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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/12896-8.txt b/12896-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3c48b2d --- /dev/null +++ b/12896-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5819 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays Æsthetical, by George Calvert + +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: Essays Æsthetical + +Author: George Calvert + +Release Date: July 12, 2004 [EBook #12896] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL + +by + +GEORGE H. CALVERT + + +1875 + + + + + CONTENTS. + + I. THE BEAUTIFUL + + II. WHAT IS POETRY? + + III. STYLE + + IV. DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS + + V. SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC + + VI. THOMAS CARLYLE + + VII. ERRATA + + VIII. NATIONAL DRAMA + + IX. USEFULNESS OF ART + + + + +ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL. + + + + +I. + +THE BEAUTIFUL. + + +The Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; it grows +not old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, and its life +runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As a subject for +exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, from the affluence +of its resources; difficult, from the exactions which its own spirit +makes in the use of them. + +Beauty--what is it? To answer this question were to solve more than +one problem. Shall we attempt what has been so often attempted and +never fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable. What though we +reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get near enough to +hearken to the throb of its power, and our minds will be nerved by the +approximation. + +To him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems with +beauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles, +wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is beauty. +It expects us at the dawn; it is about us, "an hourly neighbor," +through the day; at night it looks down on us from star-peopled +immensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing in sunsets, flashing +through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, irradiating sleep, it +is ever around, within us, eager to sweeten our labors, to purify our +thoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty, whereof the key +is in the human heart. + +But many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose +the precious key enfolded in their depths. Whole peoples are at this +moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. As with them now, so +in the remote primitive times of our own race, before history was, +nature was almost speechless to man. The earth was a waste, or but a +wide hunting ground or pasturage; and human life a round of petty +animal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond the field of the senses; +until there gradually grew up the big-eyed Greek and the deep-souled +Hebrew. Then, through creative thought,--that is, thought quickened +and exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful,--one little corner +of Europe became radiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens +of Parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their +eyes--opened from long sleep by inward stirring--were become as +mirrors, and gave back the light of nature: + + "Auxiliar light + Came from their minds, which on the setting sun + Bestowed new splendor."[1] + + [1] Wordsworth. + +And man, heated by the throbs of his swelling heart, made gods after +his own image,--forms of such life and power and harmony that the +fragments of them, spared by time, are still guarded as faultless +models of manhood. And the vales and groves and streams were peopled +with beauteous shapes. And the high places were crowned with temples +which, in their majestic purity, look as though they had been posited +there from above by heavenly hands. And by the teemful might of +sculptors and painters and poets the dim past was made resurgent and +present in glorious transfiguration. And the moral law was grasped at +by far-reaching philosophies. In this affluence of genial activity so +much truth was embodied in so much beauty, that by the products of the +Greek mind even the newer, the deeper, the wiser Christian spirit is +still instructed, still exalted. + +In Asia, too, a chosen people early made a revelation of the +beautiful. The Hebrews were introspective. At once ardent and +thoughtful, passionate and spiritual, their vigorous natures were +charged with fiery materials for inward conflicts. Out of the secret +chambers of troubled souls their poets and prophets sent forth cries +of despair and of exultation, of expostulation and self-reproach, that +ever find an echo in the conscience-smitten, sorrow-laden bosom of +man. The power and wisdom of God they saw as no other ancient people +had seen them. In the grandeurs and wonders of creation they could +behold the being and the might and the goodness of the Creator. The +strong, rich hearts of their seers yearned for a diviner life, in the +deep, true consciousness they felt that there can be peace and joy to +man only through reconcilement with God. And feeling their own +unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they +uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and +disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that +make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic +wail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense, +their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful +plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests +do the billows of a black, tempestuous sea. + +Save these two, no other nations of antiquity, except the Hindoos, +seem to have had more than a superficial susceptibility to the +beautiful. The Romans learnt the arts from the Greeks, whom they +imitated, at a wide distance, in poetry as well as in sculpture and +architecture. The remnants of art found in the valley of the Nile +prove the Egyptians to have had the germ without the vitality to +unfold it. In the literature of the Hindoos there are currents of pure +poetry and of biblical depth. In passing down from ancient to modern +times the Persians and the Arabians light the long way with +scintillations from the beautiful. + +The ugly semi-barbarian darkness of the Middle Ages in Europe was +first broken by the light that shone from the spires of Gothic +cathedrals in the eleventh century. About the twelfth century the +German mind was further illuminated by that mysterious, visionary, +titanic, Teutonic epic, the Niebelungen Lied; and a little later +appeared the troubadours in the south of Europe and the minnesingers +(love-singers) in Germany. Next came Dante and Giotto in Italy, then +Chaucer in England; so that by the end of the fourteenth century, +poetry and the arts, the offspring of the beautiful,--and who can have +no other parentage,--had established themselves in the modern European +mind, and have since, with varying vigor of life, upheld themselves +among Christian nations. To these they are now confined. In the most +advanced of Mahometan and heathen peoples sensibility to beauty is +hardly awakened, and among savages it seems scarcely to exist, so +deeply is it dormant. + +Thus to indicate when and by whom the beautiful has been recognized +will further us in the endeavor to learn wherein consists that which, +enriching the world of man so widely and plenteously, is deeply +enjoyed by so few. + +Were the beautiful, like size and shape and strength and nimbleness, +cognizable by intellectual perception, even the Hottentot would get to +know something of it in the forest, along with the grosser qualities +of trees and valleys. Were it liable to be seized by the discursive +and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or +general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the +Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have +been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is +_felt_, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its +presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous +sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. +When we exclaim, How beautiful! there is always emotion, and +delightful, expansive, purifying emotion. Whence this mysterious +cleansing thrill? Thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes, +ever springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all +things have their being. + +The beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot +demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it. +Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward +eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus +is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown +through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this +does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, +carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of +the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not +until then is its individuality and are its various physical +qualities, size, shape, etc., apprehended. And now the intellect +itself becomes a conductor, transmitting still deeper inward to the +seat of emotion the image of the object; and not until it reaches that +depth is its beauty recognized. + +In all her structures and arrangements Nature is definite, precise, +and economical. In subdivision of labor she is minute and absolute, +providing for every duty its special exclusive agent. In the mind +there is as severe a sundering of functions as in the body, and the +intellect can no more encroach upon or act for the mental +sensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the office of the +heart, or the liver that of the lungs. True, no ripe results in the +higher provinces of human life can be without intimate alliance +between the mental sensibilities and the intellect; nevertheless they +are in essence as distinct from one another as are the solar heat and +the moisture of the earth, without whose constant coöperation no grain +or fruit or flower can sprout or ripen. + +We live not merely in a world of material facts, and of objects and +things cognizable through the senses, but also in a spiritual world. +We live not only in presence of visible creation, but in presence of +the invisible Creator. With the creation we are in contact through the +intellect. Knowledge of all objects and the qualities of objects that +are within reach of the senses; distance and other material relations; +the bonds of cause and effect and of analogy, that bind all created +things in countless multiplicity of subtle relations,--these the +intellect gathers in its grasp. But with the Creator we are in +communication only through feeling. The presence, the existence of God +cannot by pure intellect be demonstrated: it must be felt in order to +be proved. The mass of objects and relations presented to us in nature +the intellect can learn, count, and arrange; but the life that +incessantly permeates the whole and every part, the spirit that looks +out from every object and every fact,--of the range and pitch of whose +power we have a faint token in the tornado and the earthquake,--of +this divine essence we should not have even an intimation through the +intellect alone. Not chemists, astronomers, mechanicians have uttered +the deepest thoughts about God, but prophets and poets: not Davys, but +Coleridges; not Herschels, but Wordsworths. It is a common belief, +indeed, that men addicted to the exact sciences are rather wanting +than otherwise in power to appreciate the invisible, a belief +pungently embodied by Wordsworth in the lines,-- + + "Physician art thou? one all eyes, + Philosopher! a fingering slave, + One that would peep and botanize + Upon his mother's grave?" + + +This is as much under the mark as is above it that saying of some one, +"An undevout astronomer is mad." A man's being endowed with rare +mathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout. +His gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual; and +nature being seldom profuse upon one individual,--as she was upon +Pascal and Newton,--the presumption as to an astronomer, of whom we +know nothing, would be that what may be termed his emotive +appreciation of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as +his intellectual. And no amount or quality of intellectual insight can +supply or compensate a want of sensibility. No matter how many +hundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space, he has still +to do with the visible and calculable. But religion is the putting of +the human mind in relation with the invisible, the incalculable. A man +gets no nearer to God through a telescope than through a microscope, +and no nearer through either than through the naked eye. Who cannot +recognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of +his own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus, or any +magnitude or arrangement of telescopic lenses. + +That we ever live not only in a material, but also in a spiritual +world, can be easily apprehended without at all entangling ourselves +in the web-work of metaphysics. The least of our acts or motions, is +it not always preceded by a thought, a volition, a something +intangible, invisible? All that we voluntarily do is, must be, an +offspring of mind. The waving of the hand is never a simple, it is a +compound process: mind and body, spirit and matter, concur in it. The +visible, corporeal movement is but the outward expression of an +inward, incorporeal movement. And so in all our acts and motions, from +birth till death; they issue out of the invisible within us; they are +feelings actualized, thoughts embodied. The embodiment is perishable, +the source of it imperishable. It is not a recondite, super-subtle, +metaphysical or psychological postulate, it is a palpable, and may be +and ought to be a familiar fact, that each one of us is ruled by the +eternal and invisible within us. + +Now, just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our mind, as +being the utterance and embodiment of that, so do we stand towards +Deity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and +will. As all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds, so ourselves +are manifestations of God. Through all things shines the eternal soul. +The more perfect the embodiment, the more translucent is the soul; and +when this is most transparent, making the body luminous with the +fullness of its presence, there is beauty, which may be said to be the +most intense and refined incarnation and exhibition of the divine +spirit. + +Behind and within every form of being is immanent the creative power; +and thence, in proportion as this power discloses itself, is object, +act, or emotion beautiful. Thus is beauty always spiritual, a +revelation more or less clear of the creative spirit. Hence our +emotion in presence of the truly beautiful, which calms and exalts us. +Hence evil never is, cannot be, beautiful: the bad is, must be, ugly. +Evil consists in the deficiency of the divine creative spirit, whose +fullness gives, is, beauty. Evil is imperfection, unripeness, +shapelessness, weakness in, or opposition to, the creative spirit. +Evil is life that is unhealthy, short-coming. Wherever there is full, +unperverted life, there is, there must be, beauty. The beautiful +blossoms on every stem of unpoisoned power. The sap of sound life ever +molds itself into forms of beauty. + +But however rich the exhibition of the divine soul, however glowing +with perfection the form, however noble the act and pure the feeling, +the richness, the perfection, the nobleness, the purity will be lost +on us, unless within us there be sympathy with the spirit whence they +flow. Only by spirit can spirit be greeted. + +Thus beauty only becomes visible--I might say only becomes actual--by +the fire kindled through the meeting of a perfection out of us and an +inward appetite therefor. And it is the flaming of this fire, thus +kindled, that lights up to us the whole world wherein we live, the +inward and the outward. This fire unlighted, and on the face of nature +there is darkness, in our own minds there is darkness. For though all +nature teems with the essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the +unkindled mind beauty is no more present then was Banquo's ghost to +the guests of Macbeth. Macbeth's individual conscience made him see +the ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is beauty +created there where, without what I may call the æsthetic conscience, +it no more exists than do the glories of Titian and Claude to the +affectionate spaniel who follows his master into a picture-gallery. To +the quadruped, by the organic limitation of his nature, dead forever +is this painted life. By the organic boundlessness of _his_ nature, +man can grasp the life of creation in its highest, its finest, its +grandest manifestations; and from these beauty is indivisible. +Wherever the divine energy is most subtle and expressive, there glows +ever, in its celestial freshness, the beautiful. + +Beauty is the happiest marriage between the invisible and the visible. +It may be termed the joyfullest look of God. Blessed is he who can +watch and reflect this radiant look. The faculties of such a one +become fortified by creative influx. Through the exquisite shock of +the beautiful he reaps an accession of mental magnetism. Thus through +the beautiful we commune the most directly with the divine; and, other +things being equal, to the degree that men respond to, are thrilled +by, this vivacity of divine presence, as announced by the beautiful, +to that degree are they elevated in the scale of being. + +Nature being minute and absolute in subdivision of function, the law +of severalty and independence--than which there is no law more +important and instructive--pervades creation. Thence the intellectual, +the religious, the true, the good, cannot interchange functions. A man +may be sincerely religious and do little for others, as is seen in +anchorites, and in many one-sided people, of Christian as well as of +Mahometan parentage, who are not anchorites. A man may be immensely +intellectual and not value truth. But neither a man's intellect, nor +his preference for truth, nor his benevolent nor his religious +sentiment, can yield its best fruit without the sunshine of the +beautiful. Sensibility to the beautiful--itself, like the others, an +independent inward power--stands to each one of them in a relation +different from that which they hold one to the other. The above and +other faculties _indirectly_ aid one the other, and to the complete +man their united action is needed; but feeling for the beautiful +_directly_ aids each one, aids by stimulating it, by expanding, by +purifying. + +To the action of every other faculty this one gives vividness and +grace. It indues each with privilege of insight into the _soul_ of the +object which it is its special office to master. By help of +sensibility to the beautiful we have inklings of the essence of +things, we sympathize with the inward life that molds the outward +form. Hence men highly gifted with this sensibility become creative, +in whatever province of work they strive; and no man in any province +is truly creative except through the subtle energy imparted to him by +this sensibility, this competence to feel the invisible in the +visible. + +The idea is the invisible; the embodiment thereof is the visible. +Hence the beautiful is always ideal; that is, it enfolds, embraces, +represents, with more or less success, the idea out of which springs +the object it illuminates: it brilliantly enrobes a germinal +essence. It is thus a sparkling emanation out of the Infinite, and it +leads us thither whence it has come. + +Sensibility to the beautiful is thus the light of the whole mind, +illuminating its labors. Without it we work in the dark, and therefore +feebly, defectively. Infer thence the immensity of its function. +Hereby it becomes the chief educator of men and of man; and where its +teaching has not been conspicuous, there no elevation has been +reached. The Greeks and the Hebrews would not have been so deeply, so +greatly, so feelingly known to us, would not have been the pioneers +and inspirers of European civilization, would not have lived on +through thousands of years in the minds of the highest men, had they +not, along with their other rare endowments, possessed, in superior, +in unique quality, this priceless gift of sensibility to the +beautiful. Through this gift Shakespeare is the foremost man of +England, and through it has done more than any other man to educate +and elevate England. Because the Italians of the fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries were so rich in this gift, therefore it is that +Italy is still a shrine to which the civilized world makes annual +pilgrimage. + +The supreme function of this sensibility is to develop, to +educate, to chasten the highest faculties, our vast discourse of +reason, our unselfish aspiration, our deep instinct of truth, our +capacious love. To educate these is its cardinal duty, and lacking +this they remain uneducated. But its beneficent influence is felt +likewise in the less elevated of our efforts. The man who makes shoes, +as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the builder of +houses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; the engineer, +as well as the artist, all work under the rays of this illuminator; +and, other things being equal, he excels all others on whose work +those rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force. + + "'T is the eternal law, + That first in beauty shall be first in might."[2] + + [2] Keats. + +In short, whatever the mental gift, in order to get from that gift its +best fruit, the possessor must be incited, upborne, enlightened, +inspired by the ideal, which burns as a transfiguring flame in his +mind, and throws thence its joyful light with every blow of his hand. + +All good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working with the +eternal mind; and work is good and productive in proportion to +the intensity of this coöperation. Why is it that we so prize a +fragment of Phidias, a few lines traced by Raphael? Because the minds +of those workers were, more than the minds of most others, in sympathy +with the Infinite mind. While at work their hands were more distinctly +guided by the Almighty hand; they felt and embodied more of the spirit +which makes, which is, life. + +Here is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, a +vocabulary. Of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling with +the pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with the +vocabulary you write an essay. And in each case you work well and +creatively, if your work be in harmony with God's laws, if your screen +be light, sightly, and protective, your dwelling healthful and +commodious, your sill lie solid and square, your essay be judicious +and sound. But if on the canvas you have a Christ's head by Leonardo, +out of the pile of stones a Strasburg Cathedral, from the block of +marble a Venus of Milo, with the vocabulary a tragedy of Hamlet, you +have works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the +vivid, impressive, instructive, never-wearying delight of the +works of nature. The men who wrought them were strong to do so through +the vigor of their sympathy with what Plato calls the formative +principle of the universe, they thereby becoming themselves creators, +that is, poets. And we sacredly guard their creations among our best +treasures of human gift, because they are so spiritually alive that +whenever we put ourselves in relation with them they animate us, they +spiritualize our thoughts; and this they do because the minds whence +they issued were radiant centers of ideal power, that is, power to +conceive the beautiful. + +But what is ideal power? the reader may ask. He might likewise ask, +What is moral power? And unless he has in his own mind some faculty of +moral estimation, no answer will help him. That which comes to us +through feeling cannot be intellectually defined, can only be +appreciated through feeling. By describing its effects and +accompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is. By means of a +foot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what is the +height of the Apollo Belvedere, and the exact length of the statue's +face; and each one can for himself verify the accuracy of your +statement. But not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can +you get the crowd to go along with you as to the Apollo's beauty. +Acknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and +a native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering. +Full and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very +beautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty +pre-attained idea of what is manly beauty. But after all, the want of +unanimity of assent to a moral or an æsthetic position, does it not +come from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained? +Assent even to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose +an ideal in the mind of him who assents? When you show by visible +measurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands +what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot +is; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. No tittle of +information, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you derive +from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic +contents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind an idea, +an ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot. + +Attempts to give a notion of what the beautiful is, by +enumerating some of the physical conditions that are found to be +present in artistic figures or persons distinguished for beauty, or +attempts to produce what shall be beautiful, by complying with these +conditions, come no nearer to the aim than do compounded mineral +waters to the briskness and flavor of a fresh draught from the +original spring. In the analysis there may be no flaw; the ingredients +are chemically identical in quality and proportion; but the nameless, +inimitable, inscrutable life is wanting: the mixing has been done by a +mechanical, not by a creative hand. Haydon says, "The curve of the +circle is excess, the straight line is deficiency, the ellipsis is the +degree between, and that curve, added to or united with proportion, +regulates the form and features of a perfect woman." Mr. D.R. Hay, in +a series of books, professes to have discovered the principles of +beauty in the law of harmonic ratio, without, however, "pretending," +as he modestly and wisely declares, "to give rules for that kind of +beauty which genius alone can produce in high art." The discovery of +Mr. Hay is curious and fascinating, and, like the announcement of +Haydon, may give practical hints to artists and others. But no +intellectual process or ingenuity can make up for the absence of +emotional warmth and refined selection. "Beauty, the foe of excess and +vacuity, blooms, like genius, in the equilibrium of all the forces," +says Jean Paul. "Beauty," says Hemsterhuis, "is the product of the +greatest number of ideas in the shortest time," which is like the +Italian definition, _il piu nel uno_, unity in multiplicity, believed +by Coleridge to contain the principle of beauty. On another page of +the "Table Talk" Coleridge is made to say, "You are wrong in resolving +beauty into expression or interest; it is quite distinct; indeed, it +is opposite, although not contrary. Beauty is an immediate presence, +between which and the beholder _nihil est_. It is always one and +tranquil; whereas the interesting always disturbs and is disturbed." +Hegel, in his "Æsthetic," defines natural beauty to be "the idea as +immediate unity, in so far as this unity is visible in sensuous +reality." And a few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct, +calling the beautiful "the sensuous shining forth of the idea." And +Schelling, in his profound treatise on "The Relation of the Plastic +Arts to Nature," says, "The beautiful is beyond form; it is substance, +the universal; it is the look and expression of the spirit of +Nature." Were it not better and more precise to say that it is to us +the look and expression of the spiritual when this is peering through +choicest embodiments? But we will stop with definitions. After +endeavoring, by means of sentences and definitions to get a notion of +the beautiful, one is tempted to say, as Goethe did when "the idea of +the Divinity" was venturously mentioned to him by Eckermann, "Dear +child, what know we of the idea of the Divinity? and what can our +narrow ideas tell of the Highest Being? Should I, like a Turk, name it +with a hundred names, I should still fall short, and, in comparison +with the infinite attributes, have said nothing." + +We have called the beautiful the light of the mind; but there must be +mind to be illuminated. If your torch be waved in a chamber set round +with bits of granite and slate and pudding-stone, you will get no +luminous reverberation. But brandish it before rubies and emeralds and +diamonds! The qualities in the mind must be precious, in order that +the mind become radiant through beauty. To take a broad example. + +The Hindoos in their organization have a fine sense of the +beautiful, but they lack mental breadth and bottom; and hence their +life and literature are not strong and manifold, although in both +there are exhibitions of that refinement which only comes of +sensibility to the beautiful. The Chinese, on the other hand, are +wanting in this sensibility; hence their prosaic, finite civilization. +But most noteworthy is the contrast between them in religious +development. In that of the Hindoos there was expansion, vastness, +self-merging in infinitude; the Chinese are religiously contracted, +petty, idolatrous; a contrast which I venture to ascribe, in large +measure, to the presence in the one case, and the absence in the +other, of the inspiration of the beautiful. + +To the same effect individual examples might be cited innumerable. +Look at Wordsworth and Byron, both preeminent for sensibility to the +beautiful; but, from deep diverseness in other leading mental gifts, +the one, through the light of this vivifying power, became a poet of +the propensities and the understanding, a poet of passion and wit; the +other, a poet of the reason, a poet of nature and meditative emotion. + +To do their best the moral feelings, too, need the light and inward +stimulus of the beautiful; but if these feelings are by nature +weak, no strength or intensity of the sense of beauty will have power +to get from a mind thus deficient high moral thought or action. If +there be present the accomplishment of verse, we shall have a Byron; +or, the other poetic gifts in full measure, with lack of this +accomplishment, and we may get a Beckford, who builds Fonthill Abbeys, +and with purity and richness of diction describes palaces, actual or +feigned, and natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow; or, +the intellectual endowments being mediocre, we shall have merely a man +of superficial taste; or, the moral regents being ineffective, an +intellectual sybarite, or a refined voluptuary. Like the sun, the +beautiful shines on healthful field and poisonous fen; and her warmth +will even make flowers to bloom in the fen, but it is not in her to +make them bear refreshing odors or nourishing fruit. + +As men have body, intellect, and moral natures, so is there physical, +intellectual, and spiritual beauty, and each distinct from the others. +Take first a few examples from the domain of art. The body and limbs +of the Gladiator in the Louvre may be cited as the exponent of +corporeal beauty; the face of the Apollo Belvedere as that of +intellectual and physical; and the Santo Sisto Madonna of Raphael, and +the Christ of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, for spiritual. +Through these radiant creations we look into the transcendent minds of +their artists with a chastened, exalting joy, not unmingled with pride +in our brotherhood with such beauty-lifted co-workers with God. + +Among the higher races, life is affluent in examples of the three +kinds of beauty, two of them, and even all three, at times united in +one subject. Children and youth offer the most frequent instances of +physical beauty. Napoleon's face combined in high degree both physical +and intellectual, without a trace of moral beauty. Discoveries in +science, and the higher scientific processes, as likewise broad and +intense intellectual action, exemplify often intellectual beauty. Of +moral beauty history preserves examples which are the brightest +jewels, and the most precious, in the casket of mankind's memory; +among the most brilliant of which are the trust of Alexander, when he +drank the draught from the hand of his physician, though warned that +it was poisoned; the fidelity of the paroled Regulus, returning from +Rome to the enemy into the jaws of a certain and cruel death; +Sir Philip Sidney, wounded unto death, taking the cup of water +untasted from his parched lips, to give it to a dying soldier; Luther +at the Diet of Worms; the public life of Washington; the life and +death of Socrates, and especially that last act of washing his body to +save the women the trouble of washing it a few hours later, when it +would be a corpse; and, lastly, that most beautiful of lives and most +sublime of deaths, which live in the heart of Christendom as its +exemplar and ever fresh ideal. + +There is no province of honorable human endeavor, no clean inlet +opened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings, into which from +that vast, deep, oceanic spring, the human soul, the beautiful does +not send its fructifying tides. There is no height in history but is +illuminated by its gleam. Only through the beautiful can truth attain +its full stature; only through the beautiful can the heart be +perfectly purified; only with vision purged by the beautiful can +anything be seen in its totality. All other faculties it makes +prolific; it is the mental generator. It helps to unveil, and then +welds, the link between the visible and the invisible. It inspires +feeling (which is ever the source of deepest insight) to discover +excellence; it quickens the mind to creative activity; it is +forever striving upward. Without the spiritual fervor of the +beautiful, your religion is narrow and superstitious, your science +cramped and mortal, your life unripened. In the mind it kindles a +flame that discloses the divinity there is in all things. Lightning +bares to the awed vision the night-shrouded earth; more vivid than +lightning, the flash of the beautiful reveals to the soul the presence +of God. + + + + +II. + +WHAT IS POETRY? + + +The better to meet the question, _What_ is poetry? we begin by putting +before it another, and ask, _Where_ is poetry? Poetry is in the mind. +Landscapes, rainbows, sunsets, constellations, these exist not to the +stag, the hare, the elephant. To them nature has no aspects, no +appearances modified by feeling. Furnished with neither combining +intellect nor transmuting sensibility, they have no vision for aught +but the proximate and immediate and the animally necessary. Corporeal +life is all their life. Within the life of mind poetry is born, and in +the best and deepest part of that life. + +The whole world outside of man, and, added to this, the wider world of +his inward motions, whether these motions interact on one another or +be started and modified by what is without them, all this--that is, +all human life, in its endless forms, varieties, degrees, all that can +come within the scope of man--is the domain of poetry; only, to +enjoy, to behold, to move about in, even to enter this domain, the +individual man must bear within him a light that shall transfigure +whatever it falls on, a light of such subtle quality, of such +spiritual virtue, that wherever it strikes it reveals something of the +very mystery of being. + +In many men, in whole tribes, this light is so feebly nourished that +it gives no illumination. To them the two vast worlds, the inner and +the outer, are made up of opaque facts, cognizable, available, by the +understanding, and by it handled grossly and directly. Things, +conditions, impressions, feelings, are not taken lovingly into the +mind, to be made there prolific through higher contacts. They are not +dandled joyfully in the arms of the imagination. Imagination! Before +proceeding a step further,--nay, in order that we be able to proceed +safely,--we must make clear to ourselves what means this great word, +imagination. + +The simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects. Having +perceived an object several times, the intellect lifts itself to a +higher process, and knows it when it sees it again, remembers it. +_Perception_ is the first, the simplest, the initiatory intellectual +process, _memory_ is the second. Higher than they, and rising +out of them, is a third process, the one whereby are modified and +transmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered. +A mother, just parted from her child, recalls his form and face, +summons before _her mind's eye_ an image of him; and this image is +modified by her feelings, she seeing him in attitudes and relations in +which she had never seen him before, cheerful or sad according to her +mood. This she could not do by aid of memory alone; she could not vary +the impress of her boy left on the brain; she could not vividly +reproduce it in shifting, rapidly successive conditions; she could not +modify and diversify that impress; in a word, she could not liberate +it. Memory could only re-give her, with single, passive fidelity, what +she had seen, unmodified, motionless, unenlivened, like a picture of +her boy on canvas. Urge intellectual activity to the phase above +memory, and the mental image steps out from its immobility, becomes a +changeful, elastic figure, brightened or darkened by the lights and +shadows cast by the feelings; the intellect, quick now with plastic +power, varying the image in position and expression, obedient +to the demands of the feelings, of which it is ever the ready +instrument. This third process is _imagination_. + +Through this mode of intellectual action the materials gathered in the +mind are endlessly combined and modified. In all intellectual +activity, beyond bare perception and memory, imagination in some +degree is and must be present. It is in fact the mind handling its +materials, and in no sphere, above the simplest, can the mind move +without this power of firmly holding and molding facts and relations, +phenomena and interior promptings and suggestions. To the forensic +reasoner, to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere, such a +power is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver +of fictions. Imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the +most intense action, of the intellect. + +When I run over in my mind, and in the order of their service, the +first seven presidents of the United States, Washington, Adams, +Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, I exert only memory. The +moment I begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to give the +character of any of them, I put into play the higher, the imaginative +action; for, to draw an historical character, the facts collected by +memory must be shaped and colored and organized, the details +gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, which being a +mere tool, the success of the result (the tool being of a temper to do +the work laid on it) will depend on the quality of the powers that +handle it, that is, on the writer's gifts of sympathy. + +The degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be +called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is that +the word _imagination_ has come to be appropriated to the highest +exercise of the power, that, namely, which is accomplished by those +few who, having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with +sensibility to the beautiful, are hereby stimulated to mold and shape +into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the +material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness. +In strictness, this exaltation of intellectual action should be called +_poetic_ imagination. + +To imagine is, etymologically speaking, _with_ the mind to form _in_ +the mind an image; that is, by inward power to produce an interior +form, a something substantial made out of what we term the +unsubstantial. To imagine is thus always, in a certain sense, to +create; and even men of dullest mentality have this power in +_kind_. The _degree_ in which men have it makes one of the chief +differences among them. The power is inherent, is implied in the very +existence of the human mind. When it is most lively the mind creates +out of all it feels and hears and sees, taking a simple sight or hint +or impression or incident, and working out images, making much out of +little, a world out of an atom. Akin herein to the supreme creative +might, the man of highest imagination, the poet, unrolls out of his +brain, through vivid energy, new worlds, peopled with thought, +throbbing with humanity. + +When we imagine, therefore, we hold an image in the mind, grasping it +with spiritual fingers, just as by our corporeal fingers a physical +substance is grasped. Now the poetic mind in handling the image tosses +it with what might be called a sportive earnest delight, and through +this power and freedom of _play_ elicits by sympathetic fervor, from +its very core, electric rays, wherein the subject glows like the +sculpture on an inwardly illuminated urn; rare insights being thus +vouchsafed to clearest imaginative vision,--insights gained never but +through sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations +after, and gleaming glimpses of, the absolute and ideal, the intellect +being used as an obedient cheerful servant. + +The sensibility that is so finely strung as to have these glimpses, +revels in them as its fullest happiness, and with its whole might +seeks and courts them. Hence the mind thus privileged to live nearer +than others to the absolutely true, the spiritual ideal, is ever +plying its privilege: conceiving, heightening, spiritualizing, +according to the vision vouchsafed it; through this vision beholding +everywhere a better and fairer than outwardly appears; painting nature +and humanity, not in colors fictitious or fanciful, but in those +richer, more lucent ones which such minds, through the penetrating +insight of the higher imagination, see more truly as they are than +minds less creatively endowed. + +Thus is imagination a power inherent in, essential to, all +intellectual action that ranges above simple perception and memory; a +power without which the daily business of life even could not go on, +being that power whereby the mind manipulates, so to speak, its +materials. In its higher phasis it may be defined as the intellect +stimulated by feeling to multiply its efforts for the ends of feeling; +and in its highest it may be said to be intellect winged by +emotion to go forth and gather honey from the bloom of creation. + +Imagination, then, being intellect in keenest chase, and the +intellectual part of the mind being, when moved in concert with the +effective part, but a tool of this, what are the feelings or +conditions of feeling of which intellect becomes the instrument in the +production of poetry? + +Cast your look on a page filled with the titles of Shakespeare's +plays. What worlds of throbbing life lie behind that roll! Then run +over the persons of a single drama: that one bounded inclosure, how +rich in variety and intensity, and truth of feeling! And when you +shall have thus cursorily sent your mind through each and all, tragic, +comic, historic, lyric, you will have traversed in thought, +accompanied by hundreds of infinitely diversified characters, wide +provinces of human sorrow and joy. Why are these pictures of passion +so uniquely prized, passed on from generation to generation, the most +precious heir-loom of the English tongue, to-day as fresh as on the +morning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were +first written? Because they have in them more fullness and fineness +and fidelity than any others. The poet has more life in him +than other men, and Shakespeare has in him more life than any other +poet, life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union +with power of sympathy, the embodiments whereof are rounded, enlarged, +refined, made translucent by that gift of _sensibility to the fair and +perfect_[3] whereby, according to its degree, we are put in more +loving relation to the work of God, and gain the clearest insights +into his doings and purposes; a gift without which in richest measure +Shakespeare might have been a notable historian or novelist or +philosopher, but never the supreme poet he is. + + [3] See preceding Essay. + +When Coriolanus, having led the Volscians to Rome, encamps under its +walls, and the Romans, in their peril and terror, send to him a +deputation to move him from his vengeful purpose, the deputies,--the +foremost citizens of Rome and the relations and former friends of +Coriolanus,--having "declared their business in a very modest and +humble manner," he is described by Plutarch as stern and austere, +answering them with "much bitterness and high resentment of the +injuries done him." What was the temper as well as the power of +Coriolanus, we learn distinctly enough from these few words of +Plutarch. But the task of the poet is more than this. To our +imagination, that is, to the abstracting intellect roused by sympathy +to a semi-creative state, he must present the haughty Roman so as to +fill us with an image of him that shall in itself embody that +momentous hour in the being of the young republic. He must dilate us +to the dimensions of the man and the moment; he must so enlarge and +warm our feeling that it shall take in, and delight in, the grandeur +of the time and the actors. The life of Rome, of Rome yet to be so +mighty, is threatened by one of her own sons. This vast history, to be +for future centuries that of the world, a Roman seemed about to +quench, about to rase the walls that were to embrace the imperial +metropolis of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of what gigantic dimensions +must he be, this Roman! Now hear Menenius, a former friend and admirer +of Coriolanus, depict him. Having described, in those compressed +sinewy phrases which Shakespeare has at command, the change in his +nature, he adds, "When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the +ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a +corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a +battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he +bids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god +but eternity and a heaven to throne in." + +Hear how a mother's heart, about to break, from the loss of her son, +utters its grief when it has the privilege of using a voice quivering +with poetic fervor. The French king bids Lady Constance be comforted: +she answers,-- + + "No, I defy all counsel, all redress, + But that which ends all counsel, true redress, + Death, death. O amiable lovely death! + Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness! + Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, + Thou hate and terror to prosperity, + And I will kiss thy detestable bones; + And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows; + And ring these fingers with thy household worms; + And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, + And be a carrion monster like thyself: + Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st: + And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love, + O, come to me!" + +In these two passages from "Coriolanus" and "King John" what +magnificence of hyperbole! The imagination of the reader, swept on +from image to image, is strained to follow that of the poet. +And yet, to the capable, how the pile of amplification lifts out the +naked truth. Read these passages to a score of well-clad auditors, +taken by chance from the thoroughfare of a wealthy city, or from the +benches of a popular lecture-room. To the expanded mold wherein the +passages are wrought, a few--five or six, perhaps, of the +twenty--would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing the +poet's climax. To some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive +extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by, +the poetically imaginative light. And to some they would be grossly +unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to +them unnatural or affected. + +Now, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source? By +these passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and are +pitched to a high key. A very comprehensive word is feelings. What is +the nature of those feelings thus wrought upon? + +The elementary feelings of our nature, when in healthful function, are +capable of emitting spiritual light; and, when exalted to their purest +action, do and must emit such, the inward fire sending forth clear +flame unmixed with smoke. To perceive this light, and, still +more, to have your path illuminated thereby, implies the present +activity of some of the higher human sensibilities; and to be so +organized as to be able to embody in words, after having imagined, +personages, conditions, and conjunctions whence this light shall flash +on and ignite the sensibilities of others, implies, besides vivid +sympathies and delight in the beautiful, a susceptibility to the +manifestations of moral and intellectual life which is enjoyed only by +him in whom the nobler elements of being are present in such +intensity, proportions, and quality, and are so commingled, that he +can reproduce life itself with translucent truthfulness, he becoming, +through this exalting susceptibility, poet or maker. + +What constitutes the wealth of human life? Is it not fullness and +richness of feeling? To refine this fullness, to purify this richness, +to distill the essence out of this wealth, to educate the feelings by +revealing their subtle possibilities, by bringing to light the +divinity there is within and behind them, this is the poet's part; and +this, his great part, he can only do by being blest with more than +common sympathy with the spirit of the Almighty Creator, and thence +clearer insight into his work and will. Merely to embody in +verse the feelings, thoughts, deeds, scenes of human life, is not the +poet's office; but to exhibit these as having attained, or as capable +of attaining, the power and beauty and spirituality possible to each. +The glorifier of humanity the poet is, not its mere reporter; that is +the historian's function. The poet's business is not with facts as +such, or with inferences, but with truth of feeling, and the very +spirit of truth. His function is ideal; that is, from the prosaic, the +individual, the limited, he is to lift us up to the universal, the +generic, the boundless. In compassing this noble end he may, if such +be his bent, use the facts and feelings and individualities of daily +life; and, by illuminating and ennobling them he will approve his +human insight, as well as his poetic gift. + +The generic in sentiment, the universal, the infinite, can only be +reached and recognized through the higher feelings, through those +whose activity causes emotion. The simple impulses, the elementary +loves, are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct; but +growing round the very fountain of life, having their roots +in the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond their +individual limits, and this they do with power when under their sway +the whole being is roused and expanded. When by their movement the +better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, as in the story +of Damon and Pythias, the reader or beholder is lifted into the +atmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse has reached its +acme of function, and playing in the noonday of the beautiful, the +contemplation of it purges and dilates us. We are upraised to the +disinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood there is ever +imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. It is not +extravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful, +it resounds through the whole being, tuning it like a high strain of +sweetest music. Thus in the poetical (and there is no poetry until the +sphere of the beautiful is entered) there is always a reverberation +from the emotional nature. Reverberation implies space, an ample vault +of roof or of heaven. In a tight, small chamber there can be none. If +feeling is shut within itself, there is no reëcho. Its explosion must +rebound from the roomy dome of sentiment, in order that it become +musical. + +The moment you enter the circle of the beautiful, into which +you can only be ushered by a light within yourself, a light kindled +through livelier recognition of the divine spirit,--the moment you +draw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged, spiritualized, +buoyed above the self. No matter how surrounded, or implicated, or +enthralled, while you are there, be it but for a few moments, you are +liberated. + + "No more--no more--oh! never more on me + The freshness of the heart can fall like dew, + Which out of all the lovely things we see + Extracts emotions beautiful and new, + Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee. + Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew? + Alas! 't was not in them, but in thy power + To double even the sweetness of a flower." + + "All who joy would win + Must share it; happiness was born a twin." + + "He entered in the house,--his home no more, + For without hearts there is no home--and felt + The solitude of passing his own door + Without a welcome; _there_ he long had dwelt, + There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er, + There his worn, bosom and keen eye would melt + Over the innocence of that sweet child, + His only shrine of feelings undefiled." + +These three passages are from a poem in which there is more wit than +poetry, and more cynicism than either; a poem in spirit unsanctified, +Mephistophelian, written by a man of the world, a terrible +egotist, _blasé_ already in early manhood, in whose life, through +organization, inherited temperament, and miseducation, humanity was so +cramped, distorted, envenomed, that the best of it was in the fiery +sway of the more urgent passions, his inmost life being, as it must +always be with poets, inwoven into his verse. From the expiring +volcano in his bosom his genius, in this poem, casts upon the world a +lurid flame, making life look pale or fever-flushed. With unslumbering +vivacity, human nature is exhibited in that misleading light made by +the bursting of half-truths that relate to its lower side, a light the +more deceptions from the sparkling accompaniment of satire and wit. + +Above the pungent secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the +specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping +personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute +the successive cantos of "Don Juan," the passages just quoted and +similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the +discontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd self-seekings of a +heated, noisy city rises a Gothic spire, aspiring, beautiful, drawing +most of its beauty from its aspiration, on whose pinnacle, calmly +glistening in the upper air, plays the coming and the parting day, +while shadows fill the streets below, and whose beauty throws over the +town a halo that beckons men from afar. The spire, in its steadfast +tranquillity and its beauty, so unlike the restless wrangling +dissonance below it, grew nevertheless out of the same hearts that +make the dissonance, and, typifying what is spiritual and eternal in +them, tends by its ideal presence to enlarge and uplift those by whose +eyes it is sought. These upshootings in "Don Juan" irradiate the +cantos, giving an attractiveness which draws to them eyes that +otherwise would not have known them; and if too pure in their light +and too remote to mingle directly with the flare and flash that dazzle +without illuminating, silently they shine and steadily, an unconscious +heavenly influence, above these coruscations of earthly +thoughts,--thoughts telling from their lively numerousness, but +neither grand nor deep. + +From the same solar center fall frequently single rays that make lines +and stanzas glisten, and but for which this poem, lacking their +perfusive light, would soon pass into oblivion; for from the +beautiful it is that the satire, the wit, the voluptuousness get their +sparkle and their sheen. If passages morally censurable are hereby +made more captivating, we are not content with saying that God's sun +fructifies and beautifies poison-oak and hemlock; but we affirm that +the beautiful, being by its nature necessarily pure, communicates of +its quality to whoever becomes aware of it, and thus in some measure +counterweighs the lowering tendency. Moreover, the morally bad, +deriving its character of evil from incompleteness, from the arresting +or the perversion of good, like fruit plucked unripe, and being +therefore outside the pale of the beautiful (the nature of which is +completeness, fullness, perfection of life) cannot by itself be made +captivating through the beautiful. Iago and Edmund are poetical as +parts of a whole; and when in speech they approach the upper region of +thought, it is because the details allotted to them have to be highly +wrought for the sake of the general plot and effect, and further, +because humanity and truth speak at times through strange organs. +Besides, the ideal may be used to show more glaringly the hideousness +of evil, and thence Iago and Edmund, as ideal villains, through the +very darkness in which only poetic art could have enveloped them, help +us by indirection to see and value the lights that surround the noble +and the good. + +In healthy function all the feelings are pure and moral, those whose +action is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at +their highest with the spiritual, for performance whose compass +reaches beyond an individual, momentary good. A burglar or a murderer +may exhibit courage; but here, a manly quality backing baseness and +brutality for selfish, short-sighted ends, there is an introverted and +bounded action, no expansive upward tendency, and thence no poetry. +But courage, when it is the servant of principle for large, unselfish +ends, becomes poetical, exhibiting the moral beautiful, as in the +fable of Curtius and the fact (or fable) of Winkelried. In the +poetical there is always enlargement, exaltation, purification; animal +feeling, self-seeking propensity, becoming so combined with the higher +nature as to rise above themselves, above the self. + +The lioness, pursuing the robber of her cub, if in her rage she +scarcely heed that he (to stay her steps) has dropped the cub in her +path, but, casting at it a glance of recognition, bounds with a +wilder howl after the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an +exhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most +unpoetical. But let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the +robber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine +tenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards her. +Through the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream of white +light, gushing from one of the purest fountains: wrathful fury is +suddenly subdued by love. A moment before she was possessed with +savage fierceness, her blood boiling with hate and revenge; now it +glows with a mother's joy. Her nature rises to the highest whereof it +is capable. It is the poetry of animalism. + +In the poetical, thought is amplified and ripened, while purified, in +the calm warmth of emotion. From being emotive, poetry draws in more +of the man, and higher, finer powers, than prose. The poetical has, +must have, rotundity. No poet ever had a square head. Prose, in its +naked quality, is to poetry what a skeleton is to a moving, +flesh-and-spirit-endowed body. From the skeleton you can learn +osteology, but neither æsthetics nor human nature. Imaginative prose +partakes of the spiritual character of poetry. When a page is +changed from poetry into prose it is flattened, deadened; when from +prose into poetry it is uplifted, enlivened. You get a something else +and a something more. Reduced to plain prose, the famous passage from +the mouth of Viola in "Twelfth Night" would read somewhat thus: "My +father had a daughter who loved a man and would let no one know of her +love, but concealed it, until her cheek grew pale with grief, +patiently bearing within her bosom the misery of an untold +attachment." Now hear the poet:-- + + "She never told her love, + But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, + Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought: + And with a green and yellow melancholy + She sat like patience on a monument, + Smiling at grief." + +What has been done with the prose statement? Instead of a bare fact we +have a picture, a twofold picture; and this, in its compact, fresh, +rose-tinted vividness, carries the whole into our hearts with a +tenfold success. Through emotional joy we apprehend, as by the light +of an instantaneous ignition, the state of the sufferer. The +prose-report is a smoldering fire on the hearth, through whose sleepy +smoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic is the flame in +full fervor, springing upward, illuminating, warming the heart, +delighting the intellect. The imagination of the reader, quickened by +illustrations so apt and original, is by their beauty tuned to its +most melodious key, while by the rare play of intellectual vitality +his mind is dilated. He has become mentally a richer man, enriched +through the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities, and +the activity imparted to his intellect. + +To say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is an +idiot; that is, one lacking the inward force and the inward +instruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from without +by perception and memory, and from within by consciousness. To say of +a poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say he is no +poet. What is poetic imagination? This, for our theme, is a vital +question. Can there be given to it an approximate answer? + +Figure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a +September sunset near the sea, the eye taking in at once ocean and a +variegated landscape. The company must not be a score of tawny +American aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals +whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or +luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture; +but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons +whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the +wonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled +sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may +be thrown upon it; in short, a score of cultivated adults. The +impression made by such a scene on such a company is heightened by a +rare atmospheric calm. The heart of each gazer fills with emotion, at +first unutterable except by indefinite exclamation; when one of the +company says,-- + + "A fairer face of evening cannot be." + +These words, making a smooth iambic line, give some utterance, and +therefore some relief, to the feeling of all. Then another adds,-- + + "The holy time is quiet as a nun + Breathless with adoration." + +Instantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking sun, is +flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a spiritual light. +The scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens +had opened, and inundated all its features with a celestial +subtilizing aura. How has this been accomplished? The first line has +little of the quality of poetic imagination. + + "A fairer face of evening cannot be." + +is simple and appropriate, but in it there is no fresh glow, no +mysterious throb. Above the level of this line rise suddenly the first +three words of the second, "the holy time." The presence of a scene +where sky, earth, and ocean combine for the delight of the beholders +puts them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo. +That the time is holy they all feel; and now, to make its tranquillity +appreciable by filling the heart with it, the poet adds--"is quiet as +a nun breathless with adoration." By this master-stroke of poetic +power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed into, +super-earthly calm. By a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is +set æsthetically aglow, as by the beams of the setting sun the +landscape is physically. By an exceptionally empowered hand the soul +is strung to a high key. Fullness and range of sensibility open to the +poet[4] a wide field of illustration; its exacting fineness reveals +the one that carries his thought into the depths of the +reader's mind, bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen +intellectual power in the service of pure emotion. + + [4] Wordsworth. + +Take now other samples from the treasury of choicest poetry. Here is +one from Coleridge:-- + + "And winter, slumbering in the open air, + Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring." + +Here again the intellect is urged to its highest action, the abstract +or imaginative action, to do the hests of a sensibility so finely +wrought by the inward impulsion to seek for the most exquisite that +nature can furnish, that it yields similitudes most delicate, most +apt, most expressive. + +Milton thus opens the fifth book of "Paradise Lost:"-- + + "Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime + Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl." + +Shakespeare makes Romeo describe daybreak:-- + + "And jocund day + Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." + +Keats begins "Hyperion" with these lines: + + "Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, + Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn." + +In the Monody on Keats, Shelley, describing the lamentation of +nature at his death, concludes a stanza as follows:-- + + "Morning sought + Her eastern watch-tower, and, her hair unbound, + Wet with the tears that should adorn the ground, + Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; + Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, + Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, + And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay." + +Such passages are the very flower of poetry, thought exquisitely dyed +in sentiment, laying suddenly bare a picture with so much light in it +that each passage irradiates its page and the reader's mind. By their +happiness the similitudes emphasize and enforce the thought; and they +do a higher service than this; for, being a breath from the inner life +of genius, they blow power into the reader. To translate these +passages into prose were like trying to translate a lily into the mold +out of which it springs, or a bar of Beethoven into the sounds of the +forum, or the sparkle of stars into the warmth of a coal fire. + +The best poetry has a far background; it comes out of deeps within the +poet, unfathomed by himself, unfathomable. He feels more than he can +express. Hence the imaginative poet always suggests, revealing enough +to inspirit the reader's higher faculties to strive for more; +not because, with artistic design, he leaves much untold, which he +often does, but because through imaginative susceptibility he at times +grasps at and partly apprehends much that cannot be embodied. He feels +his subject more largely and deeply than he can see or represent it. +To you his work is suggestive because to him the subject suggested +more than he could give utterance to. Every subject, especially every +subject of poetic capability, having infinite relations, he who most +apprehends this boundlessness--and indeed because he does apprehend +it--can do or say what will open it to you or me; and the degree of +his genius is measured by the extent to which he can present or expose +it. The unimaginative gives surface-work, and, suggesting nothing, is +at once exhausted. + +The poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has at +his command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of +an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps +feeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we +look. Sometimes epithets are brighter than their object; the +unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of +deriving it. To be lasting, the light of the epithet must be struck by +the imagination out of its object. The inspired poet finds a word so +sympathetic with the thought that it caresses and hugs it. + +Depth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic +imagination. The love of the beautiful, wielding a keen intellect, +needs furthermore rich material to mold, and only out of the poet's +individual resources can this be drawn. To make a high artist, you +must have very much of a man. Behind "Paradise Lost" and "Samson +Agonistes" is a big Miltonic man. The poet has to put a great deal of +himself, and the best of him, into his work; thence, for high poetry, +there must be a great deal of high self to put in. He must coin his +soul, and have a large soul to coin; the best work cannot be made out +of materials gathered by memory and fancy. His stream of thought must +flow from springs, not from reservoirs. Hence the universal +biographical interest in such men; they have necessarily a rich +personality. + +The passages I have cited are all pictures of outward nature, natural +scenes mirrored on the mind, or rather refracted through it, and in +the act transfigured, spiritualized; for such scenes, having +the fortune to fall on the minds of poets, are reproduced with joyful +revelation of their inmost being, as sunbeams are through a crystal +prism. Exhibiting material nature spiritualized, well do these +passages show the uplifting character of poetic imagination. But this +displays a higher, and its highest power when, striking like a +thunderbolt into the core of things, it lays bare mysteries of God and +of the heart which mere prosaic reason cannot solve or approach, +cannot indeed alone even dimly apprehend. + +I will now quote passages, brief ones, wherein through the poet are +opened vast vistas into the shining universe, or is concentrated in +single or few lines the life of man's finer nature, as in the diamond +are condensed the warmth and splendor that lie latent in acres of +fossil carbon. + +When, in the sixth book of "Paradise Lost," Milton narrates the +arrival on the battle-field of the Son,-- + + "Attended by ten thousand thousand saints," + +and then adds:-- + + "Far off his coming shone," + +in these five short words is a sudden glare of grandeur that dilates +the capable mind with light, and, as the sublime always does, with +awe. + +When Ferdinand, in "The Tempest," leaps "with hair up-staring" +into the sea, crying,-- + + "Hell is empty, + And all the devils are here," + +the mind is suddenly filled with an image of the tumult and flaming +rage of a thunder-storm at sea, such as words have never elsewhere +carried. What a reach in the imaginative stroke! In the first scene of +"Faust," the earth-spirit, whom Faust has evoked, concludes the +whirling, dazzling, brief, but gigantic sketch of his function with +these words, the majesty of which translation cannot entirely +subdue:-- + + "I ply the resounding great loom of old Time, + And work at the Godhead's live vesture sublime." + +How ennobling is the idea the mind harbors of humanity, after taking +in these lines from Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of +Immortality:"-- + + "But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home." + +With a single epithet, coined for the occasion, Keats flashes upon our +imagination the dethroned Saturn and the immensity of his fall: + + "Upon the sodden ground + His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, + Unsceptered; and his _realmless_ eyes were closed." + +The "Hyperion" of this transcendent genius, written in his +twenty-fourth year, the year before he died, is as great poetry as has +ever been treasured in words. In it he lavishes poetic wealth as +though gold were with him as plenty as silver; and so on the next page +he exceeds, if possible, the sublimity of the above lines, making Thea +write in the catalogue of Saturn's colossal deprivations,-- + + "And all the air + Is emptied of thine hoary majesty." + +These passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination, which is the +illumining of a capable material by a spiritual light, a light thrown +into it from the glow kindled in the poet's mind with richest +sensibilities, that are refined and sublimated by an exacting, subtle +inward demand for the best they can render. A single flash of new +thrilling light irradiates a continent of thought. This is the work of +genius, and genius is ever marked by a deeper sympathy with and +recognition of the creative spirit and the divine action, a sympathy +and recognition so sensitive that the spirit and action of the writer +are permeated by the divine effluence, he becoming thereby the +interpreter of divine law, the exhibitor of divine beauty. + +In these passages the thought of the poet is thrust up through +the overlaying crust of the common, by a warming, expanding, inward +motion, which is sped by a vitality so urgent and irresistible that, +to make passage for the new thought, lightly is lifted a load which, +but for this spiritual efficacy, could not be stirred, just as heavy +stones are raised by delicate growing plants. To exert this power the +poet is always moved at the instance of feeling. Poetry having its +birth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling. +But what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing +sentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling, the +sentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or +entertainment of the most divine and most perfect, and ever rises to +the top of the refined joy which such contemplation educes. + +The poetic imagination is the Ariel of the poet,--his spiritual +messenger and Mercury. A clear look into the above passages would show +that the source of their power is in the farther scope or exquisite +range the imagination opens to us, often by a word. For further +illustration I will take a few other examples, scrutinizing them more +minutely. Had Lorenzo opened the famous passage in "The +Merchant of Venice" thus,-- + + "How _calm_ the moonlight _lies_ upon this bank," + +and continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key, saying,-- + + "There's not the _tiniest star_ that _can be seen_ + But in its _revolution_ it doth _hum_, + Aye _chanting_ to the _heavenly_ cherubins," + +his words would not have become celebrated and quotable. But Lorenzo +has the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of Shakespeare, and +so he begins,-- + + "How _sweet_ the moonlight _sleeps_ upon this bank." + +Two words, _sweet_ and _sleep_, put in the place of _calm_ and _lies_, +lift the line out of prose into poetry. A log _lies_ on a bank; so +does a dead dog, and the more dead a thing is the more it lies; but +only what is alive _sleeps_, and thus the word, besides an image of +extreme stillness, brings with it what strengthens the image, the idea +of change from liveliness to quiet; for that which was awake now +sleeps; and the more full the picture of stillness, the more awake is +the mind of the reader, awakened by the fitness and felicity of the +image. The substitution of _sweet_ for _calm_ is, in a less degree, +similarly enlivening; for, used in such conjunction, _sweet_ is more +individual and subtle, and imports more life, and thus helps the +distinctness and vividness of the picture. How does the poetic Lorenzo +word the other three lines? + + "There's not the _smallest orb_ which _thou behold'st_, + But in _his motion like an angel sings_, + Still _quiring_ to the _young-eyed_ cherubins." + +The words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a finer +meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. To +_behold_ is more than to _see_: it is to see contemplatively. The +figure _prosopopoeia_ is often but an impotent straining to impart +poetic life; but the personification in _in his motion_ is apt and +effective. _Quiring_ is an amplification of the immediately preceding +_sings_, and, signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges, +while making more specific, the thought. And what an image of the +freshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the +epithet _young-eyed_! At every step the thought is expanded and +beautiful, reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which the +poetically excited mind is left poised in delight. + +But the passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still +poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening +of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining +poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less +figurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result +of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these +being moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful, and beating an +atmosphere exhaled from sensibility. As Joubert says,--herein uttering +a cardinal æsthetic principle,--"It is, above all, in the spirituality +of ideas that poetry consists." Thought that is poetic will glisten +through the plainest words; whereas, if the thought be prosaic or +trite, all the gilded epithets in the dictionary will not give it the +poetic sheen. Perdita wishes for + + "Daffodils + That come before the swallow dares, and take + The winds of March with beauty." + +Note the poetic potency in the simple word _dares_; how much it +carries: the cold which the swallow has not the courage to confront; a +mental action, I might almost call it, in the swallow, who, after +making a recognizance of the season, determines that it would be rash +to venture so far north: all this is in the single word. For _dares_ +write _does_, and the effect would be like that of cutting a +gash in a rising balloon: you would let the line suddenly down, +because you take the life out of the thought. + + "And take + The winds of March with beauty." + +Every one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of person or +thing, and the thought is common; but that the winds of March be taken +with the beauty of daffodils, this was a delicate secret which those +winds would confide only to one so sympathetic as Shakespeare. This is +poetic imagination, the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility +which is at once generous and bold, and fastidious through the +promptings and the exactions of the beautiful. + +In the opening of "Il Penseroso" Milton describes the shapes that in +sprightly moods possess the fancy, + + "As thick and numberless + As the gay motes that _people_ the sunbeams." + +Put _shine in_ the sunbeams, for _people_, and, notwithstanding the +luminousness of the word substituted, you take the sparkle out of the +line, which sparkle is imparted by mental activity, and the poetic +dash that has the delightful audacity to personify such atomies. + +The poetical is the flush on the face of things in the +unconscious triumph of their purest life, cognizable by being beheld +at the moment when the higher faculties are at their fullest flood, +buoyed up on the joy of being and emotional sympathy. The most and the +highest of this joy is possessed by him whose imagination is most +capable of being poetically agitated; for by such agitation light is +engendered within him, whereby objects and sensations that before were +dim and opaque grow luminous and pellucid, like great statuary in +twilight or moonlight, standing vague and unvalued until a torch is +waved over it. + +When we begin to speak of poetry, the higher qualities of the mind +come up for judgment. No genuine poet is without one or more of these, +and a great poet must have most of them. Thence the thought of the +poet is pitched on a high key, and even in poets of power the poetry +of a page is sometimes shown merely by the sustained tone of the +sentiment, giving out no jets of fire, having no passages salient with +golden embossings. Through sympathy and sense of beauty, the poet gets +nearer to the absolute nature of things; and thence, with little of +imagery, or coloring, or passion, through this holy influence +he becomes poetic, depicting by re-creating the object or feeling or +condition, and rising naturally into rhythmic lines and sentences, the +best substance asking for, and readily obtaining, the most suitable +form of words. Yet a poet of inward resources can seldom write a page +without there being heard a note or bar or passage of the finer +melody. + +But men wanting this inward wealth, that is, wanting depth and breadth +of emotional capacity, have not, whatever their other gifts, the soil +needed for highly imaginative poetry. With broad emphasis this +æsthetic law is exemplified in the verse of Voltaire, especially in +his dramas, and in the verse of one who was deeper and higher than he +as thinker and critic, of Lessing. Skillful versifiers, by help of +fancy and a certain plastic aptitude and laborious culture, are +enabled to give to smooth verse a flavor of poetry and to achieve a +temporary reputation. But of such uninspired workmanship the gilding +after a while wears off, the externally imparted perfume surely +evaporates. + +Often the most suitable form of words is made of plainest, commonest +parts of speech, and the fewest of them. The more intense and deep +the feeling, the greater is the need of briefest, simplest +utterance. When in one of those pauses of frantic wrath,--like the +sudden rifts that momentarily let the calm stars through a whirling +canopy of storm,--Lear utters imploringly that appeal to Heaven, the +words are the familiar words of hourly use; but what divine tenderness +and what sweep of power in three lines! + + "O heavens, + If you do love old men, if your sweet sway + Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, + Make it your cause; send down and take my part!" + +The thirty-third canto of the "Inferno" supremely exemplifies the +sustaining energy of poetic imagination, that by its sublimating light +it can forever hold before the mind, in tearful, irresistible beauty, +one of the most woful forms of human suffering, death by starvation. +In that terrific picture, in front of which all the generations of men +that come after Dante are to weep purifying tears, the most exquisite +stroke is given in five monosyllables; but in those five little words +what depth of pathos, what concentration of meaning! On the fourth day +one of Ugolino's dying sons throws himself at his father's feet, +crying,-- + + "Father, why dost not help me?" + +Here let me remark that it is not by witnessing, through +poetically imaginative representation, scenes of suffering and agony, +as in this case and the tragic drama, that the sensibilities are +"purged," according to the famous saying of Aristotle; but it is +because such scenes are witnessed by the light of the beautiful. The +beautiful always purifies and exalts. + +In either of these two passages any piling up of words, any hyperbole +of phrase, or boldness or even grandeur of figurative speech, would +have proved a hindrance instead of a conductor to the feeling, +smothering and not facilitating expression. But when, turned out of +doors in "a wild night," by those "unnatural hags," his daughters, +Lear, baring his brow to the storm, invokes the thunder to + + "Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world," + +there is no tenderness, no folding of the sore heart upon itself; +there is the expansion of defiance, outburst of the mighty wrath of an +outraged father and wronged and crownless king: and so we have a gush +of the grandest diction, of the most tempestuous rhythm, the storm in +Lear's mind marrying itself with a ghastly joy to the storm of the +elements, the sublime tumult above echoed in the crashing splendor of +the verse:-- + + "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! + You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout + Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! + You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, + Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving-thunderbolts, + Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, + Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! + Crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once, + That make ingrateful man!" + +I know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the +colossal dimensions of Shakespeare. Here is attained, with almost +unique effect, what according to Schiller is the aim of poetry, "no +other than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression, its +most complete utterance." + +The best poetry, like the best music, soars towards the upper light. +The genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the swell of +emotion. The thought moves free and strong because there is a deep, +bubbling head of feeling behind it. Feeling, at its best, has an +ascending movement, reaching up towards that high sphere where, +through their conjunction, the earthly and the spiritual play in +freedom in the sunshine of the beautiful. The surest test of the +presence of poetry is buoyancy, springiness, which comes from the +union, the divine union, of the spiritual and the beautiful. However +weighty it may be with thought, the poetical passage floats, +thus giving certain sign of life, of a soul irrepressible. + +But as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without strength +and breadth of root, the highest poetry is the most solid, the firmest +set in reality, in truth. The higher a poet is, the closer hold he has +of the roots of his subject. He looks at it with a peering, deeply +sympathetic insight. The roots, in fact, are in himself; they are in +the depths of his soul. Hence a cardinal question about a poem is, How +much of it does the poet draw out of himself? Is it his by projection +from his inward resources, by injection with his own juices; or is it +his only by adoption and adaptation, by dress and adjustment? + +Flight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings have +been feathered in the heart. Loftiness or grandeur of imagination +there cannot be, except there be first innate richness and breadth of +feeling. Imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect, is +ever, like intellect in all its phases, an instrument of feeling, a +mere tool. Height implies inward depth. The gift to touch the vitals +of a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty; it is the +soul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier sympathy. Compare Wordsworth +with Southey to learn the difference between inward and outward gifts. + +Poetry being in the mind, the man who has little poetry within him +will find little in nature or in the world or in Shakespeare. The man +who has no music in his soul will hear none at the Conservatoire in +Paris. Wordsworth sees with the inward eye, Southey too exclusively +with the outward. The true poet projects visions and rhythms out from +his brain, and gazes at and hearkens to them. The degree of the +truthfulness to nature and the vividness of these projections is the +measure of his poetic genius and capacity. Only through this intense +inwardness can he attain to great visions and rhythmic raptures, and +make you see and hear them. What illimitable inward sight must Keats +have dwelt in ere, to depict the effect on him of looking into +Chapman's Homer, he could write,-- + + "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, + When a new planet swims into his ken; + Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes + He stared at the Pacific, and all his men + Looked at each other with a wild surmise, + Silent, upon a peak in Darien." + +Here is a brilliant example of poetic imagination, the +intellect urged to its finest action to satisfy the feeling which +delights in the grand, the select, the beautiful. + + "Silent, upon a peak in Darien." + +What an outlook! What a solemn, mysterious, elevating inward moment it +creates in us! To ascend to that peak, to carry the reader thither +with him, that is the flight of a great poet, of one who has been--as +in that choice poem, "The Prelude," Wordsworth, with an electric +stroke of poetic imagination, says of Newton-- + + "Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." + +This vigor of flight in the poet, bearing on his wing the reader, whom +he ushers to new, sudden vistas, is a test of poetic genius. Some +poets never carry you to heights, but rather make you feel while +reading them as if you were moving through shut-in valleys: their +verse wants sky. They are not poetically imaginative, are not strung +for those leaps which the great poet at times finds it impossible not +to make. They have more poetic fancy than poetic imagination. Poetic +fancy is a thin flame kindled deliberately with gathered materials; +poetic imagination is an intense flash born unexpectedly of +internal collisions. Fancy is superficial and comparatively +short-sighted; imagination is penetrative and far-sighted, bringing +together things widely sundered, apparently diverse and opposite. +Fancy divides, individualizes; imagination compounds, builds, globes. +Fancy is not so broad or so keen or so warm or so bounding as +imagination; is comparatively tame and cold and quiet. Imagination is +synthetical. Large exhibitions of poetic imagination are rare even in +the greatest poets. At its best it strikes deep into the nature of +things, has a celestial quality which invests it with awe. Spenser +shows great resources of fancy, but little imagination. The arc of +imagination is in him too near its center. Hence there is no reach in +his thoughts. He has no exhaustless depths within. He is not, +as Coleridge says Shakespeare is, an example of "endless +self-reproduction." Cowley, says the same great critic, "is a fanciful +writer, Milton an imaginative poet." + +As I have already said, the power of imagining, of forming in the mind +images, conceptions, is a purely intellectual power, and imagination +becomes poetical only when this intellectual power is an agent +obeying that emotional power which ardently seeks, intensely longs +for, the better, the more perfect, the purer, in one word, the +beautiful in each province of multiform life. The willing agent, +intellect, is sent out on excursions of discovery, and unexpectedly +falls in with and captures all kinds of sparkling booty. + +Writers weak in poetic imagination are not visited by those beaming +thoughts that come unsummoned out of the invisible, like new stars +which, out of the unfathomable deeps of the sky, dart suddenly upon +the vision of the heaven-watcher. Such writers deal with the known, +with the best commonplace, not the common merely; and under the glance +of genius the common grows strange and profound. + +Some poets, not weak in poetic imagination, yet use it chiefly for +secondary purposes, that is, for beautifying the dress, the externals +of poetry. Minds with some breadth but with little depth are not +thoroughly original. Their sense of the beautiful busies itself +necessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts; and +their readiest gifts being words more than ideas, versification more +than thought, form more than substance, they turn out verse, +chiefly narrative, which captivates through its easy flow, its smooth +sensuousness of diction, its gloss. Take a poet so celebrated, in some +respects so admirable, as Tennyson. Tennyson's verse is apt to be too +richly dressed, too perfumed. The clothing is costlier than the +thoughts can pay for. Hence at every re-reading of him he parts with +some of his strength, so that after three or four repetitions he has +little left for you. From a similar cause this is the case too with +Byron, through whose pen to common sentiment and opinion a glow is +imparted by the animal heat of the man, heightened by poetic tints +from a keen sense of the beautiful. But this is not the case with +Keats or Shelley or Coleridge or Wordsworth, and of course therefore +not with Milton or Shakespeare. All these keep fresh, at every contact +giving you strength and losing none. As freely and freshly as the +sun's beams through a transparent, upspringing Gothic spire, intellect +and feeling play, ever undimmed, through Shelley's "Sky-Lark." Not so +through Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women." After a time these +mellifluous stanzas droop, and cling to the paper: they have not +enough flame-like motion. The nicest word-choosing will not +supply the place of choice in thought, a choice prompted by fresh +feeling; nor, where there is no new impulse from the heart, will the +most gorgeous diction give to a line the poetic carnation. There can +be no freshness of expression without freshness of thought; the +sparkle on the skin comes from new blood in the heart. + +Tennyson's poetry has often too much leaf and spray for the branches, +and too much branch for the trunk, and too much trunk for the roots. +There is not living stock enough of thought deeply set in emotion to +keep the leaves ever fresh and fragrant. Wordsworth's poetry has for +the most part roots deeply hidden. + +Poetry is at times fitted to a subject too much like clothes to a +body. This is the method with even some writers of good gifts and +deserved name. Compared with Goethe, who, sensuous as he is, but +healthily sensuous, writes always from within outward, Schiller is +chargeable with this kind of externality. To try to make the fancy do +the work of feeling is a vain effort. And so much verse is of the +memory and fancy more than of the heart and imagination. Inward +impulse not being dominant, the words, however shiny, are touched with +coldness. Under the inward dominance (supposing always that the +intellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness) the poet mounts +springily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he ascends; and +thus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness, a forward and +upward movement towards the climax which ever awaits you in a subject +that has a poem in it. In a genuine poem, a work of inspiration and +not mainly of art, there is brisk evolution, phase of feeling climbing +over phase, thought kindled by thought seizing unexpected links of +association. This gives sure note of the presence of the matrix out of +which poetry molds itself, that is, sensibility warm and deep, +penetrating sympathy. Where evolution and upward movement are not, it +is a sign that the spring lacks depth and is too much fed by surface +streams from without. + +Through a poem should run a thread of emotional thought, strong enough +to bind the parts together so vividly as to hold attention close to +the substance. Many a so-called poem is but a string of elaborate +stanzas, mostly of four lines each, too slightly connected to +cooperate as members of an organic whole. There is not heat enough in +the originating impulse to fuse the parts into unity. There is +too much manufacture and not enough growth. Coleridge says, "The +difference between manufactured poems and works of genius is not less +than between an egg and an egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look +alike." + +Men without depth of sensibility or breadth of nature, but with enough +sense of beauty to modulate their thoughts, using with skill the +floating capital of sentiment and the current diction and molds of +verse, for a generation are esteemed poets of more genius than they +have, their pages being elaborate verse flavored with poetry, rather +than poems. In much verse are found old thoughts re-dressed in the +scoured garments of an ambitious fancy. The remark being made to +Goethe in his latter days, that scarce one of the younger German poets +had given an example of good prose, he rejoined, "That is very +natural; he who would write prose must have something to say; but he +who has nothing to say can make verses and rhymes; for one word gives +the other, till at last you have before you what in fact is nothing, +yet looks as though it were something." There is much good-looking +verse which does not fulfill any one of Milton's primary conditions +for poetry, being artificial instead of "simple," and having +neither soul enough to be "passionate," nor body enough to be +"sensuous." By passionate Milton means imbued with feeling. + +The poetical mood is always a visionary mood; so much so, that even +when the poet is depicting an actual person or scene, he must see it +with the imaginative eye, the inward eye, as well as with the outward. +Unless he does, there is no poetry in the result. A poem is twofold, +presenting an actuality, and at the same time a tender lucent image +thereof, like the reflection of a castle, standing on the edge of a +lake, in the calm deep mirror before it: at one view we see the castle +and its glistening counterpart. In the best poetry there is vivid +picture-making: reality is made more visible by being presented as a +beautiful show. It is the power to present the beautiful show which +constitutes the poet. To conceive a scene or person with such +liveliness and compactness as to be able to transfer the conception to +paper with a distinctness and palpitation that shall make the reader +behold in it a fresh and buoyant type of the actual--this implies a +subtle, creative life in the mind, this is the test of poetic +faculty. To stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and +sensibility, dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his +conception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. The poetic +mind, with a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a +subject at arm's length, where it can be turned round in the light; +the prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there +is no room for play of light or motion. + +Contemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest, and +at the same time actively endeavoring to embody it, the genuine poet +has in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here attain to; +and in the reader who can attune himself to the high pitch, he +enkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. There is current a +detestable phrase or definition, which even Coleridge allows himself +to countenance, namely, that poetry is something which gives pleasure. +Pleasure! Do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of +the Atlantic or from the top of Mount Washington, or the pleasure of +standing beside Niagara, or of reading about the self-sacrifice of +Regulus or Winkelried? Pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to +the lighter feelings. "Let me have the pleasure of taking wine +with you." A good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets. +Even enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to +poetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the +feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, and +there are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an +execution. But poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight +which follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or +scene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range +of that thought, sentiment, act, or scene. In the poetical there +always is exaltation, a reaching towards perfection, a subtle, +blooming spirituality. The end of poetry is not pleasure,--this were +to speak too grossly,--but refined enjoyment through emotion. + +To him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its presence, +the poetical is everywhere. The beautiful is a kiss which man gives to +Nature, who returns it; to get the kiss from her he must first give +it. Wordsworth says, "Poetry is the breath and fine spirit of all +knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the +countenance of all science." It might be called the aromatic +essence of all life. + +A poem is the incarnation of this aroma, the condensation of it into +form. A drop of dew symbolizes a poem; for a true poem should be oval, +without angles, transparent, compact, complete in itself, graceful +from inward quality and fullness. It may be of a few lines, or of +hundreds or thousands; but there must be no superfluous line or word. +A poem drops out of the brain a fragrant distillation. A poem must be +a spiritual whole; that is, not only with the parts organized into +proportioned unity, but with the whole and the parts springing out of +the idea, the sentiment, form obedient to substance, body to soul, the +sensuous life to the inward. For enduring, ruddy incarnation, the +subject, whether it be incident, scene, sentiment, or action, must +have within its core this essential aroma. The poet (and the test of +his poetic capacity is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a +core) keeps his conception distinctly and vividly before him. The +conception or ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him, like the +pillar of fire in the night, drawing him onward surely and rapidly. +Otherwise he lags and flags and stumbles. The spring into poetry is on +a flash, which not only lights up the thought on which it springs, but +renews, recreates it. + +A man's chief aim in life should be to better himself, to keep +bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is +the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view +the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry +elevates and refines the feelings. It reveals and strengthens the +spirituality of our nature. Poetry tunes the mind. Faculty of +admiration is one of our super-animal privileges. Poetry purges and +guides admiration; and the sounder and higher our admirations, the +more admirable ourselves become. + +The best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself, and sweetens its +imaginations. Our imaginations, that is, our inward thoughts, plans, +shaping our silent, interior doings, these are the chief part of us; +for out of these come most of our outward acts, and all of their +color. As is the preponderance of the man, will be this inward brood. +The timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man troubles, the +hopeful man successes, the avaricious man accumulations, the ambitious +possession of power; and the poetic man will imagine all sorts +of perfections, be ever yearning for a better and higher, be ever +building beautiful air-castles, earthy or moral, material or ethereal, +according as the sensuous or the spiritual predominates in his nature. +Beckford, of a sensuously poetic nature, having command of vast +wealth, brought his castle in the air down to the ground, and dazzled +his contemporaries with Fonthill Abbey. Not only are Fonthill Abbeys +and all beautiful buildings achieved through the warm action of the +poetic faculty, but all improvements are brought about by its virtue. +Out of this deep, inward, creative power issue all theories and +practice for the bettering of human conditions. All original founders +and discoverers are poets: the most poetic French mind I know is that +of Fourier. + +When a mind, having the texture and expansibility to become surcharged +with magnetic effluence, has moreover that æsthetic gift of rhythmic +expression which involves a sense of the beautiful, that is, of the +high and exquisite possibilities of created things,--when such a mind, +under the pressure of inward needs, betakes it to embodying in verse +its imaginations and conceptions, the result is poetry. _Poetry is +thought so inly warmed by creative sensibility as to overflow in +musical cadence._ And when we consider that thought is the gathering +of loose intellectual activity into a fast focus; that creative +sensibility is human feeling refined of its dross, stilled of its +tumultuousness in the glow of the beautiful; that musical cadence is +heard by him who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to catch some +sound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend that a genuine +poem implies, for its conception, an illuminated plenitude of mind, +and involves in its production a beatific visionariness. + + + + +III. + +STYLE. + + +Thought, act, and speech are of one substance. Where the best things +have been done, the best things have been said. The history of Attica +is richer and more significant than that of her sister-states of old +Greece, and among them her literature is supreme. So of England in +modern Europe. And where good thoughts have been uttered the form of +those will be finest which carry the choicest life. The tree gets its +texture from the quality of its sap. Were I asked what author is the +most profitable to the student of English on account of style, I +should answer, study Shakespeare. + +Have something to say, and say it in the best and fewest words, were a +good recipe for style. In this brief precept there are more +ingredients than at first view appear. To have something to say +implies that a man must write out of himself, and not chiefly out of +his memory; and so to write involves much more than many people +are aware of; in order that his style have freshness, which is a +primary need of a good style, the writer's thought must be fresh. +Then, to say his thought in the best and fewest words implies faculty +of choice in words, and faculty of getting rid of all verbal +superfluity; and these two faculties betoken proficiencies and some of +the finer æsthetic forces. + +Style itself is a gift (or more properly an issue of several gifts), +not an acquisition; it cannot be taught. As to teaching style to one +with inharmonious or defective natural powers, you might as well +attempt to teach a thrush to sing the songs of the nightingale. To be +sure, like the poetical, or the scientific, or any mental gift, it +requires culture. But style is little helped from without. The most, +as to the form of his utterance, that a writer can get from +others--whether through study of the best masters or through direct +rhetorical instruction--is in the mechanical portion of the art; that +is, how to put sentences together according to relation of clauses, +how by position of words and phrases to avoid obscurity and +awkwardness, and thus make most presentable and accessible what he has +to give out. Even in these superficial lessons success imports +something more than a superficial capacity. These lessons learnt, and +you have still to go behind them for style, whose cradle is within +you. _Le style c'est l'homme même_ (a man's style is his very self), +is the oft-quoted profound sentence of Buffon. Style comes out of the +interior: beneath a genuinely good style are secret springs which give +to the surface its movement and sparkle. Mostly when people talk of +style 't is of the surface; they think not of the depths beneath. In +popularly good styles there are indeed no deep or fine springs +beneath; in Tom Moore's, for example, or Southey's. + +Nevertheless there are writers who have more skill and art than others +in presenting agreeably what they have to say, in gracefully shaping +their utterances; they are better endowed with some of the plastic +faculties; they have what Sainte-Beuve calls the genius of style. Tact +and craft enable them to make themselves more readable than some other +writers of more substance; still, they are only capable of so doing by +means of qualities which, however secondary, are interior and fervent, +and the skill imparted by which cannot be acquired except through the +presence of these qualities. This superiority of skill in form +is illustrated by the literature of France in comparison with the +literature of Germany, and even with that of England. The French +follow a precept thus embodied by Béranger: "Perfection of style +should be sought by all those who believe themselves called to diffuse +useful thoughts. Style, which is only the form appropriated to a +subject by art and reflection, is the passport of which every thought +has need in order to circulate, expand, and lodge itself in people's +brains. To neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the ideas +one wishes to make others adopt." And so effective is the following of +such a precept that, through careful devices and manipulating +cleverness, a brilliant success, though transitory is achieved by some +writers who range lightly over surfaces, their thoughts dipping no +deeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along the water, which it +keeps ruffling, making a momentary sprightly splash at each contact, +until, its force being soon spent, it disappears and is seen no more. + +The possession of certain mental gifts constitutes a talent for +writing, gifts which, with reference to the great primary powers of +the mind, are secondary. Sainte-Beuve says of the Abbé Gerbet +that he "had naturally the flowers of speech, movement and rhythm of +phrase, measure and choice of expression, even figurative language, +what, in short, makes a talent for writing." The possessor of these +qualifications may, nevertheless, rise only a little above mediocrity. +Of the styles of many, even clever, accomplished writers, one gets a +clear notion from the remark made of a certain polished actress, that +she always played well, never better. + +When Sainte-Beuve says _Rien ne vit que par le style_, he asserts in +fact the exclusive privilege of original thought to give permanence to +literary work; for nothing but an interior source can give life to +expression. The inward flow will shape itself adequately and +harmoniously in proportion as it has at full command the auxiliary, +what I have called the plastic literary qualities; but shape itself it +will, effectively and with living force, without the fullest command, +while the readiest mastery over these qualities can never give +vitality to style when are wanting primary resources. Literary +substance which does not shape itself successfully (it may not be with +the fullest success) is internally defective, is insufficient; +for if it throb with life, it will mold a form for its embodiment, +albeit that form, from lack of complete command of the secondary +agents, will not be so graceful or rich as with such command it would +have been. Wordsworth has made to English literature a permanent +addition which is of the highest worth, in spite of notable plastic +deficiencies. A conception that has a soul in it will find itself a +body, and if not a literary body, one furnished by some other of the +fine arts; or, wanting that, in practical enterprise or invention. And +the body or form will be stamped with the inward lineaments of the +man. Style issues from within, and if it does not, it is not style, +but manner. Words get all their force from the thoughts and feelings +behind them. They are necessary media, created, molded, and combined +by mental wants. Picking and polishing words and phrases is +ineffectual without the picking and polishing of the thoughts: below +the surface of words lies that which controls and vivifies style. And +then between the substance, the mental material, and the executive +faculties there must be lively harmony. The executive power is a +purely intellectual composite instrument; the force that +wields it is feeling. For the best style the wielding force must be +fine as well as rich and strong, and the shaping, harmonizing +instrument of superfine temper and smiling willingness. + +Style, in writing, is the art of putting into words what you think or +feel, in such a way as to make the best of it--presupposed, that what +you think or feel is worth putting into printed words. There are men +who, without being original or inventive, have still, through strong +understanding and culture, much to say that will profit their +contemporaries; men of a certain mental calibre, of talent, activity, +will, cleverness, of verbal facility and of prominent ambition and in +most cases of audacity, and who by discipline and labor attain to a +style which for their purposes is effective. Of this class Jeffrey, +Brougham, Macaulay are conspicuous examples. Theirs are not winged +minds. They keep to the plane of commonplace; they are never rapt into +an upper sphere of thought, where sentences grow transparent, +illuminated by soulful revelations. All three lack subtlety, the finer +insight, a penetrating perception. The style of such men, even when +most vivacious, is never marked by geniality, by newness of turns, by +imaginative combinations, by rhythmical sweeps, and especially not by +freshness, of all which the fountain is originality, genius, +creativeness. It is related that after several of Carlyle's papers had +appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," Brougham, one of its founders and +controllers, protested that if that man were permitted to write any +more he should cease to be a contributor. And so the pages of the +Review were closed against the best writer it ever had. This arbitrary +proceeding of Brougham is to be mainly accounted for as betraying the +instinct of creeping talent in the presence of soaring genius. + +Not less than men of talent men of genius need to cultivate style; +nay, from the copiousness and variousness of their material, and from +its very inwardness, the molds into which it is to be thrown need the +finest care. Coleridge, rich and incomparable as he is, would have +made many of his prose pages still more effective by a studious +supervision; and De Quincey tells us what labor his periods sometimes +cost him. The following advice, given in a letter from Maurice de +Guérin to his sister, may be addressed to all literary aspirants: +"Form for yourself a style which shall be the expression of +yourself. Study our French language by attentive reading, making it +your care to mark constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of +style, but without ever adopting the manner of any master. In the +works of these masters we must learn our language, but we must use it +each in our own fashion." + +One of the first constituents of a good style is what Coleridge calls +"progressive transition," which implies a dynamic force, a propulsive +movement, behind the pen. Hazlitt, for example, somewhat lacked this +force, and hence De Quincey is justified to speak of his solitary +flashes of thought, his "brilliancy, seen chiefly in separate +splinterings of phrase or image, which throw upon the eye a vitreous +scintillation for a moment." One of the charms, in a high sense, of +Coleridge's page is that in him this dynamic force was present in +liveliest action. His intellect, ever enkindled by his emotions, +exacted logical sequence, and thus a rapid forward movement is +overspread by a glow of generous feeling, which, being refined by his +poetic sensibility made his style luminous and flowing. + +De Quincey, treating of aphoristic writing, says, "Any man [he of +course means any man with good things in him] as he walks +through the streets may contrive to jot down an independent thought, a +short-hand memorandum of a great truth; but the labor of composition +begins when you have to put your separate threads of thought into a +loom; to weave them into a continuous whole; to connect, to introduce +them; to blow them out or expand them; to carry them to a close." +Buffon attached the greatest importance to sequence, to close +dependence, to continuous enchainment. He detested a chopped, jerky +style, that into which the French are prone to fall. Certain it is, +and from obvious causes, that much of the secret of style lies in +aptness of sequence, thought and word, through an irresistible +impulsion and pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place +promptly, because naturally and necessarily. Through fusion and close +coherency and dependence, the flow is at once smooth and lively. The +grace as well as the strength of the living physical body depends +much, nay primarily, on the joints. So with the body of a good +writer's thoughts, that is, his mode of utterance. To the linking of +sentences and paragraphs (the links being self-wrought out of inward +sap) is due much of the buoyancy and force of style. The +springiness of the joints depends, in the body, on the quality of its +nervous life; in style, much on the marrow and validity of the +thoughts. By a sprightly stream of thought, fed from a full spring of +feeling, the current of words is kept lively and graceful. Words, +sentences, paragraphs, cannot be held closely, symmetrically, +attractively together, without the unction invisibly distilled from +brisk mental movement, movement starting from sentiment fresh and +true. Soul is the source of style. Not sensibility alone is a +prerequisite for style: the sensibility must be _active_, made active +by the fine aspiring urgency which ever demands the best. A good style +will have the sheen communicated by lubrication from within, not the +gloss of outward rubbing. + +That style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject treated +ought to be self-evident. In every page of "The Merry Wives of +Windsor" we recognize Shakespeare not less palpably than in "King +Lear." In his "Recollections of Charles Lamb" De Quincey writes, "Far +be it from me to say one word in praise of those--people of how narrow +a sensibility--who imagine that a simple (that is, according to many +tastes, an unelevated and _unrhythmical_) style--take, for +instance, an Addisonian or a Swiftian style--is _unconditionally_ +good. Not so: all depends upon the subject; and there is a style, +transcending these and all other modes of simplicity, by infinite +degrees, and, in the same proportion, impossible to most men, the +rhythmical, the continuous--what in French is called the +_soutenu_--which, to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ +to a shepherd's pipe. This also finds its justification in its +subject; and the subject which _can_ justify it must be of a +corresponding quality--loftier--and therefore, rare." + +I quote De Quincey because he has written more, and more profoundly as +well as more copiously, on style than any writer I know. To this +point,--the adaption of style to subject,--he returns, laying down +with clearness and truth the law which should here govern. In a paper +on Schlosser's "Literary History of the Eighteenth Century" he +reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the +common opinion that Swift's style is, for all writers, a model of +excellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on +which Swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage: +"That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the +pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for +saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., +poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably +regarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper +subject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter +what the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had +been required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal +apostrophe to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown's +'Religio Medici' and his 'Urn-Burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural +sections of his 'Holy Living and Dying,' do you know what would have +happened? Are you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor +bald Jonathan would have cut? About the same that would be cut by a +forlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if +suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of +Belshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords." + +That no writer of limited faculties can have a style of high +excellence ought to be a truism. Through a certain equilibrium among +his faculties, and assiduous literary culture, such a one may +excel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane; but that is all. +From the shallowest utterance, where, thoughts and feelings lying just +below the surface, there can be no strong lights and shadows, no +splendid play in the exposition, styles range, with the men who make +them, through all degrees of liveliness and significance and power, up +to that simple grandeur which conceals a vast volume of thought, and +implies a divine ruling of multiplicity. + +In a good style, on whatever degree it stands, there must be a full +marriage between word and thought, so clean an adjustment of +expression to material as to leave no rough edges or nodes. The words +must not be too big or too shiny for the thought; they must not stand +out from the texture, embossing, as it were, the matter. A style can +hardly be too nervous; it can be too muscular, as, for example, was +sometimes that of Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting. + +A primary requisite for a good style is that the man and the writer be +one; that is, that the man have a personal feeling for, a free +sympathy with, the theme the writer has taken in hand; his +subject must be fitted to him, and he to his subject. That he be +sincere is not enough; he must be cordial; then he will be magnetic, +attractive. You must love your work to do it well. + +A good style is a stream, and a lively stream: it flows ever onward +actively. The worst vice a style can have is languor. With some +writers a full stop is a double full stop: the reader does not get +forward. Much writing consists of little more than sluggish eddies. In +many minds there is not leap enough for a style. Excellence in style +demands three vivacities, and rather exacting ones, for they involve a +somewhat rare mental apportionment; the vivacities of healthy and +poetic feeling, of intellectual nimbleness, and of inviolable +sequence. + +Writers there are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a routine +of phrases and words under the repetition of which thought is hardened +by its molds. Thence mechanical turns and forms, which cause numbness, +even when there is a current of intellectual activity. Writers most +liable to this subjection are they who have surrendered themselves to +set opinions and systems, who therefore cease to grow,--a sad +condition for man or writer. + +Hypocrites in writing, as in talking and doing, end badly. A +writer who through his style aims to seem better or other than himself +is soon found out. The desire so to seem argues a literary incapacity; +it looks as though the very self--which will shine through the +style--lacked confidence in its own substance. And after all, in +writing as in doing and talking, a man must be himself, will be +himself in spite of himself. One cannot put on his neighbor's style +any more than he can put on his neighbor's limbs. + +Not only has prose its melody as well as verse, but there is no +_style_ unless sentences are pervaded, I might say animated, by +rhythm; lacking appropriate movement, they are inelastic, inert, +drowsy. Rhythm implies a soul behind it and in it. The best style will +have a certain rotundity imparted by the ceaseless rocking of thought +in the deep ocean of sentiment. Without some music in them sentences +were torpid, impracticable. To put thoughts and words so together that +there shall be a charm in the presentation of them, there needs a +lively harmony among certain faculties, a rhythm in the mind. Hence +Cicero said that to write prose well, one must be able to write verse. +The utterance of music in song or tune, in artful melody or choral +harmony, is but the consummation of a power which is ever a sweetener +in life's healthily active exhibitions, the power of sound. Nature is +alive with music. In the fields, in the air, sound is a token of life. +On high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes +in great part from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a +broad, sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray +clad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of +bees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from +unseen choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, +unseen, and ever rhythmical. + +The heartier and deeper the thought, the more melody will there be in +its fit expression, and thence the higher range of style is only +reached by poets, or by men who, though poetically minded, yet lack +"the accomplishment of verse." The sudden electric injection of light +into a thought or object or sentiment--in this consists the gift +poetical, a gift which implies a sensibility so keen and select as to +kindle the light, and an intellect fine and firm enough to hold and +transmit it. A writer in whom there is no poetic feeling can hardly +rise to a style. Whoever has tried to read a play of Scribe will +understand from this why Sainte-Beuve affirms of him that he is +utterly devoid of the faculty of style (_dénué de la faculté du +style_). Contrast with Scribe his fellow-countryman, the great +Molière. Thence, Joubert says, "Many of our poets having written in +prose, ordinary style has received from them a brilliancy and +audacities which it would not have had without them. Perhaps, too, +some prose writers, who were born poets without being born versifiers, +have contributed to adorn our language, even in its familiarities, +with those riches and that pomp which until then had been the +exclusive property of the poetic idiom." + +A man of poetic sensibility is one born with a sleepless eye to the +better, an ear that craves the musical, a soul that is uneasy in +presence of the defective or the incomplete. This endowment implies a +mind not only susceptible of the higher and finer movements of +thought, but which eagerly demands them, and which thus makes the +writer exacting towards himself. Hence only he attains to a genuine +correctness; he was correct by instinct before he was so by +discipline. In the whole as well as the parts he requires finish and +proportion. Within him there is a momentum which fills out his thought +and its worded envelope to warm convexity. Only he has the fine tact +and discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses. The +best style is organic in its details as well as its structure; it +shows modeling, a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and +plastic effects of clay in the hands of the sculptor. Goethe says that +only poets and artists have method, because they require to see a +thing before them in a completed, rounded form. Writing is a fine art, +and one of the finest; and he who would be a master in this art must +unite genial gifts with conscientious culture. + +Of style the highest examples, therefore, are to be found in the verse +of the great poets, of the deep rhythmic souls who make a sure, agile +intellect their willing Ariel; and no prose writer gets to be a master +in style but through kindred endowment. The compact, symmetrical +combination of gifts and acquirements, of genius with talent, demanded +for the putting forth of a fresh, priceless poem, this he need not +have; but his perceptions must be brightened by the light +whose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more perfect in form, +deed, and sentiment, and his best thoughts suffused with that +fragrance whose only source is the ravishment of the beautiful. + + + + +IV. + +DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS.[5] + + [5] Putnam's Magazine, 1868. + + +"Ghosts and witches are the best machinery for a modern epic." So said +Charles Fox, who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class. +Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as +evidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the +epopee. The term "machinery" implies ignorance of the import of the +super-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism +and a virtual unbelief. No poet who should accept the term could write +an epic, with or without the "machinery." Such acceptance would +betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want +of faith in the invisible supervisive energies. + +A genuine epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of depth +and height and breadth, narrating long-prepared ruin or foundation of +a race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold to lay bare the +method of the divine intervention in the momentous work. The epic +poet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large sympathies, together +with such consciousness of power, that he takes on him to interpret +and incarnate the celestial cooperation. There are people, and some of +them even poets, whose consciousness is so smothered behind the +senses, that they come short of belief in spiritual potency. They are +what, with felicity of phrase, Mr. Matthew Arnold calls-- + + "Light half-believers in our casual creeds." + +Homer and Milton were believers: they believed in the visible, active +presence on the earth of the god Mars, and the archangel Raphael. Had +they not, there would have been no "Iliad," no "Paradise Lost." + +Dante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and +an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine +judgment on the multitudinous dead, ranging with inspired vision +through hell, and purgatory, and heaven. In his large, hot heart, he +lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought +them into immortal shapes. The then religious imaginations of +Christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of +Italy, then tumultuous and embittered; the theology and philosophy of +his time, fantastic, unfashioned--all this was his material. But all +this, and were it ten times as much, is but the skeleton, the frame. +The true material of a poem is the poet's own nature and thoughts, his +sentiment and his; judgment, his opinions, aspirations, imaginations, +his veriest self, the whole of him, especially the best of him. + +Than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, which +were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the day,--and +literature then was chiefly, almost exclusively, religious,--no more +broad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet, beset, as all +poets are apt to be, with the need of utterance, and possessed, +moreover, of a graphic genius that craved strong, glowing themes for +its play. The present teeming world to be transfigured into the world +to come, and the solicitation and temptation to do this brought to a +manly, powerful nature, passionate, creative, descriptive, to a +stirring realist, into whose breast, as a chief actor on the Italian +scene, ran, all warm from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of +Italian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict; +and that breast throbbing with the fiery passions of republican Italy, +while behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to +tune the wide, variegated cacophony. Proud, passionate, and baffled, +the man Dante deeply swayed the poet. Much of his verse is directly +woven out of his indignations and burning personal griefs. At times, +contemporaneous history tyrannized over him. + +Dante's high and various gifts, his supreme poetic gift, the noble +character and warm individuality of the man, with the pathos of his +personal story, the full, lively transcript he hands down of the +theology and philosophy of his age, his native literary force as +molder of the Italian language, his being the bold, adventurous +initiator, the august father of modern poetry--all this has combined +to keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of men through six +centuries. But even all this would not have made him one of the three +or four world-poets, would not have won for him the wreath of +universal European translation. What gave his rare qualities their +most advantageous field, not merely for the display of their peculiar +superiorities, but for keeping their fruit sound and sweet, was that +he is the historian of hell, purgatory, and heaven--of the world to +come such as it was pictured in his day, and as it has been pictured +more or less ever since--the word-painter of that visionary, awful +hereafter, the thought of which has ever been a spell. + +Those imaginations as to future being--to the Middle Ages so vivid as +to become soul-realities--Dante, with his transcendent pictorial +mastership, clothed in words fresh and weighty from the mine of +popular speech, stamping them with his glittering imperial +superscription. Imaginations! there are imaginations of the future, +the reverse of poetical. Hunger will give you tormenting imaginations +of breakfasts and dinners; avarice enlivens some minds with pictures +of gains that are to be. But imaginations of the life beyond the +grave, these we cannot entertain without spirituality. The having them +with any urgency and persistence implies strong spiritual +prepossessions: men must be self-possessed with their higher self, +with their spirit. The very attempt to figure your disembodied state +is an attempt poetical. To succeed with any distinctness denotes some +power of creative projection: without wings, this domain cannot be +entered. In Dante's time these attempts were common. Through his +preëminent qualifications, crowned with the poetic faculty, the +faculty of sympathy with ideal excellence, his attempt was a great, a +unique success. + +To accompany Dante through his vast triple trans-terrestrial world, +would seem to demand in the reader a sustained effort of imagination. +But Dante is so graphic, and, we might add, corporeal in his pictures, +puts such a pulse into his figures, that the artistic illusion +wherewith we set out is exchanged for, or rather overborne by, an +illusion of the reality of what is represented. Yet from the opening +of the first canto he is ever in the super-earthly world, and every +line of the fourteen thousand has the benefit of a super-earthly, that +is, a poetic atmosphere, which lightens it, transfigures it, floats +it. One reads with the poetic prestige of the knowledge that every +scene is trans-terrestrial; and, at the same time, every scene is +presented with a physical realism, a visual and audible vividness, +which captivates and holds the perceptive faculty; so that the reader +finds himself grasped, as it were, in a vice, whose double handle is +mortised on one side in the senses, and on the other in the spiritual +imagination. + +Dante had it in him,--this hell, purgatory, and heaven--so full and +warm and large was his nature. Within his own breast he had felt, with +the keen intensity of the poetic temperament, the loves and hates, the +griefs and delights of life. Through his wealth of heart he had a +fellow-feeling for all the joys and sorrows of his brother-men, and, +added to this, an artist's will and want to reproduce them, and _to_ +reproduce them a clear, outwelling, intellectual vivacity. He need +scarcely have told us that his poem, though treating of spirits, +relates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh. He chose a +theme that at once seized the attention of his readers, and gave to +himself a boundless scope. His field was all past history, around the +altitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and sketches of +famous sinners and famous saints, of heroes and lofty criminals; and, +along with this, contemporaneous Florentine and Italian history, with +its tumults and vicissitudes, its biographies and personalities, its +wraths and triumphs. + +Dante exhibits great fertility in situations and conjunctions; but, +besides that many of them were ready to his hand, this kind of +inventiveness denotes of itself no fine creative faculty. It is the +necessary equipment of the voluminous novelist. In this facility and +abundance Goldsmith could not have coped with James and Bulwer; and +yet the "Vicar of Wakefield" (not to go so high as "Tristram Shandy" +and "Don Quixote") is worth all their hundred volumes of tales put +together. What insight, what weight, and faithfulness, and refinement, +and breadth, and truth, and elevation of character and conception, +does the framework of incident support and display? That is the +æsthetic question. The novels of every day bristle with this material +inventiveness, this small, abounding, tangled underwood of event and +sensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build. +The invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures and conditions +of the "Inferno" and "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso," is not admirable for +their mere exuberance and diversity,--for that might have come from a +comparatively prosaic mind, especially when fed, as all minds then +were, with the passionate mediaeval beliefs,--but for the heart there +is in them, throbbing deeply in some, and for the human sympathy, and +thence, in part, the photographic fidelity, and for the paramount gift +poetically to portray. A consequence of the choice of subject, and, as +regards the epic quality of Dante's poem, an important consequence, is +that there is in it no unity of interest. The sympathies of the reader +are not engrossed by one great group of characters, acting and +reacting on one another through the whole sweep of the invention. +Instead of this, we have a long series of unconnected pictures, each +one awakening a new interest. Hereby the mind is distracted, the +attention being transferred at every hundred lines to a fresh figure +or group. We pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits, +classed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one from the other, and +separated by the projection of as many different frames. We are on a +weird, adventurous journey, and make but brief stops, however +attractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet. We go from person to +person, from scene to scene; so that at the end of the journey, +although the perception has been richly crowded, one impression has +effaced the other. Not carrying the weight, not pulsating in its every +limb with the power of a broad, deep, involved story, architecturally +reared on one foundation, whose parts are all subordinated to a great +unity, the "Divina Commedia," as an organic, artistic whole, is +inferior to the "Iliad" and "Paradise Lost," and to the Grecian and +Shakespearean tragedies. + +The exclusive super-earthliness of his scenes and personages, and, +with this, his delight in picture-drawing, keep Dante close to his +page--fastened to it, we might say, by a twofold fascination. Among +the many faculties that equip him for his extraordinary task, most +active is that of form. Goethe says of him, "The great intellectual +and moral qualities of Dante being universally acknowledged, we shall +be furthered in a right estimate of his works, if we keep in view that +just in his life-time--Giotto being his contemporary--was the re-birth +of plastic art in all its natural strength. By this sensuous, +form-loving spirit of the age, working so widely and deeply, Dante, +too, was largely swayed. With the eye of his imagination he seized +objects so distinctly that he could reproduce them in sharp outline. +Thence we see before us the most abstruse and unusual, drawn, as it +were, after nature." In recognition of the same characteristic, +Coleridge says, "In picturesqueness Dante is beyond all other poets, +ancient or modern, and more in the stern style of Pindar than of any +other. Michael Angelo is said to have made a design for every page of +the 'Divina Commedia.'" + +Dante, eminent in poetic gifts, has many sides, but this is his +strongest side: he is preëminently a poet of form. In his mind and in +his work there is a southern, an Italian, sensuousness. He is a poet +of thought, but more a poet of molds; he is a poet of sentiment, but +more a poet of pictures. Rising readily to generalization, still his +intellect is more specific than generic. His subject--chosen by the +concurrence of his æsthetic, moral, and intellectual needs--admits +of, nay, demands portraits, isolated sketches, unconnected +delineations. The personages of his poem are independent one of the +other, and are thence the more easily drawn. Nor does Dante abound in +transferable passages, sentences of universal application, from being +saturated with the perfumed essence of humanity. We say it with +diffidence, but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance, +more idealized fidelity, in Milton; more significance and wisdom and +profound hint in Goethe. In Milton the mental reverberation is wider: +he rivets us through distant grand association, by great suggestion. +Thus, describing the darkened head of Satan, Milton says,-- + + "As when the sun new risen + Looks through the horizontal misty air, + Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, + In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds + On half the nations," + +Setting aside the epithets "horizontal" and "disastrous," which are +poetically imaginative, the likening of Satan to the sun seen through +a mist, or in eclipse, is a direct, parallel comparison that aids us +to see Satan; and it is in such, immediate, not mediate,--not +involving likeness between physical and mental qualities, but merely +between physical, not between subtle, relations,--that Dante chiefly +deals, showing imaginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet, +but different from, and altogether inferior to, poetic imagination. +The mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the +intellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with +aspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the +utmost, and, as the result of this exertion, discovers a thought or +image which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to the +reader a new delight. Of this, the lordliest mental exhibition, there +is a sovereign example in the words wherewith Milton concludes the +passage-- + + "and with fear of change + Perplexes monarchs." + +This fills the mind with the terror he wishes his Satan to inspire; +this gives its greatness to the passage. + +Dante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself more to +the reader's senses and perception; Milton rouses his higher +imaginative capacity. In the whole "Inferno," is there a sentence so +aglow as this line and a half of "Paradise Lost"? + + "And the torrid clime + Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire." + +Or is there in Dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of +Milton's demon-host-- + + "That tore Hell's concave, and beyond + Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night"? + +Here the unity of his theme stands Milton in stead for grandeur and +breadth. + +Dante is copious in similes. Such copiousness by no means proves +poetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes +than one inferior to him. Wordsworth has much less of this command +than Moore. But when a poet does use similes, he will be likely often +to put of his best into them, for they are captivating instruments and +facilities for poetic expansion. When a poet is in warm sympathy with +the divine doings, there will be at times a flashing fitness in his +similitudes, which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition. +In citing some of the most prominent in the "Divina Commedia," we at +once give brief samples of Dante and of the craft of his three latest +translators, using the version of Dr. Parsons for extracts from the +"Inferno," that of Mr. Dayman for those from the "Purgatorio," and +that of Mr. Longfellow for those from the "Paradiso." + + "As well-filled sails, which in the tempest swell, + Drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent; + So to the earth that cruel monster fell, + And straightway down to Hell's Fourth Pit he went." + _Inferno_: Canto VII. + + "Swept now amain those turbid waters o'er + A tumult of a dread portentous kind, + Which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore, + Like the mad rushing of a rapid wind; + As when, made furious by opposing heats, + Wild through the wood the unbridled tempest scours, + Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats, + And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers; + Then fly the herds,--the swains to shelter scud. + Freeing mine eyes, 'Thy sight,' he said, 'direct + O'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood, + Where, most condense, its acrid streams collect.'" + _Inferno_: Canto IX. + + "When, lo! there met us, close beside our track, + A troop of spirits. Each amid the band + Eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by + 'Neath a new moon; as closely us they scanned, + As an old tailor doth a needle's eye." + _Inferno_: Canto XV. + + "And just as frogs that stand, with noses out + On a pool's margin, but beneath it hide + Their feet and all their bodies but the snout, + So stood the sinners there on every side." + _Inferno_: Canto XXII. + + "A cooper's vessel, that by chance hath been + Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, + Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin + I noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft." + _Inferno_: Canto XXVIII. + + "We tarried yet the ocean's brink upon, + Like unto people musing of their way, + Whose body lingers when the heart hath gone; + And lo! as near the dawning of the day, + Down in the west, upon the watery floor, + The vapor-fogs do Mars in red array, + Even such appeared to me a light that o'er + The sea so quickly came, no wing could match + Its moving. Be that vision mine once more." + _Purgatorio_: Canto II. + + "And thou, remembering well, with eye that sees + The light, wilt know thee like the sickly one + That on her bed of down can find no ease, + But turns and turns again her ache to shun," + _Purgatorio_: Canto VI. + + "'T was now the hour the longing heart that bends + In voyagers, and meltingly doth sway, + Who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends; + And wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way + With poignant love, to hear some distant bell + That seems to mourn the dying of the day; + When I began to slight the sounds that fell + Upon my ear, one risen soul to view, + Whose beckoning hand our audience would compel." + _Purgatorio_: Canto VIII. + + "There I the shades see hurrying up to kiss + Each with his mate from every part, nor stay, + Contenting them with momentary bliss. + So one with other, all their swart array + Along, do ants encounter snout with snout, + So haply probe their fortune and their way." + _Purgatorio_: Canto XXVI. + + "Between two viands, equally removed + And tempting, a free man would die of hunger + Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. + So would a lamb between the ravenings + Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike; + And so would stand a dog between two does. + Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not, + Impelled in equal measure by my doubts, + Since it must be so, nor do I commend." + _Paradiso_: Canto IV. + + "And as a lute and harp, accordant strung + With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make + To him by whom the notes are not distinguished, + So from the lights that there to me appeared + Upgathered through the cross a melody, + Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn." + _Paradiso_: Canto XIV. + + "As through the pure and tranquil evening air + There shoots from time to time a sudden fire, + Moving the eyes that steadfast were before, + And seems to be a star that changeth place, + Except that in the part where it is kindled + Nothing is missed, and this endureth little; + So from the horn that to the right extends + Unto that cross's foot there ran a star + Out of the constellation shining there." + _Paradiso_: Canto XV. + + "Even as remaineth splendid and serene + The hemisphere of air, when Boreas + Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest, + Because is purified and resolved the rack + That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs + With all the beauties of its pageantry; + Thus did I likewise, after that my lady + Had me provided with a clear response, + And like a star in Heaven the truth was seen." + _Paradiso_: Canto XXVIII. + +The first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse is, Is +it poetical? Is there, as effect of its introduction, any heightening +of the reader's mood, any cleansing of his vision, any clarification +of the medium through which he is looking? Is there a sudden play of +light that warms, and, through this warmth, illuminates the +object before him? Few of those just quoted, put to such test, could +be called more than conventionally poetical--if this be not a +solecism. To illustrate one sensuous object by another does not +animate the mind enough to fulfill any one of the above conditions. +Such similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness, there is +through them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion. They +may help to make the object ocularly more apparent, but they do not +make the feeling a party to the movement. When this is done,--as in +the examples from Canto XV. of the "Inferno," and Canto VIII. of the +"Purgatorio,"--what an instantaneous vivification of the picture! + +But in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright +as in the best of Shakespeare's. As one instance out of many: towards +the end of the great soliloquy of Henry V., after enumerating the +emblems and accompaniments of royalty, the king continues,-- + + "No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, + Not all these, laid in bed majestical, + Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; + Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind, + Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread; + Never sees horrid night, the child of hell; + But, like a lackey, from the rise to set, + Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night + Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn, + Doth rise _and help Hyperion to his horse_" + +What a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image, so +fresh and unexpected, of the rising sun, with its suggestion of beauty +and healthfulness! Then the far-reaching, transfiguring imagination, +that, in a twinkle, transmutes into the squire of Hyperion a stolid +rustic, making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. It is +by this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with +brilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures, +denoting overflow of resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel +after Shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying +more and better,--it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming +fullness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakespeare throws a +farther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does Dante's +page glisten, as Shakespeare's so often does, with metaphor, or +compressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual +sphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but inter-tissued with the +web of thought, upflashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the +surface, as on the calm level of the Atlantic you may see a +circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up +from the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten,--a +sign of life, power, and abundance. + +Like his great compeer, Milton, Dante fails of universality from want +of humor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault +(liberally to interpret Can's conduct) that Dante's host, Can Grande +of Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of both poets +(unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were +predominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their +times, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic earnestness, which +is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration +of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,--a great feat, +only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest +manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws +such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom, +and, with the fool in "Lear," forces you, like a child, to smile +through warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy +to tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and +follies of men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough +to sport with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful +delight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter. + +Of pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By the +story of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and +awe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to +tenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single +fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is +to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape with a +hundred flashes. + +All the personages of Dante's poem (unless we regard himself as one) +are spirits. Shakespeare, throughout his many works, gives only a few +glimpses into the world beyond the grave; but how grandly by these few +is the imagination expanded. Clarence's dream, "lengthened after +life," in which he passes "the melancholy flood," is almost +super-Dantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful +foretaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth. And the +great ghost in "Hamlet," when you read of him, how shadowy real! +Dante's representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too +palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe. + +Profound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, thought-breeding +thoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pure, large sensibilities, +and by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion, to be +wrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful,--of +these, which are the test of poetic greatness, Dante, if we may +venture to say so, has not more or brighter examples than Milton, and +not so many as Goethe; while of such passages, compactly embodying as +they do the finer insights of a poetic mind, there are more in a +single one of the greater tragedies of Shakespeare, than in all the +three books of the "Divina Commedia." + +Juxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the +superiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any +other great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante so +high as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakespeare; what +though the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the sky, and +the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied +domains. The traveler, even if he come directly from wondering +at Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest +delight before the majesty of the Yungfrau and the Eigher. + +But it is time to speak of Dante in English. + +"It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might +discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to +transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet." +Thus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his beautiful "Defense of +Poetry." But have we not in modern tongues the creations of Homer, and +of Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet? +And can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by +deprivation of them in translated form? Pope's Homer--still Homer +though so Popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture +of thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and +Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through +which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would +incidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derby's Iliad has gone +through many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what should we +have done without them in English? Translations are the +telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in +other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from +their words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth +and wisdom forever. The flash on which the message was first launched +has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the +message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is +freighted, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat oranges, +because on being translated from Cuba to our palates they have lost +somewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poem we wish to have +as much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the +poetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation +of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological +exposition,--a poem, only in another dress. Thence a work in verse, +that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made +to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth +every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that. +A prose translation of a poem is an æsthetic impertinence, +Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent +in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him +in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much +telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such +touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even +in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic +sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were +the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the +deflowering of many delicate stems. Forty years ago, Mr. Hay ward +translated the "Faust" of Goethe into prose; but let any one compare +the Hymn of the Archangels and other of the more highly-wrought +passages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in +verse,--with that of Mr. Brooks for example,--to perceive at once the +insufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally +faithful a prose version. The effect on "Faust," or on any high +passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what +would be the effect on an exquisite _bas-relief_ of reducing its +projection one half by a persevering application of pumice. In all +genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so +inwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely +disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the +verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by +the transplanting of it into another soil. + +The translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just +to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the +page into his own language. He must brace himself into an active +state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, then +transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he +would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt. To get +into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the +words, embracing them from within, not merely seizing them from +without. Having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the +original, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key. Such +surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original, +and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his +verse; for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and +to see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled +by himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which +he had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that +of his own first inspirations. + +A poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity. +"Paradise Lost," conceived in Milton's brain, could not utter itself +in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our +language a new music. It could not have been written in the Spenserian +stanza. What would the "Fairy Queen" be in blank verse? For his theme +and mood Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which +enlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration. Rhyme was then a new +element in verse, a modern æsthetic creation; and it is a help and an +added beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it +be not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to +freedom of movement, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are +offensive both to sense and to ear. Like buds that lie half-hidden in +leaves, rhymes should peep out, sparkling but modest, from the cover +of words, falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible +strokes of a melodious pulse at the heart of the verse. + +The _terza rima_--already in use--Dante adopted as suitable to +continuous narrative. With his feeling and æsthetic want +rhymed verse harmonized, the triple repetition offering no obstacle, +Italian being copious in endings of like sound. His measure is iambic, +free iambic, and every line consists, not of ten syllables, but of +eleven, his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes. And +this weakness is so inherent in Italian speech, that every line even +of the blank verse in all the twenty-two tragedies of Alfieri ends +femininely, that is, with an unaccented eleventh syllable. In all +Italian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme, the final syllable, +moreover, invariably ending with a vowel. This, besides being too much +rhyme and too much vowel, is, in iambic lines, metrically a defect, +the eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable. + +In these two prominent features English verse is different from +Italian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes are +masculine; and it has fewer than Italian. This second characteristic, +the comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one of its sources of +strength: it denotes musical richness and not poverty, as at first +aspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying +variety in its sounds. It has all the vocalic syllables and +endings it needs for softness, and incloses them mostly in consonants +for condensation, vigor, and emphasis. + +Primarily the translator has to consider the resources and +individualities of his own tongue. In the case of Dante the rhythmical +basis is the same in both languages; for the iambic measure is our +chief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by Shakespeare and Milton. +There only remains, then, rhyme and the division into stanzas. Can the +_terza rima_, as used by Dante, be called a stanza? The lines are not +separated into trios, but run into one another, clinging very properly +to the rhymes, which, interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the +echo still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our +Spenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines. Whether +stanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly +about the _terza rima_? To us it seems not deserving of admiration +_for its own sake_; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by +Dante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it for original +poems. We are not aware that Dante's example has been followed by any +poet of note in Italy. _Terza rima_ keeps the attention suspended too +long, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to +come, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the +last rhyme. The rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and +running ahead. It looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the +first rhymers of an uncultivated age. But Dante used it for his great +song; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the "Divina +Commedia." + +Now, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it essential,--in +order to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation,--to +preserve the triple rhyme? Not having in English a corresponding +number of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to +transpositions, substitutions, forcings, indirections, in order to +compass the meaning and the poetry? Place the passages already cited +from Mr. Dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised +to see how direct and literal, how faithful at once to the Italian +thought and to English idiom in expressing it, Mr. Dayman is. His +harness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement, so +skillfully does he wear it. If we confront him with the spirited +version in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited +from the "Inferno," or with those from the "Paradiso," in Mr. +Longfellow's less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility +of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again +manifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations with the +original and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the +three versions, of the latter part of the Francesca story, from Canto +V. of the "Inferno:"-- + + "Poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io, + E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri + A lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio. + Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri, + A che, e come concedette Amore + Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri? + Ed ella a me: nessun maggior dolore, + Che ricordarsi del tempo felice + Nella miseria, e ciò sa 'l tuo dottore. + Ma se a conoscer la prima radice + Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, + Farò come colui che piange, e dice. + Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto + Di Lancilotto, come Amor lo strinse. + Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto. + Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse + Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso: + Ma solo un punto fu quel, che ci vinse. + Qando leggemmo il disiato riso + Esser baciato da cotanto amante, + Questi, che mai da me non sia diviso, + La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante. + Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse: + Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante. + Mentre che l'uno spirito queste disse, + L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade + Io venni meno come s'io morisse, + E caddi, come corpo morto cade." + + +Mr. Dayman:-- + + "Then toward them turned again: 'Thy racking woe,' + I said, 'Francesca, wrings from out mine eyes + The pious drops that sadden as they flow. + But tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs, + By whom and how love pitying broke the spell, + And in your doubtful longings made too wise.' + And she to me: 'No keener pang hath hell, + Than to recall, amid some deep distress, + Our happier time: thy teacher knows it well. + Yet if desire so strong thy soul possess + To trace the root from whence our love was bred, + His part be mine, who tells and weeps no less. + 'T was on a day when we for pastime read + Of Lancillot, how love snared him to ruin: + We were alone, nor knew suspicious dread. + Oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing + Their glance; and from our cheeks the color started; + But one sole moment wrought for our undoing: + When that we read of lover so kind-hearted + Kissing the smile so coveted before, + He that from me shall never more be parted + Kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all o'er. + The broker of our vows, it was the lay, + And he who wrote--that day we read no more.' + The other spirit, while the first did say + These words, so moanèd, that with soft remorse + As death had stricken me, I swooned away, + And down I fell, heavily as falls a corse." + + +Mr. Longfellow:-- + + "Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, + And I began: 'Thine agonies, Francesca, + Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. + But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, + By what and in what manner Love conceded + That you should know your dubious desires?' + And she to me: 'There is no greater sorrow + Than to be mindful of the happy time + In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. + But if to recognize the earliest root + Of love in us thou hast so great desire, + I will do even as he who weeps and speaks. + One day we reading were for our delight + Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthrall. + Alone we were, and without any fear. + Full many a time our eyes together drew + That reading, and drove the color from our faces; + But one point was it that o'ercame us. + Whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile + Being by such a noble lover kissed, + This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, + Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. + Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. + That day no farther did we read therein.' + And all the while one spirit uttered this, + The other one did weep so, that, for pity, + I swooned away as if I had been dying, + And fell even as a dead body falls." + + +Dr. Parsons:-- + + "Then, turning round to them, I thus began: + 'Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes: + My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman; + But tell me,--in the time of happy sighs, + Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?" + And she to me: "The mightiest of all woes + Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed + With bliss remembered,--this thy teacher knows. + Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head, + As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim, + So will I speak. Together once we read + The tale of Lancelot,--how Love bound him. + Alone we were without suspecting aught: + Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue, + And oft our eyes each other's glances caught; + But one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew. + At reading of the longed-for smile,--to be + By such a lover's kissing so much blest, + This dearest--never shalt thou part from me! + His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed. + The writer was our Galeot with his book:-- + That day we read no further on." She stopped: + Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took + My sense away, and like a corse I dropped. + +Observe that Dr. Parsons has put Dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven +syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without +losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour. But why +does he make Francesca address her companion personally, instead of +saying, "who shall never part from me?" And why does Mr. Dayman say, +"pious drops," instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Longfellow fill +up the twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there +any strain or wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them +Lord Byron and Carey, mistranslate this passage,-- + + "Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse + Quella lettura." + +All these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read, +their eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that passage over +more than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or +passage drew to it their eyes. To restore the meaning of the original +adds to the refinement of the scene. + +Why does Mr. Longfellow use such long words as _compassionate_ instead +of _pitiful_ or _piteous_, _recognize_ for _know_, _palpitating_ for +_trembling_, _conceded that you should know_ for _gave you to know_? +By the resolution to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his +poetic hands. The first effect of this self-binding is, to oblige him +to use often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words, +that is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to +poetic expression. Mr. Dayman, not translating line for line, is free +from this prosaic incumbrance; but as he makes it a rule to himself +that every English canto shall contain the same number of lines as its +original, he is obliged, much more often than Mr. Longfellow, +to throw in epithets or words not in the Italian. And Dr. Parsons, +who, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, in +several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than +the Italian, and the XXXI. into nine lines less, might with advantage +have curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines. + +Do what we will, poetic translation is brought about more from without +than from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a +lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, which, in good +original work, comes from free inward impulsion. To counteract, in so +far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the +translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full +swing his own native speech. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr. +Longfellow forfeits much of this freedom. He is too intent on the +words; he sacrifices the spirit to the letter; he overlays the poetry +with a verbal literalness; he deprives himself of scope to give a +billowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice +passages. The rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity, +this lineal servility, is increased by a frequent looseness in +the endings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some +pages, have--contrary to all good usage--the superfluous eleventh +syllable. Milton never allows himself this liberty, nor Mr. Tennyson +in epic verse so little pretentious as "Idyls of the King." Nor do +good blank-verse translators give in to it. Cowper does not in his +Iliad, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Bryant in his version of the fifth book +of the Odyssey, nor Mr. Carey in his Dante. Permissible at times in +dramatic blank verse, it is in epic rejected by the best artists as a +weakness. Can it be that Mr. Longfellow hereby aims to be more close +to the form of Dante? Whatever the cause of its use, the effect is +still farther to weaken his translation. These loose poetic +endings--and on most pages one third of the lines have eleven +syllables and on some pages more than a third--do a part in causing +Mr. Longfellow's Dante to lack the clean outline, the tonic ring, the +chiseled edge of the original, and in making his cantos read as would +sound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are +relaxed. + +Looking at the printed Italian Dante beside the English, in a volume +where opposite each English page is the corresponding page of +the original, as in Mr. Dayman's, one cannot fail to be struck with +the comparative narrowness of the Italian column. This comes of the +comparative shortness of Italian syllables. For instance, as the +strongest exemplification, the ever-recurring _and_, and the +often-repeated _is_, are both expressed in Italian by a single letter, +_e_. And this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. In lines +of thirty letters Dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to +fourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have +about twenty consonants to ten vowels, or two to one. From this +comparative rejection of consonants, Italian cannot, as English can, +bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like _friends_ +and _straight_, nor even words of six letters, like _chimed_, +_shoots_, _thwart_, _spring_; nor does Italian abound as English does +in monosyllables, and the few it has are mostly of but two or three +letters. In combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters, +as in _fronte_ and _braccia_. As a consequence hereof, Dante's lines, +although always of eleven syllables, average about twenty-nine +letters, while those of the three translators about thirty-three. +Hence, the poem in their versions carries more weight than the +original; its soul is more cumbered with body. + +In order to the faithful reproduction of Dante, to the giving the best +transcript, possible in English, of his thought and feeling, should +not regard be had to the essential difference between the syllabic +constitutions of the two languages, what may be called the physical +basis of the two mediums of utterance? Here is the Francesca story, +translated in the spirit of this suggestion:-- + + I turned to them, and then I spake: + "Francesca! tears o'erfill mine eyes, + Such pity thy keen pangs awake. + But say: in th' hour of sweetest sighs, + By what and how found Love relief + And broke thy doubtful longing's spell?" + And she: "There is no greater grief + Than joy in sorrow to retell. + But if so urgently one seeks + To know our Love's first root, I will + Do as he does who weeps and speaks. + One day of Lancelot we still + Read o'er, how love held him enchained. + Without mistrust we were alone. + Our cheeks oft were of color drained: + One passage vanquished us, but one. + When we read of lips longed for pressed + By such a lover with a kiss, + This one whom naught from me shall wrest, + All trembling kissed my mouth. To this + That book and writer brought us. We + No farther read that day." While she + Thus spake, the other spirit wept + So bitterly, with pity I + Fell motionless, my senses swept + By swoon, as one about to die. + +In the very first line two Italian trisyllables, _rivolsi_ and +_parlai_, are given in English with literal fidelity by two +monosyllables, _turned_ and _spake_. In the fourth observe how, in a +word-for-word rendering, the eleven Italian syllables become, without +any forcing, eight English: + + "Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri:" + "But tell me: in th' hour of sweet sighs." + +For the sake of a more musical cadence, this line is slightly +modified. Again, in the line,-- + + "Than joy in sorrow to retell," + +_joy_ represents, and represents faithfully, three words containing +six syllables, _del tempo felice_: _retell_ stands for _ricordarsi_, +and _in sorrow_ for _nella miseria_, or, three syllables for six; so +that, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and complete +translation of what in Italian takes up seventeen. English the most +simple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a translation of +Dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; and this is the +first fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to. Owing to +the fundamental difference between the syllabic structures of +the two languages, we are enabled to put into English lines of eight +syllables the whole meaning of Dante's lines of eleven. In the above +experiment even more has been done. The twenty-eight lines of Dante +are given in twenty-six lines of eight syllables each, and this +without any sacrifice of the thought or feeling; for the "this thy +teacher knows," which is omitted, besides that the commentators cannot +agree on its meaning, is parenthetical in sense, and with reverence be +it said, in so far a defect in such a relation. As to the form of +Dante, what is essential in that has been preserved, namely, the +iambic measure and the rhyme. + +Let us try if this curtailment of syllables will be successful when +applied to the terrible words, written in blackest color, over the +gate of Hell, at the beginning of the third canto of the "Inferno":-- + + Through me the path to place of wail: + Through me the path to endless sigh: + Through me the path to souls in bale. + 'Twas Justice moved my Maker high: + Wisdom supreme, and Might divine, + And primal Love established me. + Created birth was none ere mine, + And I endure eternally: + Ye who pass in, all hope resign. + + +Has anything been lost in the transit from Italian words to English? +English speech being organically more concentrated than Italian, does +not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve +what ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic translation, namely, +along with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original, +fidelity to the idiom, and cast and play of the translator's own +tongue? + +Here is another short passage in a different key,--the opening of the +last canto of the "Paradiso":-- + + Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son, + Meek, yet above all things create, + Fair aim of the Eternal one, + 'Tis thou who so our human state + Ennobledst, that its Maker deigned + Himself his creature's son to be. + This flower, in th' endless peace, was gained + Through kindling of God's love in thee. + +In this passage nine Italian lines of eleven syllables are converted +into eight lines of eight syllables each. We submit it to the candid +reader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original has been +sacrificed to brevity. + +The rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to +which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for +the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic +verse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does +not feel the want. + +One more short passage of four lines,--the famous figure of the lark +in the twentieth Canto of the "Paradiso":-- + + Like lark that through the air careers, + First singing, then, silent his heart, + Feeds on the sweetness in his ears, + Such joy to th' image did impart + Th' eternal will. + +This paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but, +nevertheless, we beg the reader's indulgence for a few moments longer, +while we conclude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty +lines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is unrhymed; for that +terrible tale can dispense, in English, with soft echoes at the end of +lines. + + When locked I heard the nether door + Of the dread tower, I without speech + Into my children's faces looked: + Nor wept, so inly turned to stone. + They wept: and my dear Anselm said, + "Thou look'st so, father, what hast thou?" + Still I nor wept nor answer made + That whole day through, nor the next night, + Till a new sun rose on the world. + As in our doleful prison came + A little glimmer, and I saw + On faces four my own pale stare, + Both of my hands for grief I bit; + And they, thinking it was from wish + To eat, rose suddenly and said: + "Father, less shall we feel of pain + If them wilt eat of us: from thee + Came this poor flesh: take it again." + I calmed me then, not to grieve them. + The next two days we spake no word. + Oh! obdurate earth, why didst not ope? + When we had come to the fourth day + Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet, + Saying, "Father, why dost not help me?" + There died he; and, as thou seest me, + I saw the three fall one by one + The fifth and sixth day; then I groped, + Now blind, o'er each; and two whole days + I called them after they were dead: + Then hunger did what grief could not. + + + + +V. + +SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC. + + +A literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an arsenal +of opposites. He should combine common sense with tact, integrity with +indulgence, breadth with keenness, vigor with delicacy, largeness with +subtlety, knowledge with geniality, inflexibility with sinuousness, +severity with suavity; and, that all these counter qualities be +effective, he will need constant culture and vigilance, besides the +union of reason with warmth, of enthusiasm with self-control, of wit +with philosophy,--but hold: at this rate, in order to fit out the +critic, human nature will have to set apart its highest and best. Dr. +Johnson declared, the poet ought to know everything and to have seen +everything, and the ancients required the like of an orator. Truly, +the supreme poet should have manifold gifts, be humanly indued as +generously and completely as is the bust of Homer, ideally shaped by +the light of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the +Greeks. The poet, it is true, must be born a poet, and the +critic is the child of culture. But as the poet, to perfect his +birthright, has need of culture, so the man whom culture can shape and +sharpen to the good critic, must be born with many gifts, to be +susceptible of such shaping. And when we reflect that the task of the +critic is to see clearly into the subtlest and deepest mind, to +measure its hollows and its elevations, to weigh all its individual +and its composite powers, and, that from every one of the throbbing +aggregates, whom it is his office to analyze and portray, issue lines +that run on all sides into the infinite, we must conclude that he who +is to be the accomplished interpreter, the trusted judge, should be +able swiftly to follow these lines. + +Long and exacting as is our roll of what is wanted to equip a +veritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications, +which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal +allotment. The first is, joy in life, from which the pages of M. +Sainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a +mellow, radiant geniality. The other, which is of still deeper +account, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue--for so it deserves +to be called--born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those +in whose presence only can be recognized and enjoyed the lofty and the +profound, the beautiful and the true. He who is not well endowed with +these higher senses is not a bad critic; he is no critic at all. Not +only can he not discern the good there is in a man or a work, he can +as little discover and expose the bad; for, deficiencies implying +failures to reach a certain fullness, implying a falling short of the +complete, to say where and what are deficiencies, involves the having +in the mind an idea of the full and complete. The man so meagrely +furnished as to hold no such idea is but a carper, not a critic. To +know the bad denotes knowledge of the good; in criticism as in morals, +a righteous indignation can only flash from a shock to pure feelings. + +In a notice of M. Thiers' chapter on St. Helena, M. Sainte-Beuve, +after expressing his admiration of the commentaries of Napoleon on the +campaigns of Turenne, Frederic, and Caesar, adds: "A man of letters +smiles at first involuntarily to see Napoleon apply to each of these +famous campaigns a methodical criticism, just as we would proceed with +a work of the mind, with an epic or tragic poem. But is not a +campaign of a great captain equally a work of genius? Napoleon is here +the high sovereign critic, the Goethe in this department, as the +Feuquières, the Jominis, the St. Cyrs are the La Harpes or the +Fontanes, the Lessings or the Schlegels, all good and expert critics; +but he is the first of all, nor, if you reflect on it, could it have +been otherwise. And who then would say better things of Homer than +Milton?"--Goethe supreme in literary criticism, Milton on Homer; this +touches the root of the matter; sympathy with the writer and his work +the critic must have,--sympathy as one of the sources of good +judgment, and even of knowledge. You cannot know, and therefore not +judge of a man or book or thing, unless you have some fellow-feeling +with him or it; and to judge well you must have much fellow-feeling. +The critic must, moreover, be a thinker; reason is the critic's sun. +Scott and Byron could say just and fresh things about poets and +poetry; but neither could command the whole field, nor dig deep into +the soil. Witness Byron's deliberate exaltation of Pope. Whereas +Wordsworth and Coleridge were among the soundest of critics, because, +besides being poets, they were both profound thinkers. + +For the perfecting of the literary critic the especial +sympathy needed is that with excellence; for high literature is the +outcome of the best there is in humanity, the finished expression of +healthiest aspirations, of choicest thoughts, the ripened fruit of +noble, of refined growths, the perfected fruit, with all the perfume +and beauty of the flower upon it. Of this sympathy M. Sainte-Beuve, +throughout his many volumes, gives overflowing evidence, in addition +to that primary proof of having himself written good poems. Besides +the love, he has the instinct, of literature, and this instinct draws +him to what is its bloom and fullest manifestation, and his love is +the more warm and constant for being discriminative and refined. +Through variety of knowledge, with intellectual keenness, he enjoys +excellence in the diversified forms that literature assumes. His pages +abound in illustrations of his versatility, which is nowhere more +strikingly exhibited than in the contrast between two successive +papers (both equally admirable) in the very first volume of the +"Causeries du Lundi," the one on Madame Récamier, the other on +Napoleon. Read especially the series of paragraphs beginning, "Some +natures are born pure, and have received _quand même_ the gift +of innocence," to see how gracefully, subtly, delicately, with what a +feminine tenderness, he draws the portrait of this most fascinating of +women, this beautiful creature, for whom grace and sweetness did even +still more than beauty, this fairy-queen of France, this refined +coquette, who drew to her hundreds of hearts, this kindly magician, +who turned all her lovers into friends. Then pass directly to the next +paper, on the terrible Corsican, "who weakened his greatness by the +gigantic--who loved to astonish--who delighted too much in what was +his forte, war,--who was too much a bold adventurer." And further on, +the account of Napoleon's conversation with Goethe at Weimar, in which +account M. Sainte-Beuve shows how fully he values the largeness and +truthfulness and penetration of the great German. The impression thus +made on the reader as to the variousness of M. Sainte-Beuve's power is +deepened by another paper in the same volume, that on M. Guizot and +his historic school, a masterly paper, which reasons convincingly +against those historians "who strain humanity, who make the lesson that +history teaches too direct and stiff, who put themselves in the place +of Providence," which, as is said in another place (vol. v. p. +150), "is often but a deification of our own thought." + +In a paper published in 1862, M. Sainte-Beuve--who had then, for more +than thirty years, been plying zealously and continuously the function +of critic--describes what is a fundamental feature of his method in +arriving at a judgment on books and authors. "Literature, literary +production, is in my eyes not distinct, or at least not separable, +from the rest of the man and his organization. I can enjoy a work, but +it is difficult for me to form a judgment on it independently of the +man himself; and I readily say, _as is the tree so is the fruit_. +Literary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study." This, of +course, he can apply but partially to the ancients; but with the +moderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is to know the +man who did it, to get at his primary organization, his interior +beginnings and proclivities; and to learn this, one of the best means +is, to make yourself acquainted with his race, his family, his +predecessors. "You are sure to recognize the superior man, in part at +least, in his parents, especially in his mother, the most direct and +certain of his parents; also in his sisters and his brothers, +even in his children. In these one discovers important features which, +from being too condensed, too closely joined in the eminent +individual, are masked; but whereof the basis, the _fond_, is found in +others of his blood in a more naked, a more simple state." + +Hereby is shown with what thoroughness and professional +conscientiousness M. Sainte-Beuve sets himself to his work of critic. +Partially applying to himself his method, we discover in part the +cause of his sympathy for feminine nature, and of his tact in +delineating it. His father died before he was born; and thence all +living parental influence on him was maternal. None of his volumes is +more captivating than his "Portraits de Femmes," a translation of +which we are glad to see announced. + +Of Sainte-Beuve's love for excellence there is, in the third volume of +the "Nouveaux Lundis," an illustration, eloquently disclosing how deep +is his sympathy with the most excellent that human kind has known. For +the London Exposition of 1862 a magnificent folio of the New Testament +was prepared at the Imperial Press of Paris. The critic takes the +occasion to write a paper on "Les saints Evangiles," especially the +Sermon on the Mount. After quoting and commenting on the Beatitudes, +he continues: "Had there ever before been heard in the world such +accents, such a love of poverty, of self-divestment, such a hunger and +thirst for justice, such eagerness to suffer for it, to be cursed of +men in behalf of it, such an intrepid confidence in celestial +recompense, such a forgiveness of injuries, and not simply forgiveness +but a livelier feeling of charity for those who have injured you, who +persecute and calumniate you, such a form of prayer and of familiar +address to the Father who is in heaven? Was there ever before anything +like to that, so encouraging, so consoling, in the teaching and the +precepts of the sages? Was that not truly a revelation in the midst of +human morals; and if there be joined to it, what cannot be separated +from it, the totality of such a life, spent in doing good, and that +predication of about three years, crowned by the crucifixion, have we +not a right to say that here was a 'new ideal of a soul perfectly +heroic,' which, under this half Jewish, Galilean form was set before +all coming generations? + +"Who talks to us of _myth_, of the realization, more or less +instinctive or philosophical, of the human conscience reflecting +itself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who hardly +existed. What! do you not feel the reality, the living, vibrating, +bleeding, compassionate personality, which, independently of +what belief and enthusiasm may have added, exists and throbs behind +such words? What more convincing demonstration of the beauty and truth +of the entirely historic personage, Jesus, than the Sermon on the +Mount?" + +Alluding, then, to the denial of originality in the moral doctrines of +Christianity, M. Sainte-Beuve, after citing from Socrates, Marcus +Aurelius, and others, passages wherein is recommended "charity toward +the human race," declares that all these examples and precepts, all +that makes a fine body of social and philosophical morality, is not +Christianity itself as beheld at its source and in its spirit. "What +characterizes," he proceeds, "the discourse on the mount and the other +sayings and parables of Jesus, is not the charity that relates to +equity and strict justice, to which, with a sound heart and upright +spirit, one attains; it is something unknown to flesh and blood and to +simple reason, it is a kind of innocent and pure exaltation, freed +from rule and superior to law, holily improvident, a stranger +to all calculation, to all positive prevision, unreservedly reliant on +Him who sees and knows all things, and as a last reward counting on +the coming of that kingdom of God, the promise of which cannot fail:-- + + But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever + shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other + also. + + And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy + coat, let him have thy cloak also.... + + Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow + of thee turn not thou away.... + + No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, + and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and + despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. + + Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what + ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, + what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the + body than raiment?... + + +"Nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and moralists, +not in Hesiod, nor in the maxims of Greece any more than in Confucius. +It is not in Cicero, nor in Aristotle, nor even in Socrates any more +than in the modern Franklin. The principle of inspiration is +different, if indeed it be not opposite: the paths may come together +for a moment, but they cross one another. And it is this delicate +ideal of devotedness, of moral purification, of continual renouncement +and self-sacrifice, breathing in the words and embodied in the person +and life of Christ, which constitutes the entire novelty as well as +the sublimity of Christianity taken at its source." + +Of M. Sainte-Beuve's delight in what is the most excellent product of +literature, poetry, testimony is borne by many papers, ranging over +the whole field of French poetry, from its birth to its latest page. +"Poetry," says he, "is the essence of things, and we should be careful +not to spread the drop of essence through a mass of water or floods of +color. The task of poetry is not to say everything, but to make us +dream everything." And he cites a similar judgment of Fénélon: "The +poet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but +what can be beautified." In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks +of the youthful poems of Milton: "'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of +meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio +in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no +comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. All that +is beautiful in Milton stands by itself; one feels the tranquil habit +of the upper regions, and continuity in power." In a paper on +the letters of Ducis, he proves that he apprehends the proportions of +Shakespeare. He asks: "Have we then got him at last? Is our stomach up +to him? Are we strong enough to digest this marrow of lion (_cette +moelle de lion_)?" And again, in an article on the men of the +eighteenth century, he writes: "One may be born a sailor, but there is +nothing for it like seeing a storm, nor for a soldier like seeing a +battle. A Shakespeare, you will say, very nearly did without all that, +and yet he knew it all. But Nature never but once made a Shakespeare." + +Like most writers, of whatever country, M. Sainte-Beuve has formed +himself on native models, and the French having no poet of the highest +class, no Dante, no Shakespeare, no Goethe, it is a further proof of +his breadth and insight that he should so highly value the treasures +in the deeper mines opened by these foreigners. Seeing, too, how +catholic he is, and liberal toward all other greatness, one even takes +pleasure in his occasional exuberance of national complacency. +Whenever he speaks of Montaigne or La Fontaine or Molière, his words +flame with a tempered enthusiasm. But he throws no dust in +his own eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the +feelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. His native +favorites he enjoys as no Englishman or German could, but he does not +overrate them. Nor does he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls "the +Frenchman par excellence," and of whom he is proud as the literary +sovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly devoted +to Joubert, as well as by frequent citations of his judgments, he +lauds this spiritually-minded thinker as one of the best of critics. +And yet of Voltaire, Joubert says the hardest things: "Voltaire is +sometimes sad; he is excited; but he is never serious. His graces even +are impudent.--There are defects difficult to perceive, that have not +been classed or defined, and have no names. Voltaire is full of them." + +In a paper on Louise Labé, a poetess of the sixteenth century, he +reproduces some of her poems and several passages of prose, and then +adds: "These passages prove, once more, the marked superiority that, +at almost all times, French prose has over French poetry." No German +or English or Italian critic could say this of his native literature, +and the saying of it by the foremost of French critics is not an +exaltation of French prose, it is a depression of French +poetry. In this judgment there is a reach and severity of which +possibly the eminent critic was not fully conscious; for it amounts to +an acknowledgment that the nature and language of the French are not +capable of producing and embodying the highest poetry. + +Goethe, M. Sainte-Beuve always mentions with deference. On Eckerman's +"Conversations with Goethe" he has a series of three papers, wherein +he deals chiefly with the critic and sage, exhibiting with honest +pride Goethe's admiration of some of the chief French writers, and his +acknowledgment of what he owed them. To a passage relating to the +French translation of Eckerman, M. Sainte-Beuve has the following +note, which we, on this side the Atlantic, may cherish as a high +tribute to our distinguished countrywoman: "The English translation is +by Miss Fuller, afterwards Marchioness Ossoli, who perished so +unhappily by shipwreck. An excellent preface precedes this +translation, and I must say that for elevated comprehension of the +subject and for justness of appreciation it leaves our preface far +behind it. Miss Fuller, an American lady of Boston, was a +person of true merit and of great intellectual vigor." A sympathetic +student of Goethe, Margaret Fuller purposed to write a life of him; +and seeing what critical capacity and what insight into the nature of +Goethe she has shown in this preface, we may be confident that she +would have made a genuine contribution to the Goethe "literature," had +she lived to do that and other high literary work. Her many friends +had nearer and warmer motives for deploring the early loss of this +gifted, generous, noble-hearted woman. + +One of the busiest functions of the critic being to sift the +multifarious harvest of contemporaneous literature, he must have a +hand that can shake hard,--and hit hard, too, at times. For fifteen +years M. Sainte-Beuve furnished once a week, under the title of +"Causeries du Lundi," a critical paper, to a Paris daily journal; not +short, rapid notices, but articles that would cover seven or eight +pages of one of our double-columned monthly magazines. He was thus +ever in the thick of the literary _mêlée_. Attractions and repulsions, +sympathies and antipathies, there will be wherever men do congregate; +the æsthetic plane is as open as any other to personal preferences +and friendships. A literary circle as large as that of Paris, +if too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous +mutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and coteries, betray +some of its vices. In this voluminous series of papers the critical +pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is +wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality +is seldom transpicuous. The Parisian reader will no doubt often +perceive, in this or that paragraph or paper, a heightening or a +subduing of color not visible to the foreigner, who cannot so well +trace the marks of political, religious, or personal influences. His +perfected praise M. Sainte-Beuve reserves for those of the illustrious +dead who are embalmed in their own excellence. Besides devoting many +papers (among the most valuable of the series) to these magnates of +literature, he delights in frequent illustrative reference to them,--a +sign this of ripe culture in a critic, and of trustworthiness. + +Out of the severe things occasionally said, the sting is mostly taken +by the temper in which they are said, or by the frank recognition of +virtues and beauties beside vices and blemishes. In the general tone +there is a clear humanity, a seemly gentlemanliness. Of the +humane spirit wherewith M. Sainte-Beuve tempers condemnation, take the +following as one of many instances. In the correspondence of Lamennais +there is laid bare such contradictions between his earlier and his +later sentiments on religious questions, that the reader is thus +feelingly guarded against being too harsh in his censure: "Let us cast +a look on ourselves, and ask if in our lives, in our hearts, from +youth to our latter years, there are none of these boundless +distances, these secret abysses, these moral ruins, perhaps, which, +for being hidden, are none the less real and profound." + +Writing weekly for the _feuilleton_ of a Paris daily journal, M. +Sainte-Beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse; but his diffuseness is +always animated, never languid. Fluent, conversational, ever polished, +he is full of happy turns and of Gallic sprightliness. When the +occasion offers, he is concise, condensed even in the utterance of a +principle or of a comprehensive thought. "Admiration is a much finer +test of literary talent, a sign much more sure and delicate, than all +the art of satire." By the side of this may be placed a sentence he +cites from Grimm: "People who so easily admire bad things are +not in a state to enjoy good." How true and cheering is this: "There +is in each of us a primitive ideal being, whom Nature has wrought with +her finest and most maternal hand, but whom man too often covers up, +smothers, or corrupts." Speaking of the sixteenth century, he says: +"What it wanted was taste, if by taste we understand choice clean and +perfect, the disengagement of the elements of the beautiful." When, to +give a paragraph its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic +point, if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to +borrow just what is wanted. Speaking of embellished oratorical +diction, he quotes Talleyrand on some polished oration that was +discussed in his presence: "It is not enough to have fine sentences: +you must have something to put into them." Commenting on the +hyper-spirituality of M. Laprade, he says: "M. Laprade starts from the +_absolute notion of being_. For him the following is the principle of +Art,--'to manifest what we feel of the Absolute Being, of the +Infinite, of God, to make him known and felt by other men, such in its +generality is the end of Art.' Is this true, is it false? I know not: +at this elevation one always gets into the clouds. Like the most of +those who pride themselves on metaphysics, he contents himself +with words (_il se paye de mots_)." Here is a grand thought, that +flashes out of the upper air of poetry: "Humanity, that eternal child +that has never done growing." + +M. Sainte-Beuve's irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of +truth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. Michelet: +"Narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost +entirely sacrificed. Seek here no historical highway, well laid, +solid, and continuous; the method adopted is absolute points of view; +you run with him on summits, peaks, on needles of granite, which he +selects at his pleasure to gets views from. The reader leaps from +steeple to steeple. M. Michelet seems to have proposed to himself an +impossible wager, which, however, he has won,--to write history with a +series of flashes." Could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying +of a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on M. +Guizot: "The consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural +principle of pride, place him easily above the little susceptibilities +of self-love." M. Sainte-Beuve is not an admirer of Louis Philippe, +and among other sly hits gives him the following: "Louis +Philippe was too much like a _bourgeois_ himself to be long respected +by the _bourgeoisie_. Just as in former times the King of France was +only the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the first +_bourgeois_ of the country." What witty satire on Lamartine he +introduces, with a recognition of popularity that, with one who takes +so much joy in applause as Lamartine does, is enough to take the +poison out of the sting: "Those who knew his verses by heart (and the +number who do is large among the men of our age) meet, not without +regret, with whole strips of them spread out, drowned, as it were, in +his prose. This prose is, in 'Les Confidences,' too often but the +paraphrase of his verses, which were themselves become, toward the +last, paraphrases of his feelings." Amends are made to Lamartine on +another occasion, when, citing some recent French sonnets, he says: +"Neither Lamartine nor Hugo nor Vigny wrote sonnets. The swans and the +eagles, in trying to enter this cage, would have broken their wings. +That was for us, birds of a less lofty flight and less amplitude of +wing." This is better as modesty than as criticism. Shakespeare, +Milton, Wordsworth, had wings of vaster sweep as well as of +more gorgeous plumage than these French soarers, and they enjoyed +getting into the cage of the sonnet, and sang therein some of their +strongest as well as sweetest notes. + +A thorough Frenchman, M. Sainte-Beuve delights in French minds, just +as a beauty delights in her mirror, which throws back an image of +herself. His excellence as a critic is primarily owing to this joy in +things French. Through means of it he knows them through and through: +they are become transparent; and while his feelings are aglow, his +intellect looks calmly right through them, and sees on the other side +the shadows cast by the spots and opacities which frustrate more or +less the fullest illumination. Freely he exhibits these shadows. +Neither Bossuet nor Louis XIV., neither Voltaire nor Béranger, is +spared, nor the French character, with its proneness to frivolity and +broad jest, its thirst for superficial excitement. Whatever his +individual preferences, his mental organization is so large and happy, +that he enjoys, and can do equal justice to, Father Lacordaire and M. +Michelet, to Madame de Staël and M. Guizot, to Corneille and Goethe, +to Fénélon and M. Renan, to Marie Antoinette and Mirabeau. + +Have you then for M. Sainte-Beuve, some reader will be +impatient to ask, nothing but praise? Not much else. Commencing his +literary career in 1827, when only in his twenty-third year, from that +date to 1849 his writings, chiefly in the shape of literary portraits, +fill several thousand pages. Between his forty-fifth to his sixtieth +year he wrote twenty-three volumes, containing about eleven thousand +pages, on four or five hundred different authors and subjects. This is +the period of his critical maturity, the period of the "Causeries du +Lundi," followed by the "Nouveaux Lundis." Many men write +voluminously, but most of these only write _about_ a subject, not +_into_ it. Only the few who can write into their subject add something +to literature. One of these few is M. Sainte-Beuve. In his mind there +is vitality to animate his large acquirement, to make his many +chapters buoyant and stimulant. All through his writings is the +sparkle of original life. + +But let us now cheer the reader who is impatient of much praise, and +at the same time perform the negative part of our task. + +Well, then, to be bold, as befits a critic of the critic, we beard the +lion in his very den. We challenge a definition he gives of the +critic. In the seventh volume of the "Causeries," article +"Grimm," he says: "When Nature has endowed some one with this vivacity +of feeling, with this susceptibility to impression, and that the +creative imagination be wanting, this some one is a born critic, that +is to say, a lover and judge of the creations of others." Why did M. +Sainte-Beuve make Goethe sovereign in criticism? Why did he think +Milton peculiarly qualified to interpret Homer? From the deep +principle of like unto like; only spirit can know spirit. What were +the worth of a comment of John Locke on "Paradise Lost," except to +reveal the mental composition of John Locke? The critic should be what +Locke was, a thinker, but to be a judge of the highest form of +literature, poetry, he must moreover carry within him, inborn, some +share of that whereby poetry is fledged, "creative imagination." He +may "want the accomplishment of verse," or the constructive faculty, +but more than the common allowance of sensibility to the beautiful he +must have. But do not the presence of "vivacity of feeling with +susceptibility to impression" imply the imaginative temperament? If +not, then we confidently assure M. Sainte-Beuve that had his +definition fitted himself, his "Causeries du Lundi" would never have +been rescued from the quick oblivion of the _feuilleton._ + +Now and then there are betrayals of that predominant French weakness, +which the French will persist in cherishing as a virtue,--the love of +glory. M. Sainte-Beuve thinks Buffon's passion for glory saved him in +his latter years from ennui, from "that languor of the soul which +follows the age of the passions." Where are to be found men more the +victims of disgust with life than that eminent pair, not more +distinguished for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than +for insatiable greed of glory,--Byron and Chateaubriand? No form of +self-seeking is morally more weakening than this quenchless craving, +which makes the soul hang its satisfaction on what is utterly beyond +its sway, on praise and admiration. These stimulants--withdrawn more +or less even from the most successful in latter years--leave a void +which becomes the very nursery of ennui, or even of self-disgust. +Instead of glory being "the potent motive-power in all great souls," +as M. Sainte-Beuve approvingly quotes, it is, with a surer moral +instinct, called by Milton,-- + + "That last infirmity of noble mind." + +In some of the noblest and greatest, so subordinate is it as +hardly to be traceable in their careers. Love of glory was not the +spring that set and kept in motion Kepler and Newton, any more than +Shakespeare and Pascal or William of Orange and Washington. + +The military glory wherewith Napoleon fed and flattered the French +nation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual and animal +vigor of the conqueror's mind, dazzle even M. Sainte-Beuve, so that he +does not perceive the gaping chasms in Napoleon's moral nature, and +the consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action, nor the +unmanning effects of his despotism. The words used to describe the +moral side of the Imperial career are as insufficient as would be the +strokes of a gray crayon to depict a conflagration or a sunset. In the +paper from which has already been quoted he speaks of the "rare good +sense" of Napoleon, of "his instinct of justice." But was it not a +compact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of +justice, backed by a Titan's will, wielding a mighty intellect, that +enabled Napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot +and the merciless devastator? Again, can it be said of Napoleon that +he possessed good sense in a rare degree? Good sense is an instinctive +insight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive +discernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or purpose, a +soundness of judgment, resulting from the soundness of, and +equilibrium among, the upper powers of reason and sensibility. The +moral side is at least the half of it: Napoleon's moral endowment was +but fractional. Good sense, it may be added, lies solidly at the basis +of all good work, except such as is purely professional or technical, +or in its action one-sided; and even in such its presence must be +felt. In whatever reaches general human interests, whether as +practical act or imaginative creation, good sense must be, for their +prosperity, a primary ingredient. "The Tempest" and "Don Quixote" +shoot up into shining, imperishable beauty because their roots draw +their first nourishment from this hearty, inexhaustible substratum. +And let us say, that in M. Sainte-Beuve himself good sense is the +foundation of his eminent critical ability. He has been led, we +conceive, to attribute more of it to Napoleon than is his due by the +blinding splendor of Napoleon's military genius, through which, with +such swiftness and cumulative effect, he adapted means to ends on the +purely material plane. + +When Murray applied to Lord Byron to write a book about the +life and manners of the upper class in Italy, Byron declined the +proposal from personal regards, and then added, that were he to write +such a book it would be misjudged in England; for, said he, "their +moral is not your moral." Such international misinterpretations and +exaggerations are instinctive and involuntary. A nation from its being +a nation, has a certain one-sidedness. To the Italian (even to one who +carries a stiletto) the English practice of boxing is a sheer +brutality; while to an Englishman (himself perhaps not a Joseph) the +_cavaliere servente_ is looked upon with reprobation tempered by +scorn. To this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation +on the domestic, books, too, are liable; but to books as being more +abstract than usages, more ideal than manners, an absolute moral +standard can with less difficulty be applied. Applying it to Gil Blas, +is not M. Sainte-Beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks of this +and the other writings of Le Sage as being "the mirror of the world?" +Molière, too, is a satirist, and from his breadth a great one; and +surely the world he holds a mirror before is a much purer world than +that of Le Sage; and what of the Shakespearean world? The world of Le +Sage is a nether world. "Of Gil Blas it has been well said that the +book is moral like experience." The experience one may get in brothels +and "hells," in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it lessons of +virtue and morality,--for those who can extract them; but even for +these few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot +read so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the +experience is demoralizing and deadening. But toward the end of the +paper the critic lets it appear that he does not place Le Sage so high +as some of his phrases prompt us to infer; and he quotes this judgment +of Joubert: "Of the novels of Le Sage it may be said that they seem to +have been written in a _café_, by a player of dominoes, on coming out +of the comic theatre." + +Without being over-diffident, we may feel our footing not perfectly +secure on French ground when we differ from a Frenchman; we are +therefore not sorry to catch M. Sainte-Beuve tripping on English +ground. In a review of the translation of the celebrated Letters of +Lord Chesterfield--whom he calls the La Rochefoucauld of England--he +refers to, and in part quotes, the passages in which Chesterfield +gives his son advice as to his _liaisons_; and he adds: "All +Chesterfield's morality, on this head, is resumed in a line of +Voltaire,-- + + "Il n'est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie." + +It is these passages that make the grave Dr. Johnson blush: we only +smile at them." For ourselves, we blush with Johnson, not that the man +of the world should give to his youthful son, living at a corrupt +Continental court, counsel as to relations which were regarded as +inevitable in such a circle; but that the heart of the father should +not have poured (were it but parenthetically) through the pen of the +worldling some single sentence like this: "Writing to you, my son, as +an experienced man of the world to one inexperienced, I recommend the +good taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a gentleman; +but to his dear boy, your father says, avoid, if possible, such +_liaisons_; preserve your purity; nothing will give you such a return +throughout the whole of the future." But, a single sentence like this +would _vitiate_ the entire Chesterfieldian correspondence. + +How fully and warmly M. Sainte-Beuve prizes moral worth may be learnt +from many passages. Not the least animated and cordial of his +papers is one on the Abbé Gerbet, in the sixth volume, a paper which +shows, as Gustave Planche said of him, that "he studies with his +heart, as women do;" and one in the second volume on Malesherbes, whom +he describes as being "separated, on the moral side, from the +Mirabeaus and the Condorcets not by a shade, but by an abyss," and +whom he sums up as "great magistrate, minister too sensitive and too +easily discouraged, heroic advocate, and sublime victim." Of this +noble, deeply dutiful, self-sacrificing Frenchman, this exemplar of +moral greatness, Lord Lansdowne wrote many years before the French +Revolution: "I have seen for the first time in my life what I did not +believe could exist, that is, a man _who is exempt from fear and from +hope_, and who nevertheless is full of life and warmth. Nothing can +disturb his peace; nothing is necessary to him, and he takes a lively +interest in all that is good." + +In a paper on a volume of miscellaneous prose essays by M. Laprade, M. +Sainte-Beuve has this sentence: "What strikes me above all and +everywhere is, that the author, whether he reasons or whether he +addresses himself to literary history, only understands his own mode +of being and his own individuality. Hereby he reveals to us +that he is not a critic." The first paragraph of a keen critique on M. +de Pontmartin ends thus: "To say of even those writers who are opposed +to us nothing which their judicious friends do not already think and +are obliged to admit, this is my highest ambition." Discussing the +proper method of dealing with the past, he writes: "For myself I +respect tradition and I like novelty: I am never happier than when I +can succeed in reconciling them together." Of Hoffman he says, in a +paper on literary criticism: "He has many of the qualities of a true +critic, conscientiousness, independence, ideas, an opinion of his +own." These sentences, with others of like import, are keys to the +character of the volumes from which they are taken. The office of the +critic M. Sainte-Beuve administers, not for temporary or personal +ends, but with a disinterested sense of its elevation and its +responsibilities. Through healthy sympathies and knowledge ample and +ripe, through firm sense with artistic flexibility, through largeness +of view and subtlety of insight, he enters upon it more than +ordinarily empowered for its due discharge. He is at once what the +French call _fin_ and what the English call "sound." In +literary work, in biographical work, in work æsthetical and critical, +he delights, and he has a wide capacity of appropriation. The spirit +of a book, a man, an age, he seizes quickly. With a nice perception of +shades he catches the individual color of a mind or a production; and +by the same faculty he grasps the determining principles in a +character. Delicately, strongly, variously endowed, there is a steady +equilibrium among his fine powers. Considering the bulk and vast +variety and general excellence of his critical work, is it too much to +say of him, that he is not only, as he has been called, the foremost +of living critics, but that he deserves to hold the first place among +all critics? No other has done so much so well. Goethe and Coleridge +are something more; they are critics incidentally; but M. +Sainte-Beuve, with poetical and philosophical qualities that lift him +to a high vantage-ground, has made criticism his life-work, and +through conscientious and symmetrical use of these qualities has done +his work well. Besides much else in his many and many-sided volumes, +there is to be read in them a full, spirited history of French +literature. + +Our attempt to make M. Sainte-Beuve better known on this side +the Atlantic we cannot more fitly conclude than with a sketch of +him--a literary sketch--by himself. This we find in the fifth volume +of the "Nouveaux Lundis," in a paper on Molière, published in July, +1863. A man who, in the autumnal ripeness of his powers, thus frankly +tells us his likes and dislikes, tells us what he is. While by +reflected action the passage becomes a self-portraiture, it is a +sample of finest criticism. + +"To make Molière loved by more people is in my judgment to do a public +service. + +"Indeed, to love Molière--I mean to love him sincerely and with all +one's heart--it is, do you know? to have within one's self a guarantee +against many defects, much wrong-headedness. It is, in the first +place, to dislike what is incompatible with Molière, all that was +counter to him in his day, and that would have been insupportable to +him in ours. + +"To love Molière is to be forever cured--do not say of base and +infamous hypocrisy, but of fanaticism, of intolerance, and of that +kind of hardness which makes one anathematize and curse; it is to +carry a corrective to admiration even of Bossuet, and for all who, +after his example, exult, were it only in words, over their +enemy dead or dying; who usurp I know not what holy speech, and +involuntarily believe themselves to be, with the thunderbolt in their +hand, in the region and place of the Most High. Men eloquent and +sublime, you are far too much so for me! + +"To love Molière, is to be sheltered against, and a thousand leagues +away from, that other fanaticism, the political, which is cold, dry, +cruel, which never laughs, which smells of the sectary, which, under +pretext of Puritanism, finds means to mix and knead all that is +bitter, and to combine in one sour doctrine the hates, the spites, and +the Jacobinism of all times. It is to be not less removed, on the +other hand, from those tame, dull souls who, in the very presence of +evil, cannot be roused to either indignation or hatred. + +"To love Molière, is to be secured against giving in to that pious and +boundless admiration for a humanity which worships itself, and which +forgets of what stuff it is made, and that, do what it will, it is +always poor human nature. It is, not to despise it too much, however, +this common humanity, at which one laughs, of which one is, and into +which we throw ourselves through a healthful hilarity whenever we are +with Molière. + +"To love and cherish Molière, is to detest all mannerism in +language and expression; it is, not to take pleasure in, or to be +arrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, superfine finish, +excessive refinement of any kind, a tricky or artificial style. + +"To love Molière, it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor +pedantic science; it is to know how to recognize at first sight our +_Trissotins_[6] and our _Vadius_ even under their rejuvenated jaunty +airs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more +than formerly by the everlasting _Philaminte_, that affected pretender +of all times, whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly +renewed; it is, to like soundness and directness of mind in others as +well as in ourselves. I only give the first movement and the pitch; on +this key one may continue, with variations. + + [6] Trissotin, Vadius, and Philaminte, are personages in Molière's + comedy of _Les Femmes Savantes_ (The Blue-Stockings). + + +"To love and openly to prefer Corneille, as certain minds do, is no +doubt a fine thing, and, in one sense, a very legitimate thing; it is, +to dwell in, and to mark one's rank in, the world of great souls: but +is it not to run the risk of loving together with the grand +and sublime, false glory a little, to go so far as not to detest +inflation and magniloquence, an air of heroism on all occasions? He +who passionately loves Corneille cannot be an enemy to a little +boasting. + +"On the other hand, to love and prefer Racine, ah! that is, no doubt, +to love above all things, elegance, grace, what is natural and true +(at least relatively), sensibility, touching and charming passion; but +at the same time is it not also, to allow your taste and your mind to +be too much taken with certain conventional and over-smooth beauties, +a certain tameness and petted languidness, with certain excessive and +exclusive refinements? In a word, to love Racine so much, it is to run +the risk of having too much of what in France is called taste, and +which brings so much distaste. + +"To love Boileau--but no, one does not love Boileau, one esteems him, +one respects him; we admire his uprightness, his understanding, at +times his animation, and if we are tempted to love him, it is solely +for that sovereign equity which made him do such unshaken justice to +the great poets his contemporaries, and especially to him whom he +proclaims the first of all, Molière. + +"To love La Fontaine, is almost the same thing as to love +Molière; it is, to love nature, the whole of nature, humanity +ingenuously depicted, a representation of the grand comedy "of a +hundred different acts," unrolling itself, cutting itself up before +our eyes into a thousand little scenes with the graces and freedoms +that are so becoming, with weaknesses also, and liberties which are +never found in the simple, manly genius of the master of masters. But +why separate them? La Fontaine and Molière--we must not part them, we +love them united." + + * * * * * + +The number of "Putnam's Magazine," containing this paper, was sent to +M. Sainte-Beuve accompanied by a note. In due time I received an +answer to the note, saying that the Magazine had not reached him. +Hereupon I sent the article by itself. On receiving it he wrote the +following acknowledgment. + +In my note I referred to a rumor of his illness. His disease was, by +_post-mortem_ examination, discovered to be as the newspapers had +reported, the stone. But a consultation of physicians declared that it +was what he states it to be in his letter. Had they not made so gross +a mistake, his life might have been prolonged. + + +"PARIS, 6 _Decembre_, 1868, No. 11 Rue Mont Parnasse. + +"CHER MONSIEUR:-- + +"Oh! Cette fois je reçois bien décidément le très aimable et si bien +etudié portrait du _critique_. Comment exprimer comme je le +sens ma gratitude pour tant de soin, d'attention pénétrante, de désir +d'être agréable tout en restant juste? Il y avait certes moyen +d'insister bien plus sur les variations, les disparates et les +défaillances momentanées de la pensée et du jugement à travers cette +suite de volumes. C'est toujours un sujet d'étonnement pour moi, et +cette fois autant que jamais, de voir comment un lecteur ami et un +juge de goût parvient à tirer une figure une et consistante de ce qui +ne me parait à moi même dans mon souvenir que le cours d'un long +fleuve qui va s'épandant un pen au hazard des pentes et désertant +continuellement ses rives. De tels portraits comme celui que vous +voulez bien m'offrir me rendent un point d'appui et me feraient +véritablement croire à moi-même. Et quand je songe a l'immense +quantité d'esprits auxquels vous me présentez sous un aspect si +favorable et si magistral dans ce nouveau monde de tant de jeunesse et +d'avenir, je me prends d'une sorte de fierté et de courageuse +confiance comme en présence déjà de la postérité. + +"Le mal auquel vous voulez bien vous intéresser est tout simplement +une hypertrophie de la prostate. Les souffrances ne sont pas vives, +mais l'incommodité est grande, ne pouvant supporter à aucun degré le +mouvement de la voiture, ce qui restreint ma vie sociale à un bien +court rayon. + +"Veuillez agreéer, cher Monsieur, l'assurance de ma cordiale +gratitude, et de mes sentiments les plus distingués. + +SAINTE-BEUVE." + + + + +VI. + +THOMAS CARLYLE. + + +A brain ever aglow with self-kindled fire--a cerebral battery +bristling with magnetic life--such is Thomas Carlyle. Exceptional +fervor of temperament, rare intellectual vivacity, manful +earnestness--these are the primary qualifications of the man. He has +an uncommon soul-power. Hence his attractiveness, hence his influence. +Every page, every paragraph, every sentence, throbs with his own +being. Themselves all authors put, of course, more or less, into what +they write: few, very few, can make their sentences quiver with +themselves. This Mr. Carlyle does by the intenseness of a warm +individuality, by the nimble vigor of his mental life, and, be it +added, by the rapture of his spirituality. The self, in his case, is a +large, deep self, and it sends an audible pulse through his pen into +his page. + +To all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, +of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which +these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the +difference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high vital +pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental +currents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on +individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a +Dante, in another, a Newton, in another, a Mirabeau. And Nature, with +all her generosity, being jealous of her rights, allows no interchange +of gifts. Even the many-sided Goethe could not, by whatever force of +will and practice, have written a bar in a symphony of Beethoven. In +his dominant aptitudes, Mr. Carlyle is not more one-sided than many +other intellectual potentates; but, like some others, his activity and +ambition have at times led him into paths where great deficiencies +disclose themselves by the side of great superiorities. His mind is +biographical, not historical; stronger in details than in +generalization; more intuitive than scientific; critical, not +constructive; literary, not philosophical. Mr. Carlyle is great at a +picture, very great; he can fail in a survey or an induction. Wealth +of thought, strokes of tenderness, clean insight into life, satire, +irony, humor, make his least successful volumes to teem with +passages noteworthy, beautiful, wise, as do his "Cromwell" and his +"Frederick." Such giants carrying nations on their broad fronts, Mr. +Carlyle, in writing their lives with duteous particularity, has +embraced the full story of the epoch in which each was the leader. To +him they are more than leaders. Herein he and Mr. Buckle stand at +opposite poles; Mr. Buckle underrating the protagonists of history, +them and their share of agency; Mr. Carlyle overrating them,--a +prejudicial one-sidedness in both cases. Leader and led are the +complements the one of the other. + +History is a growth, and a slow growth. Evils in one age painfully sow +the seed that is to come up good in another. The historian, and still +more the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient, +calm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful, +nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. One +healthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, would not be ever betaking +him to the past as a refuge from the present; would not tauntingly +throw into the face of contemporaries an Abbot Sampson of the twelfth +century as a model. A judicial expounder would not cite one +single example as a characteristic of that age in contrast with this. +A patient, impartial elucidator, would not deride "ballot-boxes, +reform bills, winnowing machines:" he would make the best of these and +other tools within reach; or, if his part be to write and not to act, +would animate, not dishearten, those who are earnestly doing, and who, +by boldly striking at abuses, by steadily striving for more justice, +by aiming to lift up the down-trodden, prepare, through such means as +are at hand, a better ground for the next generation. If to such +workers, instead of God-speed, a writer of force and influence gives +jeers and gibes, and ever-repeated shrieks about "semblance and +quackery, and cant and speciosity, and dilettantism," and deems +himself profound and original, as well as hopeful, when he exclaims: +"Dim all souls of men to the divine, the high and awful meaning of +human worth and truth, we shall never by all the machinery in +Birmingham discover the true and worthy:" in that case, does he not +expose him to the taunt of being himself very like a mouthing quack, +and his words, which should be cordial, brotherly, do they not partake +of the hollow quality of what Mr. Carlyle holds in such abhorrence, +namely, of cant? The sick lion crouches growling in his lair; +he cannot eat, and he will not let others eat. + +Many grateful and admiring readers Mr. Carlyle wearies with his +ever-recurrent fallacy that might is right. In Heaven's name, what are +all the shams whose presence he so persistently bemoans,--worldly +bishops, phantasm-aristocracies, presumptuous upstarts, shallow +sway-wielding dukes,--what are all these, and much else, but so many +exemplications of might that is not right? When might shall cease to +bully, to trample on right, we shall be nearing Utopia. Utopia may be +at infinite distance, not attainable by finite men; but as surely as +our hearts beat, we are gradually getting further from its opposite, +the coarse rule of force and brutality, such rule as in the twelfth +century was rife all around "Abbot Sampson." + +Like unto this moral fallacy is an æsthetic fallacy which, through +bright pages of criticism, strikes up at times to vitiate a judgment. +"I confess," says Mr. Carlyle, "I have no notion of a truly great man +that could not be all sorts of men." Could Newton have written the +"Fairy Queen?" Could Spenser have discovered the law of gravitation? +Could Columbus have given birth to "Don Quixote?" One of Mr. +Carlyle's military heroes tried hard to be a poet. Over Frederick's +verses, how his friend Voltaire must have grinned. "I cannot +understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the +fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could +not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in +that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward." +Thus Mr. Carlyle writes in "Heroes and Hero-Worship." If Mirabeau, why +not Savonarola, or Marcus Aurelius. In that case a "Twelfth Night," or +an "Othello," might have come from Luther. Nature does not work so +loosely. Rich is she, unspeakably rich, and as artful as she is +profuse in the use of her riches. She delights in variety, thence her +ineffable radiance, and much of her immeasurable efficiency. +Diverseness in unity is a source of her power as well as of her +beauty. Her wealth of material being infinite, her specifications are +endless, countless, superfinely minute. Even no two of the commonest +men does she make alike; her men of genius she diversifies at once +grandly and delicately, broadly and subtly. "Petrarch and Boccaccio +did diplomatic messages," says Mr. Carlyle. We hope they did, +or could have done, in the prosaic field, much better than that. We +Americans know with what moderate equipment diplomatic messages may be +done. + +On poetry and poets Mr. Carlyle has written many of his best pages, +pages penetrating, discriminative, because so sympathetic, and +executed with the scholar's care and the critic's culture. His early +papers on Goethe and Burns, published more than forty years ago, made +something like an epoch in English criticism. Seizing the value and +significance of genuine poetry, he exclaims in "Past and +Present,"--"Genius, Poet! do we know what these words mean? An +inspired soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great +fire-heart, to see the truth, and speak it and do it." On the same +page he thus taunts his countrymen: "We English find a poet, as brave +a man as has been made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the +sun; and do we kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking +due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of +Dumfries, and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'" "George +the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in +those years. George the Third is head charioteer of the destinies of +England, to guide them through the gulf of French Revolutions, +American Independences; and Robert Burns is gauger of ale in +Dumfries." Poor George the Third! One needs not be a craniologist to +know that the eyes which looked out from beneath that retreating +pyramidal forehead could see but part even of the commonest men and +things before them. How could they see a Robert Burns? To be sure, had +Dundas, or whoever got Burns the place of gauger, given him one of the +many sinecures of two or three hundred pounds a year that were wasted +on idle scions of titled families, an aureole of glory would now shine +through the darkness that environs the memory of George III. So much +for George Guelf. Now for Thomas Carlyle. + +If, for not recognizing Burns, _poor_ George is to be blamed, +what terms of stricture will be too harsh for _rich_ Thomas, that +by him were not recognized poets greater than Burns, at a time when +for England's good, full, sympathetic recognition of them was just +what was literarily most wanted? Here was a man, for the fine function +of poetic criticism how rarely gifted is visible in those +thorough papers on Burns and Goethe, written so early as 1828, +wherein, besides a masterly setting forth of their great subjects, are +notable passages on other poets. On Byron is passed the following +sentence, which will, we think, be ever confirmed by sound criticism. +"Generally speaking, we should say that Byron's poetry is not true. He +refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar +strong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in +dislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, +real men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not +these characters, does not the character of their author, which more +or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the +occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended +to look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies, +this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, +with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, +is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is +to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of +life, which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds, +there is a taint of this sort, something which we should call +theatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so +powerful pieces." + +In the same paper, that on Burns, Mr. Carlyle thus opened the ears of +that generation,--partially opened, for the general æsthetic ear is +not fully opened yet,--to a hollowness which was musical to the many: +"Our Grays and Glovers seemed to write almost as if _in vacuo_; +the thing written bears no mark of place; it is not written so much +for Englishmen as for men; or rather, which is the inevitable result +of this, for certain generalizations which philosophy termed men." And +in the paper on Goethe, he calls Gray's poetry, "a laborious mosaic, +through the hard, stiff lineaments of which, little life or true grace +could be expected to look." Thus choicely endowed was Mr. Carlyle to +be, what is the critic's noblest office, an interpreter between new +poets and the public. Such an interpreter England grievously needed, +to help and teach her educated and scholarly classes to prize the +treasures just lavished upon them by Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and +Shelley, and Keats. The interpreter was there, but he spoke not. +Better than any man in England Mr. Carlyle could, if he would, +have taught the generation that was growing up with him, whose ear he +had already gained, what truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity +there was in the strains of this composite chorus of superlative +singers. Of such teaching, that generation stood in especial need, to +disabuse its ear of the hollowness which had been mistaken for +harmony; to refresh, with clear streams from "the divine fountain," +hearts that were fevered by the stimulus of Byronic "strong waters;" +to wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which lights the way to +that higher plane where breathe great poets, whose incomparable +function it is, to impart to their fellow-men some of the enlargement +and the purification of consciousness in which themselves exult +through the influx of fresh ideas and the upspringing of prolific +sentiment. The gifted interpreter was dumb. Nay, he made diversions +into Scotland and Germany, to bring Burns and Scott more distinctly +before Englishmen, and to make Schiller and Goethe and Richter better +known to them. And it pleased him to write about "Corn-law rhymes." +That he did these tasks so well, proves how well he could have done, +by the side of them, the then more urgent task. In 1828, Mr. +Carlyle wrote for one of the quarterly reviews an exposition of +"Goethe's Helena," which is a kind of episode in the second part of +"Faust," and was first published as a fragment. This takes up more +than sixty pages in the first volume of the "Miscellanies," about the +half being translations from "Helena," which by no means stands in the +front rank of Goethe's poetic creations, which is indeed rather a high +artistic composition than a creation. At that time there lay, almost +uncalled for, on the publisher's shelf, where it had lain for five +years, ever since its issue, a poem of fifty-five Spenserian stanzas, +flushed with a subtler beauty, more divinely dyed in pathos, than any +in English literature of its rare kind, or of any kind out of +Shakespeare,--a poem in which all the inward harvests of a tender, +deep, capacious, loving, and religious life, all the heaped hoards of +feeling and imagination in a life most visionary and most real, are +gathered into one sheaf of poetic affluence, to dazzle and subdue with +excess of light,--or gathered rather into a bundle of sheaves, stanza +rising on stanza, each like a flame fresh shooting from a hidden bed +of Nature's most precious perfumes, each shedding a new and +a richer fragrance; I mean the "Adonais" of Shelley. For this +glittering masterpiece,--a congenial commentary on which would have +illuminated the literary atmosphere of England,--Mr. Carlyle had no +word; no word for Shelley, no word for Coleridge, no word for +Wordsworth. For Keats he had a word in the paper on Burns, and here it +is: "Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole +consists in a weak-eyed, maudlin sensibility and a certain vague, +random timefulness of nature, is no separate faculty." A parenthesis, +short and contemptuous, is all he gives to one of whom it has been +truly said, that of no poet who has lived, not of Shakespeare, is the +poetry written before the twenty-fifth year so good as his; and of +whom it may as truly be said, that his best poems need no apology in +the youthfulness of their author; but that for originality, power, +variety, feeling, thoughtfulness, melody, they take rank in the first +class of the poetry of the world. Is not Thomas Carlyle justly +chargeable with having committed a high literary misdemeanor? Nay, +considering his gift of poetic insight, and with it his persistent +ignoring of the great English poets of his age, considering the warm +solicitation on the one side, and the duty on the other, his +offense may be termed a literary crime. He knew better. + +Mr. Carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of Elizabeth, after +this fashion; "For Raleighs and Shakespeares we have Beau Brummell and +Sheridan Knowles." Only on the surmise that Mr. Carlyle owed poor +Knowles some desperate grudge, can such an outburst be accounted for. +Otherwise it is sheer fatuity, or an impotent explosion of literary +spite. For the breadth and brilliancy of the poetic day shed upon it, +no period in the history of any nation, not that of Pericles or of +Elizabeth, is more resplendent than that which had not yet faded for +England when Mr. Carlyle began his career; nor in the field of public +action can the most prolific era of Greece or of England hold up, for +the admiration of the world and the pride of fellow-countrymen, two +agents more deservedly crowned with honor and gratitude than Nelson +and Wellington. Here are two leaders, who, besides exhibiting rare +personal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast +breadth, and in performances of unwonted magnitude and momentousness, +were, moreover, by their great, brave deeds, most palpably +saving England, saving Europe, from the grasp of an inexorable despot. +Surely these were heroes of a stature to have strained to its utmost +the reverence and the love of a genuine hero-worshipper. On the ten +thousand luminous pages of Mr. Carlyle they find no place. Not only +are their doings not celebrated, that they lived is scarce +acknowledged. + +Even when its objects are the loftiest and the most honored, jealousy +is not a noble form of + + "The last infirmity of noble mind." + +Does Mr. Carlyle feel that Nelson and Wellington, Coleridge, Shelley, +Keats, and Wordsworth, stand already so broad and high that they chill +him with their shadow, and that therefore he will not, by eulogy, or +even notice, add to their altitude? Is he repeating the littleness of +Byron, who was jealous not only of his contemporaries, Napoleon, and +Wellington, and Wordsworth, but was jealous of Shakespeare? That a pen +which, with zestful animation, embraces all contemporaneous things, +should be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of +genius who illustrate his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is +driven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive. In such a case it +is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an +imaginative man will not rise. + +Writing of Thomas Carlyle, the last words must not be censorious +comments on a weakness; we all owe too much to his strength; he is too +large a benefactor. Despite over-fondness for Frederick and the like, +and what may be termed a pathological drift towards political +despotism, how many quickening chapters has he not added to the +"gospel of freedom"? Flushed are his volumes with generous pulses, +with delicate sympathies. From many a page what cordialities step +forth to console and to fortify us; what divine depths we come upon; +what sudden vistas of sunshine through tempest-shaken shadows; what +bursts of splendor through nebulous mutterings. Much has he helped the +enfranchisement of the spirit. Well do I remember the thirst +wherewith, more than thirty years ago, I seized the monthly "Frazer," +to drink of the spiritual waters of "Sartor Resartus." Here was a new +spring; with what stimulating, exhilarating, purifying draughts, did +it bubble and sparkle! That picture, in the beginning, of the "doing +and driving (_Thun und Treiben_)" of a city as beheld by +Professor Teufelsdroeckh from his attic--would one have been surprised +to read that on a page of Shakespeare? + +A marvelous faculty of speech has Mr. Carlyle; a gift of saying what +he has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought tingle +through your ears. His diction surrounds itself with a magnetic +_aura_, which seems to float it, to part it from the paper, it +stands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro. Common phrases he +refreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings, and in the +ordering of words he has command of a magical logic. The marrowy vigor +in his mind it is that lends such expressiveness, such nimbleness, +such accent to his sentences, to his style. + +Mr. Carlyle's power comes mainly from his sensibilities. Through them +he is poetical; through them there is so much light in his pages. More +often from his than from any others, except those of the major poets, +breaks the sudden, joyful beam that flames around a thought when it +knows itself embraced by a feeling. Of humor and of wit, what an added +fund does our language now possess through his pen. The body of +criticism, inclosed in the five volumes of Miscellanies, were +enough to give their author a lasting name. When one of these papers +appeared in the Edinburgh, or other review, it shone, amid the +contributions of the Jeffreys and Broughams, like a guinea in a +handful of shillings. + +The masterpiece of Mr. Carlyle, and the masterpiece of English prose +literature, is his "French Revolution," a rhythmic Epic without verse. +To write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big, glowing +heart, thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a +momentous volcanic epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he +must have, to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and +diverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of +millions of contentious brains; he needs a literary faculty finely +artistic, creatively imaginative, to enrank the figures of such vast +tumultuous scenes, to depict the actors in each, to present vividly in +clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. Outside of +the choice achievements of verse, is there a literary task of breadth +and difficulty that has been done so well? A theme of unusual grandeur +and significance is here greatly treated. + +The foremost literary gift,--nay, the test whereby to try +whether there be any genuine literary gift,--is the power in a writer +to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested, +or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with +a fire from the writer's soul. Of this, the most perfect exhibition is +in poetry, wherein, by the intensity and fullness of inflammation, of +passion, is born a something new, which, through the strong +creativeness of the poet, has henceforth a rounded being of its own. +With this power Mr. Carlyle is highly endowed. Not only, as already +said, does his page quiver with himself; through the warmth and +healthiness of his sympathies, and his intellectual mastery, he makes +each scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the French +Revolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly +that this life has been lighted up by his. Where in history is there a +picture greater than that of the execution of Louis XVI.? With a few +strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid +chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. And then +his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the +queen, of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille +Desmoulins, of Danton, of Robespierre: it seems now that only on his +throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true +being. The giant Mirabeau, 'twas thought at first he had drawn too +gigantic. But intimate documents, historical and biographical, that +have come to light since, confirm the insight of Mr. Carlyle, and +swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him. + +For a conclusion we will let Mr. Carlyle depict himself. Making +allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so +eccentric as his friend, Professor Teufelsdroeckh, this we think he +does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of "Sartor +Resartus," wherein, under the head of "Characteristics," he comments +on the professor's Work on Clothes, and its effect on himself. From +this chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences. It opens +thus:-- + +"It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes +entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like +the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of +genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid +its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dullness' +double-vision, and even utter blindness. + +"Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and +prophesyings of the "Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger," we admitted that the +book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the +best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way +of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of +a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of _Speculation_ might +henceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be +declared that Professor Teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of +research, philosophic, and even poetic vigor, are here made +indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and +tortuosity and manifold inaptitude.... + +"Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast +into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of man. +Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs +asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the +true center of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the +head, but with crushing force smites it home and buries it.... + +"Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a +true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning +words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and +splendor from Jove's head; a rich idiomatic diction, picturesque +allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy twins; all the +graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest +intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer +sleeping and soporific passages, circumlocutions, repetitions, touches +even of pure doting jargon so often intervene.... A wild tone pervades +the whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now +screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill +mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious +heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, +when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true +character is extremely difficult to fix.... + +"Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, +do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. Gleams +of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite +pity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and +keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a +very seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably +saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that +men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, +sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you +look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate +Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, +after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and +beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were +chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest." + + + + +VII. + +ERRATA.[7] + + [7] From Lippincott's Magazine, 1870. + + +Words are the counters of thought; speech is the vocalization of the +soul; style is the luminous incarnation of reason and emotion. Thence +it behooves scholars, the wardens of language, to keep over words a +watch as keen and sleepless as a dutiful guardian keeps over his +pupils. A prime office of this guardianship is to take care lest +language fall into loose ways; for words being the final elements into +which all speech resolves itself, if they grow weak by negligence or +abuse, speech loses its firmness, veracity, and expressiveness. Style +may be likened to a close Tyrian garment woven by poets and thinkers +out of words and phrases for the clothing and adornment of the mind; +and the strength and fineness of the tissue, together with its +beauties of color, depend on the purity and precision, the +transparency and directness of its threads, which are words. + +A humble freeman of the guild of scholars would here use his +privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and +phrases,--abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and +written speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, the +pages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken or lead +to general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is +many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show +signs of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral +and intellectual energies of a people, soon spots its speech. + +Nevertheless, as inaccuracies, laxities, vulgarisms--transgressions +more or less superficial--such errors take from the correctness, from +the efficacy, from the force as well as the grace, of written or +spoken speech. + +The high level of strength, suppleness and beauty occupied by our +English tongue has been reached, and can only be maintained, by +strenuous, varied, and continuous mental action. Offenses against the +laws and proprieties of language--like so many other of our +lapses--are in most cases effects of the tendency in human nature to +relax its tone. None save the most resolute and rigorous but have +their moods of unwatchfulness, of indolence. Moreover, men are +prone to resist mental refinement and intellectual subdivisions. +Discrimination requires close attention and sustained effort; and +without habitual discrimination there can be no linguistic precision +or excellence. In this, as in other provinces, people like to take +things easily. Now, every capable man of business knows that to take +things easily is an easy way to ruin. Language is in a certain sense +every one's business; but it is especially the business, as their +appellation denotes, of men of letters; and a primary duty of their +high vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling +with, or mishandling of, those little glistening, marvelous tools +wherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are +ever a-building. Culture, demanding and creating diversity and +subtlety of mental processes, is at once a cause and an effect of +infinite multiplication in the relations the mind is capable of +establishing between itself and the objects of its action, and between +its own processes; and language, being a chief instrument of culture, +has to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands, +Any fall, therefore, on its part from the obedient fineness of +its modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness, +any slide into looseness or vagueness, any unweaving of the complex +tissue, psychical and metaphysical, into which it has been wrought by +the exquisite wants of the mind, will have a relaxing, debilitating +influence on thought itself. To use the clear, wise words of Mr. +Whewell; "Language is often called an instrument of thought, but it is +also the nutriment of thought; or, rather, it is the atmosphere on +which thought lives--a medium essential to the activity of our +speculative powers, although invisible and imperceptible in its +operation; and an element modifying, by its changes and qualities, the +growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds." + +Our enumeration of _errata_ being made alphabetically, the first to be +cited is one of the chief of sinners--the particle. + +As. The misuse of _as_ for _so_ is, in certain cases, almost +universal. If authority could justify error and convert the faulty +into the faultless, it were idle to expose a misuse in justification +of which can be cited most of the best names in recent English +literature. + + "_As_ far as doth concern my single self," + +is a line in Wordsworth ("Prelude," p. 70) which, by a change +of the first _as_ into _so_, would gain not only in sound (which is +not our affair at present), but, likewise in grammar. The seventh line +of the twenty-first stanza in that most tender of elegies and most +beautiful of poems, Shelley's "Adonais," begins, "_As_ long as skies +are blue," where also there would be a double gain by writing "_So_ +long as skies are blue." On page 242 of the first volume of De +Quincey's "Literary Remains" occurs this sentence; "Even by _as_ +philosophic a politician _as_ Edmund Burke," in which the critical +blunder of calling Burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse +for the grammatical blunder. The rule (derived, like all good rules, +from principle) which determines the use of this small particle is, I +conceive, that the double _as_ should only be employed when there is +direct comparison. In the first part of the following sentence there +is no direct comparative relation--in the second, the negative +destroys it; "_So_ far as geographical measurement goes, Philadelphia +is not _so_ far from New York as from Baltimore." Five writers out of +six would commit the error of using _as_ in both members of the +sentence. The most prevalent misuse of _as_ is in connection with +_soon_; and this general misuse, having moreover the countenance of +good writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to +unravel it. But principle is higher than the authority derived from +custom. Judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute; +and if the highest writers, whose influence is deservedly judicial, +violate the laws of language, their decisions ought to be, and will +be, reversed, or language will be undermined, and, slipping into +shallow, illogical habits, into anarchical conditions, will forfeit +much of its manliness, of its subtlety, of its truthfulness. Language +is a living organism, and to substitute authority, or even long usage, +for its innate genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices +that result from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it +to become subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism. +Worcester quotes from the Psalms the phrase, "They go astray _as_ soon +as they be born." We ask, Were not the translators of the Bible as +liable to err in grammar as De Quincey, or Wordsworth, or Shelley? A +writer in the English "National Review" for January, 1862, in an +admirable paper on the "Italian Clergy and the Pope," begins a +sentence with the same phrase: "_As_ soon as the law was passed." And +we ourselves, sure though we be that the use of _as_ in this and every +similar position is an error, need to brace both pen and tongue +against running into it, so strong to overcome principle and +conviction is the habit of the senses, accustomed daily to see and to +hear the wrong. + +AT THAT. We should not have noticed this squat vulgarism, had not the +pen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of newspapers into +bound volumes. The speech and page of every one, who would not be +italicized for lingual looseness, should be forever closed against a +phrase so shocking to taste, a phrase, we are sorry to say, of +American mintage, coined in one of those frolicksome exuberant moods, +when a young people, like a loosed horse full of youth and oats, kicks +up and scatters mud with the unharnessed license of his heels. + +ANOTHER. Before passing to the letter B on our alphabetical docket, we +will call up a minor criminal in A, viz. _another_, often incorrectly +used for _other_; as in "on one ground or another," "from one +cause or another." Now, _another_, the prefix _an_ making it +singular,--embraces but one ground or cause, and therefore, contrary +to the purpose of the writer, the words mean that there are +but two grounds or causes. Write "on one ground or other," and the +words are in harmony with the meaning of the writer, the word _other_ +implying several or many grounds. + +BOQUET. The sensibility that gives the desire to preserve a present +sparkling so long as is possible with all the qualities that made it +materially acceptable, should rule us where the gift is something so +precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, +gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, +should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of +ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest +against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the +word _bouquet_, being maimed into _boquet_, a corruption as dissonant +to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated +nosegay, and leaving only its thorny stem. _Boquet_ is heard at times +in well-upholstered drawing-rooms, and may even be seen in print. +Offensive in its mutilated shape, it smells sweet again when restored +to its native orthography. + +BY NO MANNER OF MEANS. The most vigorous writers are liable, in +unguarded moments, to lapse into verbal weakness, and so you +meet with this vulgar pleonasm in Ruskin. + +BY REASON OF. An ill-assorted, ugly phrase, used by accomplished +reviewers and others, who ought to set a purer example. + +COME OFF. Were a harp to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe, or +the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, the æsthetic +sense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from +feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words, +"The concert will _come off_ on Wednesday." This vulgarism should +never be heard beyond the "ring" and the cock-pit, and should be +banished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar. + +CONSIDER. Neither weight of authority nor universality of use can +purify or justify a linguistic corruption, and make the intrinsically +wrong in language right; and therefore such phrases as, "I consider +him an honest man," "Do you consider the dispute settled?" will ever +be bad English, however generally sanctioned. In his dedication of the +"Diversions of Purley" to the University of Cambridge, Horne Tooke +uses it wrongly when he says, "who always _considers_ acts of +voluntary justice toward himself as favors." The original +signification and only proper use of _consider_ are in phrases like +these: "If you consider the matter carefully;" "Consider the lilies of +the field." + +CONDUCT. It seems to us that it were as allowable to say of a man, "He +carries well," as "He conducts well." We say of a gun that it carries +well, and we might say of a pipe that it conducts well. The gun and +pipe are passive instruments, not living organisms, and thence the +verbs are used properly in the neuter form. Perhaps, strictly +speaking, even here _its charge_ and _water_ are understood. + +CONTEMPLATE. "Do you contemplate going to Washington to-morrow?" "No: +I contemplate moving into the country." This is more than exaggeration +and inflation: it is desecration of a noble word, born of man's higher +being; for contemplation is an exercise of the very highest faculties, +a calm collecting of them for silent meditation--an act, or rather a +mood, which implies even more than concentrated reflection, and +involves themes dependent on large, pure sentiment. An able lawyer has +to reflect much upon a broad, difficult case in order to master it; +but when in the solitude of his study he is drawn, by the conflicts +and wrongs he has witnessed during the day, to think on the +purposes and destiny of human life, he more than reflects--he is +lifted into a contemplative mood. Archbishop Trench, in his valuable +volume on the "Study of Words," opens a paragraph with this sentence: +"Let us now proceed to _contemplate_ some of the attestations for +God's truth, and some of the playings into the hands of the devil's +falsehood, which may be found to lurk in words." Here we suggest that +the proper word were _consider_; for there is activity, and a +progressive activity, in the mental operation on which he enters, +which disqualifies the verb _contemplate_. + +Habitual showiness in language, as in dress and manners, denotes lack +of discipline or lack of refinement. Our American magniloquence--the +tendency to which is getting more and more subdued--comes partly from +national youthfulness, partly from license, that bastard of liberty, +and partly from the geographical and the present, and still more the +prospective, political grandeur of the country, which Coleridge +somewhere says is to be "England in glorious magnification." + +I AM FREE TO CONFESS. An irredeemable vulgarism. + +IN THIS CONNECTION. Another. + +INDEBTEDNESS. "The amount of my _engagedness_" sounds as well +and is as proper as "the amount of my _indebtedness_." We have already +_hard-heartedness_, _wickedness_, _composedness_, and others. +Nevertheless, this making of nouns out of adjectives with the +participial form is an irruption over the boundaries of the parts of +speech which should not be encouraged. + +Archbishop Whately, in a passage of his shortcoming comments on +Bacon's "Essays," uses _preparedness_. Albeit that brevity is a +cardinal virtue in writing, a circumlocution would, we think, be +better than a gawky word like this, so unsteady on its long legs. In +favor of _indebtedness_ over others of like coinage, this is to be +said--that it imports that which in one form or other comes home to +the bosom of all humanity. + +INTELLECTS. That man's intellectual power is not one and indivisible, +but consists of many separate, independent faculties, is a momentous +truth, revealed by the insight of Gall. One of the results of this +great discovery may at times underlie the plural use of the important +word _intellect_ when applied to one individual. If so, it were still +indefensible. It has, we suspect, a much less philosophic origin, and +proceeds from the unsafe practice of overcharging the verbal +gun in order to make more noise in the ear of the listener. The plural +is correctly used when we speak of two or more different men. + +LEFT. "I left at ten o'clock." This use of _leave_ as a neuter verb, +however attractive from its brevity, is not defensible. _To leave off_ +is the only proper neuter form. "We left off at six, and left (the +hall) at a quarter past six." The place should be inserted after the +second _left_. Even the first is essentially active, some form of +action being understood after _off_: we left off _work_ or _play_. + +MIDST. "In our midst" is a common but incorrect phrase. + +OUR AUTHOR. A vulgarism, which, by its seeming convenience, gets the +countenance of critical writers. We say _seeming_ convenience; for in +this seeming lies the vulgarity, the writer expressing, unconsciously +often, by the _our_, a feeling of patronage. With his _our_ he pats +the author on the back. + +PERIODICAL is an adjective, and its use as a substantive is an +unwarrantable gain of brevity at the expense of grammar. + +PROPOSE. Hardly any word that we have cited is so frequently +misused, and by so many good writers, as _propose_, when the meaning +is to design, to intend to propose. It should always be followed by a +personal accusative--I propose to you, to him, to myself. In the +preface to Hawthorne's "Marble Faun" occurs the following sentence; +"The author _proposed_ to himself merely to write a fanciful story, +evolving a thoughtful moral, and did not _purpose_ attempting a +portraiture of Italian manners and character"--a sentence than which a +fitter could not be written to illustrate the proper use of _propose_ +and _purpose_. + +PREDICATED UPON. This abomination is paraded by persons who lose no +chance of uttering "dictionary words," hit or miss; and is sometimes +heard from others from whom the educated world has a right to look for +more correctness. + +RELIABLE. A counterfeit, which no stamping by good writers or +universality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the +family circle of honest English as a substitute for the robust Saxon +word whose place it would usurp--_trustworthy_. _Reliable_ is, +however, good English when used to signify that one is liable again. +When you have lost a receipt, and cannot otherwise prove that +a bill rendered has been paid, you are _re-liable_ for the amount. + +RELIGION. Even by scholars this word is often used with looseness. In +strictness it expresses exclusively our relation to the Infinite, the +_bond_ between man and God. You will sometimes read that he is the +truly religious man who most faithfully performs his duties of +neighbor, father, son, husband, citizen. However much a religious man +may find himself strengthened by his faith and inspirited for the +performance of all his duties, this strength is an indirect, and not a +uniform or necessary, effect of religious convictions. Some men who +are sincere in such convictions fail in these duties conspicuously; +while, on the other hand, they are performed, at times, with more than +common fidelity by men who do not carry within them any very lively +religious belief or impressions. "And now abideth faith, hope, and +charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Nor can +the greatest do the work of the others any more than faith that of +hope or charity. Each one of "these three" is different from and +independent of the other, however each one be aided by cooperation +from the others. The deep, unique feeling which lifts up and +binds the creature to the Creator is elementarily one in the human +mind, and the word used to denote it should be kept solely for this +high office, and not weakened or perverted by other uses. Worcester +quotes from Dr. Watts the following sound definition: "In a proper +sense, _virtue_ signifies duty toward men, and _religion_ duty to +God." + +SALOON. That eminent pioneer of American sculpture, brilliant talker, +and accomplished gentleman, the lamented Horatio Greenough, was +indignantly eloquent against the American abuse of this graceful +importation from France, applied as it is in the United States to +public billiard-rooms, oyster-cellars and grog-shops. + +SUBJECT-MATTER. A tautological humpback. + +TO VENTILATE, applied to a subject or person. The scholar who should +use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb taken +off. + +We have here noted a score of the errors prevalent in written and +spoken speech--some of them perversions or corruptions, countenanced +even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and +disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright +vulgarisms--that is, phrases that come from below, and are +thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These +last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such +abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of +some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be +readily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors, clinging for +generations to tongues and pens. Of this tenacity there is a notable +exemplification in a passage of Boswell, written nearly a hundred +years ago. Dr. Johnson found fault with Boswell for using the phrase +to _make_ money: "Don't you see the impropriety of it? To _make_ money +is to _coin_ it: you should say _get_ money." Johnson, adds Boswell, +"was jealous of infractions upon the genuine English language, and +prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as _pledging_ myself, +for _undertaking_; _line_ for _department_ or _branch_, as the _civil +line_, the _banking line_. He was particularly indignant against the +almost universal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or +_opinion_, when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of +which an image can be formed in the mind. We may have an _idea_ or +_image_ of a mountain, a tree, a building, but we surely cannot have +an idea or image of an _argument_ or _proposition_. Yet we +hear the sages of the law 'delivering their _ideas_ upon the question +under consideration;' and the first speakers of Parliament 'entirely +coinciding in the _idea_ which has been ably stated by an honorable +member.'" + +Whether or not the word _idea_ may be properly used in a deeper or +grander sense than that stated by Dr. Johnson, there is no doubt that +he justly condemned its use in the cases cited by him, and in similar +ones. All the four phrases _make money_, _pledge_, _line_, and _idea_, +whereupon sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer, +are still at large, and, if it be not a bull to say so, more at large +to-day than in the last century, since the area of their currency has +been extended to America, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. + + + + +VIII. + +A NATIONAL DRAMA.[8] + + [8] From _Putnam's Monthly_, 1857. + + +We are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows, +processions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more imitative +than our British cousins, that, without limiting its appeals to the +mimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory of a Simian descent +for man might find support in the features of our general life. To +complete the large compound of qualities that are required, in order +that an emulous people give birth to a drama, one is yet wanting; but +that one is not merely the most important of all, but is the one which +lifts the others into dramatic importance. Are we poetical? Ask any +number of continental Europeans, whether the English are a poetical +people. A loud, unanimous, derisive _no_ would be the answer. And +yet, there is Shakespeare! and around him, back to Chaucer and forward +to Tennyson, a band of such poets, that this prosaic nation has the +richest poetic literature in Christendom. Especially in this matter +are appearances delusive, and hasty inferences liable to be illogical. +From the prosers that one hears in pulpits, legislatures, +lecture-rooms, at morning calls and well-appointed dinner-tables in +Anglo-America, let no man infer against our poetic endowment. +Shakespeare, and Milton, and Burns, and Wordsworth, are of our stock; +and what we have already done in poetry and the plastic arts, while +yet, as a nation, hardly out of swaddling-clothes, is an earnest of a +creative future. We are to have a national literature and a national +drama. What is a national drama? Premising that as little in their +depth as in their length will our remarks be commensurate with the +dimensions of this great theme, we would say a few words. + +A literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in the +heart of a people. Good books are the crystallization of thoughts and +feelings. To have a literature--that is, a body of enduring +books--implies vigor and depth. Such books are the measure of the +mental vitality in a people. Those peoples that have the best books +will be found to be at the top of the scale of humanity; those that +have none, at the bottom. Good books, once brought forth, +exhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment. They educate while +they delight many generations. + +Good books are the best thoughts of the best men. They issue out of +deep hearts and strong heads; and where there are deep hearts and +strong heads such books are sure to come to life. The mind, like the +body, will reproduce itself: the mind, too, is procreative, +transmitting itself to a remote posterity. + +The best books are the highest products of human effort. Themselves +the evidence of creative power, they kindle and nourish power. +Consider what a spring of life to European people have been the books +of the Hebrews. What so precious treasure has England as Shakespeare? + +To be good, books must be generic. They may be, in subject, in tone, +and in color, national; but in substance they must be so universally +human, that other cognate nations can imbibe and be nourished by them. +Not that, in their fashioning, this fitness for foreign minds is to be +a conscious aim; but to be thus attractive and assimilative, is a +proof of their breadth and depth--of their high humanity. + +The peoples who earliest reached the state of culture which is +needed to bring forth books, each standing by itself, each necessarily +sang and wrote merely of itself. Thus did the Hebrews and the Greeks. +But already the Romans went out of themselves, and Virgil takes a +Trojan for his hero. This appropriation of foreign material shows that +the aim of high books is, to ascend to the sphere of ideas and +feelings that are independent of time and place. Thence, when, by +multiplication of Christian nations our mental world had become vastly +enlarged, embracing in one bond of culture, not only all modern +civilized peoples, but also the three great ancient ones, the +poets--especially the dramatic, for reasons that will be presently +stated--looked abroad and afar for the frame-work and corporeal stuff +of their writings. + +The most universal of all writers, ancient or modern, he who is most +generic in his thought, Shakespeare, embodied his transcendent +conceptions for the most part in foreign personages. Of Shakespeare's +fourteen comedies, the scene of only one is laid in England; and that +one, "The Merry Wives of Windsor"--the only one not written chiefly or +largely in verse--is a Shakespearean farce. Of the tragedies +(except the series of the ten historical ones) only two, "Lear" and +"Macbeth," stand on British ground. Is "Hamlet" on that score less +English than "Lear," or "Othello" than "Macbeth"? Does Italy count +Juliet among her trophies, or Desdemona? + +Of Milton's two dramas---to confine myself here to the dramatic +domain--the tragedy ("Samson Agonistes,") like his epics, is Biblical; +the comedy ("Comus") has its home in a sphere + + "Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot + Which men call earth." + +Of the numerous athletic corps of dramatists, contemporary with +Shakespeare and Milton, few have left works pithy enough and so +poetically complete as to withstand the wear of time and keep fresh to +each successive generation. But if you inspect the long list from +which Charles Lamb took his "Specimens," you will find few British +names. + +Casting our eyes on the dramatic efforts of the recent English poetic +celebrities, we perceive that Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley, all +abandoned, in every instance, native ground. The only dramatic work of +a great modern, the scene of which is laid within the British limits, +is "The Borderers," of Wordsworth, which, though having the +poetic advantage of remoteness in time--being thrown back to the reign +of Henry III.--is, in strictness, neither a drama nor a poem, +Wordsworth's deficiency in dramatic gifts being so signal as to cause, +by the impotent struggle in an uncongenial element, a partial +paralysis even of his high poetic genius. + +Glance now across the Channel. French poetic tragedy is in its +subjects almost exclusively ancient--Greek, Roman, and Biblical. In +the works of the great comic genius of France, Molière, we have a +salient exception to the practice of all other eminent dramatists. The +scene of his plays is Paris; the time is the year in which each was +written. + +Let us look for the cause of this remarkable isolation. + +Molière was the manager of a theatrical company in the reign of Louis +XIV., and he wrote, as he himself declares, to please the king and +amuse the Parisians. But deeper than this; Molière was by nature a +great satirist. I call him a _great_ satirist, because of the +affluence of inward substance that fed his satiric appetite--namely, a +clear, moral sensibility, distinguishing by instinct the true from the +false, rare intellectual nimbleness, homely common sense, +shrewd insight into men, a keen wit, with vivid perception of the +comic and absurd. For a satirist so variously endowed, the stage was +the best field, and for Molière especially, gifted as he was with +histrionic genius. The vices and abuses, the follies and absurdities, +the hypocrisies and superficialities of civilized life, these were the +game for his faculties. The interior of Paris households he +transferred to the stage with biting wit, doubling the attractiveness +of his pictures by comic hyperbole. His portraits are caricatures, not +because they exaggerate vices or foibles, but because they so bloat +out a single personage with one vice or one folly as to make him a +lop-sided deformity. Characters he did not seek to draw, but he made a +personage the medium of incarnating a quality. Harpagon is not a +miser; he is Avarice speaking and doing. Alceste is not a person; he +is Misanthropy personified. + +This fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the caricature of +relations and juxtapositions. With laughable unscrupulousness Molière +multiplies improbable blunders and conjunctions. All verisimilitude is +sacrificed to scenic vivacity. Hence, the very highest of his comedies +are farce-like; even "Tartuffe" is so. + +In Molière little dramatic growth goes on before the +spectator's eye. His personages are not gradually built up by +successive touches, broad or fine; they do not evolve themselves +chiefly by collision with others; in the first act they come on the +stage unfolded. The action and plot advance rapidly, but not through +the unrolling of the persons represented. Hence, his most important +personages are prosaic and finite. They interest you more as agents +for the purpose in hand than as men and women. They are subordinate +rather to the action than creative of action. + +Molière is a most thorough realist, and herein is his strength. In him +the comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire gives pungency and +body to the comic. He was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet. +Such being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was +a present Parisian actuality of story and agents. A poetic comedy +ought to be, and will necessarily be, a chapter of very high life. +Molière's comedies, dealing unctuously with vice and folly, are, +philosophically speaking, low life. His are comedies not of character +and sentiment, but of manners and morals, and therefore cannot be +highly poetical; and thence he felt no want of a remote +ground, clean of all local coloring and association, such as is +essential to the dramatist whose inspiration is poetical, and who +therefore must reconcile the ideal with the real, by which +reconciliation only can be produced the purest truth. That, +notwithstanding they belong not to the highest poetic sphere, his +comedies continue to live and to be enjoyed, this testifies of the +breadth and truthfulness of his humanity, the piercing insight of his +rich mind, and his superlative comic genius. + +Of Alfieri's twenty-two tragedies, three only are modern, and of these +three the scene of one is in Spain. + +Of the nine or ten tragedies of the foremost German dramatic poet, +Schiller, three are German, "The Robbers," "Intrigue and Love," and +"Wallenstein." + +Goethe's highest dramas, "Iphigenia," "Egmont," "Torquato Tasso," are +all foreign in clothing. "The Natural Daughter" has no local +habitation, no dependence on time or place. "Goetz von Berlichingen," +written in Goethe's earliest days of authorship, is German and in +prose, "Faust"--the greatest poem of these latter times, and rivaling +the greatest poems of all time--"Faust" is not strictly a drama: its +wonderful successive scenes are not bound together by dramatic +necessity. + +The drama of Spain, like the comedies of Molière, is an exception to +the rule we deduce from the practice of other dramatists; but it is an +exception which, like that of Molière, confirms the rule. Unlike the +ancient Greek and the French tragic poets, unlike Schiller, +Shakespeare, Goethe, Alfieri, the Spanish dramatists do not aim at +ideal humanity. The best of them, Calderon, is so intensely Spanish +and Romish, as to be, in comparison with the breadth and universality +of his eminent compeers above named, almost provincial. His personages +are not large and deep enough to be representative. The manifold +recesses of great minds he does not unveil; he gets no deeper than the +semi-barbarous exaggerations of selfish, passionate love; of revenge, +honor, and jealousy. His characterization is weak. His highest +characters lack intellectual calibre, and are exhibited in lyrical +one-sidedness rather than dramatic many-sidedness. He is mostly +content with Spanish cavaliers of the seventeenth century, ruled by +the conventionalisms in manners, morals, and superstition, which have +already passed away even in Spain. He is a marvelously fertile, +skillful, poetic playwright. + +Thus we perceive that, with poetic dramatists, the prevailing +practice is, to look abroad for fables. Moreover, in the cases where +these were drawn from the bosom of the poet's own people, he shuns the +present, and hies as far back as he can into the dark abysms of time, +as Shakespeare does in Macbeth and Lear. The Greek tragic poets, +having no outward resource, took possession of the fabulous era of +Greece. The poetic dramatist seeks mostly a double remoteness, that of +place as well as that of time; and he must have one or the other. + +The law lying behind this phenomenon is transparent. The higher poetry +is, the more generic it is. Its universality is a chief constituent of +its excellence. The drama is the most generically human, and, +therefore, the highest of the great forms of poetry. The epic deals +with the material, the outward--humanity concreted into events; the +lyric with the inward, when that is so individual and intense as to +gush out in ode or song. The dramatic is the union of the epic and +lyric--the inward moulding the outward, predominant over the outward +while co-working with it. In the dramatic, the action is more made by +the personality; in the epic, the personality is more merged in the +strong, full stream of events. The lyric is the utterance of +one-sided, partial (however deep and earnest) feeling, the which must +be linked to other feelings to give wholeness to the man and his +actions. The dramatic combines several lyrics with the epic. Out of +humanity and human action it extracts the essence. It presents men in +their completest form, in warm activity, impelled thereto by strongest +feelings. Hence, it must be condensed and compact, and must, for its +highest display, get rid of local coloring, personal associations, and +all prosaic circumscriptions. The poetic dramatist needs the highest +poetic freedom, and only through this can he attain to that breadth +and largeness whereof the superiority of his form admits, and which +are such in Shakespeare, that in his greatest plays the whole world +seems to be present as spectators and listeners. + +Observe that the highest dramatic literatures belong to the two freest +peoples--the Greeks and the English. A people, possessing already a +large political freedom, must be capable of, and must be in the act +of, vigorous, rich development, through deep inward passion and +faculty, in order that its spirit shall issue in the perennial flowers +of the poetic drama. The dramatic especially implies and +demands variety and fullness and elevation of _personality_; and +this is only possible through freedom, the attainment of which freedom +implies on its side the innate fertility of nature which results in +fullness and elevation. + +Now in the subjective elevation of the individual, and therewith the +unprecedented relative number of individuals thus elevated, herein do +we exceed all other peoples. By subjective elevation I mean, +liberation from the outward, downward pressure of dogmatic +prescription, of imperious custom, of blindfolded tradition, of +irresponsible authority. The despotic objectivity of Asia--where +religion is submissiveness, and manhood is crushed by obedience--has +been partially withstood in Europe. The emancipation therefrom of the +Indo-Germanic race is completed in Anglo-America. Through this +manifold emancipation we are to be, in all the high departments of +human achievement, preeminently creative, because, while equipped with +the best of the past, we are at the same time preeminently subjective; +and, therefore, high literature will, with us, necessarily take the +lyrical, and especially the dramatic, form. + +More than our European ancestors, we mold, each one of us, our +own destiny; we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and +elevate ourselves; we are more ready and more capable to withstand the +assaults of circumstance. Here is more thoroughly embodied the true +Christian principle, that out of himself is to come every man's +redemption; that the favor and help of God are only to be obtained +through resolute self-help, and honest, earnest struggle. In +Christendom we stand alone as having above us neither the objectivity +of politics nor that of the church. The light of the past we have, +without its darkness. We carry little weight from the exacting past. +Hence, our unexampled freedom and ease of movement which, wanting the +old conventional ballast, to Europeans seems lawless and reckless. +Even among ourselves, many tremble for our future, because they have +little faith in humanity, and because they cannot grasp the new, grand +historic phenomenon of a people possessing all the principles, +practices, and trophies of civilization without its paralyzing +incumbrances. + +But think not, because we are less passive to destiny, we are +rebellious against Deity; because we are boldly self-reliant, we are, +therefore, irreligiously defiant. The freer a people is, the +nearer it is to God. The more subjective it is, through acquired +self-rule, the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of +absolute truth and justice. For having thrown off the capricious +secondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, under +the steadfast, primary rule of God; for having broken the force of +human, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and acknowledge +the supremacy of flawless, divine law; for having rejected the tyranny +of man's willfulness, we shall submit the more fully to the beneficent +power of principle. + +Our birth, growth, and continued weal, depending on large, deep +principles--principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by reason, +and generously embracing the whole--our life must be interpenetrated +by principle, and thence our literature must embrace the widest and +most human wants and aspirations of man. And thus, it will be our +privilege and our glory to be then the most national in our books when +we are the most universal. + + + + +IX. + +USEFULNESS OF ART. + +ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE RHODE ISLAND ART +ASSOCIATION IN PROVIDENCE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1854. + + +_Gentlemen of the Rhode Island Art Association:_-- + +We are met to inaugurate an Association whose aim and end shall be the +encouragement and culture of Art. A most high end--among the highest +that men can attempt; an end that never can be entertained except by +men of the best breed. There is no art among savages, none among +barbarians. Barbarism and art are adversary terms. When men capable of +civilization ascend into it, art manifests itself an inevitable +accompaniment, an indispensable aid to human development. I will say +further, that in a people the capacity to be cultivated involves the +capacity, nay, the necessity of art. And still further, that those +nations that have been or are preeminent on the earth, are preeminent +in art. Nay, more, that a nation cannot attain to and maintain +eminence without being proficient in art; and that to abstract from a +people its artists were not merely to pluck the flowers from its +branches; it were to cut off its-deep roots. + +Who is the artist? + +He who embodies, in whatever mode,--so that they be visible or +audible, and thus find entrance to the mind,--conceptions of the +beautiful, is an artist. The test and characteristic of the artistic +nature are superior sensibility to the beautiful. Unite to this the +faculties and the will to give form to the impressions and emotions +that are the fruit of this susceptibility, and you have the artist. +Whether he shall embody his conception in written verse, in marble, in +stone, in sound, on the canvas, that will depend on each one's +individual aptitudes. Generic, common, indispensable to all is the +superior sensibility to the beautiful. In this lies the essence of the +artist. + +The beautiful and the perfect being, if not identical, in closest +consanguinity, the artist's is an important, a great function. The +artist must receive into his mind, or engender in his mind's native +richness, conceptions of what is most high, most perfect, most +beautiful in shape or sound, in thought or feeling; and producing it +before his fellow-men, appeal to their sensibility to the beautiful, +to their deepest sympathies, to their capacity of being moved by the +grandest and the noblest there is in man and nature. Truly, a mighty +part is that of the artist. + +Artists are the educators of humanity. Tutors and professors instruct +princes and kings, but poets (and all genuine artists are poets) +educate nations. Take from Greece Homer and Phidias, and Sophocles and +Scopas, and the planner of the Parthenon, and you efface Greece from +history. Wanting them, she would not have been the great Greece that +we know; she would not have had the vigor of sap, the nervous +vitality, to have continued to live in a remote posterity, immortal in +the culture, the memories, and the gratitude of men. + +So great, so far-stretching, so undying is the power of this exalted +class of men, that it were hardly too much to say that had Homer and +Phidias never lived, we should not be here today. If this be deemed +extravagant, with confidence I affirm that but for the existence of +the greatest artist the world has ever known,--of him who may +be called the chief educator of England,--but for Shakespeare, we +assuredly should not be here to-day doing the good work we are doing. + +There are probably some of this company who, like myself, having had +the good fortune to be in London at the time of the world's fair, +stood under that magnificent, transparent roof, trod that immense area +whereon fifty thousand people moved at ease. It was a privilege,--the +memory of which will last a life-time, to have been admitted into that +gigantic temple of industry, there to behold in unimaginable profusion +and variety the product of man's labor, intellect, and genius, +gathered from the four corners of the earth into one vast, gorgeous +pile,--a spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor, and from +its moral significance absolutely sublime. + +On entering by the chief portal into the transept,--covering in the +huge oaks of Hyde Park,--the American, after wondering for a moment in +the glare of the first aspect, will, with the eagerness and perhaps +the vanity of his nation,--have hastened through the compartments of +France, Belgium, Germany, gorgeous with color, glistening with gold. +He will have hastened, hard as it was to hurry through such a +show, in order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace +where a broad area had been allotted to the United States,--Jonathan, +as is his wont, having helped himself largely. Great was the +American's disappointment, cutting was the rebuke to his vanity; his +country made no _show_ at all. The samples of her industry were +not outwardly brilliant. Their excellence lay in their inward power, +in their wide usefulness. They were not ornaments and luxuries for the +dwellings of the few, they were inventions that diffuse comforts and +blessings among the many,--labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers. +By the thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated, as it +was acknowledged in the final awards of the judges. And even in this +high department where we are so eminent, owing to distance and +misunderstandings, we were not adequately represented. But even if we +had been, the European would have said, "This has a high value and +interest; but still I find not here enough to justify the expectations +entertained by this people, and by many in Europe, of the future +greatness of the American Republic. These things, significant as they +are, are yet not an alphabet that can be so compounded as to +write the richest page of man's history. In this present display I +find not prefigured that splendid future the Americans are fond of +predicting for themselves." And the American, acknowledging the force +of the comment, would have turned away mortified, humbled. But he was +saved any such humiliation. In the midst of that area, under that +beautiful flag, day after day, week after week, month after month, +from morn till night, go when he would, he beheld there a circle ever +full, its vacancies supplied as soon as they were made, a circle +silent with admiration, hushed by emotion, gazing at a master-piece of +American art, the Greek Slave of Powers. And from that contemplation +hundreds of thousands of Europeans carried away an impression of +American capacity, a conviction that truly a great page is to be +written by the young republic in the book of history,--a sense of +American power which they could have gotten from no other source. + +Our Association, gentlemen, owes its origin to the wants of industry. +The moving power which has been strongest in bringing so many of us +together to found an institution for the encouragement of art in Rhode +Island, is the desire hereby more thoroughly to inweave the +beautiful into cotton and woolen fabrics, into calicoes and delaines; +to melt the beautiful into iron and brass, and copper, as well as into +silver and gold; so that our manufacturers and artisans may hold their +own against the competition of England and France and Germany, whereof +in the two latter countries especially, schools of design have long +existed, and high artists find their account in furnishing the +beautiful to manufacturers. + +"A low origin this for such a society, and the fruits will be without +flavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered," will say some travelled +dilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders +of the Louvre and the Vatican; but the Creator of the universe teaches +a different lesson from this observer. Not the rare lightning merely, +but the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded +canopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, has He made +beautiful. He surrounds us with beauty; He envelops us in beauty. +Beauty is spread out on the familiar grass, glows in the daily flower, +glistens in the dew, waves in the commonest leafy branch. All about +us, in infinite variety, beauty is lavished by God in sights +and sounds, and odors. Now, in using the countless and multifarious +substances that are put within our reach, to be by our ingenuity and +contrivance wrought into materials for our protection and comfort, and +pleasure, it becomes us to--it is part of his design that we +shall--follow the divine example, so that in all our handiwork, as in +his, there shall be beauty, so much as the nature of each product is +susceptible of. That it is the final purpose of Providence that our +whole life, inward and outward, shall be beautiful, and be steeped in +beauty, we have evidence, in the yearnings of the best natures for the +perfect, in the delight we take in the most resplendent objects of art +and nature, in the ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful +deed. + +By culture we can so create and multiply beauty, that all our +surroundings shall be beautiful. + +Can you not imagine a city of the size of this, or vastly larger, the +structure of whose streets and buildings shall be made under the +control of the best architectural ideas, being of various stones and +marbles, and various in style and color, so that each and every one +shall be either light, or graceful, or simple, or ornate, or solid, +or grand, according to its purpose, and the conception of the +builder; and in the midst and on the borders of the city, squares, and +parks, planted with trees and flowers and freshened by streams and +fountains. And when you recall the agreeable, the elevating sensation +you have experienced in front of a perfect piece of architecture +(still so rare), will you not readily concede that where every edifice +should be beautiful, and you never walked or drove out but through +streets of palaces and artistic parks, the effect on the whole +population of this ever-present beauty and grandeur, would be to +refine, to expand, to elevate. When we look at the architectural +improvements made within a generation, in London, in Paris, in New +York, we may, without being Utopians, hope for this transformation. +But the full consummation of such a hope can only be brought about in +unison with improvements in all the conditions and relations of life, +and the diffusion of such improvements among the masses. + +It is to further-such diffusion that this Association has been +founded. Our purpose is to meet the growing demand for beauty in all +things; to bring into closer cooperation the artisan and the artist; +to make universally visible and active the harmony,--I almost might +say the identity,--there is between the useful and the beautiful. + +Gentlemen, ever in the heart of the practical, in the very core of the +useful, there is enclosed a seed of beauty; and upon the +fructification, growth, and expansion of that seed depends,--aye, +absolutely depends,--the development of the practical. But for the +expansion of that seed, we should have neither the plough nor the +printing-press, neither shoes nor the steam engine. To that we owe +silver forks as well as the electric telegraph. In no province of work +or human endeavor is improvement made, is improvement possible, but by +the action of that noble faculty through which we are uplifted when +standing before a masterpiece of Raphael. This ceaseless seeking for a +better, this unresting impulse towards the perfect, has brought the +English race through a thousand years of gradual upward movement, from +the narrow heptarchy, with its rude simplicity of life, up to this +wide cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of +life; and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our +present as that is to the times of Alfred. + +In the works of the Almighty this principle is so alive that they are +radiant with beauty; and the degree of the radiance of each is often +the measure of its usefulness. How beautiful is a field of +golden wheat--whereby our bodies live--and the more beautiful the +closer it stands and the fuller are its heads. The oak and the pine +owe their majestic beauty to that which is the index of their +usefulness, the solid magnitude of their trunks. The proportions which +give the horse his highest symmetry of form, give him his fleetness +and endurance and strength. And thus, too, with man,--his works, when +best, sparkle most with this fire of the beautiful. We profit by +history in proportion as it registers beautiful sayings and beautiful +doings. We profit one another in everyday life in proportion as our +acts, the minor as well as the greater, are vitalized by this divine +essence of beauty. To the speeches of Webster, even to the most +technical, this essence gives their completeness and their grandeur of +proportion; while it is this which illuminates with undying splendor +the creations of Allston. Thus, gentlemen, the aim of our Association +is most noble and useful, drawing its nobleness from its high +usefulness. May it so prosper, that a generation hence, thousands and +tens of thousands shall look back to this the day of its inauguration +with praise and thankfulness. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays Æsthetical, by George Calvert + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL *** + +***** This file should be named 12896-8.txt or 12896-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/8/9/12896/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +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: Essays Æsthetical + +Author: George Calvert + +Release Date: July 12, 2004 [EBook #12896] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>Essays Æsthetical</h1> +<h4>by</h4> +<h1>George H. Calvert</h1> +<h4>1875</h4> +<hr class="full" /> +<h3><a name="Contents" id="Contents">Contents</a></h3> +<table class="toc" summary="Table of Contents" border="0" width= +"80%" align="center"> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay1">I. The Beautiful</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay2">II. What Is Poetry?</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay3">III. Style</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay4">IV. Dante and His Latest Translators</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay5">V. Sainte-Beuve, The Critic</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay6">VI. Thomas Carlyle</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay7">VII. Errata</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay8">VIII. National Drama</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><a href="#Essay9">IX. Usefulness of Art</a></td> +</tr> +</table> +<hr class="full" /> +<h1>ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL.</h1> +<h2><a name="Essay1" id="Essay1">I.</a></h2> +<h2>The Beautiful.</h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>The Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; it +grows not old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, and +its life runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As a +subject for exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, +from the affluence of its resources; difficult, from the exactions +which its own spirit makes in the use of them.</p> +<p>Beauty—what is it? To answer this question were to solve +more than one problem. Shall we attempt what has been so often +attempted and never fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable. +What though we reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get +near enough to hearken to the throb of its power, and our minds +will be nerved by the approximation.</p> +<p>To him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems with +beauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles, +wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is +beauty. It expects us at the dawn; it is about us, “an hourly +neighbor,” through the day; at night it looks down on us from +star-peopled immensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing in +sunsets, flashing through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, +irradiating sleep, it is ever around, within us, eager to sweeten +our labors, to purify our thoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-house +of beauty, whereof the key is in the human heart.</p> +<p>But many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to +disclose the precious key enfolded in their depths. Whole peoples +are at this moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. As +with them now, so in the remote primitive times of our own race, +before history was, nature was almost speechless to man. The earth +was a waste, or but a wide hunting ground or pasturage; and human +life a round of petty animal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond the +field of the senses; until there gradually grew up the big-eyed +Greek and the deep-souled Hebrew. Then, through creative +thought,—that is, thought quickened and exalted by an inward +thirst for the beautiful,—one little corner of Europe became +radiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens of Parnassus +shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their +eyes—opened from long sleep by inward stirring—were +become as mirrors, and gave back the light of nature:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“Auxiliar light</p> +<p>Came from their minds, which on the setting sun</p> +<p>Bestowed new splendor.”<a id="footnotetag1" name= +"footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a></p> +</div> +</div> +<p>And man, heated by the throbs of his swelling heart, made gods +after his own image,—forms of such life and power and harmony +that the fragments of them, spared by time, are still guarded as +faultless models of manhood. And the vales and groves and streams +were peopled with beauteous shapes. And the high places were +crowned with temples which, in their majestic purity, look as +though they had been posited there from above by heavenly hands. +And by the teemful might of sculptors and painters and poets the +dim past was made resurgent and present in glorious +transfiguration. And the moral law was grasped at by far-reaching +philosophies. In this affluence of genial activity so much truth +was embodied in so much beauty, that by the products of the Greek +mind even the newer, the deeper, the wiser Christian spirit is +still instructed, still exalted.</p> +<p>In Asia, too, a chosen people early made a revelation of the +beautiful. The Hebrews were introspective. At once ardent and +thoughtful, passionate and spiritual, their vigorous natures were +charged with fiery materials for inward conflicts. Out of the +secret chambers of troubled souls their poets and prophets sent +forth cries of despair and of exultation, of expostulation and +self-reproach, that ever find an echo in the conscience-smitten, +sorrow-laden bosom of man. The power and wisdom of God they saw as +no other ancient people had seen them. In the grandeurs and wonders +of creation they could behold the being and the might and the +goodness of the Creator. The strong, rich hearts of their seers +yearned for a diviner life, in the deep, true consciousness they +felt that there can be peace and joy to man only through +reconcilement with God. And feeling their own unworthiness and +impurity, as well as that of their people, they uttered their +spiritual desires, and their aspirations and disappointments and +indignations and humiliations, in strains that make their great +writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic wail through +the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense, their +utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful +plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white +crests do the billows of a black, tempestuous sea.</p> +<p>Save these two, no other nations of antiquity, except the +Hindoos, seem to have had more than a superficial susceptibility to +the beautiful. The Romans learnt the arts from the Greeks, whom +they imitated, at a wide distance, in poetry as well as in +sculpture and architecture. The remnants of art found in the valley +of the Nile prove the Egyptians to have had the germ without the +vitality to unfold it. In the literature of the Hindoos there are +currents of pure poetry and of biblical depth. In passing down from +ancient to modern times the Persians and the Arabians light the +long way with scintillations from the beautiful.</p> +<p>The ugly semi-barbarian darkness of the Middle Ages in Europe +was first broken by the light that shone from the spires of Gothic +cathedrals in the eleventh century. About the twelfth century the +German mind was further illuminated by that mysterious, visionary, +titanic, Teutonic epic, the Niebelungen Lied; and a little later +appeared the troubadours in the south of Europe and the +minnesingers (love-singers) in Germany. Next came Dante and Giotto +in Italy, then Chaucer in England; so that by the end of the +fourteenth century, poetry and the arts, the offspring of the +beautiful,—and who can have no other parentage,—had +established themselves in the modern European mind, and have since, +with varying vigor of life, upheld themselves among Christian +nations. To these they are now confined. In the most advanced of +Mahometan and heathen peoples sensibility to beauty is hardly +awakened, and among savages it seems scarcely to exist, so deeply +is it dormant.</p> +<p>Thus to indicate when and by whom the beautiful has been +recognized will further us in the endeavor to learn wherein +consists that which, enriching the world of man so widely and +plenteously, is deeply enjoyed by so few.</p> +<p>Were the beautiful, like size and shape and strength and +nimbleness, cognizable by intellectual perception, even the +Hottentot would get to know something of it in the forest, along +with the grosser qualities of trees and valleys. Were it liable to +be seized by the discursive and ratiocinative intellect, the most +eminent statesman or lawyer or general would excel too in the +capacity to appreciate beauty; the Roman would have shone in arts +as in arms; the Spartan would not have been so barren where the +Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is <em>felt</em>, not +intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its presence is +acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous sentimental +recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. When we +exclaim, How beautiful! there is always emotion, and delightful, +expansive, purifying emotion. Whence this mysterious cleansing +thrill? Thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes, ever +springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all things +have their being.</p> +<p>The beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot +demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it. +Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward +eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular +apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit +images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic +nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is +only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to +the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them +do we see the object, not until then is its individuality and are +its various physical qualities, size, shape, etc., apprehended. And +now the intellect itself becomes a conductor, transmitting still +deeper inward to the seat of emotion the image of the object; and +not until it reaches that depth is its beauty recognized.</p> +<p>In all her structures and arrangements Nature is definite, +precise, and economical. In subdivision of labor she is minute and +absolute, providing for every duty its special exclusive agent. In +the mind there is as severe a sundering of functions as in the +body, and the intellect can no more encroach upon or act for the +mental sensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the +office of the heart, or the liver that of the lungs. True, no ripe +results in the higher provinces of human life can be without +intimate alliance between the mental sensibilities and the +intellect; nevertheless they are in essence as distinct from one +another as are the solar heat and the moisture of the earth, +without whose constant coöperation no grain or fruit or flower +can sprout or ripen.</p> +<p>We live not merely in a world of material facts, and of objects +and things cognizable through the senses, but also in a spiritual +world. We live not only in presence of visible creation, but in +presence of the invisible Creator. With the creation we are in +contact through the intellect. Knowledge of all objects and the +qualities of objects that are within reach of the senses; distance +and other material relations; the bonds of cause and effect and of +analogy, that bind all created things in countless multiplicity of +subtle relations,—these the intellect gathers in its grasp. +But with the Creator we are in communication only through feeling. +The presence, the existence of God cannot by pure intellect be +demonstrated: it must be felt in order to be proved. The mass of +objects and relations presented to us in nature the intellect can +learn, count, and arrange; but the life that incessantly permeates +the whole and every part, the spirit that looks out from every +object and every fact,—of the range and pitch of whose power +we have a faint token in the tornado and the earthquake,—of +this divine essence we should not have even an intimation through +the intellect alone. Not chemists, astronomers, mechanicians have +uttered the deepest thoughts about God, but prophets and poets: not +Davys, but Coleridges; not Herschels, but Wordsworths. It is a +common belief, indeed, that men addicted to the exact sciences are +rather wanting than otherwise in power to appreciate the invisible, +a belief pungently embodied by Wordsworth in the lines,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Physician art thou? one all eyes,</p> +<p>Philosopher! a fingering slave,</p> +<p>One that would peep and botanize</p> +<p>Upon his mother’s grave?”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>This is as much under the mark as is above it that saying of +some one, “An undevout astronomer is mad.” A +man’s being endowed with rare mathematical talent is no cause +why he should or should not be devout. His gifts to weigh and +measure the stars are purely intellectual; and nature being seldom +profuse upon one individual,—as she was upon Pascal and +Newton,—the presumption as to an astronomer, of whom we know +nothing, would be that what may be termed his emotive appreciation +of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as his +intellectual. And no amount or quality of intellectual insight can +supply or compensate a want of sensibility. No matter how many +hundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space, he has +still to do with the visible and calculable. But religion is the +putting of the human mind in relation with the invisible, the +incalculable. A man gets no nearer to God through a telescope than +through a microscope, and no nearer through either than through the +naked eye. Who cannot recognize the divine spirit in the hourly +phenomena of nature and of his own mind will not be helped by the +differential calculus, or any magnitude or arrangement of +telescopic lenses.</p> +<p>That we ever live not only in a material, but also in a +spiritual world, can be easily apprehended without at all +entangling ourselves in the web-work of metaphysics. The least of +our acts or motions, is it not always preceded by a thought, a +volition, a something intangible, invisible? All that we +voluntarily do is, must be, an offspring of mind. The waving of the +hand is never a simple, it is a compound process: mind and body, +spirit and matter, concur in it. The visible, corporeal movement is +but the outward expression of an inward, incorporeal movement. And +so in all our acts and motions, from birth till death; they issue +out of the invisible within us; they are feelings actualized, +thoughts embodied. The embodiment is perishable, the source of it +imperishable. It is not a recondite, super-subtle, metaphysical or +psychological postulate, it is a palpable, and may be and ought to +be a familiar fact, that each one of us is ruled by the eternal and +invisible within us.</p> +<p>Now, just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our +mind, as being the utterance and embodiment of that, so do we stand +towards Deity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine +thought and will. As all our doings are but exhibitions of our +minds, so ourselves are manifestations of God. Through all things +shines the eternal soul. The more perfect the embodiment, the more +translucent is the soul; and when this is most transparent, making +the body luminous with the fullness of its presence, there is +beauty, which may be said to be the most intense and refined +incarnation and exhibition of the divine spirit.</p> +<p>Behind and within every form of being is immanent the creative +power; and thence, in proportion as this power discloses itself, is +object, act, or emotion beautiful. Thus is beauty always spiritual, +a revelation more or less clear of the creative spirit. Hence our +emotion in presence of the truly beautiful, which calms and exalts +us. Hence evil never is, cannot be, beautiful: the bad is, must be, +ugly. Evil consists in the deficiency of the divine creative +spirit, whose fullness gives, is, beauty. Evil is imperfection, +unripeness, shapelessness, weakness in, or opposition to, the +creative spirit. Evil is life that is unhealthy, short-coming. +Wherever there is full, unperverted life, there is, there must be, +beauty. The beautiful blossoms on every stem of unpoisoned power. +The sap of sound life ever molds itself into forms of beauty.</p> +<p>But however rich the exhibition of the divine soul, however +glowing with perfection the form, however noble the act and pure +the feeling, the richness, the perfection, the nobleness, the +purity will be lost on us, unless within us there be sympathy with +the spirit whence they flow. Only by spirit can spirit be +greeted.</p> +<p>Thus beauty only becomes visible—I might say only becomes +actual—by the fire kindled through the meeting of a +perfection out of us and an inward appetite therefor. And it is the +flaming of this fire, thus kindled, that lights up to us the whole +world wherein we live, the inward and the outward. This fire +unlighted, and on the face of nature there is darkness, in our own +minds there is darkness. For though all nature teems with the +essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the unkindled mind +beauty is no more present then was Banquo’s ghost to the +guests of Macbeth. Macbeth’s individual conscience made him +see the ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is +beauty created there where, without what I may call the +æsthetic conscience, it no more exists than do the glories of +Titian and Claude to the affectionate spaniel who follows his +master into a picture-gallery. To the quadruped, by the organic +limitation of his nature, dead forever is this painted life. By the +organic boundlessness of <em>his</em> nature, man can grasp the +life of creation in its highest, its finest, its grandest +manifestations; and from these beauty is indivisible. Wherever the +divine energy is most subtle and expressive, there glows ever, in +its celestial freshness, the beautiful.</p> +<p>Beauty is the happiest marriage between the invisible and the +visible. It may be termed the joyfullest look of God. Blessed is he +who can watch and reflect this radiant look. The faculties of such +a one become fortified by creative influx. Through the exquisite +shock of the beautiful he reaps an accession of mental magnetism. +Thus through the beautiful we commune the most directly with the +divine; and, other things being equal, to the degree that men +respond to, are thrilled by, this vivacity of divine presence, as +announced by the beautiful, to that degree are they elevated in the +scale of being.</p> +<p>Nature being minute and absolute in subdivision of function, the +law of severalty and independence—than which there is no law +more important and instructive—pervades creation. Thence the +intellectual, the religious, the true, the good, cannot interchange +functions. A man may be sincerely religious and do little for +others, as is seen in anchorites, and in many one-sided people, of +Christian as well as of Mahometan parentage, who are not +anchorites. A man may be immensely intellectual and not value +truth. But neither a man’s intellect, nor his preference for +truth, nor his benevolent nor his religious sentiment, can yield +its best fruit without the sunshine of the beautiful. Sensibility +to the beautiful—itself, like the others, an independent +inward power—stands to each one of them in a relation +different from that which they hold one to the other. The above and +other faculties <em>indirectly</em> aid one the other, and to the +complete man their united action is needed; but feeling for the +beautiful <em>directly</em> aids each one, aids by stimulating it, +by expanding, by purifying.</p> +<p>To the action of every other faculty this one gives vividness +and grace. It indues each with privilege of insight into the +<em>soul</em> of the object which it is its special office to +master. By help of sensibility to the beautiful we have inklings of +the essence of things, we sympathize with the inward life that +molds the outward form. Hence men highly gifted with this +sensibility become creative, in whatever province of work they +strive; and no man in any province is truly creative except through +the subtle energy imparted to him by this sensibility, this +competence to feel the invisible in the visible.</p> +<p>The idea is the invisible; the embodiment thereof is the +visible. Hence the beautiful is always ideal; that is, it enfolds, +embraces, represents, with more or less success, the idea out of +which springs the object it illuminates: it brilliantly enrobes a +germinal essence. It is thus a sparkling emanation out of the +Infinite, and it leads us thither whence it has come.</p> +<p>Sensibility to the beautiful is thus the light of the whole +mind, illuminating its labors. Without it we work in the dark, and +therefore feebly, defectively. Infer thence the immensity of its +function. Hereby it becomes the chief educator of men and of man; +and where its teaching has not been conspicuous, there no elevation +has been reached. The Greeks and the Hebrews would not have been so +deeply, so greatly, so feelingly known to us, would not have been +the pioneers and inspirers of European civilization, would not have +lived on through thousands of years in the minds of the highest +men, had they not, along with their other rare endowments, +possessed, in superior, in unique quality, this priceless gift of +sensibility to the beautiful. Through this gift Shakespeare is the +foremost man of England, and through it has done more than any +other man to educate and elevate England. Because the Italians of +the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were so rich in this gift, +therefore it is that Italy is still a shrine to which the civilized +world makes annual pilgrimage.</p> +<p>The supreme function of this sensibility is to develop, to +educate, to chasten the highest faculties, our vast discourse of +reason, our unselfish aspiration, our deep instinct of truth, our +capacious love. To educate these is its cardinal duty, and lacking +this they remain uneducated. But its beneficent influence is felt +likewise in the less elevated of our efforts. The man who makes +shoes, as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the +builder of houses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; +the engineer, as well as the artist, all work under the rays of +this illuminator; and, other things being equal, he excels all +others on whose work those rays shine with the most sustained and +penetrative force.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“’T is the eternal law,</p> +<p>That first in beauty shall be first in might.”<a id= +"footnotetag2" name="footnotetag2"></a><a href= +"#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a></p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In short, whatever the mental gift, in order to get from that +gift its best fruit, the possessor must be incited, upborne, +enlightened, inspired by the ideal, which burns as a transfiguring +flame in his mind, and throws thence its joyful light with every +blow of his hand.</p> +<p>All good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working +with the eternal mind; and work is good and productive in +proportion to the intensity of this coöperation. Why is it +that we so prize a fragment of Phidias, a few lines traced by +Raphael? Because the minds of those workers were, more than the +minds of most others, in sympathy with the Infinite mind. While at +work their hands were more distinctly guided by the Almighty hand; +they felt and embodied more of the spirit which makes, which is, +life.</p> +<p>Here is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, +a vocabulary. Of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling +with the pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with +the vocabulary you write an essay. And in each case you work well +and creatively, if your work be in harmony with God’s laws, +if your screen be light, sightly, and protective, your dwelling +healthful and commodious, your sill lie solid and square, your +essay be judicious and sound. But if on the canvas you have a +Christ’s head by Leonardo, out of the pile of stones a +Strasburg Cathedral, from the block of marble a Venus of Milo, with +the vocabulary a tragedy of Hamlet, you have works which are so +creative that they tell on the mind with the vivid, impressive, +instructive, never-wearying delight of the works of nature. The men +who wrought them were strong to do so through the vigor of their +sympathy with what Plato calls the formative principle of the +universe, they thereby becoming themselves creators, that is, +poets. And we sacredly guard their creations among our best +treasures of human gift, because they are so spiritually alive that +whenever we put ourselves in relation with them they animate us, +they spiritualize our thoughts; and this they do because the minds +whence they issued were radiant centers of ideal power, that is, +power to conceive the beautiful.</p> +<p>But what is ideal power? the reader may ask. He might likewise +ask, What is moral power? And unless he has in his own mind some +faculty of moral estimation, no answer will help him. That which +comes to us through feeling cannot be intellectually defined, can +only be appreciated through feeling. By describing its effects and +accompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is. By means +of a foot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what +is the height of the Apollo Belvedere, and the exact length of the +statue’s face; and each one can for himself verify the +accuracy of your statement. But not with a like distinctness and +vivacity of assent can you get the crowd to go along with you as to +the Apollo’s beauty. Acknowledgment of the beautiful in art +implies a degree of culture and a native susceptibility not to be +found in every accidental gathering. Full and sincere assent to +your declaration that the statue is very beautiful presupposes a +high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty pre-attained idea of what +is manly beauty. But after all, the want of unanimity of assent to +a moral or an æsthetic position, does it not come from the +difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained? Assent even +to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose an ideal +in the mind of him who assents? When you show by visible +measurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands +what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one +foot is; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. No tittle of +information, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you +derive from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the +cubic contents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind +an idea, an ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square +foot.</p> +<p>Attempts to give a notion of what the beautiful is, by +enumerating some of the physical conditions that are found to be +present in artistic figures or persons distinguished for beauty, or +attempts to produce what shall be beautiful, by complying with +these conditions, come no nearer to the aim than do compounded +mineral waters to the briskness and flavor of a fresh draught from +the original spring. In the analysis there may be no flaw; the +ingredients are chemically identical in quality and proportion; but +the nameless, inimitable, inscrutable life is wanting: the mixing +has been done by a mechanical, not by a creative hand. Haydon says, +“The curve of the circle is excess, the straight line is +deficiency, the ellipsis is the degree between, and that curve, +added to or united with proportion, regulates the form and features +of a perfect woman.” Mr. D.R. Hay, in a series of books, +professes to have discovered the principles of beauty in the law of +harmonic ratio, without, however, “pretending,” as he +modestly and wisely declares, “to give rules for that kind of +beauty which genius alone can produce in high art.” The +discovery of Mr. Hay is curious and fascinating, and, like the +announcement of Haydon, may give practical hints to artists and +others. But no intellectual process or ingenuity can make up for +the absence of emotional warmth and refined selection. +“Beauty, the foe of excess and vacuity, blooms, like genius, +in the equilibrium of all the forces,” says Jean Paul. +“Beauty,” says Hemsterhuis, “is the product of +the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time,” which is +like the Italian definition, <em>il piu nel uno</em>, unity in +multiplicity, believed by Coleridge to contain the principle of +beauty. On another page of the “Table Talk” Coleridge +is made to say, “You are wrong in resolving beauty into +expression or interest; it is quite distinct; indeed, it is +opposite, although not contrary. Beauty is an immediate presence, +between which and the beholder <em>nihil est</em>. It is always one +and tranquil; whereas the interesting always disturbs and is +disturbed.” Hegel, in his “Æsthetic,” +defines natural beauty to be “the idea as immediate unity, in +so far as this unity is visible in sensuous reality.” And a +few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct, calling the +beautiful “the sensuous shining forth of the idea.” And +Schelling, in his profound treatise on “The Relation of the +Plastic Arts to Nature,” says, “The beautiful is beyond +form; it is substance, the universal; it is the look and expression +of the spirit of Nature.” Were it not better and more precise +to say that it is to us the look and expression of the spiritual +when this is peering through choicest embodiments? But we will stop +with definitions. After endeavoring, by means of sentences and +definitions to get a notion of the beautiful, one is tempted to +say, as Goethe did when “the idea of the Divinity” was +venturously mentioned to him by Eckermann, “Dear child, what +know we of the idea of the Divinity? and what can our narrow ideas +tell of the Highest Being? Should I, like a Turk, name it with a +hundred names, I should still fall short, and, in comparison with +the infinite attributes, have said nothing.”</p> +<p>We have called the beautiful the light of the mind; but there +must be mind to be illuminated. If your torch be waved in a chamber +set round with bits of granite and slate and pudding-stone, you +will get no luminous reverberation. But brandish it before rubies +and emeralds and diamonds! The qualities in the mind must be +precious, in order that the mind become radiant through beauty. To +take a broad example.</p> +<p>The Hindoos in their organization have a fine sense of the +beautiful, but they lack mental breadth and bottom; and hence their +life and literature are not strong and manifold, although in both +there are exhibitions of that refinement which only comes of +sensibility to the beautiful. The Chinese, on the other hand, are +wanting in this sensibility; hence their prosaic, finite +civilization. But most noteworthy is the contrast between them in +religious development. In that of the Hindoos there was expansion, +vastness, self-merging in infinitude; the Chinese are religiously +contracted, petty, idolatrous; a contrast which I venture to +ascribe, in large measure, to the presence in the one case, and the +absence in the other, of the inspiration of the beautiful.</p> +<p>To the same effect individual examples might be cited +innumerable. Look at Wordsworth and Byron, both preeminent for +sensibility to the beautiful; but, from deep diverseness in other +leading mental gifts, the one, through the light of this vivifying +power, became a poet of the propensities and the understanding, a +poet of passion and wit; the other, a poet of the reason, a poet of +nature and meditative emotion.</p> +<p>To do their best the moral feelings, too, need the light and +inward stimulus of the beautiful; but if these feelings are by +nature weak, no strength or intensity of the sense of beauty will +have power to get from a mind thus deficient high moral thought or +action. If there be present the accomplishment of verse, we shall +have a Byron; or, the other poetic gifts in full measure, with lack +of this accomplishment, and we may get a Beckford, who builds +Fonthill Abbeys, and with purity and richness of diction describes +palaces, actual or feigned, and natural scenery with +picturesqueness and genial glow; or, the intellectual endowments +being mediocre, we shall have merely a man of superficial taste; +or, the moral regents being ineffective, an intellectual sybarite, +or a refined voluptuary. Like the sun, the beautiful shines on +healthful field and poisonous fen; and her warmth will even make +flowers to bloom in the fen, but it is not in her to make them bear +refreshing odors or nourishing fruit.</p> +<p>As men have body, intellect, and moral natures, so is there +physical, intellectual, and spiritual beauty, and each distinct +from the others. Take first a few examples from the domain of art. +The body and limbs of the Gladiator in the Louvre may be cited as +the exponent of corporeal beauty; the face of the Apollo Belvedere +as that of intellectual and physical; and the Santo Sisto Madonna +of Raphael, and the Christ of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, +for spiritual. Through these radiant creations we look into the +transcendent minds of their artists with a chastened, exalting joy, +not unmingled with pride in our brotherhood with such beauty-lifted +co-workers with God.</p> +<p>Among the higher races, life is affluent in examples of the +three kinds of beauty, two of them, and even all three, at times +united in one subject. Children and youth offer the most frequent +instances of physical beauty. Napoleon’s face combined in +high degree both physical and intellectual, without a trace of +moral beauty. Discoveries in science, and the higher scientific +processes, as likewise broad and intense intellectual action, +exemplify often intellectual beauty. Of moral beauty history +preserves examples which are the brightest jewels, and the most +precious, in the casket of mankind’s memory; among the most +brilliant of which are the trust of Alexander, when he drank the +draught from the hand of his physician, though warned that it was +poisoned; the fidelity of the paroled Regulus, returning from Rome +to the enemy into the jaws of a certain and cruel death; Sir Philip +Sidney, wounded unto death, taking the cup of water untasted from +his parched lips, to give it to a dying soldier; Luther at the Diet +of Worms; the public life of Washington; the life and death of +Socrates, and especially that last act of washing his body to save +the women the trouble of washing it a few hours later, when it +would be a corpse; and, lastly, that most beautiful of lives and +most sublime of deaths, which live in the heart of Christendom as +its exemplar and ever fresh ideal.</p> +<p>There is no province of honorable human endeavor, no clean inlet +opened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings, into which +from that vast, deep, oceanic spring, the human soul, the beautiful +does not send its fructifying tides. There is no height in history +but is illuminated by its gleam. Only through the beautiful can +truth attain its full stature; only through the beautiful can the +heart be perfectly purified; only with vision purged by the +beautiful can anything be seen in its totality. All other faculties +it makes prolific; it is the mental generator. It helps to unveil, +and then welds, the link between the visible and the invisible. It +inspires feeling (which is ever the source of deepest insight) to +discover excellence; it quickens the mind to creative activity; it +is forever striving upward. Without the spiritual fervor of the +beautiful, your religion is narrow and superstitious, your science +cramped and mortal, your life unripened. In the mind it kindles a +flame that discloses the divinity there is in all things. Lightning +bares to the awed vision the night-shrouded earth; more vivid than +lightning, the flash of the beautiful reveals to the soul the +presence of God.</p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay2" id="Essay2">II.</a></h2> +<h2>What Is Poetry?</h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>The better to meet the question, <em>What</em> is poetry? we +begin by putting before it another, and ask, <em>Where</em> is +poetry? Poetry is in the mind. Landscapes, rainbows, sunsets, +constellations, these exist not to the stag, the hare, the +elephant. To them nature has no aspects, no appearances modified by +feeling. Furnished with neither combining intellect nor transmuting +sensibility, they have no vision for aught but the proximate and +immediate and the animally necessary. Corporeal life is all their +life. Within the life of mind poetry is born, and in the best and +deepest part of that life.</p> +<p>The whole world outside of man, and, added to this, the wider +world of his inward motions, whether these motions interact on one +another or be started and modified by what is without them, all +this—that is, all human life, in its endless forms, +varieties, degrees, all that can come within the scope of +man—is the domain of poetry; only, to enjoy, to behold, to +move about in, even to enter this domain, the individual man must +bear within him a light that shall transfigure whatever it falls +on, a light of such subtle quality, of such spiritual virtue, that +wherever it strikes it reveals something of the very mystery of +being.</p> +<p>In many men, in whole tribes, this light is so feebly nourished +that it gives no illumination. To them the two vast worlds, the +inner and the outer, are made up of opaque facts, cognizable, +available, by the understanding, and by it handled grossly and +directly. Things, conditions, impressions, feelings, are not taken +lovingly into the mind, to be made there prolific through higher +contacts. They are not dandled joyfully in the arms of the +imagination. Imagination! Before proceeding a step +further,—nay, in order that we be able to proceed +safely,—we must make clear to ourselves what means this great +word, imagination.</p> +<p>The simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects. +Having perceived an object several times, the intellect lifts +itself to a higher process, and knows it when it sees it again, +remembers it. <em>Perception</em> is the first, the simplest, the +initiatory intellectual process, <em>memory</em> is the second. +Higher than they, and rising out of them, is a third process, the +one whereby are modified and transmuted the mental impressions of +what is perceived or remembered. A mother, just parted from her +child, recalls his form and face, summons before <em>her +mind’s eye</em> an image of him; and this image is modified +by her feelings, she seeing him in attitudes and relations in which +she had never seen him before, cheerful or sad according to her +mood. This she could not do by aid of memory alone; she could not +vary the impress of her boy left on the brain; she could not +vividly reproduce it in shifting, rapidly successive conditions; +she could not modify and diversify that impress; in a word, she +could not liberate it. Memory could only re-give her, with single, +passive fidelity, what she had seen, unmodified, motionless, +unenlivened, like a picture of her boy on canvas. Urge intellectual +activity to the phase above memory, and the mental image steps out +from its immobility, becomes a changeful, elastic figure, +brightened or darkened by the lights and shadows cast by the +feelings; the intellect, quick now with plastic power, varying the +image in position and expression, obedient to the demands of the +feelings, of which it is ever the ready instrument. This third +process is <em>imagination</em>.</p> +<p>Through this mode of intellectual action the materials gathered +in the mind are endlessly combined and modified. In all +intellectual activity, beyond bare perception and memory, +imagination in some degree is and must be present. It is in fact +the mind handling its materials, and in no sphere, above the +simplest, can the mind move without this power of firmly holding +and molding facts and relations, phenomena and interior promptings +and suggestions. To the forensic reasoner, to the practical +master-worker in whatever sphere, such a power is essential not +less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver of fictions. +Imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the most intense +action, of the intellect.</p> +<p>When I run over in my mind, and in the order of their service, +the first seven presidents of the United States, Washington, Adams, +Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, I exert only memory. +The moment I begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to +give the character of any of them, I put into play the higher, the +imaginative action; for, to draw an historical character, the facts +collected by memory must be shaped and colored and organized, the +details gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, +which being a mere tool, the success of the result (the tool being +of a temper to do the work laid on it) will depend on the quality +of the powers that handle it, that is, on the writer’s gifts +of sympathy.</p> +<p>The degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be +called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is +that the word <em>imagination</em> has come to be appropriated to +the highest exercise of the power, that, namely, which is +accomplished by those few who, having more than usual emotive +capacity in combination with sensibility to the beautiful, are +hereby stimulated to mold and shape into fresh forms the stores +gathered by perception and memory, or the material originated +within the mind through its creative fruitfulness. In strictness, +this exaltation of intellectual action should be called +<em>poetic</em> imagination.</p> +<p>To imagine is, etymologically speaking, <em>with</em> the mind +to form <em>in</em> the mind an image; that is, by inward power to +produce an interior form, a something substantial made out of what +we term the unsubstantial. To imagine is thus always, in a certain +sense, to create; and even men of dullest mentality have this power +in <em>kind</em>. The <em>degree</em> in which men have it makes +one of the chief differences among them. The power is inherent, is +implied in the very existence of the human mind. When it is most +lively the mind creates out of all it feels and hears and sees, +taking a simple sight or hint or impression or incident, and +working out images, making much out of little, a world out of an +atom. Akin herein to the supreme creative might, the man of highest +imagination, the poet, unrolls out of his brain, through vivid +energy, new worlds, peopled with thought, throbbing with +humanity.</p> +<p>When we imagine, therefore, we hold an image in the mind, +grasping it with spiritual fingers, just as by our corporeal +fingers a physical substance is grasped. Now the poetic mind in +handling the image tosses it with what might be called a sportive +earnest delight, and through this power and freedom of +<em>play</em> elicits by sympathetic fervor, from its very core, +electric rays, wherein the subject glows like the sculpture on an +inwardly illuminated urn; rare insights being thus vouchsafed to +clearest imaginative vision,—insights gained never but +through sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations after, +and gleaming glimpses of, the absolute and ideal, the intellect +being used as an obedient cheerful servant.</p> +<p>The sensibility that is so finely strung as to have these +glimpses, revels in them as its fullest happiness, and with its +whole might seeks and courts them. Hence the mind thus privileged +to live nearer than others to the absolutely true, the spiritual +ideal, is ever plying its privilege: conceiving, heightening, +spiritualizing, according to the vision vouchsafed it; through this +vision beholding everywhere a better and fairer than outwardly +appears; painting nature and humanity, not in colors fictitious or +fanciful, but in those richer, more lucent ones which such minds, +through the penetrating insight of the higher imagination, see more +truly as they are than minds less creatively endowed.</p> +<p>Thus is imagination a power inherent in, essential to, all +intellectual action that ranges above simple perception and memory; +a power without which the daily business of life even could not go +on, being that power whereby the mind manipulates, so to speak, its +materials. In its higher phasis it may be defined as the intellect +stimulated by feeling to multiply its efforts for the ends of +feeling; and in its highest it may be said to be intellect winged +by emotion to go forth and gather honey from the bloom of +creation.</p> +<p>Imagination, then, being intellect in keenest chase, and the +intellectual part of the mind being, when moved in concert with the +effective part, but a tool of this, what are the feelings or +conditions of feeling of which intellect becomes the instrument in +the production of poetry?</p> +<p>Cast your look on a page filled with the titles of +Shakespeare’s plays. What worlds of throbbing life lie behind +that roll! Then run over the persons of a single drama: that one +bounded inclosure, how rich in variety and intensity, and truth of +feeling! And when you shall have thus cursorily sent your mind +through each and all, tragic, comic, historic, lyric, you will have +traversed in thought, accompanied by hundreds of infinitely +diversified characters, wide provinces of human sorrow and joy. Why +are these pictures of passion so uniquely prized, passed on from +generation to generation, the most precious heir-loom of the +English tongue, to-day as fresh as on the morning when the paper +was moist with the ink wherewith they were first written? Because +they have in them more fullness and fineness and fidelity than any +others. The poet has more life in him than other men, and +Shakespeare has in him more life than any other poet, life +manifested through power of intellect exalted through union with +power of sympathy, the embodiments whereof are rounded, enlarged, +refined, made translucent by that gift of <em>sensibility to the +fair and perfect</em><a id="footnotetag3" name= +"footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> whereby, +according to its degree, we are put in more loving relation to the +work of God, and gain the clearest insights into his doings and +purposes; a gift without which in richest measure Shakespeare might +have been a notable historian or novelist or philosopher, but never +the supreme poet he is.</p> +<p>When Coriolanus, having led the Volscians to Rome, encamps under +its walls, and the Romans, in their peril and terror, send to him a +deputation to move him from his vengeful purpose, the +deputies,—the foremost citizens of Rome and the relations and +former friends of Coriolanus,—having “declared their +business in a very modest and humble manner,” he is described +by Plutarch as stern and austere, answering them with “much +bitterness and high resentment of the injuries done him.” +What was the temper as well as the power of Coriolanus, we learn +distinctly enough from these few words of Plutarch. But the task of +the poet is more than this. To our imagination, that is, to the +abstracting intellect roused by sympathy to a semi-creative state, +he must present the haughty Roman so as to fill us with an image of +him that shall in itself embody that momentous hour in the being of +the young republic. He must dilate us to the dimensions of the man +and the moment; he must so enlarge and warm our feeling that it +shall take in, and delight in, the grandeur of the time and the +actors. The life of Rome, of Rome yet to be so mighty, is +threatened by one of her own sons. This vast history, to be for +future centuries that of the world, a Roman seemed about to quench, +about to rase the walls that were to embrace the imperial +metropolis of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of what gigantic dimensions +must he be, this Roman! Now hear Menenius, a former friend and +admirer of Coriolanus, depict him. Having described, in those +compressed sinewy phrases which Shakespeare has at command, the +change in his nature, he adds, “When he walks, he moves like +an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading. He is able +to pierce a corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his +hum is a battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for +Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding: he +wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne +in.”</p> +<p>Hear how a mother’s heart, about to break, from the loss +of her son, utters its grief when it has the privilege of using a +voice quivering with poetic fervor. The French king bids Lady +Constance be comforted: she answers,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“No, I defy all counsel, all redress,</p> +<p>But that which ends all counsel, true redress,</p> +<p>Death, death. O amiable lovely death!</p> +<p>Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!</p> +<p>Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,</p> +<p>Thou hate and terror to prosperity,</p> +<p>And I will kiss thy detestable bones;</p> +<p>And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows;</p> +<p>And ring these fingers with thy household worms;</p> +<p>And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,</p> +<p>And be a carrion monster like thyself:</p> +<p>Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil’st:</p> +<p>And buss thee as thy wife! Misery’s love,</p> +<p>O, come to me!”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In these two passages from “Coriolanus” and +“King John” what magnificence of hyperbole! The +imagination of the reader, swept on from image to image, is +strained to follow that of the poet. And yet, to the capable, how +the pile of amplification lifts out the naked truth. Read these +passages to a score of well-clad auditors, taken by chance from the +thoroughfare of a wealthy city, or from the benches of a popular +lecture-room. To the expanded mold wherein the passages are +wrought, a few—five or six, perhaps, of the +twenty—would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing +the poet’s climax. To some they would be dazzling, +semi-offensive extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because +seeing but dimly by, the poetically imaginative light. And to some +they would be grossly unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full +appreciators seeming to them unnatural or affected.</p> +<p>Now, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source? +By these passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and +are pitched to a high key. A very comprehensive word is feelings. +What is the nature of those feelings thus wrought upon?</p> +<p>The elementary feelings of our nature, when in healthful +function, are capable of emitting spiritual light; and, when +exalted to their purest action, do and must emit such, the inward +fire sending forth clear flame unmixed with smoke. To perceive this +light, and, still more, to have your path illuminated thereby, +implies the present activity of some of the higher human +sensibilities; and to be so organized as to be able to embody in +words, after having imagined, personages, conditions, and +conjunctions whence this light shall flash on and ignite the +sensibilities of others, implies, besides vivid sympathies and +delight in the beautiful, a susceptibility to the manifestations of +moral and intellectual life which is enjoyed only by him in whom +the nobler elements of being are present in such intensity, +proportions, and quality, and are so commingled, that he can +reproduce life itself with translucent truthfulness, he becoming, +through this exalting susceptibility, poet or maker.</p> +<p>What constitutes the wealth of human life? Is it not fullness +and richness of feeling? To refine this fullness, to purify this +richness, to distill the essence out of this wealth, to educate the +feelings by revealing their subtle possibilities, by bringing to +light the divinity there is within and behind them, this is the +poet’s part; and this, his great part, he can only do by +being blest with more than common sympathy with the spirit of the +Almighty Creator, and thence clearer insight into his work and +will. Merely to embody in verse the feelings, thoughts, deeds, +scenes of human life, is not the poet’s office; but to +exhibit these as having attained, or as capable of attaining, the +power and beauty and spirituality possible to each. The glorifier +of humanity the poet is, not its mere reporter; that is the +historian’s function. The poet’s business is not with +facts as such, or with inferences, but with truth of feeling, and +the very spirit of truth. His function is ideal; that is, from the +prosaic, the individual, the limited, he is to lift us up to the +universal, the generic, the boundless. In compassing this noble end +he may, if such be his bent, use the facts and feelings and +individualities of daily life; and, by illuminating and ennobling +them he will approve his human insight, as well as his poetic +gift.</p> +<p>The generic in sentiment, the universal, the infinite, can only +be reached and recognized through the higher feelings, through +those whose activity causes emotion. The simple impulses, the +elementary loves, are in themselves bounded in their action near +and direct; but growing round the very fountain of life, having +their roots in the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond +their individual limits, and this they do with power when under +their sway the whole being is roused and expanded. When by their +movement the better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, +as in the story of Damon and Pythias, the reader or beholder is +lifted into the atmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse +has reached its acme of function, and playing in the noonday of the +beautiful, the contemplation of it purges and dilates us. We are +upraised to the disinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood +there is ever imaginative activity refined by spiritual +necessities. It is not extravagant to affirm that when act or +thought reaches the beautiful, it resounds through the whole being, +tuning it like a high strain of sweetest music. Thus in the +poetical (and there is no poetry until the sphere of the beautiful +is entered) there is always a reverberation from the emotional +nature. Reverberation implies space, an ample vault of roof or of +heaven. In a tight, small chamber there can be none. If feeling is +shut within itself, there is no reëcho. Its explosion must +rebound from the roomy dome of sentiment, in order that it become +musical.</p> +<p>The moment you enter the circle of the beautiful, into which you +can only be ushered by a light within yourself, a light kindled +through livelier recognition of the divine spirit,—the moment +you draw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged, +spiritualized, buoyed above the self. No matter how surrounded, or +implicated, or enthralled, while you are there, be it but for a few +moments, you are liberated.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“No more—no more—oh! never more on me</p> +<p>The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,</p> +<p>Which out of all the lovely things we see</p> +<p>Extracts emotions beautiful and new,</p> +<p>Hived in our bosoms like the bag o’ the bee.</p> +<p>Think’st thou the honey with those objects grew?</p> +<p>Alas! ‘t was not in them, but in thy power</p> +<p>To double even the sweetness of a flower.”</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“All who joy would win</p> +<p>Must share it; happiness was born a twin.”</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“He entered in the house,—his home no more,</p> +<p>For without hearts there is no home—and felt</p> +<p>The solitude of passing his own door</p> +<p>Without a welcome; <em>there</em> he long had dwelt,</p> +<p>There his few peaceful days Time had swept o’er,</p> +<p>There his worn, bosom and keen eye would melt</p> +<p>Over the innocence of that sweet child,</p> +<p>His only shrine of feelings undefiled.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>These three passages are from a poem in which there is more wit +than poetry, and more cynicism than either; a poem in spirit +unsanctified, Mephistophelian, written by a man of the world, a +terrible egotist, <em>blasé</em> already in early manhood, +in whose life, through organization, inherited temperament, and +miseducation, humanity was so cramped, distorted, envenomed, that +the best of it was in the fiery sway of the more urgent passions, +his inmost life being, as it must always be with poets, inwoven +into his verse. From the expiring volcano in his bosom his genius, +in this poem, casts upon the world a lurid flame, making life look +pale or fever-flushed. With unslumbering vivacity, human nature is +exhibited in that misleading light made by the bursting of +half-truths that relate to its lower side, a light the more +deceptions from the sparkling accompaniment of satire and wit.</p> +<p>Above the pungent secularities, the nimble intellectualities, +the specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping +personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute +the successive cantos of “Don Juan,” the passages just +quoted and similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the +desires and the discontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd +self-seekings of a heated, noisy city rises a Gothic spire, +aspiring, beautiful, drawing most of its beauty from its +aspiration, on whose pinnacle, calmly glistening in the upper air, +plays the coming and the parting day, while shadows fill the +streets below, and whose beauty throws over the town a halo that +beckons men from afar. The spire, in its steadfast tranquillity and +its beauty, so unlike the restless wrangling dissonance below it, +grew nevertheless out of the same hearts that make the dissonance, +and, typifying what is spiritual and eternal in them, tends by its +ideal presence to enlarge and uplift those by whose eyes it is +sought. These upshootings in “Don Juan” irradiate the +cantos, giving an attractiveness which draws to them eyes that +otherwise would not have known them; and if too pure in their light +and too remote to mingle directly with the flare and flash that +dazzle without illuminating, silently they shine and steadily, an +unconscious heavenly influence, above these coruscations of earthly +thoughts,—thoughts telling from their lively numerousness, +but neither grand nor deep.</p> +<p>From the same solar center fall frequently single rays that make +lines and stanzas glisten, and but for which this poem, lacking +their perfusive light, would soon pass into oblivion; for from the +beautiful it is that the satire, the wit, the voluptuousness get +their sparkle and their sheen. If passages morally censurable are +hereby made more captivating, we are not content with saying that +God’s sun fructifies and beautifies poison-oak and hemlock; +but we affirm that the beautiful, being by its nature necessarily +pure, communicates of its quality to whoever becomes aware of it, +and thus in some measure counterweighs the lowering tendency. +Moreover, the morally bad, deriving its character of evil from +incompleteness, from the arresting or the perversion of good, like +fruit plucked unripe, and being therefore outside the pale of the +beautiful (the nature of which is completeness, fullness, +perfection of life) cannot by itself be made captivating through +the beautiful. Iago and Edmund are poetical as parts of a whole; +and when in speech they approach the upper region of thought, it is +because the details allotted to them have to be highly wrought for +the sake of the general plot and effect, and further, because +humanity and truth speak at times through strange organs. Besides, +the ideal may be used to show more glaringly the hideousness of +evil, and thence Iago and Edmund, as ideal villains, through the +very darkness in which only poetic art could have enveloped them, +help us by indirection to see and value the lights that surround +the noble and the good.</p> +<p>In healthy function all the feelings are pure and moral, those +whose action is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting +themselves at their highest with the spiritual, for performance +whose compass reaches beyond an individual, momentary good. A +burglar or a murderer may exhibit courage; but here, a manly +quality backing baseness and brutality for selfish, short-sighted +ends, there is an introverted and bounded action, no expansive +upward tendency, and thence no poetry. But courage, when it is the +servant of principle for large, unselfish ends, becomes poetical, +exhibiting the moral beautiful, as in the fable of Curtius and the +fact (or fable) of Winkelried. In the poetical there is always +enlargement, exaltation, purification; animal feeling, self-seeking +propensity, becoming so combined with the higher nature as to rise +above themselves, above the self.</p> +<p>The lioness, pursuing the robber of her cub, if in her rage she +scarcely heed that he (to stay her steps) has dropped the cub in +her path, but, casting at it a glance of recognition, bounds with a +wilder howl after the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an +exhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most +unpoetical. But let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the +robber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine +tenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards +her. Through the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream +of white light, gushing from one of the purest fountains: wrathful +fury is suddenly subdued by love. A moment before she was possessed +with savage fierceness, her blood boiling with hate and revenge; +now it glows with a mother’s joy. Her nature rises to the +highest whereof it is capable. It is the poetry of animalism.</p> +<p>In the poetical, thought is amplified and ripened, while +purified, in the calm warmth of emotion. From being emotive, poetry +draws in more of the man, and higher, finer powers, than prose. The +poetical has, must have, rotundity. No poet ever had a square head. +Prose, in its naked quality, is to poetry what a skeleton is to a +moving, flesh-and-spirit-endowed body. From the skeleton you can +learn osteology, but neither æsthetics nor human nature. +Imaginative prose partakes of the spiritual character of poetry. +When a page is changed from poetry into prose it is flattened, +deadened; when from prose into poetry it is uplifted, enlivened. +You get a something else and a something more. Reduced to plain +prose, the famous passage from the mouth of Viola in “Twelfth +Night” would read somewhat thus: “My father had a +daughter who loved a man and would let no one know of her love, but +concealed it, until her cheek grew pale with grief, patiently +bearing within her bosom the misery of an untold attachment.” +Now hear the poet:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“She never told her love,</p> +<p>But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,</p> +<p>Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought:</p> +<p>And with a green and yellow melancholy</p> +<p>She sat like patience on a monument,</p> +<p>Smiling at grief.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>What has been done with the prose statement? Instead of a bare +fact we have a picture, a twofold picture; and this, in its +compact, fresh, rose-tinted vividness, carries the whole into our +hearts with a tenfold success. Through emotional joy we apprehend, +as by the light of an instantaneous ignition, the state of the +sufferer. The prose-report is a smoldering fire on the hearth, +through whose sleepy smoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic +is the flame in full fervor, springing upward, illuminating, +warming the heart, delighting the intellect. The imagination of the +reader, quickened by illustrations so apt and original, is by their +beauty tuned to its most melodious key, while by the rare play of +intellectual vitality his mind is dilated. He has become mentally a +richer man, enriched through the refining and enlarging of his +higher sensibilities, and the activity imparted to his +intellect.</p> +<p>To say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is +an idiot; that is, one lacking the inward force and the inward +instruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from +without by perception and memory, and from within by consciousness. +To say of a poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say +he is no poet. What is poetic imagination? This, for our theme, is +a vital question. Can there be given to it an approximate +answer?</p> +<p>Figure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a +September sunset near the sea, the eye taking in at once ocean and +a variegated landscape. The company must not be a score of tawny +American aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals +whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or +luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental +culture; but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist +of persons whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of +susceptibility to the wonders and beauties of nature, and whose +intellect has been tilled sufficiently to receive and nourish any +fresh seed of thought that may be thrown upon it; in short, a score +of cultivated adults. The impression made by such a scene on such a +company is heightened by a rare atmospheric calm. The heart of each +gazer fills with emotion, at first unutterable except by indefinite +exclamation; when one of the company says,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“A fairer face of evening cannot be.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>These words, making a smooth iambic line, give some utterance, +and therefore some relief, to the feeling of all. Then another +adds,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“The holy time is quiet as a nun</p> +<p>Breathless with adoration.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Instantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking +sun, is flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a +spiritual light. The scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is +as if the heavens had opened, and inundated all its features with a +celestial subtilizing aura. How has this been accomplished? The +first line has little of the quality of poetic imagination.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“A fairer face of evening cannot be.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>is simple and appropriate, but in it there is no fresh glow, no +mysterious throb. Above the level of this line rise suddenly the +first three words of the second, “the holy time.” The +presence of a scene where sky, earth, and ocean combine for the +delight of the beholders puts them in a mood which crowns the +landscape with a religious halo. That the time is holy they all +feel; and now, to make its tranquillity appreciable by filling the +heart with it, the poet adds—“is quiet as a nun +breathless with adoration.” By this master-stroke of poetic +power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed +into, super-earthly calm. By a fresh burst of spiritual light the +mind is set æsthetically aglow, as by the beams of the +setting sun the landscape is physically. By an exceptionally +empowered hand the soul is strung to a high key. Fullness and range +of sensibility open to the poet<a id="footnotetag4" name= +"footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> a wide +field of illustration; its exacting fineness reveals the one that +carries his thought into the depths of the reader’s mind, +bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen intellectual power +in the service of pure emotion.</p> +<p>Take now other samples from the treasury of choicest poetry. +Here is one from Coleridge:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">“And winter, slumbering in the open air,</p> +<p>Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Here again the intellect is urged to its highest action, the +abstract or imaginative action, to do the hests of a sensibility so +finely wrought by the inward impulsion to seek for the most +exquisite that nature can furnish, that it yields similitudes most +delicate, most apt, most expressive.</p> +<p>Milton thus opens the fifth book of “Paradise +Lost:”—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime</p> +<p>Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Shakespeare makes Romeo describe daybreak:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“And jocund day</p> +<p>Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Keats begins “Hyperion” with these lines:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,</p> +<p>Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In the Monody on Keats, Shelley, describing the lamentation of +nature at his death, concludes a stanza as follows:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“Morning sought</p> +<p class="i2">Her eastern watch-tower, and, her hair unbound,</p> +<p class="i2">Wet with the tears that should adorn the ground,</p> +<p class="i2">Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day;</p> +<p class="i2">Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,</p> +<p class="i2">Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,</p> +<p>And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their +dismay.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Such passages are the very flower of poetry, thought exquisitely +dyed in sentiment, laying suddenly bare a picture with so much +light in it that each passage irradiates its page and the +reader’s mind. By their happiness the similitudes emphasize +and enforce the thought; and they do a higher service than this; +for, being a breath from the inner life of genius, they blow power +into the reader. To translate these passages into prose were like +trying to translate a lily into the mold out of which it springs, +or a bar of Beethoven into the sounds of the forum, or the sparkle +of stars into the warmth of a coal fire.</p> +<p>The best poetry has a far background; it comes out of deeps +within the poet, unfathomed by himself, unfathomable. He feels more +than he can express. Hence the imaginative poet always suggests, +revealing enough to inspirit the reader’s higher faculties to +strive for more; not because, with artistic design, he leaves much +untold, which he often does, but because through imaginative +susceptibility he at times grasps at and partly apprehends much +that cannot be embodied. He feels his subject more largely and +deeply than he can see or represent it. To you his work is +suggestive because to him the subject suggested more than he could +give utterance to. Every subject, especially every subject of +poetic capability, having infinite relations, he who most +apprehends this boundlessness—and indeed because he does +apprehend it—can do or say what will open it to you or me; +and the degree of his genius is measured by the extent to which he +can present or expose it. The unimaginative gives surface-work, +and, suggesting nothing, is at once exhausted.</p> +<p>The poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has +at his command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the +heart of an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a +depth that keeps feeding it with significance, bringing out its +aptness the longer we look. Sometimes epithets are brighter than +their object; the unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart +power instead of deriving it. To be lasting, the light of the +epithet must be struck by the imagination out of its object. The +inspired poet finds a word so sympathetic with the thought that it +caresses and hugs it.</p> +<p>Depth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic +imagination. The love of the beautiful, wielding a keen intellect, +needs furthermore rich material to mold, and only out of the +poet’s individual resources can this be drawn. To make a high +artist, you must have very much of a man. Behind “Paradise +Lost” and “Samson Agonistes” is a big Miltonic +man. The poet has to put a great deal of himself, and the best of +him, into his work; thence, for high poetry, there must be a great +deal of high self to put in. He must coin his soul, and have a +large soul to coin; the best work cannot be made out of materials +gathered by memory and fancy. His stream of thought must flow from +springs, not from reservoirs. Hence the universal biographical +interest in such men; they have necessarily a rich personality.</p> +<p>The passages I have cited are all pictures of outward nature, +natural scenes mirrored on the mind, or rather refracted through +it, and in the act transfigured, spiritualized; for such scenes, +having the fortune to fall on the minds of poets, are reproduced +with joyful revelation of their inmost being, as sunbeams are +through a crystal prism. Exhibiting material nature spiritualized, +well do these passages show the uplifting character of poetic +imagination. But this displays a higher, and its highest power +when, striking like a thunderbolt into the core of things, it lays +bare mysteries of God and of the heart which mere prosaic reason +cannot solve or approach, cannot indeed alone even dimly +apprehend.</p> +<p>I will now quote passages, brief ones, wherein through the poet +are opened vast vistas into the shining universe, or is +concentrated in single or few lines the life of man’s finer +nature, as in the diamond are condensed the warmth and splendor +that lie latent in acres of fossil carbon.</p> +<p>When, in the sixth book of “Paradise Lost,” Milton +narrates the arrival on the battle-field of the Son,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Attended by ten thousand thousand saints,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>and then adds:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Far off his coming shone,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>in these five short words is a sudden glare of grandeur that +dilates the capable mind with light, and, as the sublime always +does, with awe.</p> +<p>When Ferdinand, in “The Tempest,” leaps “with +hair up-staring” into the sea, crying,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“Hell is empty,</p> +<p>And all the devils are here,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>the mind is suddenly filled with an image of the tumult and +flaming rage of a thunder-storm at sea, such as words have never +elsewhere carried. What a reach in the imaginative stroke! In the +first scene of “Faust,” the earth-spirit, whom Faust +has evoked, concludes the whirling, dazzling, brief, but gigantic +sketch of his function with these words, the majesty of which +translation cannot entirely subdue:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“I ply the resounding great loom of old Time,</p> +<p>And work at the Godhead’s live vesture sublime.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>How ennobling is the idea the mind harbors of humanity, after +taking in these lines from Wordsworth’s “Ode on +Intimations of Immortality:”—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“But trailing clouds of glory do we come</p> +<p>From God, who is our home.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>With a single epithet, coined for the occasion, Keats flashes +upon our imagination the dethroned Saturn and the immensity of his +fall:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“Upon the sodden ground</p> +<p>His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,</p> +<p>Unsceptered; and his <em>realmless</em> eyes were +closed.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The “Hyperion” of this transcendent genius, written +in his twenty-fourth year, the year before he died, is as great +poetry as has ever been treasured in words. In it he lavishes +poetic wealth as though gold were with him as plenty as silver; and +so on the next page he exceeds, if possible, the sublimity of the +above lines, making Thea write in the catalogue of Saturn’s +colossal deprivations,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“And all the air</p> +<p>Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>These passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination, which is +the illumining of a capable material by a spiritual light, a light +thrown into it from the glow kindled in the poet’s mind with +richest sensibilities, that are refined and sublimated by an +exacting, subtle inward demand for the best they can render. A +single flash of new thrilling light irradiates a continent of +thought. This is the work of genius, and genius is ever marked by a +deeper sympathy with and recognition of the creative spirit and the +divine action, a sympathy and recognition so sensitive that the +spirit and action of the writer are permeated by the divine +effluence, he becoming thereby the interpreter of divine law, the +exhibitor of divine beauty.</p> +<p>In these passages the thought of the poet is thrust up through +the overlaying crust of the common, by a warming, expanding, inward +motion, which is sped by a vitality so urgent and irresistible +that, to make passage for the new thought, lightly is lifted a load +which, but for this spiritual efficacy, could not be stirred, just +as heavy stones are raised by delicate growing plants. To exert +this power the poet is always moved at the instance of feeling. +Poetry having its birth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it +but through feeling. But what moves him to embody and shape his +feeling is that ravishing sentiment which will have the best there +is in the feeling, the sentiment which seeks satisfaction through +contemplation or entertainment of the most divine and most perfect, +and ever rises to the top of the refined joy which such +contemplation educes.</p> +<p>The poetic imagination is the Ariel of the poet,—his +spiritual messenger and Mercury. A clear look into the above +passages would show that the source of their power is in the +farther scope or exquisite range the imagination opens to us, often +by a word. For further illustration I will take a few other +examples, scrutinizing them more minutely. Had Lorenzo opened the +famous passage in “The Merchant of Venice” +thus,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“How <em>calm</em> the moonlight <em>lies</em> upon this +bank,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>and continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key, +saying,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“There’s not the <em>tiniest star</em> that <em>can +be seen</em></p> +<p>But in its <em>revolution</em> it doth <em>hum</em>,</p> +<p>Aye <em>chanting</em> to the <em>heavenly</em> +cherubins,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>his words would not have become celebrated and quotable. But +Lorenzo has the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of +Shakespeare, and so he begins,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“How <em>sweet</em> the moonlight <em>sleeps</em> upon +this bank.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Two words, <em>sweet</em> and <em>sleep</em>, put in the place +of <em>calm</em> and <em>lies</em>, lift the line out of prose into +poetry. A log <em>lies</em> on a bank; so does a dead dog, and the +more dead a thing is the more it lies; but only what is alive +<em>sleeps</em>, and thus the word, besides an image of extreme +stillness, brings with it what strengthens the image, the idea of +change from liveliness to quiet; for that which was awake now +sleeps; and the more full the picture of stillness, the more awake +is the mind of the reader, awakened by the fitness and felicity of +the image. The substitution of <em>sweet</em> for <em>calm</em> is, +in a less degree, similarly enlivening; for, used in such +conjunction, <em>sweet</em> is more individual and subtle, and +imports more life, and thus helps the distinctness and vividness of +the picture. How does the poetic Lorenzo word the other three +lines?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“There’s not the <em>smallest orb</em> which +<em>thou behold’st</em>,</p> +<p>But in <em>his motion like an angel sings</em>,</p> +<p>Still <em>quiring</em> to the <em>young-eyed</em> +cherubins.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a +finer meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. +To <em>behold</em> is more than to <em>see</em>: it is to see +contemplatively. The figure <em>prosopopoeia</em> is often but an +impotent straining to impart poetic life; but the personification +in <em>in his motion</em> is apt and effective. <em>Quiring</em> is +an amplification of the immediately preceding <em>sings</em>, and, +signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges, while making +more specific, the thought. And what an image of the freshness of +heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the epithet +<em>young-eyed</em>! At every step the thought is expanded and +beautiful, reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which +the poetically excited mind is left poised in delight.</p> +<p>But the passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is +still poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the +flattening of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still +remaining poetically alive, their poetry shining through the +plainer and less figurative words. And the thought is poetical +because it is the result of a flight of intellect made by aid of +imagination’s wings, these being moved by the soaring demands +of the beautiful, and beating an atmosphere exhaled from +sensibility. As Joubert says,—herein uttering a cardinal +æsthetic principle,—“It is, above all, in the +spirituality of ideas that poetry consists.” Thought that is +poetic will glisten through the plainest words; whereas, if the +thought be prosaic or trite, all the gilded epithets in the +dictionary will not give it the poetic sheen. Perdita wishes +for</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“Daffodils</p> +<p>That come before the swallow dares, and take</p> +<p>The winds of March with beauty.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Note the poetic potency in the simple word <em>dares</em>; how +much it carries: the cold which the swallow has not the courage to +confront; a mental action, I might almost call it, in the swallow, +who, after making a recognizance of the season, determines that it +would be rash to venture so far north: all this is in the single +word. For <em>dares</em> write <em>does</em>, and the effect would +be like that of cutting a gash in a rising balloon: you would let +the line suddenly down, because you take the life out of the +thought.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“And take</p> +<p>The winds of March with beauty.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Every one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of +person or thing, and the thought is common; but that the winds of +March be taken with the beauty of daffodils, this was a delicate +secret which those winds would confide only to one so sympathetic +as Shakespeare. This is poetic imagination, the intellect sent on +far errands by a sensibility which is at once generous and bold, +and fastidious through the promptings and the exactions of the +beautiful.</p> +<p>In the opening of “Il Penseroso” Milton describes +the shapes that in sprightly moods possess the fancy,</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“As thick and numberless</p> +<p>As the gay motes that <em>people</em> the sunbeams.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Put <em>shine in</em> the sunbeams, for <em>people</em>, and, +notwithstanding the luminousness of the word substituted, you take +the sparkle out of the line, which sparkle is imparted by mental +activity, and the poetic dash that has the delightful audacity to +personify such atomies.</p> +<p>The poetical is the flush on the face of things in the +unconscious triumph of their purest life, cognizable by being +beheld at the moment when the higher faculties are at their fullest +flood, buoyed up on the joy of being and emotional sympathy. The +most and the highest of this joy is possessed by him whose +imagination is most capable of being poetically agitated; for by +such agitation light is engendered within him, whereby objects and +sensations that before were dim and opaque grow luminous and +pellucid, like great statuary in twilight or moonlight, standing +vague and unvalued until a torch is waved over it.</p> +<p>When we begin to speak of poetry, the higher qualities of the +mind come up for judgment. No genuine poet is without one or more +of these, and a great poet must have most of them. Thence the +thought of the poet is pitched on a high key, and even in poets of +power the poetry of a page is sometimes shown merely by the +sustained tone of the sentiment, giving out no jets of fire, having +no passages salient with golden embossings. Through sympathy and +sense of beauty, the poet gets nearer to the absolute nature of +things; and thence, with little of imagery, or coloring, or +passion, through this holy influence he becomes poetic, depicting +by re-creating the object or feeling or condition, and rising +naturally into rhythmic lines and sentences, the best substance +asking for, and readily obtaining, the most suitable form of words. +Yet a poet of inward resources can seldom write a page without +there being heard a note or bar or passage of the finer melody.</p> +<p>But men wanting this inward wealth, that is, wanting depth and +breadth of emotional capacity, have not, whatever their other +gifts, the soil needed for highly imaginative poetry. With broad +emphasis this æsthetic law is exemplified in the verse of +Voltaire, especially in his dramas, and in the verse of one who was +deeper and higher than he as thinker and critic, of Lessing. +Skillful versifiers, by help of fancy and a certain plastic +aptitude and laborious culture, are enabled to give to smooth verse +a flavor of poetry and to achieve a temporary reputation. But of +such uninspired workmanship the gilding after a while wears off, +the externally imparted perfume surely evaporates.</p> +<p>Often the most suitable form of words is made of plainest, +commonest parts of speech, and the fewest of them. The more intense +and deep the feeling, the greater is the need of briefest, simplest +utterance. When in one of those pauses of frantic wrath,—like +the sudden rifts that momentarily let the calm stars through a +whirling canopy of storm,—Lear utters imploringly that appeal +to Heaven, the words are the familiar words of hourly use; but what +divine tenderness and what sweep of power in three lines!</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">“O heavens,</p> +<p>If you do love old men, if your sweet sway</p> +<p>Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,</p> +<p>Make it your cause; send down and take my part!”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The thirty-third canto of the “Inferno” supremely +exemplifies the sustaining energy of poetic imagination, that by +its sublimating light it can forever hold before the mind, in +tearful, irresistible beauty, one of the most woful forms of human +suffering, death by starvation. In that terrific picture, in front +of which all the generations of men that come after Dante are to +weep purifying tears, the most exquisite stroke is given in five +monosyllables; but in those five little words what depth of pathos, +what concentration of meaning! On the fourth day one of +Ugolino’s dying sons throws himself at his father’s +feet, crying,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Father, why dost not help me?”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Here let me remark that it is not by witnessing, through +poetically imaginative representation, scenes of suffering and +agony, as in this case and the tragic drama, that the sensibilities +are “purged,” according to the famous saying of +Aristotle; but it is because such scenes are witnessed by the light +of the beautiful. The beautiful always purifies and exalts.</p> +<p>In either of these two passages any piling up of words, any +hyperbole of phrase, or boldness or even grandeur of figurative +speech, would have proved a hindrance instead of a conductor to the +feeling, smothering and not facilitating expression. But when, +turned out of doors in “a wild night,” by those +“unnatural hags,” his daughters, Lear, baring his brow +to the storm, invokes the thunder to</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the +world,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>there is no tenderness, no folding of the sore heart upon +itself; there is the expansion of defiance, outburst of the mighty +wrath of an outraged father and wronged and crownless king: and so +we have a gush of the grandest diction, of the most tempestuous +rhythm, the storm in Lear’s mind marrying itself with a +ghastly joy to the storm of the elements, the sublime tumult above +echoed in the crashing splendor of the verse:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!</p> +<p>You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout</p> +<p>Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!</p> +<p>You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,</p> +<p>Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving-thunderbolts,</p> +<p>Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,</p> +<p>Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!</p> +<p>Crack nature’s moulds, all germins spill at once,</p> +<p>That make ingrateful man!”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>I know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the +colossal dimensions of Shakespeare. Here is attained, with almost +unique effect, what according to Schiller is the aim of poetry, +“no other than to give to humanity its fullest possible +expression, its most complete utterance.”</p> +<p>The best poetry, like the best music, soars towards the upper +light. The genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the +swell of emotion. The thought moves free and strong because there +is a deep, bubbling head of feeling behind it. Feeling, at its +best, has an ascending movement, reaching up towards that high +sphere where, through their conjunction, the earthly and the +spiritual play in freedom in the sunshine of the beautiful. The +surest test of the presence of poetry is buoyancy, springiness, +which comes from the union, the divine union, of the spiritual and +the beautiful. However weighty it may be with thought, the poetical +passage floats, thus giving certain sign of life, of a soul +irrepressible.</p> +<p>But as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without +strength and breadth of root, the highest poetry is the most solid, +the firmest set in reality, in truth. The higher a poet is, the +closer hold he has of the roots of his subject. He looks at it with +a peering, deeply sympathetic insight. The roots, in fact, are in +himself; they are in the depths of his soul. Hence a cardinal +question about a poem is, How much of it does the poet draw out of +himself? Is it his by projection from his inward resources, by +injection with his own juices; or is it his only by adoption and +adaptation, by dress and adjustment?</p> +<p>Flight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings +have been feathered in the heart. Loftiness or grandeur of +imagination there cannot be, except there be first innate richness +and breadth of feeling. Imagination being simply the tensest action +of intellect, is ever, like intellect in all its phases, an +instrument of feeling, a mere tool. Height implies inward depth. +The gift to touch the vitals of a subject is the test-gift of +literary faculty; it is the soul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier +sympathy. Compare Wordsworth with Southey to learn the difference +between inward and outward gifts.</p> +<p>Poetry being in the mind, the man who has little poetry within +him will find little in nature or in the world or in Shakespeare. +The man who has no music in his soul will hear none at the +Conservatoire in Paris. Wordsworth sees with the inward eye, +Southey too exclusively with the outward. The true poet projects +visions and rhythms out from his brain, and gazes at and hearkens +to them. The degree of the truthfulness to nature and the vividness +of these projections is the measure of his poetic genius and +capacity. Only through this intense inwardness can he attain to +great visions and rhythmic raptures, and make you see and hear +them. What illimitable inward sight must Keats have dwelt in ere, +to depict the effect on him of looking into Chapman’s Homer, +he could write,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,</p> +<p class="i2">When a new planet swims into his ken;</p> +<p>Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes</p> +<p class="i2">He stared at the Pacific, and all his men</p> +<p>Looked at each other with a wild surmise,</p> +<p class="i2">Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Here is a brilliant example of poetic imagination, the intellect +urged to its finest action to satisfy the feeling which delights in +the grand, the select, the beautiful.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>What an outlook! What a solemn, mysterious, elevating inward +moment it creates in us! To ascend to that peak, to carry the +reader thither with him, that is the flight of a great poet, of one +who has been—as in that choice poem, “The +Prelude,” Wordsworth, with an electric stroke of poetic +imagination, says of Newton—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Voyaging through strange seas of thought, +alone.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>This vigor of flight in the poet, bearing on his wing the +reader, whom he ushers to new, sudden vistas, is a test of poetic +genius. Some poets never carry you to heights, but rather make you +feel while reading them as if you were moving through shut-in +valleys: their verse wants sky. They are not poetically +imaginative, are not strung for those leaps which the great poet at +times finds it impossible not to make. They have more poetic fancy +than poetic imagination. Poetic fancy is a thin flame kindled +deliberately with gathered materials; poetic imagination is an +intense flash born unexpectedly of internal collisions. Fancy is +superficial and comparatively short-sighted; imagination is +penetrative and far-sighted, bringing together things widely +sundered, apparently diverse and opposite. Fancy divides, +individualizes; imagination compounds, builds, globes. Fancy is not +so broad or so keen or so warm or so bounding as imagination; is +comparatively tame and cold and quiet. Imagination is synthetical. +Large exhibitions of poetic imagination are rare even in the +greatest poets. At its best it strikes deep into the nature of +things, has a celestial quality which invests it with awe. Spenser +shows great resources of fancy, but little imagination. The arc of +imagination is in him too near its center. Hence there is no reach +in his thoughts. He has no exhaustless depths within. He is not, as +Coleridge says Shakespeare is, an example of “endless +self-reproduction.” Cowley, says the same great critic, +“is a fanciful writer, Milton an imaginative poet.”</p> +<p>As I have already said, the power of imagining, of forming in +the mind images, conceptions, is a purely intellectual power, and +imagination becomes poetical only when this intellectual power is +an agent obeying that emotional power which ardently seeks, +intensely longs for, the better, the more perfect, the purer, in +one word, the beautiful in each province of multiform life. The +willing agent, intellect, is sent out on excursions of discovery, +and unexpectedly falls in with and captures all kinds of sparkling +booty.</p> +<p>Writers weak in poetic imagination are not visited by those +beaming thoughts that come unsummoned out of the invisible, like +new stars which, out of the unfathomable deeps of the sky, dart +suddenly upon the vision of the heaven-watcher. Such writers deal +with the known, with the best commonplace, not the common merely; +and under the glance of genius the common grows strange and +profound.</p> +<p>Some poets, not weak in poetic imagination, yet use it chiefly +for secondary purposes, that is, for beautifying the dress, the +externals of poetry. Minds with some breadth but with little depth +are not thoroughly original. Their sense of the beautiful busies +itself necessarily with that for which they have the readiest +gifts; and their readiest gifts being words more than ideas, +versification more than thought, form more than substance, they +turn out verse, chiefly narrative, which captivates through its +easy flow, its smooth sensuousness of diction, its gloss. Take a +poet so celebrated, in some respects so admirable, as Tennyson. +Tennyson’s verse is apt to be too richly dressed, too +perfumed. The clothing is costlier than the thoughts can pay for. +Hence at every re-reading of him he parts with some of his +strength, so that after three or four repetitions he has little +left for you. From a similar cause this is the case too with Byron, +through whose pen to common sentiment and opinion a glow is +imparted by the animal heat of the man, heightened by poetic tints +from a keen sense of the beautiful. But this is not the case with +Keats or Shelley or Coleridge or Wordsworth, and of course +therefore not with Milton or Shakespeare. All these keep fresh, at +every contact giving you strength and losing none. As freely and +freshly as the sun’s beams through a transparent, upspringing +Gothic spire, intellect and feeling play, ever undimmed, through +Shelley’s “Sky-Lark.” Not so through +Tennyson’s “Dream of Fair Women.” After a time +these mellifluous stanzas droop, and cling to the paper: they have +not enough flame-like motion. The nicest word-choosing will not +supply the place of choice in thought, a choice prompted by fresh +feeling; nor, where there is no new impulse from the heart, will +the most gorgeous diction give to a line the poetic carnation. +There can be no freshness of expression without freshness of +thought; the sparkle on the skin comes from new blood in the +heart.</p> +<p>Tennyson’s poetry has often too much leaf and spray for +the branches, and too much branch for the trunk, and too much trunk +for the roots. There is not living stock enough of thought deeply +set in emotion to keep the leaves ever fresh and fragrant. +Wordsworth’s poetry has for the most part roots deeply +hidden.</p> +<p>Poetry is at times fitted to a subject too much like clothes to +a body. This is the method with even some writers of good gifts and +deserved name. Compared with Goethe, who, sensuous as he is, but +healthily sensuous, writes always from within outward, Schiller is +chargeable with this kind of externality. To try to make the fancy +do the work of feeling is a vain effort. And so much verse is of +the memory and fancy more than of the heart and imagination. Inward +impulse not being dominant, the words, however shiny, are touched +with coldness. Under the inward dominance (supposing always that +the intellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness) the poet +mounts springily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he +ascends; and thus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness, +a forward and upward movement towards the climax which ever awaits +you in a subject that has a poem in it. In a genuine poem, a work +of inspiration and not mainly of art, there is brisk evolution, +phase of feeling climbing over phase, thought kindled by thought +seizing unexpected links of association. This gives sure note of +the presence of the matrix out of which poetry molds itself, that +is, sensibility warm and deep, penetrating sympathy. Where +evolution and upward movement are not, it is a sign that the spring +lacks depth and is too much fed by surface streams from +without.</p> +<p>Through a poem should run a thread of emotional thought, strong +enough to bind the parts together so vividly as to hold attention +close to the substance. Many a so-called poem is but a string of +elaborate stanzas, mostly of four lines each, too slightly +connected to cooperate as members of an organic whole. There is not +heat enough in the originating impulse to fuse the parts into +unity. There is too much manufacture and not enough growth. +Coleridge says, “The difference between manufactured poems +and works of genius is not less than between an egg and an +egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look alike.”</p> +<p>Men without depth of sensibility or breadth of nature, but with +enough sense of beauty to modulate their thoughts, using with skill +the floating capital of sentiment and the current diction and molds +of verse, for a generation are esteemed poets of more genius than +they have, their pages being elaborate verse flavored with poetry, +rather than poems. In much verse are found old thoughts re-dressed +in the scoured garments of an ambitious fancy. The remark being +made to Goethe in his latter days, that scarce one of the younger +German poets had given an example of good prose, he rejoined, +“That is very natural; he who would write prose must have +something to say; but he who has nothing to say can make verses and +rhymes; for one word gives the other, till at last you have before +you what in fact is nothing, yet looks as though it were +something.” There is much good-looking verse which does not +fulfill any one of Milton’s primary conditions for poetry, +being artificial instead of “simple,” and having +neither soul enough to be “passionate,” nor body enough +to be “sensuous.” By passionate Milton means imbued +with feeling.</p> +<p>The poetical mood is always a visionary mood; so much so, that +even when the poet is depicting an actual person or scene, he must +see it with the imaginative eye, the inward eye, as well as with +the outward. Unless he does, there is no poetry in the result. A +poem is twofold, presenting an actuality, and at the same time a +tender lucent image thereof, like the reflection of a castle, +standing on the edge of a lake, in the calm deep mirror before it: +at one view we see the castle and its glistening counterpart. In +the best poetry there is vivid picture-making: reality is made more +visible by being presented as a beautiful show. It is the power to +present the beautiful show which constitutes the poet. To conceive +a scene or person with such liveliness and compactness as to be +able to transfer the conception to paper with a distinctness and +palpitation that shall make the reader behold in it a fresh and +buoyant type of the actual—this implies a subtle, creative +life in the mind, this is the test of poetic faculty. To stand this +test there must be an inward sea of thought and sensibility, +dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his conception or +invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. The poetic mind, with +a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a subject at +arm’s length, where it can be turned round in the light; the +prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there is +no room for play of light or motion.</p> +<p>Contemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest, +and at the same time actively endeavoring to embody it, the genuine +poet has in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here +attain to; and in the reader who can attune himself to the high +pitch, he enkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. There is +current a detestable phrase or definition, which even Coleridge +allows himself to countenance, namely, that poetry is something +which gives pleasure. Pleasure! Do we speak of the pleasure of +beholding the sun rise out of the Atlantic or from the top of Mount +Washington, or the pleasure of standing beside Niagara, or of +reading about the self-sacrifice of Regulus or Winkelried? Pleasure +is a word limited to the animal or to the lighter feelings. +”Let me have the pleasure of taking wine with you.” A +good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets. Even +enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to +poetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the +feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, +and there are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an +execution. But poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight +which follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or +scene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the +range of that thought, sentiment, act, or scene. In the poetical +there always is exaltation, a reaching towards perfection, a +subtle, blooming spirituality. The end of poetry is not +pleasure,—this were to speak too grossly,—but refined +enjoyment through emotion.</p> +<p>To him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its +presence, the poetical is everywhere. The beautiful is a kiss which +man gives to Nature, who returns it; to get the kiss from her he +must first give it. Wordsworth says, “Poetry is the breath +and fine spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression +which is in the countenance of all science.” It might be +called the aromatic essence of all life.</p> +<p>A poem is the incarnation of this aroma, the condensation of it +into form. A drop of dew symbolizes a poem; for a true poem should +be oval, without angles, transparent, compact, complete in itself, +graceful from inward quality and fullness. It may be of a few +lines, or of hundreds or thousands; but there must be no +superfluous line or word. A poem drops out of the brain a fragrant +distillation. A poem must be a spiritual whole; that is, not only +with the parts organized into proportioned unity, but with the +whole and the parts springing out of the idea, the sentiment, form +obedient to substance, body to soul, the sensuous life to the +inward. For enduring, ruddy incarnation, the subject, whether it be +incident, scene, sentiment, or action, must have within its core +this essential aroma. The poet (and the test of his poetic capacity +is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a core) keeps his +conception distinctly and vividly before him. The conception or +ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him, like the pillar of +fire in the night, drawing him onward surely and rapidly. Otherwise +he lags and flags and stumbles. The spring into poetry is on a +flash, which not only lights up the thought on which it springs, +but renews, recreates it.</p> +<p>A man’s chief aim in life should be to better himself, to +keep bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. +Poetry is the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and +holding up to view the noblest and cleanest and best there is in +human life, poetry elevates and refines the feelings. It reveals +and strengthens the spirituality of our nature. Poetry tunes the +mind. Faculty of admiration is one of our super-animal privileges. +Poetry purges and guides admiration; and the sounder and higher our +admirations, the more admirable ourselves become.</p> +<p>The best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself, and sweetens +its imaginations. Our imaginations, that is, our inward thoughts, +plans, shaping our silent, interior doings, these are the chief +part of us; for out of these come most of our outward acts, and all +of their color. As is the preponderance of the man, will be this +inward brood. The timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man +troubles, the hopeful man successes, the avaricious man +accumulations, the ambitious possession of power; and the poetic +man will imagine all sorts of perfections, be ever yearning for a +better and higher, be ever building beautiful air-castles, earthy +or moral, material or ethereal, according as the sensuous or the +spiritual predominates in his nature. Beckford, of a sensuously +poetic nature, having command of vast wealth, brought his castle in +the air down to the ground, and dazzled his contemporaries with +Fonthill Abbey. Not only are Fonthill Abbeys and all beautiful +buildings achieved through the warm action of the poetic faculty, +but all improvements are brought about by its virtue. Out of this +deep, inward, creative power issue all theories and practice for +the bettering of human conditions. All original founders and +discoverers are poets: the most poetic French mind I know is that +of Fourier.</p> +<p>When a mind, having the texture and expansibility to become +surcharged with magnetic effluence, has moreover that +æsthetic gift of rhythmic expression which involves a sense +of the beautiful, that is, of the high and exquisite possibilities +of created things,—when such a mind, under the pressure of +inward needs, betakes it to embodying in verse its imaginations and +conceptions, the result is poetry. <em>Poetry is thought so inly +warmed by creative sensibility as to overflow in musical +cadence.</em> And when we consider that thought is the gathering of +loose intellectual activity into a fast focus; that creative +sensibility is human feeling refined of its dross, stilled of its +tumultuousness in the glow of the beautiful; that musical cadence +is heard by him who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to +catch some sound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend +that a genuine poem implies, for its conception, an illuminated +plenitude of mind, and involves in its production a beatific +visionariness.</p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay3" id="Essay3">III.</a></h2> +<h2>Style.</h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>Thought, act, and speech are of one substance. Where the best +things have been done, the best things have been said. The history +of Attica is richer and more significant than that of her +sister-states of old Greece, and among them her literature is +supreme. So of England in modern Europe. And where good thoughts +have been uttered the form of those will be finest which carry the +choicest life. The tree gets its texture from the quality of its +sap. Were I asked what author is the most profitable to the student +of English on account of style, I should answer, study +Shakespeare.</p> +<p>Have something to say, and say it in the best and fewest words, +were a good recipe for style. In this brief precept there are more +ingredients than at first view appear. To have something to say +implies that a man must write out of himself, and not chiefly out +of his memory; and so to write involves much more than many people +are aware of; in order that his style have freshness, which is a +primary need of a good style, the writer’s thought must be +fresh. Then, to say his thought in the best and fewest words +implies faculty of choice in words, and faculty of getting rid of +all verbal superfluity; and these two faculties betoken +proficiencies and some of the finer æsthetic forces.</p> +<p>Style itself is a gift (or more properly an issue of several +gifts), not an acquisition; it cannot be taught. As to teaching +style to one with inharmonious or defective natural powers, you +might as well attempt to teach a thrush to sing the songs of the +nightingale. To be sure, like the poetical, or the scientific, or +any mental gift, it requires culture. But style is little helped +from without. The most, as to the form of his utterance, that a +writer can get from others—whether through study of the best +masters or through direct rhetorical instruction—is in the +mechanical portion of the art; that is, how to put sentences +together according to relation of clauses, how by position of words +and phrases to avoid obscurity and awkwardness, and thus make most +presentable and accessible what he has to give out. Even in these +superficial lessons success imports something more than a +superficial capacity. These lessons learnt, and you have still to +go behind them for style, whose cradle is within you. <em>Le +style c’est l’homme même</em> (a +man’s style is his very self), is the oft-quoted profound +sentence of Buffon. Style comes out of the interior: beneath a +genuinely good style are secret springs which give to the surface +its movement and sparkle. Mostly when people talk of style ‘t +is of the surface; they think not of the depths beneath. In +popularly good styles there are indeed no deep or fine springs +beneath; in Tom Moore’s, for example, or Southey’s.</p> +<p>Nevertheless there are writers who have more skill and art than +others in presenting agreeably what they have to say, in gracefully +shaping their utterances; they are better endowed with some of the +plastic faculties; they have what Sainte-Beuve calls the genius of +style. Tact and craft enable them to make themselves more readable +than some other writers of more substance; still, they are only +capable of so doing by means of qualities which, however secondary, +are interior and fervent, and the skill imparted by which cannot be +acquired except through the presence of these qualities. This +superiority of skill in form is illustrated by the literature of +France in comparison with the literature of Germany, and even with +that of England. The French follow a precept thus embodied by +Béranger: “Perfection of style should be sought by all +those who believe themselves called to diffuse useful thoughts. +Style, which is only the form appropriated to a subject by art and +reflection, is the passport of which every thought has need in +order to circulate, expand, and lodge itself in people’s +brains. To neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the +ideas one wishes to make others adopt.” And so effective is +the following of such a precept that, through careful devices and +manipulating cleverness, a brilliant success, though transitory is +achieved by some writers who range lightly over surfaces, their +thoughts dipping no deeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along +the water, which it keeps ruffling, making a momentary sprightly +splash at each contact, until, its force being soon spent, it +disappears and is seen no more.</p> +<p>The possession of certain mental gifts constitutes a talent for +writing, gifts which, with reference to the great primary powers of +the mind, are secondary. Sainte-Beuve says of the Abbé +Gerbet that he “had naturally the flowers of speech, movement +and rhythm of phrase, measure and choice of expression, even +figurative language, what, in short, makes a talent for +writing.” The possessor of these qualifications may, +nevertheless, rise only a little above mediocrity. Of the styles of +many, even clever, accomplished writers, one gets a clear notion +from the remark made of a certain polished actress, that she always +played well, never better.</p> +<p>When Sainte-Beuve says <em>Rien ne vit que par le style</em>, he +asserts in fact the exclusive privilege of original thought to give +permanence to literary work; for nothing but an interior source can +give life to expression. The inward flow will shape itself +adequately and harmoniously in proportion as it has at full command +the auxiliary, what I have called the plastic literary qualities; +but shape itself it will, effectively and with living force, +without the fullest command, while the readiest mastery over these +qualities can never give vitality to style when are wanting primary +resources. Literary substance which does not shape itself +successfully (it may not be with the fullest success) is internally +defective, is insufficient; for if it throb with life, it will mold +a form for its embodiment, albeit that form, from lack of complete +command of the secondary agents, will not be so graceful or rich as +with such command it would have been. Wordsworth has made to +English literature a permanent addition which is of the highest +worth, in spite of notable plastic deficiencies. A conception that +has a soul in it will find itself a body, and if not a literary +body, one furnished by some other of the fine arts; or, wanting +that, in practical enterprise or invention. And the body or form +will be stamped with the inward lineaments of the man. Style issues +from within, and if it does not, it is not style, but manner. Words +get all their force from the thoughts and feelings behind them. +They are necessary media, created, molded, and combined by mental +wants. Picking and polishing words and phrases is ineffectual +without the picking and polishing of the thoughts: below the +surface of words lies that which controls and vivifies style. And +then between the substance, the mental material, and the executive +faculties there must be lively harmony. The executive power is a +purely intellectual composite instrument; the force that wields it +is feeling. For the best style the wielding force must be fine as +well as rich and strong, and the shaping, harmonizing instrument of +superfine temper and smiling willingness.</p> +<p>Style, in writing, is the art of putting into words what you +think or feel, in such a way as to make the best of +it—presupposed, that what you think or feel is worth putting +into printed words. There are men who, without being original or +inventive, have still, through strong understanding and culture, +much to say that will profit their contemporaries; men of a certain +mental calibre, of talent, activity, will, cleverness, of verbal +facility and of prominent ambition and in most cases of audacity, +and who by discipline and labor attain to a style which for their +purposes is effective. Of this class Jeffrey, Brougham, Macaulay +are conspicuous examples. Theirs are not winged minds. They keep to +the plane of commonplace; they are never rapt into an upper sphere +of thought, where sentences grow transparent, illuminated by +soulful revelations. All three lack subtlety, the finer insight, a +penetrating perception. The style of such men, even when most +vivacious, is never marked by geniality, by newness of turns, by +imaginative combinations, by rhythmical sweeps, and especially not +by freshness, of all which the fountain is originality, genius, +creativeness. It is related that after several of Carlyle’s +papers had appeared in the “Edinburgh Review,” +Brougham, one of its founders and controllers, protested that if +that man were permitted to write any more he should cease to be a +contributor. And so the pages of the Review were closed against the +best writer it ever had. This arbitrary proceeding of Brougham is +to be mainly accounted for as betraying the instinct of creeping +talent in the presence of soaring genius.</p> +<p>Not less than men of talent men of genius need to cultivate +style; nay, from the copiousness and variousness of their material, +and from its very inwardness, the molds into which it is to be +thrown need the finest care. Coleridge, rich and incomparable as he +is, would have made many of his prose pages still more effective by +a studious supervision; and De Quincey tells us what labor his +periods sometimes cost him. The following advice, given in a letter +from Maurice de Guérin to his sister, may be addressed to +all literary aspirants: “Form for yourself a style which +shall be the expression of yourself. Study our French language by +attentive reading, making it your care to mark constructions, turns +of expression, delicacies of style, but without ever adopting the +manner of any master. In the works of these masters we must learn +our language, but we must use it each in our own +fashion.”</p> +<p>One of the first constituents of a good style is what Coleridge +calls “progressive transition,” which implies a dynamic +force, a propulsive movement, behind the pen. Hazlitt, for example, +somewhat lacked this force, and hence De Quincey is justified to +speak of his solitary flashes of thought, his “brilliancy, +seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image, which +throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment.” +One of the charms, in a high sense, of Coleridge’s page is +that in him this dynamic force was present in liveliest action. His +intellect, ever enkindled by his emotions, exacted logical +sequence, and thus a rapid forward movement is overspread by a glow +of generous feeling, which, being refined by his poetic sensibility +made his style luminous and flowing.</p> +<p>De Quincey, treating of aphoristic writing, says, “Any man +[he of course means any man with good things in him] as he walks +through the streets may contrive to jot down an independent +thought, a short-hand memorandum of a great truth; but the labor of +composition begins when you have to put your separate threads of +thought into a loom; to weave them into a continuous whole; to +connect, to introduce them; to blow them out or expand them; to +carry them to a close.” Buffon attached the greatest +importance to sequence, to close dependence, to continuous +enchainment. He detested a chopped, jerky style, that into which +the French are prone to fall. Certain it is, and from obvious +causes, that much of the secret of style lies in aptness of +sequence, thought and word, through an irresistible impulsion and +pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place promptly, +because naturally and necessarily. Through fusion and close +coherency and dependence, the flow is at once smooth and lively. +The grace as well as the strength of the living physical body +depends much, nay primarily, on the joints. So with the body of a +good writer’s thoughts, that is, his mode of utterance. To +the linking of sentences and paragraphs (the links being +self-wrought out of inward sap) is due much of the buoyancy and +force of style. The springiness of the joints depends, in the body, +on the quality of its nervous life; in style, much on the marrow +and validity of the thoughts. By a sprightly stream of thought, fed +from a full spring of feeling, the current of words is kept lively +and graceful. Words, sentences, paragraphs, cannot be held closely, +symmetrically, attractively together, without the unction invisibly +distilled from brisk mental movement, movement starting from +sentiment fresh and true. Soul is the source of style. Not +sensibility alone is a prerequisite for style: the sensibility must +be <em>active</em>, made active by the fine aspiring urgency which +ever demands the best. A good style will have the sheen +communicated by lubrication from within, not the gloss of outward +rubbing.</p> +<p>That style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject +treated ought to be self-evident. In every page of “The Merry +Wives of Windsor” we recognize Shakespeare not less palpably +than in “King Lear.” In his “Recollections of +Charles Lamb” De Quincey writes, “Far be it from me to +say one word in praise of those—people of how narrow a +sensibility—who imagine that a simple (that is, according to +many tastes, an unelevated and <em>unrhythmical</em>) +style—take, for instance, an Addisonian or a Swiftian +style—is <em>unconditionally</em> good. Not so: all depends +upon the subject; and there is a style, transcending these and all +other modes of simplicity, by infinite degrees, and, in the same +proportion, impossible to most men, the rhythmical, the +continuous—what in French is called the +<em>soutenu</em>—which, to humbler styles stands in the +relation of an organ to a shepherd’s pipe. This also finds +its justification in its subject; and the subject which +<em>can</em> justify it must be of a corresponding +quality—loftier—and therefore, rare.”</p> +<p>I quote De Quincey because he has written more, and more +profoundly as well as more copiously, on style than any writer I +know. To this point,—the adaption of style to +subject,—he returns, laying down with clearness and truth the +law which should here govern. In a paper on Schlosser’s +“Literary History of the Eighteenth Century” he +reaffirms—what cannot be too strongly insisted on—the +falsity of the common opinion that Swift’s style is, for all +writers, a model of excellence, showing how it is only fitted to +the kind of subjects on which Swift wrote, and concluding with this +characteristic passage: “That nearly all the blockheads with +whom I have at any time had the pleasure of conversing upon the +subject of style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most +sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, to talk +<em>most</em> like blockheads) have invariably regarded +Swift’s style not as if <em>relatively</em>, (i.e., +<em>given</em> a proper subject), but as if <em>absolutely</em> +good—good unconditionally, no matter what the subject. Now, +my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had been required to +write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh’s immortal apostrophe +to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown’s +‘Religio Medici’ and his ‘Urn-Burial,’ or +to Jeremy Taylor’s inaugural sections of his ‘Holy +Living and Dying,’ do you know what would have happened? Are +you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan +would have cut? About the same that would be cut by a forlorn +scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if +suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival +of Belshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords.”</p> +<p>That no writer of limited faculties can have a style of high +excellence ought to be a truism. Through a certain equilibrium +among his faculties, and assiduous literary culture, such a one may +excel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane; but that is +all. From the shallowest utterance, where, thoughts and feelings +lying just below the surface, there can be no strong lights and +shadows, no splendid play in the exposition, styles range, with the +men who make them, through all degrees of liveliness and +significance and power, up to that simple grandeur which conceals a +vast volume of thought, and implies a divine ruling of +multiplicity.</p> +<p>In a good style, on whatever degree it stands, there must be a +full marriage between word and thought, so clean an adjustment of +expression to material as to leave no rough edges or nodes. The +words must not be too big or too shiny for the thought; they must +not stand out from the texture, embossing, as it were, the matter. +A style can hardly be too nervous; it can be too muscular, as, for +example, was sometimes that of Michael Angelo in sculpture and +painting.</p> +<p>A primary requisite for a good style is that the man and the +writer be one; that is, that the man have a personal feeling for, a +free sympathy with, the theme the writer has taken in hand; his +subject must be fitted to him, and he to his subject. That he be +sincere is not enough; he must be cordial; then he will be +magnetic, attractive. You must love your work to do it well.</p> +<p>A good style is a stream, and a lively stream: it flows ever +onward actively. The worst vice a style can have is languor. With +some writers a full stop is a double full stop: the reader does not +get forward. Much writing consists of little more than sluggish +eddies. In many minds there is not leap enough for a style. +Excellence in style demands three vivacities, and rather exacting +ones, for they involve a somewhat rare mental apportionment; the +vivacities of healthy and poetic feeling, of intellectual +nimbleness, and of inviolable sequence.</p> +<p>Writers there are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a +routine of phrases and words under the repetition of which thought +is hardened by its molds. Thence mechanical turns and forms, which +cause numbness, even when there is a current of intellectual +activity. Writers most liable to this subjection are they who have +surrendered themselves to set opinions and systems, who therefore +cease to grow,—a sad condition for man or writer.</p> +<p>Hypocrites in writing, as in talking and doing, end badly. A +writer who through his style aims to seem better or other than +himself is soon found out. The desire so to seem argues a literary +incapacity; it looks as though the very self—which will shine +through the style—lacked confidence in its own substance. And +after all, in writing as in doing and talking, a man must be +himself, will be himself in spite of himself. One cannot put on his +neighbor’s style any more than he can put on his +neighbor’s limbs.</p> +<p>Not only has prose its melody as well as verse, but there is no +<em>style</em> unless sentences are pervaded, I might say animated, +by rhythm; lacking appropriate movement, they are inelastic, inert, +drowsy. Rhythm implies a soul behind it and in it. The best style +will have a certain rotundity imparted by the ceaseless rocking of +thought in the deep ocean of sentiment. Without some music in them +sentences were torpid, impracticable. To put thoughts and words so +together that there shall be a charm in the presentation of them, +there needs a lively harmony among certain faculties, a rhythm in +the mind. Hence Cicero said that to write prose well, one must be +able to write verse. The utterance of music in song or tune, in +artful melody or choral harmony, is but the consummation of a power +which is ever a sweetener in life’s healthily active +exhibitions, the power of sound. Nature is alive with music. In the +fields, in the air, sound is a token of life. On high, bare, or +snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes in great part +from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a broad, +sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray clad +in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of bees +above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from unseen +choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, +unseen, and ever rhythmical.</p> +<p>The heartier and deeper the thought, the more melody will there +be in its fit expression, and thence the higher range of style is +only reached by poets, or by men who, though poetically minded, yet +lack “the accomplishment of verse.” The sudden electric +injection of light into a thought or object or sentiment—in +this consists the gift poetical, a gift which implies a sensibility +so keen and select as to kindle the light, and an intellect fine +and firm enough to hold and transmit it. A writer in whom there is +no poetic feeling can hardly rise to a style. Whoever has tried to +read a play of Scribe will understand from this why Sainte-Beuve +affirms of him that he is utterly devoid of the faculty of style +(<em>dénué de la faculté du style</em>). +Contrast with Scribe his fellow-countryman, the great +Molière. Thence, Joubert says, “Many of our poets +having written in prose, ordinary style has received from them a +brilliancy and audacities which it would not have had without them. +Perhaps, too, some prose writers, who were born poets without being +born versifiers, have contributed to adorn our language, even in +its familiarities, with those riches and that pomp which until then +had been the exclusive property of the poetic idiom.”</p> +<p>A man of poetic sensibility is one born with a sleepless eye to +the better, an ear that craves the musical, a soul that is uneasy +in presence of the defective or the incomplete. This endowment +implies a mind not only susceptible of the higher and finer +movements of thought, but which eagerly demands them, and which +thus makes the writer exacting towards himself. Hence only he +attains to a genuine correctness; he was correct by instinct before +he was so by discipline. In the whole as well as the parts he +requires finish and proportion. Within him there is a momentum +which fills out his thought and its worded envelope to warm +convexity. Only he has the fine tact and discernment to know the +full meaning of each word he uses. The best style is organic in its +details as well as its structure; it shows modeling, a handling of +words and phrases with the pliancy and plastic effects of clay in +the hands of the sculptor. Goethe says that only poets and artists +have method, because they require to see a thing before them in a +completed, rounded form. Writing is a fine art, and one of the +finest; and he who would be a master in this art must unite genial +gifts with conscientious culture.</p> +<p>Of style the highest examples, therefore, are to be found in the +verse of the great poets, of the deep rhythmic souls who make a +sure, agile intellect their willing Ariel; and no prose writer gets +to be a master in style but through kindred endowment. The compact, +symmetrical combination of gifts and acquirements, of genius with +talent, demanded for the putting forth of a fresh, priceless poem, +this he need not have; but his perceptions must be brightened by +the light whose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more +perfect in form, deed, and sentiment, and his best thoughts +suffused with that fragrance whose only source is the ravishment of +the beautiful.</p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay4" id="Essay4">IV.</a></h2> +<h2>Dante and His Latest Translators.<a id="footnotetag5" name= +"footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a></h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>“Ghosts and witches are the best machinery for a modern +epic.” So said Charles Fox, who fed his imagination on verse +of this aspiring class. Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion +is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an +acknowledged element in the epopee. The term +“machinery” implies ignorance of the import of the +super-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism +and a virtual unbelief. No poet who should accept the term could +write an epic, with or without the “machinery.” Such +acceptance would betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which +surely follows a want of faith in the invisible supervisive +energies.</p> +<p>A genuine epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of +depth and height and breadth, narrating long-prepared ruin or +foundation of a race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold +to lay bare the method of the divine intervention in the momentous +work. The epic poet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large +sympathies, together with such consciousness of power, that he +takes on him to interpret and incarnate the celestial cooperation. +There are people, and some of them even poets, whose consciousness +is so smothered behind the senses, that they come short of belief +in spiritual potency. They are what, with felicity of phrase, Mr. +Matthew Arnold calls—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Light half-believers in our casual creeds.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Homer and Milton were believers: they believed in the visible, +active presence on the earth of the god Mars, and the archangel +Raphael. Had they not, there would have been no +“Iliad,” no “Paradise Lost.”</p> +<p>Dante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had +he, and an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the +divine judgment on the multitudinous dead, ranging with inspired +vision through hell, and purgatory, and heaven. In his large, hot +heart, he lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with +poetic pen wrought them into immortal shapes. The then religious +imaginations of Christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; +the politics of Italy, then tumultuous and embittered; the theology +and philosophy of his time, fantastic, unfashioned—all this +was his material. But all this, and were it ten times as much, is +but the skeleton, the frame. The true material of a poem is the +poet’s own nature and thoughts, his sentiment and his; +judgment, his opinions, aspirations, imaginations, his veriest +self, the whole of him, especially the best of him.</p> +<p>Than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, +which were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the +day,—and literature then was chiefly, almost exclusively, +religious,—no more broad or tempting canvas could be offered +to a poet, beset, as all poets are apt to be, with the need of +utterance, and possessed, moreover, of a graphic genius that craved +strong, glowing themes for its play. The present teeming world to +be transfigured into the world to come, and the solicitation and +temptation to do this brought to a manly, powerful nature, +passionate, creative, descriptive, to a stirring realist, into +whose breast, as a chief actor on the Italian scene, ran, all warm +from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of Italian politics +at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict; and that breast +throbbing with the fiery passions of republican Italy, while behind +the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to tune the +wide, variegated cacophony. Proud, passionate, and baffled, the man +Dante deeply swayed the poet. Much of his verse is directly woven +out of his indignations and burning personal griefs. At times, +contemporaneous history tyrannized over him.</p> +<p>Dante’s high and various gifts, his supreme poetic gift, +the noble character and warm individuality of the man, with the +pathos of his personal story, the full, lively transcript he hands +down of the theology and philosophy of his age, his native literary +force as molder of the Italian language, his being the bold, +adventurous initiator, the august father of modern poetry—all +this has combined to keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of +men through six centuries. But even all this would not have made +him one of the three or four world-poets, would not have won for +him the wreath of universal European translation. What gave his +rare qualities their most advantageous field, not merely for the +display of their peculiar superiorities, but for keeping their +fruit sound and sweet, was that he is the historian of hell, +purgatory, and heaven—of the world to come such as it was +pictured in his day, and as it has been pictured more or less ever +since—the word-painter of that visionary, awful hereafter, +the thought of which has ever been a spell.</p> +<p>Those imaginations as to future being—to the Middle Ages +so vivid as to become soul-realities—Dante, with his +transcendent pictorial mastership, clothed in words fresh and +weighty from the mine of popular speech, stamping them with his +glittering imperial superscription. Imaginations! there are +imaginations of the future, the reverse of poetical. Hunger will +give you tormenting imaginations of breakfasts and dinners; avarice +enlivens some minds with pictures of gains that are to be. But +imaginations of the life beyond the grave, these we cannot +entertain without spirituality. The having them with any urgency +and persistence implies strong spiritual prepossessions: men must +be self-possessed with their higher self, with their spirit. The +very attempt to figure your disembodied state is an attempt +poetical. To succeed with any distinctness denotes some power of +creative projection: without wings, this domain cannot be entered. +In Dante’s time these attempts were common. Through his +preëminent qualifications, crowned with the poetic faculty, +the faculty of sympathy with ideal excellence, his attempt was a +great, a unique success.</p> +<p>To accompany Dante through his vast triple trans-terrestrial +world, would seem to demand in the reader a sustained effort of +imagination. But Dante is so graphic, and, we might add, corporeal +in his pictures, puts such a pulse into his figures, that the +artistic illusion wherewith we set out is exchanged for, or rather +overborne by, an illusion of the reality of what is represented. +Yet from the opening of the first canto he is ever in the +super-earthly world, and every line of the fourteen thousand has +the benefit of a super-earthly, that is, a poetic atmosphere, which +lightens it, transfigures it, floats it. One reads with the poetic +prestige of the knowledge that every scene is trans-terrestrial; +and, at the same time, every scene is presented with a physical +realism, a visual and audible vividness, which captivates and holds +the perceptive faculty; so that the reader finds himself grasped, +as it were, in a vice, whose double handle is mortised on one side +in the senses, and on the other in the spiritual imagination.</p> +<p>Dante had it in him,—this hell, purgatory, and +heaven—so full and warm and large was his nature. Within his +own breast he had felt, with the keen intensity of the poetic +temperament, the loves and hates, the griefs and delights of life. +Through his wealth of heart he had a fellow-feeling for all the +joys and sorrows of his brother-men, and, added to this, an +artist’s will and want to reproduce them, and <em>to</em> +reproduce them a clear, outwelling, intellectual vivacity. He need +scarcely have told us that his poem, though treating of spirits, +relates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh. He chose a +theme that at once seized the attention of his readers, and gave to +himself a boundless scope. His field was all past history, around +the altitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and +sketches of famous sinners and famous saints, of heroes and lofty +criminals; and, along with this, contemporaneous Florentine and +Italian history, with its tumults and vicissitudes, its biographies +and personalities, its wraths and triumphs.</p> +<p>Dante exhibits great fertility in situations and conjunctions; +but, besides that many of them were ready to his hand, this kind of +inventiveness denotes of itself no fine creative faculty. It is the +necessary equipment of the voluminous novelist. In this facility +and abundance Goldsmith could not have coped with James and Bulwer; +and yet the “Vicar of Wakefield” (not to go so high as +“Tristram Shandy” and “Don Quixote”) is +worth all their hundred volumes of tales put together. What +insight, what weight, and faithfulness, and refinement, and +breadth, and truth, and elevation of character and conception, does +the framework of incident support and display? That is the +æsthetic question. The novels of every day bristle with this +material inventiveness, this small, abounding, tangled underwood of +event and sensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will +not build. The invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures +and conditions of the “Inferno” and +“Purgatorio” and “Paradiso,” is not +admirable for their mere exuberance and diversity,—for that +might have come from a comparatively prosaic mind, especially when +fed, as all minds then were, with the passionate mediaeval +beliefs,—but for the heart there is in them, throbbing deeply +in some, and for the human sympathy, and thence, in part, the +photographic fidelity, and for the paramount gift poetically to +portray. A consequence of the choice of subject, and, as regards +the epic quality of Dante’s poem, an important consequence, +is that there is in it no unity of interest. The sympathies of the +reader are not engrossed by one great group of characters, acting +and reacting on one another through the whole sweep of the +invention. Instead of this, we have a long series of unconnected +pictures, each one awakening a new interest. Hereby the mind is +distracted, the attention being transferred at every hundred lines +to a fresh figure or group. We pass through a gallery of pictures +and portraits, classed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one +from the other, and separated by the projection of as many +different frames. We are on a weird, adventurous journey, and make +but brief stops, however attractive the strangers or acquaintance +we meet. We go from person to person, from scene to scene; so that +at the end of the journey, although the perception has been richly +crowded, one impression has effaced the other. Not carrying the +weight, not pulsating in its every limb with the power of a broad, +deep, involved story, architecturally reared on one foundation, +whose parts are all subordinated to a great unity, the +“Divina Commedia,” as an organic, artistic whole, is +inferior to the “Iliad” and “Paradise +Lost,” and to the Grecian and Shakespearean tragedies.</p> +<p>The exclusive super-earthliness of his scenes and personages, +and, with this, his delight in picture-drawing, keep Dante close to +his page—fastened to it, we might say, by a twofold +fascination. Among the many faculties that equip him for his +extraordinary task, most active is that of form. Goethe says of +him, “The great intellectual and moral qualities of Dante +being universally acknowledged, we shall be furthered in a right +estimate of his works, if we keep in view that just in his +life-time—Giotto being his contemporary—was the +re-birth of plastic art in all its natural strength. By this +sensuous, form-loving spirit of the age, working so widely and +deeply, Dante, too, was largely swayed. With the eye of his +imagination he seized objects so distinctly that he could reproduce +them in sharp outline. Thence we see before us the most abstruse +and unusual, drawn, as it were, after nature.” In recognition +of the same characteristic, Coleridge says, “In +picturesqueness Dante is beyond all other poets, ancient or modern, +and more in the stern style of Pindar than of any other. Michael +Angelo is said to have made a design for every page of the +‘Divina Commedia.’”</p> +<p>Dante, eminent in poetic gifts, has many sides, but this is his +strongest side: he is preëminently a poet of form. In his mind +and in his work there is a southern, an Italian, sensuousness. He +is a poet of thought, but more a poet of molds; he is a poet of +sentiment, but more a poet of pictures. Rising readily to +generalization, still his intellect is more specific than generic. +His subject—chosen by the concurrence of his æsthetic, +moral, and intellectual needs—admits of, nay, demands +portraits, isolated sketches, unconnected delineations. The +personages of his poem are independent one of the other, and are +thence the more easily drawn. Nor does Dante abound in transferable +passages, sentences of universal application, from being saturated +with the perfumed essence of humanity. We say it with diffidence, +but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance, more +idealized fidelity, in Milton; more significance and wisdom and +profound hint in Goethe. In Milton the mental reverberation is +wider: he rivets us through distant grand association, by great +suggestion. Thus, describing the darkened head of Satan, Milton +says,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">“As when the sun new risen</p> +<p>Looks through the horizontal misty air,</p> +<p>Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon,</p> +<p>In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds</p> +<p>On half the nations,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Setting aside the epithets “horizontal” and +“disastrous,” which are poetically imaginative, the +likening of Satan to the sun seen through a mist, or in eclipse, is +a direct, parallel comparison that aids us to see Satan; and it is +in such, immediate, not mediate,—not involving likeness +between physical and mental qualities, but merely between physical, +not between subtle, relations,—that Dante chiefly deals, +showing imaginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet, but +different from, and altogether inferior to, poetic imagination. The +mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the +intellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with +aspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the +utmost, and, as the result of this exertion, discovers a thought or +image which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to +the reader a new delight. Of this, the lordliest mental exhibition, +there is a sovereign example in the words wherewith Milton +concludes the passage—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">“and with fear of change</p> +<p>Perplexes monarchs.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>This fills the mind with the terror he wishes his Satan to +inspire; this gives its greatness to the passage.</p> +<p>Dante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself +more to the reader’s senses and perception; Milton rouses his +higher imaginative capacity. In the whole “Inferno,” is +there a sentence so aglow as this line and a half of +“Paradise Lost”?</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">“And the torrid clime</p> +<p>Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Or is there in Dante any sound so loud and terrible as that +shout of Milton’s demon-host—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">“That tore Hell’s concave, and beyond</p> +<p>Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night”?</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Here the unity of his theme stands Milton in stead for grandeur +and breadth.</p> +<p>Dante is copious in similes. Such copiousness by no means proves +poetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes +than one inferior to him. Wordsworth has much less of this command +than Moore. But when a poet does use similes, he will be likely +often to put of his best into them, for they are captivating +instruments and facilities for poetic expansion. When a poet is in +warm sympathy with the divine doings, there will be at times a +flashing fitness in his similitudes, which are then the sudden +offspring of finest intuition. In citing some of the most prominent +in the “Divina Commedia,” we at once give brief samples +of Dante and of the craft of his three latest translators, using +the version of Dr. Parsons for extracts from the +“Inferno,” that of Mr. Dayman for those from the +“Purgatorio,” and that of Mr. Longfellow for those from +the “Paradiso.”</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“As well-filled sails, which in the tempest swell,</p> +<p class="i2">Drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent;</p> +<p>So to the earth that cruel monster fell,</p> +<p class="i2">And straightway down to Hell’s Fourth Pit he +went.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Inferno</em>: Canto VII.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Swept now amain those turbid waters o’er</p> +<p class="i2">A tumult of a dread portentous kind,</p> +<p>Which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore,</p> +<p class="i2">Like the mad rushing of a rapid wind;</p> +<p>As when, made furious by opposing heats,</p> +<p class="i2">Wild through the wood the unbridled tempest +scours,</p> +<p>Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats,</p> +<p class="i2">And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers;</p> +<p>Then fly the herds,—the swains to shelter scud.</p> +<p class="i2">Freeing mine eyes, ‘Thy sight,’ he said, +‘direct</p> +<p>O’er the long-standing scum of yonder flood,</p> +<p class="i2">Where, most condense, its acrid streams +collect.’”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Inferno</em>: Canto IX.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“When, lo! there met us, close beside our track,</p> +<p class="i2">A troop of spirits. Each amid the band</p> +<p>Eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by</p> +<p class="i2">’Neath a new moon; as closely us they +scanned,</p> +<p>As an old tailor doth a needle’s eye.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Inferno</em>: Canto XV.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“And just as frogs that stand, with noses out</p> +<p class="i2">On a pool’s margin, but beneath it hide</p> +<p>Their feet and all their bodies but the snout,</p> +<p class="i2">So stood the sinners there on every side.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Inferno</em>: Canto XXII.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“A cooper’s vessel, that by chance hath been</p> +<p class="i2">Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft,</p> +<p>Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin</p> +<p class="i2">I noticed lengthwise through his carcass +cleft.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Inferno</em>: Canto XXVIII.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“We tarried yet the ocean’s brink upon,</p> +<p class="i2">Like unto people musing of their way,</p> +<p>Whose body lingers when the heart hath gone;</p> +<p class="i2">And lo! as near the dawning of the day,</p> +<p>Down in the west, upon the watery floor,</p> +<p class="i2">The vapor-fogs do Mars in red array,</p> +<p>Even such appeared to me a light that o’er</p> +<p class="i2">The sea so quickly came, no wing could match</p> +<p>Its moving. Be that vision mine once more.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Purgatorio</em>: Canto II.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“And thou, remembering well, with eye that sees</p> +<p class="i2">The light, wilt know thee like the sickly one</p> +<p>That on her bed of down can find no ease,</p> +<p class="i2">But turns and turns again her ache to +shun,”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Purgatorio</em>: Canto VI.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“’T was now the hour the longing heart that +bends</p> +<p class="i2">In voyagers, and meltingly doth sway,</p> +<p>Who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends;</p> +<p class="i2">And wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way</p> +<p>With poignant love, to hear some distant bell</p> +<p class="i2">That seems to mourn the dying of the day;</p> +<p>When I began to slight the sounds that fell</p> +<p class="i2">Upon my ear, one risen soul to view,</p> +<p>Whose beckoning hand our audience would compel.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Purgatorio</em>: Canto VIII.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“There I the shades see hurrying up to kiss</p> +<p class="i2">Each with his mate from every part, nor stay,</p> +<p>Contenting them with momentary bliss.</p> +<p class="i2">So one with other, all their swart array</p> +<p>Along, do ants encounter snout with snout,</p> +<p class="i2">So haply probe their fortune and their +way.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Purgatorio</em>: Canto XXVI.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Between two viands, equally removed</p> +<p class="i2">And tempting, a free man would die of hunger</p> +<p>Ere either he could bring unto his teeth.</p> +<p class="i2">So would a lamb between the ravenings</p> +<p>Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike;</p> +<p class="i2">And so would stand a dog between two does.</p> +<p>Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not,</p> +<p class="i2">Impelled in equal measure by my doubts,</p> +<p>Since it must be so, nor do I commend.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Paradiso</em>: Canto IV.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“And as a lute and harp, accordant strung</p> +<p class="i2">With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make</p> +<p>To him by whom the notes are not distinguished,</p> +<p class="i2">So from the lights that there to me appeared</p> +<p>Upgathered through the cross a melody,</p> +<p class="i2">Which rapt me, not distinguishing the +hymn.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Paradiso</em>: Canto XIV.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“As through the pure and tranquil evening air</p> +<p class="i2">There shoots from time to time a sudden fire,</p> +<p>Moving the eyes that steadfast were before,</p> +<p class="i2">And seems to be a star that changeth place,</p> +<p>Except that in the part where it is kindled</p> +<p class="i2">Nothing is missed, and this endureth little;</p> +<p>So from the horn that to the right extends</p> +<p class="i2">Unto that cross’s foot there ran a star</p> +<p>Out of the constellation shining there.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Paradiso</em>: Canto XV.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Even as remaineth splendid and serene</p> +<p class="i2">The hemisphere of air, when Boreas</p> +<p>Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest,</p> +<p class="i2">Because is purified and resolved the rack</p> +<p>That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs</p> +<p class="i2">With all the beauties of its pageantry;</p> +<p>Thus did I likewise, after that my lady</p> +<p class="i2">Had me provided with a clear response,</p> +<p>And like a star in Heaven the truth was seen.”</p> +<p class="i10"><em>Paradiso</em>: Canto XXVIII.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>The first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse +is, Is it poetical? Is there, as effect of its introduction, any +heightening of the reader’s mood, any cleansing of his +vision, any clarification of the medium through which he is +looking? Is there a sudden play of light that warms, and, through +this warmth, illuminates the object before him? Few of those just +quoted, put to such test, could be called more than conventionally +poetical—if this be not a solecism. To illustrate one +sensuous object by another does not animate the mind enough to +fulfill any one of the above conditions. Such similitudes issuing +from intellectual liveliness, there is through them no steeping of +intellectual perception in emotion. They may help to make the +object ocularly more apparent, but they do not make the feeling a +party to the movement. When this is done,—as in the examples +from Canto XV. of the “Inferno,” and Canto VIII. of the +“Purgatorio,”—what an instantaneous vivification +of the picture!</p> +<p>But in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for +bright as in the best of Shakespeare’s. As one instance out +of many: towards the end of the great soliloquy of Henry V., after +enumerating the emblems and accompaniments of royalty, the king +continues,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,</p> +<p>Not all these, laid in bed majestical,</p> +<p>Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave;</p> +<p>Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind,</p> +<p>Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread;</p> +<p>Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;</p> +<p>But, like a lackey, from the rise to set,</p> +<p>Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night</p> +<p>Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,</p> +<p>Doth rise <em>and help Hyperion to his horse</em>”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>What a sudden filling of the earth with light through that +image, so fresh and unexpected, of the rising sun, with its +suggestion of beauty and healthfulness! Then the far-reaching, +transfiguring imagination, that, in a twinkle, transmutes into the +squire of Hyperion a stolid rustic, making him suddenly radiant +with the glory of morning. It is by this union of unexpectedness +with fitness, of solidity with brilliancy, of remoteness with +instantaneous presence, in his figures, denoting overflow of +resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel after Shakespeare +has said his best things, that he could go on saying more and +better,—it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming +fullness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakespeare throws +a farther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does +Dante’s page glisten, as Shakespeare’s so often does, +with metaphor, or compressed similes, that at times with a word +open the spiritual sphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but +inter-tissued with the web of thought, upflashings from a deep sea +of mind, to quiver on the surface, as on the calm level of the +Atlantic you may see a circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools +of fish that have come up from the wealth in the depths below to +help the sun to glisten,—a sign of life, power, and +abundance.</p> +<p>Like his great compeer, Milton, Dante fails of universality from +want of humor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault +(liberally to interpret Can’s conduct) that Dante’s +host, Can Grande of Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of +both poets (unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of +humor) were predominantly religious, and their theology, which was +that of their times, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic +earnestness, which is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, +to use an illustration of Richter, they could not turn sublimity +upside down,—a great feat, only possible through sense of the +comic, which, in its highest manifestation of humor, pillows pain +in the lap of absurdity, throws such rays upon affliction as to +make a grin to glimmer through gloom, and, with the fool in +“Lear,” forces you, like a child, to smile through +warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy to +tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and follies of +men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough to sport +with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful delight; +in its finest mood, an angelic laughter.</p> +<p>Of pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By +the story of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that +pity and awe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are +touched to tenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single +fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes +is to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape +with a hundred flashes.</p> +<p>All the personages of Dante’s poem (unless we regard +himself as one) are spirits. Shakespeare, throughout his many +works, gives only a few glimpses into the world beyond the grave; +but how grandly by these few is the imagination expanded. +Clarence’s dream, “lengthened after life,” in +which he passes “the melancholy flood,” is almost +super-Dantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful +foretaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth. And the +great ghost in “Hamlet,” when you read of him, how +shadowy real! Dante’s representation of disembodied humanity +is too pagan, too palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized +with hope and awe.</p> +<p>Profound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, +thought-breeding thoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pure, +large sensibilities, and by them are cast up in the heave and glow +of inward motion, to be wrought by intellect and shaped in the +light of the beautiful,—of these, which are the test of +poetic greatness, Dante, if we may venture to say so, has not more +or brighter examples than Milton, and not so many as Goethe; while +of such passages, compactly embodying as they do the finer insights +of a poetic mind, there are more in a single one of the greater +tragedies of Shakespeare, than in all the three books of the +“Divina Commedia.”</p> +<p>Juxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the +superiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any +other great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante +so high as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakespeare; +what though the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the +sky, and the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and +more varied domains. The traveler, even if he come directly from +wondering at Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand +with earnest delight before the majesty of the Yungfrau and the +Eigher.</p> +<p>But it is time to speak of Dante in English.</p> +<p>“It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that +you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as +to seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations +of a poet.” Thus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his +beautiful “Defense of Poetry.” But have we not in +modern tongues the creations of Homer, and of Plato, who Shelley, +on the same page, says is essentially a poet? And can we estimate +the loss the modern mind would suffer by deprivation of them in +translated form? Pope’s Homer—still Homer though so +Popish—has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture of +thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and +Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through +which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would +incidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derby’s Iliad has +gone through many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what +should we have done without them in English? Translations are the +telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in +other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from +their words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth +and wisdom forever. The flash on which the message was first +launched has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport +of the message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith +it is freighted, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat +oranges, because on being translated from Cuba to our palates they +have lost somewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poem we +wish to have as much of the essence of the original, that is, as +much of the poetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, +not a relation of facts, or an historical or critical or +philosophical or theological exposition,—a poem, only in +another dress. Thence a work in verse, that has poetic quality +enough to be worth translating, must be made to lose by the process +as little as may be of its worth; and its worth every poem owes +entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that. A prose +translation of a poem is an æsthetic impertinence, +Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent in +prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him +in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so +much telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, +such touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having +him even in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of +rhythmic sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should +say, were the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted +flowers, the deflowering of many delicate stems. Forty years ago, +Mr. Hay ward translated the “Faust” of Goethe into +prose; but let any one compare the Hymn of the Archangels and other +of the more highly-wrought passages, as rendered by him, with any +of the better translations in verse,—with that of Mr. Brooks +for example,—to perceive at once the insufficiency, the +flatness and meagreness of even so verbally faithful a prose +version. The effect on “Faust,” or on any high +passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to +what would be the effect on an exquisite <em>bas-relief</em> of +reducing its projection one half by a persevering application of +pumice. In all genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the +substance is so inwrought into the form and sound, that if in +translating you entirely disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and +measure, you subject the verse to a second depletion right upon +that which it has to suffer by the transplanting of it into another +soil.</p> +<p>The translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than +just to take the words and through them attempt passively to render +the page into his own language. He must brace himself into an +active state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, +then transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the +poet he would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and +felt. To get into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should +go behind the words, embracing them from within, not merely seizing +them from without. Having imbued himself with the thought and +sentiment of the original, let him, if he can, utter them in a +still higher key. Such surpassing excellence would be the truest +fidelity to the original, and any cordial poet would especially +rejoice in such elevation of his verse; for the aspiring writer +will often fall short of his ideal, and to see it more nearly +approached by a translator who has been kindled by himself, to find +some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which he had opened, +could not but give him a delight akin to that of his own first +inspirations.</p> +<p>A poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity. +“Paradise Lost,” conceived in Milton’s brain, +could not utter itself in any other mode than the unrhymed +harmonies that have given to our language a new music. It could not +have been written in the Spenserian stanza. What would the +“Fairy Queen” be in blank verse? For his theme and mood +Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which enlivens +musical cadence with sweet reiteration. Rhyme was then a new +element in verse, a modern æsthetic creation; and it is a +help and an added beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too +self-conscious, and if it be not a target at which the line aims; +for then it becomes a clog to freedom of movement, and the pivot of +factitious pauses, that are offensive both to sense and to ear. +Like buds that lie half-hidden in leaves, rhymes should peep out, +sparkling but modest, from the cover of words, falling on the ear +as though they were the irrepressible strokes of a melodious pulse +at the heart of the verse.</p> +<p>The <em>terza rima</em>—already in use—Dante adopted +as suitable to continuous narrative. With his feeling and +æsthetic want rhymed verse harmonized, the triple repetition +offering no obstacle, Italian being copious in endings of like +sound. His measure is iambic, free iambic, and every line consists, +not of ten syllables, but of eleven, his native tongue having none +other than feminine rhymes. And this weakness is so inherent in +Italian speech, that every line even of the blank verse in all the +twenty-two tragedies of Alfieri ends femininely, that is, with an +unaccented eleventh syllable. In all Italian rhyme there is thus +always a double rhyme, the final syllable, moreover, invariably +ending with a vowel. This, besides being too much rhyme and too +much vowel, is, in iambic lines, metrically a defect, the eleventh +syllable being a superfluous syllable.</p> +<p>In these two prominent features English verse is different from +Italian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes +are masculine; and it has fewer than Italian. This second +characteristic, the comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one +of its sources of strength: it denotes musical richness and not +poverty, as at first aspect it seems to do, the paucity of +like-sounding syllables implying variety in its sounds. It has all +the vocalic syllables and endings it needs for softness, and +incloses them mostly in consonants for condensation, vigor, and +emphasis.</p> +<p>Primarily the translator has to consider the resources and +individualities of his own tongue. In the case of Dante the +rhythmical basis is the same in both languages; for the iambic +measure is our chief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by +Shakespeare and Milton. There only remains, then, rhyme and the +division into stanzas. Can the <em>terza rima</em>, as used by +Dante, be called a stanza? The lines are not separated into trios, +but run into one another, clinging very properly to the rhymes, +which, interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the echo still +onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our Spenserian form +does each stanza into a whole of nine lines. Whether stanzas, +strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly about the +<em>terza rima</em>? To us it seems not deserving of admiration +<em>for its own sake</em>; and we surmise that had it not been +consecrated by Dante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it +for original poems. We are not aware that Dante’s example has +been followed by any poet of note in Italy. <em>Terza rima</em> +keeps the attention suspended too long, keeps it ever on the +stretch for something that is to come, and never does come, until +at the end of the canto, namely, the last rhyme. The rhymes cannot +be held down, but are ever escaping and running ahead. It looks +somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the first rhymers of an +uncultivated age. But Dante used it for his great song; and there +it stands forever, holding in its folds the “Divina +Commedia.”</p> +<p>Now, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it +essential,—in order to fulfill the conditions of successful +poetic translation,—to preserve the triple rhyme? Not having +in English a corresponding number of rhymes, will not the +translator have to resort to transpositions, substitutions, +forcings, indirections, in order to compass the meaning and the +poetry? Place the passages already cited from Mr. Dayman beside the +original, and the reader will be surprised to see how direct and +literal, how faithful at once to the Italian thought and to English +idiom in expressing it, Mr. Dayman is. His harness of triplets +seems hardly to constrain his movement, so skillfully does he wear +it. If we confront him with the spirited version in quatrains of +Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited from the “Inferno,” +or with those from the “Paradiso,” in Mr. +Longfellow’s less free unrhymed version, the resources and +flexibility of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be +again manifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations +with the original and with one another, we will give the Italian, +and then the three versions, of the latter part of the Francesca +story, from Canto V. of the “Inferno:”—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io,</p> +<p class="i2">E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri</p> +<p>A lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio.</p> +<p class="i2">Ma dimmi: al tempo de’ dolci sospiri,</p> +<p>A che, e come concedette Amore</p> +<p class="i2">Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri?</p> +<p>Ed ella a me: nessun maggior dolore,</p> +<p class="i2">Che ricordarsi del tempo felice</p> +<p>Nella miseria, e ciò sa ’l tuo dottore.</p> +<p class="i2">Ma se a conoscer la prima radice</p> +<p>Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto,</p> +<p class="i2">Farò come colui che piange, e dice.</p> +<p>Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto</p> +<p class="i2">Di Lancilotto, come Amor lo strinse.</p> +<p>Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto.</p> +<p class="i2">Per più fiate gli occhi ci sospinse</p> +<p>Quella lettura, e scolorocci ’l viso:</p> +<p class="i2">Ma solo un punto fu quel, che ci vinse.</p> +<p>Qando leggemmo il disiato riso</p> +<p class="i2">Esser baciato da cotanto amante,</p> +<p>Questi, che mai da me non sia diviso,</p> +<p class="i2">La bocca mi baciò tutto tremante.</p> +<p>Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse:</p> +<p class="i2">Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.</p> +<p>Mentre che l’uno spirito queste disse,</p> +<p class="i2">L’altro piangeva si, che di pietade</p> +<p>Io venni meno come s’io morisse,</p> +<p class="i2">E caddi, come corpo morto cade.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Mr. Dayman:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Then toward them turned again: ‘Thy racking +woe,’</p> +<p class="i2">I said, ‘Francesca, wrings from out mine +eyes</p> +<p>The pious drops that sadden as they flow.</p> +<p class="i2">But tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs,</p> +<p>By whom and how love pitying broke the spell,</p> +<p class="i2">And in your doubtful longings made too +wise.’</p> +<p>And she to me: ‘No keener pang hath hell,</p> +<p class="i2">Than to recall, amid some deep distress,</p> +<p>Our happier time: thy teacher knows it well.</p> +<p class="i2">Yet if desire so strong thy soul possess</p> +<p>To trace the root from whence our love was bred,</p> +<p class="i2">His part be mine, who tells and weeps no less.</p> +<p>’T was on a day when we for pastime read</p> +<p class="i2">Of Lancillot, how love snared him to ruin:</p> +<p>We were alone, nor knew suspicious dread.</p> +<p class="i2">Oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing</p> +<p>Their glance; and from our cheeks the color started;</p> +<p class="i2">But one sole moment wrought for our undoing:</p> +<p>When that we read of lover so kind-hearted</p> +<p class="i2">Kissing the smile so coveted before,</p> +<p>He that from me shall never more be parted</p> +<p class="i2">Kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all +o’er.</p> +<p>The broker of our vows, it was the lay,</p> +<p class="i2">And he who wrote—that day we read no +more.’</p> +<p>The other spirit, while the first did say</p> +<p class="i2">These words, so moanèd, that with soft +remorse</p> +<p>As death had stricken me, I swooned away,</p> +<p class="i2">And down I fell, heavily as falls a corse.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Mr. Longfellow:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Then unto them I turned me, and I spake,</p> +<p>And I began: ‘Thine agonies, Francesca,</p> +<p>Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.</p> +<p>But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,</p> +<p>By what and in what manner Love conceded</p> +<p>That you should know your dubious desires?’</p> +<p>And she to me: ‘There is no greater sorrow</p> +<p>Than to be mindful of the happy time</p> +<p>In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.</p> +<p>But if to recognize the earliest root</p> +<p>Of love in us thou hast so great desire,</p> +<p>I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.</p> +<p>One day we reading were for our delight</p> +<p>Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthrall.</p> +<p>Alone we were, and without any fear.</p> +<p>Full many a time our eyes together drew</p> +<p>That reading, and drove the color from our faces;</p> +<p>But one point was it that o’ercame us.</p> +<p>Whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile</p> +<p>Being by such a noble lover kissed,</p> +<p>This one, who ne’er from me shall be divided,</p> +<p>Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.</p> +<p>Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.</p> +<p>That day no farther did we read therein.’</p> +<p>And all the while one spirit uttered this,</p> +<p>The other one did weep so, that, for pity,</p> +<p>I swooned away as if I had been dying,</p> +<p>And fell even as a dead body falls.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Dr. Parsons:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Then, turning round to them, I thus began:</p> +<p class="i2">‘Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes:</p> +<p>My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman;</p> +<p class="i2">But tell me,—in the time of happy sighs,</p> +<p>Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?”</p> +<p class="i2">And she to me: “The mightiest of all woes</p> +<p>Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed</p> +<p class="i2">With bliss remembered,—this thy teacher +knows.</p> +<p>Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion’s root and head,</p> +<p class="i2">As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim,</p> +<p>So will I speak. Together once we read</p> +<p class="i2">The tale of Lancelot,—how Love bound him.</p> +<p>Alone we were without suspecting aught:</p> +<p class="i2">Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue,</p> +<p>And oft our eyes each other’s glances caught;</p> +<p class="i2">But one sole passage ’t was which both +o’erthrew.</p> +<p>At reading of the longed-for smile,—to be</p> +<p class="i2">By such a lover’s kissing so much blest,</p> +<p>This dearest—never shalt thou part from me!</p> +<p class="i2">His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, +pressed.</p> +<p>The writer was our Galeot with his book:—</p> +<p class="i2">That day we read no further on.” She +stopped:</p> +<p>Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took</p> +<p class="i2">My sense away, and like a corse I dropped.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Observe that Dr. Parsons has put Dante’s twenty-eight +lines of eleven syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; +and this without losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes +to pour. But why does he make Francesca address her companion +personally, instead of saying, “who shall never part from +me?” And why does Mr. Dayman say, “pious drops,” +instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Longfellow fill up the +twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there any strain or +wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them Lord Byron +and Carey, mistranslate this passage,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse</p> +<p class="i2">Quella lettura.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>All these translators interpret it to mean, that while they +read, their eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that +passage over more than once; or, literally rendered, several times +that reading or passage drew to it their eyes. To restore the +meaning of the original adds to the refinement of the scene.</p> +<p>Why does Mr. Longfellow use such long words as +<em>compassionate</em> instead of <em>pitiful</em> or +<em>piteous</em>, <em>recognize</em> for <em>know</em>, +<em>palpitating</em> for <em>trembling</em>, <em>conceded that you +should know</em> for <em>gave you to know</em>? By the resolution +to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his poetic hands. +The first effect of this self-binding is, to oblige him to use +often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words, that +is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to poetic +expression. Mr. Dayman, not translating line for line, is free from +this prosaic incumbrance; but as he makes it a rule to himself that +every English canto shall contain the same number of lines as its +original, he is obliged, much more often than Mr. Longfellow, to +throw in epithets or words not in the Italian. And Dr. Parsons, +who, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, +in several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines +less than the Italian, and the XXXI. into nine lines less, might +with advantage have curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines.</p> +<p>Do what we will, poetic translation is brought about more from +without than from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of +surface, a lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, +which, in good original work, comes from free inward impulsion. To +counteract, in so far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical +inflexibility, the translator should keep himself free to wield +boldly and with full swing his own native speech. By his +line-for-line allegiance, Mr. Longfellow forfeits much of this +freedom. He is too intent on the words; he sacrifices the spirit to +the letter; he overlays the poetry with a verbal literalness; he +deprives himself of scope to give a billowy motion, a heightened +color, a girded vigor, to choice passages. The rhythmical languor +consequent on this verbal conformity, this lineal servility, is +increased by a frequent looseness in the endings of lines, some of +which on every page, and many on some pages, have—contrary to +all good usage—the superfluous eleventh syllable. Milton +never allows himself this liberty, nor Mr. Tennyson in epic verse +so little pretentious as “Idyls of the King.” Nor do +good blank-verse translators give in to it. Cowper does not in his +Iliad, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Bryant in his version of the fifth +book of the Odyssey, nor Mr. Carey in his Dante. Permissible at +times in dramatic blank verse, it is in epic rejected by the best +artists as a weakness. Can it be that Mr. Longfellow hereby aims to +be more close to the form of Dante? Whatever the cause of its use, +the effect is still farther to weaken his translation. These loose +poetic endings—and on most pages one third of the lines have +eleven syllables and on some pages more than a third—do a +part in causing Mr. Longfellow’s Dante to lack the clean +outline, the tonic ring, the chiseled edge of the original, and in +making his cantos read as would sound a high passionate tune played +on a harp whose strings are relaxed.</p> +<p>Looking at the printed Italian Dante beside the English, in a +volume where opposite each English page is the corresponding page +of the original, as in Mr. Dayman’s, one cannot fail to be +struck with the comparative narrowness of the Italian column. This +comes of the comparative shortness of Italian syllables. For +instance, as the strongest exemplification, the ever-recurring +<em>and</em>, and the often-repeated <em>is</em>, are both +expressed in Italian by a single letter, <em>e</em>. And this +shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. In lines of thirty +letters Dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to +fourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have +about twenty consonants to ten vowels, or two to one. From this +comparative rejection of consonants, Italian cannot, as English +can, bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like +<em>friends</em> and <em>straight</em>, nor even words of six +letters, like <em>chimed</em>, <em>shoots</em>, <em>thwart</em>, +<em>spring</em>; nor does Italian abound as English does in +monosyllables, and the few it has are mostly of but two or three +letters. In combination its syllables sometimes get to four +letters, as in <em>fronte</em> and <em>braccia</em>. As a +consequence hereof, Dante’s lines, although always of eleven +syllables, average about twenty-nine letters, while those of the +three translators about thirty-three. Hence, the poem in their +versions carries more weight than the original; its soul is more +cumbered with body.</p> +<p>In order to the faithful reproduction of Dante, to the giving +the best transcript, possible in English, of his thought and +feeling, should not regard be had to the essential difference +between the syllabic constitutions of the two languages, what may +be called the physical basis of the two mediums of utterance? Here +is the Francesca story, translated in the spirit of this +suggestion:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>I turned to them, and then I spake:</p> +<p class="i2">“Francesca! tears o’erfill mine eyes,</p> +<p>Such pity thy keen pangs awake.</p> +<p class="i2">But say: in th’ hour of sweetest sighs,</p> +<p>By what and how found Love relief</p> +<p class="i2">And broke thy doubtful longing’s +spell?”</p> +<p>And she: “There is no greater grief</p> +<p class="i2">Than joy in sorrow to retell.</p> +<p>But if so urgently one seeks</p> +<p class="i2">To know our Love’s first root, I will</p> +<p>Do as he does who weeps and speaks.</p> +<p class="i2">One day of Lancelot we still</p> +<p>Read o’er, how love held him enchained.</p> +<p class="i2">Without mistrust we were alone.</p> +<p>Our cheeks oft were of color drained:</p> +<p class="i2">One passage vanquished us, but one.</p> +<p>When we read of lips longed for pressed</p> +<p class="i2">By such a lover with a kiss,</p> +<p>This one whom naught from me shall wrest,</p> +<p class="i2">All trembling kissed my mouth. To this</p> +<p>That book and writer brought us. We</p> +<p class="i2">No farther read that day.” While she</p> +<p>Thus spake, the other spirit wept</p> +<p class="i2">So bitterly, with pity I</p> +<p>Fell motionless, my senses swept</p> +<p class="i2">By swoon, as one about to die.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In the very first line two Italian trisyllables, +<em>rivolsi</em> and <em>parlai</em>, are given in English with +literal fidelity by two monosyllables, <em>turned</em> and +<em>spake</em>. In the fourth observe how, in a word-for-word +rendering, the eleven Italian syllables become, without any +forcing, eight English:</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Ma dimmi: al tempo de’ dolci sospiri:”</p> +<p>“But tell me: in th’ hour of sweet sighs.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>For the sake of a more musical cadence, this line is slightly +modified. Again, in the line,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Than joy in sorrow to retell,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p><em>joy</em> represents, and represents faithfully, three words +containing six syllables, <em>del tempo felice</em>: +<em>retell</em> stands for <em>ricordarsi</em>, and <em>in +sorrow</em> for <em>nella miseria</em>, or, three syllables for +six; so that, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and +complete translation of what in Italian takes up seventeen. English +the most simple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a +translation of Dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; +and this is the first fidelity his translator should feel himself +bound to. Owing to the fundamental difference between the syllabic +structures of the two languages, we are enabled to put into English +lines of eight syllables the whole meaning of Dante’s lines +of eleven. In the above experiment even more has been done. The +twenty-eight lines of Dante are given in twenty-six lines of eight +syllables each, and this without any sacrifice of the thought or +feeling; for the “this thy teacher knows,” which is +omitted, besides that the commentators cannot agree on its meaning, +is parenthetical in sense, and with reverence be it said, in so far +a defect in such a relation. As to the form of Dante, what is +essential in that has been preserved, namely, the iambic measure +and the rhyme.</p> +<p>Let us try if this curtailment of syllables will be successful +when applied to the terrible words, written in blackest color, over +the gate of Hell, at the beginning of the third canto of the +“Inferno”:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Through me the path to place of wail:</p> +<p class="i2">Through me the path to endless sigh:</p> +<p>Through me the path to souls in bale.</p> +<p class="i2">’Twas Justice moved my Maker high:</p> +<p>Wisdom supreme, and Might divine,</p> +<p class="i2">And primal Love established me.</p> +<p>Created birth was none ere mine,</p> +<p class="i2">And I endure eternally:</p> +<p>Ye who pass in, all hope resign.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Has anything been lost in the transit from Italian words to +English? English speech being organically more concentrated than +Italian, does not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight +especially subserve what ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic +translation, namely, along with fidelity to the thought and spirit +of the original, fidelity to the idiom, and cast and play of the +translator’s own tongue?</p> +<p>Here is another short passage in a different key,—the +opening of the last canto of the “Paradiso”:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son,</p> +<p class="i2">Meek, yet above all things create,</p> +<p>Fair aim of the Eternal one,</p> +<p class="i2">’Tis thou who so our human state</p> +<p>Ennobledst, that its Maker deigned</p> +<p class="i2">Himself his creature’s son to be.</p> +<p>This flower, in th’ endless peace, was gained</p> +<p class="i2">Through kindling of God’s love in thee.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In this passage nine Italian lines of eleven syllables are +converted into eight lines of eight syllables each. We submit it to +the candid reader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original +has been sacrificed to brevity.</p> +<p>The rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity +to which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, +compensate for the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which +decasyllabic verse gives more room, but of which the translator of +Dante does not feel the want.</p> +<p>One more short passage of four lines,—the famous figure of +the lark in the twentieth Canto of the +“Paradiso”:—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>Like lark that through the air careers,</p> +<p class="i2">First singing, then, silent his heart,</p> +<p>Feeds on the sweetness in his ears,</p> +<p class="i2">Such joy to th’ image did impart</p> +<p>Th’ eternal will.</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>This paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but, +nevertheless, we beg the reader’s indulgence for a few +moments longer, while we conclude with an octosyllabic version of +the last thirty lines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is +unrhymed; for that terrible tale can dispense, in English, with +soft echoes at the end of lines.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>When locked I heard the nether door</p> +<p>Of the dread tower, I without speech</p> +<p>Into my children’s faces looked:</p> +<p>Nor wept, so inly turned to stone.</p> +<p>They wept: and my dear Anselm said,</p> +<p>“Thou look’st so, father, what hast thou?”</p> +<p>Still I nor wept nor answer made</p> +<p>That whole day through, nor the next night,</p> +<p>Till a new sun rose on the world.</p> +<p>As in our doleful prison came</p> +<p>A little glimmer, and I saw</p> +<p>On faces four my own pale stare,</p> +<p>Both of my hands for grief I bit;</p> +<p>And they, thinking it was from wish</p> +<p>To eat, rose suddenly and said:</p> +<p>“Father, less shall we feel of pain</p> +<p>If them wilt eat of us: from thee</p> +<p>Came this poor flesh: take it again.”</p> +<p>I calmed me then, not to grieve them.</p> +<p>The next two days we spake no word.</p> +<p>Oh! obdurate earth, why didst not ope?</p> +<p>When we had come to the fourth day</p> +<p>Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet,</p> +<p>Saying, “Father, why dost not help me?”</p> +<p>There died he; and, as thou seest me,</p> +<p>I saw the three fall one by one</p> +<p>The fifth and sixth day; then I groped,</p> +<p>Now blind, o’er each; and two whole days</p> +<p>I called them after they were dead:</p> +<p>Then hunger did what grief could not.</p> +</div> +</div> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay5" id="Essay5">V.</a></h2> +<h2>Sainte-Beuve, The Critic.</h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>A literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an +arsenal of opposites. He should combine common sense with tact, +integrity with indulgence, breadth with keenness, vigor with +delicacy, largeness with subtlety, knowledge with geniality, +inflexibility with sinuousness, severity with suavity; and, that +all these counter qualities be effective, he will need constant +culture and vigilance, besides the union of reason with warmth, of +enthusiasm with self-control, of wit with philosophy,—but +hold: at this rate, in order to fit out the critic, human nature +will have to set apart its highest and best. Dr. Johnson declared, +the poet ought to know everything and to have seen everything, and +the ancients required the like of an orator. Truly, the supreme +poet should have manifold gifts, be humanly indued as generously +and completely as is the bust of Homer, ideally shaped by the light +of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the Greeks. The +poet, it is true, must be born a poet, and the critic is the child +of culture. But as the poet, to perfect his birthright, has need of +culture, so the man whom culture can shape and sharpen to the good +critic, must be born with many gifts, to be susceptible of such +shaping. And when we reflect that the task of the critic is to see +clearly into the subtlest and deepest mind, to measure its hollows +and its elevations, to weigh all its individual and its composite +powers, and, that from every one of the throbbing aggregates, whom +it is his office to analyze and portray, issue lines that run on +all sides into the infinite, we must conclude that he who is to be +the accomplished interpreter, the trusted judge, should be able +swiftly to follow these lines.</p> +<p>Long and exacting as is our roll of what is wanted to equip a +veritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal +qualifications, which by the subject of our present paper are +possessed in liberal allotment. The first is, joy in life, from +which the pages of M. Sainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial +sprightliness merely, but a mellow, radiant geniality. The other, +which is of still deeper account, is the capacity of admiration; a +virtue—for so it deserves to be called—born directly of +the nobler sensibilities, those in whose presence only can be +recognized and enjoyed the lofty and the profound, the beautiful +and the true. He who is not well endowed with these higher senses +is not a bad critic; he is no critic at all. Not only can he not +discern the good there is in a man or a work, he can as little +discover and expose the bad; for, deficiencies implying failures to +reach a certain fullness, implying a falling short of the complete, +to say where and what are deficiencies, involves the having in the +mind an idea of the full and complete. The man so meagrely +furnished as to hold no such idea is but a carper, not a critic. To +know the bad denotes knowledge of the good; in criticism as in +morals, a righteous indignation can only flash from a shock to pure +feelings.</p> +<p>In a notice of M. Thiers’ chapter on St. Helena, M. +Sainte-Beuve, after expressing his admiration of the commentaries +of Napoleon on the campaigns of Turenne, Frederic, and Caesar, +adds: “A man of letters smiles at first involuntarily to see +Napoleon apply to each of these famous campaigns a methodical +criticism, just as we would proceed with a work of the mind, with +an epic or tragic poem. But is not a campaign of a great captain +equally a work of genius? Napoleon is here the high sovereign +critic, the Goethe in this department, as the Feuquières, +the Jominis, the St. Cyrs are the La Harpes or the Fontanes, the +Lessings or the Schlegels, all good and expert critics; but he is +the first of all, nor, if you reflect on it, could it have been +otherwise. And who then would say better things of Homer than +Milton?”—Goethe supreme in literary criticism, Milton +on Homer; this touches the root of the matter; sympathy with the +writer and his work the critic must have,—sympathy as one of +the sources of good judgment, and even of knowledge. You cannot +know, and therefore not judge of a man or book or thing, unless you +have some fellow-feeling with him or it; and to judge well you must +have much fellow-feeling. The critic must, moreover, be a thinker; +reason is the critic’s sun. Scott and Byron could say just +and fresh things about poets and poetry; but neither could command +the whole field, nor dig deep into the soil. Witness Byron’s +deliberate exaltation of Pope. Whereas Wordsworth and Coleridge +were among the soundest of critics, because, besides being poets, +they were both profound thinkers.</p> +<p>For the perfecting of the literary critic the especial sympathy +needed is that with excellence; for high literature is the outcome +of the best there is in humanity, the finished expression of +healthiest aspirations, of choicest thoughts, the ripened fruit of +noble, of refined growths, the perfected fruit, with all the +perfume and beauty of the flower upon it. Of this sympathy M. +Sainte-Beuve, throughout his many volumes, gives overflowing +evidence, in addition to that primary proof of having himself +written good poems. Besides the love, he has the instinct, of +literature, and this instinct draws him to what is its bloom and +fullest manifestation, and his love is the more warm and constant +for being discriminative and refined. Through variety of knowledge, +with intellectual keenness, he enjoys excellence in the diversified +forms that literature assumes. His pages abound in illustrations of +his versatility, which is nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in +the contrast between two successive papers (both equally admirable) +in the very first volume of the “Causeries du Lundi,” +the one on Madame Récamier, the other on Napoleon. Read +especially the series of paragraphs beginning, “Some natures +are born pure, and have received <em>quand même</em> the gift +of innocence,” to see how gracefully, subtly, delicately, +with what a feminine tenderness, he draws the portrait of this most +fascinating of women, this beautiful creature, for whom grace and +sweetness did even still more than beauty, this fairy-queen of +France, this refined coquette, who drew to her hundreds of hearts, +this kindly magician, who turned all her lovers into friends. Then +pass directly to the next paper, on the terrible Corsican, +“who weakened his greatness by the gigantic—who loved +to astonish—who delighted too much in what was his forte, +war,—who was too much a bold adventurer.” And further +on, the account of Napoleon’s conversation with Goethe at +Weimar, in which account M. Sainte-Beuve shows how fully he values +the largeness and truthfulness and penetration of the great German. +The impression thus made on the reader as to the variousness of M. +Sainte-Beuve’s power is deepened by another paper in the same +volume, that on M. Guizot and his historic school, a masterly +paper, which reasons convincingly against those historians +“who strain humanity, who make the lesson that history +teaches too direct and stiff, who put themselves in the place of +Providence,” which, as is said in another place (vol. v. p. +150), “is often but a deification of our own +thought.”</p> +<p>In a paper published in 1862, M. Sainte-Beuve—who had +then, for more than thirty years, been plying zealously and +continuously the function of critic—describes what is a +fundamental feature of his method in arriving at a judgment on +books and authors. “Literature, literary production, is in my +eyes not distinct, or at least not separable, from the rest of the +man and his organization. I can enjoy a work, but it is difficult +for me to form a judgment on it independently of the man himself; +and I readily say, <em>as is the tree so is the fruit</em>. +Literary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study.” +This, of course, he can apply but partially to the ancients; but +with the moderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is +to know the man who did it, to get at his primary organization, his +interior beginnings and proclivities; and to learn this, one of the +best means is, to make yourself acquainted with his race, his +family, his predecessors. “You are sure to recognize the +superior man, in part at least, in his parents, especially in his +mother, the most direct and certain of his parents; also in his +sisters and his brothers, even in his children. In these one +discovers important features which, from being too condensed, too +closely joined in the eminent individual, are masked; but whereof +the basis, the <em>fond</em>, is found in others of his blood in a +more naked, a more simple state.”</p> +<p>Hereby is shown with what thoroughness and professional +conscientiousness M. Sainte-Beuve sets himself to his work of +critic. Partially applying to himself his method, we discover in +part the cause of his sympathy for feminine nature, and of his tact +in delineating it. His father died before he was born; and thence +all living parental influence on him was maternal. None of his +volumes is more captivating than his “Portraits de +Femmes,” a translation of which we are glad to see +announced.</p> +<p>Of Sainte-Beuve’s love for excellence there is, in the +third volume of the “Nouveaux Lundis,” an illustration, +eloquently disclosing how deep is his sympathy with the most +excellent that human kind has known. For the London Exposition of +1862 a magnificent folio of the New Testament was prepared at the +Imperial Press of Paris. The critic takes the occasion to write a +paper on “Les saints Evangiles,” especially the Sermon +on the Mount. After quoting and commenting on the Beatitudes, he +continues: “Had there ever before been heard in the world +such accents, such a love of poverty, of self-divestment, such a +hunger and thirst for justice, such eagerness to suffer for it, to +be cursed of men in behalf of it, such an intrepid confidence in +celestial recompense, such a forgiveness of injuries, and not +simply forgiveness but a livelier feeling of charity for those who +have injured you, who persecute and calumniate you, such a form of +prayer and of familiar address to the Father who is in heaven? Was +there ever before anything like to that, so encouraging, so +consoling, in the teaching and the precepts of the sages? Was that +not truly a revelation in the midst of human morals; and if there +be joined to it, what cannot be separated from it, the totality of +such a life, spent in doing good, and that predication of about +three years, crowned by the crucifixion, have we not a right to say +that here was a ‘new ideal of a soul perfectly heroic,’ +which, under this half Jewish, Galilean form was set before all +coming generations?</p> +<p>“Who talks to us of <em>myth</em>, of the realization, +more or less instinctive or philosophical, of the human conscience +reflecting itself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who +hardly existed. What! do you not feel the reality, the living, +vibrating, bleeding, compassionate personality, which, +independently of what belief and enthusiasm may have added, exists +and throbs behind such words? What more convincing demonstration of +the beauty and truth of the entirely historic personage, Jesus, +than the Sermon on the Mount?”</p> +<p>Alluding, then, to the denial of originality in the moral +doctrines of Christianity, M. Sainte-Beuve, after citing from +Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and others, passages wherein is +recommended “charity toward the human race,” declares +that all these examples and precepts, all that makes a fine body of +social and philosophical morality, is not Christianity itself as +beheld at its source and in its spirit. “What +characterizes,” he proceeds, “the discourse on the +mount and the other sayings and parables of Jesus, is not the +charity that relates to equity and strict justice, to which, with a +sound heart and upright spirit, one attains; it is something +unknown to flesh and blood and to simple reason, it is a kind of +innocent and pure exaltation, freed from rule and superior to law, +holily improvident, a stranger to all calculation, to all positive +prevision, unreservedly reliant on Him who sees and knows all +things, and as a last reward counting on the coming of that kingdom +of God, the promise of which cannot fail:—</p> +<blockquote>But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but +whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the +other also.</blockquote> +<blockquote>And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away +thy coat, let him have thy cloak also….</blockquote> +<blockquote>Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would +borrow of thee turn not thou away….</blockquote> +<blockquote>No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate +the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and +despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.</blockquote> +<blockquote>Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your +life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your +body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the +body than raiment?…</blockquote> +<p>“Nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and +moralists, not in Hesiod, nor in the maxims of Greece any more than +in Confucius. It is not in Cicero, nor in Aristotle, nor even in +Socrates any more than in the modern Franklin. The principle of +inspiration is different, if indeed it be not opposite: the paths +may come together for a moment, but they cross one another. And it +is this delicate ideal of devotedness, of moral purification, of +continual renouncement and self-sacrifice, breathing in the words +and embodied in the person and life of Christ, which constitutes +the entire novelty as well as the sublimity of Christianity taken +at its source.”</p> +<p>Of M. Sainte-Beuve’s delight in what is the most excellent +product of literature, poetry, testimony is borne by many papers, +ranging over the whole field of French poetry, from its birth to +its latest page. “Poetry,” says he, “is the +essence of things, and we should be careful not to spread the drop +of essence through a mass of water or floods of color. The task of +poetry is not to say everything, but to make us dream +everything.” And he cites a similar judgment of +Fénélon: “The poet should take only the flower +of each object, and never touch but what can be beautified.” +In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks of the youthful poems +of Milton: “‘Il Penseroso’ is the masterpiece of +meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent +oratorio in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make +no comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. +All that is beautiful in Milton stands by itself; one feels the +tranquil habit of the upper regions, and continuity in +power.” In a paper on the letters of Ducis, he proves that he +apprehends the proportions of Shakespeare. He asks: “Have we +then got him at last? Is our stomach up to him? Are we strong +enough to digest this marrow of lion (<em>cette moelle de +lion</em>)?” And again, in an article on the men of the +eighteenth century, he writes: “One may be born a sailor, but +there is nothing for it like seeing a storm, nor for a soldier like +seeing a battle. A Shakespeare, you will say, very nearly did +without all that, and yet he knew it all. But Nature never but once +made a Shakespeare.”</p> +<p>Like most writers, of whatever country, M. Sainte-Beuve has +formed himself on native models, and the French having no poet of +the highest class, no Dante, no Shakespeare, no Goethe, it is a +further proof of his breadth and insight that he should so highly +value the treasures in the deeper mines opened by these foreigners. +Seeing, too, how catholic he is, and liberal toward all other +greatness, one even takes pleasure in his occasional exuberance of +national complacency. Whenever he speaks of Montaigne or La +Fontaine or Molière, his words flame with a tempered +enthusiasm. But he throws no dust in his own eyes: his is a healthy +rapture, a torch lighted by the feelings, but which the reason +holds upright and steady. His native favorites he enjoys as no +Englishman or German could, but he does not overrate them. Nor does +he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls “the Frenchman par +excellence,” and of whom he is proud as the literary +sovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly +devoted to Joubert, as well as by frequent citations of his +judgments, he lauds this spiritually-minded thinker as one of the +best of critics. And yet of Voltaire, Joubert says the hardest +things: “Voltaire is sometimes sad; he is excited; but he is +never serious. His graces even are impudent.—There are +defects difficult to perceive, that have not been classed or +defined, and have no names. Voltaire is full of them.”</p> +<p>In a paper on Louise Labé, a poetess of the sixteenth +century, he reproduces some of her poems and several passages of +prose, and then adds: “These passages prove, once more, the +marked superiority that, at almost all times, French prose has over +French poetry.” No German or English or Italian critic could +say this of his native literature, and the saying of it by the +foremost of French critics is not an exaltation of French prose, it +is a depression of French poetry. In this judgment there is a reach +and severity of which possibly the eminent critic was not fully +conscious; for it amounts to an acknowledgment that the nature and +language of the French are not capable of producing and embodying +the highest poetry.</p> +<p>Goethe, M. Sainte-Beuve always mentions with deference. On +Eckerman’s “Conversations with Goethe” he has a +series of three papers, wherein he deals chiefly with the critic +and sage, exhibiting with honest pride Goethe’s admiration of +some of the chief French writers, and his acknowledgment of what he +owed them. To a passage relating to the French translation of +Eckerman, M. Sainte-Beuve has the following note, which we, on this +side the Atlantic, may cherish as a high tribute to our +distinguished countrywoman: “The English translation is by +Miss Fuller, afterwards Marchioness Ossoli, who perished so +unhappily by shipwreck. An excellent preface precedes this +translation, and I must say that for elevated comprehension of the +subject and for justness of appreciation it leaves our preface far +behind it. Miss Fuller, an American lady of Boston, was a person of +true merit and of great intellectual vigor.” A sympathetic +student of Goethe, Margaret Fuller purposed to write a life of him; +and seeing what critical capacity and what insight into the nature +of Goethe she has shown in this preface, we may be confident that +she would have made a genuine contribution to the Goethe +“literature,” had she lived to do that and other high +literary work. Her many friends had nearer and warmer motives for +deploring the early loss of this gifted, generous, noble-hearted +woman.</p> +<p>One of the busiest functions of the critic being to sift the +multifarious harvest of contemporaneous literature, he must have a +hand that can shake hard,—and hit hard, too, at times. For +fifteen years M. Sainte-Beuve furnished once a week, under the +title of “Causeries du Lundi,” a critical paper, to a +Paris daily journal; not short, rapid notices, but articles that +would cover seven or eight pages of one of our double-columned +monthly magazines. He was thus ever in the thick of the literary +<em>mêlée</em>. Attractions and repulsions, sympathies +and antipathies, there will be wherever men do congregate; the +æsthetic plane is as open as any other to personal +preferences and friendships. A literary circle as large as that of +Paris, if too miscellaneous and extensive to become one +multitudinous mutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and +coteries, betray some of its vices. In this voluminous series of +papers the critical pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most +sharply incisive, is wielded with so much skill and art and fine +temper, that personality is seldom transpicuous. The Parisian +reader will no doubt often perceive, in this or that paragraph or +paper, a heightening or a subduing of color not visible to the +foreigner, who cannot so well trace the marks of political, +religious, or personal influences. His perfected praise M. +Sainte-Beuve reserves for those of the illustrious dead who are +embalmed in their own excellence. Besides devoting many papers +(among the most valuable of the series) to these magnates of +literature, he delights in frequent illustrative reference to +them,—a sign this of ripe culture in a critic, and of +trustworthiness.</p> +<p>Out of the severe things occasionally said, the sting is mostly +taken by the temper in which they are said, or by the frank +recognition of virtues and beauties beside vices and blemishes. In +the general tone there is a clear humanity, a seemly +gentlemanliness. Of the humane spirit wherewith M. Sainte-Beuve +tempers condemnation, take the following as one of many instances. +In the correspondence of Lamennais there is laid bare such +contradictions between his earlier and his later sentiments on +religious questions, that the reader is thus feelingly guarded +against being too harsh in his censure: “Let us cast a look +on ourselves, and ask if in our lives, in our hearts, from youth to +our latter years, there are none of these boundless distances, +these secret abysses, these moral ruins, perhaps, which, for being +hidden, are none the less real and profound.”</p> +<p>Writing weekly for the <em>feuilleton</em> of a Paris daily +journal, M. Sainte-Beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse; but his +diffuseness is always animated, never languid. Fluent, +conversational, ever polished, he is full of happy turns and of +Gallic sprightliness. When the occasion offers, he is concise, +condensed even in the utterance of a principle or of a +comprehensive thought. “Admiration is a much finer test of +literary talent, a sign much more sure and delicate, than all the +art of satire.” By the side of this may be placed a sentence +he cites from Grimm: “People who so easily admire bad things +are not in a state to enjoy good.” How true and cheering is +this: “There is in each of us a primitive ideal being, whom +Nature has wrought with her finest and most maternal hand, but whom +man too often covers up, smothers, or corrupts.” Speaking of +the sixteenth century, he says: “What it wanted was taste, if +by taste we understand choice clean and perfect, the disengagement +of the elements of the beautiful.” When, to give a paragraph +its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic point, if he +does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to borrow +just what is wanted. Speaking of embellished oratorical diction, he +quotes Talleyrand on some polished oration that was discussed in +his presence: “It is not enough to have fine sentences: you +must have something to put into them.” Commenting on the +hyper-spirituality of M. Laprade, he says: “M. Laprade starts +from the <em>absolute notion of being</em>. For him the following +is the principle of Art,—‘to manifest what we feel of +the Absolute Being, of the Infinite, of God, to make him known and +felt by other men, such in its generality is the end of Art.’ +Is this true, is it false? I know not: at this elevation one always +gets into the clouds. Like the most of those who pride themselves +on metaphysics, he contents himself with words (<em>il se paye de +mots</em>).” Here is a grand thought, that flashes out of the +upper air of poetry: “Humanity, that eternal child that has +never done growing.”</p> +<p>M. Sainte-Beuve’s irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly +medium of truth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. +Michelet: “Narrative, properly so called, which never was his +forte, is almost entirely sacrificed. Seek here no historical +highway, well laid, solid, and continuous; the method adopted is +absolute points of view; you run with him on summits, peaks, on +needles of granite, which he selects at his pleasure to gets views +from. The reader leaps from steeple to steeple. M. Michelet seems +to have proposed to himself an impossible wager, which, however, he +has won,—to write history with a series of flashes.” +Could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying of a man that he +is hardened by self-esteem than the following on M. Guizot: +“The consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural +principle of pride, place him easily above the little +susceptibilities of self-love.” M. Sainte-Beuve is not an +admirer of Louis Philippe, and among other sly hits gives him the +following: “Louis Philippe was too much like a +<em>bourgeois</em> himself to be long respected by the +<em>bourgeoisie</em>. Just as in former times the King of France +was only the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the +first <em>bourgeois</em> of the country.” What witty satire +on Lamartine he introduces, with a recognition of popularity that, +with one who takes so much joy in applause as Lamartine does, is +enough to take the poison out of the sting: “Those who knew +his verses by heart (and the number who do is large among the men +of our age) meet, not without regret, with whole strips of them +spread out, drowned, as it were, in his prose. This prose is, in +‘Les Confidences,’ too often but the paraphrase of his +verses, which were themselves become, toward the last, paraphrases +of his feelings.” Amends are made to Lamartine on another +occasion, when, citing some recent French sonnets, he says: +“Neither Lamartine nor Hugo nor Vigny wrote sonnets. The +swans and the eagles, in trying to enter this cage, would have +broken their wings. That was for us, birds of a less lofty flight +and less amplitude of wing.” This is better as modesty than +as criticism. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, had wings of vaster +sweep as well as of more gorgeous plumage than these French +soarers, and they enjoyed getting into the cage of the sonnet, and +sang therein some of their strongest as well as sweetest notes.</p> +<p>A thorough Frenchman, M. Sainte-Beuve delights in French minds, +just as a beauty delights in her mirror, which throws back an image +of herself. His excellence as a critic is primarily owing to this +joy in things French. Through means of it he knows them through and +through: they are become transparent; and while his feelings are +aglow, his intellect looks calmly right through them, and sees on +the other side the shadows cast by the spots and opacities which +frustrate more or less the fullest illumination. Freely he exhibits +these shadows. Neither Bossuet nor Louis XIV., neither Voltaire nor +Béranger, is spared, nor the French character, with its +proneness to frivolity and broad jest, its thirst for superficial +excitement. Whatever his individual preferences, his mental +organization is so large and happy, that he enjoys, and can do +equal justice to, Father Lacordaire and M. Michelet, to Madame de +Staël and M. Guizot, to Corneille and Goethe, to +Fénélon and M. Renan, to Marie Antoinette and +Mirabeau.</p> +<p>Have you then for M. Sainte-Beuve, some reader will be impatient +to ask, nothing but praise? Not much else. Commencing his literary +career in 1827, when only in his twenty-third year, from that date +to 1849 his writings, chiefly in the shape of literary portraits, +fill several thousand pages. Between his forty-fifth to his +sixtieth year he wrote twenty-three volumes, containing about +eleven thousand pages, on four or five hundred different authors +and subjects. This is the period of his critical maturity, the +period of the “Causeries du Lundi,” followed by the +“Nouveaux Lundis.” Many men write voluminously, but +most of these only write <em>about</em> a subject, not +<em>into</em> it. Only the few who can write into their subject add +something to literature. One of these few is M. Sainte-Beuve. In +his mind there is vitality to animate his large acquirement, to +make his many chapters buoyant and stimulant. All through his +writings is the sparkle of original life.</p> +<p>But let us now cheer the reader who is impatient of much praise, +and at the same time perform the negative part of our task.</p> +<p>Well, then, to be bold, as befits a critic of the critic, we +beard the lion in his very den. We challenge a definition he gives +of the critic. In the seventh volume of the +“Causeries,” article “Grimm,” he says: +“When Nature has endowed some one with this vivacity of +feeling, with this susceptibility to impression, and that the +creative imagination be wanting, this some one is a born critic, +that is to say, a lover and judge of the creations of +others.” Why did M. Sainte-Beuve make Goethe sovereign in +criticism? Why did he think Milton peculiarly qualified to +interpret Homer? From the deep principle of like unto like; only +spirit can know spirit. What were the worth of a comment of John +Locke on “Paradise Lost,” except to reveal the mental +composition of John Locke? The critic should be what Locke was, a +thinker, but to be a judge of the highest form of literature, +poetry, he must moreover carry within him, inborn, some share of +that whereby poetry is fledged, “creative imagination.” +He may “want the accomplishment of verse,” or the +constructive faculty, but more than the common allowance of +sensibility to the beautiful he must have. But do not the presence +of “vivacity of feeling with susceptibility to +impression” imply the imaginative temperament? If not, then +we confidently assure M. Sainte-Beuve that had his definition +fitted himself, his “Causeries du Lundi” would never +have been rescued from the quick oblivion of the +<em>feuilleton,</em></p> +<p>Now and then there are betrayals of that predominant French +weakness, which the French will persist in cherishing as a +virtue,—the love of glory. M. Sainte-Beuve thinks +Buffon’s passion for glory saved him in his latter years from +ennui, from “that languor of the soul which follows the age +of the passions.” Where are to be found men more the victims +of disgust with life than that eminent pair, not more distinguished +for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than for +insatiable greed of glory,—Byron and Chateaubriand? No form +of self-seeking is morally more weakening than this quenchless +craving, which makes the soul hang its satisfaction on what is +utterly beyond its sway, on praise and admiration. These +stimulants—withdrawn more or less even from the most +successful in latter years—leave a void which becomes the +very nursery of ennui, or even of self-disgust. Instead of glory +being “the potent motive-power in all great souls,” as +M. Sainte-Beuve approvingly quotes, it is, with a surer moral +instinct, called by Milton,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“That last infirmity of noble mind.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>In some of the noblest and greatest, so subordinate is it as +hardly to be traceable in their careers. Love of glory was not the +spring that set and kept in motion Kepler and Newton, any more than +Shakespeare and Pascal or William of Orange and Washington.</p> +<p>The military glory wherewith Napoleon fed and flattered the +French nation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual +and animal vigor of the conqueror’s mind, dazzle even M. +Sainte-Beuve, so that he does not perceive the gaping chasms in +Napoleon’s moral nature, and the consequent one-sidedness of +his intellectual action, nor the unmanning effects of his +despotism. The words used to describe the moral side of the +Imperial career are as insufficient as would be the strokes of a +gray crayon to depict a conflagration or a sunset. In the paper +from which has already been quoted he speaks of the “rare +good sense” of Napoleon, of “his instinct of +justice.” But was it not a compact array of the selfish +impulses against a weak instinct of justice, backed by a +Titan’s will, wielding a mighty intellect, that enabled +Napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot and +the merciless devastator? Again, can it be said of Napoleon that he +possessed good sense in a rare degree? Good sense is an instinctive +insight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive +discernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or +purpose, a soundness of judgment, resulting from the soundness of, +and equilibrium among, the upper powers of reason and sensibility. +The moral side is at least the half of it: Napoleon’s moral +endowment was but fractional. Good sense, it may be added, lies +solidly at the basis of all good work, except such as is purely +professional or technical, or in its action one-sided; and even in +such its presence must be felt. In whatever reaches general human +interests, whether as practical act or imaginative creation, good +sense must be, for their prosperity, a primary ingredient. +“The Tempest” and “Don Quixote” shoot up +into shining, imperishable beauty because their roots draw their +first nourishment from this hearty, inexhaustible substratum. And +let us say, that in M. Sainte-Beuve himself good sense is the +foundation of his eminent critical ability. He has been led, we +conceive, to attribute more of it to Napoleon than is his due by +the blinding splendor of Napoleon’s military genius, through +which, with such swiftness and cumulative effect, he adapted means +to ends on the purely material plane.</p> +<p>When Murray applied to Lord Byron to write a book about the life +and manners of the upper class in Italy, Byron declined the +proposal from personal regards, and then added, that were he to +write such a book it would be misjudged in England; for, said he, +“their moral is not your moral.” Such international +misinterpretations and exaggerations are instinctive and +involuntary. A nation from its being a nation, has a certain +one-sidedness. To the Italian (even to one who carries a stiletto) +the English practice of boxing is a sheer brutality; while to an +Englishman (himself perhaps not a Joseph) the <em>cavaliere +servente</em> is looked upon with reprobation tempered by scorn. To +this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation on the +domestic, books, too, are liable; but to books as being more +abstract than usages, more ideal than manners, an absolute moral +standard can with less difficulty be applied. Applying it to Gil +Blas, is not M. Sainte-Beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks +of this and the other writings of Le Sage as being “the +mirror of the world?” Molière, too, is a satirist, and +from his breadth a great one; and surely the world he holds a +mirror before is a much purer world than that of Le Sage; and what +of the Shakespearean world? The world of Le Sage is a nether world. +“Of Gil Blas it has been well said that the book is moral +like experience.” The experience one may get in brothels and +“hells,” in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it +lessons of virtue and morality,—for those who can extract +them; but even for these few it is a very partial teaching; and for +the many who cannot read so spiritually, whether in the book or the +brothel, the experience is demoralizing and deadening. But toward +the end of the paper the critic lets it appear that he does not +place Le Sage so high as some of his phrases prompt us to infer; +and he quotes this judgment of Joubert: “Of the novels of Le +Sage it may be said that they seem to have been written in a +<em>café</em>, by a player of dominoes, on coming out of the +comic theatre.”</p> +<p>Without being over-diffident, we may feel our footing not +perfectly secure on French ground when we differ from a Frenchman; +we are therefore not sorry to catch M. Sainte-Beuve tripping on +English ground. In a review of the translation of the celebrated +Letters of Lord Chesterfield—whom he calls the La +Rochefoucauld of England—he refers to, and in part quotes, +the passages in which Chesterfield gives his son advice as to his +<em>liaisons</em>; and he adds: “All Chesterfield’s +morality, on this head, is resumed in a line of +Voltaire,—</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Il n’est jamais de mal en bonne +compagnie.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>It is these passages that make the grave Dr. Johnson blush: we +only smile at them.” For ourselves, we blush with Johnson, +not that the man of the world should give to his youthful son, +living at a corrupt Continental court, counsel as to relations +which were regarded as inevitable in such a circle; but that the +heart of the father should not have poured (were it but +parenthetically) through the pen of the worldling some single +sentence like this: “Writing to you, my son, as an +experienced man of the world to one inexperienced, I recommend the +good taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a +gentleman; but to his dear boy, your father says, avoid, if +possible, such <em>liaisons</em>; preserve your purity; nothing +will give you such a return throughout the whole of the +future.” But, a single sentence like this would +<em>vitiate</em> the entire Chesterfieldian correspondence.</p> +<p>How fully and warmly M. Sainte-Beuve prizes moral worth may be +learnt from many passages. Not the least animated and cordial of +his papers is one on the Abbé Gerbet, in the sixth volume, a +paper which shows, as Gustave Planche said of him, that “he +studies with his heart, as women do;” and one in the second +volume on Malesherbes, whom he describes as being “separated, +on the moral side, from the Mirabeaus and the Condorcets not by a +shade, but by an abyss,” and whom he sums up as “great +magistrate, minister too sensitive and too easily discouraged, +heroic advocate, and sublime victim.” Of this noble, deeply +dutiful, self-sacrificing Frenchman, this exemplar of moral +greatness, Lord Lansdowne wrote many years before the French +Revolution: “I have seen for the first time in my life what I +did not believe could exist, that is, a man <em>who is exempt from +fear and from hope</em>, and who nevertheless is full of life and +warmth. Nothing can disturb his peace; nothing is necessary to him, +and he takes a lively interest in all that is good.”</p> +<p>In a paper on a volume of miscellaneous prose essays by M. +Laprade, M. Sainte-Beuve has this sentence: “What strikes me +above all and everywhere is, that the author, whether he reasons or +whether he addresses himself to literary history, only understands +his own mode of being and his own individuality. Hereby he reveals +to us that he is not a critic.” The first paragraph of a keen +critique on M. de Pontmartin ends thus: “To say of even those +writers who are opposed to us nothing which their judicious friends +do not already think and are obliged to admit, this is my highest +ambition.” Discussing the proper method of dealing with the +past, he writes: “For myself I respect tradition and I like +novelty: I am never happier than when I can succeed in reconciling +them together.” Of Hoffman he says, in a paper on literary +criticism: “He has many of the qualities of a true critic, +conscientiousness, independence, ideas, an opinion of his +own.” These sentences, with others of like import, are keys +to the character of the volumes from which they are taken. The +office of the critic M. Sainte-Beuve administers, not for temporary +or personal ends, but with a disinterested sense of its elevation +and its responsibilities. Through healthy sympathies and knowledge +ample and ripe, through firm sense with artistic flexibility, +through largeness of view and subtlety of insight, he enters upon +it more than ordinarily empowered for its due discharge. He is at +once what the French call <em>fin</em> and what the English call +”sound.” In literary work, in biographical work, in +work æsthetical and critical, he delights, and he has a wide +capacity of appropriation. The spirit of a book, a man, an age, he +seizes quickly. With a nice perception of shades he catches the +individual color of a mind or a production; and by the same faculty +he grasps the determining principles in a character. Delicately, +strongly, variously endowed, there is a steady equilibrium among +his fine powers. Considering the bulk and vast variety and general +excellence of his critical work, is it too much to say of him, that +he is not only, as he has been called, the foremost of living +critics, but that he deserves to hold the first place among all +critics? No other has done so much so well. Goethe and Coleridge +are something more; they are critics incidentally; but M. +Sainte-Beuve, with poetical and philosophical qualities that lift +him to a high vantage-ground, has made criticism his life-work, and +through conscientious and symmetrical use of these qualities has +done his work well. Besides much else in his many and many-sided +volumes, there is to be read in them a full, spirited history of +French literature.</p> +<p>Our attempt to make M. Sainte-Beuve better known on this side +the Atlantic we cannot more fitly conclude than with a sketch of +him—a literary sketch—by himself. This we find in the +fifth volume of the “Nouveaux Lundis,” in a paper on +Molière, published in July, 1863. A man who, in the autumnal +ripeness of his powers, thus frankly tells us his likes and +dislikes, tells us what he is. While by reflected action the +passage becomes a self-portraiture, it is a sample of finest +criticism.</p> +<p>“To make Molière loved by more people is in my +judgment to do a public service.</p> +<p>“Indeed, to love Molière—I mean to love him +sincerely and with all one’s heart—it is, do you know? +to have within one’s self a guarantee against many defects, +much wrong-headedness. It is, in the first place, to dislike what +is incompatible with Molière, all that was counter to him in +his day, and that would have been insupportable to him in ours.</p> +<p>“To love Molière is to be forever cured—do +not say of base and infamous hypocrisy, but of fanaticism, of +intolerance, and of that kind of hardness which makes one +anathematize and curse; it is to carry a corrective to admiration +even of Bossuet, and for all who, after his example, exult, were it +only in words, over their enemy dead or dying; who usurp I know not +what holy speech, and involuntarily believe themselves to be, with +the thunderbolt in their hand, in the region and place of the Most +High. Men eloquent and sublime, you are far too much so for me!</p> +<p>“To love Molière, is to be sheltered against, and a +thousand leagues away from, that other fanaticism, the political, +which is cold, dry, cruel, which never laughs, which smells of the +sectary, which, under pretext of Puritanism, finds means to mix and +knead all that is bitter, and to combine in one sour doctrine the +hates, the spites, and the Jacobinism of all times. It is to be not +less removed, on the other hand, from those tame, dull souls who, +in the very presence of evil, cannot be roused to either +indignation or hatred.</p> +<p>“To love Molière, is to be secured against giving +in to that pious and boundless admiration for a humanity which +worships itself, and which forgets of what stuff it is made, and +that, do what it will, it is always poor human nature. It is, not +to despise it too much, however, this common humanity, at which one +laughs, of which one is, and into which we throw ourselves through +a healthful hilarity whenever we are with Molière.</p> +<p>”To love and cherish Molière, is to detest all +mannerism in language and expression; it is, not to take pleasure +in, or to be arrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, +superfine finish, excessive refinement of any kind, a tricky or +artificial style.</p> +<p>“To love Molière, it is to be disposed to like +neither false wit nor pedantic science; it is to know how to +recognize at first sight our <em>Trissotins</em><a id= +"footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6"></a><a href= +"#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> and our <em>Vadius</em> even under +their rejuvenated jaunty airs; it is, not to let one’s self +be captivated at present any more than formerly by the everlasting +<em>Philaminte</em>, that affected pretender of all times, whose +form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly renewed; it is, +to like soundness and directness of mind in others as well as in +ourselves. I only give the first movement and the pitch; on this +key one may continue, with variations.</p> +<p>“To love and openly to prefer Corneille, as certain minds +do, is no doubt a fine thing, and, in one sense, a very legitimate +thing; it is, to dwell in, and to mark one’s rank in, the +world of great souls: but is it not to run the risk of loving +together with the grand and sublime, false glory a little, to go so +far as not to detest inflation and magniloquence, an air of heroism +on all occasions? He who passionately loves Corneille cannot be an +enemy to a little boasting.</p> +<p>“On the other hand, to love and prefer Racine, ah! that +is, no doubt, to love above all things, elegance, grace, what is +natural and true (at least relatively), sensibility, touching and +charming passion; but at the same time is it not also, to allow +your taste and your mind to be too much taken with certain +conventional and over-smooth beauties, a certain tameness and +petted languidness, with certain excessive and exclusive +refinements? In a word, to love Racine so much, it is to run the +risk of having too much of what in France is called taste, and +which brings so much distaste.</p> +<p>“To love Boileau—but no, one does not love Boileau, +one esteems him, one respects him; we admire his uprightness, his +understanding, at times his animation, and if we are tempted to +love him, it is solely for that sovereign equity which made him do +such unshaken justice to the great poets his contemporaries, and +especially to him whom he proclaims the first of all, +Molière.</p> +<p>”To love La Fontaine, is almost the same thing as to love +Molière; it is, to love nature, the whole of nature, +humanity ingenuously depicted, a representation of the grand comedy +“of a hundred different acts,” unrolling itself, +cutting itself up before our eyes into a thousand little scenes +with the graces and freedoms that are so becoming, with weaknesses +also, and liberties which are never found in the simple, manly +genius of the master of masters. But why separate them? La Fontaine +and Molière—we must not part them, we love them +united.”</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p>The number of “Putnam’s Magazine,” containing +this paper, was sent to M. Sainte-Beuve accompanied by a note. In +due time I received an answer to the note, saying that the Magazine +had not reached him. Hereupon I sent the article by itself. On +receiving it he wrote the following acknowledgment.</p> +<p>In my note I referred to a rumor of his illness. His disease +was, by <em>post-mortem</em> examination, discovered to be as the +newspapers had reported, the stone. But a consultation of +physicians declared that it was what he states it to be in his +letter. Had they not made so gross a mistake, his life might have +been prolonged.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcaps">Paris</span>, 6 <em>Decembre</em>, +1868, No. 11 Rue Mont Parnasse.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcaps">Cher Monsieur:</span>—</p> +<p>“Oh! Cette fois je reçois bien +décidément le très aimable et si bien +etudié portrait du <em>critique</em>. Comment exprimer comme +je le sens ma gratitude pour tant de soin, d’attention +pénétrante, de désir d’être +agréable tout en restant juste? Il y avait certes moyen +d’insister bien plus sur les variations, les disparates et +les défaillances momentanées de la pensée et +du jugement à travers cette suite de volumes. C’est +toujours un sujet d’étonnement pour moi, et cette fois +autant que jamais, de voir comment un lecteur ami et un juge de +goût parvient à tirer une figure une et consistante de +ce qui ne me parait à moi même dans mon souvenir que +le cours d’un long fleuve qui va s’épandant un +pen au hazard des pentes et désertant continuellement ses +rives. De tels portraits comme celui que vous voulez bien +m’offrir me rendent un point d’appui et me feraient +véritablement croire à moi-même. Et quand je +songe a l’immense quantité d’esprits auxquels +vous me présentez sous un aspect si favorable et si +magistral dans ce nouveau monde de tant de jeunesse et +d’avenir, je me prends d’une sorte de fierté et +de courageuse confiance comme en présence déjà +de la postérité.</p> +<p>“Le mal auquel vous voulez bien vous intéresser est +tout simplement une hypertrophie de la prostate. Les souffrances ne +sont pas vives, mais l’incommodité est grande, ne +pouvant supporter à aucun degré le mouvement de la +voiture, ce qui restreint ma vie sociale à un bien court +rayon.</p> +<p>“Veuillez agreéer, cher Monsieur, l’assurance +de ma cordiale gratitude, et de mes sentiments les plus +distingués.</p> +<p><span class="smcaps">Sainte-Beuve.”</span></p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay6" id="Essay6">VI.</a></h2> +<h2>Thomas Carlyle.</h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>A brain ever aglow with self-kindled fire—a cerebral +battery bristling with magnetic life—such is Thomas Carlyle. +Exceptional fervor of temperament, rare intellectual vivacity, +manful earnestness—these are the primary qualifications of +the man. He has an uncommon soul-power. Hence his attractiveness, +hence his influence. Every page, every paragraph, every sentence, +throbs with his own being. Themselves all authors put, of course, +more or less, into what they write: few, very few, can make their +sentences quiver with themselves. This Mr. Carlyle does by the +intenseness of a warm individuality, by the nimble vigor of his +mental life, and, be it added, by the rapture of his spirituality. +The self, in his case, is a large, deep self, and it sends an +audible pulse through his pen into his page.</p> +<p>To all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental +faculties, of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to +which these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes +the difference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high +vital pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong +mental currents, through what channels the currents shall flow +depends on individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the +one case, a Dante, in another, a Newton, in another, a Mirabeau. +And Nature, with all her generosity, being jealous of her rights, +allows no interchange of gifts. Even the many-sided Goethe could +not, by whatever force of will and practice, have written a bar in +a symphony of Beethoven. In his dominant aptitudes, Mr. Carlyle is +not more one-sided than many other intellectual potentates; but, +like some others, his activity and ambition have at times led him +into paths where great deficiencies disclose themselves by the side +of great superiorities. His mind is biographical, not historical; +stronger in details than in generalization; more intuitive than +scientific; critical, not constructive; literary, not +philosophical. Mr. Carlyle is great at a picture, very great; he +can fail in a survey or an induction. Wealth of thought, strokes of +tenderness, clean insight into life, satire, irony, humor, make his +least successful volumes to teem with passages noteworthy, +beautiful, wise, as do his “Cromwell” and his +“Frederick.” Such giants carrying nations on their +broad fronts, Mr. Carlyle, in writing their lives with duteous +particularity, has embraced the full story of the epoch in which +each was the leader. To him they are more than leaders. Herein he +and Mr. Buckle stand at opposite poles; Mr. Buckle underrating the +protagonists of history, them and their share of agency; Mr. +Carlyle overrating them,—a prejudicial one-sidedness in both +cases. Leader and led are the complements the one of the other.</p> +<p>History is a growth, and a slow growth. Evils in one age +painfully sow the seed that is to come up good in another. The +historian, and still more the critical commentator on his own +times, needs to be patient, calm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is +impatient, fervid, willful, nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, +not hopeful enough. One healthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, +would not be ever betaking him to the past as a refuge from the +present; would not tauntingly throw into the face of contemporaries +an Abbot Sampson of the twelfth century as a model. A judicial +expounder would not cite one single example as a characteristic of +that age in contrast with this. A patient, impartial elucidator, +would not deride “ballot-boxes, reform bills, winnowing +machines:” he would make the best of these and other tools +within reach; or, if his part be to write and not to act, would +animate, not dishearten, those who are earnestly doing, and who, by +boldly striking at abuses, by steadily striving for more justice, +by aiming to lift up the down-trodden, prepare, through such means +as are at hand, a better ground for the next generation. If to such +workers, instead of God-speed, a writer of force and influence +gives jeers and gibes, and ever-repeated shrieks about +“semblance and quackery, and cant and speciosity, and +dilettantism,” and deems himself profound and original, as +well as hopeful, when he exclaims: “Dim all souls of men to +the divine, the high and awful meaning of human worth and truth, we +shall never by all the machinery in Birmingham discover the true +and worthy:” in that case, does he not expose him to the +taunt of being himself very like a mouthing quack, and his words, +which should be cordial, brotherly, do they not partake of the +hollow quality of what Mr. Carlyle holds in such abhorrence, +namely, of cant? The sick lion crouches growling in his lair; he +cannot eat, and he will not let others eat.</p> +<p>Many grateful and admiring readers Mr. Carlyle wearies with his +ever-recurrent fallacy that might is right. In Heaven’s name, +what are all the shams whose presence he so persistently +bemoans,—worldly bishops, phantasm-aristocracies, +presumptuous upstarts, shallow sway-wielding dukes,—what are +all these, and much else, but so many exemplications of might that +is not right? When might shall cease to bully, to trample on right, +we shall be nearing Utopia. Utopia may be at infinite distance, not +attainable by finite men; but as surely as our hearts beat, we are +gradually getting further from its opposite, the coarse rule of +force and brutality, such rule as in the twelfth century was rife +all around “Abbot Sampson.”</p> +<p>Like unto this moral fallacy is an æsthetic fallacy which, +through bright pages of criticism, strikes up at times to vitiate a +judgment. “I confess,” says Mr. Carlyle, “I have +no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of +men.” Could Newton have written the “Fairy +Queen?” Could Spenser have discovered the law of gravitation? +Could Columbus have given birth to “Don Quixote?” One +of Mr. Carlyle’s military heroes tried hard to be a poet. +Over Frederick’s verses, how his friend Voltaire must have +grinned. “I cannot understand how a Mirabeau, with that great +glowing heart, with the fire that was in it, with the bursting +tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, +poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life +and education led him thitherward.” Thus Mr. Carlyle writes +in “Heroes and Hero-Worship.” If Mirabeau, why not +Savonarola, or Marcus Aurelius. In that case a “Twelfth +Night,” or an “Othello,” might have come from +Luther. Nature does not work so loosely. Rich is she, unspeakably +rich, and as artful as she is profuse in the use of her riches. She +delights in variety, thence her ineffable radiance, and much of her +immeasurable efficiency. Diverseness in unity is a source of her +power as well as of her beauty. Her wealth of material being +infinite, her specifications are endless, countless, superfinely +minute. Even no two of the commonest men does she make alike; her +men of genius she diversifies at once grandly and delicately, +broadly and subtly. “Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic +messages,” says Mr. Carlyle. We hope they did, or could have +done, in the prosaic field, much better than that. We Americans +know with what moderate equipment diplomatic messages may be +done.</p> +<p>On poetry and poets Mr. Carlyle has written many of his best +pages, pages penetrating, discriminative, because so sympathetic, +and executed with the scholar’s care and the critic’s +culture. His early papers on Goethe and Burns, published more than +forty years ago, made something like an epoch in English criticism. +Seizing the value and significance of genuine poetry, he exclaims +in “Past and Present,”—“Genius, Poet! do we +know what these words mean? An inspired soul once more vouchsafed +us, direct from Nature’s own great fire-heart, to see the +truth, and speak it and do it.” On the same page he thus +taunts his countrymen: “We English find a poet, as brave a +man as has been made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the +sun; and do we kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, +taking due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the +Burgh of Dumfries, and pique ourselves on our ‘patronage of +genius.’” “George the Third is Defender of +something we call ‘the Faith’ in those years. George +the Third is head charioteer of the destinies of England, to guide +them through the gulf of French Revolutions, American +Independences; and Robert Burns is gauger of ale in +Dumfries.” Poor George the Third! One needs not be a +craniologist to know that the eyes which looked out from beneath +that retreating pyramidal forehead could see but part even of the +commonest men and things before them. How could they see a Robert +Burns? To be sure, had Dundas, or whoever got Burns the place of +gauger, given him one of the many sinecures of two or three hundred +pounds a year that were wasted on idle scions of titled families, +an aureole of glory would now shine through the darkness that +environs the memory of George III. So much for George Guelf. Now +for Thomas Carlyle.</p> +<p>If, for not recognizing Burns, <em>poor</em> George is to be +blamed, what terms of stricture will be too harsh for <em>rich</em> +Thomas, that by him were not recognized poets greater than Burns, +at a time when for England’s good, full, sympathetic +recognition of them was just what was literarily most wanted? Here +was a man, for the fine function of poetic criticism how rarely +gifted is visible in those thorough papers on Burns and Goethe, +written so early as 1828, wherein, besides a masterly setting forth +of their great subjects, are notable passages on other poets. On +Byron is passed the following sentence, which will, we think, be +ever confirmed by sound criticism. “Generally speaking, we +should say that Byron’s poetry is not true. He refreshes us, +not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong +waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in +dislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, +real men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do +not these characters, does not the character of their author, which +more or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on +for the occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but +something intended to look much grander than nature? Surely, all +these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, +and moody desperation, with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, +and other sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player +in some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the +bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last +threescore and ten years. To our minds, there is a taint of this +sort, something which we should call theatrical, false, affected, +in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces.”</p> +<p>In the same paper, that on Burns, Mr. Carlyle thus opened the +ears of that generation,—partially opened, for the general +æsthetic ear is not fully opened yet,—to a hollowness +which was musical to the many: “Our Grays and Glovers seemed +to write almost as if <em>in vacuo</em>; the thing written bears no +mark of place; it is not written so much for Englishmen as for men; +or rather, which is the inevitable result of this, for certain +generalizations which philosophy termed men.” And in the +paper on Goethe, he calls Gray’s poetry, “a laborious +mosaic, through the hard, stiff lineaments of which, little life or +true grace could be expected to look.” Thus choicely endowed +was Mr. Carlyle to be, what is the critic’s noblest office, +an interpreter between new poets and the public. Such an +interpreter England grievously needed, to help and teach her +educated and scholarly classes to prize the treasures just lavished +upon them by Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and Shelley, and Keats. The +interpreter was there, but he spoke not. Better than any man in +England Mr. Carlyle could, if he would, have taught the generation +that was growing up with him, whose ear he had already gained, what +truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity there was in the strains +of this composite chorus of superlative singers. Of such teaching, +that generation stood in especial need, to disabuse its ear of the +hollowness which had been mistaken for harmony; to refresh, with +clear streams from “the divine fountain,” hearts that +were fevered by the stimulus of Byronic “strong +waters;” to wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which +lights the way to that higher plane where breathe great poets, +whose incomparable function it is, to impart to their fellow-men +some of the enlargement and the purification of consciousness in +which themselves exult through the influx of fresh ideas and the +upspringing of prolific sentiment. The gifted interpreter was dumb. +Nay, he made diversions into Scotland and Germany, to bring Burns +and Scott more distinctly before Englishmen, and to make Schiller +and Goethe and Richter better known to them. And it pleased him to +write about “Corn-law rhymes.” That he did these tasks +so well, proves how well he could have done, by the side of them, +the then more urgent task. In 1828, Mr. Carlyle wrote for one of +the quarterly reviews an exposition of “Goethe’s +Helena,” which is a kind of episode in the second part of +“Faust,” and was first published as a fragment. This +takes up more than sixty pages in the first volume of the +“Miscellanies,” about the half being translations from +“Helena,” which by no means stands in the front rank of +Goethe’s poetic creations, which is indeed rather a high +artistic composition than a creation. At that time there lay, +almost uncalled for, on the publisher’s shelf, where it had +lain for five years, ever since its issue, a poem of fifty-five +Spenserian stanzas, flushed with a subtler beauty, more divinely +dyed in pathos, than any in English literature of its rare kind, or +of any kind out of Shakespeare,—a poem in which all the +inward harvests of a tender, deep, capacious, loving, and religious +life, all the heaped hoards of feeling and imagination in a life +most visionary and most real, are gathered into one sheaf of poetic +affluence, to dazzle and subdue with excess of light,—or +gathered rather into a bundle of sheaves, stanza rising on stanza, +each like a flame fresh shooting from a hidden bed of +Nature’s most precious perfumes, each shedding a new and a +richer fragrance; I mean the “Adonais” of Shelley. For +this glittering masterpiece,—a congenial commentary on which +would have illuminated the literary atmosphere of +England,—Mr. Carlyle had no word; no word for Shelley, no +word for Coleridge, no word for Wordsworth. For Keats he had a word +in the paper on Burns, and here it is: “Poetry, except in +such cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a +weak-eyed, maudlin sensibility and a certain vague, random +timefulness of nature, is no separate faculty.” A +parenthesis, short and contemptuous, is all he gives to one of whom +it has been truly said, that of no poet who has lived, not of +Shakespeare, is the poetry written before the twenty-fifth year so +good as his; and of whom it may as truly be said, that his best +poems need no apology in the youthfulness of their author; but that +for originality, power, variety, feeling, thoughtfulness, melody, +they take rank in the first class of the poetry of the world. Is +not Thomas Carlyle justly chargeable with having committed a high +literary misdemeanor? Nay, considering his gift of poetic insight, +and with it his persistent ignoring of the great English poets of +his age, considering the warm solicitation on the one side, and the +duty on the other, his offense may be termed a literary crime. He +knew better.</p> +<p>Mr. Carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of Elizabeth, +after this fashion; “For Raleighs and Shakespeares we have +Beau Brummell and Sheridan Knowles.” Only on the surmise that +Mr. Carlyle owed poor Knowles some desperate grudge, can such an +outburst be accounted for. Otherwise it is sheer fatuity, or an +impotent explosion of literary spite. For the breadth and +brilliancy of the poetic day shed upon it, no period in the history +of any nation, not that of Pericles or of Elizabeth, is more +resplendent than that which had not yet faded for England when Mr. +Carlyle began his career; nor in the field of public action can the +most prolific era of Greece or of England hold up, for the +admiration of the world and the pride of fellow-countrymen, two +agents more deservedly crowned with honor and gratitude than Nelson +and Wellington. Here are two leaders, who, besides exhibiting rare +personal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast +breadth, and in performances of unwonted magnitude and +momentousness, were, moreover, by their great, brave deeds, most +palpably saving England, saving Europe, from the grasp of an +inexorable despot. Surely these were heroes of a stature to have +strained to its utmost the reverence and the love of a genuine +hero-worshipper. On the ten thousand luminous pages of Mr. Carlyle +they find no place. Not only are their doings not celebrated, that +they lived is scarce acknowledged.</p> +<p>Even when its objects are the loftiest and the most honored, +jealousy is not a noble form of</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“The last infirmity of noble mind.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Does Mr. Carlyle feel that Nelson and Wellington, Coleridge, +Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth, stand already so broad and high +that they chill him with their shadow, and that therefore he will +not, by eulogy, or even notice, add to their altitude? Is he +repeating the littleness of Byron, who was jealous not only of his +contemporaries, Napoleon, and Wellington, and Wordsworth, but was +jealous of Shakespeare? That a pen which, with zestful animation, +embraces all contemporaneous things, should be studiously silent +about almost every one of the dozen men of genius who illustrate +his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is driven to monstrous +devices to divulge its motive. In such a case it is impossible to +premise to what clouds of self-delusion an imaginative man will not +rise.</p> +<p>Writing of Thomas Carlyle, the last words must not be censorious +comments on a weakness; we all owe too much to his strength; he is +too large a benefactor. Despite over-fondness for Frederick and the +like, and what may be termed a pathological drift towards political +despotism, how many quickening chapters has he not added to the +“gospel of freedom”? Flushed are his volumes with +generous pulses, with delicate sympathies. From many a page what +cordialities step forth to console and to fortify us; what divine +depths we come upon; what sudden vistas of sunshine through +tempest-shaken shadows; what bursts of splendor through nebulous +mutterings. Much has he helped the enfranchisement of the spirit. +Well do I remember the thirst wherewith, more than thirty years +ago, I seized the monthly “Frazer,” to drink of the +spiritual waters of “Sartor Resartus.” Here was a new +spring; with what stimulating, exhilarating, purifying draughts, +did it bubble and sparkle! That picture, in the beginning, of the +“doing and driving (<em>Thun und Treiben</em>)” of a +city as beheld by Professor Teufelsdroeckh from his +attic—would one have been surprised to read that on a page of +Shakespeare?</p> +<p>A marvelous faculty of speech has Mr. Carlyle; a gift of saying +what he has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought +tingle through your ears. His diction surrounds itself with a +magnetic <em>aura</em>, which seems to float it, to part it from +the paper, it stands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro. Common +phrases he refreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings, +and in the ordering of words he has command of a magical logic. The +marrowy vigor in his mind it is that lends such expressiveness, +such nimbleness, such accent to his sentences, to his style.</p> +<p>Mr. Carlyle’s power comes mainly from his sensibilities. +Through them he is poetical; through them there is so much light in +his pages. More often from his than from any others, except those +of the major poets, breaks the sudden, joyful beam that flames +around a thought when it knows itself embraced by a feeling. Of +humor and of wit, what an added fund does our language now possess +through his pen. The body of criticism, inclosed in the five +volumes of Miscellanies, were enough to give their author a lasting +name. When one of these papers appeared in the Edinburgh, or other +review, it shone, amid the contributions of the Jeffreys and +Broughams, like a guinea in a handful of shillings.</p> +<p>The masterpiece of Mr. Carlyle, and the masterpiece of English +prose literature, is his “French Revolution,” a +rhythmic Epic without verse. To write those three volumes a man +needs have in him a big, glowing heart, thus to flood with +passionate life all the men and scenes of a momentous volcanic +epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he must have, to grasp +in their full reality the multitudinous and diverse facts and +incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of millions of +contentious brains; he needs a literary faculty finely artistic, +creatively imaginative, to enrank the figures of such vast +tumultuous scenes, to depict the actors in each, to present vividly +in clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. +Outside of the choice achievements of verse, is there a literary +task of breadth and difficulty that has been done so well? A theme +of unusual grandeur and significance is here greatly treated.</p> +<p>The foremost literary gift,—nay, the test whereby to try +whether there be any genuine literary gift,—is the power in a +writer to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand +invested, or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it +becomes warmed with a fire from the writer’s soul. Of this, +the most perfect exhibition is in poetry, wherein, by the intensity +and fullness of inflammation, of passion, is born a something new, +which, through the strong creativeness of the poet, has henceforth +a rounded being of its own. With this power Mr. Carlyle is highly +endowed. Not only, as already said, does his page quiver with +himself; through the warmth and healthiness of his sympathies, and +his intellectual mastery, he makes each scene and person in his +gorgeous representation of the French Revolution to shine with its +own life, the more brilliantly and truly that this life has been +lighted up by his. Where in history is there a picture greater than +that of the execution of Louis XVI.? With a few strokes how many a +vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid chiefly from its +faithfulness to personality and to history. And then his +full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the queen, +of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille Desmoulins, of +Danton, of Robespierre: it seems now that only on his throbbing +page do these personages live and move and have their true being. +The giant Mirabeau, ‘twas thought at first he had drawn too +gigantic. But intimate documents, historical and biographical, that +have come to light since, confirm the insight of Mr. Carlyle, and +swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him.</p> +<p>For a conclusion we will let Mr. Carlyle depict himself. Making +allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so +eccentric as his friend, Professor Teufelsdroeckh, this we think he +does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of +“Sartor Resartus,” wherein, under the head of +“Characteristics,” he comments on the professor’s +Work on Clothes, and its effect on himself. From this chapter we +extract some of the most pertinent sentences. It opens +thus:—</p> +<p>“It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this +Work on Clothes entirely contents us; that it is not, like all +works of genius, like the very sun, which, though the highest +published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless black spots +and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence,—a mixture of +insight, inspiration, with dullness’ double-vision, and even +utter blindness.</p> +<p>“Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic +praises and prophesyings of the “Weissnichtwo’sche +Anzeiger,” we admitted that the book had in a high degree +excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; +that it had even operated changes in our way of thought; nay, that +it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, +wherein the whole world of <em>Speculation</em> might henceforth +dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be declared that +Professor Teufelsdroeckh’s acquirements, patience of +research, philosophic, and even poetic vigor, are here made +indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and +tortuosity and manifold inaptitude….</p> +<p>“Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, +has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious +Life of man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, +he severs asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs +deep, into the true center of the matter; and there not only hits +the nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home and +buries it….</p> +<p>”Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, +a true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning +words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and +splendor from Jove’s head; a rich idiomatic diction, +picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy +twins; all the graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to +the clearest intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it +not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages, circumlocutions, +repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon so often +intervene…. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the +man, like its key-note and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as +into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of fiends; now +sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though +sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it +only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is +extremely difficult to fix….</p> +<p>“Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal +intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the professor’s +moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, +soft wailings of infinite pity; he could clasp the whole universe +into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude +exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and +still so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference, malign +coolness, towards all that men strive after; and ever with some +half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, sardonic humor, if indeed it be +not mere stolid callousness,—that you look on him almost with +a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great +terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge +foolish whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, +and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which +only children could take interest.”</p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay7" id="Essay7">VI.</a></h2> +<h2>Errata.<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7"></a><a href= +"#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a></h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>Words are the counters of thought; speech is the vocalization of +the soul; style is the luminous incarnation of reason and emotion. +Thence it behooves scholars, the wardens of language, to keep over +words a watch as keen and sleepless as a dutiful guardian keeps +over his pupils. A prime office of this guardianship is to take +care lest language fall into loose ways; for words being the final +elements into which all speech resolves itself, if they grow weak +by negligence or abuse, speech loses its firmness, veracity, and +expressiveness. Style may be likened to a close Tyrian garment +woven by poets and thinkers out of words and phrases for the +clothing and adornment of the mind; and the strength and fineness +of the tissue, together with its beauties of color, depend on the +purity and precision, the transparency and directness of its +threads, which are words.</p> +<p>A humble freeman of the guild of scholars would here use his +privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and +phrases,—abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken +and written speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, +the pages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken +or lead to general final corruption, and the great +Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is many centuries distant from the period +when it may be expected to show signs of that decadence which, +visible at first in the waning moral and intellectual energies of a +people, soon spots its speech.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, as inaccuracies, laxities, +vulgarisms—transgressions more or less superficial—such +errors take from the correctness, from the efficacy, from the force +as well as the grace, of written or spoken speech.</p> +<p>The high level of strength, suppleness and beauty occupied by +our English tongue has been reached, and can only be maintained, by +strenuous, varied, and continuous mental action. Offenses against +the laws and proprieties of language—like so many other of +our lapses—are in most cases effects of the tendency in human +nature to relax its tone. None save the most resolute and rigorous +but have their moods of unwatchfulness, of indolence. Moreover, men +are prone to resist mental refinement and intellectual +subdivisions. Discrimination requires close attention and sustained +effort; and without habitual discrimination there can be no +linguistic precision or excellence. In this, as in other provinces, +people like to take things easily. Now, every capable man of +business knows that to take things easily is an easy way to ruin. +Language is in a certain sense every one’s business; but it +is especially the business, as their appellation denotes, of men of +letters; and a primary duty of their high vocation is to be jealous +of any careless or impertinent meddling with, or mishandling of, +those little glistening, marvelous tools wherewith such amazing +structures and temples have been built and are ever a-building. +Culture, demanding and creating diversity and subtlety of mental +processes, is at once a cause and an effect of infinite +multiplication in the relations the mind is capable of establishing +between itself and the objects of its action, and between its own +processes; and language, being a chief instrument of culture, has +to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands, +Any fall, therefore, on its part from the obedient fineness of its +modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness, +any slide into looseness or vagueness, any unweaving of the complex +tissue, psychical and metaphysical, into which it has been wrought +by the exquisite wants of the mind, will have a relaxing, +debilitating influence on thought itself. To use the clear, wise +words of Mr. Whewell; “Language is often called an instrument +of thought, but it is also the nutriment of thought; or, rather, it +is the atmosphere on which thought lives—a medium essential +to the activity of our speculative powers, although invisible and +imperceptible in its operation; and an element modifying, by its +changes and qualities, the growth and complexion of the faculties +which it feeds.”</p> +<p>Our enumeration of <em>errata</em> being made alphabetically, +the first to be cited is one of the chief of sinners—the +particle.</p> +<p>As. The misuse of <em>as</em> for <em>so</em> is, in certain +cases, almost universal. If authority could justify error and +convert the faulty into the faultless, it were idle to expose a +misuse in justification of which can be cited most of the best +names in recent English literature.</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“<em>As</em> far as doth concern my single +self,”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>is a line in Wordsworth (“Prelude,” p. 70) which, by +a change of the first <em>as</em> into <em>so</em>, would gain not +only in sound (which is not our affair at present), but, likewise +in grammar. The seventh line of the twenty-first stanza in that +most tender of elegies and most beautiful of poems, Shelley’s +“Adonais,” begins, “<em>As</em> long as skies are +blue,” where also there would be a double gain by writing +“<em>So</em> long as skies are blue.” On page 242 of +the first volume of De Quincey’s “Literary +Remains” occurs this sentence; “Even by <em>as</em> +philosophic a politician <em>as</em> Edmund Burke,” in which +the critical blunder of calling Burke a philosophic politician +furnishes no excuse for the grammatical blunder. The rule (derived, +like all good rules, from principle) which determines the use of +this small particle is, I conceive, that the double <em>as</em> +should only be employed when there is direct comparison. In the +first part of the following sentence there is no direct comparative +relation—in the second, the negative destroys it; +“<em>So</em> far as geographical measurement goes, +Philadelphia is not <em>so</em> far from New York as from +Baltimore.” Five writers out of six would commit the error of +using <em>as</em> in both members of the sentence. The most +prevalent misuse of <em>as</em> is in connection with +<em>soon</em>; and this general misuse, having moreover the +countenance of good writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it +will be hard to unravel it. But principle is higher than the +authority derived from custom. Judges are bound to give sentence +according to the statute; and if the highest writers, whose +influence is deservedly judicial, violate the laws of language, +their decisions ought to be, and will be, reversed, or language +will be undermined, and, slipping into shallow, illogical habits, +into anarchical conditions, will forfeit much of its manliness, of +its subtlety, of its truthfulness. Language is a living organism, +and to substitute authority, or even long usage, for its innate +genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices that result +from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it to become +subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism. Worcester +quotes from the Psalms the phrase, “They go astray +<em>as</em> soon as they be born.” We ask, Were not the +translators of the Bible as liable to err in grammar as De Quincey, +or Wordsworth, or Shelley? A writer in the English “National +Review” for January, 1862, in an admirable paper on the +“Italian Clergy and the Pope,” begins a sentence with +the same phrase: ”<em>As</em> soon as the law was +passed.” And we ourselves, sure though we be that the use of +<em>as</em> in this and every similar position is an error, need to +brace both pen and tongue against running into it, so strong to +overcome principle and conviction is the habit of the senses, +accustomed daily to see and to hear the wrong.</p> +<p>AT THAT. We should not have noticed this squat vulgarism, had +not the pen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of +newspapers into bound volumes. The speech and page of every one, +who would not be italicized for lingual looseness, should be +forever closed against a phrase so shocking to taste, a phrase, we +are sorry to say, of American mintage, coined in one of those +frolicksome exuberant moods, when a young people, like a loosed +horse full of youth and oats, kicks up and scatters mud with the +unharnessed license of his heels.</p> +<p>ANOTHER. Before passing to the letter B on our alphabetical +docket, we will call up a minor criminal in A, viz. +<em>another</em>, often incorrectly used for <em>other</em>; as in +“on one ground or another,” “from one cause or +another.” Now, <em>another</em>, the prefix <em>an</em> +making it singular,—embraces but one ground or cause, and +therefore, contrary to the purpose of the writer, the words mean +that there are but two grounds or causes. Write “on one +ground or other,” and the words are in harmony with the +meaning of the writer, the word <em>other</em> implying several or +many grounds.</p> +<p>BOQUET. The sensibility that gives the desire to preserve a +present sparkling so long as is possible with all the qualities +that made it materially acceptable, should rule us where the gift +is something so precious as a word; and when we receive one from +another people, gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of +the gift itself, should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by +the boorish breath of ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical +voices. We therefore protest against a useful and tuneful +noun-substantive, a native of France, the word <em>bouquet</em>, +being maimed into <em>boquet</em>, a corruption as dissonant to the +ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated nosegay, +and leaving only its thorny stem. <em>Boquet</em> is heard at times +in well-upholstered drawing-rooms, and may even be seen in print. +Offensive in its mutilated shape, it smells sweet again when +restored to its native orthography.</p> +<p>BY NO MANNER OF MEANS. The most vigorous writers are liable, in +unguarded moments, to lapse into verbal weakness, and so you meet +with this vulgar pleonasm in Ruskin.</p> +<p>BY REASON OF. An ill-assorted, ugly phrase, used by accomplished +reviewers and others, who ought to set a purer example.</p> +<p>COME OFF. Were a harp to give out the nasal whine of the +bagpipe, or the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, +the æsthetic sense would not be more startled and offended +than to hear from feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and +youth, issue the words, “The concert will <em>come off</em> +on Wednesday.” This vulgarism should never be heard beyond +the “ring” and the cock-pit, and should be banished +from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar.</p> +<p>CONSIDER. Neither weight of authority nor universality of use +can purify or justify a linguistic corruption, and make the +intrinsically wrong in language right; and therefore such phrases +as, “I consider him an honest man,” “Do you +consider the dispute settled?” will ever be bad English, +however generally sanctioned. In his dedication of the +“Diversions of Purley” to the University of Cambridge, +Horne Tooke uses it wrongly when he says, “who always +<em>considers</em> acts of voluntary justice toward himself as +favors.” The original signification and only proper use of +<em>consider</em> are in phrases like these: “If you consider +the matter carefully;” “Consider the lilies of the +field.”</p> +<p>CONDUCT. It seems to us that it were as allowable to say of a +man, “He carries well,” as “He conducts +well.” We say of a gun that it carries well, and we might say +of a pipe that it conducts well. The gun and pipe are passive +instruments, not living organisms, and thence the verbs are used +properly in the neuter form. Perhaps, strictly speaking, even here +<em>its charge</em> and <em>water</em> are understood.</p> +<p>CONTEMPLATE. “Do you contemplate going to Washington +to-morrow?” “No: I contemplate moving into the +country.” This is more than exaggeration and inflation: it is +desecration of a noble word, born of man’s higher being; for +contemplation is an exercise of the very highest faculties, a calm +collecting of them for silent meditation—an act, or rather a +mood, which implies even more than concentrated reflection, and +involves themes dependent on large, pure sentiment. An able lawyer +has to reflect much upon a broad, difficult case in order to master +it; but when in the solitude of his study he is drawn, by the +conflicts and wrongs he has witnessed during the day, to think on +the purposes and destiny of human life, he more than +reflects—he is lifted into a contemplative mood. Archbishop +Trench, in his valuable volume on the “Study of Words,” +opens a paragraph with this sentence: “Let us now proceed to +<em>contemplate</em> some of the attestations for God’s +truth, and some of the playings into the hands of the devil’s +falsehood, which may be found to lurk in words.” Here we +suggest that the proper word were <em>consider</em>; for there is +activity, and a progressive activity, in the mental operation on +which he enters, which disqualifies the verb +<em>contemplate</em>.</p> +<p>Habitual showiness in language, as in dress and manners, denotes +lack of discipline or lack of refinement. Our American +magniloquence—the tendency to which is getting more and more +subdued—comes partly from national youthfulness, partly from +license, that bastard of liberty, and partly from the geographical +and the present, and still more the prospective, political grandeur +of the country, which Coleridge somewhere says is to be +“England in glorious magnification.”</p> +<p>I AM FREE TO CONFESS. An irredeemable vulgarism.</p> +<p>IN THIS CONNECTION. Another.</p> +<p>INDEBTEDNESS. “The amount of my +<em>engagedness</em>” sounds as well and is as proper as +“the amount of my <em>indebtedness</em>.” We have +already <em>hard-heartedness</em>, <em>wickedness</em>, +<em>composedness</em>, and others. Nevertheless, this making of +nouns out of adjectives with the participial form is an irruption +over the boundaries of the parts of speech which should not be +encouraged.</p> +<p>Archbishop Whately, in a passage of his shortcoming comments on +Bacon’s “Essays,” uses <em>preparedness</em>. +Albeit that brevity is a cardinal virtue in writing, a +circumlocution would, we think, be better than a gawky word like +this, so unsteady on its long legs. In favor of +<em>indebtedness</em> over others of like coinage, this is to be +said—that it imports that which in one form or other comes +home to the bosom of all humanity.</p> +<p>INTELLECTS. That man’s intellectual power is not one and +indivisible, but consists of many separate, independent faculties, +is a momentous truth, revealed by the insight of Gall. One of the +results of this great discovery may at times underlie the plural +use of the important word <em>intellect</em> when applied to one +individual. If so, it were still indefensible. It has, we suspect, +a much less philosophic origin, and proceeds from the unsafe +practice of overcharging the verbal gun in order to make more noise +in the ear of the listener. The plural is correctly used when we +speak of two or more different men.</p> +<p>LEFT. “I left at ten o’clock.” This use of +<em>leave</em> as a neuter verb, however attractive from its +brevity, is not defensible. <em>To leave off</em> is the only +proper neuter form. “We left off at six, and left (the hall) +at a quarter past six.” The place should be inserted after +the second <em>left</em>. Even the first is essentially active, +some form of action being understood after <em>off</em>: we left +off <em>work</em> or <em>play</em>.</p> +<p>MIDST. “In our midst” is a common but incorrect +phrase.</p> +<p>OUR AUTHOR. A vulgarism, which, by its seeming convenience, gets +the countenance of critical writers. We say <em>seeming</em> +convenience; for in this seeming lies the vulgarity, the writer +expressing, unconsciously often, by the <em>our</em>, a feeling of +patronage. With his <em>our</em> he pats the author on the +back.</p> +<p>PERIODICAL is an adjective, and its use as a substantive is an +unwarrantable gain of brevity at the expense of grammar.</p> +<p>PROPOSE. Hardly any word that we have cited is so frequently +misused, and by so many good writers, as <em>propose</em>, when the +meaning is to design, to intend to propose. It should always be +followed by a personal accusative—I propose to you, to him, +to myself. In the preface to Hawthorne’s “Marble +Faun” occurs the following sentence; “The author +<em>proposed</em> to himself merely to write a fanciful story, +evolving a thoughtful moral, and did not <em>purpose</em> +attempting a portraiture of Italian manners and +character”—a sentence than which a fitter could not be +written to illustrate the proper use of <em>propose</em> and +<em>purpose</em>.</p> +<p>PREDICATED UPON. This abomination is paraded by persons who lose +no chance of uttering “dictionary words,” hit or miss; +and is sometimes heard from others from whom the educated world has +a right to look for more correctness.</p> +<p>RELIABLE. A counterfeit, which no stamping by good writers or +universality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the +family circle of honest English as a substitute for the robust +Saxon word whose place it would usurp—<em>trustworthy</em>. +<em>Reliable</em> is, however, good English when used to signify +that one is liable again. When you have lost a receipt, and cannot +otherwise prove that a bill rendered has been paid, you are +<em>re-liable</em> for the amount.</p> +<p>RELIGION. Even by scholars this word is often used with +looseness. In strictness it expresses exclusively our relation to +the Infinite, the <em>bond</em> between man and God. You will +sometimes read that he is the truly religious man who most +faithfully performs his duties of neighbor, father, son, husband, +citizen. However much a religious man may find himself strengthened +by his faith and inspirited for the performance of all his duties, +this strength is an indirect, and not a uniform or necessary, +effect of religious convictions. Some men who are sincere in such +convictions fail in these duties conspicuously; while, on the other +hand, they are performed, at times, with more than common fidelity +by men who do not carry within them any very lively religious +belief or impressions. “And now abideth faith, hope, and +charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” +Nor can the greatest do the work of the others any more than faith +that of hope or charity. Each one of “these three” is +different from and independent of the other, however each one be +aided by cooperation from the others. The deep, unique feeling +which lifts up and binds the creature to the Creator is +elementarily one in the human mind, and the word used to denote it +should be kept solely for this high office, and not weakened or +perverted by other uses. Worcester quotes from Dr. Watts the +following sound definition: “In a proper sense, +<em>virtue</em> signifies duty toward men, and <em>religion</em> +duty to God.”</p> +<p>SALOON. That eminent pioneer of American sculpture, brilliant +talker, and accomplished gentleman, the lamented Horatio Greenough, +was indignantly eloquent against the American abuse of this +graceful importation from France, applied as it is in the United +States to public billiard-rooms, oyster-cellars and grog-shops.</p> +<p>SUBJECT-MATTER. A tautological humpback.</p> +<p>TO VENTILATE, applied to a subject or person. The scholar who +should use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right +thumb taken off.</p> +<p>We have here noted a score of the errors prevalent in written +and spoken speech—some of them perversions or corruptions, +countenanced even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that +weaken and disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, +downright vulgarisms—that is, phrases that come from below, +and are thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about +them. These last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. +Against such abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from +the convenience of some of them, they get so incorporated into +daily speech as not to be readily distinguishable from their +healthy neighbors, clinging for generations to tongues and pens. Of +this tenacity there is a notable exemplification in a passage of +Boswell, written nearly a hundred years ago. Dr. Johnson found +fault with Boswell for using the phrase to <em>make</em> money: +“Don’t you see the impropriety of it? To <em>make</em> +money is to <em>coin</em> it: you should say <em>get</em> +money.” Johnson, adds Boswell, “was jealous of +infractions upon the genuine English language, and prompt to +repress colloquial barbarisms; such as <em>pledging</em> myself, +for <em>undertaking</em>; <em>line</em> for <em>department</em> or +<em>branch</em>, as the <em>civil line</em>, the <em>banking +line</em>. He was particularly indignant against the almost +universal use of the word <em>idea</em> in the sense of +<em>notion</em> or <em>opinion</em>, when it is clear that +<em>idea</em> can only signify something of which an image can be +formed in the mind. We may have an <em>idea</em> or <em>image</em> +of a mountain, a tree, a building, but we surely cannot have an +idea or image of an <em>argument</em> or <em>proposition</em>. Yet +we hear the sages of the law ‘delivering their <em>ideas</em> +upon the question under consideration;’ and the first +speakers of Parliament ‘entirely coinciding in the +<em>idea</em> which has been ably stated by an honorable +member.’”</p> +<p>Whether or not the word <em>idea</em> may be properly used in a +deeper or grander sense than that stated by Dr. Johnson, there is +no doubt that he justly condemned its use in the cases cited by +him, and in similar ones. All the four phrases <em>make money</em>, +<em>pledge</em>, <em>line</em>, and <em>idea</em>, whereupon +sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer, are still +at large, and, if it be not a bull to say so, more at large to-day +than in the last century, since the area of their currency has been +extended to America, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.</p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay8" id="Essay8">VIII.</a></h2> +<h2>A National Drama.<a id="footnotetag8" name= +"footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a></h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<p>We are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows, +processions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more +imitative than our British cousins, that, without limiting its +appeals to the mimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory +of a Simian descent for man might find support in the features of +our general life. To complete the large compound of qualities that +are required, in order that an emulous people give birth to a +drama, one is yet wanting; but that one is not merely the most +important of all, but is the one which lifts the others into +dramatic importance. Are we poetical? Ask any number of continental +Europeans, whether the English are a poetical people. A loud, +unanimous, derisive <em>no</em> would be the answer. And yet, there +is Shakespeare! and around him, back to Chaucer and forward to +Tennyson, a band of such poets, that this prosaic nation has the +richest poetic literature in Christendom. Especially in this matter +are appearances delusive, and hasty inferences liable to be +illogical. From the prosers that one hears in pulpits, +legislatures, lecture-rooms, at morning calls and well-appointed +dinner-tables in Anglo-America, let no man infer against our poetic +endowment. Shakespeare, and Milton, and Burns, and Wordsworth, are +of our stock; and what we have already done in poetry and the +plastic arts, while yet, as a nation, hardly out of +swaddling-clothes, is an earnest of a creative future. We are to +have a national literature and a national drama. What is a national +drama? Premising that as little in their depth as in their length +will our remarks be commensurate with the dimensions of this great +theme, we would say a few words.</p> +<p>A literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in +the heart of a people. Good books are the crystallization of +thoughts and feelings. To have a literature—that is, a body +of enduring books—implies vigor and depth. Such books are the +measure of the mental vitality in a people. Those peoples that have +the best books will be found to be at the top of the scale of +humanity; those that have none, at the bottom. Good books, once +brought forth, exhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment. +They educate while they delight many generations.</p> +<p>Good books are the best thoughts of the best men. They issue out +of deep hearts and strong heads; and where there are deep hearts +and strong heads such books are sure to come to life. The mind, +like the body, will reproduce itself: the mind, too, is +procreative, transmitting itself to a remote posterity.</p> +<p>The best books are the highest products of human effort. +Themselves the evidence of creative power, they kindle and nourish +power. Consider what a spring of life to European people have been +the books of the Hebrews. What so precious treasure has England as +Shakespeare?</p> +<p>To be good, books must be generic. They may be, in subject, in +tone, and in color, national; but in substance they must be so +universally human, that other cognate nations can imbibe and be +nourished by them. Not that, in their fashioning, this fitness for +foreign minds is to be a conscious aim; but to be thus attractive +and assimilative, is a proof of their breadth and depth—of +their high humanity.</p> +<p>The peoples who earliest reached the state of culture which is +needed to bring forth books, each standing by itself, each +necessarily sang and wrote merely of itself. Thus did the Hebrews +and the Greeks. But already the Romans went out of themselves, and +Virgil takes a Trojan for his hero. This appropriation of foreign +material shows that the aim of high books is, to ascend to the +sphere of ideas and feelings that are independent of time and +place. Thence, when, by multiplication of Christian nations our +mental world had become vastly enlarged, embracing in one bond of +culture, not only all modern civilized peoples, but also the three +great ancient ones, the poets—especially the dramatic, for +reasons that will be presently stated—looked abroad and afar +for the frame-work and corporeal stuff of their writings.</p> +<p>The most universal of all writers, ancient or modern, he who is +most generic in his thought, Shakespeare, embodied his transcendent +conceptions for the most part in foreign personages. Of +Shakespeare’s fourteen comedies, the scene of only one is +laid in England; and that one, “The Merry Wives of +Windsor”—the only one not written chiefly or largely in +verse—is a Shakespearean farce. Of the tragedies (except the +series of the ten historical ones) only two, “Lear” and +“Macbeth,” stand on British ground. Is +“Hamlet” on that score less English than +“Lear,” or “Othello” than +“Macbeth”? Does Italy count Juliet among her trophies, +or Desdemona?</p> +<p>Of Milton’s two dramas—-to confine myself here to +the dramatic domain—the tragedy (“Samson +Agonistes,”) like his epics, is Biblical; the comedy +(“Comus”) has its home in a sphere</p> +<div class="poem"> +<div class="stanza"> +<p>“Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot</p> +<p>Which men call earth.”</p> +</div> +</div> +<p>Of the numerous athletic corps of dramatists, contemporary with +Shakespeare and Milton, few have left works pithy enough and so +poetically complete as to withstand the wear of time and keep fresh +to each successive generation. But if you inspect the long list +from which Charles Lamb took his “Specimens,” you will +find few British names.</p> +<p>Casting our eyes on the dramatic efforts of the recent English +poetic celebrities, we perceive that Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley, +all abandoned, in every instance, native ground. The only dramatic +work of a great modern, the scene of which is laid within the +British limits, is “The Borderers,” of Wordsworth, +which, though having the poetic advantage of remoteness in +time—being thrown back to the reign of Henry III.—is, +in strictness, neither a drama nor a poem, Wordsworth’s +deficiency in dramatic gifts being so signal as to cause, by the +impotent struggle in an uncongenial element, a partial paralysis +even of his high poetic genius.</p> +<p>Glance now across the Channel. French poetic tragedy is in its +subjects almost exclusively ancient—Greek, Roman, and +Biblical. In the works of the great comic genius of France, +Molière, we have a salient exception to the practice of all +other eminent dramatists. The scene of his plays is Paris; the time +is the year in which each was written.</p> +<p>Let us look for the cause of this remarkable isolation.</p> +<p>Molière was the manager of a theatrical company in the +reign of Louis XIV., and he wrote, as he himself declares, to +please the king and amuse the Parisians. But deeper than this; +Molière was by nature a great satirist. I call him a +<em>great</em> satirist, because of the affluence of inward +substance that fed his satiric appetite—namely, a clear, +moral sensibility, distinguishing by instinct the true from the +false, rare intellectual nimbleness, homely common sense, shrewd +insight into men, a keen wit, with vivid perception of the comic +and absurd. For a satirist so variously endowed, the stage was the +best field, and for Molière especially, gifted as he was +with histrionic genius. The vices and abuses, the follies and +absurdities, the hypocrisies and superficialities of civilized +life, these were the game for his faculties. The interior of Paris +households he transferred to the stage with biting wit, doubling +the attractiveness of his pictures by comic hyperbole. His +portraits are caricatures, not because they exaggerate vices or +foibles, but because they so bloat out a single personage with one +vice or one folly as to make him a lop-sided deformity. Characters +he did not seek to draw, but he made a personage the medium of +incarnating a quality. Harpagon is not a miser; he is Avarice +speaking and doing. Alceste is not a person; he is Misanthropy +personified.</p> +<p>This fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the +caricature of relations and juxtapositions. With laughable +unscrupulousness Molière multiplies improbable blunders and +conjunctions. All verisimilitude is sacrificed to scenic vivacity. +Hence, the very highest of his comedies are farce-like; even +“Tartuffe” is so.</p> +<p>In Molière little dramatic growth goes on before the +spectator’s eye. His personages are not gradually built up by +successive touches, broad or fine; they do not evolve themselves +chiefly by collision with others; in the first act they come on the +stage unfolded. The action and plot advance rapidly, but not +through the unrolling of the persons represented. Hence, his most +important personages are prosaic and finite. They interest you more +as agents for the purpose in hand than as men and women. They are +subordinate rather to the action than creative of action.</p> +<p>Molière is a most thorough realist, and herein is his +strength. In him the comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire +gives pungency and body to the comic. He was primarily a satirist, +secondarily a poet. Such being his powers and his aims, helpful to +him, nay, needful, was a present Parisian actuality of story and +agents. A poetic comedy ought to be, and will necessarily be, a +chapter of very high life. Molière’s comedies, dealing +unctuously with vice and folly, are, philosophically speaking, low +life. His are comedies not of character and sentiment, but of +manners and morals, and therefore cannot be highly poetical; and +thence he felt no want of a remote ground, clean of all local +coloring and association, such as is essential to the dramatist +whose inspiration is poetical, and who therefore must reconcile the +ideal with the real, by which reconciliation only can be produced +the purest truth. That, notwithstanding they belong not to the +highest poetic sphere, his comedies continue to live and to be +enjoyed, this testifies of the breadth and truthfulness of his +humanity, the piercing insight of his rich mind, and his +superlative comic genius.</p> +<p>Of Alfieri’s twenty-two tragedies, three only are modern, +and of these three the scene of one is in Spain.</p> +<p>Of the nine or ten tragedies of the foremost German dramatic +poet, Schiller, three are German, “The Robbers,” +“Intrigue and Love,” and “Wallenstein.”</p> +<p>Goethe’s highest dramas, “Iphigenia,” +“Egmont,” “Torquato Tasso,” are all foreign +in clothing. “The Natural Daughter” has no local +habitation, no dependence on time or place. “Goetz von +Berlichingen,” written in Goethe’s earliest days of +authorship, is German and in prose, “Faust”—the +greatest poem of these latter times, and rivaling the greatest +poems of all time—“Faust” is not strictly a +drama: its wonderful successive scenes are not bound together by +dramatic necessity.</p> +<p>The drama of Spain, like the comedies of Molière, is an +exception to the rule we deduce from the practice of other +dramatists; but it is an exception which, like that of +Molière, confirms the rule. Unlike the ancient Greek and the +French tragic poets, unlike Schiller, Shakespeare, Goethe, Alfieri, +the Spanish dramatists do not aim at ideal humanity. The best of +them, Calderon, is so intensely Spanish and Romish, as to be, in +comparison with the breadth and universality of his eminent +compeers above named, almost provincial. His personages are not +large and deep enough to be representative. The manifold recesses +of great minds he does not unveil; he gets no deeper than the +semi-barbarous exaggerations of selfish, passionate love; of +revenge, honor, and jealousy. His characterization is weak. His +highest characters lack intellectual calibre, and are exhibited in +lyrical one-sidedness rather than dramatic many-sidedness. He is +mostly content with Spanish cavaliers of the seventeenth century, +ruled by the conventionalisms in manners, morals, and superstition, +which have already passed away even in Spain. He is a marvelously +fertile, skillful, poetic playwright.</p> +<p>Thus we perceive that, with poetic dramatists, the prevailing +practice is, to look abroad for fables. Moreover, in the cases +where these were drawn from the bosom of the poet’s own +people, he shuns the present, and hies as far back as he can into +the dark abysms of time, as Shakespeare does in Macbeth and Lear. +The Greek tragic poets, having no outward resource, took possession +of the fabulous era of Greece. The poetic dramatist seeks mostly a +double remoteness, that of place as well as that of time; and he +must have one or the other.</p> +<p>The law lying behind this phenomenon is transparent. The higher +poetry is, the more generic it is. Its universality is a chief +constituent of its excellence. The drama is the most generically +human, and, therefore, the highest of the great forms of poetry. +The epic deals with the material, the outward—humanity +concreted into events; the lyric with the inward, when that is so +individual and intense as to gush out in ode or song. The dramatic +is the union of the epic and lyric—the inward moulding the +outward, predominant over the outward while co-working with it. In +the dramatic, the action is more made by the personality; in the +epic, the personality is more merged in the strong, full stream of +events. The lyric is the utterance of one-sided, partial (however +deep and earnest) feeling, the which must be linked to other +feelings to give wholeness to the man and his actions. The dramatic +combines several lyrics with the epic. Out of humanity and human +action it extracts the essence. It presents men in their completest +form, in warm activity, impelled thereto by strongest feelings. +Hence, it must be condensed and compact, and must, for its highest +display, get rid of local coloring, personal associations, and all +prosaic circumscriptions. The poetic dramatist needs the highest +poetic freedom, and only through this can he attain to that breadth +and largeness whereof the superiority of his form admits, and which +are such in Shakespeare, that in his greatest plays the whole world +seems to be present as spectators and listeners.</p> +<p>Observe that the highest dramatic literatures belong to the two +freest peoples—the Greeks and the English. A people, +possessing already a large political freedom, must be capable of, +and must be in the act of, vigorous, rich development, through deep +inward passion and faculty, in order that its spirit shall issue in +the perennial flowers of the poetic drama. The dramatic especially +implies and demands variety and fullness and elevation of +<em>personality</em>; and this is only possible through freedom, +the attainment of which freedom implies on its side the innate +fertility of nature which results in fullness and elevation.</p> +<p>Now in the subjective elevation of the individual, and therewith +the unprecedented relative number of individuals thus elevated, +herein do we exceed all other peoples. By subjective elevation I +mean, liberation from the outward, downward pressure of dogmatic +prescription, of imperious custom, of blindfolded tradition, of +irresponsible authority. The despotic objectivity of +Asia—where religion is submissiveness, and manhood is crushed +by obedience—has been partially withstood in Europe. The +emancipation therefrom of the Indo-Germanic race is completed in +Anglo-America. Through this manifold emancipation we are to be, in +all the high departments of human achievement, preeminently +creative, because, while equipped with the best of the past, we are +at the same time preeminently subjective; and, therefore, high +literature will, with us, necessarily take the lyrical, and +especially the dramatic, form.</p> +<p>More than our European ancestors, we mold, each one of us, our +own destiny; we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and +elevate ourselves; we are more ready and more capable to withstand +the assaults of circumstance. Here is more thoroughly embodied the +true Christian principle, that out of himself is to come every +man’s redemption; that the favor and help of God are only to +be obtained through resolute self-help, and honest, earnest +struggle. In Christendom we stand alone as having above us neither +the objectivity of politics nor that of the church. The light of +the past we have, without its darkness. We carry little weight from +the exacting past. Hence, our unexampled freedom and ease of +movement which, wanting the old conventional ballast, to Europeans +seems lawless and reckless. Even among ourselves, many tremble for +our future, because they have little faith in humanity, and because +they cannot grasp the new, grand historic phenomenon of a people +possessing all the principles, practices, and trophies of +civilization without its paralyzing incumbrances.</p> +<p>But think not, because we are less passive to destiny, we are +rebellious against Deity; because we are boldly self-reliant, we +are, therefore, irreligiously defiant. The freer a people is, the +nearer it is to God. The more subjective it is, through acquired +self-rule, the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of +absolute truth and justice. For having thrown off the capricious +secondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, +under the steadfast, primary rule of God; for having broken the +force of human, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and +acknowledge the supremacy of flawless, divine law; for having +rejected the tyranny of man’s willfulness, we shall submit +the more fully to the beneficent power of principle.</p> +<p>Our birth, growth, and continued weal, depending on large, deep +principles—principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by +reason, and generously embracing the whole—our life must be +interpenetrated by principle, and thence our literature must +embrace the widest and most human wants and aspirations of man. And +thus, it will be our privilege and our glory to be then the most +national in our books when we are the most universal.</p> +<hr /> +<h2><a name="Essay9" id="Essay9">IX.</a></h2> +<h2>Usefulness of Art.</h2> +<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of +Contents</a></p> +<h4>ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE RHODE ISLAND ART +ASSOCIATION IN PROVIDENCE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1854.</h4> +<p><em>Gentlemen of the Rhode Island Art +Association:</em>—</p> +<p>We are met to inaugurate an Association whose aim and end shall +be the encouragement and culture of Art. A most high +end—among the highest that men can attempt; an end that never +can be entertained except by men of the best breed. There is no art +among savages, none among barbarians. Barbarism and art are +adversary terms. When men capable of civilization ascend into it, +art manifests itself an inevitable accompaniment, an indispensable +aid to human development. I will say further, that in a people the +capacity to be cultivated involves the capacity, nay, the necessity +of art. And still further, that those nations that have been or are +preeminent on the earth, are preeminent in art. Nay, more, that a +nation cannot attain to and maintain eminence without being +proficient in art; and that to abstract from a people its artists +were not merely to pluck the flowers from its branches; it were to +cut off its-deep roots.</p> +<p>Who is the artist?</p> +<p>He who embodies, in whatever mode,—so that they be visible +or audible, and thus find entrance to the mind,—conceptions +of the beautiful, is an artist. The test and characteristic of the +artistic nature are superior sensibility to the beautiful. Unite to +this the faculties and the will to give form to the impressions and +emotions that are the fruit of this susceptibility, and you have +the artist. Whether he shall embody his conception in written +verse, in marble, in stone, in sound, on the canvas, that will +depend on each one’s individual aptitudes. Generic, common, +indispensable to all is the superior sensibility to the beautiful. +In this lies the essence of the artist.</p> +<p>The beautiful and the perfect being, if not identical, in +closest consanguinity, the artist’s is an important, a great +function. The artist must receive into his mind, or engender in his +mind’s native richness, conceptions of what is most high, +most perfect, most beautiful in shape or sound, in thought or +feeling; and producing it before his fellow-men, appeal to their +sensibility to the beautiful, to their deepest sympathies, to their +capacity of being moved by the grandest and the noblest there is in +man and nature. Truly, a mighty part is that of the artist.</p> +<p>Artists are the educators of humanity. Tutors and professors +instruct princes and kings, but poets (and all genuine artists are +poets) educate nations. Take from Greece Homer and Phidias, and +Sophocles and Scopas, and the planner of the Parthenon, and you +efface Greece from history. Wanting them, she would not have been +the great Greece that we know; she would not have had the vigor of +sap, the nervous vitality, to have continued to live in a remote +posterity, immortal in the culture, the memories, and the gratitude +of men.</p> +<p>So great, so far-stretching, so undying is the power of this +exalted class of men, that it were hardly too much to say that had +Homer and Phidias never lived, we should not be here today. If this +be deemed extravagant, with confidence I affirm that but for the +existence of the greatest artist the world has ever known,—of +him who may be called the chief educator of England,—but for +Shakespeare, we assuredly should not be here to-day doing the good +work we are doing.</p> +<p>There are probably some of this company who, like myself, having +had the good fortune to be in London at the time of the +world’s fair, stood under that magnificent, transparent roof, +trod that immense area whereon fifty thousand people moved at ease. +It was a privilege,—the memory of which will last a +life-time, to have been admitted into that gigantic temple of +industry, there to behold in unimaginable profusion and variety the +product of man’s labor, intellect, and genius, gathered from +the four corners of the earth into one vast, gorgeous pile,—a +spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor, and from its +moral significance absolutely sublime.</p> +<p>On entering by the chief portal into the +transept,—covering in the huge oaks of Hyde Park,—the +American, after wondering for a moment in the glare of the first +aspect, will, with the eagerness and perhaps the vanity of his +nation,—have hastened through the compartments of France, +Belgium, Germany, gorgeous with color, glistening with gold. He +will have hastened, hard as it was to hurry through such a show, in +order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace where a +broad area had been allotted to the United States,—Jonathan, +as is his wont, having helped himself largely. Great was the +American’s disappointment, cutting was the rebuke to his +vanity; his country made no <em>show</em> at all. The samples of +her industry were not outwardly brilliant. Their excellence lay in +their inward power, in their wide usefulness. They were not +ornaments and luxuries for the dwellings of the few, they were +inventions that diffuse comforts and blessings among the +many,—labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers. By the +thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated, as it was +acknowledged in the final awards of the judges. And even in this +high department where we are so eminent, owing to distance and +misunderstandings, we were not adequately represented. But even if +we had been, the European would have said, “This has a high +value and interest; but still I find not here enough to justify the +expectations entertained by this people, and by many in Europe, of +the future greatness of the American Republic. These things, +significant as they are, are yet not an alphabet that can be so +compounded as to write the richest page of man’s history. In +this present display I find not prefigured that splendid future the +Americans are fond of predicting for themselves.” And the +American, acknowledging the force of the comment, would have turned +away mortified, humbled. But he was saved any such humiliation. In +the midst of that area, under that beautiful flag, day after day, +week after week, month after month, from morn till night, go when +he would, he beheld there a circle ever full, its vacancies +supplied as soon as they were made, a circle silent with +admiration, hushed by emotion, gazing at a master-piece of American +art, the Greek Slave of Powers. And from that contemplation +hundreds of thousands of Europeans carried away an impression of +American capacity, a conviction that truly a great page is to be +written by the young republic in the book of history,—a sense +of American power which they could have gotten from no other +source.</p> +<p>Our Association, gentlemen, owes its origin to the wants of +industry. The moving power which has been strongest in bringing so +many of us together to found an institution for the encouragement +of art in Rhode Island, is the desire hereby more thoroughly to +inweave the beautiful into cotton and woolen fabrics, into calicoes +and delaines; to melt the beautiful into iron and brass, and +copper, as well as into silver and gold; so that our manufacturers +and artisans may hold their own against the competition of England +and France and Germany, whereof in the two latter countries +especially, schools of design have long existed, and high artists +find their account in furnishing the beautiful to +manufacturers.</p> +<p>“A low origin this for such a society, and the fruits will +be without flavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered,” +will say some travelled dilettante, who, with book in hand, has +looked by rote on the wonders of the Louvre and the Vatican; but +the Creator of the universe teaches a different lesson from this +observer. Not the rare lightning merely, but the daily sunlight, +too; not merely the distant star-studded canopy of the earth, but +also our near earth itself, has He made beautiful. He surrounds us +with beauty; He envelops us in beauty. Beauty is spread out on the +familiar grass, glows in the daily flower, glistens in the dew, +waves in the commonest leafy branch. All about us, in infinite +variety, beauty is lavished by God in sights and sounds, and odors. +Now, in using the countless and multifarious substances that are +put within our reach, to be by our ingenuity and contrivance +wrought into materials for our protection and comfort, and +pleasure, it becomes us to—it is part of his design that we +shall—follow the divine example, so that in all our +handiwork, as in his, there shall be beauty, so much as the nature +of each product is susceptible of. That it is the final purpose of +Providence that our whole life, inward and outward, shall be +beautiful, and be steeped in beauty, we have evidence, in the +yearnings of the best natures for the perfect, in the delight we +take in the most resplendent objects of art and nature, in the +ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful deed.</p> +<p>By culture we can so create and multiply beauty, that all our +surroundings shall be beautiful.</p> +<p>Can you not imagine a city of the size of this, or vastly +larger, the structure of whose streets and buildings shall be made +under the control of the best architectural ideas, being of various +stones and marbles, and various in style and color, so that each +and every one shall be either light, or graceful, or simple, or +ornate, or solid, or grand, according to its purpose, and the +conception of the builder; and in the midst and on the borders of +the city, squares, and parks, planted with trees and flowers and +freshened by streams and fountains. And when you recall the +agreeable, the elevating sensation you have experienced in front of +a perfect piece of architecture (still so rare), will you not +readily concede that where every edifice should be beautiful, and +you never walked or drove out but through streets of palaces and +artistic parks, the effect on the whole population of this +ever-present beauty and grandeur, would be to refine, to expand, to +elevate. When we look at the architectural improvements made within +a generation, in London, in Paris, in New York, we may, without +being Utopians, hope for this transformation. But the full +consummation of such a hope can only be brought about in unison +with improvements in all the conditions and relations of life, and +the diffusion of such improvements among the masses.</p> +<p>It is to further-such diffusion that this Association has been +founded. Our purpose is to meet the growing demand for beauty in +all things; to bring into closer cooperation the artisan and the +artist; to make universally visible and active the harmony,—I +almost might say the identity,—there is between the useful +and the beautiful.</p> +<p>Gentlemen, ever in the heart of the practical, in the very core +of the useful, there is enclosed a seed of beauty; and upon the +fructification, growth, and expansion of that seed +depends,—aye, absolutely depends,—the development of +the practical. But for the expansion of that seed, we should have +neither the plough nor the printing-press, neither shoes nor the +steam engine. To that we owe silver forks as well as the electric +telegraph. In no province of work or human endeavor is improvement +made, is improvement possible, but by the action of that noble +faculty through which we are uplifted when standing before a +masterpiece of Raphael. This ceaseless seeking for a better, this +unresting impulse towards the perfect, has brought the English race +through a thousand years of gradual upward movement, from the +narrow heptarchy, with its rude simplicity of life, up to this wide +cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of +life; and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our +present as that is to the times of Alfred.</p> +<p>In the works of the Almighty this principle is so alive that +they are radiant with beauty; and the degree of the radiance of +each is often the measure of its usefulness. How beautiful is a +field of golden wheat—whereby our bodies live—and the +more beautiful the closer it stands and the fuller are its heads. +The oak and the pine owe their majestic beauty to that which is the +index of their usefulness, the solid magnitude of their trunks. The +proportions which give the horse his highest symmetry of form, give +him his fleetness and endurance and strength. And thus, too, with +man,—his works, when best, sparkle most with this fire of the +beautiful. We profit by history in proportion as it registers +beautiful sayings and beautiful doings. We profit one another in +everyday life in proportion as our acts, the minor as well as the +greater, are vitalized by this divine essence of beauty. To the +speeches of Webster, even to the most technical, this essence gives +their completeness and their grandeur of proportion; while it is +this which illuminates with undying splendor the creations of +Allston. Thus, gentlemen, the aim of our Association is most noble +and useful, drawing its nobleness from its high usefulness. May it +so prosper, that a generation hence, thousands and tens of +thousands shall look back to this the day of its inauguration with +praise and thankfulness.</p> +<hr class="full" /> +<h3>Footnotes</h3> +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<ol> +<li><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a>Wordsworth. <a href= +"#footnotetag1">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a>Keats. <a href= +"#footnotetag2">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a>See <a href= +"#Essay1">preceding Essay</a>. <a href= +"#footnotetag3">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a>Wordsworth. <a href= +"#footnotetag4">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a>Putnam’s Magazine, +1868. <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a>Trissotin, Vadius, and +Philaminte, are personages in Molière’s comedy of +<em>Les Femmes Savantes</em> (The Blue-Stockings). <a href= +"#footnotetag6">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a>From Lippincott’s +Magazine, 1870. <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a></li> +<li><a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a>From <em>Putnam’s +Monthly</em>, 1857. <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a></li> +</ol> +</blockquote> +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays Æsthetical, by George Calvert + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS ÆSTHETICAL *** + +***** This file should be named 12896-h.htm or 12896-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/8/9/12896/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +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: Essays AEsthetical + +Author: George Calvert + +Release Date: July 12, 2004 [EBook #12896] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS AESTHETICAL *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +ESSAYS AESTHETICAL + +by + +GEORGE H. CALVERT + + +1875 + + + + + CONTENTS. + + I. THE BEAUTIFUL + + II. WHAT IS POETRY? + + III. STYLE + + IV. DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS + + V. SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC + + VI. THOMAS CARLYLE + + VII. ERRATA + + VIII. NATIONAL DRAMA + + IX. USEFULNESS OF ART + + + + +ESSAYS AESTHETICAL. + + + + +I. + +THE BEAUTIFUL. + + +The Beautiful is one of the immortal themes. It cannot die; it grows +not old. On the same day with the sun was beauty born, and its life +runs parallel with the path of that great beautifier. As a subject for +exposition, it is at once easy and difficult: easy, from the affluence +of its resources; difficult, from the exactions which its own spirit +makes in the use of them. + +Beauty--what is it? To answer this question were to solve more than +one problem. Shall we attempt what has been so often attempted and +never fully achieved? Such attempts are profitable. What though we +reach not the very heart of the mystery, we may get near enough to +hearken to the throb of its power, and our minds will be nerved by the +approximation. + +To him who has the gift to feel its presence, nature teems with +beauty. Whithersoever the senses reach, whenever emotion kindles, +wherever the mind seeks food for its finer appetites, there is beauty. +It expects us at the dawn; it is about us, "an hourly neighbor," +through the day; at night it looks down on us from star-peopled +immensities. Glittering on green lawns, glowing in sunsets, flashing +through storm-clouds, gilding our wakeful hours, irradiating sleep, it +is ever around, within us, eager to sweeten our labors, to purify our +thoughts. Nature is a vast treasure-house of beauty, whereof the key +is in the human heart. + +But many are the hearts that have never opened far enough to disclose +the precious key enfolded in their depths. Whole peoples are at this +moment ignorant that they live amid such wealth. As with them now, so +in the remote primitive times of our own race, before history was, +nature was almost speechless to man. The earth was a waste, or but a +wide hunting ground or pasturage; and human life a round of petty +animal circles, scarcely sweeping beyond the field of the senses; +until there gradually grew up the big-eyed Greek and the deep-souled +Hebrew. Then, through creative thought,--that is, thought quickened +and exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful,--one little corner +of Europe became radiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens +of Parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their +eyes--opened from long sleep by inward stirring--were become as +mirrors, and gave back the light of nature: + + "Auxiliar light + Came from their minds, which on the setting sun + Bestowed new splendor."[1] + + [1] Wordsworth. + +And man, heated by the throbs of his swelling heart, made gods after +his own image,--forms of such life and power and harmony that the +fragments of them, spared by time, are still guarded as faultless +models of manhood. And the vales and groves and streams were peopled +with beauteous shapes. And the high places were crowned with temples +which, in their majestic purity, look as though they had been posited +there from above by heavenly hands. And by the teemful might of +sculptors and painters and poets the dim past was made resurgent and +present in glorious transfiguration. And the moral law was grasped at +by far-reaching philosophies. In this affluence of genial activity so +much truth was embodied in so much beauty, that by the products of the +Greek mind even the newer, the deeper, the wiser Christian spirit is +still instructed, still exalted. + +In Asia, too, a chosen people early made a revelation of the +beautiful. The Hebrews were introspective. At once ardent and +thoughtful, passionate and spiritual, their vigorous natures were +charged with fiery materials for inward conflicts. Out of the secret +chambers of troubled souls their poets and prophets sent forth cries +of despair and of exultation, of expostulation and self-reproach, that +ever find an echo in the conscience-smitten, sorrow-laden bosom of +man. The power and wisdom of God they saw as no other ancient people +had seen them. In the grandeurs and wonders of creation they could +behold the being and the might and the goodness of the Creator. The +strong, rich hearts of their seers yearned for a diviner life, in the +deep, true consciousness they felt that there can be peace and joy to +man only through reconcilement with God. And feeling their own +unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they +uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and +disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that +make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic +wail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense, +their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful +plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests +do the billows of a black, tempestuous sea. + +Save these two, no other nations of antiquity, except the Hindoos, +seem to have had more than a superficial susceptibility to the +beautiful. The Romans learnt the arts from the Greeks, whom they +imitated, at a wide distance, in poetry as well as in sculpture and +architecture. The remnants of art found in the valley of the Nile +prove the Egyptians to have had the germ without the vitality to +unfold it. In the literature of the Hindoos there are currents of pure +poetry and of biblical depth. In passing down from ancient to modern +times the Persians and the Arabians light the long way with +scintillations from the beautiful. + +The ugly semi-barbarian darkness of the Middle Ages in Europe was +first broken by the light that shone from the spires of Gothic +cathedrals in the eleventh century. About the twelfth century the +German mind was further illuminated by that mysterious, visionary, +titanic, Teutonic epic, the Niebelungen Lied; and a little later +appeared the troubadours in the south of Europe and the minnesingers +(love-singers) in Germany. Next came Dante and Giotto in Italy, then +Chaucer in England; so that by the end of the fourteenth century, +poetry and the arts, the offspring of the beautiful,--and who can have +no other parentage,--had established themselves in the modern European +mind, and have since, with varying vigor of life, upheld themselves +among Christian nations. To these they are now confined. In the most +advanced of Mahometan and heathen peoples sensibility to beauty is +hardly awakened, and among savages it seems scarcely to exist, so +deeply is it dormant. + +Thus to indicate when and by whom the beautiful has been recognized +will further us in the endeavor to learn wherein consists that which, +enriching the world of man so widely and plenteously, is deeply +enjoyed by so few. + +Were the beautiful, like size and shape and strength and nimbleness, +cognizable by intellectual perception, even the Hottentot would get to +know something of it in the forest, along with the grosser qualities +of trees and valleys. Were it liable to be seized by the discursive +and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or +general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the +Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have +been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is +_felt_, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its +presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous +sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding. +When we exclaim, How beautiful! there is always emotion, and +delightful, expansive, purifying emotion. Whence this mysterious +cleansing thrill? Thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes, +ever springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all +things have their being. + +The beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot +demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it. +Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward +eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus +is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown +through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this +does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, +carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of +the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not +until then is its individuality and are its various physical +qualities, size, shape, etc., apprehended. And now the intellect +itself becomes a conductor, transmitting still deeper inward to the +seat of emotion the image of the object; and not until it reaches that +depth is its beauty recognized. + +In all her structures and arrangements Nature is definite, precise, +and economical. In subdivision of labor she is minute and absolute, +providing for every duty its special exclusive agent. In the mind +there is as severe a sundering of functions as in the body, and the +intellect can no more encroach upon or act for the mental +sensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the office of the +heart, or the liver that of the lungs. True, no ripe results in the +higher provinces of human life can be without intimate alliance +between the mental sensibilities and the intellect; nevertheless they +are in essence as distinct from one another as are the solar heat and +the moisture of the earth, without whose constant cooeperation no grain +or fruit or flower can sprout or ripen. + +We live not merely in a world of material facts, and of objects and +things cognizable through the senses, but also in a spiritual world. +We live not only in presence of visible creation, but in presence of +the invisible Creator. With the creation we are in contact through the +intellect. Knowledge of all objects and the qualities of objects that +are within reach of the senses; distance and other material relations; +the bonds of cause and effect and of analogy, that bind all created +things in countless multiplicity of subtle relations,--these the +intellect gathers in its grasp. But with the Creator we are in +communication only through feeling. The presence, the existence of God +cannot by pure intellect be demonstrated: it must be felt in order to +be proved. The mass of objects and relations presented to us in nature +the intellect can learn, count, and arrange; but the life that +incessantly permeates the whole and every part, the spirit that looks +out from every object and every fact,--of the range and pitch of whose +power we have a faint token in the tornado and the earthquake,--of +this divine essence we should not have even an intimation through the +intellect alone. Not chemists, astronomers, mechanicians have uttered +the deepest thoughts about God, but prophets and poets: not Davys, but +Coleridges; not Herschels, but Wordsworths. It is a common belief, +indeed, that men addicted to the exact sciences are rather wanting +than otherwise in power to appreciate the invisible, a belief +pungently embodied by Wordsworth in the lines,-- + + "Physician art thou? one all eyes, + Philosopher! a fingering slave, + One that would peep and botanize + Upon his mother's grave?" + + +This is as much under the mark as is above it that saying of some one, +"An undevout astronomer is mad." A man's being endowed with rare +mathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout. +His gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual; and +nature being seldom profuse upon one individual,--as she was upon +Pascal and Newton,--the presumption as to an astronomer, of whom we +know nothing, would be that what may be termed his emotive +appreciation of stars and stellar systems is probably not so full as +his intellectual. And no amount or quality of intellectual insight can +supply or compensate a want of sensibility. No matter how many +hundreds of millions of miles he may pierce into space, he has still +to do with the visible and calculable. But religion is the putting of +the human mind in relation with the invisible, the incalculable. A man +gets no nearer to God through a telescope than through a microscope, +and no nearer through either than through the naked eye. Who cannot +recognize the divine spirit in the hourly phenomena of nature and of +his own mind will not be helped by the differential calculus, or any +magnitude or arrangement of telescopic lenses. + +That we ever live not only in a material, but also in a spiritual +world, can be easily apprehended without at all entangling ourselves +in the web-work of metaphysics. The least of our acts or motions, is +it not always preceded by a thought, a volition, a something +intangible, invisible? All that we voluntarily do is, must be, an +offspring of mind. The waving of the hand is never a simple, it is a +compound process: mind and body, spirit and matter, concur in it. The +visible, corporeal movement is but the outward expression of an +inward, incorporeal movement. And so in all our acts and motions, from +birth till death; they issue out of the invisible within us; they are +feelings actualized, thoughts embodied. The embodiment is perishable, +the source of it imperishable. It is not a recondite, super-subtle, +metaphysical or psychological postulate, it is a palpable, and may be +and ought to be a familiar fact, that each one of us is ruled by the +eternal and invisible within us. + +Now, just as our words and deeds and movements stand to our mind, as +being the utterance and embodiment of that, so do we stand towards +Deity, being the utterance and embodiment of the divine thought and +will. As all our doings are but exhibitions of our minds, so ourselves +are manifestations of God. Through all things shines the eternal soul. +The more perfect the embodiment, the more translucent is the soul; and +when this is most transparent, making the body luminous with the +fullness of its presence, there is beauty, which may be said to be the +most intense and refined incarnation and exhibition of the divine +spirit. + +Behind and within every form of being is immanent the creative power; +and thence, in proportion as this power discloses itself, is object, +act, or emotion beautiful. Thus is beauty always spiritual, a +revelation more or less clear of the creative spirit. Hence our +emotion in presence of the truly beautiful, which calms and exalts us. +Hence evil never is, cannot be, beautiful: the bad is, must be, ugly. +Evil consists in the deficiency of the divine creative spirit, whose +fullness gives, is, beauty. Evil is imperfection, unripeness, +shapelessness, weakness in, or opposition to, the creative spirit. +Evil is life that is unhealthy, short-coming. Wherever there is full, +unperverted life, there is, there must be, beauty. The beautiful +blossoms on every stem of unpoisoned power. The sap of sound life ever +molds itself into forms of beauty. + +But however rich the exhibition of the divine soul, however glowing +with perfection the form, however noble the act and pure the feeling, +the richness, the perfection, the nobleness, the purity will be lost +on us, unless within us there be sympathy with the spirit whence they +flow. Only by spirit can spirit be greeted. + +Thus beauty only becomes visible--I might say only becomes actual--by +the fire kindled through the meeting of a perfection out of us and an +inward appetite therefor. And it is the flaming of this fire, thus +kindled, that lights up to us the whole world wherein we live, the +inward and the outward. This fire unlighted, and on the face of nature +there is darkness, in our own minds there is darkness. For though all +nature teems with the essence and the outward mold of beauty, to the +unkindled mind beauty is no more present then was Banquo's ghost to +the guests of Macbeth. Macbeth's individual conscience made him see +the ghost; nay, by a creative potency summoned it: and so is beauty +created there where, without what I may call the aesthetic conscience, +it no more exists than do the glories of Titian and Claude to the +affectionate spaniel who follows his master into a picture-gallery. To +the quadruped, by the organic limitation of his nature, dead forever +is this painted life. By the organic boundlessness of _his_ nature, +man can grasp the life of creation in its highest, its finest, its +grandest manifestations; and from these beauty is indivisible. +Wherever the divine energy is most subtle and expressive, there glows +ever, in its celestial freshness, the beautiful. + +Beauty is the happiest marriage between the invisible and the visible. +It may be termed the joyfullest look of God. Blessed is he who can +watch and reflect this radiant look. The faculties of such a one +become fortified by creative influx. Through the exquisite shock of +the beautiful he reaps an accession of mental magnetism. Thus through +the beautiful we commune the most directly with the divine; and, other +things being equal, to the degree that men respond to, are thrilled +by, this vivacity of divine presence, as announced by the beautiful, +to that degree are they elevated in the scale of being. + +Nature being minute and absolute in subdivision of function, the law +of severalty and independence--than which there is no law more +important and instructive--pervades creation. Thence the intellectual, +the religious, the true, the good, cannot interchange functions. A man +may be sincerely religious and do little for others, as is seen in +anchorites, and in many one-sided people, of Christian as well as of +Mahometan parentage, who are not anchorites. A man may be immensely +intellectual and not value truth. But neither a man's intellect, nor +his preference for truth, nor his benevolent nor his religious +sentiment, can yield its best fruit without the sunshine of the +beautiful. Sensibility to the beautiful--itself, like the others, an +independent inward power--stands to each one of them in a relation +different from that which they hold one to the other. The above and +other faculties _indirectly_ aid one the other, and to the complete +man their united action is needed; but feeling for the beautiful +_directly_ aids each one, aids by stimulating it, by expanding, by +purifying. + +To the action of every other faculty this one gives vividness and +grace. It indues each with privilege of insight into the _soul_ of the +object which it is its special office to master. By help of +sensibility to the beautiful we have inklings of the essence of +things, we sympathize with the inward life that molds the outward +form. Hence men highly gifted with this sensibility become creative, +in whatever province of work they strive; and no man in any province +is truly creative except through the subtle energy imparted to him by +this sensibility, this competence to feel the invisible in the +visible. + +The idea is the invisible; the embodiment thereof is the visible. +Hence the beautiful is always ideal; that is, it enfolds, embraces, +represents, with more or less success, the idea out of which springs +the object it illuminates: it brilliantly enrobes a germinal +essence. It is thus a sparkling emanation out of the Infinite, and it +leads us thither whence it has come. + +Sensibility to the beautiful is thus the light of the whole mind, +illuminating its labors. Without it we work in the dark, and therefore +feebly, defectively. Infer thence the immensity of its function. +Hereby it becomes the chief educator of men and of man; and where its +teaching has not been conspicuous, there no elevation has been +reached. The Greeks and the Hebrews would not have been so deeply, so +greatly, so feelingly known to us, would not have been the pioneers +and inspirers of European civilization, would not have lived on +through thousands of years in the minds of the highest men, had they +not, along with their other rare endowments, possessed, in superior, +in unique quality, this priceless gift of sensibility to the +beautiful. Through this gift Shakespeare is the foremost man of +England, and through it has done more than any other man to educate +and elevate England. Because the Italians of the fourteenth and +fifteenth centuries were so rich in this gift, therefore it is that +Italy is still a shrine to which the civilized world makes annual +pilgrimage. + +The supreme function of this sensibility is to develop, to +educate, to chasten the highest faculties, our vast discourse of +reason, our unselfish aspiration, our deep instinct of truth, our +capacious love. To educate these is its cardinal duty, and lacking +this they remain uneducated. But its beneficent influence is felt +likewise in the less elevated of our efforts. The man who makes shoes, +as well as he who makes laws and he who makes poems; the builder of +houses, with the builder of theologies or cosmogonies; the engineer, +as well as the artist, all work under the rays of this illuminator; +and, other things being equal, he excels all others on whose work +those rays shine with the most sustained and penetrative force. + + "'T is the eternal law, + That first in beauty shall be first in might."[2] + + [2] Keats. + +In short, whatever the mental gift, in order to get from that gift its +best fruit, the possessor must be incited, upborne, enlightened, +inspired by the ideal, which burns as a transfiguring flame in his +mind, and throws thence its joyful light with every blow of his hand. + +All good work is more or less creative, that is, a co-working with the +eternal mind; and work is good and productive in proportion to +the intensity of this cooeperation. Why is it that we so prize a +fragment of Phidias, a few lines traced by Raphael? Because the minds +of those workers were, more than the minds of most others, in sympathy +with the Infinite mind. While at work their hands were more distinctly +guided by the Almighty hand; they felt and embodied more of the spirit +which makes, which is, life. + +Here is a frame of canvas, a block of marble, a pile of stones, a +vocabulary. Of the canvas you make a screen, you build a dwelling with +the pile of stones, chisel a door-sill out of the block, with the +vocabulary you write an essay. And in each case you work well and +creatively, if your work be in harmony with God's laws, if your screen +be light, sightly, and protective, your dwelling healthful and +commodious, your sill lie solid and square, your essay be judicious +and sound. But if on the canvas you have a Christ's head by Leonardo, +out of the pile of stones a Strasburg Cathedral, from the block of +marble a Venus of Milo, with the vocabulary a tragedy of Hamlet, you +have works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the +vivid, impressive, instructive, never-wearying delight of the +works of nature. The men who wrought them were strong to do so through +the vigor of their sympathy with what Plato calls the formative +principle of the universe, they thereby becoming themselves creators, +that is, poets. And we sacredly guard their creations among our best +treasures of human gift, because they are so spiritually alive that +whenever we put ourselves in relation with them they animate us, they +spiritualize our thoughts; and this they do because the minds whence +they issued were radiant centers of ideal power, that is, power to +conceive the beautiful. + +But what is ideal power? the reader may ask. He might likewise ask, +What is moral power? And unless he has in his own mind some faculty of +moral estimation, no answer will help him. That which comes to us +through feeling cannot be intellectually defined, can only be +appreciated through feeling. By describing its effects and +accompaniments we approach to a knowledge of what it is. By means of a +foot-rule you can make clear to every member of a crowd what is the +height of the Apollo Belvedere, and the exact length of the statue's +face; and each one can for himself verify the accuracy of your +statement. But not with a like distinctness and vivacity of assent can +you get the crowd to go along with you as to the Apollo's beauty. +Acknowledgment of the beautiful in art implies a degree of culture and +a native susceptibility not to be found in every accidental gathering. +Full and sincere assent to your declaration that the statue is very +beautiful presupposes a high ideal in the mind; that is, a lofty +pre-attained idea of what is manly beauty. But after all, the want of +unanimity of assent to a moral or an aesthetic position, does it not +come from the difficulty and subtlety of the idea to be pre-attained? +Assent even to an intellectual proposition, does not it too presuppose +an ideal in the mind of him who assents? When you show by visible +measurement that the statue is eight feet high, whoever understands +what you mean must have already in his head the idea of what one foot +is; that is, he must carry within him an ideal. No tittle of +information, not the slightest accession of knowledge, will you derive +from the measurement even of the area of a hall or of the cubic +contents of a block, unless you bring with you in your mind an idea, +an ideal, of what is a superficial or a cubic square foot. + +Attempts to give a notion of what the beautiful is, by +enumerating some of the physical conditions that are found to be +present in artistic figures or persons distinguished for beauty, or +attempts to produce what shall be beautiful, by complying with these +conditions, come no nearer to the aim than do compounded mineral +waters to the briskness and flavor of a fresh draught from the +original spring. In the analysis there may be no flaw; the ingredients +are chemically identical in quality and proportion; but the nameless, +inimitable, inscrutable life is wanting: the mixing has been done by a +mechanical, not by a creative hand. Haydon says, "The curve of the +circle is excess, the straight line is deficiency, the ellipsis is the +degree between, and that curve, added to or united with proportion, +regulates the form and features of a perfect woman." Mr. D.R. Hay, in +a series of books, professes to have discovered the principles of +beauty in the law of harmonic ratio, without, however, "pretending," +as he modestly and wisely declares, "to give rules for that kind of +beauty which genius alone can produce in high art." The discovery of +Mr. Hay is curious and fascinating, and, like the announcement of +Haydon, may give practical hints to artists and others. But no +intellectual process or ingenuity can make up for the absence of +emotional warmth and refined selection. "Beauty, the foe of excess and +vacuity, blooms, like genius, in the equilibrium of all the forces," +says Jean Paul. "Beauty," says Hemsterhuis, "is the product of the +greatest number of ideas in the shortest time," which is like the +Italian definition, _il piu nel uno_, unity in multiplicity, believed +by Coleridge to contain the principle of beauty. On another page of +the "Table Talk" Coleridge is made to say, "You are wrong in resolving +beauty into expression or interest; it is quite distinct; indeed, it +is opposite, although not contrary. Beauty is an immediate presence, +between which and the beholder _nihil est_. It is always one and +tranquil; whereas the interesting always disturbs and is disturbed." +Hegel, in his "AEsthetic," defines natural beauty to be "the idea as +immediate unity, in so far as this unity is visible in sensuous +reality." And a few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct, +calling the beautiful "the sensuous shining forth of the idea." And +Schelling, in his profound treatise on "The Relation of the Plastic +Arts to Nature," says, "The beautiful is beyond form; it is substance, +the universal; it is the look and expression of the spirit of +Nature." Were it not better and more precise to say that it is to us +the look and expression of the spiritual when this is peering through +choicest embodiments? But we will stop with definitions. After +endeavoring, by means of sentences and definitions to get a notion of +the beautiful, one is tempted to say, as Goethe did when "the idea of +the Divinity" was venturously mentioned to him by Eckermann, "Dear +child, what know we of the idea of the Divinity? and what can our +narrow ideas tell of the Highest Being? Should I, like a Turk, name it +with a hundred names, I should still fall short, and, in comparison +with the infinite attributes, have said nothing." + +We have called the beautiful the light of the mind; but there must be +mind to be illuminated. If your torch be waved in a chamber set round +with bits of granite and slate and pudding-stone, you will get no +luminous reverberation. But brandish it before rubies and emeralds and +diamonds! The qualities in the mind must be precious, in order that +the mind become radiant through beauty. To take a broad example. + +The Hindoos in their organization have a fine sense of the +beautiful, but they lack mental breadth and bottom; and hence their +life and literature are not strong and manifold, although in both +there are exhibitions of that refinement which only comes of +sensibility to the beautiful. The Chinese, on the other hand, are +wanting in this sensibility; hence their prosaic, finite civilization. +But most noteworthy is the contrast between them in religious +development. In that of the Hindoos there was expansion, vastness, +self-merging in infinitude; the Chinese are religiously contracted, +petty, idolatrous; a contrast which I venture to ascribe, in large +measure, to the presence in the one case, and the absence in the +other, of the inspiration of the beautiful. + +To the same effect individual examples might be cited innumerable. +Look at Wordsworth and Byron, both preeminent for sensibility to the +beautiful; but, from deep diverseness in other leading mental gifts, +the one, through the light of this vivifying power, became a poet of +the propensities and the understanding, a poet of passion and wit; the +other, a poet of the reason, a poet of nature and meditative emotion. + +To do their best the moral feelings, too, need the light and inward +stimulus of the beautiful; but if these feelings are by nature +weak, no strength or intensity of the sense of beauty will have power +to get from a mind thus deficient high moral thought or action. If +there be present the accomplishment of verse, we shall have a Byron; +or, the other poetic gifts in full measure, with lack of this +accomplishment, and we may get a Beckford, who builds Fonthill Abbeys, +and with purity and richness of diction describes palaces, actual or +feigned, and natural scenery with picturesqueness and genial glow; or, +the intellectual endowments being mediocre, we shall have merely a man +of superficial taste; or, the moral regents being ineffective, an +intellectual sybarite, or a refined voluptuary. Like the sun, the +beautiful shines on healthful field and poisonous fen; and her warmth +will even make flowers to bloom in the fen, but it is not in her to +make them bear refreshing odors or nourishing fruit. + +As men have body, intellect, and moral natures, so is there physical, +intellectual, and spiritual beauty, and each distinct from the others. +Take first a few examples from the domain of art. The body and limbs +of the Gladiator in the Louvre may be cited as the exponent of +corporeal beauty; the face of the Apollo Belvedere as that of +intellectual and physical; and the Santo Sisto Madonna of Raphael, and +the Christ of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, for spiritual. +Through these radiant creations we look into the transcendent minds of +their artists with a chastened, exalting joy, not unmingled with pride +in our brotherhood with such beauty-lifted co-workers with God. + +Among the higher races, life is affluent in examples of the three +kinds of beauty, two of them, and even all three, at times united in +one subject. Children and youth offer the most frequent instances of +physical beauty. Napoleon's face combined in high degree both physical +and intellectual, without a trace of moral beauty. Discoveries in +science, and the higher scientific processes, as likewise broad and +intense intellectual action, exemplify often intellectual beauty. Of +moral beauty history preserves examples which are the brightest +jewels, and the most precious, in the casket of mankind's memory; +among the most brilliant of which are the trust of Alexander, when he +drank the draught from the hand of his physician, though warned that +it was poisoned; the fidelity of the paroled Regulus, returning from +Rome to the enemy into the jaws of a certain and cruel death; +Sir Philip Sidney, wounded unto death, taking the cup of water +untasted from his parched lips, to give it to a dying soldier; Luther +at the Diet of Worms; the public life of Washington; the life and +death of Socrates, and especially that last act of washing his body to +save the women the trouble of washing it a few hours later, when it +would be a corpse; and, lastly, that most beautiful of lives and most +sublime of deaths, which live in the heart of Christendom as its +exemplar and ever fresh ideal. + +There is no province of honorable human endeavor, no clean inlet +opened by the senses or the intellect or the feelings, into which from +that vast, deep, oceanic spring, the human soul, the beautiful does +not send its fructifying tides. There is no height in history but is +illuminated by its gleam. Only through the beautiful can truth attain +its full stature; only through the beautiful can the heart be +perfectly purified; only with vision purged by the beautiful can +anything be seen in its totality. All other faculties it makes +prolific; it is the mental generator. It helps to unveil, and then +welds, the link between the visible and the invisible. It inspires +feeling (which is ever the source of deepest insight) to discover +excellence; it quickens the mind to creative activity; it is +forever striving upward. Without the spiritual fervor of the +beautiful, your religion is narrow and superstitious, your science +cramped and mortal, your life unripened. In the mind it kindles a +flame that discloses the divinity there is in all things. Lightning +bares to the awed vision the night-shrouded earth; more vivid than +lightning, the flash of the beautiful reveals to the soul the presence +of God. + + + + +II. + +WHAT IS POETRY? + + +The better to meet the question, _What_ is poetry? we begin by putting +before it another, and ask, _Where_ is poetry? Poetry is in the mind. +Landscapes, rainbows, sunsets, constellations, these exist not to the +stag, the hare, the elephant. To them nature has no aspects, no +appearances modified by feeling. Furnished with neither combining +intellect nor transmuting sensibility, they have no vision for aught +but the proximate and immediate and the animally necessary. Corporeal +life is all their life. Within the life of mind poetry is born, and in +the best and deepest part of that life. + +The whole world outside of man, and, added to this, the wider world of +his inward motions, whether these motions interact on one another or +be started and modified by what is without them, all this--that is, +all human life, in its endless forms, varieties, degrees, all that can +come within the scope of man--is the domain of poetry; only, to +enjoy, to behold, to move about in, even to enter this domain, the +individual man must bear within him a light that shall transfigure +whatever it falls on, a light of such subtle quality, of such +spiritual virtue, that wherever it strikes it reveals something of the +very mystery of being. + +In many men, in whole tribes, this light is so feebly nourished that +it gives no illumination. To them the two vast worlds, the inner and +the outer, are made up of opaque facts, cognizable, available, by the +understanding, and by it handled grossly and directly. Things, +conditions, impressions, feelings, are not taken lovingly into the +mind, to be made there prolific through higher contacts. They are not +dandled joyfully in the arms of the imagination. Imagination! Before +proceeding a step further,--nay, in order that we be able to proceed +safely,--we must make clear to ourselves what means this great word, +imagination. + +The simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects. Having +perceived an object several times, the intellect lifts itself to a +higher process, and knows it when it sees it again, remembers it. +_Perception_ is the first, the simplest, the initiatory intellectual +process, _memory_ is the second. Higher than they, and rising +out of them, is a third process, the one whereby are modified and +transmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered. +A mother, just parted from her child, recalls his form and face, +summons before _her mind's eye_ an image of him; and this image is +modified by her feelings, she seeing him in attitudes and relations in +which she had never seen him before, cheerful or sad according to her +mood. This she could not do by aid of memory alone; she could not vary +the impress of her boy left on the brain; she could not vividly +reproduce it in shifting, rapidly successive conditions; she could not +modify and diversify that impress; in a word, she could not liberate +it. Memory could only re-give her, with single, passive fidelity, what +she had seen, unmodified, motionless, unenlivened, like a picture of +her boy on canvas. Urge intellectual activity to the phase above +memory, and the mental image steps out from its immobility, becomes a +changeful, elastic figure, brightened or darkened by the lights and +shadows cast by the feelings; the intellect, quick now with plastic +power, varying the image in position and expression, obedient +to the demands of the feelings, of which it is ever the ready +instrument. This third process is _imagination_. + +Through this mode of intellectual action the materials gathered in the +mind are endlessly combined and modified. In all intellectual +activity, beyond bare perception and memory, imagination in some +degree is and must be present. It is in fact the mind handling its +materials, and in no sphere, above the simplest, can the mind move +without this power of firmly holding and molding facts and relations, +phenomena and interior promptings and suggestions. To the forensic +reasoner, to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere, such a +power is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver +of fictions. Imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the +most intense action, of the intellect. + +When I run over in my mind, and in the order of their service, the +first seven presidents of the United States, Washington, Adams, +Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, I exert only memory. The +moment I begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to give the +character of any of them, I put into play the higher, the imaginative +action; for, to draw an historical character, the facts collected by +memory must be shaped and colored and organized, the details +gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, which being a +mere tool, the success of the result (the tool being of a temper to do +the work laid on it) will depend on the quality of the powers that +handle it, that is, on the writer's gifts of sympathy. + +The degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be +called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is that +the word _imagination_ has come to be appropriated to the highest +exercise of the power, that, namely, which is accomplished by those +few who, having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with +sensibility to the beautiful, are hereby stimulated to mold and shape +into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the +material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness. +In strictness, this exaltation of intellectual action should be called +_poetic_ imagination. + +To imagine is, etymologically speaking, _with_ the mind to form _in_ +the mind an image; that is, by inward power to produce an interior +form, a something substantial made out of what we term the +unsubstantial. To imagine is thus always, in a certain sense, to +create; and even men of dullest mentality have this power in +_kind_. The _degree_ in which men have it makes one of the chief +differences among them. The power is inherent, is implied in the very +existence of the human mind. When it is most lively the mind creates +out of all it feels and hears and sees, taking a simple sight or hint +or impression or incident, and working out images, making much out of +little, a world out of an atom. Akin herein to the supreme creative +might, the man of highest imagination, the poet, unrolls out of his +brain, through vivid energy, new worlds, peopled with thought, +throbbing with humanity. + +When we imagine, therefore, we hold an image in the mind, grasping it +with spiritual fingers, just as by our corporeal fingers a physical +substance is grasped. Now the poetic mind in handling the image tosses +it with what might be called a sportive earnest delight, and through +this power and freedom of _play_ elicits by sympathetic fervor, from +its very core, electric rays, wherein the subject glows like the +sculpture on an inwardly illuminated urn; rare insights being thus +vouchsafed to clearest imaginative vision,--insights gained never but +through sensibilities elevated and purified by aspirations +after, and gleaming glimpses of, the absolute and ideal, the intellect +being used as an obedient cheerful servant. + +The sensibility that is so finely strung as to have these glimpses, +revels in them as its fullest happiness, and with its whole might +seeks and courts them. Hence the mind thus privileged to live nearer +than others to the absolutely true, the spiritual ideal, is ever +plying its privilege: conceiving, heightening, spiritualizing, +according to the vision vouchsafed it; through this vision beholding +everywhere a better and fairer than outwardly appears; painting nature +and humanity, not in colors fictitious or fanciful, but in those +richer, more lucent ones which such minds, through the penetrating +insight of the higher imagination, see more truly as they are than +minds less creatively endowed. + +Thus is imagination a power inherent in, essential to, all +intellectual action that ranges above simple perception and memory; a +power without which the daily business of life even could not go on, +being that power whereby the mind manipulates, so to speak, its +materials. In its higher phasis it may be defined as the intellect +stimulated by feeling to multiply its efforts for the ends of feeling; +and in its highest it may be said to be intellect winged by +emotion to go forth and gather honey from the bloom of creation. + +Imagination, then, being intellect in keenest chase, and the +intellectual part of the mind being, when moved in concert with the +effective part, but a tool of this, what are the feelings or +conditions of feeling of which intellect becomes the instrument in the +production of poetry? + +Cast your look on a page filled with the titles of Shakespeare's +plays. What worlds of throbbing life lie behind that roll! Then run +over the persons of a single drama: that one bounded inclosure, how +rich in variety and intensity, and truth of feeling! And when you +shall have thus cursorily sent your mind through each and all, tragic, +comic, historic, lyric, you will have traversed in thought, +accompanied by hundreds of infinitely diversified characters, wide +provinces of human sorrow and joy. Why are these pictures of passion +so uniquely prized, passed on from generation to generation, the most +precious heir-loom of the English tongue, to-day as fresh as on the +morning when the paper was moist with the ink wherewith they were +first written? Because they have in them more fullness and fineness +and fidelity than any others. The poet has more life in him +than other men, and Shakespeare has in him more life than any other +poet, life manifested through power of intellect exalted through union +with power of sympathy, the embodiments whereof are rounded, enlarged, +refined, made translucent by that gift of _sensibility to the fair and +perfect_[3] whereby, according to its degree, we are put in more +loving relation to the work of God, and gain the clearest insights +into his doings and purposes; a gift without which in richest measure +Shakespeare might have been a notable historian or novelist or +philosopher, but never the supreme poet he is. + + [3] See preceding Essay. + +When Coriolanus, having led the Volscians to Rome, encamps under its +walls, and the Romans, in their peril and terror, send to him a +deputation to move him from his vengeful purpose, the deputies,--the +foremost citizens of Rome and the relations and former friends of +Coriolanus,--having "declared their business in a very modest and +humble manner," he is described by Plutarch as stern and austere, +answering them with "much bitterness and high resentment of the +injuries done him." What was the temper as well as the power of +Coriolanus, we learn distinctly enough from these few words of +Plutarch. But the task of the poet is more than this. To our +imagination, that is, to the abstracting intellect roused by sympathy +to a semi-creative state, he must present the haughty Roman so as to +fill us with an image of him that shall in itself embody that +momentous hour in the being of the young republic. He must dilate us +to the dimensions of the man and the moment; he must so enlarge and +warm our feeling that it shall take in, and delight in, the grandeur +of the time and the actors. The life of Rome, of Rome yet to be so +mighty, is threatened by one of her own sons. This vast history, to be +for future centuries that of the world, a Roman seemed about to +quench, about to rase the walls that were to embrace the imperial +metropolis of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Of what gigantic dimensions +must he be, this Roman! Now hear Menenius, a former friend and admirer +of Coriolanus, depict him. Having described, in those compressed +sinewy phrases which Shakespeare has at command, the change in his +nature, he adds, "When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the +ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a +corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a +battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he +bids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god +but eternity and a heaven to throne in." + +Hear how a mother's heart, about to break, from the loss of her son, +utters its grief when it has the privilege of using a voice quivering +with poetic fervor. The French king bids Lady Constance be comforted: +she answers,-- + + "No, I defy all counsel, all redress, + But that which ends all counsel, true redress, + Death, death. O amiable lovely death! + Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness! + Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, + Thou hate and terror to prosperity, + And I will kiss thy detestable bones; + And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows; + And ring these fingers with thy household worms; + And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust, + And be a carrion monster like thyself: + Come, grin on me; and I will think thou smil'st: + And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love, + O, come to me!" + +In these two passages from "Coriolanus" and "King John" what +magnificence of hyperbole! The imagination of the reader, swept on +from image to image, is strained to follow that of the poet. +And yet, to the capable, how the pile of amplification lifts out the +naked truth. Read these passages to a score of well-clad auditors, +taken by chance from the thoroughfare of a wealthy city, or from the +benches of a popular lecture-room. To the expanded mold wherein the +passages are wrought, a few--five or six, perhaps, of the +twenty--would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing the +poet's climax. To some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive +extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by, +the poetically imaginative light. And to some they would be grossly +unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to +them unnatural or affected. + +Now, the enjoyment of the few appreciators, what is its source? By +these passages certain feelings in them are made to vibrate and are +pitched to a high key. A very comprehensive word is feelings. What is +the nature of those feelings thus wrought upon? + +The elementary feelings of our nature, when in healthful function, are +capable of emitting spiritual light; and, when exalted to their purest +action, do and must emit such, the inward fire sending forth clear +flame unmixed with smoke. To perceive this light, and, still +more, to have your path illuminated thereby, implies the present +activity of some of the higher human sensibilities; and to be so +organized as to be able to embody in words, after having imagined, +personages, conditions, and conjunctions whence this light shall flash +on and ignite the sensibilities of others, implies, besides vivid +sympathies and delight in the beautiful, a susceptibility to the +manifestations of moral and intellectual life which is enjoyed only by +him in whom the nobler elements of being are present in such +intensity, proportions, and quality, and are so commingled, that he +can reproduce life itself with translucent truthfulness, he becoming, +through this exalting susceptibility, poet or maker. + +What constitutes the wealth of human life? Is it not fullness and +richness of feeling? To refine this fullness, to purify this richness, +to distill the essence out of this wealth, to educate the feelings by +revealing their subtle possibilities, by bringing to light the +divinity there is within and behind them, this is the poet's part; and +this, his great part, he can only do by being blest with more than +common sympathy with the spirit of the Almighty Creator, and thence +clearer insight into his work and will. Merely to embody in +verse the feelings, thoughts, deeds, scenes of human life, is not the +poet's office; but to exhibit these as having attained, or as capable +of attaining, the power and beauty and spirituality possible to each. +The glorifier of humanity the poet is, not its mere reporter; that is +the historian's function. The poet's business is not with facts as +such, or with inferences, but with truth of feeling, and the very +spirit of truth. His function is ideal; that is, from the prosaic, the +individual, the limited, he is to lift us up to the universal, the +generic, the boundless. In compassing this noble end he may, if such +be his bent, use the facts and feelings and individualities of daily +life; and, by illuminating and ennobling them he will approve his +human insight, as well as his poetic gift. + +The generic in sentiment, the universal, the infinite, can only be +reached and recognized through the higher feelings, through those +whose activity causes emotion. The simple impulses, the elementary +loves, are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct; but +growing round the very fountain of life, having their roots +in the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond their +individual limits, and this they do with power when under their sway +the whole being is roused and expanded. When by their movement the +better nature is urged to heroism and self-sacrifice, as in the story +of Damon and Pythias, the reader or beholder is lifted into the +atmosphere of finest emotion; for then the impulse has reached its +acme of function, and playing in the noonday of the beautiful, the +contemplation of it purges and dilates us. We are upraised to the +disinterested mood, the poetical, in which mood there is ever +imaginative activity refined by spiritual necessities. It is not +extravagant to affirm that when act or thought reaches the beautiful, +it resounds through the whole being, tuning it like a high strain of +sweetest music. Thus in the poetical (and there is no poetry until the +sphere of the beautiful is entered) there is always a reverberation +from the emotional nature. Reverberation implies space, an ample vault +of roof or of heaven. In a tight, small chamber there can be none. If +feeling is shut within itself, there is no reecho. Its explosion must +rebound from the roomy dome of sentiment, in order that it become +musical. + +The moment you enter the circle of the beautiful, into which +you can only be ushered by a light within yourself, a light kindled +through livelier recognition of the divine spirit,--the moment you +draw breath in this circle you find yourself enlarged, spiritualized, +buoyed above the self. No matter how surrounded, or implicated, or +enthralled, while you are there, be it but for a few moments, you are +liberated. + + "No more--no more--oh! never more on me + The freshness of the heart can fall like dew, + Which out of all the lovely things we see + Extracts emotions beautiful and new, + Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee. + Think'st thou the honey with those objects grew? + Alas! 't was not in them, but in thy power + To double even the sweetness of a flower." + + "All who joy would win + Must share it; happiness was born a twin." + + "He entered in the house,--his home no more, + For without hearts there is no home--and felt + The solitude of passing his own door + Without a welcome; _there_ he long had dwelt, + There his few peaceful days Time had swept o'er, + There his worn, bosom and keen eye would melt + Over the innocence of that sweet child, + His only shrine of feelings undefiled." + +These three passages are from a poem in which there is more wit than +poetry, and more cynicism than either; a poem in spirit unsanctified, +Mephistophelian, written by a man of the world, a terrible +egotist, _blase_ already in early manhood, in whose life, through +organization, inherited temperament, and miseducation, humanity was so +cramped, distorted, envenomed, that the best of it was in the fiery +sway of the more urgent passions, his inmost life being, as it must +always be with poets, inwoven into his verse. From the expiring +volcano in his bosom his genius, in this poem, casts upon the world a +lurid flame, making life look pale or fever-flushed. With unslumbering +vivacity, human nature is exhibited in that misleading light made by +the bursting of half-truths that relate to its lower side, a light the +more deceptions from the sparkling accompaniment of satire and wit. + +Above the pungent secularities, the nimble intellectualities, the +specious animalism, the derisive skepticism, the snapping +personalities, the witty worldliness, that interlace and constitute +the successive cantos of "Don Juan," the passages just quoted and +similar ones (they are not many) rise, as above the desires and the +discontents, the plots and contentions, the shrewd self-seekings of a +heated, noisy city rises a Gothic spire, aspiring, beautiful, drawing +most of its beauty from its aspiration, on whose pinnacle, calmly +glistening in the upper air, plays the coming and the parting day, +while shadows fill the streets below, and whose beauty throws over the +town a halo that beckons men from afar. The spire, in its steadfast +tranquillity and its beauty, so unlike the restless wrangling +dissonance below it, grew nevertheless out of the same hearts that +make the dissonance, and, typifying what is spiritual and eternal in +them, tends by its ideal presence to enlarge and uplift those by whose +eyes it is sought. These upshootings in "Don Juan" irradiate the +cantos, giving an attractiveness which draws to them eyes that +otherwise would not have known them; and if too pure in their light +and too remote to mingle directly with the flare and flash that dazzle +without illuminating, silently they shine and steadily, an unconscious +heavenly influence, above these coruscations of earthly +thoughts,--thoughts telling from their lively numerousness, but +neither grand nor deep. + +From the same solar center fall frequently single rays that make lines +and stanzas glisten, and but for which this poem, lacking their +perfusive light, would soon pass into oblivion; for from the +beautiful it is that the satire, the wit, the voluptuousness get their +sparkle and their sheen. If passages morally censurable are hereby +made more captivating, we are not content with saying that God's sun +fructifies and beautifies poison-oak and hemlock; but we affirm that +the beautiful, being by its nature necessarily pure, communicates of +its quality to whoever becomes aware of it, and thus in some measure +counterweighs the lowering tendency. Moreover, the morally bad, +deriving its character of evil from incompleteness, from the arresting +or the perversion of good, like fruit plucked unripe, and being +therefore outside the pale of the beautiful (the nature of which is +completeness, fullness, perfection of life) cannot by itself be made +captivating through the beautiful. Iago and Edmund are poetical as +parts of a whole; and when in speech they approach the upper region of +thought, it is because the details allotted to them have to be highly +wrought for the sake of the general plot and effect, and further, +because humanity and truth speak at times through strange organs. +Besides, the ideal may be used to show more glaringly the hideousness +of evil, and thence Iago and Edmund, as ideal villains, through the +very darkness in which only poetic art could have enveloped them, help +us by indirection to see and value the lights that surround the noble +and the good. + +In healthy function all the feelings are pure and moral, those whose +action is most earthly and animal and selfish uniting themselves at +their highest with the spiritual, for performance whose compass +reaches beyond an individual, momentary good. A burglar or a murderer +may exhibit courage; but here, a manly quality backing baseness and +brutality for selfish, short-sighted ends, there is an introverted and +bounded action, no expansive upward tendency, and thence no poetry. +But courage, when it is the servant of principle for large, unselfish +ends, becomes poetical, exhibiting the moral beautiful, as in the +fable of Curtius and the fact (or fable) of Winkelried. In the +poetical there is always enlargement, exaltation, purification; animal +feeling, self-seeking propensity, becoming so combined with the higher +nature as to rise above themselves, above the self. + +The lioness, pursuing the robber of her cub, if in her rage she +scarcely heed that he (to stay her steps) has dropped the cub in her +path, but, casting at it a glance of recognition, bounds with a +wilder howl after the robber, the incident is purely bestial, an +exhibition of sheer brute fury, and as such repulsive and most +unpoetical. But let her, instantly drawing her fiery eye from the +robber, stop, and for the infuriated roar utter a growl of leonine +tenderness over her recovered cub, and our sympathy leaps towards her. +Through the red glare of rage there shines suddenly a stream of white +light, gushing from one of the purest fountains: wrathful fury is +suddenly subdued by love. A moment before she was possessed with +savage fierceness, her blood boiling with hate and revenge; now it +glows with a mother's joy. Her nature rises to the highest whereof it +is capable. It is the poetry of animalism. + +In the poetical, thought is amplified and ripened, while purified, in +the calm warmth of emotion. From being emotive, poetry draws in more +of the man, and higher, finer powers, than prose. The poetical has, +must have, rotundity. No poet ever had a square head. Prose, in its +naked quality, is to poetry what a skeleton is to a moving, +flesh-and-spirit-endowed body. From the skeleton you can learn +osteology, but neither aesthetics nor human nature. Imaginative prose +partakes of the spiritual character of poetry. When a page is +changed from poetry into prose it is flattened, deadened; when from +prose into poetry it is uplifted, enlivened. You get a something else +and a something more. Reduced to plain prose, the famous passage from +the mouth of Viola in "Twelfth Night" would read somewhat thus: "My +father had a daughter who loved a man and would let no one know of her +love, but concealed it, until her cheek grew pale with grief, +patiently bearing within her bosom the misery of an untold +attachment." Now hear the poet:-- + + "She never told her love, + But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, + Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought: + And with a green and yellow melancholy + She sat like patience on a monument, + Smiling at grief." + +What has been done with the prose statement? Instead of a bare fact we +have a picture, a twofold picture; and this, in its compact, fresh, +rose-tinted vividness, carries the whole into our hearts with a +tenfold success. Through emotional joy we apprehend, as by the light +of an instantaneous ignition, the state of the sufferer. The +prose-report is a smoldering fire on the hearth, through whose sleepy +smoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic is the flame in +full fervor, springing upward, illuminating, warming the heart, +delighting the intellect. The imagination of the reader, quickened by +illustrations so apt and original, is by their beauty tuned to its +most melodious key, while by the rare play of intellectual vitality +his mind is dilated. He has become mentally a richer man, enriched +through the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities, and +the activity imparted to his intellect. + +To say of a man that he is without imagination were to say he is an +idiot; that is, one lacking the inward force and the inward +instruments to grasp and handle the materials collected from without +by perception and memory, and from within by consciousness. To say of +a poet that he is without poetic imagination were to say he is no +poet. What is poetic imagination? This, for our theme, is a vital +question. Can there be given to it an approximate answer? + +Figure to yourself a company of men and women in presence of a +September sunset near the sea, the eye taking in at once ocean and a +variegated landscape. The company must not be a score of tawny +American aborigines, nor of European peasants, nor of individuals +whose life of monotonous labor, whether for necessaries or +luxuries, has no opportunity or no will for the finer mental culture; +but, to give aptness to our illustration, should consist of persons +whose being has been unfolded to the tissue of susceptibility to the +wonders and beauties of nature, and whose intellect has been tilled +sufficiently to receive and nourish any fresh seed of thought that may +be thrown upon it; in short, a score of cultivated adults. The +impression made by such a scene on such a company is heightened by a +rare atmospheric calm. The heart of each gazer fills with emotion, at +first unutterable except by indefinite exclamation; when one of the +company says,-- + + "A fairer face of evening cannot be." + +These words, making a smooth iambic line, give some utterance, and +therefore some relief, to the feeling of all. Then another adds,-- + + "The holy time is quiet as a nun + Breathless with adoration." + +Instantly the whole scene, steeped in the beams of the sinking sun, is +flooded with a light that illuminates the sunlight, a spiritual light. +The scene is transfigured before their eyes: it is as if the heavens +had opened, and inundated all its features with a celestial +subtilizing aura. How has this been accomplished? The first line has +little of the quality of poetic imagination. + + "A fairer face of evening cannot be." + +is simple and appropriate, but in it there is no fresh glow, no +mysterious throb. Above the level of this line rise suddenly the first +three words of the second, "the holy time." The presence of a scene +where sky, earth, and ocean combine for the delight of the beholders +puts them in a mood which crowns the landscape with a religious halo. +That the time is holy they all feel; and now, to make its tranquillity +appreciable by filling the heart with it, the poet adds--"is quiet as +a nun breathless with adoration." By this master-stroke of poetic +power the atmospheric earthly calm is vivified with, is changed into, +super-earthly calm. By a fresh burst of spiritual light the mind is +set aesthetically aglow, as by the beams of the setting sun the +landscape is physically. By an exceptionally empowered hand the soul +is strung to a high key. Fullness and range of sensibility open to the +poet[4] a wide field of illustration; its exacting fineness reveals +the one that carries his thought into the depths of the +reader's mind, bringing him that exquisite joy caused by keen +intellectual power in the service of pure emotion. + + [4] Wordsworth. + +Take now other samples from the treasury of choicest poetry. Here is +one from Coleridge:-- + + "And winter, slumbering in the open air, + Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring." + +Here again the intellect is urged to its highest action, the abstract +or imaginative action, to do the hests of a sensibility so finely +wrought by the inward impulsion to seek for the most exquisite that +nature can furnish, that it yields similitudes most delicate, most +apt, most expressive. + +Milton thus opens the fifth book of "Paradise Lost:"-- + + "Now morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime + Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl." + +Shakespeare makes Romeo describe daybreak:-- + + "And jocund day + Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." + +Keats begins "Hyperion" with these lines: + + "Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, + Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn." + +In the Monody on Keats, Shelley, describing the lamentation of +nature at his death, concludes a stanza as follows:-- + + "Morning sought + Her eastern watch-tower, and, her hair unbound, + Wet with the tears that should adorn the ground, + Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; + Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, + Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, + And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay." + +Such passages are the very flower of poetry, thought exquisitely dyed +in sentiment, laying suddenly bare a picture with so much light in it +that each passage irradiates its page and the reader's mind. By their +happiness the similitudes emphasize and enforce the thought; and they +do a higher service than this; for, being a breath from the inner life +of genius, they blow power into the reader. To translate these +passages into prose were like trying to translate a lily into the mold +out of which it springs, or a bar of Beethoven into the sounds of the +forum, or the sparkle of stars into the warmth of a coal fire. + +The best poetry has a far background; it comes out of deeps within the +poet, unfathomed by himself, unfathomable. He feels more than he can +express. Hence the imaginative poet always suggests, revealing enough +to inspirit the reader's higher faculties to strive for more; +not because, with artistic design, he leaves much untold, which he +often does, but because through imaginative susceptibility he at times +grasps at and partly apprehends much that cannot be embodied. He feels +his subject more largely and deeply than he can see or represent it. +To you his work is suggestive because to him the subject suggested +more than he could give utterance to. Every subject, especially every +subject of poetic capability, having infinite relations, he who most +apprehends this boundlessness--and indeed because he does apprehend +it--can do or say what will open it to you or me; and the degree of +his genius is measured by the extent to which he can present or expose +it. The unimaginative gives surface-work, and, suggesting nothing, is +at once exhausted. + +The poetic imagination shows itself in the epithets the poet has at +his command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of +an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps +feeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we +look. Sometimes epithets are brighter than their object; the +unimaginative thus futilely striving to impart power instead of +deriving it. To be lasting, the light of the epithet must be struck by +the imagination out of its object. The inspired poet finds a word so +sympathetic with the thought that it caresses and hugs it. + +Depth and breadth of nature are implied in the full poetic +imagination. The love of the beautiful, wielding a keen intellect, +needs furthermore rich material to mold, and only out of the poet's +individual resources can this be drawn. To make a high artist, you +must have very much of a man. Behind "Paradise Lost" and "Samson +Agonistes" is a big Miltonic man. The poet has to put a great deal of +himself, and the best of him, into his work; thence, for high poetry, +there must be a great deal of high self to put in. He must coin his +soul, and have a large soul to coin; the best work cannot be made out +of materials gathered by memory and fancy. His stream of thought must +flow from springs, not from reservoirs. Hence the universal +biographical interest in such men; they have necessarily a rich +personality. + +The passages I have cited are all pictures of outward nature, natural +scenes mirrored on the mind, or rather refracted through it, and in +the act transfigured, spiritualized; for such scenes, having +the fortune to fall on the minds of poets, are reproduced with joyful +revelation of their inmost being, as sunbeams are through a crystal +prism. Exhibiting material nature spiritualized, well do these +passages show the uplifting character of poetic imagination. But this +displays a higher, and its highest power when, striking like a +thunderbolt into the core of things, it lays bare mysteries of God and +of the heart which mere prosaic reason cannot solve or approach, +cannot indeed alone even dimly apprehend. + +I will now quote passages, brief ones, wherein through the poet are +opened vast vistas into the shining universe, or is concentrated in +single or few lines the life of man's finer nature, as in the diamond +are condensed the warmth and splendor that lie latent in acres of +fossil carbon. + +When, in the sixth book of "Paradise Lost," Milton narrates the +arrival on the battle-field of the Son,-- + + "Attended by ten thousand thousand saints," + +and then adds:-- + + "Far off his coming shone," + +in these five short words is a sudden glare of grandeur that dilates +the capable mind with light, and, as the sublime always does, with +awe. + +When Ferdinand, in "The Tempest," leaps "with hair up-staring" +into the sea, crying,-- + + "Hell is empty, + And all the devils are here," + +the mind is suddenly filled with an image of the tumult and flaming +rage of a thunder-storm at sea, such as words have never elsewhere +carried. What a reach in the imaginative stroke! In the first scene of +"Faust," the earth-spirit, whom Faust has evoked, concludes the +whirling, dazzling, brief, but gigantic sketch of his function with +these words, the majesty of which translation cannot entirely +subdue:-- + + "I ply the resounding great loom of old Time, + And work at the Godhead's live vesture sublime." + +How ennobling is the idea the mind harbors of humanity, after taking +in these lines from Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of +Immortality:"-- + + "But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home." + +With a single epithet, coined for the occasion, Keats flashes upon our +imagination the dethroned Saturn and the immensity of his fall: + + "Upon the sodden ground + His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, + Unsceptered; and his _realmless_ eyes were closed." + +The "Hyperion" of this transcendent genius, written in his +twenty-fourth year, the year before he died, is as great poetry as has +ever been treasured in words. In it he lavishes poetic wealth as +though gold were with him as plenty as silver; and so on the next page +he exceeds, if possible, the sublimity of the above lines, making Thea +write in the catalogue of Saturn's colossal deprivations,-- + + "And all the air + Is emptied of thine hoary majesty." + +These passages vividly exemplify poetic imagination, which is the +illumining of a capable material by a spiritual light, a light thrown +into it from the glow kindled in the poet's mind with richest +sensibilities, that are refined and sublimated by an exacting, subtle +inward demand for the best they can render. A single flash of new +thrilling light irradiates a continent of thought. This is the work of +genius, and genius is ever marked by a deeper sympathy with and +recognition of the creative spirit and the divine action, a sympathy +and recognition so sensitive that the spirit and action of the writer +are permeated by the divine effluence, he becoming thereby the +interpreter of divine law, the exhibitor of divine beauty. + +In these passages the thought of the poet is thrust up through +the overlaying crust of the common, by a warming, expanding, inward +motion, which is sped by a vitality so urgent and irresistible that, +to make passage for the new thought, lightly is lifted a load which, +but for this spiritual efficacy, could not be stirred, just as heavy +stones are raised by delicate growing plants. To exert this power the +poet is always moved at the instance of feeling. Poetry having its +birth in feeling, no man can enjoy or value it but through feeling. +But what moves him to embody and shape his feeling is that ravishing +sentiment which will have the best there is in the feeling, the +sentiment which seeks satisfaction through contemplation or +entertainment of the most divine and most perfect, and ever rises to +the top of the refined joy which such contemplation educes. + +The poetic imagination is the Ariel of the poet,--his spiritual +messenger and Mercury. A clear look into the above passages would show +that the source of their power is in the farther scope or exquisite +range the imagination opens to us, often by a word. For further +illustration I will take a few other examples, scrutinizing them more +minutely. Had Lorenzo opened the famous passage in "The +Merchant of Venice" thus,-- + + "How _calm_ the moonlight _lies_ upon this bank," + +and continued to the end of the dozen lines in the same key, saying,-- + + "There's not the _tiniest star_ that _can be seen_ + But in its _revolution_ it doth _hum_, + Aye _chanting_ to the _heavenly_ cherubins," + +his words would not have become celebrated and quotable. But Lorenzo +has the privilege of being one of the mouth-pieces of Shakespeare, and +so he begins,-- + + "How _sweet_ the moonlight _sleeps_ upon this bank." + +Two words, _sweet_ and _sleep_, put in the place of _calm_ and _lies_, +lift the line out of prose into poetry. A log _lies_ on a bank; so +does a dead dog, and the more dead a thing is the more it lies; but +only what is alive _sleeps_, and thus the word, besides an image of +extreme stillness, brings with it what strengthens the image, the idea +of change from liveliness to quiet; for that which was awake now +sleeps; and the more full the picture of stillness, the more awake is +the mind of the reader, awakened by the fitness and felicity of the +image. The substitution of _sweet_ for _calm_ is, in a less degree, +similarly enlivening; for, used in such conjunction, _sweet_ is more +individual and subtle, and imports more life, and thus helps the +distinctness and vividness of the picture. How does the poetic Lorenzo +word the other three lines? + + "There's not the _smallest orb_ which _thou behold'st_, + But in _his motion like an angel sings_, + Still _quiring_ to the _young-eyed_ cherubins." + +The words or phrases italicized carry a larger, or a deeper or a finer +meaning than the corresponding ones in the substituted lines. To +_behold_ is more than to _see_: it is to see contemplatively. The +figure _prosopopoeia_ is often but an impotent straining to impart +poetic life; but the personification in _in his motion_ is apt and +effective. _Quiring_ is an amplification of the immediately preceding +_sings_, and, signifying to sing in company with others, enlarges, +while making more specific, the thought. And what an image of the +freshness of heaven and of youthful immortality is conveyed by the +epithet _young-eyed_! At every step the thought is expanded and +beautiful, reaching at the end of the third line a climax on which the +poetically excited mind is left poised in delight. + +But the passage transformed, and, as we might say, degraded, is still +poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening +of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining +poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less +figurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result +of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these +being moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful, and beating an +atmosphere exhaled from sensibility. As Joubert says,--herein uttering +a cardinal aesthetic principle,--"It is, above all, in the spirituality +of ideas that poetry consists." Thought that is poetic will glisten +through the plainest words; whereas, if the thought be prosaic or +trite, all the gilded epithets in the dictionary will not give it the +poetic sheen. Perdita wishes for + + "Daffodils + That come before the swallow dares, and take + The winds of March with beauty." + +Note the poetic potency in the simple word _dares_; how much it +carries: the cold which the swallow has not the courage to confront; a +mental action, I might almost call it, in the swallow, who, after +making a recognizance of the season, determines that it would be rash +to venture so far north: all this is in the single word. For _dares_ +write _does_, and the effect would be like that of cutting a +gash in a rising balloon: you would let the line suddenly down, +because you take the life out of the thought. + + "And take + The winds of March with beauty." + +Every one is taken at some time or other with the beauty of person or +thing, and the thought is common; but that the winds of March be taken +with the beauty of daffodils, this was a delicate secret which those +winds would confide only to one so sympathetic as Shakespeare. This is +poetic imagination, the intellect sent on far errands by a sensibility +which is at once generous and bold, and fastidious through the +promptings and the exactions of the beautiful. + +In the opening of "Il Penseroso" Milton describes the shapes that in +sprightly moods possess the fancy, + + "As thick and numberless + As the gay motes that _people_ the sunbeams." + +Put _shine in_ the sunbeams, for _people_, and, notwithstanding the +luminousness of the word substituted, you take the sparkle out of the +line, which sparkle is imparted by mental activity, and the poetic +dash that has the delightful audacity to personify such atomies. + +The poetical is the flush on the face of things in the +unconscious triumph of their purest life, cognizable by being beheld +at the moment when the higher faculties are at their fullest flood, +buoyed up on the joy of being and emotional sympathy. The most and the +highest of this joy is possessed by him whose imagination is most +capable of being poetically agitated; for by such agitation light is +engendered within him, whereby objects and sensations that before were +dim and opaque grow luminous and pellucid, like great statuary in +twilight or moonlight, standing vague and unvalued until a torch is +waved over it. + +When we begin to speak of poetry, the higher qualities of the mind +come up for judgment. No genuine poet is without one or more of these, +and a great poet must have most of them. Thence the thought of the +poet is pitched on a high key, and even in poets of power the poetry +of a page is sometimes shown merely by the sustained tone of the +sentiment, giving out no jets of fire, having no passages salient with +golden embossings. Through sympathy and sense of beauty, the poet gets +nearer to the absolute nature of things; and thence, with little of +imagery, or coloring, or passion, through this holy influence +he becomes poetic, depicting by re-creating the object or feeling or +condition, and rising naturally into rhythmic lines and sentences, the +best substance asking for, and readily obtaining, the most suitable +form of words. Yet a poet of inward resources can seldom write a page +without there being heard a note or bar or passage of the finer +melody. + +But men wanting this inward wealth, that is, wanting depth and breadth +of emotional capacity, have not, whatever their other gifts, the soil +needed for highly imaginative poetry. With broad emphasis this +aesthetic law is exemplified in the verse of Voltaire, especially in +his dramas, and in the verse of one who was deeper and higher than he +as thinker and critic, of Lessing. Skillful versifiers, by help of +fancy and a certain plastic aptitude and laborious culture, are +enabled to give to smooth verse a flavor of poetry and to achieve a +temporary reputation. But of such uninspired workmanship the gilding +after a while wears off, the externally imparted perfume surely +evaporates. + +Often the most suitable form of words is made of plainest, commonest +parts of speech, and the fewest of them. The more intense and deep +the feeling, the greater is the need of briefest, simplest +utterance. When in one of those pauses of frantic wrath,--like the +sudden rifts that momentarily let the calm stars through a whirling +canopy of storm,--Lear utters imploringly that appeal to Heaven, the +words are the familiar words of hourly use; but what divine tenderness +and what sweep of power in three lines! + + "O heavens, + If you do love old men, if your sweet sway + Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, + Make it your cause; send down and take my part!" + +The thirty-third canto of the "Inferno" supremely exemplifies the +sustaining energy of poetic imagination, that by its sublimating light +it can forever hold before the mind, in tearful, irresistible beauty, +one of the most woful forms of human suffering, death by starvation. +In that terrific picture, in front of which all the generations of men +that come after Dante are to weep purifying tears, the most exquisite +stroke is given in five monosyllables; but in those five little words +what depth of pathos, what concentration of meaning! On the fourth day +one of Ugolino's dying sons throws himself at his father's feet, +crying,-- + + "Father, why dost not help me?" + +Here let me remark that it is not by witnessing, through +poetically imaginative representation, scenes of suffering and agony, +as in this case and the tragic drama, that the sensibilities are +"purged," according to the famous saying of Aristotle; but it is +because such scenes are witnessed by the light of the beautiful. The +beautiful always purifies and exalts. + +In either of these two passages any piling up of words, any hyperbole +of phrase, or boldness or even grandeur of figurative speech, would +have proved a hindrance instead of a conductor to the feeling, +smothering and not facilitating expression. But when, turned out of +doors in "a wild night," by those "unnatural hags," his daughters, +Lear, baring his brow to the storm, invokes the thunder to + + "Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world," + +there is no tenderness, no folding of the sore heart upon itself; +there is the expansion of defiance, outburst of the mighty wrath of an +outraged father and wronged and crownless king: and so we have a gush +of the grandest diction, of the most tempestuous rhythm, the storm in +Lear's mind marrying itself with a ghastly joy to the storm of the +elements, the sublime tumult above echoed in the crashing splendor of +the verse:-- + + "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! + You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout + Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! + You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, + Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving-thunderbolts, + Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, + Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! + Crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once, + That make ingrateful man!" + +I know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the +colossal dimensions of Shakespeare. Here is attained, with almost +unique effect, what according to Schiller is the aim of poetry, "no +other than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression, its +most complete utterance." + +The best poetry, like the best music, soars towards the upper light. +The genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the swell of +emotion. The thought moves free and strong because there is a deep, +bubbling head of feeling behind it. Feeling, at its best, has an +ascending movement, reaching up towards that high sphere where, +through their conjunction, the earthly and the spiritual play in +freedom in the sunshine of the beautiful. The surest test of the +presence of poetry is buoyancy, springiness, which comes from the +union, the divine union, of the spiritual and the beautiful. However +weighty it may be with thought, the poetical passage floats, +thus giving certain sign of life, of a soul irrepressible. + +But as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without strength +and breadth of root, the highest poetry is the most solid, the firmest +set in reality, in truth. The higher a poet is, the closer hold he has +of the roots of his subject. He looks at it with a peering, deeply +sympathetic insight. The roots, in fact, are in himself; they are in +the depths of his soul. Hence a cardinal question about a poem is, How +much of it does the poet draw out of himself? Is it his by projection +from his inward resources, by injection with his own juices; or is it +his only by adoption and adaptation, by dress and adjustment? + +Flight of poetic imagination there cannot be unless the wings have +been feathered in the heart. Loftiness or grandeur of imagination +there cannot be, except there be first innate richness and breadth of +feeling. Imagination being simply the tensest action of intellect, is +ever, like intellect in all its phases, an instrument of feeling, a +mere tool. Height implies inward depth. The gift to touch the vitals +of a subject is the test-gift of literary faculty; it is the +soul-gift, the gift of fuller, livelier sympathy. Compare Wordsworth +with Southey to learn the difference between inward and outward gifts. + +Poetry being in the mind, the man who has little poetry within him +will find little in nature or in the world or in Shakespeare. The man +who has no music in his soul will hear none at the Conservatoire in +Paris. Wordsworth sees with the inward eye, Southey too exclusively +with the outward. The true poet projects visions and rhythms out from +his brain, and gazes at and hearkens to them. The degree of the +truthfulness to nature and the vividness of these projections is the +measure of his poetic genius and capacity. Only through this intense +inwardness can he attain to great visions and rhythmic raptures, and +make you see and hear them. What illimitable inward sight must Keats +have dwelt in ere, to depict the effect on him of looking into +Chapman's Homer, he could write,-- + + "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, + When a new planet swims into his ken; + Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes + He stared at the Pacific, and all his men + Looked at each other with a wild surmise, + Silent, upon a peak in Darien." + +Here is a brilliant example of poetic imagination, the +intellect urged to its finest action to satisfy the feeling which +delights in the grand, the select, the beautiful. + + "Silent, upon a peak in Darien." + +What an outlook! What a solemn, mysterious, elevating inward moment it +creates in us! To ascend to that peak, to carry the reader thither +with him, that is the flight of a great poet, of one who has been--as +in that choice poem, "The Prelude," Wordsworth, with an electric +stroke of poetic imagination, says of Newton-- + + "Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." + +This vigor of flight in the poet, bearing on his wing the reader, whom +he ushers to new, sudden vistas, is a test of poetic genius. Some +poets never carry you to heights, but rather make you feel while +reading them as if you were moving through shut-in valleys: their +verse wants sky. They are not poetically imaginative, are not strung +for those leaps which the great poet at times finds it impossible not +to make. They have more poetic fancy than poetic imagination. Poetic +fancy is a thin flame kindled deliberately with gathered materials; +poetic imagination is an intense flash born unexpectedly of +internal collisions. Fancy is superficial and comparatively +short-sighted; imagination is penetrative and far-sighted, bringing +together things widely sundered, apparently diverse and opposite. +Fancy divides, individualizes; imagination compounds, builds, globes. +Fancy is not so broad or so keen or so warm or so bounding as +imagination; is comparatively tame and cold and quiet. Imagination is +synthetical. Large exhibitions of poetic imagination are rare even in +the greatest poets. At its best it strikes deep into the nature of +things, has a celestial quality which invests it with awe. Spenser +shows great resources of fancy, but little imagination. The arc of +imagination is in him too near its center. Hence there is no reach in +his thoughts. He has no exhaustless depths within. He is not, +as Coleridge says Shakespeare is, an example of "endless +self-reproduction." Cowley, says the same great critic, "is a fanciful +writer, Milton an imaginative poet." + +As I have already said, the power of imagining, of forming in the mind +images, conceptions, is a purely intellectual power, and imagination +becomes poetical only when this intellectual power is an agent +obeying that emotional power which ardently seeks, intensely longs +for, the better, the more perfect, the purer, in one word, the +beautiful in each province of multiform life. The willing agent, +intellect, is sent out on excursions of discovery, and unexpectedly +falls in with and captures all kinds of sparkling booty. + +Writers weak in poetic imagination are not visited by those beaming +thoughts that come unsummoned out of the invisible, like new stars +which, out of the unfathomable deeps of the sky, dart suddenly upon +the vision of the heaven-watcher. Such writers deal with the known, +with the best commonplace, not the common merely; and under the glance +of genius the common grows strange and profound. + +Some poets, not weak in poetic imagination, yet use it chiefly for +secondary purposes, that is, for beautifying the dress, the externals +of poetry. Minds with some breadth but with little depth are not +thoroughly original. Their sense of the beautiful busies itself +necessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts; and +their readiest gifts being words more than ideas, versification more +than thought, form more than substance, they turn out verse, +chiefly narrative, which captivates through its easy flow, its smooth +sensuousness of diction, its gloss. Take a poet so celebrated, in some +respects so admirable, as Tennyson. Tennyson's verse is apt to be too +richly dressed, too perfumed. The clothing is costlier than the +thoughts can pay for. Hence at every re-reading of him he parts with +some of his strength, so that after three or four repetitions he has +little left for you. From a similar cause this is the case too with +Byron, through whose pen to common sentiment and opinion a glow is +imparted by the animal heat of the man, heightened by poetic tints +from a keen sense of the beautiful. But this is not the case with +Keats or Shelley or Coleridge or Wordsworth, and of course therefore +not with Milton or Shakespeare. All these keep fresh, at every contact +giving you strength and losing none. As freely and freshly as the +sun's beams through a transparent, upspringing Gothic spire, intellect +and feeling play, ever undimmed, through Shelley's "Sky-Lark." Not so +through Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women." After a time these +mellifluous stanzas droop, and cling to the paper: they have not +enough flame-like motion. The nicest word-choosing will not +supply the place of choice in thought, a choice prompted by fresh +feeling; nor, where there is no new impulse from the heart, will the +most gorgeous diction give to a line the poetic carnation. There can +be no freshness of expression without freshness of thought; the +sparkle on the skin comes from new blood in the heart. + +Tennyson's poetry has often too much leaf and spray for the branches, +and too much branch for the trunk, and too much trunk for the roots. +There is not living stock enough of thought deeply set in emotion to +keep the leaves ever fresh and fragrant. Wordsworth's poetry has for +the most part roots deeply hidden. + +Poetry is at times fitted to a subject too much like clothes to a +body. This is the method with even some writers of good gifts and +deserved name. Compared with Goethe, who, sensuous as he is, but +healthily sensuous, writes always from within outward, Schiller is +chargeable with this kind of externality. To try to make the fancy do +the work of feeling is a vain effort. And so much verse is of the +memory and fancy more than of the heart and imagination. Inward +impulse not being dominant, the words, however shiny, are touched with +coldness. Under the inward dominance (supposing always that the +intellectual tool be of due temper and sharpness) the poet mounts +springily on a ladder self-wrought out of the brain as he ascends; and +thus there is a prompt continuity and progressiveness, a forward and +upward movement towards the climax which ever awaits you in a subject +that has a poem in it. In a genuine poem, a work of inspiration and +not mainly of art, there is brisk evolution, phase of feeling climbing +over phase, thought kindled by thought seizing unexpected links of +association. This gives sure note of the presence of the matrix out of +which poetry molds itself, that is, sensibility warm and deep, +penetrating sympathy. Where evolution and upward movement are not, it +is a sign that the spring lacks depth and is too much fed by surface +streams from without. + +Through a poem should run a thread of emotional thought, strong enough +to bind the parts together so vividly as to hold attention close to +the substance. Many a so-called poem is but a string of elaborate +stanzas, mostly of four lines each, too slightly connected to +cooperate as members of an organic whole. There is not heat enough in +the originating impulse to fuse the parts into unity. There is +too much manufacture and not enough growth. Coleridge says, "The +difference between manufactured poems and works of genius is not less +than between an egg and an egg-shell; yet at a distance they both look +alike." + +Men without depth of sensibility or breadth of nature, but with enough +sense of beauty to modulate their thoughts, using with skill the +floating capital of sentiment and the current diction and molds of +verse, for a generation are esteemed poets of more genius than they +have, their pages being elaborate verse flavored with poetry, rather +than poems. In much verse are found old thoughts re-dressed in the +scoured garments of an ambitious fancy. The remark being made to +Goethe in his latter days, that scarce one of the younger German poets +had given an example of good prose, he rejoined, "That is very +natural; he who would write prose must have something to say; but he +who has nothing to say can make verses and rhymes; for one word gives +the other, till at last you have before you what in fact is nothing, +yet looks as though it were something." There is much good-looking +verse which does not fulfill any one of Milton's primary conditions +for poetry, being artificial instead of "simple," and having +neither soul enough to be "passionate," nor body enough to be +"sensuous." By passionate Milton means imbued with feeling. + +The poetical mood is always a visionary mood; so much so, that even +when the poet is depicting an actual person or scene, he must see it +with the imaginative eye, the inward eye, as well as with the outward. +Unless he does, there is no poetry in the result. A poem is twofold, +presenting an actuality, and at the same time a tender lucent image +thereof, like the reflection of a castle, standing on the edge of a +lake, in the calm deep mirror before it: at one view we see the castle +and its glistening counterpart. In the best poetry there is vivid +picture-making: reality is made more visible by being presented as a +beautiful show. It is the power to present the beautiful show which +constitutes the poet. To conceive a scene or person with such +liveliness and compactness as to be able to transfer the conception to +paper with a distinctness and palpitation that shall make the reader +behold in it a fresh and buoyant type of the actual--this implies a +subtle, creative life in the mind, this is the test of poetic +faculty. To stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and +sensibility, dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his +conception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. The poetic +mind, with a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a +subject at arm's length, where it can be turned round in the light; +the prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there +is no room for play of light or motion. + +Contemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest, and +at the same time actively endeavoring to embody it, the genuine poet +has in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here attain to; +and in the reader who can attune himself to the high pitch, he +enkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. There is current a +detestable phrase or definition, which even Coleridge allows himself +to countenance, namely, that poetry is something which gives pleasure. +Pleasure! Do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of +the Atlantic or from the top of Mount Washington, or the pleasure of +standing beside Niagara, or of reading about the self-sacrifice of +Regulus or Winkelried? Pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to +the lighter feelings. "Let me have the pleasure of taking wine +with you." A good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets. +Even enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to +poetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the +feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, and +there are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an +execution. But poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight +which follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or +scene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range +of that thought, sentiment, act, or scene. In the poetical there +always is exaltation, a reaching towards perfection, a subtle, +blooming spirituality. The end of poetry is not pleasure,--this were +to speak too grossly,--but refined enjoyment through emotion. + +To him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its presence, +the poetical is everywhere. The beautiful is a kiss which man gives to +Nature, who returns it; to get the kiss from her he must first give +it. Wordsworth says, "Poetry is the breath and fine spirit of all +knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the +countenance of all science." It might be called the aromatic +essence of all life. + +A poem is the incarnation of this aroma, the condensation of it into +form. A drop of dew symbolizes a poem; for a true poem should be oval, +without angles, transparent, compact, complete in itself, graceful +from inward quality and fullness. It may be of a few lines, or of +hundreds or thousands; but there must be no superfluous line or word. +A poem drops out of the brain a fragrant distillation. A poem must be +a spiritual whole; that is, not only with the parts organized into +proportioned unity, but with the whole and the parts springing out of +the idea, the sentiment, form obedient to substance, body to soul, the +sensuous life to the inward. For enduring, ruddy incarnation, the +subject, whether it be incident, scene, sentiment, or action, must +have within its core this essential aroma. The poet (and the test of +his poetic capacity is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a +core) keeps his conception distinctly and vividly before him. The +conception or ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him, like the +pillar of fire in the night, drawing him onward surely and rapidly. +Otherwise he lags and flags and stumbles. The spring into poetry is on +a flash, which not only lights up the thought on which it springs, but +renews, recreates it. + +A man's chief aim in life should be to better himself, to keep +bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is +the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view +the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry +elevates and refines the feelings. It reveals and strengthens the +spirituality of our nature. Poetry tunes the mind. Faculty of +admiration is one of our super-animal privileges. Poetry purges and +guides admiration; and the sounder and higher our admirations, the +more admirable ourselves become. + +The best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself, and sweetens its +imaginations. Our imaginations, that is, our inward thoughts, plans, +shaping our silent, interior doings, these are the chief part of us; +for out of these come most of our outward acts, and all of their +color. As is the preponderance of the man, will be this inward brood. +The timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man troubles, the +hopeful man successes, the avaricious man accumulations, the ambitious +possession of power; and the poetic man will imagine all sorts +of perfections, be ever yearning for a better and higher, be ever +building beautiful air-castles, earthy or moral, material or ethereal, +according as the sensuous or the spiritual predominates in his nature. +Beckford, of a sensuously poetic nature, having command of vast +wealth, brought his castle in the air down to the ground, and dazzled +his contemporaries with Fonthill Abbey. Not only are Fonthill Abbeys +and all beautiful buildings achieved through the warm action of the +poetic faculty, but all improvements are brought about by its virtue. +Out of this deep, inward, creative power issue all theories and +practice for the bettering of human conditions. All original founders +and discoverers are poets: the most poetic French mind I know is that +of Fourier. + +When a mind, having the texture and expansibility to become surcharged +with magnetic effluence, has moreover that aesthetic gift of rhythmic +expression which involves a sense of the beautiful, that is, of the +high and exquisite possibilities of created things,--when such a mind, +under the pressure of inward needs, betakes it to embodying in verse +its imaginations and conceptions, the result is poetry. _Poetry is +thought so inly warmed by creative sensibility as to overflow in +musical cadence._ And when we consider that thought is the gathering +of loose intellectual activity into a fast focus; that creative +sensibility is human feeling refined of its dross, stilled of its +tumultuousness in the glow of the beautiful; that musical cadence is +heard by him who can hearken with such rapt reverence as to catch some +sound of the tread in divine movement, we may apprehend that a genuine +poem implies, for its conception, an illuminated plenitude of mind, +and involves in its production a beatific visionariness. + + + + +III. + +STYLE. + + +Thought, act, and speech are of one substance. Where the best things +have been done, the best things have been said. The history of Attica +is richer and more significant than that of her sister-states of old +Greece, and among them her literature is supreme. So of England in +modern Europe. And where good thoughts have been uttered the form of +those will be finest which carry the choicest life. The tree gets its +texture from the quality of its sap. Were I asked what author is the +most profitable to the student of English on account of style, I +should answer, study Shakespeare. + +Have something to say, and say it in the best and fewest words, were a +good recipe for style. In this brief precept there are more +ingredients than at first view appear. To have something to say +implies that a man must write out of himself, and not chiefly out of +his memory; and so to write involves much more than many people +are aware of; in order that his style have freshness, which is a +primary need of a good style, the writer's thought must be fresh. +Then, to say his thought in the best and fewest words implies faculty +of choice in words, and faculty of getting rid of all verbal +superfluity; and these two faculties betoken proficiencies and some of +the finer aesthetic forces. + +Style itself is a gift (or more properly an issue of several gifts), +not an acquisition; it cannot be taught. As to teaching style to one +with inharmonious or defective natural powers, you might as well +attempt to teach a thrush to sing the songs of the nightingale. To be +sure, like the poetical, or the scientific, or any mental gift, it +requires culture. But style is little helped from without. The most, +as to the form of his utterance, that a writer can get from +others--whether through study of the best masters or through direct +rhetorical instruction--is in the mechanical portion of the art; that +is, how to put sentences together according to relation of clauses, +how by position of words and phrases to avoid obscurity and +awkwardness, and thus make most presentable and accessible what he has +to give out. Even in these superficial lessons success imports +something more than a superficial capacity. These lessons learnt, and +you have still to go behind them for style, whose cradle is within +you. _Le style c'est l'homme meme_ (a man's style is his very self), +is the oft-quoted profound sentence of Buffon. Style comes out of the +interior: beneath a genuinely good style are secret springs which give +to the surface its movement and sparkle. Mostly when people talk of +style 't is of the surface; they think not of the depths beneath. In +popularly good styles there are indeed no deep or fine springs +beneath; in Tom Moore's, for example, or Southey's. + +Nevertheless there are writers who have more skill and art than others +in presenting agreeably what they have to say, in gracefully shaping +their utterances; they are better endowed with some of the plastic +faculties; they have what Sainte-Beuve calls the genius of style. Tact +and craft enable them to make themselves more readable than some other +writers of more substance; still, they are only capable of so doing by +means of qualities which, however secondary, are interior and fervent, +and the skill imparted by which cannot be acquired except through the +presence of these qualities. This superiority of skill in form +is illustrated by the literature of France in comparison with the +literature of Germany, and even with that of England. The French +follow a precept thus embodied by Beranger: "Perfection of style +should be sought by all those who believe themselves called to diffuse +useful thoughts. Style, which is only the form appropriated to a +subject by art and reflection, is the passport of which every thought +has need in order to circulate, expand, and lodge itself in people's +brains. To neglect style is not to show sufficient love for the ideas +one wishes to make others adopt." And so effective is the following of +such a precept that, through careful devices and manipulating +cleverness, a brilliant success, though transitory is achieved by some +writers who range lightly over surfaces, their thoughts dipping no +deeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along the water, which it +keeps ruffling, making a momentary sprightly splash at each contact, +until, its force being soon spent, it disappears and is seen no more. + +The possession of certain mental gifts constitutes a talent for +writing, gifts which, with reference to the great primary powers of +the mind, are secondary. Sainte-Beuve says of the Abbe Gerbet +that he "had naturally the flowers of speech, movement and rhythm of +phrase, measure and choice of expression, even figurative language, +what, in short, makes a talent for writing." The possessor of these +qualifications may, nevertheless, rise only a little above mediocrity. +Of the styles of many, even clever, accomplished writers, one gets a +clear notion from the remark made of a certain polished actress, that +she always played well, never better. + +When Sainte-Beuve says _Rien ne vit que par le style_, he asserts in +fact the exclusive privilege of original thought to give permanence to +literary work; for nothing but an interior source can give life to +expression. The inward flow will shape itself adequately and +harmoniously in proportion as it has at full command the auxiliary, +what I have called the plastic literary qualities; but shape itself it +will, effectively and with living force, without the fullest command, +while the readiest mastery over these qualities can never give +vitality to style when are wanting primary resources. Literary +substance which does not shape itself successfully (it may not be with +the fullest success) is internally defective, is insufficient; +for if it throb with life, it will mold a form for its embodiment, +albeit that form, from lack of complete command of the secondary +agents, will not be so graceful or rich as with such command it would +have been. Wordsworth has made to English literature a permanent +addition which is of the highest worth, in spite of notable plastic +deficiencies. A conception that has a soul in it will find itself a +body, and if not a literary body, one furnished by some other of the +fine arts; or, wanting that, in practical enterprise or invention. And +the body or form will be stamped with the inward lineaments of the +man. Style issues from within, and if it does not, it is not style, +but manner. Words get all their force from the thoughts and feelings +behind them. They are necessary media, created, molded, and combined +by mental wants. Picking and polishing words and phrases is +ineffectual without the picking and polishing of the thoughts: below +the surface of words lies that which controls and vivifies style. And +then between the substance, the mental material, and the executive +faculties there must be lively harmony. The executive power is a +purely intellectual composite instrument; the force that +wields it is feeling. For the best style the wielding force must be +fine as well as rich and strong, and the shaping, harmonizing +instrument of superfine temper and smiling willingness. + +Style, in writing, is the art of putting into words what you think or +feel, in such a way as to make the best of it--presupposed, that what +you think or feel is worth putting into printed words. There are men +who, without being original or inventive, have still, through strong +understanding and culture, much to say that will profit their +contemporaries; men of a certain mental calibre, of talent, activity, +will, cleverness, of verbal facility and of prominent ambition and in +most cases of audacity, and who by discipline and labor attain to a +style which for their purposes is effective. Of this class Jeffrey, +Brougham, Macaulay are conspicuous examples. Theirs are not winged +minds. They keep to the plane of commonplace; they are never rapt into +an upper sphere of thought, where sentences grow transparent, +illuminated by soulful revelations. All three lack subtlety, the finer +insight, a penetrating perception. The style of such men, even when +most vivacious, is never marked by geniality, by newness of turns, by +imaginative combinations, by rhythmical sweeps, and especially not by +freshness, of all which the fountain is originality, genius, +creativeness. It is related that after several of Carlyle's papers had +appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," Brougham, one of its founders and +controllers, protested that if that man were permitted to write any +more he should cease to be a contributor. And so the pages of the +Review were closed against the best writer it ever had. This arbitrary +proceeding of Brougham is to be mainly accounted for as betraying the +instinct of creeping talent in the presence of soaring genius. + +Not less than men of talent men of genius need to cultivate style; +nay, from the copiousness and variousness of their material, and from +its very inwardness, the molds into which it is to be thrown need the +finest care. Coleridge, rich and incomparable as he is, would have +made many of his prose pages still more effective by a studious +supervision; and De Quincey tells us what labor his periods sometimes +cost him. The following advice, given in a letter from Maurice de +Guerin to his sister, may be addressed to all literary aspirants: +"Form for yourself a style which shall be the expression of +yourself. Study our French language by attentive reading, making it +your care to mark constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of +style, but without ever adopting the manner of any master. In the +works of these masters we must learn our language, but we must use it +each in our own fashion." + +One of the first constituents of a good style is what Coleridge calls +"progressive transition," which implies a dynamic force, a propulsive +movement, behind the pen. Hazlitt, for example, somewhat lacked this +force, and hence De Quincey is justified to speak of his solitary +flashes of thought, his "brilliancy, seen chiefly in separate +splinterings of phrase or image, which throw upon the eye a vitreous +scintillation for a moment." One of the charms, in a high sense, of +Coleridge's page is that in him this dynamic force was present in +liveliest action. His intellect, ever enkindled by his emotions, +exacted logical sequence, and thus a rapid forward movement is +overspread by a glow of generous feeling, which, being refined by his +poetic sensibility made his style luminous and flowing. + +De Quincey, treating of aphoristic writing, says, "Any man [he of +course means any man with good things in him] as he walks +through the streets may contrive to jot down an independent thought, a +short-hand memorandum of a great truth; but the labor of composition +begins when you have to put your separate threads of thought into a +loom; to weave them into a continuous whole; to connect, to introduce +them; to blow them out or expand them; to carry them to a close." +Buffon attached the greatest importance to sequence, to close +dependence, to continuous enchainment. He detested a chopped, jerky +style, that into which the French are prone to fall. Certain it is, +and from obvious causes, that much of the secret of style lies in +aptness of sequence, thought and word, through an irresistible +impulsion and pertinence, leaping forth nimbly, each taking its place +promptly, because naturally and necessarily. Through fusion and close +coherency and dependence, the flow is at once smooth and lively. The +grace as well as the strength of the living physical body depends +much, nay primarily, on the joints. So with the body of a good +writer's thoughts, that is, his mode of utterance. To the linking of +sentences and paragraphs (the links being self-wrought out of inward +sap) is due much of the buoyancy and force of style. The +springiness of the joints depends, in the body, on the quality of its +nervous life; in style, much on the marrow and validity of the +thoughts. By a sprightly stream of thought, fed from a full spring of +feeling, the current of words is kept lively and graceful. Words, +sentences, paragraphs, cannot be held closely, symmetrically, +attractively together, without the unction invisibly distilled from +brisk mental movement, movement starting from sentiment fresh and +true. Soul is the source of style. Not sensibility alone is a +prerequisite for style: the sensibility must be _active_, made active +by the fine aspiring urgency which ever demands the best. A good style +will have the sheen communicated by lubrication from within, not the +gloss of outward rubbing. + +That style varies in pitch and tone according to the subject treated +ought to be self-evident. In every page of "The Merry Wives of +Windsor" we recognize Shakespeare not less palpably than in "King +Lear." In his "Recollections of Charles Lamb" De Quincey writes, "Far +be it from me to say one word in praise of those--people of how narrow +a sensibility--who imagine that a simple (that is, according to many +tastes, an unelevated and _unrhythmical_) style--take, for +instance, an Addisonian or a Swiftian style--is _unconditionally_ +good. Not so: all depends upon the subject; and there is a style, +transcending these and all other modes of simplicity, by infinite +degrees, and, in the same proportion, impossible to most men, the +rhythmical, the continuous--what in French is called the +_soutenu_--which, to humbler styles stands in the relation of an organ +to a shepherd's pipe. This also finds its justification in its +subject; and the subject which _can_ justify it must be of a +corresponding quality--loftier--and therefore, rare." + +I quote De Quincey because he has written more, and more profoundly as +well as more copiously, on style than any writer I know. To this +point,--the adaption of style to subject,--he returns, laying down +with clearness and truth the law which should here govern. In a paper +on Schlosser's "Literary History of the Eighteenth Century" he +reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the +common opinion that Swift's style is, for all writers, a model of +excellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on +which Swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage: +"That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the +pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for +saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., +poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably +regarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper +subject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter +what the subject. Now, my friend, suppose the case, that the dean had +been required to write a pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal +apostrophe to Death, or to many passages in Sir Thomas Brown's +'Religio Medici' and his 'Urn-Burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural +sections of his 'Holy Living and Dying,' do you know what would have +happened? Are you aware what sort of a ridiculous figure your poor +bald Jonathan would have cut? About the same that would be cut by a +forlorn scullion or waiter from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if +suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of +Belshazzar the king, before a thousand of his lords." + +That no writer of limited faculties can have a style of high +excellence ought to be a truism. Through a certain equilibrium among +his faculties, and assiduous literary culture, such a one may +excel colleagues who move on the same bounded plane; but that is all. +From the shallowest utterance, where, thoughts and feelings lying just +below the surface, there can be no strong lights and shadows, no +splendid play in the exposition, styles range, with the men who make +them, through all degrees of liveliness and significance and power, up +to that simple grandeur which conceals a vast volume of thought, and +implies a divine ruling of multiplicity. + +In a good style, on whatever degree it stands, there must be a full +marriage between word and thought, so clean an adjustment of +expression to material as to leave no rough edges or nodes. The words +must not be too big or too shiny for the thought; they must not stand +out from the texture, embossing, as it were, the matter. A style can +hardly be too nervous; it can be too muscular, as, for example, was +sometimes that of Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting. + +A primary requisite for a good style is that the man and the writer be +one; that is, that the man have a personal feeling for, a free +sympathy with, the theme the writer has taken in hand; his +subject must be fitted to him, and he to his subject. That he be +sincere is not enough; he must be cordial; then he will be magnetic, +attractive. You must love your work to do it well. + +A good style is a stream, and a lively stream: it flows ever onward +actively. The worst vice a style can have is languor. With some +writers a full stop is a double full stop: the reader does not get +forward. Much writing consists of little more than sluggish eddies. In +many minds there is not leap enough for a style. Excellence in style +demands three vivacities, and rather exacting ones, for they involve a +somewhat rare mental apportionment; the vivacities of healthy and +poetic feeling, of intellectual nimbleness, and of inviolable +sequence. + +Writers there are who get to be partially self-enslaved by a routine +of phrases and words under the repetition of which thought is hardened +by its molds. Thence mechanical turns and forms, which cause numbness, +even when there is a current of intellectual activity. Writers most +liable to this subjection are they who have surrendered themselves to +set opinions and systems, who therefore cease to grow,--a sad +condition for man or writer. + +Hypocrites in writing, as in talking and doing, end badly. A +writer who through his style aims to seem better or other than himself +is soon found out. The desire so to seem argues a literary incapacity; +it looks as though the very self--which will shine through the +style--lacked confidence in its own substance. And after all, in +writing as in doing and talking, a man must be himself, will be +himself in spite of himself. One cannot put on his neighbor's style +any more than he can put on his neighbor's limbs. + +Not only has prose its melody as well as verse, but there is no +_style_ unless sentences are pervaded, I might say animated, by +rhythm; lacking appropriate movement, they are inelastic, inert, +drowsy. Rhythm implies a soul behind it and in it. The best style will +have a certain rotundity imparted by the ceaseless rocking of thought +in the deep ocean of sentiment. Without some music in them sentences +were torpid, impracticable. To put thoughts and words so together that +there shall be a charm in the presentation of them, there needs a +lively harmony among certain faculties, a rhythm in the mind. Hence +Cicero said that to write prose well, one must be able to write verse. +The utterance of music in song or tune, in artful melody or choral +harmony, is but the consummation of a power which is ever a sweetener +in life's healthily active exhibitions, the power of sound. Nature is +alive with music. In the fields, in the air, sound is a token of life. +On high, bare, or snow-covered mountains the sense of oppression comes +in great part from the absence of sound. But stand in spring under a +broad, sapful Norway maple, leafless as yet, its every twig and spray +clad in tender green flowerets, and listen to the musical murmur of +bees above you, full of life and promise, a heavenly harmony from +unseen choristers. Here is a symbol of the creative energy, unceasing, +unseen, and ever rhythmical. + +The heartier and deeper the thought, the more melody will there be in +its fit expression, and thence the higher range of style is only +reached by poets, or by men who, though poetically minded, yet lack +"the accomplishment of verse." The sudden electric injection of light +into a thought or object or sentiment--in this consists the gift +poetical, a gift which implies a sensibility so keen and select as to +kindle the light, and an intellect fine and firm enough to hold and +transmit it. A writer in whom there is no poetic feeling can hardly +rise to a style. Whoever has tried to read a play of Scribe will +understand from this why Sainte-Beuve affirms of him that he is +utterly devoid of the faculty of style (_denue de la faculte du +style_). Contrast with Scribe his fellow-countryman, the great +Moliere. Thence, Joubert says, "Many of our poets having written in +prose, ordinary style has received from them a brilliancy and +audacities which it would not have had without them. Perhaps, too, +some prose writers, who were born poets without being born versifiers, +have contributed to adorn our language, even in its familiarities, +with those riches and that pomp which until then had been the +exclusive property of the poetic idiom." + +A man of poetic sensibility is one born with a sleepless eye to the +better, an ear that craves the musical, a soul that is uneasy in +presence of the defective or the incomplete. This endowment implies a +mind not only susceptible of the higher and finer movements of +thought, but which eagerly demands them, and which thus makes the +writer exacting towards himself. Hence only he attains to a genuine +correctness; he was correct by instinct before he was so by +discipline. In the whole as well as the parts he requires finish and +proportion. Within him there is a momentum which fills out his thought +and its worded envelope to warm convexity. Only he has the fine tact +and discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses. The +best style is organic in its details as well as its structure; it +shows modeling, a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and +plastic effects of clay in the hands of the sculptor. Goethe says that +only poets and artists have method, because they require to see a +thing before them in a completed, rounded form. Writing is a fine art, +and one of the finest; and he who would be a master in this art must +unite genial gifts with conscientious culture. + +Of style the highest examples, therefore, are to be found in the verse +of the great poets, of the deep rhythmic souls who make a sure, agile +intellect their willing Ariel; and no prose writer gets to be a master +in style but through kindred endowment. The compact, symmetrical +combination of gifts and acquirements, of genius with talent, demanded +for the putting forth of a fresh, priceless poem, this he need not +have; but his perceptions must be brightened by the light +whose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more perfect in form, +deed, and sentiment, and his best thoughts suffused with that +fragrance whose only source is the ravishment of the beautiful. + + + + +IV. + +DANTE AND HIS LATEST TRANSLATORS.[5] + + [5] Putnam's Magazine, 1868. + + +"Ghosts and witches are the best machinery for a modern epic." So said +Charles Fox, who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class. +Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as +evidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the +epopee. The term "machinery" implies ignorance of the import of the +super-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism +and a virtual unbelief. No poet who should accept the term could write +an epic, with or without the "machinery." Such acceptance would +betoken that weakness of the poetic pinion which surely follows a want +of faith in the invisible supervisive energies. + +A genuine epic, of the first class, is a world-poem, a poem of depth +and height and breadth, narrating long-prepared ruin or foundation of +a race; and poetry, soaring beyond history, is bold to lay bare the +method of the divine intervention in the momentous work. The epic +poet, worthy of the lofty task, has such large sympathies, together +with such consciousness of power, that he takes on him to interpret +and incarnate the celestial cooperation. There are people, and some of +them even poets, whose consciousness is so smothered behind the +senses, that they come short of belief in spiritual potency. They are +what, with felicity of phrase, Mr. Matthew Arnold calls-- + + "Light half-believers in our casual creeds." + +Homer and Milton were believers: they believed in the visible, active +presence on the earth of the god Mars, and the archangel Raphael. Had +they not, there would have been no "Iliad," no "Paradise Lost." + +Dante, too, was a believer; and such warm, wide sympathies had he, and +an imagination so daring, that he undertook to unfold the divine +judgment on the multitudinous dead, ranging with inspired vision +through hell, and purgatory, and heaven. In his large, hot heart, he +lodged the racy, crude beliefs of his age, and with poetic pen wrought +them into immortal shapes. The then religious imaginations of +Christendom, positive, and gross, and very vivid; the politics of +Italy, then tumultuous and embittered; the theology and philosophy of +his time, fantastic, unfashioned--all this was his material. But all +this, and were it ten times as much, is but the skeleton, the frame. +The true material of a poem is the poet's own nature and thoughts, his +sentiment and his; judgment, his opinions, aspirations, imaginations, +his veriest self, the whole of him, especially the best of him. + +Than imaginary journeys through the realms beyond the grave, which +were so much the vogue with the religious writers of the day,--and +literature then was chiefly, almost exclusively, religious,--no more +broad or tempting canvas could be offered to a poet, beset, as all +poets are apt to be, with the need of utterance, and possessed, +moreover, of a graphic genius that craved strong, glowing themes for +its play. The present teeming world to be transfigured into the world +to come, and the solicitation and temptation to do this brought to a +manly, powerful nature, passionate, creative, descriptive, to a +stirring realist, into whose breast, as a chief actor on the Italian +scene, ran, all warm from the wheels of their spinning, the threads of +Italian politics at the culmination of the papal imperial conflict; +and that breast throbbing with the fiery passions of republican Italy, +while behind the throb beat the measure of a poetic soul impelled to +tune the wide, variegated cacophony. Proud, passionate, and baffled, +the man Dante deeply swayed the poet. Much of his verse is directly +woven out of his indignations and burning personal griefs. At times, +contemporaneous history tyrannized over him. + +Dante's high and various gifts, his supreme poetic gift, the noble +character and warm individuality of the man, with the pathos of his +personal story, the full, lively transcript he hands down of the +theology and philosophy of his age, his native literary force as +molder of the Italian language, his being the bold, adventurous +initiator, the august father of modern poetry--all this has combined +to keep him and his verse fresh in the minds of men through six +centuries. But even all this would not have made him one of the three +or four world-poets, would not have won for him the wreath of +universal European translation. What gave his rare qualities their +most advantageous field, not merely for the display of their peculiar +superiorities, but for keeping their fruit sound and sweet, was that +he is the historian of hell, purgatory, and heaven--of the world to +come such as it was pictured in his day, and as it has been pictured +more or less ever since--the word-painter of that visionary, awful +hereafter, the thought of which has ever been a spell. + +Those imaginations as to future being--to the Middle Ages so vivid as +to become soul-realities--Dante, with his transcendent pictorial +mastership, clothed in words fresh and weighty from the mine of +popular speech, stamping them with his glittering imperial +superscription. Imaginations! there are imaginations of the future, +the reverse of poetical. Hunger will give you tormenting imaginations +of breakfasts and dinners; avarice enlivens some minds with pictures +of gains that are to be. But imaginations of the life beyond the +grave, these we cannot entertain without spirituality. The having them +with any urgency and persistence implies strong spiritual +prepossessions: men must be self-possessed with their higher self, +with their spirit. The very attempt to figure your disembodied state +is an attempt poetical. To succeed with any distinctness denotes some +power of creative projection: without wings, this domain cannot be +entered. In Dante's time these attempts were common. Through his +preeminent qualifications, crowned with the poetic faculty, the +faculty of sympathy with ideal excellence, his attempt was a great, a +unique success. + +To accompany Dante through his vast triple trans-terrestrial world, +would seem to demand in the reader a sustained effort of imagination. +But Dante is so graphic, and, we might add, corporeal in his pictures, +puts such a pulse into his figures, that the artistic illusion +wherewith we set out is exchanged for, or rather overborne by, an +illusion of the reality of what is represented. Yet from the opening +of the first canto he is ever in the super-earthly world, and every +line of the fourteen thousand has the benefit of a super-earthly, that +is, a poetic atmosphere, which lightens it, transfigures it, floats +it. One reads with the poetic prestige of the knowledge that every +scene is trans-terrestrial; and, at the same time, every scene is +presented with a physical realism, a visual and audible vividness, +which captivates and holds the perceptive faculty; so that the reader +finds himself grasped, as it were, in a vice, whose double handle is +mortised on one side in the senses, and on the other in the spiritual +imagination. + +Dante had it in him,--this hell, purgatory, and heaven--so full and +warm and large was his nature. Within his own breast he had felt, with +the keen intensity of the poetic temperament, the loves and hates, the +griefs and delights of life. Through his wealth of heart he had a +fellow-feeling for all the joys and sorrows of his brother-men, and, +added to this, an artist's will and want to reproduce them, and _to_ +reproduce them a clear, outwelling, intellectual vivacity. He need +scarcely have told us that his poem, though treating of spirits, +relates to the passions and doings of men in the flesh. He chose a +theme that at once seized the attention of his readers, and gave to +himself a boundless scope. His field was all past history, around the +altitudes of which are clustered biographical traits and sketches of +famous sinners and famous saints, of heroes and lofty criminals; and, +along with this, contemporaneous Florentine and Italian history, with +its tumults and vicissitudes, its biographies and personalities, its +wraths and triumphs. + +Dante exhibits great fertility in situations and conjunctions; but, +besides that many of them were ready to his hand, this kind of +inventiveness denotes of itself no fine creative faculty. It is the +necessary equipment of the voluminous novelist. In this facility and +abundance Goldsmith could not have coped with James and Bulwer; and +yet the "Vicar of Wakefield" (not to go so high as "Tristram Shandy" +and "Don Quixote") is worth all their hundred volumes of tales put +together. What insight, what weight, and faithfulness, and refinement, +and breadth, and truth, and elevation of character and conception, +does the framework of incident support and display? That is the +aesthetic question. The novels of every day bristle with this material +inventiveness, this small, abounding, tangled underwood of event and +sensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build. +The invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures and conditions +of the "Inferno" and "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso," is not admirable for +their mere exuberance and diversity,--for that might have come from a +comparatively prosaic mind, especially when fed, as all minds then +were, with the passionate mediaeval beliefs,--but for the heart there +is in them, throbbing deeply in some, and for the human sympathy, and +thence, in part, the photographic fidelity, and for the paramount gift +poetically to portray. A consequence of the choice of subject, and, as +regards the epic quality of Dante's poem, an important consequence, is +that there is in it no unity of interest. The sympathies of the reader +are not engrossed by one great group of characters, acting and +reacting on one another through the whole sweep of the invention. +Instead of this, we have a long series of unconnected pictures, each +one awakening a new interest. Hereby the mind is distracted, the +attention being transferred at every hundred lines to a fresh figure +or group. We pass through a gallery of pictures and portraits, +classed, to be sure, by subjects, but distinct one from the other, and +separated by the projection of as many different frames. We are on a +weird, adventurous journey, and make but brief stops, however +attractive the strangers or acquaintance we meet. We go from person to +person, from scene to scene; so that at the end of the journey, +although the perception has been richly crowded, one impression has +effaced the other. Not carrying the weight, not pulsating in its every +limb with the power of a broad, deep, involved story, architecturally +reared on one foundation, whose parts are all subordinated to a great +unity, the "Divina Commedia," as an organic, artistic whole, is +inferior to the "Iliad" and "Paradise Lost," and to the Grecian and +Shakespearean tragedies. + +The exclusive super-earthliness of his scenes and personages, and, +with this, his delight in picture-drawing, keep Dante close to his +page--fastened to it, we might say, by a twofold fascination. Among +the many faculties that equip him for his extraordinary task, most +active is that of form. Goethe says of him, "The great intellectual +and moral qualities of Dante being universally acknowledged, we shall +be furthered in a right estimate of his works, if we keep in view that +just in his life-time--Giotto being his contemporary--was the re-birth +of plastic art in all its natural strength. By this sensuous, +form-loving spirit of the age, working so widely and deeply, Dante, +too, was largely swayed. With the eye of his imagination he seized +objects so distinctly that he could reproduce them in sharp outline. +Thence we see before us the most abstruse and unusual, drawn, as it +were, after nature." In recognition of the same characteristic, +Coleridge says, "In picturesqueness Dante is beyond all other poets, +ancient or modern, and more in the stern style of Pindar than of any +other. Michael Angelo is said to have made a design for every page of +the 'Divina Commedia.'" + +Dante, eminent in poetic gifts, has many sides, but this is his +strongest side: he is preeminently a poet of form. In his mind and in +his work there is a southern, an Italian, sensuousness. He is a poet +of thought, but more a poet of molds; he is a poet of sentiment, but +more a poet of pictures. Rising readily to generalization, still his +intellect is more specific than generic. His subject--chosen by the +concurrence of his aesthetic, moral, and intellectual needs--admits +of, nay, demands portraits, isolated sketches, unconnected +delineations. The personages of his poem are independent one of the +other, and are thence the more easily drawn. Nor does Dante abound in +transferable passages, sentences of universal application, from being +saturated with the perfumed essence of humanity. We say it with +diffidence, but to us it seems that there is a further poetic glance, +more idealized fidelity, in Milton; more significance and wisdom and +profound hint in Goethe. In Milton the mental reverberation is wider: +he rivets us through distant grand association, by great suggestion. +Thus, describing the darkened head of Satan, Milton says,-- + + "As when the sun new risen + Looks through the horizontal misty air, + Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, + In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds + On half the nations," + +Setting aside the epithets "horizontal" and "disastrous," which are +poetically imaginative, the likening of Satan to the sun seen through +a mist, or in eclipse, is a direct, parallel comparison that aids us +to see Satan; and it is in such, immediate, not mediate,--not +involving likeness between physical and mental qualities, but merely +between physical, not between subtle, relations,--that Dante chiefly +deals, showing imaginative fertility, helpful, needful to the poet, +but different from, and altogether inferior to, poetic imagination. +The mind attains to the height of poetic imagination when the +intellect, urged by the purer sensibilities in alliance with +aspiration for the perfect, exerts its imaginative power to the +utmost, and, as the result of this exertion, discovers a thought or +image which, from its originality, fitness, and beauty, gives to the +reader a new delight. Of this, the lordliest mental exhibition, there +is a sovereign example in the words wherewith Milton concludes the +passage-- + + "and with fear of change + Perplexes monarchs." + +This fills the mind with the terror he wishes his Satan to inspire; +this gives its greatness to the passage. + +Dante, by the distinctness of his outline, addresses himself more to +the reader's senses and perception; Milton rouses his higher +imaginative capacity. In the whole "Inferno," is there a sentence so +aglow as this line and a half of "Paradise Lost"? + + "And the torrid clime + Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire." + +Or is there in Dante any sound so loud and terrible as that shout of +Milton's demon-host-- + + "That tore Hell's concave, and beyond + Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night"? + +Here the unity of his theme stands Milton in stead for grandeur and +breadth. + +Dante is copious in similes. Such copiousness by no means proves +poetic genius; and a superior poet may have less command of similes +than one inferior to him. Wordsworth has much less of this command +than Moore. But when a poet does use similes, he will be likely often +to put of his best into them, for they are captivating instruments and +facilities for poetic expansion. When a poet is in warm sympathy with +the divine doings, there will be at times a flashing fitness in his +similitudes, which are then the sudden offspring of finest intuition. +In citing some of the most prominent in the "Divina Commedia," we at +once give brief samples of Dante and of the craft of his three latest +translators, using the version of Dr. Parsons for extracts from the +"Inferno," that of Mr. Dayman for those from the "Purgatorio," and +that of Mr. Longfellow for those from the "Paradiso." + + "As well-filled sails, which in the tempest swell, + Drop, with folds flapping, if the mast be rent; + So to the earth that cruel monster fell, + And straightway down to Hell's Fourth Pit he went." + _Inferno_: Canto VII. + + "Swept now amain those turbid waters o'er + A tumult of a dread portentous kind, + Which rocked with sudden spasms each trembling shore, + Like the mad rushing of a rapid wind; + As when, made furious by opposing heats, + Wild through the wood the unbridled tempest scours, + Dusty and proud, the cringing forest beats, + And scatters far the broken limbs and flowers; + Then fly the herds,--the swains to shelter scud. + Freeing mine eyes, 'Thy sight,' he said, 'direct + O'er the long-standing scum of yonder flood, + Where, most condense, its acrid streams collect.'" + _Inferno_: Canto IX. + + "When, lo! there met us, close beside our track, + A troop of spirits. Each amid the band + Eyed us, as men at eve a passer-by + 'Neath a new moon; as closely us they scanned, + As an old tailor doth a needle's eye." + _Inferno_: Canto XV. + + "And just as frogs that stand, with noses out + On a pool's margin, but beneath it hide + Their feet and all their bodies but the snout, + So stood the sinners there on every side." + _Inferno_: Canto XXII. + + "A cooper's vessel, that by chance hath been + Either of middle-piece or cant-piece reft, + Gapes not so wide as one that from his chin + I noticed lengthwise through his carcass cleft." + _Inferno_: Canto XXVIII. + + "We tarried yet the ocean's brink upon, + Like unto people musing of their way, + Whose body lingers when the heart hath gone; + And lo! as near the dawning of the day, + Down in the west, upon the watery floor, + The vapor-fogs do Mars in red array, + Even such appeared to me a light that o'er + The sea so quickly came, no wing could match + Its moving. Be that vision mine once more." + _Purgatorio_: Canto II. + + "And thou, remembering well, with eye that sees + The light, wilt know thee like the sickly one + That on her bed of down can find no ease, + But turns and turns again her ache to shun," + _Purgatorio_: Canto VI. + + "'T was now the hour the longing heart that bends + In voyagers, and meltingly doth sway, + Who bade farewell at morn to gentle friends; + And wounds the pilgrim newly bound his way + With poignant love, to hear some distant bell + That seems to mourn the dying of the day; + When I began to slight the sounds that fell + Upon my ear, one risen soul to view, + Whose beckoning hand our audience would compel." + _Purgatorio_: Canto VIII. + + "There I the shades see hurrying up to kiss + Each with his mate from every part, nor stay, + Contenting them with momentary bliss. + So one with other, all their swart array + Along, do ants encounter snout with snout, + So haply probe their fortune and their way." + _Purgatorio_: Canto XXVI. + + "Between two viands, equally removed + And tempting, a free man would die of hunger + Ere either he could bring unto his teeth. + So would a lamb between the ravenings + Of two fierce wolves stand fearing both alike; + And so would stand a dog between two does. + Hence, if I held my peace, myself I blame not, + Impelled in equal measure by my doubts, + Since it must be so, nor do I commend." + _Paradiso_: Canto IV. + + "And as a lute and harp, accordant strung + With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make + To him by whom the notes are not distinguished, + So from the lights that there to me appeared + Upgathered through the cross a melody, + Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn." + _Paradiso_: Canto XIV. + + "As through the pure and tranquil evening air + There shoots from time to time a sudden fire, + Moving the eyes that steadfast were before, + And seems to be a star that changeth place, + Except that in the part where it is kindled + Nothing is missed, and this endureth little; + So from the horn that to the right extends + Unto that cross's foot there ran a star + Out of the constellation shining there." + _Paradiso_: Canto XV. + + "Even as remaineth splendid and serene + The hemisphere of air, when Boreas + Is blowing from that cheek where he is mildest, + Because is purified and resolved the rack + That erst disturbed it, till the welkin laughs + With all the beauties of its pageantry; + Thus did I likewise, after that my lady + Had me provided with a clear response, + And like a star in Heaven the truth was seen." + _Paradiso_: Canto XXVIII. + +The first question to ask in regard to a simile found in verse is, Is +it poetical? Is there, as effect of its introduction, any heightening +of the reader's mood, any cleansing of his vision, any clarification +of the medium through which he is looking? Is there a sudden play of +light that warms, and, through this warmth, illuminates the +object before him? Few of those just quoted, put to such test, could +be called more than conventionally poetical--if this be not a +solecism. To illustrate one sensuous object by another does not +animate the mind enough to fulfill any one of the above conditions. +Such similitudes issuing from intellectual liveliness, there is +through them no steeping of intellectual perception in emotion. They +may help to make the object ocularly more apparent, but they do not +make the feeling a party to the movement. When this is done,--as in +the examples from Canto XV. of the "Inferno," and Canto VIII. of the +"Purgatorio,"--what an instantaneous vivification of the picture! + +But in the best of them the poetic gleam is not so unlooked-for bright +as in the best of Shakespeare's. As one instance out of many: towards +the end of the great soliloquy of Henry V., after enumerating the +emblems and accompaniments of royalty, the king continues,-- + + "No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, + Not all these, laid in bed majestical, + Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; + Who, with a body filled, and vacant mind, + Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread; + Never sees horrid night, the child of hell; + But, like a lackey, from the rise to set, + Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night + Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn, + Doth rise _and help Hyperion to his horse_" + +What a sudden filling of the earth with light through that image, so +fresh and unexpected, of the rising sun, with its suggestion of beauty +and healthfulness! Then the far-reaching, transfiguring imagination, +that, in a twinkle, transmutes into the squire of Hyperion a stolid +rustic, making him suddenly radiant with the glory of morning. It is +by this union of unexpectedness with fitness, of solidity with +brilliancy, of remoteness with instantaneous presence, in his figures, +denoting overflow of resources, a divine plenitude, so that we feel +after Shakespeare has said his best things, that he could go on saying +more and better,--it is especially by this lustrous, ever-teeming +fullness of life, this creative readiness, that Shakespeare throws a +farther and whiter and a broader light than Dante. Nor does Dante's +page glisten, as Shakespeare's so often does, with metaphor, or +compressed similes, that at times with a word open the spiritual +sphere; not super-imposed as cold ornament, but inter-tissued with the +web of thought, upflashings from a deep sea of mind, to quiver on the +surface, as on the calm level of the Atlantic you may see a +circuit of shining ripple, caused by schools of fish that have come up +from the wealth in the depths below to help the sun to glisten,--a +sign of life, power, and abundance. + +Like his great compeer, Milton, Dante fails of universality from want +of humor. Neither had any fun in him. This was the only fault +(liberally to interpret Can's conduct) that Dante's host, Can Grande +of Verona, had to find with him. The subjects of both poets +(unconsciously chosen perhaps from this very defect of humor) were +predominantly religious, and their theology, which was that of their +times, was crude and cruel. The deep, sympathetic earnestness, which +is the basis of the best humor, they had, but, to use an illustration +of Richter, they could not turn sublimity upside down,--a great feat, +only possible through sense of the comic, which, in its highest +manifestation of humor, pillows pain in the lap of absurdity, throws +such rays upon affliction as to make a grin to glimmer through gloom, +and, with the fool in "Lear," forces you, like a child, to smile +through warmest tears of sympathy. Humor imparts breadth and buoyancy +to tolerance, enabling it to dandle lovingly the faults and +follies of men; through humor the spiritual is calm and clear enough +to sport with and toss the sensual; it is a compassionate, tearful +delight; in its finest mood, an angelic laughter. + +Of pathos Dante has given examples unsurpassed in literature. By the +story of Ugolino the chords of the heart are so thrilled that pity and +awe possess us wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to +tenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single +fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is +to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape with a +hundred flashes. + +All the personages of Dante's poem (unless we regard himself as one) +are spirits. Shakespeare, throughout his many works, gives only a few +glimpses into the world beyond the grave; but how grandly by these few +is the imagination expanded. Clarence's dream, "lengthened after +life," in which he passes "the melancholy flood," is almost +super-Dantesque, concentrating in a few ejaculative lines a fearful +foretaste of trans-earthly torment for a bad life on earth. And the +great ghost in "Hamlet," when you read of him, how shadowy real! +Dante's representation of disembodied humanity is too pagan, too +palpable, not ghostly enough, not spiritualized with hope and awe. + +Profound, awakening, far-stretching, much enfolding, thought-breeding +thoughts, that can only grow in the soil of pure, large sensibilities, +and by them are cast up in the heave and glow of inward motion, to be +wrought by intellect and shaped in the light of the beautiful,--of +these, which are the test of poetic greatness, Dante, if we may +venture to say so, has not more or brighter examples than Milton, and +not so many as Goethe; while of such passages, compactly embodying as +they do the finer insights of a poetic mind, there are more in a +single one of the greater tragedies of Shakespeare, than in all the +three books of the "Divina Commedia." + +Juxtaposition beside Shakespeare, even if it bring out the +superiorities of the English bard, is the highest honor paid to any +other great poet. Glory enough is it if admiration can lift Dante so +high as to take him into the same look that beholds Shakespeare; what +though the summit of the mighty Englishman shine alone in the sky, and +the taller giant carry up towards heaven a larger bulk and more varied +domains. The traveler, even if he come directly from wondering +at Mont Blanc in its sublime presence, will yet stand with earnest +delight before the majesty of the Yungfrau and the Eigher. + +But it is time to speak of Dante in English. + +"It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible, that you might +discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as to seek to +transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet." +Thus writes a great poet, Shelley, in his beautiful "Defense of +Poetry." But have we not in modern tongues the creations of Homer, and +of Plato, who Shelley, on the same page, says is essentially a poet? +And can we estimate the loss the modern mind would suffer by +deprivation of them in translated form? Pope's Homer--still Homer +though so Popish--has been a not insignificant chapter in the culture +of thousands, who without it would have known no more of Hector and +Achilles and the golden glowing cloud of passion and action through +which they are seen superbly shining, than what a few of them would +incidently have learnt from Lempriere. Lord Derby's Iliad has gone +through many editions already. And Job and the Psalms: what should we +have done without them in English? Translations are the +telegraphic conductors that bring us great messages from those in +other lands and times, whose souls were so rich and deep that from +their words their fellow-men, in all parts of the globe, draw truth +and wisdom forever. The flash on which the message was first launched +has lost some of its vividness by the way; but the purport of the +message we have distinctly, and the joy or grief wherewith it is +freighted, and even much of its beauty. Shall we not eat oranges, +because on being translated from Cuba to our palates they have lost +somewhat of their flavor? In reading a translated poem we wish to have +as much of the essence of the original, that is, as much of the +poetry, as possible. A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation +of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological +exposition,--a poem, only in another dress. Thence a work in verse, +that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made +to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth +every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that. +A prose translation of a poem is an aesthetic impertinence, +Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent +in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him +in verse. And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much +telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such +touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even +in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic +sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were +the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the +deflowering of many delicate stems. Forty years ago, Mr. Hay ward +translated the "Faust" of Goethe into prose; but let any one compare +the Hymn of the Archangels and other of the more highly-wrought +passages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in +verse,--with that of Mr. Brooks for example,--to perceive at once the +insufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally +faithful a prose version. The effect on "Faust," or on any high +passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what +would be the effect on an exquisite _bas-relief_ of reducing its +projection one half by a persevering application of pumice. In all +genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so +inwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely +disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the +verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by +the transplanting of it into another soil. + +The translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just +to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the +page into his own language. He must brace himself into an active +state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, then +transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he +would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt. To get +into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the +words, embracing them from within, not merely seizing them from +without. Having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the +original, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key. Such +surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original, +and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his +verse; for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and +to see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled +by himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which +he had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that +of his own first inspirations. + +A poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity. +"Paradise Lost," conceived in Milton's brain, could not utter itself +in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our +language a new music. It could not have been written in the Spenserian +stanza. What would the "Fairy Queen" be in blank verse? For his theme +and mood Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which +enlivens musical cadence with sweet reiteration. Rhyme was then a new +element in verse, a modern aesthetic creation; and it is a help and an +added beauty, if it be not obtrusive and too self-conscious, and if it +be not a target at which the line aims; for then it becomes a clog to +freedom of movement, and the pivot of factitious pauses, that are +offensive both to sense and to ear. Like buds that lie half-hidden in +leaves, rhymes should peep out, sparkling but modest, from the cover +of words, falling on the ear as though they were the irrepressible +strokes of a melodious pulse at the heart of the verse. + +The _terza rima_--already in use--Dante adopted as suitable to +continuous narrative. With his feeling and aesthetic want +rhymed verse harmonized, the triple repetition offering no obstacle, +Italian being copious in endings of like sound. His measure is iambic, +free iambic, and every line consists, not of ten syllables, but of +eleven, his native tongue having none other than feminine rhymes. And +this weakness is so inherent in Italian speech, that every line even +of the blank verse in all the twenty-two tragedies of Alfieri ends +femininely, that is, with an unaccented eleventh syllable. In all +Italian rhyme there is thus always a double rhyme, the final syllable, +moreover, invariably ending with a vowel. This, besides being too much +rhyme and too much vowel, is, in iambic lines, metrically a defect, +the eleventh syllable being a superfluous syllable. + +In these two prominent features English verse is different from +Italian: it has feminine rhymes, but the larger part of its rhymes are +masculine; and it has fewer than Italian. This second characteristic, +the comparative fewness of rhymes, is likewise one of its sources of +strength: it denotes musical richness and not poverty, as at first +aspect it seems to do, the paucity of like-sounding syllables implying +variety in its sounds. It has all the vocalic syllables and +endings it needs for softness, and incloses them mostly in consonants +for condensation, vigor, and emphasis. + +Primarily the translator has to consider the resources and +individualities of his own tongue. In the case of Dante the rhythmical +basis is the same in both languages; for the iambic measure is our +chief poetic vehicle, wrought to perfection by Shakespeare and Milton. +There only remains, then, rhyme and the division into stanzas. Can the +_terza rima_, as used by Dante, be called a stanza? The lines are not +separated into trios, but run into one another, clinging very properly +to the rhymes, which, interlinking all the stanzas by carrying the +echo still onward, bind each canto into one whole, just as our +Spenserian form does each stanza into a whole of nine lines. Whether +stanzas, strictly speaking, or not, shall we say our mind frankly +about the _terza rima_? To us it seems not deserving of admiration +_for its own sake_; and we surmise that had it not been consecrated by +Dante, neither Byron nor Shelley would have used it for original +poems. We are not aware that Dante's example has been followed by any +poet of note in Italy. _Terza rima_ keeps the attention suspended too +long, keeps it ever on the stretch for something that is to +come, and never does come, until at the end of the canto, namely, the +last rhyme. The rhymes cannot be held down, but are ever escaping and +running ahead. It looks somewhat like an artificial contrivance of the +first rhymers of an uncultivated age. But Dante used it for his great +song; and there it stands forever, holding in its folds the "Divina +Commedia." + +Now, in rendering into English the poem of Dante, is it essential,--in +order to fulfill the conditions of successful poetic translation,--to +preserve the triple rhyme? Not having in English a corresponding +number of rhymes, will not the translator have to resort to +transpositions, substitutions, forcings, indirections, in order to +compass the meaning and the poetry? Place the passages already cited +from Mr. Dayman beside the original, and the reader will be surprised +to see how direct and literal, how faithful at once to the Italian +thought and to English idiom in expressing it, Mr. Dayman is. His +harness of triplets seems hardly to constrain his movement, so +skillfully does he wear it. If we confront him with the spirited +version in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited +from the "Inferno," or with those from the "Paradiso," in Mr. +Longfellow's less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility +of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again +manifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations with the +original and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the +three versions, of the latter part of the Francesca story, from Canto +V. of the "Inferno:"-- + + "Poi mi rivolsi a loro, e parlai io, + E cominciai: Francesca, i tuoi martiri + A lagrimar mi fanno tristo, e pio. + Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri, + A che, e come concedette Amore + Che conosceste i dubbiosi desiri? + Ed ella a me: nessun maggior dolore, + Che ricordarsi del tempo felice + Nella miseria, e cio sa 'l tuo dottore. + Ma se a conoscer la prima radice + Del nostro amor tu hai cotanto affetto, + Faro come colui che piange, e dice. + Noi leggevamo un giorno per diletto + Di Lancilotto, come Amor lo strinse. + Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto. + Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse + Quella lettura, e scolorocci 'l viso: + Ma solo un punto fu quel, che ci vinse. + Qando leggemmo il disiato riso + Esser baciato da cotanto amante, + Questi, che mai da me non sia diviso, + La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante. + Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse: + Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante. + Mentre che l'uno spirito queste disse, + L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade + Io venni meno come s'io morisse, + E caddi, come corpo morto cade." + + +Mr. Dayman:-- + + "Then toward them turned again: 'Thy racking woe,' + I said, 'Francesca, wrings from out mine eyes + The pious drops that sadden as they flow. + But tell me, in your hour of honeyed sighs, + By whom and how love pitying broke the spell, + And in your doubtful longings made too wise.' + And she to me: 'No keener pang hath hell, + Than to recall, amid some deep distress, + Our happier time: thy teacher knows it well. + Yet if desire so strong thy soul possess + To trace the root from whence our love was bred, + His part be mine, who tells and weeps no less. + 'T was on a day when we for pastime read + Of Lancillot, how love snared him to ruin: + We were alone, nor knew suspicious dread. + Oft on that reading paused our eyes, renewing + Their glance; and from our cheeks the color started; + But one sole moment wrought for our undoing: + When that we read of lover so kind-hearted + Kissing the smile so coveted before, + He that from me shall never more be parted + Kissed me with lip to lip, trembling all o'er. + The broker of our vows, it was the lay, + And he who wrote--that day we read no more.' + The other spirit, while the first did say + These words, so moaned, that with soft remorse + As death had stricken me, I swooned away, + And down I fell, heavily as falls a corse." + + +Mr. Longfellow:-- + + "Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, + And I began: 'Thine agonies, Francesca, + Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. + But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, + By what and in what manner Love conceded + That you should know your dubious desires?' + And she to me: 'There is no greater sorrow + Than to be mindful of the happy time + In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. + But if to recognize the earliest root + Of love in us thou hast so great desire, + I will do even as he who weeps and speaks. + One day we reading were for our delight + Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthrall. + Alone we were, and without any fear. + Full many a time our eyes together drew + That reading, and drove the color from our faces; + But one point was it that o'ercame us. + Whenas we read of the much-longed-for smile + Being by such a noble lover kissed, + This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, + Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. + Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. + That day no farther did we read therein.' + And all the while one spirit uttered this, + The other one did weep so, that, for pity, + I swooned away as if I had been dying, + And fell even as a dead body falls." + + +Dr. Parsons:-- + + "Then, turning round to them, I thus began: + 'Francesca! tears must overflow mine eyes: + My pitying soul thy martyr-throes unman; + But tell me,--in the time of happy sighs, + Your vague desires how gave Love utterance first?" + And she to me: "The mightiest of all woes + Is, in the midst of misery, to be cursed + With bliss remembered,--this thy teacher knows. + Yet, wouldst thou learn our passion's root and head, + As one may speak whose eyes with tears are dim, + So will I speak. Together once we read + The tale of Lancelot,--how Love bound him. + Alone we were without suspecting aught: + Oft in perusal paled our cheeks their hue, + And oft our eyes each other's glances caught; + But one sole passage 't was which both o'erthrew. + At reading of the longed-for smile,--to be + By such a lover's kissing so much blest, + This dearest--never shalt thou part from me! + His lips to mine, to mine, all trembling, pressed. + The writer was our Galeot with his book:-- + That day we read no further on." She stopped: + Meanwhile he moaned so that compassion took + My sense away, and like a corse I dropped. + +Observe that Dr. Parsons has put Dante's twenty-eight lines of eleven +syllables into twenty-four lines of ten syllables; and this without +losing a drop of the precious stream he undertakes to pour. But why +does he make Francesca address her companion personally, instead of +saying, "who shall never part from me?" And why does Mr. Dayman say, +"pious drops," instead of piteous? Mr. Dayman and Mr. Longfellow fill +up the twenty-eight lines. In neither of the three is there +any strain or wresting of the sense. But all three, and before them +Lord Byron and Carey, mistranslate this passage,-- + + "Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse + Quella lettura." + +All these translators interpret it to mean, that while they read, +their eyes often met; whereas Dante says, they read that passage over +more than once; or, literally rendered, several times that reading or +passage drew to it their eyes. To restore the meaning of the original +adds to the refinement of the scene. + +Why does Mr. Longfellow use such long words as _compassionate_ instead +of _pitiful_ or _piteous_, _recognize_ for _know_, _palpitating_ for +_trembling_, _conceded that you should know_ for _gave you to know_? +By the resolution to translate line for line, Mr. Longfellow ties his +poetic hands. The first effect of this self-binding is, to oblige him +to use often long Latin-English instead of short Saxon-English words, +that is, words that in most cases lend themselves less readily to +poetic expression. Mr. Dayman, not translating line for line, is free +from this prosaic incumbrance; but as he makes it a rule to himself +that every English canto shall contain the same number of lines as its +original, he is obliged, much more often than Mr. Longfellow, +to throw in epithets or words not in the Italian. And Dr. Parsons, +who, happily freeing himself from either verbal or numerical bond, in +several instances compresses a canto into two or three lines less than +the Italian, and the XXXI. into nine lines less, might with advantage +have curtailed each canto ten or twelve lines. + +Do what we will, poetic translation is brought about more from without +than from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a +lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, which, in good +original work, comes from free inward impulsion. To counteract, in so +far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the +translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full +swing his own native speech. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr. +Longfellow forfeits much of this freedom. He is too intent on the +words; he sacrifices the spirit to the letter; he overlays the poetry +with a verbal literalness; he deprives himself of scope to give a +billowy motion, a heightened color, a girded vigor, to choice +passages. The rhythmical languor consequent on this verbal conformity, +this lineal servility, is increased by a frequent looseness in +the endings of lines, some of which on every page, and many on some +pages, have--contrary to all good usage--the superfluous eleventh +syllable. Milton never allows himself this liberty, nor Mr. Tennyson +in epic verse so little pretentious as "Idyls of the King." Nor do +good blank-verse translators give in to it. Cowper does not in his +Iliad, nor Lord Derby, nor Mr. Bryant in his version of the fifth book +of the Odyssey, nor Mr. Carey in his Dante. Permissible at times in +dramatic blank verse, it is in epic rejected by the best artists as a +weakness. Can it be that Mr. Longfellow hereby aims to be more close +to the form of Dante? Whatever the cause of its use, the effect is +still farther to weaken his translation. These loose poetic +endings--and on most pages one third of the lines have eleven +syllables and on some pages more than a third--do a part in causing +Mr. Longfellow's Dante to lack the clean outline, the tonic ring, the +chiseled edge of the original, and in making his cantos read as would +sound a high passionate tune played on a harp whose strings are +relaxed. + +Looking at the printed Italian Dante beside the English, in a volume +where opposite each English page is the corresponding page of +the original, as in Mr. Dayman's, one cannot fail to be struck with +the comparative narrowness of the Italian column. This comes of the +comparative shortness of Italian syllables. For instance, as the +strongest exemplification, the ever-recurring _and_, and the +often-repeated _is_, are both expressed in Italian by a single letter, +_e_. And this shortness comes of the numerousness of vowels. In lines +of thirty letters Dante will have on an average sixteen consonants to +fourteen vowels, nearly half and half; while his translators have +about twenty consonants to ten vowels, or two to one. From this +comparative rejection of consonants, Italian cannot, as English can, +bind into one syllable words of seven or eight letters, like _friends_ +and _straight_, nor even words of six letters, like _chimed_, +_shoots_, _thwart_, _spring_; nor does Italian abound as English does +in monosyllables, and the few it has are mostly of but two or three +letters. In combination its syllables sometimes get to four letters, +as in _fronte_ and _braccia_. As a consequence hereof, Dante's lines, +although always of eleven syllables, average about twenty-nine +letters, while those of the three translators about thirty-three. +Hence, the poem in their versions carries more weight than the +original; its soul is more cumbered with body. + +In order to the faithful reproduction of Dante, to the giving the best +transcript, possible in English, of his thought and feeling, should +not regard be had to the essential difference between the syllabic +constitutions of the two languages, what may be called the physical +basis of the two mediums of utterance? Here is the Francesca story, +translated in the spirit of this suggestion:-- + + I turned to them, and then I spake: + "Francesca! tears o'erfill mine eyes, + Such pity thy keen pangs awake. + But say: in th' hour of sweetest sighs, + By what and how found Love relief + And broke thy doubtful longing's spell?" + And she: "There is no greater grief + Than joy in sorrow to retell. + But if so urgently one seeks + To know our Love's first root, I will + Do as he does who weeps and speaks. + One day of Lancelot we still + Read o'er, how love held him enchained. + Without mistrust we were alone. + Our cheeks oft were of color drained: + One passage vanquished us, but one. + When we read of lips longed for pressed + By such a lover with a kiss, + This one whom naught from me shall wrest, + All trembling kissed my mouth. To this + That book and writer brought us. We + No farther read that day." While she + Thus spake, the other spirit wept + So bitterly, with pity I + Fell motionless, my senses swept + By swoon, as one about to die. + +In the very first line two Italian trisyllables, _rivolsi_ and +_parlai_, are given in English with literal fidelity by two +monosyllables, _turned_ and _spake_. In the fourth observe how, in a +word-for-word rendering, the eleven Italian syllables become, without +any forcing, eight English: + + "Ma dimmi: al tempo de' dolci sospiri:" + "But tell me: in th' hour of sweet sighs." + +For the sake of a more musical cadence, this line is slightly +modified. Again, in the line,-- + + "Than joy in sorrow to retell," + +_joy_ represents, and represents faithfully, three words containing +six syllables, _del tempo felice_: _retell_ stands for _ricordarsi_, +and _in sorrow_ for _nella miseria_, or, three syllables for six; so +that, by means of eight syllables, is given a full and complete +translation of what in Italian takes up seventeen. English the most +simple, direct, idiomatic, is needed in order that a translation of +Dante be faithful to his simplicity and naturalness; and this is the +first fidelity his translator should feel himself bound to. Owing to +the fundamental difference between the syllabic structures of +the two languages, we are enabled to put into English lines of eight +syllables the whole meaning of Dante's lines of eleven. In the above +experiment even more has been done. The twenty-eight lines of Dante +are given in twenty-six lines of eight syllables each, and this +without any sacrifice of the thought or feeling; for the "this thy +teacher knows," which is omitted, besides that the commentators cannot +agree on its meaning, is parenthetical in sense, and with reverence be +it said, in so far a defect in such a relation. As to the form of +Dante, what is essential in that has been preserved, namely, the +iambic measure and the rhyme. + +Let us try if this curtailment of syllables will be successful when +applied to the terrible words, written in blackest color, over the +gate of Hell, at the beginning of the third canto of the "Inferno":-- + + Through me the path to place of wail: + Through me the path to endless sigh: + Through me the path to souls in bale. + 'Twas Justice moved my Maker high: + Wisdom supreme, and Might divine, + And primal Love established me. + Created birth was none ere mine, + And I endure eternally: + Ye who pass in, all hope resign. + + +Has anything been lost in the transit from Italian words to English? +English speech being organically more concentrated than Italian, does +not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve +what ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic translation, namely, +along with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original, +fidelity to the idiom, and cast and play of the translator's own +tongue? + +Here is another short passage in a different key,--the opening of the +last canto of the "Paradiso":-- + + Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son, + Meek, yet above all things create, + Fair aim of the Eternal one, + 'Tis thou who so our human state + Ennobledst, that its Maker deigned + Himself his creature's son to be. + This flower, in th' endless peace, was gained + Through kindling of God's love in thee. + +In this passage nine Italian lines of eleven syllables are converted +into eight lines of eight syllables each. We submit it to the candid +reader of Italian to say, whether aught of the original has been +sacrificed to brevity. + +The rejection of all superfluity, the conciseness and simplicity to +which the translator is obliged by octosyllabic verse, compensate for +the partial loss of that breadth of sweep for which decasyllabic +verse gives more room, but of which the translator of Dante does +not feel the want. + +One more short passage of four lines,--the famous figure of the lark +in the twentieth Canto of the "Paradiso":-- + + Like lark that through the air careers, + First singing, then, silent his heart, + Feeds on the sweetness in his ears, + Such joy to th' image did impart + Th' eternal will. + +This paper has exceeded the length we designed to give it; but, +nevertheless, we beg the reader's indulgence for a few moments longer, +while we conclude with an octosyllabic version of the last thirty +lines of the celebrated Ugolino story. It is unrhymed; for that +terrible tale can dispense, in English, with soft echoes at the end of +lines. + + When locked I heard the nether door + Of the dread tower, I without speech + Into my children's faces looked: + Nor wept, so inly turned to stone. + They wept: and my dear Anselm said, + "Thou look'st so, father, what hast thou?" + Still I nor wept nor answer made + That whole day through, nor the next night, + Till a new sun rose on the world. + As in our doleful prison came + A little glimmer, and I saw + On faces four my own pale stare, + Both of my hands for grief I bit; + And they, thinking it was from wish + To eat, rose suddenly and said: + "Father, less shall we feel of pain + If them wilt eat of us: from thee + Came this poor flesh: take it again." + I calmed me then, not to grieve them. + The next two days we spake no word. + Oh! obdurate earth, why didst not ope? + When we had come to the fourth day + Gaddo threw him stretched at my feet, + Saying, "Father, why dost not help me?" + There died he; and, as thou seest me, + I saw the three fall one by one + The fifth and sixth day; then I groped, + Now blind, o'er each; and two whole days + I called them after they were dead: + Then hunger did what grief could not. + + + + +V. + +SAINTE-BEUVE, THE CRITIC. + + +A literary critic, a genuine one, should carry in his brain an arsenal +of opposites. He should combine common sense with tact, integrity with +indulgence, breadth with keenness, vigor with delicacy, largeness with +subtlety, knowledge with geniality, inflexibility with sinuousness, +severity with suavity; and, that all these counter qualities be +effective, he will need constant culture and vigilance, besides the +union of reason with warmth, of enthusiasm with self-control, of wit +with philosophy,--but hold: at this rate, in order to fit out the +critic, human nature will have to set apart its highest and best. Dr. +Johnson declared, the poet ought to know everything and to have seen +everything, and the ancients required the like of an orator. Truly, +the supreme poet should have manifold gifts, be humanly indued as +generously and completely as is the bust of Homer, ideally shaped by +the light of the infallible artistic instinct and insight of the +Greeks. The poet, it is true, must be born a poet, and the +critic is the child of culture. But as the poet, to perfect his +birthright, has need of culture, so the man whom culture can shape and +sharpen to the good critic, must be born with many gifts, to be +susceptible of such shaping. And when we reflect that the task of the +critic is to see clearly into the subtlest and deepest mind, to +measure its hollows and its elevations, to weigh all its individual +and its composite powers, and, that from every one of the throbbing +aggregates, whom it is his office to analyze and portray, issue lines +that run on all sides into the infinite, we must conclude that he who +is to be the accomplished interpreter, the trusted judge, should be +able swiftly to follow these lines. + +Long and exacting as is our roll of what is wanted to equip a +veritable sure critic, we have yet to add two cardinal qualifications, +which by the subject of our present paper are possessed in liberal +allotment. The first is, joy in life, from which the pages of M. +Sainte-Beuve derive, not a superficial sprightliness merely, but a +mellow, radiant geniality. The other, which is of still deeper +account, is the capacity of admiration; a virtue--for so it deserves +to be called--born directly of the nobler sensibilities, those +in whose presence only can be recognized and enjoyed the lofty and the +profound, the beautiful and the true. He who is not well endowed with +these higher senses is not a bad critic; he is no critic at all. Not +only can he not discern the good there is in a man or a work, he can +as little discover and expose the bad; for, deficiencies implying +failures to reach a certain fullness, implying a falling short of the +complete, to say where and what are deficiencies, involves the having +in the mind an idea of the full and complete. The man so meagrely +furnished as to hold no such idea is but a carper, not a critic. To +know the bad denotes knowledge of the good; in criticism as in morals, +a righteous indignation can only flash from a shock to pure feelings. + +In a notice of M. Thiers' chapter on St. Helena, M. Sainte-Beuve, +after expressing his admiration of the commentaries of Napoleon on the +campaigns of Turenne, Frederic, and Caesar, adds: "A man of letters +smiles at first involuntarily to see Napoleon apply to each of these +famous campaigns a methodical criticism, just as we would proceed with +a work of the mind, with an epic or tragic poem. But is not a +campaign of a great captain equally a work of genius? Napoleon is here +the high sovereign critic, the Goethe in this department, as the +Feuquieres, the Jominis, the St. Cyrs are the La Harpes or the +Fontanes, the Lessings or the Schlegels, all good and expert critics; +but he is the first of all, nor, if you reflect on it, could it have +been otherwise. And who then would say better things of Homer than +Milton?"--Goethe supreme in literary criticism, Milton on Homer; this +touches the root of the matter; sympathy with the writer and his work +the critic must have,--sympathy as one of the sources of good +judgment, and even of knowledge. You cannot know, and therefore not +judge of a man or book or thing, unless you have some fellow-feeling +with him or it; and to judge well you must have much fellow-feeling. +The critic must, moreover, be a thinker; reason is the critic's sun. +Scott and Byron could say just and fresh things about poets and +poetry; but neither could command the whole field, nor dig deep into +the soil. Witness Byron's deliberate exaltation of Pope. Whereas +Wordsworth and Coleridge were among the soundest of critics, because, +besides being poets, they were both profound thinkers. + +For the perfecting of the literary critic the especial +sympathy needed is that with excellence; for high literature is the +outcome of the best there is in humanity, the finished expression of +healthiest aspirations, of choicest thoughts, the ripened fruit of +noble, of refined growths, the perfected fruit, with all the perfume +and beauty of the flower upon it. Of this sympathy M. Sainte-Beuve, +throughout his many volumes, gives overflowing evidence, in addition +to that primary proof of having himself written good poems. Besides +the love, he has the instinct, of literature, and this instinct draws +him to what is its bloom and fullest manifestation, and his love is +the more warm and constant for being discriminative and refined. +Through variety of knowledge, with intellectual keenness, he enjoys +excellence in the diversified forms that literature assumes. His pages +abound in illustrations of his versatility, which is nowhere more +strikingly exhibited than in the contrast between two successive +papers (both equally admirable) in the very first volume of the +"Causeries du Lundi," the one on Madame Recamier, the other on +Napoleon. Read especially the series of paragraphs beginning, "Some +natures are born pure, and have received _quand meme_ the gift +of innocence," to see how gracefully, subtly, delicately, with what a +feminine tenderness, he draws the portrait of this most fascinating of +women, this beautiful creature, for whom grace and sweetness did even +still more than beauty, this fairy-queen of France, this refined +coquette, who drew to her hundreds of hearts, this kindly magician, +who turned all her lovers into friends. Then pass directly to the next +paper, on the terrible Corsican, "who weakened his greatness by the +gigantic--who loved to astonish--who delighted too much in what was +his forte, war,--who was too much a bold adventurer." And further on, +the account of Napoleon's conversation with Goethe at Weimar, in which +account M. Sainte-Beuve shows how fully he values the largeness and +truthfulness and penetration of the great German. The impression thus +made on the reader as to the variousness of M. Sainte-Beuve's power is +deepened by another paper in the same volume, that on M. Guizot and +his historic school, a masterly paper, which reasons convincingly +against those historians "who strain humanity, who make the lesson that +history teaches too direct and stiff, who put themselves in the place +of Providence," which, as is said in another place (vol. v. p. +150), "is often but a deification of our own thought." + +In a paper published in 1862, M. Sainte-Beuve--who had then, for more +than thirty years, been plying zealously and continuously the function +of critic--describes what is a fundamental feature of his method in +arriving at a judgment on books and authors. "Literature, literary +production, is in my eyes not distinct, or at least not separable, +from the rest of the man and his organization. I can enjoy a work, but +it is difficult for me to form a judgment on it independently of the +man himself; and I readily say, _as is the tree so is the fruit_. +Literary study thus leads me quite naturally to moral study." This, of +course, he can apply but partially to the ancients; but with the +moderns the first thing to do in order to know the work is to know the +man who did it, to get at his primary organization, his interior +beginnings and proclivities; and to learn this, one of the best means +is, to make yourself acquainted with his race, his family, his +predecessors. "You are sure to recognize the superior man, in part at +least, in his parents, especially in his mother, the most direct and +certain of his parents; also in his sisters and his brothers, +even in his children. In these one discovers important features which, +from being too condensed, too closely joined in the eminent +individual, are masked; but whereof the basis, the _fond_, is found in +others of his blood in a more naked, a more simple state." + +Hereby is shown with what thoroughness and professional +conscientiousness M. Sainte-Beuve sets himself to his work of critic. +Partially applying to himself his method, we discover in part the +cause of his sympathy for feminine nature, and of his tact in +delineating it. His father died before he was born; and thence all +living parental influence on him was maternal. None of his volumes is +more captivating than his "Portraits de Femmes," a translation of +which we are glad to see announced. + +Of Sainte-Beuve's love for excellence there is, in the third volume of +the "Nouveaux Lundis," an illustration, eloquently disclosing how deep +is his sympathy with the most excellent that human kind has known. For +the London Exposition of 1862 a magnificent folio of the New Testament +was prepared at the Imperial Press of Paris. The critic takes the +occasion to write a paper on "Les saints Evangiles," especially the +Sermon on the Mount. After quoting and commenting on the Beatitudes, +he continues: "Had there ever before been heard in the world such +accents, such a love of poverty, of self-divestment, such a hunger and +thirst for justice, such eagerness to suffer for it, to be cursed of +men in behalf of it, such an intrepid confidence in celestial +recompense, such a forgiveness of injuries, and not simply forgiveness +but a livelier feeling of charity for those who have injured you, who +persecute and calumniate you, such a form of prayer and of familiar +address to the Father who is in heaven? Was there ever before anything +like to that, so encouraging, so consoling, in the teaching and the +precepts of the sages? Was that not truly a revelation in the midst of +human morals; and if there be joined to it, what cannot be separated +from it, the totality of such a life, spent in doing good, and that +predication of about three years, crowned by the crucifixion, have we +not a right to say that here was a 'new ideal of a soul perfectly +heroic,' which, under this half Jewish, Galilean form was set before +all coming generations? + +"Who talks to us of _myth_, of the realization, more or less +instinctive or philosophical, of the human conscience reflecting +itself in a being who only supplied the pretext and who hardly +existed. What! do you not feel the reality, the living, vibrating, +bleeding, compassionate personality, which, independently of +what belief and enthusiasm may have added, exists and throbs behind +such words? What more convincing demonstration of the beauty and truth +of the entirely historic personage, Jesus, than the Sermon on the +Mount?" + +Alluding, then, to the denial of originality in the moral doctrines of +Christianity, M. Sainte-Beuve, after citing from Socrates, Marcus +Aurelius, and others, passages wherein is recommended "charity toward +the human race," declares that all these examples and precepts, all +that makes a fine body of social and philosophical morality, is not +Christianity itself as beheld at its source and in its spirit. "What +characterizes," he proceeds, "the discourse on the mount and the other +sayings and parables of Jesus, is not the charity that relates to +equity and strict justice, to which, with a sound heart and upright +spirit, one attains; it is something unknown to flesh and blood and to +simple reason, it is a kind of innocent and pure exaltation, freed +from rule and superior to law, holily improvident, a stranger +to all calculation, to all positive prevision, unreservedly reliant on +Him who sees and knows all things, and as a last reward counting on +the coming of that kingdom of God, the promise of which cannot fail:-- + + But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever + shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other + also. + + And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy + coat, let him have thy cloak also.... + + Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow + of thee turn not thou away.... + + No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, + and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and + despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. + + Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what + ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, + what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the + body than raiment?... + + +"Nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and moralists, +not in Hesiod, nor in the maxims of Greece any more than in Confucius. +It is not in Cicero, nor in Aristotle, nor even in Socrates any more +than in the modern Franklin. The principle of inspiration is +different, if indeed it be not opposite: the paths may come together +for a moment, but they cross one another. And it is this delicate +ideal of devotedness, of moral purification, of continual renouncement +and self-sacrifice, breathing in the words and embodied in the person +and life of Christ, which constitutes the entire novelty as well as +the sublimity of Christianity taken at its source." + +Of M. Sainte-Beuve's delight in what is the most excellent product of +literature, poetry, testimony is borne by many papers, ranging over +the whole field of French poetry, from its birth to its latest page. +"Poetry," says he, "is the essence of things, and we should be careful +not to spread the drop of essence through a mass of water or floods of +color. The task of poetry is not to say everything, but to make us +dream everything." And he cites a similar judgment of Fenelon: "The +poet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but +what can be beautified." In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks +of the youthful poems of Milton: "'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of +meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio +in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no +comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. All that +is beautiful in Milton stands by itself; one feels the tranquil habit +of the upper regions, and continuity in power." In a paper on +the letters of Ducis, he proves that he apprehends the proportions of +Shakespeare. He asks: "Have we then got him at last? Is our stomach up +to him? Are we strong enough to digest this marrow of lion (_cette +moelle de lion_)?" And again, in an article on the men of the +eighteenth century, he writes: "One may be born a sailor, but there is +nothing for it like seeing a storm, nor for a soldier like seeing a +battle. A Shakespeare, you will say, very nearly did without all that, +and yet he knew it all. But Nature never but once made a Shakespeare." + +Like most writers, of whatever country, M. Sainte-Beuve has formed +himself on native models, and the French having no poet of the highest +class, no Dante, no Shakespeare, no Goethe, it is a further proof of +his breadth and insight that he should so highly value the treasures +in the deeper mines opened by these foreigners. Seeing, too, how +catholic he is, and liberal toward all other greatness, one even takes +pleasure in his occasional exuberance of national complacency. +Whenever he speaks of Montaigne or La Fontaine or Moliere, his words +flame with a tempered enthusiasm. But he throws no dust in +his own eyes: his is a healthy rapture, a torch lighted by the +feelings, but which the reason holds upright and steady. His native +favorites he enjoys as no Englishman or German could, but he does not +overrate them. Nor does he overrate Voltaire, whom he calls "the +Frenchman par excellence," and of whom he is proud as the literary +sovereign of his age. At the same time, in articles directly devoted +to Joubert, as well as by frequent citations of his judgments, he +lauds this spiritually-minded thinker as one of the best of critics. +And yet of Voltaire, Joubert says the hardest things: "Voltaire is +sometimes sad; he is excited; but he is never serious. His graces even +are impudent.--There are defects difficult to perceive, that have not +been classed or defined, and have no names. Voltaire is full of them." + +In a paper on Louise Labe, a poetess of the sixteenth century, he +reproduces some of her poems and several passages of prose, and then +adds: "These passages prove, once more, the marked superiority that, +at almost all times, French prose has over French poetry." No German +or English or Italian critic could say this of his native literature, +and the saying of it by the foremost of French critics is not an +exaltation of French prose, it is a depression of French +poetry. In this judgment there is a reach and severity of which +possibly the eminent critic was not fully conscious; for it amounts to +an acknowledgment that the nature and language of the French are not +capable of producing and embodying the highest poetry. + +Goethe, M. Sainte-Beuve always mentions with deference. On Eckerman's +"Conversations with Goethe" he has a series of three papers, wherein +he deals chiefly with the critic and sage, exhibiting with honest +pride Goethe's admiration of some of the chief French writers, and his +acknowledgment of what he owed them. To a passage relating to the +French translation of Eckerman, M. Sainte-Beuve has the following +note, which we, on this side the Atlantic, may cherish as a high +tribute to our distinguished countrywoman: "The English translation is +by Miss Fuller, afterwards Marchioness Ossoli, who perished so +unhappily by shipwreck. An excellent preface precedes this +translation, and I must say that for elevated comprehension of the +subject and for justness of appreciation it leaves our preface far +behind it. Miss Fuller, an American lady of Boston, was a +person of true merit and of great intellectual vigor." A sympathetic +student of Goethe, Margaret Fuller purposed to write a life of him; +and seeing what critical capacity and what insight into the nature of +Goethe she has shown in this preface, we may be confident that she +would have made a genuine contribution to the Goethe "literature," had +she lived to do that and other high literary work. Her many friends +had nearer and warmer motives for deploring the early loss of this +gifted, generous, noble-hearted woman. + +One of the busiest functions of the critic being to sift the +multifarious harvest of contemporaneous literature, he must have a +hand that can shake hard,--and hit hard, too, at times. For fifteen +years M. Sainte-Beuve furnished once a week, under the title of +"Causeries du Lundi," a critical paper, to a Paris daily journal; not +short, rapid notices, but articles that would cover seven or eight +pages of one of our double-columned monthly magazines. He was thus +ever in the thick of the literary _melee_. Attractions and repulsions, +sympathies and antipathies, there will be wherever men do congregate; +the aesthetic plane is as open as any other to personal preferences +and friendships. A literary circle as large as that of Paris, +if too miscellaneous and extensive to become one multitudinous +mutual-admiration-society, will, through cliques and coteries, betray +some of its vices. In this voluminous series of papers the critical +pen, when most earnestly eulogistic or most sharply incisive, is +wielded with so much skill and art and fine temper, that personality +is seldom transpicuous. The Parisian reader will no doubt often +perceive, in this or that paragraph or paper, a heightening or a +subduing of color not visible to the foreigner, who cannot so well +trace the marks of political, religious, or personal influences. His +perfected praise M. Sainte-Beuve reserves for those of the illustrious +dead who are embalmed in their own excellence. Besides devoting many +papers (among the most valuable of the series) to these magnates of +literature, he delights in frequent illustrative reference to them,--a +sign this of ripe culture in a critic, and of trustworthiness. + +Out of the severe things occasionally said, the sting is mostly taken +by the temper in which they are said, or by the frank recognition of +virtues and beauties beside vices and blemishes. In the general tone +there is a clear humanity, a seemly gentlemanliness. Of the +humane spirit wherewith M. Sainte-Beuve tempers condemnation, take the +following as one of many instances. In the correspondence of Lamennais +there is laid bare such contradictions between his earlier and his +later sentiments on religious questions, that the reader is thus +feelingly guarded against being too harsh in his censure: "Let us cast +a look on ourselves, and ask if in our lives, in our hearts, from +youth to our latter years, there are none of these boundless +distances, these secret abysses, these moral ruins, perhaps, which, +for being hidden, are none the less real and profound." + +Writing weekly for the _feuilleton_ of a Paris daily journal, M. +Sainte-Beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse; but his diffuseness is +always animated, never languid. Fluent, conversational, ever polished, +he is full of happy turns and of Gallic sprightliness. When the +occasion offers, he is concise, condensed even in the utterance of a +principle or of a comprehensive thought. "Admiration is a much finer +test of literary talent, a sign much more sure and delicate, than all +the art of satire." By the side of this may be placed a sentence he +cites from Grimm: "People who so easily admire bad things are +not in a state to enjoy good." How true and cheering is this: "There +is in each of us a primitive ideal being, whom Nature has wrought with +her finest and most maternal hand, but whom man too often covers up, +smothers, or corrupts." Speaking of the sixteenth century, he says: +"What it wanted was taste, if by taste we understand choice clean and +perfect, the disengagement of the elements of the beautiful." When, to +give a paragraph its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic +point, if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to +borrow just what is wanted. Speaking of embellished oratorical +diction, he quotes Talleyrand on some polished oration that was +discussed in his presence: "It is not enough to have fine sentences: +you must have something to put into them." Commenting on the +hyper-spirituality of M. Laprade, he says: "M. Laprade starts from the +_absolute notion of being_. For him the following is the principle of +Art,--'to manifest what we feel of the Absolute Being, of the +Infinite, of God, to make him known and felt by other men, such in its +generality is the end of Art.' Is this true, is it false? I know not: +at this elevation one always gets into the clouds. Like the most of +those who pride themselves on metaphysics, he contents himself +with words (_il se paye de mots_)." Here is a grand thought, that +flashes out of the upper air of poetry: "Humanity, that eternal child +that has never done growing." + +M. Sainte-Beuve's irony, keen and delicate, is a sprightly medium of +truth: witness this passage on a new volume of M. Michelet: +"Narrative, properly so called, which never was his forte, is almost +entirely sacrificed. Seek here no historical highway, well laid, +solid, and continuous; the method adopted is absolute points of view; +you run with him on summits, peaks, on needles of granite, which he +selects at his pleasure to gets views from. The reader leaps from +steeple to steeple. M. Michelet seems to have proposed to himself an +impossible wager, which, however, he has won,--to write history with a +series of flashes." Could there be a more subtle, covert way of saying +of a man that he is hardened by self-esteem than the following on M. +Guizot: "The consciousness that he has of himself, and a natural +principle of pride, place him easily above the little susceptibilities +of self-love." M. Sainte-Beuve is not an admirer of Louis Philippe, +and among other sly hits gives him the following: "Louis +Philippe was too much like a _bourgeois_ himself to be long respected +by the _bourgeoisie_. Just as in former times the King of France was +only the first gentleman of the kingdom, he was nothing but the first +_bourgeois_ of the country." What witty satire on Lamartine he +introduces, with a recognition of popularity that, with one who takes +so much joy in applause as Lamartine does, is enough to take the +poison out of the sting: "Those who knew his verses by heart (and the +number who do is large among the men of our age) meet, not without +regret, with whole strips of them spread out, drowned, as it were, in +his prose. This prose is, in 'Les Confidences,' too often but the +paraphrase of his verses, which were themselves become, toward the +last, paraphrases of his feelings." Amends are made to Lamartine on +another occasion, when, citing some recent French sonnets, he says: +"Neither Lamartine nor Hugo nor Vigny wrote sonnets. The swans and the +eagles, in trying to enter this cage, would have broken their wings. +That was for us, birds of a less lofty flight and less amplitude of +wing." This is better as modesty than as criticism. Shakespeare, +Milton, Wordsworth, had wings of vaster sweep as well as of +more gorgeous plumage than these French soarers, and they enjoyed +getting into the cage of the sonnet, and sang therein some of their +strongest as well as sweetest notes. + +A thorough Frenchman, M. Sainte-Beuve delights in French minds, just +as a beauty delights in her mirror, which throws back an image of +herself. His excellence as a critic is primarily owing to this joy in +things French. Through means of it he knows them through and through: +they are become transparent; and while his feelings are aglow, his +intellect looks calmly right through them, and sees on the other side +the shadows cast by the spots and opacities which frustrate more or +less the fullest illumination. Freely he exhibits these shadows. +Neither Bossuet nor Louis XIV., neither Voltaire nor Beranger, is +spared, nor the French character, with its proneness to frivolity and +broad jest, its thirst for superficial excitement. Whatever his +individual preferences, his mental organization is so large and happy, +that he enjoys, and can do equal justice to, Father Lacordaire and M. +Michelet, to Madame de Stael and M. Guizot, to Corneille and Goethe, +to Fenelon and M. Renan, to Marie Antoinette and Mirabeau. + +Have you then for M. Sainte-Beuve, some reader will be +impatient to ask, nothing but praise? Not much else. Commencing his +literary career in 1827, when only in his twenty-third year, from that +date to 1849 his writings, chiefly in the shape of literary portraits, +fill several thousand pages. Between his forty-fifth to his sixtieth +year he wrote twenty-three volumes, containing about eleven thousand +pages, on four or five hundred different authors and subjects. This is +the period of his critical maturity, the period of the "Causeries du +Lundi," followed by the "Nouveaux Lundis." Many men write +voluminously, but most of these only write _about_ a subject, not +_into_ it. Only the few who can write into their subject add something +to literature. One of these few is M. Sainte-Beuve. In his mind there +is vitality to animate his large acquirement, to make his many +chapters buoyant and stimulant. All through his writings is the +sparkle of original life. + +But let us now cheer the reader who is impatient of much praise, and +at the same time perform the negative part of our task. + +Well, then, to be bold, as befits a critic of the critic, we beard the +lion in his very den. We challenge a definition he gives of the +critic. In the seventh volume of the "Causeries," article +"Grimm," he says: "When Nature has endowed some one with this vivacity +of feeling, with this susceptibility to impression, and that the +creative imagination be wanting, this some one is a born critic, that +is to say, a lover and judge of the creations of others." Why did M. +Sainte-Beuve make Goethe sovereign in criticism? Why did he think +Milton peculiarly qualified to interpret Homer? From the deep +principle of like unto like; only spirit can know spirit. What were +the worth of a comment of John Locke on "Paradise Lost," except to +reveal the mental composition of John Locke? The critic should be what +Locke was, a thinker, but to be a judge of the highest form of +literature, poetry, he must moreover carry within him, inborn, some +share of that whereby poetry is fledged, "creative imagination." He +may "want the accomplishment of verse," or the constructive faculty, +but more than the common allowance of sensibility to the beautiful he +must have. But do not the presence of "vivacity of feeling with +susceptibility to impression" imply the imaginative temperament? If +not, then we confidently assure M. Sainte-Beuve that had his +definition fitted himself, his "Causeries du Lundi" would never have +been rescued from the quick oblivion of the _feuilleton._ + +Now and then there are betrayals of that predominant French weakness, +which the French will persist in cherishing as a virtue,--the love of +glory. M. Sainte-Beuve thinks Buffon's passion for glory saved him in +his latter years from ennui, from "that languor of the soul which +follows the age of the passions." Where are to be found men more the +victims of disgust with life than that eminent pair, not more +distinguished for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than +for insatiable greed of glory,--Byron and Chateaubriand? No form of +self-seeking is morally more weakening than this quenchless craving, +which makes the soul hang its satisfaction on what is utterly beyond +its sway, on praise and admiration. These stimulants--withdrawn more +or less even from the most successful in latter years--leave a void +which becomes the very nursery of ennui, or even of self-disgust. +Instead of glory being "the potent motive-power in all great souls," +as M. Sainte-Beuve approvingly quotes, it is, with a surer moral +instinct, called by Milton,-- + + "That last infirmity of noble mind." + +In some of the noblest and greatest, so subordinate is it as +hardly to be traceable in their careers. Love of glory was not the +spring that set and kept in motion Kepler and Newton, any more than +Shakespeare and Pascal or William of Orange and Washington. + +The military glory wherewith Napoleon fed and flattered the French +nation for fifteen years, and the astonishing intellectual and animal +vigor of the conqueror's mind, dazzle even M. Sainte-Beuve, so that he +does not perceive the gaping chasms in Napoleon's moral nature, and +the consequent one-sidedness of his intellectual action, nor the +unmanning effects of his despotism. The words used to describe the +moral side of the Imperial career are as insufficient as would be the +strokes of a gray crayon to depict a conflagration or a sunset. In the +paper from which has already been quoted he speaks of the "rare good +sense" of Napoleon, of "his instinct of justice." But was it not a +compact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of +justice, backed by a Titan's will, wielding a mighty intellect, that +enabled Napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot +and the merciless devastator? Again, can it be said of Napoleon that +he possessed good sense in a rare degree? Good sense is an instinctive +insight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive +discernment of the relations and consequences of conduct or purpose, a +soundness of judgment, resulting from the soundness of, and +equilibrium among, the upper powers of reason and sensibility. The +moral side is at least the half of it: Napoleon's moral endowment was +but fractional. Good sense, it may be added, lies solidly at the basis +of all good work, except such as is purely professional or technical, +or in its action one-sided; and even in such its presence must be +felt. In whatever reaches general human interests, whether as +practical act or imaginative creation, good sense must be, for their +prosperity, a primary ingredient. "The Tempest" and "Don Quixote" +shoot up into shining, imperishable beauty because their roots draw +their first nourishment from this hearty, inexhaustible substratum. +And let us say, that in M. Sainte-Beuve himself good sense is the +foundation of his eminent critical ability. He has been led, we +conceive, to attribute more of it to Napoleon than is his due by the +blinding splendor of Napoleon's military genius, through which, with +such swiftness and cumulative effect, he adapted means to ends on the +purely material plane. + +When Murray applied to Lord Byron to write a book about the +life and manners of the upper class in Italy, Byron declined the +proposal from personal regards, and then added, that were he to write +such a book it would be misjudged in England; for, said he, "their +moral is not your moral." Such international misinterpretations and +exaggerations are instinctive and involuntary. A nation from its being +a nation, has a certain one-sidedness. To the Italian (even to one who +carries a stiletto) the English practice of boxing is a sheer +brutality; while to an Englishman (himself perhaps not a Joseph) the +_cavaliere servente_ is looked upon with reprobation tempered by +scorn. To this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation +on the domestic, books, too, are liable; but to books as being more +abstract than usages, more ideal than manners, an absolute moral +standard can with less difficulty be applied. Applying it to Gil Blas, +is not M. Sainte-Beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks of this +and the other writings of Le Sage as being "the mirror of the world?" +Moliere, too, is a satirist, and from his breadth a great one; and +surely the world he holds a mirror before is a much purer world than +that of Le Sage; and what of the Shakespearean world? The world of Le +Sage is a nether world. "Of Gil Blas it has been well said that the +book is moral like experience." The experience one may get in brothels +and "hells," in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it lessons of +virtue and morality,--for those who can extract them; but even for +these few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot +read so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the +experience is demoralizing and deadening. But toward the end of the +paper the critic lets it appear that he does not place Le Sage so high +as some of his phrases prompt us to infer; and he quotes this judgment +of Joubert: "Of the novels of Le Sage it may be said that they seem to +have been written in a _cafe_, by a player of dominoes, on coming out +of the comic theatre." + +Without being over-diffident, we may feel our footing not perfectly +secure on French ground when we differ from a Frenchman; we are +therefore not sorry to catch M. Sainte-Beuve tripping on English +ground. In a review of the translation of the celebrated Letters of +Lord Chesterfield--whom he calls the La Rochefoucauld of England--he +refers to, and in part quotes, the passages in which Chesterfield +gives his son advice as to his _liaisons_; and he adds: "All +Chesterfield's morality, on this head, is resumed in a line of +Voltaire,-- + + "Il n'est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie." + +It is these passages that make the grave Dr. Johnson blush: we only +smile at them." For ourselves, we blush with Johnson, not that the man +of the world should give to his youthful son, living at a corrupt +Continental court, counsel as to relations which were regarded as +inevitable in such a circle; but that the heart of the father should +not have poured (were it but parenthetically) through the pen of the +worldling some single sentence like this: "Writing to you, my son, as +an experienced man of the world to one inexperienced, I recommend the +good taste in such matters and the delicacy which become a gentleman; +but to his dear boy, your father says, avoid, if possible, such +_liaisons_; preserve your purity; nothing will give you such a return +throughout the whole of the future." But, a single sentence like this +would _vitiate_ the entire Chesterfieldian correspondence. + +How fully and warmly M. Sainte-Beuve prizes moral worth may be learnt +from many passages. Not the least animated and cordial of his +papers is one on the Abbe Gerbet, in the sixth volume, a paper which +shows, as Gustave Planche said of him, that "he studies with his +heart, as women do;" and one in the second volume on Malesherbes, whom +he describes as being "separated, on the moral side, from the +Mirabeaus and the Condorcets not by a shade, but by an abyss," and +whom he sums up as "great magistrate, minister too sensitive and too +easily discouraged, heroic advocate, and sublime victim." Of this +noble, deeply dutiful, self-sacrificing Frenchman, this exemplar of +moral greatness, Lord Lansdowne wrote many years before the French +Revolution: "I have seen for the first time in my life what I did not +believe could exist, that is, a man _who is exempt from fear and from +hope_, and who nevertheless is full of life and warmth. Nothing can +disturb his peace; nothing is necessary to him, and he takes a lively +interest in all that is good." + +In a paper on a volume of miscellaneous prose essays by M. Laprade, M. +Sainte-Beuve has this sentence: "What strikes me above all and +everywhere is, that the author, whether he reasons or whether he +addresses himself to literary history, only understands his own mode +of being and his own individuality. Hereby he reveals to us +that he is not a critic." The first paragraph of a keen critique on M. +de Pontmartin ends thus: "To say of even those writers who are opposed +to us nothing which their judicious friends do not already think and +are obliged to admit, this is my highest ambition." Discussing the +proper method of dealing with the past, he writes: "For myself I +respect tradition and I like novelty: I am never happier than when I +can succeed in reconciling them together." Of Hoffman he says, in a +paper on literary criticism: "He has many of the qualities of a true +critic, conscientiousness, independence, ideas, an opinion of his +own." These sentences, with others of like import, are keys to the +character of the volumes from which they are taken. The office of the +critic M. Sainte-Beuve administers, not for temporary or personal +ends, but with a disinterested sense of its elevation and its +responsibilities. Through healthy sympathies and knowledge ample and +ripe, through firm sense with artistic flexibility, through largeness +of view and subtlety of insight, he enters upon it more than +ordinarily empowered for its due discharge. He is at once what the +French call _fin_ and what the English call "sound." In +literary work, in biographical work, in work aesthetical and critical, +he delights, and he has a wide capacity of appropriation. The spirit +of a book, a man, an age, he seizes quickly. With a nice perception of +shades he catches the individual color of a mind or a production; and +by the same faculty he grasps the determining principles in a +character. Delicately, strongly, variously endowed, there is a steady +equilibrium among his fine powers. Considering the bulk and vast +variety and general excellence of his critical work, is it too much to +say of him, that he is not only, as he has been called, the foremost +of living critics, but that he deserves to hold the first place among +all critics? No other has done so much so well. Goethe and Coleridge +are something more; they are critics incidentally; but M. +Sainte-Beuve, with poetical and philosophical qualities that lift him +to a high vantage-ground, has made criticism his life-work, and +through conscientious and symmetrical use of these qualities has done +his work well. Besides much else in his many and many-sided volumes, +there is to be read in them a full, spirited history of French +literature. + +Our attempt to make M. Sainte-Beuve better known on this side +the Atlantic we cannot more fitly conclude than with a sketch of +him--a literary sketch--by himself. This we find in the fifth volume +of the "Nouveaux Lundis," in a paper on Moliere, published in July, +1863. A man who, in the autumnal ripeness of his powers, thus frankly +tells us his likes and dislikes, tells us what he is. While by +reflected action the passage becomes a self-portraiture, it is a +sample of finest criticism. + +"To make Moliere loved by more people is in my judgment to do a public +service. + +"Indeed, to love Moliere--I mean to love him sincerely and with all +one's heart--it is, do you know? to have within one's self a guarantee +against many defects, much wrong-headedness. It is, in the first +place, to dislike what is incompatible with Moliere, all that was +counter to him in his day, and that would have been insupportable to +him in ours. + +"To love Moliere is to be forever cured--do not say of base and +infamous hypocrisy, but of fanaticism, of intolerance, and of that +kind of hardness which makes one anathematize and curse; it is to +carry a corrective to admiration even of Bossuet, and for all who, +after his example, exult, were it only in words, over their +enemy dead or dying; who usurp I know not what holy speech, and +involuntarily believe themselves to be, with the thunderbolt in their +hand, in the region and place of the Most High. Men eloquent and +sublime, you are far too much so for me! + +"To love Moliere, is to be sheltered against, and a thousand leagues +away from, that other fanaticism, the political, which is cold, dry, +cruel, which never laughs, which smells of the sectary, which, under +pretext of Puritanism, finds means to mix and knead all that is +bitter, and to combine in one sour doctrine the hates, the spites, and +the Jacobinism of all times. It is to be not less removed, on the +other hand, from those tame, dull souls who, in the very presence of +evil, cannot be roused to either indignation or hatred. + +"To love Moliere, is to be secured against giving in to that pious and +boundless admiration for a humanity which worships itself, and which +forgets of what stuff it is made, and that, do what it will, it is +always poor human nature. It is, not to despise it too much, however, +this common humanity, at which one laughs, of which one is, and into +which we throw ourselves through a healthful hilarity whenever we are +with Moliere. + +"To love and cherish Moliere, is to detest all mannerism in +language and expression; it is, not to take pleasure in, or to be +arrested by, petty graces, elaborate subtlety, superfine finish, +excessive refinement of any kind, a tricky or artificial style. + +"To love Moliere, it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor +pedantic science; it is to know how to recognize at first sight our +_Trissotins_[6] and our _Vadius_ even under their rejuvenated jaunty +airs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more +than formerly by the everlasting _Philaminte_, that affected pretender +of all times, whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly +renewed; it is, to like soundness and directness of mind in others as +well as in ourselves. I only give the first movement and the pitch; on +this key one may continue, with variations. + + [6] Trissotin, Vadius, and Philaminte, are personages in Moliere's + comedy of _Les Femmes Savantes_ (The Blue-Stockings). + + +"To love and openly to prefer Corneille, as certain minds do, is no +doubt a fine thing, and, in one sense, a very legitimate thing; it is, +to dwell in, and to mark one's rank in, the world of great souls: but +is it not to run the risk of loving together with the grand +and sublime, false glory a little, to go so far as not to detest +inflation and magniloquence, an air of heroism on all occasions? He +who passionately loves Corneille cannot be an enemy to a little +boasting. + +"On the other hand, to love and prefer Racine, ah! that is, no doubt, +to love above all things, elegance, grace, what is natural and true +(at least relatively), sensibility, touching and charming passion; but +at the same time is it not also, to allow your taste and your mind to +be too much taken with certain conventional and over-smooth beauties, +a certain tameness and petted languidness, with certain excessive and +exclusive refinements? In a word, to love Racine so much, it is to run +the risk of having too much of what in France is called taste, and +which brings so much distaste. + +"To love Boileau--but no, one does not love Boileau, one esteems him, +one respects him; we admire his uprightness, his understanding, at +times his animation, and if we are tempted to love him, it is solely +for that sovereign equity which made him do such unshaken justice to +the great poets his contemporaries, and especially to him whom he +proclaims the first of all, Moliere. + +"To love La Fontaine, is almost the same thing as to love +Moliere; it is, to love nature, the whole of nature, humanity +ingenuously depicted, a representation of the grand comedy "of a +hundred different acts," unrolling itself, cutting itself up before +our eyes into a thousand little scenes with the graces and freedoms +that are so becoming, with weaknesses also, and liberties which are +never found in the simple, manly genius of the master of masters. But +why separate them? La Fontaine and Moliere--we must not part them, we +love them united." + + * * * * * + +The number of "Putnam's Magazine," containing this paper, was sent to +M. Sainte-Beuve accompanied by a note. In due time I received an +answer to the note, saying that the Magazine had not reached him. +Hereupon I sent the article by itself. On receiving it he wrote the +following acknowledgment. + +In my note I referred to a rumor of his illness. His disease was, by +_post-mortem_ examination, discovered to be as the newspapers had +reported, the stone. But a consultation of physicians declared that it +was what he states it to be in his letter. Had they not made so gross +a mistake, his life might have been prolonged. + + +"PARIS, 6 _Decembre_, 1868, No. 11 Rue Mont Parnasse. + +"CHER MONSIEUR:-- + +"Oh! Cette fois je recois bien decidement le tres aimable et si bien +etudie portrait du _critique_. Comment exprimer comme je le +sens ma gratitude pour tant de soin, d'attention penetrante, de desir +d'etre agreable tout en restant juste? Il y avait certes moyen +d'insister bien plus sur les variations, les disparates et les +defaillances momentanees de la pensee et du jugement a travers cette +suite de volumes. C'est toujours un sujet d'etonnement pour moi, et +cette fois autant que jamais, de voir comment un lecteur ami et un +juge de gout parvient a tirer une figure une et consistante de ce qui +ne me parait a moi meme dans mon souvenir que le cours d'un long +fleuve qui va s'epandant un pen au hazard des pentes et desertant +continuellement ses rives. De tels portraits comme celui que vous +voulez bien m'offrir me rendent un point d'appui et me feraient +veritablement croire a moi-meme. Et quand je songe a l'immense +quantite d'esprits auxquels vous me presentez sous un aspect si +favorable et si magistral dans ce nouveau monde de tant de jeunesse et +d'avenir, je me prends d'une sorte de fierte et de courageuse +confiance comme en presence deja de la posterite. + +"Le mal auquel vous voulez bien vous interesser est tout simplement +une hypertrophie de la prostate. Les souffrances ne sont pas vives, +mais l'incommodite est grande, ne pouvant supporter a aucun degre le +mouvement de la voiture, ce qui restreint ma vie sociale a un bien +court rayon. + +"Veuillez agreeer, cher Monsieur, l'assurance de ma cordiale +gratitude, et de mes sentiments les plus distingues. + +SAINTE-BEUVE." + + + + +VI. + +THOMAS CARLYLE. + + +A brain ever aglow with self-kindled fire--a cerebral battery +bristling with magnetic life--such is Thomas Carlyle. Exceptional +fervor of temperament, rare intellectual vivacity, manful +earnestness--these are the primary qualifications of the man. He has +an uncommon soul-power. Hence his attractiveness, hence his influence. +Every page, every paragraph, every sentence, throbs with his own +being. Themselves all authors put, of course, more or less, into what +they write: few, very few, can make their sentences quiver with +themselves. This Mr. Carlyle does by the intenseness of a warm +individuality, by the nimble vigor of his mental life, and, be it +added, by the rapture of his spirituality. The self, in his case, is a +large, deep self, and it sends an audible pulse through his pen into +his page. + +To all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, +of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which +these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the +difference between a genius and a blockhead. There being high vital +pressure at a full, rich, interior source, and thence, strong mental +currents, through what channels the currents shall flow depends on +individual aptitudes, these aptitudes shaping, in the one case, a +Dante, in another, a Newton, in another, a Mirabeau. And Nature, with +all her generosity, being jealous of her rights, allows no interchange +of gifts. Even the many-sided Goethe could not, by whatever force of +will and practice, have written a bar in a symphony of Beethoven. In +his dominant aptitudes, Mr. Carlyle is not more one-sided than many +other intellectual potentates; but, like some others, his activity and +ambition have at times led him into paths where great deficiencies +disclose themselves by the side of great superiorities. His mind is +biographical, not historical; stronger in details than in +generalization; more intuitive than scientific; critical, not +constructive; literary, not philosophical. Mr. Carlyle is great at a +picture, very great; he can fail in a survey or an induction. Wealth +of thought, strokes of tenderness, clean insight into life, satire, +irony, humor, make his least successful volumes to teem with +passages noteworthy, beautiful, wise, as do his "Cromwell" and his +"Frederick." Such giants carrying nations on their broad fronts, Mr. +Carlyle, in writing their lives with duteous particularity, has +embraced the full story of the epoch in which each was the leader. To +him they are more than leaders. Herein he and Mr. Buckle stand at +opposite poles; Mr. Buckle underrating the protagonists of history, +them and their share of agency; Mr. Carlyle overrating them,--a +prejudicial one-sidedness in both cases. Leader and led are the +complements the one of the other. + +History is a growth, and a slow growth. Evils in one age painfully sow +the seed that is to come up good in another. The historian, and still +more the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient, +calm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful, +nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. One +healthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, would not be ever betaking +him to the past as a refuge from the present; would not tauntingly +throw into the face of contemporaries an Abbot Sampson of the twelfth +century as a model. A judicial expounder would not cite one +single example as a characteristic of that age in contrast with this. +A patient, impartial elucidator, would not deride "ballot-boxes, +reform bills, winnowing machines:" he would make the best of these and +other tools within reach; or, if his part be to write and not to act, +would animate, not dishearten, those who are earnestly doing, and who, +by boldly striking at abuses, by steadily striving for more justice, +by aiming to lift up the down-trodden, prepare, through such means as +are at hand, a better ground for the next generation. If to such +workers, instead of God-speed, a writer of force and influence gives +jeers and gibes, and ever-repeated shrieks about "semblance and +quackery, and cant and speciosity, and dilettantism," and deems +himself profound and original, as well as hopeful, when he exclaims: +"Dim all souls of men to the divine, the high and awful meaning of +human worth and truth, we shall never by all the machinery in +Birmingham discover the true and worthy:" in that case, does he not +expose him to the taunt of being himself very like a mouthing quack, +and his words, which should be cordial, brotherly, do they not partake +of the hollow quality of what Mr. Carlyle holds in such abhorrence, +namely, of cant? The sick lion crouches growling in his lair; +he cannot eat, and he will not let others eat. + +Many grateful and admiring readers Mr. Carlyle wearies with his +ever-recurrent fallacy that might is right. In Heaven's name, what are +all the shams whose presence he so persistently bemoans,--worldly +bishops, phantasm-aristocracies, presumptuous upstarts, shallow +sway-wielding dukes,--what are all these, and much else, but so many +exemplications of might that is not right? When might shall cease to +bully, to trample on right, we shall be nearing Utopia. Utopia may be +at infinite distance, not attainable by finite men; but as surely as +our hearts beat, we are gradually getting further from its opposite, +the coarse rule of force and brutality, such rule as in the twelfth +century was rife all around "Abbot Sampson." + +Like unto this moral fallacy is an aesthetic fallacy which, through +bright pages of criticism, strikes up at times to vitiate a judgment. +"I confess," says Mr. Carlyle, "I have no notion of a truly great man +that could not be all sorts of men." Could Newton have written the +"Fairy Queen?" Could Spenser have discovered the law of gravitation? +Could Columbus have given birth to "Don Quixote?" One of Mr. +Carlyle's military heroes tried hard to be a poet. Over Frederick's +verses, how his friend Voltaire must have grinned. "I cannot +understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the +fire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could +not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in +that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward." +Thus Mr. Carlyle writes in "Heroes and Hero-Worship." If Mirabeau, why +not Savonarola, or Marcus Aurelius. In that case a "Twelfth Night," or +an "Othello," might have come from Luther. Nature does not work so +loosely. Rich is she, unspeakably rich, and as artful as she is +profuse in the use of her riches. She delights in variety, thence her +ineffable radiance, and much of her immeasurable efficiency. +Diverseness in unity is a source of her power as well as of her +beauty. Her wealth of material being infinite, her specifications are +endless, countless, superfinely minute. Even no two of the commonest +men does she make alike; her men of genius she diversifies at once +grandly and delicately, broadly and subtly. "Petrarch and Boccaccio +did diplomatic messages," says Mr. Carlyle. We hope they did, +or could have done, in the prosaic field, much better than that. We +Americans know with what moderate equipment diplomatic messages may be +done. + +On poetry and poets Mr. Carlyle has written many of his best pages, +pages penetrating, discriminative, because so sympathetic, and +executed with the scholar's care and the critic's culture. His early +papers on Goethe and Burns, published more than forty years ago, made +something like an epoch in English criticism. Seizing the value and +significance of genuine poetry, he exclaims in "Past and +Present,"--"Genius, Poet! do we know what these words mean? An +inspired soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great +fire-heart, to see the truth, and speak it and do it." On the same +page he thus taunts his countrymen: "We English find a poet, as brave +a man as has been made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the +sun; and do we kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking +due counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of +Dumfries, and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'" "George +the Third is Defender of something we call 'the Faith' in +those years. George the Third is head charioteer of the destinies of +England, to guide them through the gulf of French Revolutions, +American Independences; and Robert Burns is gauger of ale in +Dumfries." Poor George the Third! One needs not be a craniologist to +know that the eyes which looked out from beneath that retreating +pyramidal forehead could see but part even of the commonest men and +things before them. How could they see a Robert Burns? To be sure, had +Dundas, or whoever got Burns the place of gauger, given him one of the +many sinecures of two or three hundred pounds a year that were wasted +on idle scions of titled families, an aureole of glory would now shine +through the darkness that environs the memory of George III. So much +for George Guelf. Now for Thomas Carlyle. + +If, for not recognizing Burns, _poor_ George is to be blamed, +what terms of stricture will be too harsh for _rich_ Thomas, that +by him were not recognized poets greater than Burns, at a time when +for England's good, full, sympathetic recognition of them was just +what was literarily most wanted? Here was a man, for the fine function +of poetic criticism how rarely gifted is visible in those +thorough papers on Burns and Goethe, written so early as 1828, +wherein, besides a masterly setting forth of their great subjects, are +notable passages on other poets. On Byron is passed the following +sentence, which will, we think, be ever confirmed by sound criticism. +"Generally speaking, we should say that Byron's poetry is not true. He +refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar +strong waters, stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in +dislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, +real men; we mean, poetically consistent and conceivable men? Do not +these characters, does not the character of their author, which more +or less shines through them all, rather appear a thing put on for the +occasion; no natural or possible mode of being, but something intended +to look much grander than nature? Surely, all these stormful agonies, +this volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt, and moody desperation, +with so much scowling and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous humor, +is more like the brawling of a player in some paltry tragedy, which is +to last three hours, than the bearing of a man in the business of +life, which is to last threescore and ten years. To our minds, +there is a taint of this sort, something which we should call +theatrical, false, affected, in every one of these otherwise so +powerful pieces." + +In the same paper, that on Burns, Mr. Carlyle thus opened the ears of +that generation,--partially opened, for the general aesthetic ear is +not fully opened yet,--to a hollowness which was musical to the many: +"Our Grays and Glovers seemed to write almost as if _in vacuo_; +the thing written bears no mark of place; it is not written so much +for Englishmen as for men; or rather, which is the inevitable result +of this, for certain generalizations which philosophy termed men." And +in the paper on Goethe, he calls Gray's poetry, "a laborious mosaic, +through the hard, stiff lineaments of which, little life or true grace +could be expected to look." Thus choicely endowed was Mr. Carlyle to +be, what is the critic's noblest office, an interpreter between new +poets and the public. Such an interpreter England grievously needed, +to help and teach her educated and scholarly classes to prize the +treasures just lavished upon them by Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and +Shelley, and Keats. The interpreter was there, but he spoke not. +Better than any man in England Mr. Carlyle could, if he would, +have taught the generation that was growing up with him, whose ear he +had already gained, what truth and fresh beauty and deep humanity +there was in the strains of this composite chorus of superlative +singers. Of such teaching, that generation stood in especial need, to +disabuse its ear of the hollowness which had been mistaken for +harmony; to refresh, with clear streams from "the divine fountain," +hearts that were fevered by the stimulus of Byronic "strong waters;" +to wave before half-awakened eyes the torch which lights the way to +that higher plane where breathe great poets, whose incomparable +function it is, to impart to their fellow-men some of the enlargement +and the purification of consciousness in which themselves exult +through the influx of fresh ideas and the upspringing of prolific +sentiment. The gifted interpreter was dumb. Nay, he made diversions +into Scotland and Germany, to bring Burns and Scott more distinctly +before Englishmen, and to make Schiller and Goethe and Richter better +known to them. And it pleased him to write about "Corn-law rhymes." +That he did these tasks so well, proves how well he could have done, +by the side of them, the then more urgent task. In 1828, Mr. +Carlyle wrote for one of the quarterly reviews an exposition of +"Goethe's Helena," which is a kind of episode in the second part of +"Faust," and was first published as a fragment. This takes up more +than sixty pages in the first volume of the "Miscellanies," about the +half being translations from "Helena," which by no means stands in the +front rank of Goethe's poetic creations, which is indeed rather a high +artistic composition than a creation. At that time there lay, almost +uncalled for, on the publisher's shelf, where it had lain for five +years, ever since its issue, a poem of fifty-five Spenserian stanzas, +flushed with a subtler beauty, more divinely dyed in pathos, than any +in English literature of its rare kind, or of any kind out of +Shakespeare,--a poem in which all the inward harvests of a tender, +deep, capacious, loving, and religious life, all the heaped hoards of +feeling and imagination in a life most visionary and most real, are +gathered into one sheaf of poetic affluence, to dazzle and subdue with +excess of light,--or gathered rather into a bundle of sheaves, stanza +rising on stanza, each like a flame fresh shooting from a hidden bed +of Nature's most precious perfumes, each shedding a new and +a richer fragrance; I mean the "Adonais" of Shelley. For this +glittering masterpiece,--a congenial commentary on which would have +illuminated the literary atmosphere of England,--Mr. Carlyle had no +word; no word for Shelley, no word for Coleridge, no word for +Wordsworth. For Keats he had a word in the paper on Burns, and here it +is: "Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole +consists in a weak-eyed, maudlin sensibility and a certain vague, +random timefulness of nature, is no separate faculty." A parenthesis, +short and contemptuous, is all he gives to one of whom it has been +truly said, that of no poet who has lived, not of Shakespeare, is the +poetry written before the twenty-fifth year so good as his; and of +whom it may as truly be said, that his best poems need no apology in +the youthfulness of their author; but that for originality, power, +variety, feeling, thoughtfulness, melody, they take rank in the first +class of the poetry of the world. Is not Thomas Carlyle justly +chargeable with having committed a high literary misdemeanor? Nay, +considering his gift of poetic insight, and with it his persistent +ignoring of the great English poets of his age, considering the warm +solicitation on the one side, and the duty on the other, his +offense may be termed a literary crime. He knew better. + +Mr. Carlyle somewhere contrasts his age with that of Elizabeth, after +this fashion; "For Raleighs and Shakespeares we have Beau Brummell and +Sheridan Knowles." Only on the surmise that Mr. Carlyle owed poor +Knowles some desperate grudge, can such an outburst be accounted for. +Otherwise it is sheer fatuity, or an impotent explosion of literary +spite. For the breadth and brilliancy of the poetic day shed upon it, +no period in the history of any nation, not that of Pericles or of +Elizabeth, is more resplendent than that which had not yet faded for +England when Mr. Carlyle began his career; nor in the field of public +action can the most prolific era of Greece or of England hold up, for +the admiration of the world and the pride of fellow-countrymen, two +agents more deservedly crowned with honor and gratitude than Nelson +and Wellington. Here are two leaders, who, besides exhibiting rare +personal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast +breadth, and in performances of unwonted magnitude and momentousness, +were, moreover, by their great, brave deeds, most palpably +saving England, saving Europe, from the grasp of an inexorable despot. +Surely these were heroes of a stature to have strained to its utmost +the reverence and the love of a genuine hero-worshipper. On the ten +thousand luminous pages of Mr. Carlyle they find no place. Not only +are their doings not celebrated, that they lived is scarce +acknowledged. + +Even when its objects are the loftiest and the most honored, jealousy +is not a noble form of + + "The last infirmity of noble mind." + +Does Mr. Carlyle feel that Nelson and Wellington, Coleridge, Shelley, +Keats, and Wordsworth, stand already so broad and high that they chill +him with their shadow, and that therefore he will not, by eulogy, or +even notice, add to their altitude? Is he repeating the littleness of +Byron, who was jealous not only of his contemporaries, Napoleon, and +Wellington, and Wordsworth, but was jealous of Shakespeare? That a pen +which, with zestful animation, embraces all contemporaneous things, +should be studiously silent about almost every one of the dozen men of +genius who illustrate his era, is a fact so monstrous, that one is +driven to monstrous devices to divulge its motive. In such a case it +is impossible to premise to what clouds of self-delusion an +imaginative man will not rise. + +Writing of Thomas Carlyle, the last words must not be censorious +comments on a weakness; we all owe too much to his strength; he is too +large a benefactor. Despite over-fondness for Frederick and the like, +and what may be termed a pathological drift towards political +despotism, how many quickening chapters has he not added to the +"gospel of freedom"? Flushed are his volumes with generous pulses, +with delicate sympathies. From many a page what cordialities step +forth to console and to fortify us; what divine depths we come upon; +what sudden vistas of sunshine through tempest-shaken shadows; what +bursts of splendor through nebulous mutterings. Much has he helped the +enfranchisement of the spirit. Well do I remember the thirst +wherewith, more than thirty years ago, I seized the monthly "Frazer," +to drink of the spiritual waters of "Sartor Resartus." Here was a new +spring; with what stimulating, exhilarating, purifying draughts, did +it bubble and sparkle! That picture, in the beginning, of the "doing +and driving (_Thun und Treiben_)" of a city as beheld by +Professor Teufelsdroeckh from his attic--would one have been surprised +to read that on a page of Shakespeare? + +A marvelous faculty of speech has Mr. Carlyle; a gift of saying what +he has to say with a ring in the words that makes the thought tingle +through your ears. His diction surrounds itself with a magnetic +_aura_, which seems to float it, to part it from the paper, it +stands out in such transparent chiar-oscuro. Common phrases he +refreshes by making them the vehicle for new meanings, and in the +ordering of words he has command of a magical logic. The marrowy vigor +in his mind it is that lends such expressiveness, such nimbleness, +such accent to his sentences, to his style. + +Mr. Carlyle's power comes mainly from his sensibilities. Through them +he is poetical; through them there is so much light in his pages. More +often from his than from any others, except those of the major poets, +breaks the sudden, joyful beam that flames around a thought when it +knows itself embraced by a feeling. Of humor and of wit, what an added +fund does our language now possess through his pen. The body of +criticism, inclosed in the five volumes of Miscellanies, were +enough to give their author a lasting name. When one of these papers +appeared in the Edinburgh, or other review, it shone, amid the +contributions of the Jeffreys and Broughams, like a guinea in a +handful of shillings. + +The masterpiece of Mr. Carlyle, and the masterpiece of English prose +literature, is his "French Revolution," a rhythmic Epic without verse. +To write those three volumes a man needs have in him a big, glowing +heart, thus to flood with passionate life all the men and scenes of a +momentous volcanic epoch; a lively, strong, intellectual vision he +must have, to grasp in their full reality the multitudinous and +diverse facts and incidents so swiftly begotten under the pulsation of +millions of contentious brains; he needs a literary faculty finely +artistic, creatively imaginative, to enrank the figures of such vast +tumultuous scenes, to depict the actors in each, to present vividly in +clear relief the rapid succession of eventful convulsions. Outside of +the choice achievements of verse, is there a literary task of breadth +and difficulty that has been done so well? A theme of unusual grandeur +and significance is here greatly treated. + +The foremost literary gift,--nay, the test whereby to try +whether there be any genuine literary gift,--is the power in a writer +to impart so much of himself, that his subject shall stand invested, +or rather, imbued, with a life which renews it; it becomes warmed with +a fire from the writer's soul. Of this, the most perfect exhibition is +in poetry, wherein, by the intensity and fullness of inflammation, of +passion, is born a something new, which, through the strong +creativeness of the poet, has henceforth a rounded being of its own. +With this power Mr. Carlyle is highly endowed. Not only, as already +said, does his page quiver with himself; through the warmth and +healthiness of his sympathies, and his intellectual mastery, he makes +each scene and person in his gorgeous representation of the French +Revolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly +that this life has been lighted up by his. Where in history is there a +picture greater than that of the execution of Louis XVI.? With a few +strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid +chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. And then +his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the +queen, of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille +Desmoulins, of Danton, of Robespierre: it seems now that only on his +throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true +being. The giant Mirabeau, 'twas thought at first he had drawn too +gigantic. But intimate documents, historical and biographical, that +have come to light since, confirm the insight of Mr. Carlyle, and +swell his hero out to the large proportions he has given him. + +For a conclusion we will let Mr. Carlyle depict himself. Making +allowance for some humorous play in describing a fellow-man so +eccentric as his friend, Professor Teufelsdroeckh, this we think he +does consciously and designedly in the fourth chapter of "Sartor +Resartus," wherein, under the head of "Characteristics," he comments +on the professor's Work on Clothes, and its effect on himself. From +this chapter we extract some of the most pertinent sentences. It opens +thus:-- + +"It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work on Clothes +entirely contents us; that it is not, like all works of genius, like +the very sun, which, though the highest published creation, or work of +genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid +its effulgence,--a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dullness' +double-vision, and even utter blindness. + +"Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises and +prophesyings of the "Weissnichtwo'sche Anzeiger," we admitted that the +book had in a high degree excited us to self-activity, which is the +best effect of any book; that it had even operated changes in our way +of thought; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the opening of +a new mine-shaft, wherein the whole world of _Speculation_ might +henceforth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now be +declared that Professor Teufelsdroeckh's acquirements, patience of +research, philosophic, and even poetic vigor, are here made +indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity and +tortuosity and manifold inaptitude.... + +"Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has he cast +into mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of man. +Wonderful it is with what cutting words, now and then, he severs +asunder the confusion; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the +true center of the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the +head, but with crushing force smites it home and buries it.... + +"Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a +true inspiration; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning +words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and +splendor from Jove's head; a rich idiomatic diction, picturesque +allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy twins; all the +graces and terrors of a wild imagination, wedded to the clearest +intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer +sleeping and soporific passages, circumlocutions, repetitions, touches +even of pure doting jargon so often intervene.... A wild tone pervades +the whole utterance of the man, like its key-note and regulator; now +screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill +mockery of fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious +heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, +when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true +character is extremely difficult to fix.... + +"Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, +do we still lie with regard to the professor's moral feeling. Gleams +of an ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite +pity; he could clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and +keep it warm; it seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a +very seraph. Then, again, he is so sly, and still so imperturbably +saturnine; shows such indifference, malign coolness, towards all that +men strive after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter, +sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callousness,--that you +look on him almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate +Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, +after all, were but some huge foolish whirligig, where kings and +beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were +chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest." + + + + +VII. + +ERRATA.[7] + + [7] From Lippincott's Magazine, 1870. + + +Words are the counters of thought; speech is the vocalization of the +soul; style is the luminous incarnation of reason and emotion. Thence +it behooves scholars, the wardens of language, to keep over words a +watch as keen and sleepless as a dutiful guardian keeps over his +pupils. A prime office of this guardianship is to take care lest +language fall into loose ways; for words being the final elements into +which all speech resolves itself, if they grow weak by negligence or +abuse, speech loses its firmness, veracity, and expressiveness. Style +may be likened to a close Tyrian garment woven by poets and thinkers +out of words and phrases for the clothing and adornment of the mind; +and the strength and fineness of the tissue, together with its +beauties of color, depend on the purity and precision, the +transparency and directness of its threads, which are words. + +A humble freeman of the guild of scholars would here use his +privilege to call attention to some abuses in words and +phrases,--abuses which are not only prevalent in the spoken and +written speech of the many, but which disfigure, occasionally, the +pages, even of good writers. These are not errors that betoken or lead +to general final corruption, and the great Anglo-Saxo-Norman race is +many centuries distant from the period when it may be expected to show +signs of that decadence which, visible at first in the waning moral +and intellectual energies of a people, soon spots its speech. + +Nevertheless, as inaccuracies, laxities, vulgarisms--transgressions +more or less superficial--such errors take from the correctness, from +the efficacy, from the force as well as the grace, of written or +spoken speech. + +The high level of strength, suppleness and beauty occupied by our +English tongue has been reached, and can only be maintained, by +strenuous, varied, and continuous mental action. Offenses against the +laws and proprieties of language--like so many other of our +lapses--are in most cases effects of the tendency in human nature to +relax its tone. None save the most resolute and rigorous but have +their moods of unwatchfulness, of indolence. Moreover, men are +prone to resist mental refinement and intellectual subdivisions. +Discrimination requires close attention and sustained effort; and +without habitual discrimination there can be no linguistic precision +or excellence. In this, as in other provinces, people like to take +things easily. Now, every capable man of business knows that to take +things easily is an easy way to ruin. Language is in a certain sense +every one's business; but it is especially the business, as their +appellation denotes, of men of letters; and a primary duty of their +high vocation is to be jealous of any careless or impertinent meddling +with, or mishandling of, those little glistening, marvelous tools +wherewith such amazing structures and temples have been built and are +ever a-building. Culture, demanding and creating diversity and +subtlety of mental processes, is at once a cause and an effect of +infinite multiplication in the relations the mind is capable of +establishing between itself and the objects of its action, and between +its own processes; and language, being a chief instrument of culture, +has to follow and subserve these multiplied and diversified demands, +Any fall, therefore, on its part from the obedient fineness of +its modes and modulations back into barbaric singleness and crudeness, +any slide into looseness or vagueness, any unweaving of the complex +tissue, psychical and metaphysical, into which it has been wrought by +the exquisite wants of the mind, will have a relaxing, debilitating +influence on thought itself. To use the clear, wise words of Mr. +Whewell; "Language is often called an instrument of thought, but it is +also the nutriment of thought; or, rather, it is the atmosphere on +which thought lives--a medium essential to the activity of our +speculative powers, although invisible and imperceptible in its +operation; and an element modifying, by its changes and qualities, the +growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds." + +Our enumeration of _errata_ being made alphabetically, the first to be +cited is one of the chief of sinners--the particle. + +As. The misuse of _as_ for _so_ is, in certain cases, almost +universal. If authority could justify error and convert the faulty +into the faultless, it were idle to expose a misuse in justification +of which can be cited most of the best names in recent English +literature. + + "_As_ far as doth concern my single self," + +is a line in Wordsworth ("Prelude," p. 70) which, by a change +of the first _as_ into _so_, would gain not only in sound (which is +not our affair at present), but, likewise in grammar. The seventh line +of the twenty-first stanza in that most tender of elegies and most +beautiful of poems, Shelley's "Adonais," begins, "_As_ long as skies +are blue," where also there would be a double gain by writing "_So_ +long as skies are blue." On page 242 of the first volume of De +Quincey's "Literary Remains" occurs this sentence; "Even by _as_ +philosophic a politician _as_ Edmund Burke," in which the critical +blunder of calling Burke a philosophic politician furnishes no excuse +for the grammatical blunder. The rule (derived, like all good rules, +from principle) which determines the use of this small particle is, I +conceive, that the double _as_ should only be employed when there is +direct comparison. In the first part of the following sentence there +is no direct comparative relation--in the second, the negative +destroys it; "_So_ far as geographical measurement goes, Philadelphia +is not _so_ far from New York as from Baltimore." Five writers out of +six would commit the error of using _as_ in both members of the +sentence. The most prevalent misuse of _as_ is in connection with +_soon_; and this general misuse, having moreover the countenance of +good writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to +unravel it. But principle is higher than the authority derived from +custom. Judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute; +and if the highest writers, whose influence is deservedly judicial, +violate the laws of language, their decisions ought to be, and will +be, reversed, or language will be undermined, and, slipping into +shallow, illogical habits, into anarchical conditions, will forfeit +much of its manliness, of its subtlety, of its truthfulness. Language +is a living organism, and to substitute authority, or even long usage, +for its innate genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices +that result from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it +to become subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism. +Worcester quotes from the Psalms the phrase, "They go astray _as_ soon +as they be born." We ask, Were not the translators of the Bible as +liable to err in grammar as De Quincey, or Wordsworth, or Shelley? A +writer in the English "National Review" for January, 1862, in an +admirable paper on the "Italian Clergy and the Pope," begins a +sentence with the same phrase: "_As_ soon as the law was passed." And +we ourselves, sure though we be that the use of _as_ in this and every +similar position is an error, need to brace both pen and tongue +against running into it, so strong to overcome principle and +conviction is the habit of the senses, accustomed daily to see and to +hear the wrong. + +AT THAT. We should not have noticed this squat vulgarism, had not the +pen blazoned its own depravity by lifting it out of newspapers into +bound volumes. The speech and page of every one, who would not be +italicized for lingual looseness, should be forever closed against a +phrase so shocking to taste, a phrase, we are sorry to say, of +American mintage, coined in one of those frolicksome exuberant moods, +when a young people, like a loosed horse full of youth and oats, kicks +up and scatters mud with the unharnessed license of his heels. + +ANOTHER. Before passing to the letter B on our alphabetical docket, we +will call up a minor criminal in A, viz. _another_, often incorrectly +used for _other_; as in "on one ground or another," "from one +cause or another." Now, _another_, the prefix _an_ making it +singular,--embraces but one ground or cause, and therefore, contrary +to the purpose of the writer, the words mean that there are +but two grounds or causes. Write "on one ground or other," and the +words are in harmony with the meaning of the writer, the word _other_ +implying several or many grounds. + +BOQUET. The sensibility that gives the desire to preserve a present +sparkling so long as is possible with all the qualities that made it +materially acceptable, should rule us where the gift is something so +precious as a word; and when we receive one from another people, +gratitude, as well as sense of grace in the form of the gift itself, +should make us watchful that it be not dimmed by the boorish breath of +ignorance or cacophanized by unmusical voices. We therefore protest +against a useful and tuneful noun-substantive, a native of France, the +word _bouquet_, being maimed into _boquet_, a corruption as dissonant +to the ear as were to the eye plucking a rose from a variegated +nosegay, and leaving only its thorny stem. _Boquet_ is heard at times +in well-upholstered drawing-rooms, and may even be seen in print. +Offensive in its mutilated shape, it smells sweet again when restored +to its native orthography. + +BY NO MANNER OF MEANS. The most vigorous writers are liable, in +unguarded moments, to lapse into verbal weakness, and so you +meet with this vulgar pleonasm in Ruskin. + +BY REASON OF. An ill-assorted, ugly phrase, used by accomplished +reviewers and others, who ought to set a purer example. + +COME OFF. Were a harp to give out the nasal whine of the bagpipe, or +the throat of a nightingale to emit the caw of a raven, the aesthetic +sense would not be more startled and offended than to hear from +feminine lips, rosily wreathed by beauty and youth, issue the words, +"The concert will _come off_ on Wednesday." This vulgarism should +never be heard beyond the "ring" and the cock-pit, and should be +banished from resorts so respectable as an oyster-cellar. + +CONSIDER. Neither weight of authority nor universality of use can +purify or justify a linguistic corruption, and make the intrinsically +wrong in language right; and therefore such phrases as, "I consider +him an honest man," "Do you consider the dispute settled?" will ever +be bad English, however generally sanctioned. In his dedication of the +"Diversions of Purley" to the University of Cambridge, Horne Tooke +uses it wrongly when he says, "who always _considers_ acts of +voluntary justice toward himself as favors." The original +signification and only proper use of _consider_ are in phrases like +these: "If you consider the matter carefully;" "Consider the lilies of +the field." + +CONDUCT. It seems to us that it were as allowable to say of a man, "He +carries well," as "He conducts well." We say of a gun that it carries +well, and we might say of a pipe that it conducts well. The gun and +pipe are passive instruments, not living organisms, and thence the +verbs are used properly in the neuter form. Perhaps, strictly +speaking, even here _its charge_ and _water_ are understood. + +CONTEMPLATE. "Do you contemplate going to Washington to-morrow?" "No: +I contemplate moving into the country." This is more than exaggeration +and inflation: it is desecration of a noble word, born of man's higher +being; for contemplation is an exercise of the very highest faculties, +a calm collecting of them for silent meditation--an act, or rather a +mood, which implies even more than concentrated reflection, and +involves themes dependent on large, pure sentiment. An able lawyer has +to reflect much upon a broad, difficult case in order to master it; +but when in the solitude of his study he is drawn, by the conflicts +and wrongs he has witnessed during the day, to think on the +purposes and destiny of human life, he more than reflects--he is +lifted into a contemplative mood. Archbishop Trench, in his valuable +volume on the "Study of Words," opens a paragraph with this sentence: +"Let us now proceed to _contemplate_ some of the attestations for +God's truth, and some of the playings into the hands of the devil's +falsehood, which may be found to lurk in words." Here we suggest that +the proper word were _consider_; for there is activity, and a +progressive activity, in the mental operation on which he enters, +which disqualifies the verb _contemplate_. + +Habitual showiness in language, as in dress and manners, denotes lack +of discipline or lack of refinement. Our American magniloquence--the +tendency to which is getting more and more subdued--comes partly from +national youthfulness, partly from license, that bastard of liberty, +and partly from the geographical and the present, and still more the +prospective, political grandeur of the country, which Coleridge +somewhere says is to be "England in glorious magnification." + +I AM FREE TO CONFESS. An irredeemable vulgarism. + +IN THIS CONNECTION. Another. + +INDEBTEDNESS. "The amount of my _engagedness_" sounds as well +and is as proper as "the amount of my _indebtedness_." We have already +_hard-heartedness_, _wickedness_, _composedness_, and others. +Nevertheless, this making of nouns out of adjectives with the +participial form is an irruption over the boundaries of the parts of +speech which should not be encouraged. + +Archbishop Whately, in a passage of his shortcoming comments on +Bacon's "Essays," uses _preparedness_. Albeit that brevity is a +cardinal virtue in writing, a circumlocution would, we think, be +better than a gawky word like this, so unsteady on its long legs. In +favor of _indebtedness_ over others of like coinage, this is to be +said--that it imports that which in one form or other comes home to +the bosom of all humanity. + +INTELLECTS. That man's intellectual power is not one and indivisible, +but consists of many separate, independent faculties, is a momentous +truth, revealed by the insight of Gall. One of the results of this +great discovery may at times underlie the plural use of the important +word _intellect_ when applied to one individual. If so, it were still +indefensible. It has, we suspect, a much less philosophic origin, and +proceeds from the unsafe practice of overcharging the verbal +gun in order to make more noise in the ear of the listener. The plural +is correctly used when we speak of two or more different men. + +LEFT. "I left at ten o'clock." This use of _leave_ as a neuter verb, +however attractive from its brevity, is not defensible. _To leave off_ +is the only proper neuter form. "We left off at six, and left (the +hall) at a quarter past six." The place should be inserted after the +second _left_. Even the first is essentially active, some form of +action being understood after _off_: we left off _work_ or _play_. + +MIDST. "In our midst" is a common but incorrect phrase. + +OUR AUTHOR. A vulgarism, which, by its seeming convenience, gets the +countenance of critical writers. We say _seeming_ convenience; for in +this seeming lies the vulgarity, the writer expressing, unconsciously +often, by the _our_, a feeling of patronage. With his _our_ he pats +the author on the back. + +PERIODICAL is an adjective, and its use as a substantive is an +unwarrantable gain of brevity at the expense of grammar. + +PROPOSE. Hardly any word that we have cited is so frequently +misused, and by so many good writers, as _propose_, when the meaning +is to design, to intend to propose. It should always be followed by a +personal accusative--I propose to you, to him, to myself. In the +preface to Hawthorne's "Marble Faun" occurs the following sentence; +"The author _proposed_ to himself merely to write a fanciful story, +evolving a thoughtful moral, and did not _purpose_ attempting a +portraiture of Italian manners and character"--a sentence than which a +fitter could not be written to illustrate the proper use of _propose_ +and _purpose_. + +PREDICATED UPON. This abomination is paraded by persons who lose no +chance of uttering "dictionary words," hit or miss; and is sometimes +heard from others from whom the educated world has a right to look for +more correctness. + +RELIABLE. A counterfeit, which no stamping by good writers or +universality of circulation will ever be able to introduce into the +family circle of honest English as a substitute for the robust Saxon +word whose place it would usurp--_trustworthy_. _Reliable_ is, +however, good English when used to signify that one is liable again. +When you have lost a receipt, and cannot otherwise prove that +a bill rendered has been paid, you are _re-liable_ for the amount. + +RELIGION. Even by scholars this word is often used with looseness. In +strictness it expresses exclusively our relation to the Infinite, the +_bond_ between man and God. You will sometimes read that he is the +truly religious man who most faithfully performs his duties of +neighbor, father, son, husband, citizen. However much a religious man +may find himself strengthened by his faith and inspirited for the +performance of all his duties, this strength is an indirect, and not a +uniform or necessary, effect of religious convictions. Some men who +are sincere in such convictions fail in these duties conspicuously; +while, on the other hand, they are performed, at times, with more than +common fidelity by men who do not carry within them any very lively +religious belief or impressions. "And now abideth faith, hope, and +charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Nor can +the greatest do the work of the others any more than faith that of +hope or charity. Each one of "these three" is different from and +independent of the other, however each one be aided by cooperation +from the others. The deep, unique feeling which lifts up and +binds the creature to the Creator is elementarily one in the human +mind, and the word used to denote it should be kept solely for this +high office, and not weakened or perverted by other uses. Worcester +quotes from Dr. Watts the following sound definition: "In a proper +sense, _virtue_ signifies duty toward men, and _religion_ duty to +God." + +SALOON. That eminent pioneer of American sculpture, brilliant talker, +and accomplished gentleman, the lamented Horatio Greenough, was +indignantly eloquent against the American abuse of this graceful +importation from France, applied as it is in the United States to +public billiard-rooms, oyster-cellars and grog-shops. + +SUBJECT-MATTER. A tautological humpback. + +TO VENTILATE, applied to a subject or person. The scholar who should +use this vilest of vulgarisms deserves to have his right thumb taken +off. + +We have here noted a score of the errors prevalent in written and +spoken speech--some of them perversions or corruptions, countenanced +even by eminent writers; some, misapplications that weaken and +disfigure the style of him who adopts them; and some, downright +vulgarisms--that is, phrases that come from below, and are +thrust into clean company with the odors of slang about them. These +last are often a device for giving piquancy to style. Against such +abuses we should be the more heedful, because, from the convenience of +some of them, they get so incorporated into daily speech as not to be +readily distinguishable from their healthy neighbors, clinging for +generations to tongues and pens. Of this tenacity there is a notable +exemplification in a passage of Boswell, written nearly a hundred +years ago. Dr. Johnson found fault with Boswell for using the phrase +to _make_ money: "Don't you see the impropriety of it? To _make_ money +is to _coin_ it: you should say _get_ money." Johnson, adds Boswell, +"was jealous of infractions upon the genuine English language, and +prompt to repress colloquial barbarisms; such as _pledging_ myself, +for _undertaking_; _line_ for _department_ or _branch_, as the _civil +line_, the _banking line_. He was particularly indignant against the +almost universal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or +_opinion_, when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of +which an image can be formed in the mind. We may have an _idea_ or +_image_ of a mountain, a tree, a building, but we surely cannot have +an idea or image of an _argument_ or _proposition_. Yet we +hear the sages of the law 'delivering their _ideas_ upon the question +under consideration;' and the first speakers of Parliament 'entirely +coinciding in the _idea_ which has been ably stated by an honorable +member.'" + +Whether or not the word _idea_ may be properly used in a deeper or +grander sense than that stated by Dr. Johnson, there is no doubt that +he justly condemned its use in the cases cited by him, and in similar +ones. All the four phrases _make money_, _pledge_, _line_, and _idea_, +whereupon sentence of guilty was passed by the great lexicographer, +are still at large, and, if it be not a bull to say so, more at large +to-day than in the last century, since the area of their currency has +been extended to America, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. + + + + +VIII. + +A NATIONAL DRAMA.[8] + + [8] From _Putnam's Monthly_, 1857. + + +We are eminently a people of action; we are fond of shows, +processions, and organized spectacles; we are so much more imitative +than our British cousins, that, without limiting its appeals to the +mimetic files of fashion, the ungentlemanly theory of a Simian descent +for man might find support in the features of our general life. To +complete the large compound of qualities that are required, in order +that an emulous people give birth to a drama, one is yet wanting; but +that one is not merely the most important of all, but is the one which +lifts the others into dramatic importance. Are we poetical? Ask any +number of continental Europeans, whether the English are a poetical +people. A loud, unanimous, derisive _no_ would be the answer. And +yet, there is Shakespeare! and around him, back to Chaucer and forward +to Tennyson, a band of such poets, that this prosaic nation has the +richest poetic literature in Christendom. Especially in this matter +are appearances delusive, and hasty inferences liable to be illogical. +From the prosers that one hears in pulpits, legislatures, +lecture-rooms, at morning calls and well-appointed dinner-tables in +Anglo-America, let no man infer against our poetic endowment. +Shakespeare, and Milton, and Burns, and Wordsworth, are of our stock; +and what we have already done in poetry and the plastic arts, while +yet, as a nation, hardly out of swaddling-clothes, is an earnest of a +creative future. We are to have a national literature and a national +drama. What is a national drama? Premising that as little in their +depth as in their length will our remarks be commensurate with the +dimensions of this great theme, we would say a few words. + +A literature is the expression of what is warmest and deepest in the +heart of a people. Good books are the crystallization of thoughts and +feelings. To have a literature--that is, a body of enduring +books--implies vigor and depth. Such books are the measure of the +mental vitality in a people. Those peoples that have the best books +will be found to be at the top of the scale of humanity; those that +have none, at the bottom. Good books, once brought forth, +exhale ever after both fragrance and nourishment. They educate while +they delight many generations. + +Good books are the best thoughts of the best men. They issue out of +deep hearts and strong heads; and where there are deep hearts and +strong heads such books are sure to come to life. The mind, like the +body, will reproduce itself: the mind, too, is procreative, +transmitting itself to a remote posterity. + +The best books are the highest products of human effort. Themselves +the evidence of creative power, they kindle and nourish power. +Consider what a spring of life to European people have been the books +of the Hebrews. What so precious treasure has England as Shakespeare? + +To be good, books must be generic. They may be, in subject, in tone, +and in color, national; but in substance they must be so universally +human, that other cognate nations can imbibe and be nourished by them. +Not that, in their fashioning, this fitness for foreign minds is to be +a conscious aim; but to be thus attractive and assimilative, is a +proof of their breadth and depth--of their high humanity. + +The peoples who earliest reached the state of culture which is +needed to bring forth books, each standing by itself, each necessarily +sang and wrote merely of itself. Thus did the Hebrews and the Greeks. +But already the Romans went out of themselves, and Virgil takes a +Trojan for his hero. This appropriation of foreign material shows that +the aim of high books is, to ascend to the sphere of ideas and +feelings that are independent of time and place. Thence, when, by +multiplication of Christian nations our mental world had become vastly +enlarged, embracing in one bond of culture, not only all modern +civilized peoples, but also the three great ancient ones, the +poets--especially the dramatic, for reasons that will be presently +stated--looked abroad and afar for the frame-work and corporeal stuff +of their writings. + +The most universal of all writers, ancient or modern, he who is most +generic in his thought, Shakespeare, embodied his transcendent +conceptions for the most part in foreign personages. Of Shakespeare's +fourteen comedies, the scene of only one is laid in England; and that +one, "The Merry Wives of Windsor"--the only one not written chiefly or +largely in verse--is a Shakespearean farce. Of the tragedies +(except the series of the ten historical ones) only two, "Lear" and +"Macbeth," stand on British ground. Is "Hamlet" on that score less +English than "Lear," or "Othello" than "Macbeth"? Does Italy count +Juliet among her trophies, or Desdemona? + +Of Milton's two dramas---to confine myself here to the dramatic +domain--the tragedy ("Samson Agonistes,") like his epics, is Biblical; +the comedy ("Comus") has its home in a sphere + + "Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot + Which men call earth." + +Of the numerous athletic corps of dramatists, contemporary with +Shakespeare and Milton, few have left works pithy enough and so +poetically complete as to withstand the wear of time and keep fresh to +each successive generation. But if you inspect the long list from +which Charles Lamb took his "Specimens," you will find few British +names. + +Casting our eyes on the dramatic efforts of the recent English poetic +celebrities, we perceive that Byron, Coleridge, and Shelley, all +abandoned, in every instance, native ground. The only dramatic work of +a great modern, the scene of which is laid within the British limits, +is "The Borderers," of Wordsworth, which, though having the +poetic advantage of remoteness in time--being thrown back to the reign +of Henry III.--is, in strictness, neither a drama nor a poem, +Wordsworth's deficiency in dramatic gifts being so signal as to cause, +by the impotent struggle in an uncongenial element, a partial +paralysis even of his high poetic genius. + +Glance now across the Channel. French poetic tragedy is in its +subjects almost exclusively ancient--Greek, Roman, and Biblical. In +the works of the great comic genius of France, Moliere, we have a +salient exception to the practice of all other eminent dramatists. The +scene of his plays is Paris; the time is the year in which each was +written. + +Let us look for the cause of this remarkable isolation. + +Moliere was the manager of a theatrical company in the reign of Louis +XIV., and he wrote, as he himself declares, to please the king and +amuse the Parisians. But deeper than this; Moliere was by nature a +great satirist. I call him a _great_ satirist, because of the +affluence of inward substance that fed his satiric appetite--namely, a +clear, moral sensibility, distinguishing by instinct the true from the +false, rare intellectual nimbleness, homely common sense, +shrewd insight into men, a keen wit, with vivid perception of the +comic and absurd. For a satirist so variously endowed, the stage was +the best field, and for Moliere especially, gifted as he was with +histrionic genius. The vices and abuses, the follies and absurdities, +the hypocrisies and superficialities of civilized life, these were the +game for his faculties. The interior of Paris households he +transferred to the stage with biting wit, doubling the attractiveness +of his pictures by comic hyperbole. His portraits are caricatures, not +because they exaggerate vices or foibles, but because they so bloat +out a single personage with one vice or one folly as to make him a +lop-sided deformity. Characters he did not seek to draw, but he made a +personage the medium of incarnating a quality. Harpagon is not a +miser; he is Avarice speaking and doing. Alceste is not a person; he +is Misanthropy personified. + +This fundamental exaggeration led to and facilitated the caricature of +relations and juxtapositions. With laughable unscrupulousness Moliere +multiplies improbable blunders and conjunctions. All verisimilitude is +sacrificed to scenic vivacity. Hence, the very highest of his comedies +are farce-like; even "Tartuffe" is so. + +In Moliere little dramatic growth goes on before the +spectator's eye. His personages are not gradually built up by +successive touches, broad or fine; they do not evolve themselves +chiefly by collision with others; in the first act they come on the +stage unfolded. The action and plot advance rapidly, but not through +the unrolling of the persons represented. Hence, his most important +personages are prosaic and finite. They interest you more as agents +for the purpose in hand than as men and women. They are subordinate +rather to the action than creative of action. + +Moliere is a most thorough realist, and herein is his strength. In him +the comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire gives pungency and +body to the comic. He was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet. +Such being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was +a present Parisian actuality of story and agents. A poetic comedy +ought to be, and will necessarily be, a chapter of very high life. +Moliere's comedies, dealing unctuously with vice and folly, are, +philosophically speaking, low life. His are comedies not of character +and sentiment, but of manners and morals, and therefore cannot be +highly poetical; and thence he felt no want of a remote +ground, clean of all local coloring and association, such as is +essential to the dramatist whose inspiration is poetical, and who +therefore must reconcile the ideal with the real, by which +reconciliation only can be produced the purest truth. That, +notwithstanding they belong not to the highest poetic sphere, his +comedies continue to live and to be enjoyed, this testifies of the +breadth and truthfulness of his humanity, the piercing insight of his +rich mind, and his superlative comic genius. + +Of Alfieri's twenty-two tragedies, three only are modern, and of these +three the scene of one is in Spain. + +Of the nine or ten tragedies of the foremost German dramatic poet, +Schiller, three are German, "The Robbers," "Intrigue and Love," and +"Wallenstein." + +Goethe's highest dramas, "Iphigenia," "Egmont," "Torquato Tasso," are +all foreign in clothing. "The Natural Daughter" has no local +habitation, no dependence on time or place. "Goetz von Berlichingen," +written in Goethe's earliest days of authorship, is German and in +prose, "Faust"--the greatest poem of these latter times, and rivaling +the greatest poems of all time--"Faust" is not strictly a drama: its +wonderful successive scenes are not bound together by dramatic +necessity. + +The drama of Spain, like the comedies of Moliere, is an exception to +the rule we deduce from the practice of other dramatists; but it is an +exception which, like that of Moliere, confirms the rule. Unlike the +ancient Greek and the French tragic poets, unlike Schiller, +Shakespeare, Goethe, Alfieri, the Spanish dramatists do not aim at +ideal humanity. The best of them, Calderon, is so intensely Spanish +and Romish, as to be, in comparison with the breadth and universality +of his eminent compeers above named, almost provincial. His personages +are not large and deep enough to be representative. The manifold +recesses of great minds he does not unveil; he gets no deeper than the +semi-barbarous exaggerations of selfish, passionate love; of revenge, +honor, and jealousy. His characterization is weak. His highest +characters lack intellectual calibre, and are exhibited in lyrical +one-sidedness rather than dramatic many-sidedness. He is mostly +content with Spanish cavaliers of the seventeenth century, ruled by +the conventionalisms in manners, morals, and superstition, which have +already passed away even in Spain. He is a marvelously fertile, +skillful, poetic playwright. + +Thus we perceive that, with poetic dramatists, the prevailing +practice is, to look abroad for fables. Moreover, in the cases where +these were drawn from the bosom of the poet's own people, he shuns the +present, and hies as far back as he can into the dark abysms of time, +as Shakespeare does in Macbeth and Lear. The Greek tragic poets, +having no outward resource, took possession of the fabulous era of +Greece. The poetic dramatist seeks mostly a double remoteness, that of +place as well as that of time; and he must have one or the other. + +The law lying behind this phenomenon is transparent. The higher poetry +is, the more generic it is. Its universality is a chief constituent of +its excellence. The drama is the most generically human, and, +therefore, the highest of the great forms of poetry. The epic deals +with the material, the outward--humanity concreted into events; the +lyric with the inward, when that is so individual and intense as to +gush out in ode or song. The dramatic is the union of the epic and +lyric--the inward moulding the outward, predominant over the outward +while co-working with it. In the dramatic, the action is more made by +the personality; in the epic, the personality is more merged in the +strong, full stream of events. The lyric is the utterance of +one-sided, partial (however deep and earnest) feeling, the which must +be linked to other feelings to give wholeness to the man and his +actions. The dramatic combines several lyrics with the epic. Out of +humanity and human action it extracts the essence. It presents men in +their completest form, in warm activity, impelled thereto by strongest +feelings. Hence, it must be condensed and compact, and must, for its +highest display, get rid of local coloring, personal associations, and +all prosaic circumscriptions. The poetic dramatist needs the highest +poetic freedom, and only through this can he attain to that breadth +and largeness whereof the superiority of his form admits, and which +are such in Shakespeare, that in his greatest plays the whole world +seems to be present as spectators and listeners. + +Observe that the highest dramatic literatures belong to the two freest +peoples--the Greeks and the English. A people, possessing already a +large political freedom, must be capable of, and must be in the act +of, vigorous, rich development, through deep inward passion and +faculty, in order that its spirit shall issue in the perennial flowers +of the poetic drama. The dramatic especially implies and +demands variety and fullness and elevation of _personality_; and +this is only possible through freedom, the attainment of which freedom +implies on its side the innate fertility of nature which results in +fullness and elevation. + +Now in the subjective elevation of the individual, and therewith the +unprecedented relative number of individuals thus elevated, herein do +we exceed all other peoples. By subjective elevation I mean, +liberation from the outward, downward pressure of dogmatic +prescription, of imperious custom, of blindfolded tradition, of +irresponsible authority. The despotic objectivity of Asia--where +religion is submissiveness, and manhood is crushed by obedience--has +been partially withstood in Europe. The emancipation therefrom of the +Indo-Germanic race is completed in Anglo-America. Through this +manifold emancipation we are to be, in all the high departments of +human achievement, preeminently creative, because, while equipped with +the best of the past, we are at the same time preeminently subjective; +and, therefore, high literature will, with us, necessarily take the +lyrical, and especially the dramatic, form. + +More than our European ancestors, we mold, each one of us, our +own destiny; we have a stronger inward sense of power to unfold and +elevate ourselves; we are more ready and more capable to withstand the +assaults of circumstance. Here is more thoroughly embodied the true +Christian principle, that out of himself is to come every man's +redemption; that the favor and help of God are only to be obtained +through resolute self-help, and honest, earnest struggle. In +Christendom we stand alone as having above us neither the objectivity +of politics nor that of the church. The light of the past we have, +without its darkness. We carry little weight from the exacting past. +Hence, our unexampled freedom and ease of movement which, wanting the +old conventional ballast, to Europeans seems lawless and reckless. +Even among ourselves, many tremble for our future, because they have +little faith in humanity, and because they cannot grasp the new, grand +historic phenomenon of a people possessing all the principles, +practices, and trophies of civilization without its paralyzing +incumbrances. + +But think not, because we are less passive to destiny, we are +rebellious against Deity; because we are boldly self-reliant, we are, +therefore, irreligiously defiant. The freer a people is, the +nearer it is to God. The more subjective it is, through acquired +self-rule, the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of +absolute truth and justice. For having thrown off the capricious +secondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, under +the steadfast, primary rule of God; for having broken the force of +human, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and acknowledge +the supremacy of flawless, divine law; for having rejected the tyranny +of man's willfulness, we shall submit the more fully to the beneficent +power of principle. + +Our birth, growth, and continued weal, depending on large, deep +principles--principles deliberately elaborated and adopted by reason, +and generously embracing the whole--our life must be interpenetrated +by principle, and thence our literature must embrace the widest and +most human wants and aspirations of man. And thus, it will be our +privilege and our glory to be then the most national in our books when +we are the most universal. + + + + +IX. + +USEFULNESS OF ART. + +ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE RHODE ISLAND ART +ASSOCIATION IN PROVIDENCE, SEPTEMBER 4, 1854. + + +_Gentlemen of the Rhode Island Art Association:_-- + +We are met to inaugurate an Association whose aim and end shall be the +encouragement and culture of Art. A most high end--among the highest +that men can attempt; an end that never can be entertained except by +men of the best breed. There is no art among savages, none among +barbarians. Barbarism and art are adversary terms. When men capable of +civilization ascend into it, art manifests itself an inevitable +accompaniment, an indispensable aid to human development. I will say +further, that in a people the capacity to be cultivated involves the +capacity, nay, the necessity of art. And still further, that those +nations that have been or are preeminent on the earth, are preeminent +in art. Nay, more, that a nation cannot attain to and maintain +eminence without being proficient in art; and that to abstract from a +people its artists were not merely to pluck the flowers from its +branches; it were to cut off its-deep roots. + +Who is the artist? + +He who embodies, in whatever mode,--so that they be visible or +audible, and thus find entrance to the mind,--conceptions of the +beautiful, is an artist. The test and characteristic of the artistic +nature are superior sensibility to the beautiful. Unite to this the +faculties and the will to give form to the impressions and emotions +that are the fruit of this susceptibility, and you have the artist. +Whether he shall embody his conception in written verse, in marble, in +stone, in sound, on the canvas, that will depend on each one's +individual aptitudes. Generic, common, indispensable to all is the +superior sensibility to the beautiful. In this lies the essence of the +artist. + +The beautiful and the perfect being, if not identical, in closest +consanguinity, the artist's is an important, a great function. The +artist must receive into his mind, or engender in his mind's native +richness, conceptions of what is most high, most perfect, most +beautiful in shape or sound, in thought or feeling; and producing it +before his fellow-men, appeal to their sensibility to the beautiful, +to their deepest sympathies, to their capacity of being moved by the +grandest and the noblest there is in man and nature. Truly, a mighty +part is that of the artist. + +Artists are the educators of humanity. Tutors and professors instruct +princes and kings, but poets (and all genuine artists are poets) +educate nations. Take from Greece Homer and Phidias, and Sophocles and +Scopas, and the planner of the Parthenon, and you efface Greece from +history. Wanting them, she would not have been the great Greece that +we know; she would not have had the vigor of sap, the nervous +vitality, to have continued to live in a remote posterity, immortal in +the culture, the memories, and the gratitude of men. + +So great, so far-stretching, so undying is the power of this exalted +class of men, that it were hardly too much to say that had Homer and +Phidias never lived, we should not be here today. If this be deemed +extravagant, with confidence I affirm that but for the existence of +the greatest artist the world has ever known,--of him who may +be called the chief educator of England,--but for Shakespeare, we +assuredly should not be here to-day doing the good work we are doing. + +There are probably some of this company who, like myself, having had +the good fortune to be in London at the time of the world's fair, +stood under that magnificent, transparent roof, trod that immense area +whereon fifty thousand people moved at ease. It was a privilege,--the +memory of which will last a life-time, to have been admitted into that +gigantic temple of industry, there to behold in unimaginable profusion +and variety the product of man's labor, intellect, and genius, +gathered from the four corners of the earth into one vast, gorgeous +pile,--a spectacle peerless from its mere material splendor, and from +its moral significance absolutely sublime. + +On entering by the chief portal into the transept,--covering in the +huge oaks of Hyde Park,--the American, after wondering for a moment in +the glare of the first aspect, will, with the eagerness and perhaps +the vanity of his nation,--have hastened through the compartments of +France, Belgium, Germany, gorgeous with color, glistening with gold. +He will have hastened, hard as it was to hurry through such a +show, in order to reach at once the far eastern end of the palace +where a broad area had been allotted to the United States,--Jonathan, +as is his wont, having helped himself largely. Great was the +American's disappointment, cutting was the rebuke to his vanity; his +country made no _show_ at all. The samples of her industry were +not outwardly brilliant. Their excellence lay in their inward power, +in their wide usefulness. They were not ornaments and luxuries for the +dwellings of the few, they were inventions that diffuse comforts and +blessings among the many,--labor-saving machines and cheap newspapers. +By the thoughtful visitor the merit of these was appreciated, as it +was acknowledged in the final awards of the judges. And even in this +high department where we are so eminent, owing to distance and +misunderstandings, we were not adequately represented. But even if we +had been, the European would have said, "This has a high value and +interest; but still I find not here enough to justify the expectations +entertained by this people, and by many in Europe, of the future +greatness of the American Republic. These things, significant as they +are, are yet not an alphabet that can be so compounded as to +write the richest page of man's history. In this present display I +find not prefigured that splendid future the Americans are fond of +predicting for themselves." And the American, acknowledging the force +of the comment, would have turned away mortified, humbled. But he was +saved any such humiliation. In the midst of that area, under that +beautiful flag, day after day, week after week, month after month, +from morn till night, go when he would, he beheld there a circle ever +full, its vacancies supplied as soon as they were made, a circle +silent with admiration, hushed by emotion, gazing at a master-piece of +American art, the Greek Slave of Powers. And from that contemplation +hundreds of thousands of Europeans carried away an impression of +American capacity, a conviction that truly a great page is to be +written by the young republic in the book of history,--a sense of +American power which they could have gotten from no other source. + +Our Association, gentlemen, owes its origin to the wants of industry. +The moving power which has been strongest in bringing so many of us +together to found an institution for the encouragement of art in Rhode +Island, is the desire hereby more thoroughly to inweave the +beautiful into cotton and woolen fabrics, into calicoes and delaines; +to melt the beautiful into iron and brass, and copper, as well as into +silver and gold; so that our manufacturers and artisans may hold their +own against the competition of England and France and Germany, whereof +in the two latter countries especially, schools of design have long +existed, and high artists find their account in furnishing the +beautiful to manufacturers. + +"A low origin this for such a society, and the fruits will be without +flavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered," will say some travelled +dilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders +of the Louvre and the Vatican; but the Creator of the universe teaches +a different lesson from this observer. Not the rare lightning merely, +but the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded +canopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, has He made +beautiful. He surrounds us with beauty; He envelops us in beauty. +Beauty is spread out on the familiar grass, glows in the daily flower, +glistens in the dew, waves in the commonest leafy branch. All about +us, in infinite variety, beauty is lavished by God in sights +and sounds, and odors. Now, in using the countless and multifarious +substances that are put within our reach, to be by our ingenuity and +contrivance wrought into materials for our protection and comfort, and +pleasure, it becomes us to--it is part of his design that we +shall--follow the divine example, so that in all our handiwork, as in +his, there shall be beauty, so much as the nature of each product is +susceptible of. That it is the final purpose of Providence that our +whole life, inward and outward, shall be beautiful, and be steeped in +beauty, we have evidence, in the yearnings of the best natures for the +perfect, in the delight we take in the most resplendent objects of art +and nature, in the ennobling thrill we feel on witnessing a beautiful +deed. + +By culture we can so create and multiply beauty, that all our +surroundings shall be beautiful. + +Can you not imagine a city of the size of this, or vastly larger, the +structure of whose streets and buildings shall be made under the +control of the best architectural ideas, being of various stones and +marbles, and various in style and color, so that each and every one +shall be either light, or graceful, or simple, or ornate, or solid, +or grand, according to its purpose, and the conception of the +builder; and in the midst and on the borders of the city, squares, and +parks, planted with trees and flowers and freshened by streams and +fountains. And when you recall the agreeable, the elevating sensation +you have experienced in front of a perfect piece of architecture +(still so rare), will you not readily concede that where every edifice +should be beautiful, and you never walked or drove out but through +streets of palaces and artistic parks, the effect on the whole +population of this ever-present beauty and grandeur, would be to +refine, to expand, to elevate. When we look at the architectural +improvements made within a generation, in London, in Paris, in New +York, we may, without being Utopians, hope for this transformation. +But the full consummation of such a hope can only be brought about in +unison with improvements in all the conditions and relations of life, +and the diffusion of such improvements among the masses. + +It is to further-such diffusion that this Association has been +founded. Our purpose is to meet the growing demand for beauty in all +things; to bring into closer cooperation the artisan and the artist; +to make universally visible and active the harmony,--I almost might +say the identity,--there is between the useful and the beautiful. + +Gentlemen, ever in the heart of the practical, in the very core of the +useful, there is enclosed a seed of beauty; and upon the +fructification, growth, and expansion of that seed depends,--aye, +absolutely depends,--the development of the practical. But for the +expansion of that seed, we should have neither the plough nor the +printing-press, neither shoes nor the steam engine. To that we owe +silver forks as well as the electric telegraph. In no province of work +or human endeavor is improvement made, is improvement possible, but by +the action of that noble faculty through which we are uplifted when +standing before a masterpiece of Raphael. This ceaseless seeking for a +better, this unresting impulse towards the perfect, has brought the +English race through a thousand years of gradual upward movement, from +the narrow heptarchy, with its rude simplicity of life, up to this +wide cultivated confederacy of states with its multiform opulence of +life; and will yet carry us to a condition as much superior to our +present as that is to the times of Alfred. + +In the works of the Almighty this principle is so alive that they are +radiant with beauty; and the degree of the radiance of each is often +the measure of its usefulness. How beautiful is a field of +golden wheat--whereby our bodies live--and the more beautiful the +closer it stands and the fuller are its heads. The oak and the pine +owe their majestic beauty to that which is the index of their +usefulness, the solid magnitude of their trunks. The proportions which +give the horse his highest symmetry of form, give him his fleetness +and endurance and strength. And thus, too, with man,--his works, when +best, sparkle most with this fire of the beautiful. We profit by +history in proportion as it registers beautiful sayings and beautiful +doings. We profit one another in everyday life in proportion as our +acts, the minor as well as the greater, are vitalized by this divine +essence of beauty. To the speeches of Webster, even to the most +technical, this essence gives their completeness and their grandeur of +proportion; while it is this which illuminates with undying splendor +the creations of Allston. Thus, gentlemen, the aim of our Association +is most noble and useful, drawing its nobleness from its high +usefulness. May it so prosper, that a generation hence, thousands and +tens of thousands shall look back to this the day of its inauguration +with praise and thankfulness. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays AEsthetical, by George Calvert + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS AESTHETICAL *** + +***** This file should be named 12896.txt or 12896.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/8/9/12896/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +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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