using his best jargon, responds that +"the answer is in the negative. I never pretended to _do_ these things, +only to guess, in my small way, how they are done." + +Nor is there any real irreverence in answering thus: for of course it is +not the Almighty who puts the questions, but someone audaciously +personating Him. And some of us find this pretension irritating; as +Douglas Jerrold meeting a pompous stranger on the pavement was moved to +accost him with, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but would you mind informing +me--Are you anybody in particular?" + +Again, in the sixth chapter of the Second Book of Esdras, someone +usurping the voice of the Almighty and using (be it said to his credit) +excellent prose, declares: + + _"In the beginning, when the earth was made, before the waters of + the world stood, or ever the wind blew, + + Before it thundered or lightened, or ever the foundations of + paradise were laid, + + Before the fair flowers were seen, or ever_ _the moveable powers + were established; before the innumerable multitude of angels were + gathered together, + + Or ever the heights of the air were lifted up, before the measures + of the firmament were named, or ever the chimneys of Zion were hot._ + + Then _did I consider these things, and they all were made through Me + alone, and through none other: by Me also they shall be ended, and + by none other."_ + +It is all very beautiful: but (for aught that appears) no one was +denying it. It has been shrewdly objected against the arguments of the +"affable Archangel" in the later books of _Paradise Lost_ that argument +by its nature admits of being answered: and the fatal fallacy of putting +human speech into a divine mouth, as in the above passage, is that it +invites retort. + +A sensible man does not aspire to bind the sweet influences of Pleiades: +but he may, and does, aspire to understand something of the universal +harmony in which he and they bear a part, if only that he may render it +a more perfect obedience. "Let me know," he craves, "that I may accept +my fate intelligently, even though it prove that under the iron rule of +Necessity I have no more freedom of will than the dead, + + _Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees._" + +The claim (as Man must think) is a just one--for why was he given +intelligence if not to use it? And even though disallowed as +presumptuous, it is an instinctive one. Man is, after all, a part of the +Universe, and just as surely as the Pleiades or Arcturus: and moreover +he _feels_ in himself a harmony correspondent with the greater harmony +of his quest. His heart beats to a rhythm: his blood pulses through +steady circuits; like the plants by which he is fed, he comes to birth, +grows, begets his kind, dies, and returns to earth; like the tides, his +days of gestation obey the moon and can be reckoned by her; in the sweat +of his body he tills the ground, and by the seasons, summer and winter, +seedtime and harvest, his life while it lasts is regulated. But above +all he is the microcosm, the tiny percipient centre upon which the +immense cosmic circle focusses itself as the sun upon a +burning-glass--and he is not shrivelled up by the miracle! Other +creatures (he notes) share his sensations; but, so far as he can +discover, not his intelligence--or, if at all, in no degree worth +measuring. So far as he can detect, he is not only an actor in the grand +cosmic pageant, but the sole intelligent spectator. As a poor Welsh +parson, Thomas Traherne, wrote of the small town of his childhood:-- + +_The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their +clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, +their skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun +and moon and stars; and all the world was mine, and I the only spectator +and enjoyer of it...._ + + _But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by; + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious soul that was the King, + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing!_ + +We may safely go some way even beyond this, and lay it down for +unchallengeable truth that over and above Man's consciousness of being +the eye of the Universe and receptacle, however imperfect, of its great +harmony, he has a native impulse to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit in his heart (as the Scripture puts it) "of +adoption, whereby we cry, _Abba, Father_"--_And because ye are sons, God +hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, +Father._ In his daily life he is for ever seeking after harmony in +avoidance of chaos, cultivating personal habits after the clock; in his +civic life forming governments, attempting hierarchies, laws, +constitutions, by which (as he hopes) a system of society will work in +tune, almost automatically. When he fights he has learnt that his +fighting men shall march in rhythm and deploy rhythmically, and they do +so to regimental music. If he haul rope or weigh anchor, setting out to +sea, or haul up his ship on a beach, he has proved by experiment that +these operations are performed more than twice as easily when done to a +tune. But these are dull, less than half-conscious, imitations of the +great harmony for which, when he starts out to understand and interpret +it consciously, he must use the most godlike of all his gifts. Now the +most godlike of all human gifts--the singular gift separating Man from +the brutes--is speech. If he can harmonise speech he has taught his +first and peculiar faculty to obey the great rhythm: "I will sing and +give praise," says the Psalmist, "with the best member that I have." +Thus by harmonising speech (in a fashion we will discuss by and by), he +arrives at _Poetry_. + + * * * * * + +But an objection may be raised. "_Is_ the tongue, rather than the brain, +the best member that I have?" or (to put it in another way), "Surely a +man's _thoughts_ about the Universe have more value than his words about +it?" + +The answer is, that we cannot separate them: and Newman has put this so +cogently that I must quote him, making no attempt to water down his +argument with words of my own. "Thought and speech are inseparable from +one another. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking +out into language. This is literature; not _things_, but the verbal +symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_, but thoughts +expressed in language. Call to mind the meaning of the Greek word which +expresses this special prerogative of Man over the feeble intelligence +of the lower animals. It is called Logos. What does Logos mean? It +stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say +which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really +they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, +life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be +possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do +without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile +intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression +and the channel of its speculations and emotions." Words, in short, are +the outward and visible signs of thought: that, and something +more--since you may prove by experiment that the shortest and simplest +train of thought cannot be followed unless at every step the mind +silently casts it into the mould of words. + + * * * * * + +As an instrument for reconciling Man's inward harmony with the great +outer harmony of the Universe, Poetry is notoriously imperfect. Men have +tried others therefore--others that appeared at first sight more +promising, such as Music and Mathematics--yet on the whole to their +disappointment. + +Take Mathematics. Numbers inhere in all harmony. By numbers harmony can +be expressed far more severely than by Poetry, and so successfully up to +a point, that poets have borrowed the very word to dignify their poor +efforts. They "lisp in numbers"--or so they say: and the curious may +turn to the _Parmenides_, to Book vii. of _The Republic_ and others of +the _Dialogues_ and note how Plato, hunting on the trail of many +distinguished predecessors, pursues Mathematics up to the point where, +as a means of interpreting to Man the Universal harmony, Mathematics, +like Philosophy, inevitably breaks down. Mathematics, an abstract +science, breaks down just because it is abstract and in no way personal: +because though it may calculate and time and even weigh parts of the +greater Universe, it cannot, by defect of its nature, bring its +discoveries back to bear on the other harmony of Man. It is impersonal +and therefore nescient of his need. Though by such a science he gain the +whole world, it shall not profit a man who misses from it his own soul. + +Philosophy, too, fails us over this same crux of "personality"; not by +ignoring it, but by clinging with obstinacy to the wrong end of the +stick. The quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry is notorious and +inveterate: and at ninety-nine points in the hundred Philosophy has the +better of the dispute; as the Fox in the fable had ninety-nine ways of +evading the hounds, against the Cat's solitary one. But the Cat could +climb a tree. + +So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry +interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you +happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You +are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_ +guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself +to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_ +the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal +with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce +by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to +which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain +men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their +fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they +throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray +messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery +of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch +and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean. +Such men are the poets, my servants." + +"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their +messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning; +nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but +by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of +apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For +it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him +up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles +of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees +by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the +wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait, +they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed +they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be +accused of insobriety. Yet always they excel your philosophers, insomuch +as they accept the transcendental as really transcendental and do not +profess to instruct the Almighty in it; and chiefly, perhaps, they excel +your philosophers by opposing a creativeness, potential at any rate, +against a certain and foredoomed barrenness. For the philosophers would +get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows +that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even +passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse +of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real +understanding of the Creator." + +Yet the philosopher will go on to the end of time despising the poet, +who grasps at mysteries _per saltum_, neglecting the military road of +logic. + +Shall we then, by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy +and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: +Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been +found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of +counterpoint, is capable of harmonies deeper and more intricate than any +within the range of human speech. In short, against Poetry, Music can +set up a very strong claim. + +But first we note that--_securus judicat orbis terrarum_--in the +beginning Poetry and Music did their business together (with the Dance +conjoined as third partner); and that, by practice, men have tended to +trust Poetry, for an interpreter, more and more above Music, while +Dancing has dropped out of the competition. The ballad, the sonnet, have +grown to stand on their merits as verse, though their names--_ballata, +sonata_--imply that they started in dependence upon dance and +orchestra. This supersession of music by verse, whether as ally or +competitor, is a historical fact, if a startling one, which Mr. +Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the _Encyclopaedia +Britannica_, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a +little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of +superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. +This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for +harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment +upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that +excellence in its own sense." Mr. Watts-Dunton proceeds: "The finest +music of AEschylus, of Pindar, of Shakespeare, of Milton, is after all, +only a succession of melodious notes, and in endeavouring to catch the +harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe and epode in the Greek chorus +and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing +memory into our service." But I, for one, should not seek counterpoint +in these any more than in the recurrent themes of a sonata. I should +seek it rather in the running line which he pronounces (mistakenly, as I +think) to be "after all, only a succession of melodious notes." C sharp, +B, A, A, A, E, A are a succession of melodious notes and spell the +opening phrase of "The Death of Nelson": as the vowels E, O, U, U, O, O, +E, E, U are a succession of melodious notes, and, if notes alone +counted, would spell a phrase of Milton's great Invocation to Light. But +when we consider the consonantal value, the interplay and the exquisite +repetition of-- + + _Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day,..._ + +or note the vowel-peals throughout the passage, now shut and anon opened +by the scheme of consonants; now continuous, anon modulated by delicate +pauses; always chiming obediently to the strain of thought; then I hold +that if we have not actual counterpoint here, we have something +remarkably like it,--as we certainly have harmony-- + + _thoughts that move +Harmonious numbers,_ + +or I know not what harmony is. In truth, if counterpoint be (as the +dictionary defines it), "a blending of related but independent +melodies," then Poetry achieves it by mating a process of sound to a +process of thought: and Mr. Watts-Dunton disposes of his own first +contention for music when he goes on to say (very rightly), "But if +Poetry falls behind Music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering +emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts." Yet I +should still object to the word "disintegrated" as applied to thought, +unless it be allowed that emotion undergoes the same process at the same +time and both meet in one solution. To speak more plainly, Music is +inferior to Poetry because, of any two melodies in its counterpoint, +both may be (and in practice are) emotional and vague: while of any two +melodies in the counterpoint of Poetry one must convey thought and +therefore be intelligible. And, to speak summarily, Poetry surpasses +Music because it carries its explanation, whereas the meaning of a +_concerto_ has to be interpreted into dull words on a programme. + +We have arrived at this, then; that Poetry's chief function is to +reconcile the inner harmony of Man (his Soul, as we call it) with the +outer harmony of the Universe. With this conception of "peerless Poesie" +in our minds, we turn to Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it gives us a +sensible shock to read on the first page, that "Epic Poetry and Tragedy, +Comedy also and dithyrambic Poetry, and the greater part of the music of +the flute and of the lyre are all, generally speaking, modes of +imitation" ([Greek: _pasai tynchhanoysin ohysai mimheseis to hynolon_]). +"What?" we say--"Nothing better than _that_?"--for "imitation" has a bad +name among men and is apt to suggest the ape. But, first bearing in mind +that there are imitations and imitations (the _Imitatio Christi_ among +them), let us go on to see what it is that in Aristotle's opinion Poetry +imitates or copies. It is "the Universal" ([Greek: _tho chathholoy_]): +and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track +as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or +a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena +as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better +than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech, +intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law" +the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded +reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that +this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it +probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference +that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and +the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the +heavens." + + * * * * * + +Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have +indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner +harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness" +until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune +together. The Psalmist describes the process accurately: "While I was +thus musing the fire kindled, and at the last I spake with my tongue." +"Poetry," writes Shelley, "is not, like reasoning, a power to be exerted +according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, _I will +compose poetry_. The greatest poet, even, cannot say it: for the mind in +creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an +inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness." But the Poet's way +of reporting these apprehensions to his fellows, since he deals with +Universals or ideas, is by "universalising" or "idealising" his story: +and upon these two terms, which properly mean much the same thing, we +must pause for a moment. + +The word "idealise," which is the more commonly used, has unfortunately +two meanings, a true and a false; and, again unfortunately, the false +prevails in vulgar use. To "idealise" in the true sense is to disengage +an "idea" of all that is trivial or impertinent or transient or +disturbing, and present it to men in its clearest outline, so that its +own proper form shines in on the intelligence, as you would wipe away +from a discovered statue all stains or accretions of mud or moss or +fungus, to release and reveal its true beauty. False "idealising," on +the other hand, means that, instead of trusting to this naked +manifestation, we add to it some graces of our invention, some touches +by which we think to improve it; that we "paint the lily," in short. But +the true "idealisation" and the first business of the poet is a +_denuding_ not an _investing_ of the Goddess, whether her name be +"Life," "Truth," "Beauty," or what you will: a revealing, not a +coverture of embroidered words, however pretty and fantastic; as has +been excellently said by Shelley: "A poem _is the very image of life +expressed in its external truth_. There is this difference between a +story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which +have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and +effect; the other is the erection of actions according to the +unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the +Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." Let us enforce +this account of the true idealisation by a verse or two of our old +friend Sir John Davies (quoted by Coleridge in his _Biographia +Literaria_). "What an unworldly mass of impressions the mind would be," +says Sir John in effect, "did not the soul come to the rescue and reduce +these crowding bodies by 'sublimation strange.'"-- + + _From their gross Matter she abstracts the Forms, + And draws a kind of Quintessence from things, + Which to her proper nature she transforms + To bear them light on her celestial wings. + This doth She when from things particular + She doth abstract the Universal kinds...._ + +But it is time to descend from these heights (such as they are) of +philosophising, and illustrate the difference between true and false +"idealising" in Poetry by concrete example: and no two better examples +occur to me, for drawing this contrast, than Webster's _Duchess of +Malfy_ and Shakespeare's _Macbeth_. Each of these plays excites horror +and is calculated to excite horror; both have outlived three hundred +years, there or thereabouts; both may be taken as having established an +indefinitely long lease on men's admiration--but to any critical mind, +how different an admiration! Webster is an expert, a _virtuoso_ in +horrifics; in flesh-creeping effects lies his skill; and, indulging that +skill, he not only paints the lily, but repaints it and daubs it yet a +third time. There is no reason on earth--she has offended against no +moral law on earth or in the heavens--that could possibly condemn the +Duchess to the hellish tortures she is made to endure. At the worst she +has married a man beneath her in station. To punish her in Webster's +extravagant fashion every other character, with the whole story of the +play, has to be dehumanised. To me--as I penetrate the Fourth Act--the +whole business becomes ludicrous: not sanely comic, or even quite sanely +absurd: but bizarre, and ridiculously bizarre at that. It has no "idea" +at all, no relation to the Universal in the shape of any moral order, +"law," fate, doom, destiny. It is just a box of tricks, of raw heads and +bloody bones, left with the lid open. That is false "idealising"; +Webster choosing his effect and "improving" it for all he was +worth--which (let it be added) was a great deal. + + * * * * * + +Turn from _The Duchess of Malfy_ to _Macbeth_, and you find an English +poet as sensitive of fate, doom, destiny, "law," the moral order, as +ever was Aeschylus; nay, interpreting it perhaps more effectively than +ever did Aeschylus. In the First Act we see it suggested to Macbeth by +witchcraft (which is the personified foe of moral order) that he can +achieve an ambition by an unlawful path, the ambition itself being +suggested along with the way to it and growing as the way opens. We see +them both communicated to a feminine mind, narrower, more intent and +practical; because narrower, because more intent and practical, for the +moment more courageous. (It was Eve that the Serpent, wily enough, +selected to tempt.) Both Macbeth and his lady move to the deed under a +law which--for a while--has usurped the true moral order and reversed +it, he not without misgivings: the spectators all the while knowing the +true order, yet held silent, watching the event. Outside the castle an +owl hoots as Duncan is slain. The guilty man and woman creep back, +whispering; and thereupon--what happens? A knocking on the door--a +knocking followed by the growls of a drowsy if not drunken porter: +"Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should +have old turning the key. (Knocking again.) Knock, knock, knock! Who's +there, i' the name of Beelzebub?" The stage direction admits Macduff, +who in due course is to prove the avenger of blood: but the hand that +knocks, the step on the threshold, are in truth those of the moral order +returning _pede claudo_, demanding to be readmitted. From the instant of +that first knock the ambitions of the pair roll back toward their doom +as the law they have offended reasserts itself, and the witches' +palindrome _In girum imus noctu, ecce!_ steadily spells itself backward, +letter by letter, to the awful sentence, _Ecce ut consumimur igni!_ + + * * * * * + +This is to "idealise" in the right sense of the word. Fixing his mind on +the Idea of two human beings, a man and a woman who trespass from the +law of the great moral powers ordering the Universe (Man along with it) +and are overtaken in that trespass and punished, Shakespeare +disencumbers it of all that is trivial, irrelevant, non-essential. He +takes the wickedest crime of which man can be guilty; not a mere naked +murder, nor even a murder for profit, but the murder of a king by his +sworn soldier, of a guest by his host, of a sleeping guest by the hand +on which he has just bestowed a diamond. Can criminality be laid barer? +He illustrates it again in two persons lifted above the common station; +and he does this not (as I think) for the practical reason for which +Aristotle seems to commend it to tragic writers--that the disasters of +great persons are more striking than those of the small fry of +mankind--that, as the height is, so will be the fall--or not for that +reason alone; but, still in the process of "idealising," because such +persons, exalted above the obscuring petty cares of life, may reasonably +be expected to see the Universe with a clearer vision than ours, to have +more delicate ears for its harmonies. Who but a King should know most +concerning moral law? Why is he with our consent lifted up so that he +may hear the divine commandments better than we, and dictate them down +to us? He is greater, but yet--and this is the point--_a man like +ourselves_ ([Greek: _omoios_]). He cannot for purposes of tragedy be +wholly good: for not only is this extremely rare in real life, and +almost inconceivable, but the ruin of a wholly good man would merely +shock, without teaching us anything. The disaster of a tragic figure +must come, and be seen to come, through some fault--or, at least, some +mistake--of his own. But again he must not be wholly bad, for the +disasters of the wholly bad do not affect us save with disgust. Such +men, we know, are not _like ourselves_. What happens to them may serve +for _The Police News_. Tragedy does not deal with the worthless. How +then are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, beings like ourselves, to fall into +crime so heinous? Again Shakespeare strips the Idea bare: their trespass +comes through ambition, "last infirmity of noble minds," under the +blinding persuasion of witchcraft, which (an actual belief in +Shakespeare's time) is a direct negation of the moral law, and puts +Satan in place of God. + + * * * * * + +It is curious that, some thirty-odd years after Shakespeare had handled +this tremendous theme, another attempt on it was being meditated, and by +the man whom the most of us rank next after Shakespeare in the hierarchy +of English poets. Among the treasures in the library at Trinity College, +Cambridge, lies a manuscript, the hand-writing undoubtedly Milton's, +containing a list compiled by him of promising subjects for the great +poem for which, between his leaving the University and the outbreak of +the Civil War, all his life was a deliberate preparation. The list is +long; the subjects proposed run to no fewer than ninety-nine. Of these, +fifty-three are derived from Old Testament history (with a recurring +inclination for the theme of _Paradise Lost_), eight from the New +Testament; thirty-three from the history of Britain (with a leaning +towards the Arthurian legend); while five of them are legendary tales of +Scotland or North Britain, the last being headed "Macbeth. Beginning at +the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff. The matter of Duncan may be expressed +by the arrival of his ghost." Now that Milton (an adorer of +Shakespeare's genius, as everyone knows) should have taken so deep an +impression from the play that its theme possessed him and he longed to +transfer it to _Epic_, is credible enough. That he, with his classical +bent, should choose to attempt in Drama an improvement upon the most +"classical" of all Shakespeare's tragedies seems to me scarcely +credible. But if the credibility of this be granted, then I can only +conceive Milton's designing to improve the play by making it yet more +"classical," _i.e._ by writing it (after the fashion he followed in +_Samson Agonistes_) closely upon the model of Athenian Tragedy. + +For my part I always consider Milton's _Macbeth_ the most fascinating +poem--certainly, if play it were, the most fascinating play--ever +unwritten. But of this any man may be sure; that (since they were both +great poets) one made, as the other would have made, a story of far more +value to us than Shakespeare or Milton or any man before or after could +have made by a strict biography of Macbeth, the man as he lived. For any +such biography would clog the lesson for us with details which were more +the less irrelevant because they really happened. Here I must quote +Aristotle again, and for the last time in this little book: but no +sentences in his treatise hold a deeper import than these:-- + +"It is not the function of the Poet to relate what has happened, but +what may happen of likelihood or must happen of necessity. The Poet and +the Historian are not different because one writes in verse and the +other in prose. Turn what Herodotus tells into verse, and none the less +it will be a sort of history; the metre makes no difference. The real +difference lies in the Historian's telling what has happened, the Poet's +telling what may happen. _Thus Poetry is a more philosophical thing, and +a more serious, than History: for Poetry tells of the Universal, History +of the Particular_. Now the business of the Universal is to tell us how +it will fall to such and such a person to speak or act in such or such +circumstances according to likelihood or necessity: and it is at this +that Poetry aims in giving characters names of its own: whereas the +Particular narrates what Alcibiades did or what happened to him." + + * * * * * + +This may seem a hard saying, even after what has been said. So let us +pause and digest it in Sir Philip Sidney's comment: "... Thus farre +Aristotle, which reason of his (as all his) is most full of reason. For +indeed, if the question were whether it were better to have a +particular acte truly or falsely set down, there is no doubt which is to +be chosen, no more than whether you had rather have _Vespasian's_ +picture right as hee was or at the Painter's pleasure nothing +resembling. But if the question be for your owne use and learning, +whether it be better to have it set downe as it should be, or as it was, +then certainly is more doctrinable the fayned _Cyrus of Xenophon_ than +the true _Cyrus in Justine_, and the fayned _AEneas in Virgil_ than the +true _AEneas_ in _Dares Phrygius._" + + * * * * * + +But now, having drawn breath, let us follow our Poet from the lowest up +to the highest of his claim. And be it observed, to start with, that in +clearing and cleansing the Idea for us (in the manner described) he does +but employ a process of Selection which all men are employing, all day +long and every day of their lives, upon more trivial matters; a process +indeed which every man is constantly obliged to employ. Life would be a +night-mare for him, soon over, if he had to take account, for example, +of every object flashed on the retina of his eye during a country walk. +How many millions of leaves, stones, blades of grass, must he not see +without seeing? Say it be the shortest of rambles on an afternoon in +early November. The light fades early: but before he reaches home in the +dark, how many of the myriad falling leaves has he counted?--a dozen at +most. Of the myriad leaves changing colour does he preserve, unless by +chance, the separate image of one? Rather from the mass over which his +eyes have travelled he has abstracted an "idea" of autumnal +colouring--yellow, red, brown--and with that he carries home a +sentimental, perhaps even a profound, sense of the falling leaf, the +falling close of the year. So--and just so, save more deftly--the Poet +abstracts:-- + + _Where is the prime of Summer--the green prime-- + The many, many leaves all twinkling?--Three + On the moss'd elm; three on the naked lime + Trembling; and one upon the old oak tree!_ + +(As a matter of fact, oak leaves are singularly tenacious, and the +autumnal oak will show a thousand for the elm's one. Hood, being a +Cockney, took his seven leaves at random. But what does it matter? He +was a poet, and seven leaves sufficed him to convey the idea.) + + * * * * * + +Nor does our Poet, unless he be a charlatan, pretend to bring home some +hieratic message above the understanding of his fellows: for he is an +interpreter, and the interpreter's success depends upon hitting his +hearer's intelligence. Failing that, he misses everything and is null. +To put it in another way--at the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +as of all Theology, stands one rock: _the very highest Universe Truth is +something so absolutely simple that a child can understand it._ This is +what Emerson means when he tells us that the great writers never _seem +to condescend_; that yonder slip of a boy who has carried off +Shakespeare to the window-seat, can feel with King Harry or Hamlet or +Coriolanus, with Rosalind or Desdemona or Miranda. For the moment he +_is_ any given one of these, because any human soul contains them all. +And some such thought we must believe to have been in Our Lord's mind +when He said, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that +Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast +revealed them unto babes." For as the Universe is one, so the individual +human souls that apprehend it have no varying values intrinsically, but +one equal value. They differ only in power to apprehend, and this may be +more easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I would even dare to quote of this Universal Truth the words +I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley concerning divine Love: +"I see now that if God's love reaches up to every star and down to every +poor soul on Earth, it must be something vastly simple, so simple that +all dwellers on earth may be assured of it--as all who have eyes may be +assured of the planet shining yonder at the end of the street--and so +vast that all bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts." The message, then, which one Poet brings +home, is no esoteric one: as Johnson said of Gray's _Elegy_, "it abounds +with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to +which every bosom returns an echo." It exalts us through the best in us, +by telling it, not as anything new or strange, _but so as we recognise +it_. + + * * * * * + +And here let us dwell a moment on Johnson's phrase, "to which every +bosom returns an echo": for it recalls us to a point, which we noted +indeed on p. 22, but have left (I fear) somewhat under-emphasised--the +emotion that enters into poetical truth, which only by the help of +emotion is apprehended; as through emotion it is conveyed, and to an +emotional understanding in the hearer addresses its appeal. For the +desire of man's soul after the Universal, to be in harmony with it, is +(as a matter of fact, and when all pulpit eloquence has been +discounted) something more than a mere intellectual attraction: a +[Greek: _storghe_] rather; a yearning felt in its veins to know its +fatherhood. Saint Paul goes farther and assures us that "the earnest +expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation," so that "the +whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." "And +not only they," he goes on, "but ourselves also": while the pagan poet +has tears that reach the heart of the transitory show: _Sunt lacrimae +rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_--"Tears are for Life, mortal things +pierce the soul." + +And why not? For the complete man--_totus homo_--has feelings as well as +reason, and should have both active, in fine training, to realise the +best of him. Shelley obviously meant this when he defined Poetry as "the +record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." +He did not mean that they are happy only in the sense of being +"fortunate," _felices_, in such moments, but that they were happy in the +sense of being "blessed," _beati_; and this feeling of blessedness they +communicate. "We are aware," he goes on, "of evanescent visitations of +thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes +requiring our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and +departing unbidden, but elevating _and delightful_ beyond all expression +... so that even in the desire and the regret they leave, _there cannot +but be pleasure_, participating as it does in the nature of its object. +It is as it were the interpenetration of a divine nature through our +own, ... and the state of mind produced is at war with every base +desire. The _enthusiasm_ of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship is +essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self +appears as what it is--an atom in the universe." Every word italicised +above by me carries Shelley's witness that Poetry and joyous emotion are +inseparable. "Poetry," he winds up, "redeems from decay the visitations +of the Divinity in Man." How can we dissociate from joy the news of such +visitations either on the lips that carry or in the ears that receive? + +Yet, as has been hinted, the very simplicity of it puzzles the ordinary +man, and not only puzzles the philosopher but exasperates him. It annoys +the philosopher, first, that the poet apparently takes so little +trouble. (As a fact he takes endless trouble; but, to be sure, he saves +an immense deal by going the right way to work.) All knowledge is +notoriously painful (that is to say, to philosophers). Moreover, the +fellow mixes it up with emotion (an integral part of man which +philosophy ignores, and stultifies itself, as a rule, by ignoring). He +is one with the Oracles, a suspected tribe. He idles like an Oracle, +attending on inspiration, and when he has received the alleged afflatus, +the fellow--so different from us--is neither to hold nor to bind. The +easiest way with him seems to be a pitying contempt. "For all good +poets," says Socrates sagely in the Ion, "epic as well as lyric, compose +their lovely strains, not by art, but because they are inspired and +possessed. And as the Corybantian dances are not quite 'rational,' so +the lyric poets are, so to speak, not quite '_all there_.' ... They tell +us," he goes on condescendingly, "that they bring songs from honeyed +fountains, culling them from the gardens and dells of the Muses; that, +like the bees, they wing from one flower to another. Yes of a truth: the +Poet is a light and a winged and a holy thing, without invention in him +until he is inspired and out of his senses, and out of his own wit; +until he has attained to this he is but a feeble thing, unable to utter +his oracles." I can imagine all this reported to Homer in the Shades and +Homer answering with a smile: "Well, and who in the world is denying it? +I certainly did not, while I lived and sang upon earth. Nay, I never +even sang, but invited the Muse to sing to me and through me. [Greek: +_Menin haeide theha ... Handra moi hennepe, Moysa_.]--Surely the dear +fellow might remember the first line of my immortal works! And if he +does remember, and is only bringing it up against me that in the +intervals of doing my work in life I was a feeble fellow, go back and +tell him that it is likely enough, yet I fail to see how it can be any +business of his, since it was only my work that I ever asked for +recognition. They say that I used to go about begging a dinner on the +strength of it. Did I?... I cannot remember. Anyhow, that nuisance is +over sometime ago, and _his_ kitchen is safe!" + +To you, who have followed the argument of this little book, the theory +of poetic "inspiration" will be intelligible enough. It earned a living +in its day and, if revived in ours, might happily supersede much modern +chatter about art and technique. For it contains much truth:-- + + _When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green + and gold, + The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould-- + They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink + and the anguish start, + For the Devil mutters behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"_ + +The philosophers did poetry no great harm by being angry with it as an +"inspired" thing: for that, in a measure, it happens to be. They did it +far more harm when they took it seriously and made it out to be a form +of _teaching_. For by the nature of things there happens to be something +of the pedant in every philosopher and the incurable propensity of the +pedant is to remove everything--but Literature especially--out of the +category to which it belongs and consider it in another with which it +has but a remote concern. (Thus a man will talk of Chaucer as though his +inflexions were the most important thing about him.) Now to acclaim +Homer as a great teacher, and use him in the schools, was right enough +so long as the Athenians remembered (and is right enough for us, so long +as we remember) _how_ he teaches us, or rather _educates_. What we have +described the Poet as doing for men--drawing forth the inner harmonies +of the soul and attuning them to the Universal--is _educative_ in the +truest sense as in the highest degree. So long as we remember this, the +old dispute whether the aim of Poetry be to teach or to delight is seen +to be futile: for she does both, and she does the one by means of the +other. On the other hand, you cannot leave a delicate instrument such as +Poetry lying within reach of the professional teacher; he will +certainly, at any risk of marring or mutilating, seize on it and use it +as a hammer to knock things into heads; if rebuked for this, plaintively +remonstrating, "But I thought you told me it was useful to teach with!" +(So Gideon taught the men of Succoth.) And therefore, we need not be +astonished: coming dawn to Strabo, to find him asserting that "the +ancients held poetry to be a kind of elementary philosophy, introducing +us from childhood to life and pleasureably instructing us in character, +behaviour and action." The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their +children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the +sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of +morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous: +for this same influencing of the soul--[Greek: _phychagoghia_] (a +beautiful word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the +mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of +children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning +them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers +of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the +face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine +amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to +be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he +tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that +which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in +respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the +Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare +the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet. And that mooving is of a +higher degree than teaching, it may by this appeare: that it is welnigh +the cause and the effect of teaching. For who will be taught, if hee bee +not mooved with desire to be taught?" Then, after a page devoted to +showing "which constant desire whosoever hath in him hath already past +halfe the hardness of the way," Sidney goes on: "Now therein of all +Sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit) is +our Poet the Monarch. For he dooth not only show the way, but giveth so +sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. +Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at +the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may +long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which +must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with +doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful +proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the +well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth +unto you: with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from +the chimney-corner." + + * * * * * + +"And with a tale, forsooth, he commeth to you."--For having stripped +the Idea bare, he has to reclothe it again and in such shape as will +strike forcibly on his hearer's senses. A while back we broke off midway +in a stanza of Sir John Davies. Let us here complete it. There are two +versions. As first Davies wrote:-- + + _This doth She when from things particular, + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which bodiless and immaterial are, + And can be lodged but only in our minds._ + +--the last two lines of which are weak and unnecessary. Revising the +stanza, he wrote:-- + + _This does She, when from individual states + She doth abstract the Universal kinds, + Which then reclothed in divers names and fates + Steal access through our senses to our minds,_ + +--which exactly describes the whole process. Having laid bare the Idea, +our Poet, turning from analysis to synthesis, proceeds to reclothe it in +new particulars of his own inventing, carefully chosen that they may +strike home hardest upon the hearer's perceptions. Now that which +strikes home hardest on a man is a tale which he can grasp by the +concretest images conveyed in the concretest language. '_Labor improbus +omnia vincit_' tells him not half so much as a tale of the labours of +Hercules; so he will learn more of patience from Job or Griselda; more +of chivalrous courage from Hector or Roland or Launcelot or the tale of +Palamon and Arcite; more of patriotism from the figures in +history--Leonidas, Horatius, Regulus, Joan of Arc, William Tell, +Garibaldi, Gordon--that have translated the Idea back into their own +lives with the noblest simplicity, so that we say of them that they are +"epical figures" or "figures worthy of romance," thereby paying them the +highest compliment in our power: yes and more of Christian simplicity +from my Uncle Toby, Colonel Newcome, even Mr. Pickwick; than from a +hundred copybook maxims concerning these virtues: all these figures +indeed illustrating the tritest copybook maxim of all--that "Example +is better than Precept." Thus Charles Lamb praises the Plays of +Shakespeare as "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a +withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all +sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, +generosity, humanity: for," say he, "of _examples_, teaching those +virtues, his pages are full." + + * * * * * + +The Poet then, having seized on the Idea and purged it of what is +trivial or accidental, reclothes it in a concrete dress and so +represents it to us. And you will generally remark in the very greatest +poets that not only are the images they represent to us extraordinarily +definite and concrete and therefore vivid--as Dante, for example, will +describe a Scene in Hell or in Paradise with as much particularity as +though he were writing a newspaper report; but this concreteness of +vision translates itself into a remarkable concreteness of speech. I +suppose there was never a more concrete writer than Shakespeare, and his +practice of translating all his idea into things which you can touch or +see grew steadily stronger throughout his career, so that any competent +critic can in a moment distinguish his later writing from his earlier by +its compression of images in words, its forcible concretion of the +various "parts of speech," its masterful _corvee_ of nouns substantive +to do the work of verbs, and so on. Even in very early work such as +_Venus and Adonis_ we cannot but note this gift of vision, how quick and +particular it is.... + + _Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper, peering through a wave, + Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in...._ + +But in his later plays--so fast the images teem--he has to reach out +among nouns, verbs, adverbs, with both strong hands, grasping what comes +and packing it ere it can protest. Take for example:-- + +_Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care._ + +Or-- + + _The multitudinous sea incarnadine, + Making the green one red._ + +Or-- + +_In the dark backward and abysm of time._ + +Or this from Lear:-- + + _My face I'll grime with filth, + Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots + And with presented nakedness outface + The winds and persecutions of the sky._ + +Or (for vividness) this, from _Antony and Cleopatra_, when Cleopatra +cries out and faints over Antony's body:-- + + _O! withered is the garland of the war, + The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls + Are level now with men; the odds is gone, + And there is nothing left remarkable + Beneath the visiting moon ..._ + +"Madam! Madam!" "Royal Egypt!" "Empress!" cry the waiting-maids as she +swoons. She revives and rebukes them:-- + + _No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded + By such poor passion as the maid that milks + And does the meanest chares. It were for me + To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods; + To tell them that this world did equal theirs + Till they had stolen my jewel._ + +When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth +and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can +show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with +milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can +reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and, +rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so +vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood, +against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's +ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has +lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that +name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser +one. + + * * * * * + +I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and +from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry: +between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the +formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged," +when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by +nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion, +which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as +a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a +member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says: +"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs +yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two +only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that +is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he +makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious +inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament +fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_" +said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio +ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the +Poet." + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetry, by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY *** + +***** This file should be named 11496.txt or 11496.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11496/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Susan Woodring and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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