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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/19367-h.zip b/19367-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..af5b882 --- /dev/null +++ b/19367-h.zip diff --git a/19367-h/19367-h.htm b/19367-h/19367-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bc25899 --- /dev/null +++ b/19367-h/19367-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2321 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Romance</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Romance, by Walter Raleigh</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Romance, by Walter Raleigh + + +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: Romance + Two Lectures + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: September 25, 2006 [eBook #19367] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1916 Princeton University Press edition +by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center">LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION</p> +<h1>ROMANCE</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">two lectures +by</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">SIR WALTER RALEIGH</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">m.a.</span>, +<span class="smcap">professor of english literature in +the</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">university of oxford, fellow of</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">merton college</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">lectures +delivered at princeton</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">university</span>, <span class="smcap">may +4th and 6th</span>, <span class="smcap">1915</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS<br /> +PRINCETON</p> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD<br /> +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS</p> +<p style="text-align: center">1916</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page ii--><a +name="pageii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. ii</span>Copyright, +1916, by<br /> +<span class="smcap">Princeton University Press</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">Published October, 1916</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE</h2> +<p>The period of English political history which falls between +Pitt’s acceptance of office as prime minister, in 1783, and +the passing of the Reform Bill, in 1832, is a period rich in +character and event. The same period of fifty years is one +of the most crowded epochs of our national literature. In +1783 William Blake produced his <i>Poetical Sketches</i>, and +George Crabbe published <i>The Village</i>. In 1832 Scott +died, not many months after the death of Goethe. Between +these two dates a great company of English writers produced a +literature of immense bulk, and of almost endless diversity of +character. Yet one dominant strain in that literature has +commonly been allowed to give a name to the whole period, and it +is often called the Age of the Romantic Revival.</p> +<p>We do not name other notable periods of our literature in this +fashion. The name itself <!-- page 2--><a +name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>contains a +theory, and so marks the rise of a new philosophical and +aesthetic criticism. It attempts to describe as well as to +name, and attaches significance not to kings, or great authors, +but to the kind of writing which flourished conspicuously in that +age. A less ambitious and much more secure name would have +been the Age of George III; but this name has seldom been used, +perhaps because the writers of his time who reverenced King +George III were not very many in number. The danger of +basing a name on a theory of literature is that the theory may +very easily be superseded, or may prove to be inadequate, and +then the name, having become immutable by the force of custom, is +left standing, a monument of ancient error. The terminology +of the sciences, which pretends to be exact and colourless, is +always being reduced to emptiness by the progress of +knowledge. The thing that struck the first observer is +proved to be less important than he thought it. Scientific +names, for all their air of learned universality, are merely +fossilized impressions, stereotyped portraits of a single +aspect. The decorous obscurity of the <!-- page 3--><a +name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>ancient +languages is used to conceal an immense diversity of +principle. Mammal, amphibian, coleoptera, dicotyledon, +cryptogam,—all these terms, which, if they were translated +into the language of a peasant, would be seen to record very +simple observations, yet do lend a kind of formal majesty to +ignorance.</p> +<p>So it is with the vocabulary of literary criticism: the first +use of a name, because the name was coined by someone who felt +the need of it, is often striking and instructive; the impression +is fresh and new. Then the freshness wears off it, and the +name becomes an outworn print, a label that serves only to recall +the memory of past travel. What was created for the needs +of thought becomes a thrifty device, useful only to save +thinking. The best way to restore the habit of thinking is +to do away with the names. The word Romantic loses almost +all its meaning and value when it is used to characterize whole +periods of our literature. Landor and Crabbe belong to a +Romantic era of poetry; Steele and Sterne wrote prose in an age +which set before itself the Classic ideal. Yet there is +hardly any distinctively Classical beauty in <!-- page 4--><a +name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>English verse +which cannot be exemplified from the poetry of Landor and Crabbe; +and there are not very many characteristics of Romantic prose +which find no illustration in the writings of Steele and +Sterne. Nevertheless, the very name of romance has wielded +such a power in human affairs, and has so habitually impressed +the human imagination, that time is not misspent in exhibiting +its historical bearings. These great vague words, invented +to facilitate reference to whole centuries of human +history—Middle Ages, Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, +Revival of Romance—are very often invoked as if they were +something ultimate, as if the names themselves were a sufficient +explanation of all that they include. So an imperfect +terminology is used to gain esteem for an artificial and rigid +conception of things which were as fluid as life itself. +The Renaissance, for instance, in its strict original meaning, is +the name for that renewed study of the classical literatures +which manifested itself throughout the chief countries of Europe +in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In Italy, where +the movement had its origin, no <!-- page 5--><a +name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>single +conspicuous event can be used to date it. The traditions +inherited from Greece and Rome had never lost their authority; +but with the increase of wealth and leisure in the city republics +they were renewed and strengthened. From being remnants and +memories they became live models; Latin poetry was revived, and +Italian poetry was disciplined by the ancient masters. But +the Renaissance, when it reached the shores of England, so far +from giving new life to the literature it found there, at first +degraded it. It killed the splendid prose school of Malory +and Berners, and prose did not run clear again for a +century. It bewildered and confused the minds of poets, and +blending itself with the national tradition, produced the rich +lawlessness of the English sixteenth century. It was a +strong tributary to the stream of our national literature; but +the popular usage, which assigns all that is good in the English +literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to a +mysterious event called the Renaissance, is merely absurd. +Modern scholars, if they are forced to find a beginning for +modern literature, would prefer to <!-- page 6--><a +name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 6</span>date it from +the wonderful outburst of vernacular poetry in the latter part of +the twelfth century, and, if they must name a birthplace, would +claim attention for the Court of King Henry II.</p> +<p>In some of its aspects, the Romantic revival may be exhibited +as a natural consequence of the Renaissance. Classical +scholarship at first scorned the vernacular literatures, and did +all its work of criticism and imitation in the Latin +tongue. By degrees the lesson was widened, and applied to +the modern languages. Study; imitation in Latin; extension +of classical usages and principles to modern +literature,—these were the regular stages in the progress +of the classical influence. When the poets of France and +England, to name no others, had learned as much as they were able +and willing to learn from the masters of Greece and Rome, the +work of the Renaissance was done. By the middle of the +eighteenth century there was no notable kind of Greek or Latin +literature—historical, philosophical, poetical; epic, +elegy, ode, satire—which had not worthy disciples and +rivals in the literatures of France and England. <!-- page +7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>Nothing +remained to do but to go further afield and seek for new +masters. These might easily have been found among the poets +and prophets of the East, and not a few notable writers of the +time began to forage in that direction. But the East was +too remote and strange, and its languages were too little known, +for this attempt to be carried far; the imitation of Chinese and +Persian models was practised chiefly by way of fantasy and +joke. The study of the neglected and forgotten matter of +mediaeval times, on the other hand, was undertaken by serious +scholars. The progress of the mediaeval influence +reproduced very exactly the successive phases of the Classical +Renaissance. At first there was study; and books like +Sainte Palaye’s <i>Memoirs of Ancient Chivalry</i>, and +Paul Henri Mallet’s <i>Northern Antiquities</i>, enjoyed a +European reputation. Then followed the period of forgery +and imitation, the age of Ossian and Chatterton, Horace Walpole +and Bishop Percy. Lastly, the poets enrolled themselves in +the new school, and an original literature, suggested by the old, +was created by Sir Walter <!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 8</span>Scott, Coleridge, and Keats. It +was the temper of the antiquary and the sceptic, in the age of +Gibbon and Hume, that begot the Romantic Revival; and the +rebellion of the younger age against the spirit of the eighteenth +century was the rebellion of a child against its parents.</p> +<p>It is not needful, nor indeed is it possible, to define +Romance. In the mathematical sciences definitions are +all-important, because with them the definition is the +thing. When a mathematician asks you to describe a circle, +he asks you to create one. But the man who asks you to +describe a monkey is less exacting; he will be content if you +mention some of the features that seem to you to distinguish a +monkey from other animals. Such a description must needs be +based on personal impressions and ideas; some features must be +chosen as being more significant than the rest. In the +history of literature there are only two really significant +things—men, and books. To study the ascertained facts +concerning men and books is to study biography and bibliography, +two sciences which between them supply the only <!-- page 9--><a +name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>competent and +modest part of the history of literature. To discern the +significance of men and books, to classify and explain them, is +another matter. We have not, and we never shall have, a +calculus sufficient for human life even at its weakest and +poorest. Let him who conceives high hopes from the progress +of knowledge and the pertinacity of thought tame and subdue his +pride by considering, for a moment, the game of chess. That +game is played with thirty-two pieces, of six different kinds, on +a board of sixty-four squares. Each kind of piece has one +allotted mode of action, which is further cramped by severe +limitations of space. The conditions imposed upon the game +are strict, uniform, and mechanical. Yet those who have +made of chess a life-long study are ready to confess their +complete ignorance of the fundamental merits of particular moves; +one game does not resemble another; and from the most commonplace +of developments there may spring up, on the sudden, wild romantic +possibilities and situations that are like miracles. If +these surprising flowers of fancy grow on the chess-board, how +shall we set a limit to the <!-- page 10--><a +name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>possibilities +of human life, which is chess, with variety and uncertainty many +million times increased? It is prudent, therefore, to say +little of the laws which govern the course of human history, to +avoid, except for pastime, the discussion of tendencies and +movements, and to speak chiefly of men and books. If an +author can be exhibited as the effect of certain causes (and I do +not deny that some authors can plausibly be so exhibited) he +loses his virtue as an author. He thought of himself as a +cause, a surprising intruder upon the routine of the world, an +original creator. I think that he is right, and that the +profitable study of a man is the study which regards him as an +oddity, not a quiddity.</p> +<p>A general statement of the law that governs literary history +may perhaps be borrowed from the most unreasonable of the +arts—the art of dress. One of the powerful rulers of +men, and therefore of books, is Fashion, and the fluctuations of +literary fashion make up a great part of literary history. +If the history of a single fashion in dress could ever be +written, it would illuminate the literary problem. <!-- +page 11--><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>The motives at work are the same; thoughtful wearers of +clothes, like thoughtful authors, are all trying to do something +new, within the limits assigned by practical utility and social +sympathy. Each desires to express himself and yet in that +very act to win the admiration and liking of his fellows. +The great object is to wear the weeds of humanity with a +difference. Some authors, it is true, like timid or lazy +dressers, desire only to conform to usage. But these, as M. +Brunetière remarks in one of his historical essays, are +precisely the authors who do not count. An author who +respects himself is not content if his work is mistaken for +another’s, even if that other be one of the gods of his +idolatry. He would rather write his own signature across +faulty work than sink into a copyist of merit. This eternal +temper of self-assertion, this spirit of invention, this +determination to add something or alter something, is no doubt +the principle of life. It questions accepted standards, and +makes of reaction from the reigning fashion a permanent force in +literature. The young want something to do; they will not +be loyal subjects in a kingdom <!-- page 12--><a +name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>where no land +remains to be taken up, nor will they allow the praise of the +dead to be the last word in criticism. Why should they +paraphrase old verdicts?</p> +<p>The sway of Fashion often bears hardest on a good author just +dead, when the generation that discovered him and acclaimed him +begins to pass away. Then it is not what he did that +attracts the notice of the younger sort, but what he left +undone. Tennyson is discovered to be no great +thinker. Pope, who, when his star was in the ascendant, was +“Mr. Pope, the new Poet,” has to submit to +examination by the Headmaster of Winchester, who decides that he +is not a poet, except in an inferior sense. Shakespeare is +dragged to the bar by Thomas Rymer, who demonstrates, with what +degree of critical ability is still disputed, but certainly in +clear and vigorous English, that Shakespeare has no capacity for +tragic writing. Dante is banished, by the critics of the +Renaissance, into the Gothic darkness. So the pendulum of +fashion swings to and fro, compelled, even in the shortest of its +variable oscillations, to revisit the greatest writers, who are +nearest <!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 13</span>to the centre of rest. Wit and +sense, which are raised by one age into the very essentials of +good poetry, are denied the name of poetry by the next; +sentiment, the virtue of one age, is the exploded vice of +another; and Romance comes in and goes out with secular +regularity.</p> +<p>The meaning of Romance will never come home to him who seeks +for it in modern controversies. The name Romance is itself +a memorial of the conquest of Europe by the Romans. They +imposed their language on half Europe, and profoundly influenced +the other half. The dialectical, provincial Latin, of +various kinds, spoken by the conquered peoples, became the +Romance speech; and Romance literature was the new literature +which grew up among these peoples from the ninth century +onwards,—or from an earlier time, if the fringe of Celtic +peoples, who kept their language but felt the full influence of +Christianity, be taken into the account. The chief thing to +be noted concerning Romance literature is that it was a Christian +literature, finding its background and inspiration in the ideas +to which the Christian Church gave currency. <!-- page +14--><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>While +Rome spread her conquests over Europe, at the very heart of her +empire Christianity took root, and by slow process transformed +that empire. During the Middle Ages the Bishops of Rome sat +in the seat of the Roman Emperors. This startling change +possessed Gibbon’s imagination, and is the theme of his +great work. But the whole of Gibbon’s history was +anticipated and condensed by Hobbes in a single +sentence—“If a man considers the original of this +great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the +Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, +sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the +Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen +power.”</p> +<p>Here, then, is the answer to a question which at once suggests +itself. How do we get this famous opposition between the +older Latin literature and the literature of those countries +which had inherited or accepted the Latin tradition? Why +did not the Romans hand over their literature and teach it, as +they handed over and taught their law? They did teach it in +<!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +15</span>their schools; grammar and rhetoric, two of the chief +subjects of a liberal education, were purely literary studies, +based on the work of the literary masters of Rome. Never +was there an education so completely literary as the organized +education of Rome and of her provinces. How came it that +there was any breach between the old and the new?</p> +<p>A question of this kind, involving centuries of history, does +not admit of a perfectly simple answer. It may be very +reasonably maintained that in Rome education killed +literature. A carefully organized, universal system of +education, which takes for its material the work of great poets +and orators, is certain to breed a whole army of slaves. +The teachers, employed by the machine to expound ideas not their +own, soon erect systems of pedantic dogma, under which the living +part of literature is buried. The experience of ancient +Rome is being repeated in the England of to-day. The +officials responsible for education, whatever they may uneasily +pretend, are forced by the necessities of their work to encourage +uniformity, and national education becomes a warehouse of <!-- +page 16--><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>second-hand goods, presided over by men who cheerfully +explain the mind of Burke or of Shakespeare, adjusting the place +of each, and balancing faults against merits. But Roman +education throughout the Empire had further difficulties to +encounter. To understand these it must be remembered what +Latin literature was. The Latins, when we first discern +them in the dim light of the past, were a small, strenuous, +political people, with a passion for government and war. +They first subdued Italy, and no very serious culture-problem +resulted from that conquest. The Etruscans certainly +contributed much to Latin civilization, but their separate +history is lost. No one knows what the Etruscans +thought. The Romans do not seem to have cared. They +welded Italy together, and thereafter came into contact with the +older, richer civilizations of the Mediterranean shores. +The chief of these, in its influence, was the Greek civilization, +as it had developed in that famous group of free city states, +fostered by the sun and air, and addicted to life. In +Athens, at the time of her glory, life was not a habit, but an +experiment. Even <!-- page 17--><a name="page17"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 17</span>the conservative Romans were +infected. They fell under the sway of Greek thought. +When a practical man of business becomes intimate with an artist, +he is never the same man again. The thought of that +disinterested mode of life haunts his dreams. So Rome, +though she had paid little regard to the other ancient peoples +with whom she had had traffic and war, put herself to school to +the Greeks. She accepted the Greek pantheon, renamed the +Greek gods and goddesses, and translated and adopted Greek +culture. The real Roman religion was a religion of the +homestead, simple, pious, domestic, but they now added foreign +ornaments. So also with literature; their own native +literature was scanty and practical—laws and rustic +proverbs—but they set themselves to produce a new +literature, modelled on the Greek. Virgil followed Homer; +Plautus copied Menander; and Roman literature took on that +secondary and reminiscent character which it never lost. It +was a literature of culture, not of creed. This people had +so practical a genius that they could put the world in harness; +for the decoration of the world they were willing to depend on +foreign loans.</p> +<p><!-- page 18--><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +18</span>In so far as Latin literature was founded on the Greek, +that is, in so far as it was a derivative and imitative +literature, it was not very fit for missionary purposes. +One people can give to another only what is its own. The +Greek gods were useless for export. An example may be taken +from the English rule in India. We can give to the peoples +of India our own representative institutions. We can give +them our own authors, Shakespeare, Burke, Macaulay. But we +cannot give them Homer and Virgil, who nevertheless continue to +play an appreciable part in training the English mind; and we can +hardly give them Milton, whose subtlest beauties depend on the +niceties of the Latin speech. The trial for Latin +literature came when obscurely, in the purlieus and kennels of +Rome, like a hidden fermentation, Christianity arose. The +earliest Christians were for the most part illiterate; but when +at last Christianity reached the high places of the government, +and controlled the Empire, a problem of enormous difficulty +presented itself for solution. The whole elaborate +educational system of the Romans was founded <!-- page 19--><a +name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>on the older +literature and the older creeds. All education, law, and +culture were pagan. How could the Christians be educated; +and how, unless they were educated, could they appeal to the +minds of educated men? So began a long struggle, which +continued for many centuries, and swayed this way and that. +Was Christianity to be founded barely on the Gospel precepts and +on a way of life, or was it to seek to subdue the world by +yielding to it? This, the religious problem, is the chief +educational problem in recorded history. There were the +usual parties; and the fiercest, on both sides, counselled no +surrender. Tertullian, careful for the purity of the new +religion, held it an unlawful thing for Christians to become +teachers in the Roman schools. Later, in the reign of +Julian the Apostate, an edict forbade Christians to teach in the +schools, but this time for another reason, lest they should draw +away the youth from the older faith. In the end the result +was a practical compromise, arranged by certain ecclesiastical +politicians, themselves lovers of letters, between the old world +and the new. It was agreed, in effect, that the schools +<!-- page 20--><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>should teach humane letters and mythology, leaving it to +the Church to teach divine doctrine and the conduct of +life. All later history bears the marks of this +compromise. Here was the beginning of that distinction and +apportionment between the secular and the sacred which is so much +more conspicuous in Christian communities than ever it has been +among the followers of other religions. Here also was the +beginning of that strange mixture, familiar to all students of +literature, whereby the Bible and Virgil are quoted as equal +authorities, Plato is set over against St. Paul, the Sibyl +confirms the words of David, and, when a youth of promise, +destined for the Church, is drowned, St. Peter and a river-god +are the chief mourners at his poetic obsequies. This +mixture is not a fantasy of the Renaissance; it has been part and +parcel, from the earliest times, of the tradition of the +Christian church.</p> +<p>History is larger than morality; and a wise man will not +attempt to pass judgment on those who found themselves in so +unparalleled a position. A new religion, claiming an +authority not of this world, prevailed in this world, <!-- page +21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>and +was confronted with all the resources of civilization, +inextricably entangled with the ancient pagan faiths. What +was to be done? The Gospel precepts seemed to admit of no +transaction. “They that say such things declare +plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had +been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they +might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they +desire a better country, that is an heavenly.” The +material prosperity and social order which Law and Politics take +such pains to preserve and increase are no part of their +care. They are strangers and pilgrims in the country where +they pitch their tent for a night. How dare they spend time +on cherishing the painted veil called Life, when their desires +are fixed on what it conceals? When Tacitus called the +Christian religion “a deadly superstition,” he spoke +as a true Roman, a member of the race of Empire-builders. +His subtle political instinct scented danger from those who +looked with coldness on the business and desire of this +world. The Christian faith, which presents no social +difficulties while it is professed <!-- page 22--><a +name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>here and +there by a lonely saint or seer, is another thing when it becomes +the formal creed of a nation. The Christians themselves +knew that to cut themselves off from the country of their birth +would have been a fatal choice, so far as this world is +concerned. Their ultimate decision was to accept Roman +civilization and Roman culture, and to add Christianity to +it.</p> +<p>Then followed an age-long attempt to Christianize Latin +literature, to supply believers with a new poetry, written in +polished and accomplished verse, and inspired by Christian +doctrine. Of those who attempted this task, Prudentius is +perhaps the greatest name. The attempt could never have +been very successful; those who write in Latin verse must submit +to be judged, not by the truth of their teaching, but by the +formal beauties of their prosody, and the wealth of their +allusive learning. Even Milton, zealot though he be, is +esteemed for his manner rather than for his matter. But the +experiment was cut short by the barbarian invasions. When +the Empire was invaded, St. Jerome and St. Augustine, Prudentius +and <!-- page 23--><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +23</span>Symmachus, Claudian and Paulinus of Nola, were all +alive. These men, in varying degrees, had compounded and +blended the two elements, the pagan and the Christian. The +two have been compounded ever since. The famous sevententh +century controversy concerning the fitness of sacred subjects for +poetic treatment is but a repetition and an echo of that older +and more vital difference. The two strains could never be +perfectly reconciled, so that a certain impurity and confusion +was bequeathed to modern European literature, not least to +English literature. Ours is a great and various literature, +but its rarest virtue is simplicity. Our best ballads and +lyrics are filled with the matter of faith, but as often as we +try the larger kinds of poetry, we inevitably pass over into +reminiscence, learning, criticism,—in a word, culture.</p> +<p>The barbarians seized, or were granted, land; and settled down +under their chiefs. They accepted Christianity, and made it +into a warlike religion. They learned and +“corrupted” the Latin language. In their +dialects they had access neither to the literature of ancient +Rome, <!-- page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 24</span>nor to the imitative scholarly +Christian literature, poetry and homily, which competed with +it. Latin continued to be the language of religion and +law. It was full of terms and allusions which meant nothing +to them. They knew something of government,—not of +the old republic, but of their own men and estates. They +believed wholly and simply in Christianity, especially the +miraculous part of it. To them (as to all whom it has most +profoundly influenced) it was not a philosophy, but a history of +marvellous events. When, by the operation of society, their +dialect had formed itself, a new literature, unlike anything that +had flourished in ancient Rome, grew up among them. This +was Romance, the great literary form of the Middle Ages. It +was a sincere literature, expressive of their pride in arms and +their simple religious faith. The early songs and ballads, +chanted in the Romance speech, have all perished. From a +later time there have come down to us the <i>Chansons de +Geste</i>, narrative poems composed by the professional caste of +poets to celebrate the deeds and adventures of the knights who +fought the battles of Charlemagne against the Saracen +invader.</p> +<p><!-- page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>The note of this Romance literature is that it was +actual, modern, realistic, at a time when classical literature +had become a remote convention of bookish culture. It was +sung in the banqueting-hall, while Latin poetry was read in the +cells of monks. It flourished enormously, and extended +itself to all the matter of history and legend, to King Arthur, +Theseus, Alexander, ancient heroes and warriors who were brought +alive again in the likeness of knights and emperors. Its +triumph was so complete, that its decadence followed +swiftly. Like the creatures that live in the blood of man, +literary forms and species commonly die of their own +excess. Romances were multiplied, and imitated; +professional poets, not content with marvels that had now become +familiar, sought for a new sensation in extravagant language and +incident. The tales became more and more sophisticated, +elaborate, grotesque, and unreal, until, in the fourteenth +century, a stout townsman, who ticketed bales in a custom-house, +and was the best English poet of his time, found them +ridiculous. In <i>Sir Thopas</i> Chaucer parodies the +popular literature of his <!-- page 26--><a +name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>day. +Sir Thopas is a great reader of romances; he models himself on +the heroes whose deeds possess his imagination, and scours the +English countryside, seeking in vain for the fulfilment of his +dreams of prowess.</p> +<p>So Romance declined; and by the end of the seventeenth century +the fashion is completely reversed; the pendulum has swung back; +now it is the literature inspired by the old classical models +that is real, and handles actual human interests, while Romantic +literature has become remote, fictitious, artificial. This +does not mean that the men of the later seventeenth century +believed in the gods and Achilles, but not in the saints and +Arthur. It means that classical literature was found best +to imitate for its form. The greater classical writers had +described the life of man, as they saw it, in direct and simple +language, carefully ordered by art. After a long +apprenticeship of translation and imitation, modern writers +adopted the old forms, and filled them with modern matter. +The old mythology, when it was kept, was used allegorically and +allusively. Common-sense, pointedly expressed, with some +<!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +27</span>traditional ornament and fable, became the matter of +poetry.</p> +<p>A rough summary of this kind is enough to show how large a +question is involved in the history of Romance. All +literary history is a long record of the struggle between those +two rival teachers of man—books, and the experience of +life. Good books describe the world, and teach whole +generations to interpret the world. Because they throw +light on the life of man, they enjoy a vast esteem, and are set +up in a position of authority. Then they generate other +books; and literature, receding further and further from the +source of truth, becomes bookish and conventional, until those +who have been taught to see nature through the spectacles of +books grow uneasy, and throw away the distorting glasses, to look +at nature afresh with the naked eye. They also write books, +it may be, and attract a crowd of imitators, who produce a +literature no less servile than the literature it supplants.</p> +<p>This movement of the sincere and independent human mind is +found in the great writers of all periods, and is called the +Return to Nature. <!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 28</span>It is seen in Pope no less than in +Wordsworth; in <i>The Rape of the Lock</i> no less than in +<i>Peter Bell</i>. Indeed the whole history of the +mock-heroic, and the work of Tassoni, Boileau, and Pope, the +three chief masters in that kind, was a reassertion of sincerity +and nature against the stilted conventions of the late literary +epic. The <i>Iliad</i> is the story of a quarrel. +What do men really quarrel about? Is there any more +distinctive mark of human quarrels than the eternal triviality of +the immediate cause? The insulting removal of a memorial +emblem from an Italian city; the shifting of a reading-desk from +one position to another in a French church; the playful theft of +a lock of hair by an amorous young English nobleman—these +were enough, in point of fact, to set whole communities by the +ears, and these are the events celebrated in <i>The Rape of the +Bucket</i>, <i>The Rape of the Lectern</i>, <i>The Rape of the +Lock</i>. How foolish it is to suppose that nature and +truth are to be found in one school of poetry to the exclusion of +another! The eternal virtues of literature are sincerity, +clarity, breadth, force, and subtlety. They are to <!-- +page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +29</span>be found, in diverse combinations, now here and now +there. While the late Latin Christian poets were bound over +to Latin models—to elegant reminiscences of a faded +mythology and the tricks of a professional rhetoric—there +arose a new school, intent on making literature real and +modern. These were the Romance poets. If they +pictured Theseus as a duke, and Jason as a wandering knight, it +was because they thought of them as live men, and took means to +make them live for the reader or listener. The realism of +the early literature of the Middle Ages is perhaps best seen in +old Irish. The monk bewails the lawlessness of his +wandering thoughts, which run after dreams of beauty and pleasure +during the hour of divine service. The hermit in the wood +describes, with loving minuteness, the contents of his +larder. Never was there a fresher or more spontaneous +poetry than the poetry of this early Christian people. But +it is not in the direct line of descent, for it was written in +the Celtic speech of a people who did not achieve the government +of Europe. The French romances inherited the throne, and +passed through all the stages of <!-- page 30--><a +name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>elaboration +and decadence. They too, in their turn, became a +professional rhetoric, false and tedious. When they ceased +to be a true picture of life, they continued in esteem as a +school of manners and deportment for the fantastic gallantry of a +court. Yet through them all their Christian origin +shines. Their very themes bear witness to the teaching of +Christian asceticism and Christian idealism. The quest of a +lady never seen; the temptations that present themselves to a +wandering knight under the disguise of beauty and +ease;—these, and many other familiar romantic plots borrow +their inspiration from the same source. Not a few of the +old fairy stories, preserved in folk-lore, are full of religious +meaning—they are the Christian literature of the Dark +Ages. Nor is it hard to discern the Christian origins of +later Romantic poetry. Pope’s morality has little +enough of the religious character:</p> +<blockquote><p>Know then this truth (enough for Man to know),<br +/> +Virtue alone is Happiness below.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Coleridge, when he moralizes, speaks the language of +Christianity:</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 31</span>He prayeth best, who loveth best<br +/> + All things both great and small;<br /> +For the dear God who loveth us<br /> + He made and loveth all.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The like contrast holds between Dryden and Shelley. It +is perhaps hardly fair to take an example from Dryden’s +poems on religion; they are rational arguments on difficult +topics, after this fashion:</p> +<blockquote><p>In doubtful questions ’tis the safest way<br +/> +To learn what unsuspected ancients say;<br /> +For ’tis not likely we should higher soar<br /> +In search of heaven than all the church before.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>When Dryden writes in his most fervent and magnificent style, +he writes like this:</p> +<blockquote><p>I will not rake the Dunghill of thy Crimes,<br /> +For who would read thy Life that reads thy rhymes?<br /> +But of King <i>David’s</i> Foes be this the Doom,<br /> +May all be like the Young-man <i>Absalom</i>;<br /> +And for my Foes may this their Blessing be,<br /> +To talk like <i>Doeg</i> and to write like Thee.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Nor is it fair to bring Shelley’s lame satires into +comparison with these splendors. When Shelley is inspired +by his demon, this is how he writes:</p> +<blockquote><p><!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 32</span>To suffer woes which Hope thinks +infinite;<br /> +To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;<br /> + To defy Power which seems omnipotent;<br /> +To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates<br /> +From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;<br /> + Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;<br /> +This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be<br /> +Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;<br /> +This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Some of the great poets of the Romantic Revival took mediaeval +literature for their model, but they did more than that. +They returned to the cult of wild nature; they reintroduced the +supernatural, which is a part of the nature of man; they +described seas, and deserts, and mountains, and the emotions of +the soul in loneliness. But so soon as it passed out of the +hands of the greater poets, this revived Romance became as +bookish as decadent Classicism, and ran into every kind of +sentimental extravagance. Indeed revived Romance also +became a school of manners, and by making a fashion and a code of +rare emotions, debased the descriptive parts of the +language. A description by any professional reporter of any +Royal wedding is further from the truth to-day <!-- page 33--><a +name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>than it was +in the eighteenth century. The average writer is looser and +more unprincipled.</p> +<p>The word Romance supplies no very valuable instrument of +criticism even in regard to the great writers of the early +nineteenth century. Wordsworth, like Defoe, drew straight +from the life. Those who will may call him a +Romantic. He told of adventures—the adventures of the +mind. He did not write of Bacchus, Venus, and Apollo; +neither did he concern himself with Merlin, Tristram, and the +Lady of the Lake. He shunned what is derived from other +books. His theme is man, nature, and human life. +Scott, in rich and careless fashion, dealt in every kind of +material that came his way. He described his own country +and his own people with loving care, and he loved also the +melodrama of historical fiction and supernatural legend. +“His romance and antiquarianism,” says Ruskin, +“his knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knows +them to be false.” Certainly, <i>The Heart of +Midlothian</i> and <i>The Antiquary</i> are better than +<i>Ivanhoe</i>. Scott’s love for the knighthood and +monkery was real, but it was playful. His heart was with +Fielding.</p> +<p><!-- page 34--><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +34</span>There is nothing inconsistent in the best of the +traditions of the two parties. The Classical school taught +simplicity, directness, and modesty of speech. They are +right: it is the way to tell a ghost story. The Romantic +school taught a wider imaginative outlook and a more curious +analysis of the human mind. They also are right: it is the +way to investigate a case in the police courts. Both were +cumbered, at times, with the dead things that they found in the +books they loved. All literature, except the strongest and +purest, is cumbered with useless matter—the conventional +epithet, the grandiose phrase, the outworn classical quotation, +the self-conscious apology, the time-honored joke. But +there are only two schools of literature—the good, and the +bad. As for national legend, its growth is the same in all +ages. The Greeks told tales of Achilles, the Romans of +Aeneas, the French of Charlemagne, the British of Arthur. +It is a part of the same process, and an expression of the same +humanity.</p> +<p>I have tried to show that the Renaissance bears the same +relation to classical literature as <!-- page 35--><a +name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>the Revival +of Romance bears to mediaeval literature, and that the whole +history of the literature of Europe is an oscillation between +Christian and Pagan ideals during that long and wavering process +whereby Christianity was partially established as the creed and +way of life of a group of diverse nations. The historical +meaning of the word Romance is exact and easy to define. +But in common usage the word means something much vaguer than +this. It is a note, an atmosphere, a kind of feeling that +is awakened not only by literature but by the behavior of men and +the disposition of material objects. John Evelyn, the +diarist, enjoys the reputation of having been the first to speak +of a “romantic site,”—a phrase which leads the +way to immeasurable possibilities in the application of the +word. Accuracy in the definition of this larger meaning is +unattainable; and would certainly be false, for the word has +taken its meaning from centuries of usage by inaccurate +thinkers. A whole cluster of feelings, impressions, and +desires, dimly recognized as cognate, has grown around the word, +which has now been a centre of critical discussion <!-- page +36--><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>and +controversy for the better part of a century. Heine, in his +dissertation on the Romantic School, takes the Christianity of +the Middle Ages as his starting-point, and relates everything to +that. Perhaps he makes too much of allegory and symbolism, +which have always been dear to the church, but are not +conspicuous in early Romance. Yet no one can go far astray +who keeps in touch, as Heine does, with the facts of +history. Goethe, impatient of the wistful intensities of +youth, said that the Classical is health, and the Romantic +disease. Much has been made, by many critics, of the statue +and the picture, as types of ancient and modern art, the one +complete in itself, the other suggesting more than it +portrays. Mr. Walter Pater, borrowing a hint from a +sentence of Bacon, finds the essence of Romance in the addition +of strangeness to beauty, of curiosity to desire. It would +be easy to multiply these epigrammatic statements, which are all +not obscurely related to the fundamental changes wrought on the +world by Christian ideas. No single formula can hope to +describe and distinguish two eras, or define two tempers <!-- +page 37--><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +37</span>of mind. If I had to choose a single +characteristic of Romance as the most noteworthy, I think I +should choose Distance, and should call Romance the magic of +Distance. What is the most romantic line in Virgil? +Surely it is the line which describes the ghosts, staying for +waftage on the banks of the river, and stretching out their hands +in passionate desire to the further shore:</p> +<blockquote><p>Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Scott expounds the harmonizing power of distance in his +<i>Journal</i>, where he describes the funeral of his friend +Laidlaw’s infant:</p> +<blockquote><p>I saw the poor child’s funeral from a +distance. Ah, that Distance! What a magician for +conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing all asperities, +reconciling all incongruities, veiling all absurdness, softening +every coarseness, doubling every effect by the influence of the +imagination. A Scottish wedding should be seen at a +distance; the gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the +elderly group of the spectators,—the glass held high, and +the distant cheers as it is swallowed, should be only a sketch, +not a finished Dutch picture, when it becomes brutal and +boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard from a +distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the whine and the +scream, should be all blended in that <!-- page 38--><a +name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>deep and +distant sound, which rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may +have some title to be called the praise of our Maker. Even +so the distant funeral: the few mourners on horseback with their +plaids wrapped around them—the father heading the +procession as they enter the river, and pointing out the ford by +which his darling is to be carried on the last long +road—not one of the subordinate figures in discord with the +general tone of the incident—seeming just accessories, and +no more—this <i>is</i> affecting.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The same idea is the subject of T. E. Brown’s poem, +<i>The Schooner</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p> Just mark that schooner westward +far at sea—<br /> +’Tis but an hour ago<br /> +When she was lying hoggish at the quay,<br /> + And men ran to and fro,<br /> +And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed and swore,<br /> +And ever and anon, with crapulous glee,<br /> +Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore.<br /> +* * * * *<br /> +And now, behold! a shadow of repose<br /> + Upon a line of gray,<br /> +She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose—<br /> + She sleeps, and dreams away,<br /> +Soft blended in a unity of rest<br /> +All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes,<br /> +’Neath the broad benediction of the West.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 39--><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +39</span>Shelley finds the suggestion of distance in beautiful +music:</p> +<blockquote><p> Though the sound overpowers,<br +/> +Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing<br /> + A tone<br /> + Of some world far from ours,<br /> +Where music and moonlight and feeling<br /> + Are one.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Wordsworth hears it in the song of the Highland Girl:</p> +<blockquote><p>Will no one tell me what she sings?—<br /> +Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow<br /> +For old, unhappy, far-off things,<br /> + And battles long ago.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These quotations are enough to show what a width of view is +given to modern Romantic poetry. Man is, in one sense, more +truly seen in a wide setting of the mountains and the sea than +close at hand in the street. But the romantic effect of +distance may delude and conceal as well as glorify and +liberate. The weakness of the modern Romantic poet is that +he must keep himself aloof from life, that he may see it. +He rejects the authority, and many of the pleasures, along with +the duties, of society. He looks out from his window on the +<!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>men fighting in the plain, and sees them transfigured +under the rays of the setting sun. He enjoys the battle, +but not as the fighters enjoy it. He nurses himself in all +the luxury of philosophic sensation. He does not help to +bury the child, or to navigate the schooner, or to discover the +Fortunate Islands. The business of every poet, it may be +said, is vision, not action. But the epic poet holds his +reader fast by strong moral bonds of sympathy with the actors in +the poem. “I should have liked to do that” is +what the reader says to himself. He is asked to think and +feel as a man, not as a god.</p> +<p>The weakness of revived Romance found the most searching of +its critics in Tennyson, who was fascinated, when he was shaping +his own poetic career, by the picture and the past, yet could not +feel satisfied with the purely aesthetic attitude of art to +life. In poem after poem he returns to the question, Is +poetry an escape from life? Must it lull the soul in a +selfish security? The struggle that went on in his mind has +left its mark on <i>The Lady of Shalott</i>, <i>The Palace of +Art</i>, <i>The Voyage</i>, <i>The Vision of </i><!-- page +41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +41</span><i>Sin</i>, <i>The Lotos-Eaters</i>, and others of his +poems. The Lady of Shalott lives secluded in her bower, +where she weaves a magic web with gay colors. She has heard +that a curse will fall on her if she looks out on the world and +down to the city of Camelot. She sees the outer world only +in a mirror, and</p> +<blockquote><p>In her web she still delights<br /> +To weave the mirror’s magic sights</p> +</blockquote> +<p>—villages, market-girls, knights riding two and two, +funerals, or pairs of lovers wandering by. At last she +grows half-sick of seeing the world only in shadows and +reflections. Then a sudden vivid experience breaks up this +life of dream. Sir Lancelot rides past, in shining armor, +singing as he rides. She leaves her magic web and mirror, +and looks upon the real world.</p> +<blockquote><p>Out flew the web and floated wide;<br /> +The mirror crack’d from side to side;<br /> +“The curse is come upon me,” cried<br /> +The Lady of Shalott.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>She goes into the world, and there she meets her death. +The poem is not an allegory, but there is no mistaking the +thought that generated <!-- page 42--><a name="page42"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 42</span>it. The mirror and the web are +the emblems of Romantic art. The feelings which stir the +heart to action, which spring to meet the occasion or the object, +are contrasted, in the poem, with the more pensive feelings which +are excited by the sight of the object in a mirror, and the +suggestions of color and design which are to be transferred to +the embroidery. The mirror is a true and subtle +symbol. When Shakespeare treated the same problem, he made +King Richard II, the most romantically minded of all his kings, +call for a mirror. The thing that it is easiest for a man +to see in a mirror is himself; egotism in its many forms, +self-pity, self-cultivation, self-esteem, dogs Romanticism like +its shadow. The desire to be the spectator of your own +life, to see yourself in all kinds of heroic and pathetic +attitudes, is the motive-power of Romantic poetry in many of its +later developments. Yet life must be arrested and falsified +before the desire can be fulfilled. No one has ever seen +himself in a mirror as he is seen by others. He cannot +catch himself looking away, self-forgetful, intent on something +outward; yet only when he <!-- page 43--><a +name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>is in these +attitudes does his true character show itself in his face. +Nor, if he could so see himself, would he be a witness of the +truth. The sensation of drowning, or of leading an assault +in war, is very unlike the sentiment which is aroused in the +spectator of either of these adventures. Romanticism, in +its decline, confuses the sentiment with the sensation, and +covets the enjoyment of life on the easy terms of a +by-stander.</p> +<p>These faults and failings of late Romance are far enough +removed from the simple heroism of the death of Roland in the +pass of Roncesvalles. Later Romance is known everywhere by +its derivative, secondary, consciously literary character. +Yet it draws sometimes from the original source of inspiration, +and attains, by devious ways, to poetic glories not inferior to +the old.</p> +<h2><!-- page 44--><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +44</span>IMITATION AND FORGERY</h2> +<p>Romance is a perennial form of modern literature, and has +passed through many phases. No period has been without it, +though the esteem in which it is held has varied a good deal from +age to age. English literature is strong in romance; there +is something in the English temper which makes scepticism +ungrateful to it, and disposes it to treat even dreams +seriously. Chaucer, who laughed at the romantic writers of +his day, yet gave a new lease of life to Romance in <i>Troilus +and Cressida</i> and <i>The Knightes Tale</i>. Many of the +poets of the seventeenth century chose romantic themes for their +most serious work; if Davenant and Chamberlayne and others had +been as successful as they were ambitious, they would have +anticipated the Revival of Romance. Even in the age of +Pope, the old romance subjects were still popular, though <!-- +page 45--><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +45</span>they were celebrated in books which have long been +forgotten. Everyone who has studied the Troy legend of the +Middle Ages knows how great a share in the popularization of the +legend belongs to the Sicilian lawyer, Guido delle Colonne, who +summarized, in the dull style of a Latin chronicle, and without +acknowledgment, the brilliant <i>Roman de Troie</i> which the +French poet, Benoît de Sainte-More had written for Queen +Eleanor of England. Guide’s matter-of-fact +compilation had an enormous vogue; Chaucer, Lydgate, and +Shakespeare treated it as an authority; and Caxton translated it +into English prose. Through all the changes of fashion +Caxton’s version continued in esteem; it was repeatedly +revised and reissued; and, in the very age of Pope, found what +was doubtless a large public under the title <i>The Destruction +of Troy</i>, <i>In Three Books . . . With many Admirable Acts of +Chivalry and Martial Prowess</i>, <i>effected by Valiant +Knights</i>, <i>in the Defence and Love of distressed +Ladies. The Thirteenth Edition</i>, <i>Corrected and much +Amended</i>. London, <i>Printed for Eben. Tracey</i>, <i>at +the Three Bibles </i><!-- page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 46</span><i>on London-Bridge</i>. +<i>1708</i>. In the underworld of literature Romance never +died out. The Revival of Romance took its special character +from a gradual and powerful reaction against Dryden and Pope and +all those masters of Classical method who, during half a century, +had legislated for English poetry. It began very early in +the eighteenth century, long before the death of Pope. No +sooner did a dynasty of moralists and satirists claim possession +of the high places, and speak in the name of English literature, +than all the other interests and kinds, which survived among the +people, began to range themselves in opposition, and to assert +their right to be heard. The supremacy of Dryden and Pope +was the most despotic rule that English poetry has ever known, +and the revolt was strong in proportion. Satire and +morality very easily becomes tedious, especially when they are in +close alliance. Despotism may be tempered by epigrams, and +so become tolerable, but it is important that the epigrams should +not be made by the despot. Outside the charmed circle of +his friendships, Pope was ready enough to use his wit against any +pretender.</p> +<p><!-- page 47--><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +47</span>The change began gradually, and in very innocent +fashion. Poetry had been taught to be scholarly, +self-conscious, experimental; and it showed its skill in +half-playful imitations of the older English masters. Pope +himself imitated Chaucer and Spenser in burlesque fashion. +John Philips, in <i>The Splendid Shilling</i>, used +Milton’s heightened style to describe the distresses of an +impecunious poet. William Shenstone in <i>The +School-mistress</i>, parodied Spenser, yet the parody is in no +way hostile, and betrays an almost sentimental admiration. +Spenser, like Milton, never lost credit as a master, though his +fame was obscured a little during the reign of Dryden. His +style, it must be remembered, was archaic in his own time; it +could not grow old, for it had never been young. Addison, +in <i>An Account of the Greatest English Poets</i>, says that +Spenser’s verse</p> +<blockquote><p>Can charm an understanding age no more;<br /> +The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,<br /> +While the dull moral lies too plain below.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But the <i>Account</i> is a merely juvenile work; its dogma is +not the sword of judgment, but <!-- page 48--><a +name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>the shield of +ignorance. “The character he gives of Spenser,” +said Pope, “is false; and I have heard him say that he +never read Spenser till fifteen years after he wrote +it.” As for Pope himself, among the English poets +Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were his childhood’s favorites, +in that order; and the year before his death he said to +Spence—“I don’t know how it is; there is +something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one’s +old age as it did in one’s youth. I read the Faerie +Queene, when I was about twelve, with infinite delight; and I +think it gave me as much when I read it over, about a year or two +ago.”</p> +<p>The lyrical Milton and the romantic Spenser found disciples +among poets in the early half of the eighteenth century. +Two of these disciples may be mentioned, both born about the year +1700, only twelve years later than Pope. John Dyer, the son +of a solicitor in Wales, was bred to the law, but gave it up to +study painting under Jonathan Richardson. His earlier and +better poems were written while he wandered about South Wales in +pursuit of his art. <i>Grongar Hill</i>, the most <!-- page +49--><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +49</span>notable of them, was published in 1726. Love of +the country is what inspires his verses, which have a very +winning simplicity, only touched here and there by the +conventions deemed proper for poetry:</p> +<blockquote><p>Grass and flowers Quiet treads,<br /> +On the meads and mountain-heads,<br /> +Along with Pleasure, close ally’d,<br /> +Ever by each other’s side;<br /> +And often, by the murmuring rill,<br /> +Hears the thrush, while all is still,<br /> +Within the groves of Grongar Hill.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The truth of his observation endeared him to Wordsworth; and +his moral, when he finds a moral, is without violence:</p> +<blockquote><p>How close and small the hedges lie!<br /> +What streaks of meadows cross the eye!<br /> +A step methinks may pass the stream,<br /> +So little distant dangers seem;<br /> +So we mistake the Future’s face,<br /> +Ey’d thro’ Hope’s deluding glass;<br /> +As yon summits soft and fair,<br /> +Clad in colours of the air,<br /> +Which, to those who journey near,<br /> +Barren, and brown, and rough appear,<br /> +Still we tread tir’d the same coarse way,<br /> +The present’s still a cloudy day.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +50</span>It takes a good poet to strike a clear note, with no +indecision, in the opening lines of his poem, as Dyer does in +<i>The Country Walk</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>I am resolv’d, this charming day,<br /> +In the open fields to stray;<br /> +And have no roof above my head<br /> +But that whereon the Gods do tread.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His landscapes are delicately etched, and are loved for their +own sake:</p> +<blockquote><p>And there behold a bloomy mead,<br /> +A silver stream, a willow shade,<br /> +Beneath the shade a fisher stand,<br /> +Who, with the angle in his hand,<br /> +Swings the nibbling fry to land.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It would be absurd to speak solemnly of Dyer’s debt to +Milton; he is an original poet; but the writer of the lines +quoted above can never have been blind to the beauties of +<i>L’Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i>. His two +arts brought him little material prosperity; in 1740 he took +orders in the Church of England, and in his later years did harm +to his fame by a long industrial poem called <i>The Fleece</i>, +which has on it none of the dew that glistens on his youthful +verses.</p> +<p><!-- page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>James Thomson, who won a great reputation in his own +age, was the son of a parish minister in Scotland. He was +educated in Edinburgh, and came to London to seek his +fortune. All Thomson’s work shows the new tendencies +in poetry struggling with the accepted fashions. His +language in <i>The Seasons</i> is habitually rhetorical and +stilted, yet there is hardly a page without its vignettes of +truth and beauty. When he forgets what he has learned in +the Rhetoric class, and falls back on his own memories and +likings, the poet in him reappears. In <i>The Castle of +Indolence</i>, published just before his death in 1748, he +imitates Spenser. One stanza of this poem is more famous +than all the rest; it is pure and high romance:</p> +<blockquote><p> As when a shepherd of the +Hebrid-Isles,<br /> + Placed far amid the melancholy main,<br /> + (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles,<br /> + Or that aërial beings sometimes deign<br /> + To stand embodied to our senses plain),<br /> + Sees on the naked hill, or valley low,<br /> + The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain,<br /> + A vast assembly moving to and fro;<br /> +Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +52</span>Many who are familiar with this simile have never been +at the pains to remember, or enquire, what it illustrates. +Indeed its appearance in the poem is almost startling, as if it +were there for no purpose but to prophesy of the coming glories +of English poetry. The visitors to the Castle of Indolence +are met at the gate by the porter, who supplies them with +dressing-gowns and slippers, wherein to take their ease. +They then stroll off to various parts of the spacious grounds, +and their disappearance is the occasion for this wonderful +verse. Thomson cared no more than his readers for the +application of the figure; what possessed him was his memory of +the magic twilight on the west coast of Scotland.</p> +<p>Pope and Prior were metropolitan poets; it is worth noting +that Dyer belonged to Wales, and Thomson to Scotland. It is +even more significant that Dyer was by profession a painter, and +that Thomson’s poems were influenced by memories of the +fashionable school of landscape painting. The development +of Romantic poetry in the eighteenth century is inseparably +associated with pictorial art, and especially with <!-- page +53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>the +rise of landscape painting. Two great masters of the +seventeenth century, Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, are more +important than all the rest. We have here to do not with +the absolute merits of painting, nor with its technical beauties +and subtleties, but with its effect on the popular imagination, +which in this matter does not much differ from the poetic +imagination. The landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Claude +were made familiar to an enormous public by the process of +engraving, and poetry followed where painting led. There +are exquisite landscapes in the backgrounds of the great Italian +masters; Leonardo, Titian, and others; but now the background +became the picture, and the groups of figures were reduced to +serve as incidents in a wider scheme. Exactly the same +change, the same shift of the centre of interest, may be seen in +Thomson’s poetry compared with Spenser’s. No +doubt it would be difficult to balance the creditor and debtor +account as between poetry and painting; the earlier pictorial +landscapes borrowed some hints from the older romances; but in +England, at least, landscapes of wild rocks, <!-- page 54--><a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>and calm +lakes, and feudal castles lit up by the glow of the setting sun +were familiar before the reaction in poetry set in. +Romance, in its modern development, is largely a question of +background. A romantic love-affair might be defined as a +love-affair in other than domestic surroundings. Who can +use the word “romantic” with more authority than +Coleridge? In <i>Kubla Khan</i>, a poem which some would +choose as the high-water mark of English romantic poetry, he gets +his effect from the description of a landscape combining the +extremes of beauty and terror:</p> +<blockquote><p>But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted<br +/> +Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!<br /> +A savage place! as holy and enchanted<br /> +As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted<br /> +By woman wailing for her demon lover!<br /> +And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,<br /> +* * * * *<br /> +It flung up momently the sacred river.<br /> +Five miles meandering with a mazy motion<br /> +Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,<br /> +Then reached the caverns measureless to man,<br /> +And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;<br /> +And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far<br /> +Ancestral voices prophesying war!</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 55--><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +55</span>Romance demands scenery; and it should never be +forgotten that the age of Pope, the age of symmetry and +correctness in poetry, was an age when the taste for wild scenery +in painting and in gardening was at its height. If the +house was set in order, the garden broke into a wilderness. +Addison in the <i>Spectator</i> (No. 414) praises the new art of +landscape gardening:</p> +<blockquote><p>There is generally in nature something more grand +and august, than what we meet with in the curiosities of +art. When, therefore, we see this imitated in any measure, +it gives us a nobler and more exalted kind of pleasure, than what +we receive from the nicer and more accurate productions of +art. On this account our <i>English</i> gardens are not so +entertaining to the fancy as those in <i>France</i> and +<i>Italy</i>, where we see a larger extent of ground covered over +with an agreeable mixture of garden and forest, which represent +everywhere an artificial wildness, much more charming than that +neatness and elegancy which we meet with in those of our own +country.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Addison would have hesitated to apply this doctrine to poetry; +indeed the orthodoxy of that age favored the highest possible +contrast between the orderly works of man, and the garden, <!-- +page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>which it chose to treat as the outpost of rebellious +nature. Pope was a gardener as well as a poet, and his +gardening was extravagantly romantic. He describes his +ideal garden in the <i>Epistle to the Earl of Burlington</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>Let not each beauty everywhere be spy’d,<br +/> +Where half the skill is decently to hide.<br /> +He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,<br /> +Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.<br /> +Consult the genius of the place in all;<br /> +That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;<br /> +Or helps th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale,<br +/> +Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;<br /> +Calls in the country, catches opening glades,<br /> +Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades;<br /> +Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines;<br /> +Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Pope carried out these ideas as well as he could in his garden +at Twickenham, where he attempted to compress every variety of +scenic effect within the space of five acres, so that it became a +kind of melodramatic peep-show. The professional +landscape-gardeners worked on a larger scale; the two chief of +them perhaps were Bridgeman, who invented the haha for the +purpose of concealing the bounds; and William <!-- page 57--><a +name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>Kent, +Pope’s associate and contemporary, who disarranged old +gardens, and designed illustrations for Spenser’s <i>Faerie +Queene</i>. Kent was an architect and bad painter, much +favored by George I. Lord Chesterfield compares him to +Apelles, who alone was permitted to paint the portrait of +Alexander:</p> +<blockquote><p>Equal your varied wonders! save<br /> + This difference we see,<br /> +One would no other painter have—<br /> + No other would have thee.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>From 1716 onward he was much employed by the Earl of +Burlington. He helped to lay out Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, +with a fresh and surprising view at every turn; the wandering +visitor was introduced, among other delights, to the Hermitage, +the Temple of Venus, the Egyptian pyramid, St. Augustine’s +cave (artfully constructed of roots and moss), the Saxon Temple, +the Temple of Bacchus, and Dido’s cave. The craze for +romantic gardening, with its illusions of distance, and its ruins +and groves, persisted throughout the eighteenth century. +Shenstone’s garden at The Leasowes enjoyed a higher +reputation even than his <!-- page 58--><a +name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>poetry, and +it is well known how he strained his slender means in the effort +to outshine his neighbors. “In time,” says +Johnson, “his expenses brought clamours about him that +overpowered the lamb’s bleat and the linnet’s song; +and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns +and fairies.”</p> +<p>The chief of Kent’s successors was Launcelot Brown, +commonly called “Capability Brown” from his habit of +murmuring to himself, as he gazed on a tract of land submitted +for his diagnosis—“It has capabilities; it has +capabilities.” He laid out Kew and Blenheim. +Gazing one day on one of his own made rivers, he exclaimed, with +an artist’s rapture,—“Thames! +Thames! Thou wilt never forgive me.” He +certainly imposed himself upon his own time, and, so far, was a +great man. “Mr. Brown,” said Richard Owen +Cambridge, “I very earnestly wish that I may die before +you.” “Why so?” said Brown with some +surprise. “Because,” said he, “I should +like to see Heaven before you had improved it.” Among +the romantic writers who were bitten by the mania for picturesque +improvement were Horace <!-- page 59--><a name="page59"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 59</span>Walpole and even Sir Walter +Scott. Everyone knows how Walpole bought from Mrs. +Chevenix, the toy-shop woman, a little house called +“Chopp’d Straw Hall” which he converted into +the baronial splendors of Strawberry Hill; and how Scott +transmitted a mean Tweedside farm, called Clarty Hole, into the +less pretentious glories of Abbotsford.</p> +<p>After the practice came the theory. The painters and +landscape-gardeners were followed by a school of philosophers, +who expounded Taste and the laws of the Picturesque. Some +extracts from the work of one of these, Thomas Whately, whose +<i>Observations on Modern Gardening</i> appeared in 1770, will +show to what excesses the whole nonsensical business had been +carried. “In wild and romantic scenes,” says +Whately, “may be introduced a ruined stone bridge, of which +some arches may be still standing, and the loss of those which +are fallen may be supplied by a few planks, with a rail, thrown +over the vacancy. It is a picturesque object: it suits the +situation; and the antiquity of the passage, the care taken to +keep it still open, though the original building <!-- page +60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>is +decayed, the apparent necessity which thence results for a +communication, give it an imposing air of reality.” +The context of this passages shows that the bridge leads +nowhither. On the management of rocks Whately is a +connoisseur. “Their most distinguished +characters,” he says, “are <i>dignity</i>, +<i>terror</i>, and <i>fancy</i>: the expressions of all are +constantly wild; and sometimes a rocky scene is only wild, +without pretensions to any particular character.” But +ruins are what he likes best, and he recommends that they shall +be constructed on the model of Tintern Abbey. They must be +obvious ruins, much dilapidated, or the visitors will examine +them too closely. “An appendage evidently more modern +than the principal structure will sometimes corroborate the +effect; the shed of a cottager amidst the remains of a temple, is +a contrast both to the former and the present state of the +building.” It seems almost impossible that this +should have been offered as serious advice; but it was the +admired usage of the time. Whately’s book was a +recognized authority, and ran through several editions. He +is also known as a Shakespeare critic, of no particular mark.</p> +<p><!-- page 61--><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>A more influential writer than Whately was William +Gilpin, an industrious clergyman and schoolmaster, who spent his +holidays wandering and sketching in the most approved parts of +England, Wales and Scotland. His books on the Picturesque +were long held in esteem. The earliest of them was entitled +<i>Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales +. . . relative chiefly to picturesque beauty</i> (1782). +Others, which followed in steady succession, rendered a like +service to the Lake district, the Highlands of Scotland, the New +Forest, and the Isle of Wight. Those books taught the +aesthetic appreciation of wild nature to a whole +generation. It is a testimony to their influence that for a +time they enslaved the youth of Wordsworth. In <i>The +Prelude</i> he tells how, in early life, he misunderstood the +teaching of Nature, not from insensibility, but from the +presumption which applied to the impassioned life of Nature the +“rules of mimic art.” He calls this habit +“a strong infection of the age,” and tells how he +too, for a time, was wont to compare scene with scene, and to +pamper himself “with meagre novelties of <!-- page 62--><a +name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>colour and +proportion.” In another passage he speaks of similar +melodramatic errors, from conformity to book-notions, in his +early study of poetry.</p> +<blockquote><p>The dignities of plain occurrence then<br /> +Were tasteless, and truth’s golden mean, a point,<br /> +Where no sufficient pleasure could be found.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But imaginative power, and the humility which had been his in +childhood, returned to him—</p> +<blockquote><p> I shook the habit off<br /> +Entirely and for ever.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yet in one curious respect Gilpin’s amateur teaching did +leave its mark on the history of English poetry. When +Wordsworth and Coleridge chose the Wye and Tintern Abbey for +their walking tour, they were probably determined in that +direction by the fame of the scenery; and when they and Southey +settled in the Lake district, it may be surmised that they felt +other and stronger attractions than those that came from +Wordsworth’s early associations with the place. The +Wye, Tintern Abbey, the English Lakes, the Scottish +Highlands—these were the favored places of the <!-- page +63--><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +63</span>apostles of the picturesque, and have now become +memorial places in our poetic history.</p> +<p>All these gardeners and aesthetic critics who busied +themselves with wild nature were aiming at an ideal which had +been expressed in many painted landscapes, and had been held up +as the top of admiration by one of the greatest English +poets. The influence of Milton on the new landscape +interest must be held to be not less than the influence of his +contemporaries, Salvator Rosa and Claude. His descriptions +of Paradise did more than any painting to alter the whole +practice of gardening. They are often appealed to, even by +the technical gardeners. In garden-lore Milton was a +convinced Romantic. He has two descriptions of the Garden +of Eden; the slighter of the two occurs on the occasion of +Raphael’s entry, and merely resumes the earlier and fuller +account:</p> +<blockquote><p>Their glittering tents they passed, and now is +come<br /> +Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrhe,<br /> +And flowering Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balme;<br /> +A Wilderness of Sweets; for Nature here<br /> +Wantoned as in her prime and plaid at will<br /> +Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet,<br /> +Wilde above rule or art; enormous bliss.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 64--><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>Coleridge has some remarks, in his <i>Table Talk</i>, on +Milton’s disregard of painting. There are only two +pictures, he says, in Milton; Adam bending over the sleeping Eve, +and the entrance of Dalilah, like a ship under full sail. +Certainly the above lines are no picture; but they are more +exciting than any clear delineation could be; they are full of +scent, and air, and the emotions of ease and bliss. The +other passage has more of architectural quality in it, and +describes what first met Satan’s gaze, when he entered the +Garden and sat, perched like a cormorant, upon the Tree of +Life.</p> +<blockquote><p> The crisped +Brooks<br /> +With mazie error under pendant shades<br /> +Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed<br /> +Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art<br /> +In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon<br /> +Poured forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine<br /> +Both where the morning sun first warmly smote<br /> +The open field, and where the unpierc’t shade<br /> +Imbround the noontide Bowers: Thus was this place,<br /> +A happy rural seat of various view:<br /> +Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme,<br /> +Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde<br /> +Hung amiable, <i>Hesperian</i> Fables true,<br /> +<!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>If true, here onely, and of delicious taste:<br /> +Betwixt the Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks<br /> +Grasing the tender herb, were interpos’d,<br /> +Or palmie hilloc, or the flourie lap<br /> +Of some irriguous Valley spread her store,<br /> +Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose:<br /> +Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves<br /> +Of coole recess, o’er which the mantling Vine<br /> +Layes forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps<br /> +Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall<br /> +Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake,<br /> +That to the fringed Bank with Myrtle crown’d,<br /> +Her chrystall mirror holds, unite their streams.<br /> +The Birds their quire apply; aires, vernal aires,<br /> +Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune<br /> +The trembling leaves, while Universal <i>Pan</i><br /> +Knit with the <i>Graces</i> and the <i>Hours</i> in dance<br /> +Led on th’ Eternal Spring.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here is all the variety of hill and valley, wood and lawn, +rock and meadow, waterfall and lake, rose and vine, which the +landscape artists also loved to depict, and which, together with +ruined temples and castles, unknown in Paradise, became the +cherished ideal of landscape gardening. By the influence of +<i>Paradise Lost</i> upon the gardeners, no less than by the +influence of <i>L’Allegro</i> and <i>Il Penseroso</i> upon +the poets, Milton may claim to be regarded as <!-- page 66--><a +name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>one of the +forefathers of the Romantic Revival. There is no need to +distinguish carefully between poetry and painting in discussing +their contributions to Romance. A great outcry was raised, +in the last age, against literary criticism of pictures. +But in this question we are concerned with this effect of +pictures on the normal imagination, which is literary, which +cares for story, and suggested action, and the whole chain of +memories and desires that a picture may set in motion. Do +not most of those who look at a romantic landscape imagine +themselves wandering among the scenes that are portrayed? +And are not men prone to admire in Nature what they have been +taught by Art to notice? The landscape art of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries taught them to imagine +themselves in lonely scenes, among old ruins or frowning rocks, +by the light of sunrise or sunset, cast on gleaming lakes. +These were the theatre of Romance; and the emotions awakened by +scenes like these played an enormous part in the Revival. +It was thus that poets were educated to find that exaltation in +the terrors of mountainous regions which <!-- page 67--><a +name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>Gray +expressed when he said: “Not a precipice, not a torrent, +not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.”</p> +<p>The weaker side of modern Romance, the play-acting and +pretence that has always accompanied it, may be seen in the +gardening mania. It was not enough to be a country +gentleman; the position must be improved by the added elegances +of a hermit’s cell and an Egyptian pyramid. It is +like children’s play; the day is long, the affairs of our +elders are tedious, we are tired of a life in which there is no +danger and no hunger; let us pretend that we are monks, or +ancient Romans. The mature imagination interprets the +facts; this kind of imagination escapes from the facts into a +world of make-believe, where the tyranny and cause and effect is +no longer felt. It is not a hard word to call it childish; +the imagination of these early Romantics had a child’s +weakness and a child’s delightful confidence and zest.</p> +<p>The same play activity expressed itself in literature, where +an orgy of imitation ushered in the real movement. The +antiquarian beginnings of Romantic poetry may be well illustrated +<!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>by the life and works of Thomas Warton. He passed +his life as a resident Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and +devoted his leisure, which was considerable, to the study of +English poetry and Gothic architecture. He was not yet +thirty when, in 1757, he was elected Professor of Poetry, a post +which he held for ten years. During this time he planned a +complete History of English Poetry, a task which Pope and Gray in +turn had contemplated and abandoned. The historical +interest which is so conspicuous in early Romanticism owed not a +little, it may be remarked in passing, to the initiative of Pope, +who must therefore be given a place in any full genealogy of the +Romantic family. Warton’s <i>History</i>, so far as +it was completed, was published between 1774 and 1781, when he +relaxed his efforts, and took up lesser tasks. In 1785 he +was made Poet Laureate on the strength of his early poems and +later scholarship. He died in 1790.</p> +<p>Warton’s poems are a curious study. Spenser and +Milton are his masters, and he is a docile pupil. His +poetry is all derivative, and might be best described as +imitation poetry. Christopher <!-- page 69--><a +name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>North said of +him that “the gods had made him poetical, but not a +poet,” a saying which contains the whole truth. He +puts together a mosaic of phrases borrowed from his teachers, and +frames them in a sentimental setting of his own. Here are +some passages from <i>The Pleasures of Melancholy</i>, which, +though he wrote it at the age of seventeen, does not differ in +method or inspiration from the rest of his poetical work:</p> +<blockquote><p>Beneath yon ruin’d abbey’s moss-grown +piles<br /> +Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve,<br /> +Where thro’ some western window the pale moon<br /> +Pours her long-levell’d rule of streaming light;<br /> +While sullen sacred silence reigns around,<br /> +Save the lone screech-owl’s note, who builds his +bow’r<br /> +Amid the mould’ring caverns dark and damp,<br /> +Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves<br /> +Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green<br /> +Invests some wasted tow’r. . . .<br /> +Then, when the sullen shades of ev’ning close,<br /> +Where thro’ the room a blindly-glimm’ring gleam<br /> +The dying embers scatter, far remote<br /> +From Mirth’s mad shouts, that thro’ th’ +illumin’d roof<br /> +Resound with festive echo, let me sit,<br /> +Blest with the lowly cricket’s drowsy dirge. . . .<br /> +O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought!<br /> +<!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +70</span>O come with saintly look, and steadfast step,<br /> +From forth thy cave embower’d with mournful yew,<br /> +Where ever to the curfeu’s solemn sound<br /> +List’ning thou sitt’st, and with thy cypress bind<br +/> +Thy votary’s hair, and seal him for thy son.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Melancholy seems not to have answered these advances. In +later life Warton was a short, squat, red-faced man, fond of ale, +and a cheerful talker, with a thick utterance, so that he gobbled +like a turkey-cock. Some of his verses are cheerful. +This is from the <i>Ode on the Approach of Summer</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>Haste thee, Nymph! and hand in hand<br /> +With thee lead a buxom band;<br /> +Bring fantastic-footed Joy,<br /> +With Sport, that yellow-tressed boy:<br /> +Leisure, that through the balmy sky<br /> +Chases a crimson butterfly.<br /> +Bring Health, that loves in early dawn<br /> +To meet the milk-maid on the lawn;<br /> +Bring Pleasure, rural nymph, and Peace,<br /> +Meek, cottage-loving shepherdess!</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is all like this, fluent and unnecessary. Perhaps no +verses in English were ever made so exactly in the approved +fashion of modern Latin verses. Warton writes pleasantly, +his <!-- page 71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>cento of reminiscences is skilful, and his own epithets +are sometimes happy, yet nothing comes of it. His work +suggests the doubt whether any modern Latin verse, even the best, +would deceive an intelligent citizen of ancient Rome.</p> +<p>The strange thing about the Romantic Revival is that an +epidemic of this sort of imitation at last produced real poetry +and real romance. The industrious simulation of the +emotions begot the emotions simulated. Is there not a story +told of a young officer who, having dressed himself in a sheet to +frighten his fellows, was embarrassed by the company of a real +ghost, bent on the same errand; and retired from the enterprise, +leaving it wholly to the professional? That, at any rate, +is very much what happened to the Romantic impersonators.</p> +<p>Another parallel may perhaps be found in the power of +vulgarity to advance civilization. Take, for instance, the +question of manners. Politeness is a codification of the +impulses of a heart that is moved by good will and consideration +for others. If the impulses are not <!-- page 72--><a +name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>there, the +politeness is so far unreal and insincere—a cheap +varnish. Yet it is insisted on by society, and enforced by +fear and fashion. If the forms are taught, the soul of them +may be, and sometimes is, breathed in later. So this +imitative and timid artifice, this conformity to opinions the +ground and meaning of which is not fully understood, becomes a +great engine of social progress. Imitation and forgery, +which are a kind of literary vulgarity, were the school of +Romanticism in its nonage. Some of the greater poets who +passed this way went on to express things subtler and more +profound than had found a voice in the poetry that they +imitated.</p> +<p>The long debate on the so-called poems of Ossian is now +ended. They are known to be a not very skilful forgery by +James Macpherson. Yet their importance in literary history +remains undiminished, and the life of Macpherson has a curious +kind of pathos. He was the creature and victim of the +Romantic movement, and was led, by almost insensible degrees, +into supplying fraudulent evidence for the favorite Romantic +theory that a truer and deeper <!-- page 73--><a +name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>vein of +poetry is to be found among primitive peoples. +Collins’s <i>Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the +Highlands of Scotland</i> and Gray’s <i>Bard</i> show the +literary world prepared to put itself to school to Celtic +tradition. Macpherson supplied it with a body of poetry +which exactly fulfilled its expectations. The crucial date +in his history is his meeting in 1759 with John Home, the author +of the once famous tragedy of <i>Douglas</i>. In the summer +of that year Home was drinking the waters at Moffat, and among +the visitors assembled there found Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord +Lynedoch, then a boy of ten, and his tutor, James Macpherson, a +young Highlander, shy and ambitious, who had been educated at +Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and had dabbled in verse. Home, +full of the literary gossip of the hour, seized upon the +opportunity to question Macpherson concerning the poems that were +rumored to have survived among the Gaelic-speaking population of +Scotland. In the light of what we now know it is not +difficult to understand the genesis of this great European +fraud. Macpherson was proud of his race, which he had <!-- +page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>celebrated in an heroic poem called <i>The +Highlander</i>. He had interested himself in Gaelic poetry, +though his knowledge of the tongue was not good, and he had by +him some fragments of genuine Gaelic poems. He was +flattered by Home’s appeal to him, and, feeling perhaps +that the few and slight genuine poems which he could produce +would hardly warrant the magnificence of his allusions to Gaelic +literature, he forged a tale in poetic prose, called <i>The Death +of Oscar</i>, and presented it to Home as a translation from the +Gaelic. The poem was much admired, and Macpherson, unable +now to retrace his steps without declaring himself a cheat, soon +produced others from the same source. These were submitted +to the literary society of Edinburgh, with the great Dr. Blair at +its head, and were pronounced to be the wonder of the +world. From this point onward, during a long and melancholy +life, poor Macpherson was enslaved to the fraud which had its +beginning in the shyness and vanity of his own character. +He was bound now to forge or to fail; and no doubt the +consciousness that it was his own work which <!-- page 75--><a +name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>called forth +such rapturous applause supported him in his labors and justified +him to his own conscience. A subscription was easily raised +in Edinburgh to enable him to travel and collect the remains of +Celtic poetry. For a few months he perambulated the western +highlands and islands, and returned to Edinburgh bringing with +him <i>Fingal</i>, a complete epic poem in six books. This +was followed by <i>Temora</i>, in eight books, also attributed to +the great Gaelic bard Ossian; and the new Celtic fashion was +established.</p> +<p>These poems had an immense success. Everyone knows how +they influenced the youth of Goethe, and captured the imagination +of Napoleon. It is less surprising that they enraptured the +poet Gray, and were approved by the professor Blair, for they +were exactly modelled on the practice and theory of these two +critics. All the fashionable doctrine of that age +concerning the history of poetry was borne out by these +works. Poetry, so it was held, is to be found in its +perfection only in primitive society, before it is overlaid by +the complexities of modern civilization. Its <!-- page +76--><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>most +perfect, and therefore its earliest, form, is the epic; and Dr. +Blair must have been delighted to find that the laws of the epic, +which he so often explained to his class in Edinburgh University, +were minutely observed by the oldest of Scottish bards. He +died without suspecting that the inspiration of the Ossianic +poems had come partly from himself.</p> +<p>The belief that Celtic literature is essentially and eternally +melancholy,—a belief which persisted down to the time of +Matthew Arnold, also drew its strength from the poems of +Ossian. Here again theory showed the way to practice. +The melancholy of the Ossianic poems is not the melancholy of the +Celt, but a melancholy compounded of many simples, and extracted +from works that were held in high esteem in the eighteenth +century—Young’s <i>Night Thoughts</i>, Blair’s +<i>Grave</i>, Gray’s <i>Bard</i>, and the soliloquies of +Milton’s Satan.</p> +<p>Macpherson was soon challenged, and his whole life was passed +in a brawl of controversy. Two famous men dismissed him +contemptuously. Dr. Johnson, who knew what honesty means +among scholars, treated him as an impudent <!-- page 77--><a +name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>impostor. Wordsworth, who knew what simplicity +means in poetry, declared that all the imagery of the poems is +false and spurious. But the whole question early became a +national quarrel, and the honor of Scotland was involved in +it. There are signs that Macpherson would gladly have +escaped from the storm he had raised. Aided by his early +literary success, he became a prosperous man, held a well-paid +post at court, entered Parliament, and was pensioned by the +government. Still the controversy persisted. He had +found it easy to take up a haughty attitude towards those hostile +critics who had doubted his good faith and had asked him to +produce his Gaelic originals. But now the demand for the +originals came from his champions and friends, who desired to +place the fame of Scotland’s oldest and greatest poet on a +sure foundation. He wriggled on the hook, and more than +once timidly hinted that the poems owed not a little to the +poetic genius of the translator. But this half-hearted +attempt to rob the great Ossian of a part of his fame stirred the +Caledonian enthusiasts to a frenzy of indignation. At last, +<!-- page 78--><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +78</span>when he was no longer able to restrain his supporters, +the wretched Macpherson found no escape but one. In middle +age, some twenty years after his first appearance on the poetic +horizon, he sat down, with a heavy heart and an imperfect +knowledge of the Gaelic tongue, to forge the originals. In +1807, eleven years after his death, these were at last +published. The progress of genuine Celtic scholarship +during the succeeding century did the rest; and the old blind +bard rejoined the mists and vapors which were the inspiration of +his Muse. <a name="citation78"></a><a href="#footnote78" +class="citation">[78]</a> The poems of Ossian are only one, +though perhaps the most signal, instance of the forgeries which +prevailed like an epidemic at the time of the Romantic +Revival. Some of these, like Ireland’s Shakespeare +forgeries, were little better than cold-blooded mercenary +frauds. Others, like Chatterton’s Rowley Poems and +Horace Walpole’s <i>Castle of Otranto</i>, are full of the +zest and delight of play-acting. Even Coleridge’s +<i>Ancient Mariner</i>, though it is free from the reproach of +forgery, is touched by the <!-- page 79--><a +name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>same +spirit. The severe morality of scholarship had not yet been +applied to mediaeval or modern matter. Scholars are the +trustees of poets; but where this trust is undertaken by men who +are poets themselves, there is usually a good deal of gaiety and +exuberance in its performance.</p> +<p>I have now traced some of the neglected sources of revived +Romance, and have shown how in this movement, more notably, +perhaps, than in any other great movement in literature, it was +not the supply which created the demand, but the demand which +created the supply. The Romantic change was wrought, not by +the energy of lonely pioneers, but by a shift in public +taste. Readers of poetry knew what it was they wanted, even +before they knew whether it existed. Writers were soon at +hand to prove that it had existed in the past, and could still be +made. The weakness of vague desire is felt everywhere in +the origins of the change. Out of the weakness came +strength; the tinsel Gothic castle of Walpole was enlarged to +house the magnanimous soul of Scott; the Sorrows of Werther gave +birth to <i>Faust</i>.</p> +<p><!-- page 80--><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +80</span>The weakness of the Romantic movement, its love of mere +sensation and sentiment, is well exhibited in its effect upon the +sane and strong mind of Keats. He was a pupil of the +Romantics; and poetry, as he first conceived of it, seemed to +open to him boundless fields of passive enjoyment. His +early work shows the struggle between the delicious swoon of +reverie and the growing pains of thought. His verse, in its +beginnings, was crowded with “luxuries, bright, milky, +soft, and rosy.” He was a boy at the time of +England’s greatest naval glory, but he thinks more of Robin +Hood than of Nelson. If Robin Hood could revisit the +forest, says Keats,</p> +<blockquote><p>He would swear, for all his oaks<br /> +Fallen beneath the dockyard strokes,<br /> +Have rotted on the briny seas.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His use of a word like “rich,” as Mr. Robert +Bridges has remarked, is almost inhuman in its luxurious +detachment from the human situation.</p> +<blockquote><p>Now more than ever seems it rich to die,<br /> +To cease upon the midnight with no pain.<br /> +<!-- page 81--><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,<br /> +Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>By his work in this kind Keats became the parent and founder +of the Aesthetic School of poetry, which is more than half in +love with easeful death, and seeks nothing so ardently as rest +and escape from the world. The epilogue to the Aesthetic +movement was written by William Morris before ever he broke out +from those enchanted bowers:</p> +<blockquote><p>So with this earthly paradise it is,<br /> +If ye will read aright, and pardon me<br /> +Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss<br /> +Midmost the beating of the steely sea,<br /> +Where tossed about all hearts of men must be,<br /> + Whose ravening monsters mighty men must slay,<br /> + Not the poor singer of an empty +day.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Yet there is another side to the work of Keats, more wonderful +in its broken promise than all the soft perfections of his tender +Muse. He grew tired of imitation and ease. Weakness +may exclude the world by forgetting it; only strength can conquer +the world. What if this law be also the law of +beauty? The thought inspires his last great attempt, <!-- +page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>the fragment of <i>Hyperion</i>. Men have their +dynasties and revolutions; but the immortals also, whom men +worship, must change to live.</p> +<blockquote><p>So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,<br /> +A power more strong in beauty.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And this power cannot be won by those who shirk the challenge +of ugly facts.</p> +<blockquote><p>O folly! for to bear all naked truths,<br /> +And to envisage circumstance, all calm,<br /> +That is the top of sovereignty.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>As if to enforce his thought by repetition, Keats made an +allegorical framework for his revised version of the poem. +There he exhibits himself as wandering among the delights of the +garden of this life, and indulging himself to the point of +drunkenness. Awaked from his swoon, he finds himself at the +steps of the temple of fame. He is told he must climb or +die. After an agony of struggle he mounts to the top, and +has speech there with a veiled figure, who tells him that this +temple is all that has been spared in the war between the rival +houses of the Gods. When he asks why he <!-- page 83--><a +name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>has been +saved from death, the veiled figure makes reply:</p> +<blockquote><p>“None can usurp this height,” +return’d that shade,<br /> +“But those to whom the miseries of the world<br /> +Are misery, and will not let them rest.”<br /> +* * * * *<br /> +“Are there not thousands in the world,” said I,<br /> +Encourag’d by the sooth voice of the shade,<br /> +“Who love their fellows even to the death,<br /> +Who feel the giant agony of the world,<br /> +And more, like slaves to poor humanity,<br /> +Labour for mortal good? I sure should see<br /> +Other men here, but I am here alone.”<br /> +“Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries,”<br +/> +Rejoined that voice; “they are no dreamers weak;<br /> +They seek no wonder but the human face,<br /> +No music but a happy-noted voice:<br /> +They come not here, they have no thought to come;<br /> +And thou art here, for thou art less than they.<br /> +What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe,<br /> +To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing,<br /> +A fever of thyself: think of the earth;<br /> +What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee?<br /> +What haven? every creature hath its home,<br /> +Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,<br /> +Whether his labours be sublime or low—<br /> +The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct:<br /> +Only the dreamer venoms all his days,<br /> +Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p><!-- page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>In this, which is almost his last deliberate utterance, +Keats expresses his sense of the futility of romance, and seems +to condemn poetry itself. A condemnation of the expression +of profound thought in beautiful forms would come very ill from +Keats, but this much he surely had learned, that poetry, the real +high poetry, cannot be made out of dreams. The worst of +dreams is that you cannot discipline them. Their tragedy is +night-mare; their comedy is nonsense. Only what can stand +severe discipline, and emerge the purer and stronger for it, is +fit to endure. For all its sins of flatness and prosiness +the Classical School has always taught discipline. No doubt +it has sometimes trusted too absolutely to discipline, and has +given us too much of the foot-rule and the tuning-fork. But +one discipline, at least, poetry cannot afford to +neglect—the discipline of facts and life. The poetry +that can face this ordeal and survive it is rare. Some +poets are tempted to avoid the experience and save the +dream. Others, who were poets in their youth, undergo the +experience and are beaten by it. But the poetry which can +bear all naked truth and still keep its singing voice is the only +immortal poetry.</p> +<h2>Footnotes:</h2> +<p><a name="footnote78"></a><a href="#citation78" +class="footnote">[78]</a> For some of the facts in this +account of Ossian I am indebted to Mr. J. S. Smart’s +fascinating book, <i>James Macpherson</i>, <i>an Episode in +Literature</i> (David Nutt, 1905).</p> +<p>End of the Project Gutenberg eBook *** Corrected to here, +scaps check done, italic check done, spell-check done ***</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 19367-h.htm or 19367-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/3/6/19367 + + + +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: Romance + Two Lectures + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: September 25, 2006 [eBook #19367] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1916 Princeton University Press edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + +LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION + + + + + +ROMANCE + + +TWO LECTURES BY + +SIR WALTER RALEIGH + +M.A., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE +UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, FELLOW OF +MERTON COLLEGE + +LECTURES DELIVERED AT PRINCETON +UNIVERSITY, MAY 4TH AND 6TH, 1915 + +PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS +PRINCETON + +LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS + +1916 + +Copyright, 1916, by +PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS + +Published October, 1916 + + + + +THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE + + +The period of English political history which falls between Pitt's +acceptance of office as prime minister, in 1783, and the passing of the +Reform Bill, in 1832, is a period rich in character and event. The same +period of fifty years is one of the most crowded epochs of our national +literature. In 1783 William Blake produced his _Poetical Sketches_, and +George Crabbe published _The Village_. In 1832 Scott died, not many +months after the death of Goethe. Between these two dates a great +company of English writers produced a literature of immense bulk, and of +almost endless diversity of character. Yet one dominant strain in that +literature has commonly been allowed to give a name to the whole period, +and it is often called the Age of the Romantic Revival. + +We do not name other notable periods of our literature in this fashion. +The name itself contains a theory, and so marks the rise of a new +philosophical and aesthetic criticism. It attempts to describe as well +as to name, and attaches significance not to kings, or great authors, but +to the kind of writing which flourished conspicuously in that age. A +less ambitious and much more secure name would have been the Age of +George III; but this name has seldom been used, perhaps because the +writers of his time who reverenced King George III were not very many in +number. The danger of basing a name on a theory of literature is that +the theory may very easily be superseded, or may prove to be inadequate, +and then the name, having become immutable by the force of custom, is +left standing, a monument of ancient error. The terminology of the +sciences, which pretends to be exact and colourless, is always being +reduced to emptiness by the progress of knowledge. The thing that struck +the first observer is proved to be less important than he thought it. +Scientific names, for all their air of learned universality, are merely +fossilized impressions, stereotyped portraits of a single aspect. The +decorous obscurity of the ancient languages is used to conceal an immense +diversity of principle. Mammal, amphibian, coleoptera, dicotyledon, +cryptogam,--all these terms, which, if they were translated into the +language of a peasant, would be seen to record very simple observations, +yet do lend a kind of formal majesty to ignorance. + +So it is with the vocabulary of literary criticism: the first use of a +name, because the name was coined by someone who felt the need of it, is +often striking and instructive; the impression is fresh and new. Then +the freshness wears off it, and the name becomes an outworn print, a +label that serves only to recall the memory of past travel. What was +created for the needs of thought becomes a thrifty device, useful only to +save thinking. The best way to restore the habit of thinking is to do +away with the names. The word Romantic loses almost all its meaning and +value when it is used to characterize whole periods of our literature. +Landor and Crabbe belong to a Romantic era of poetry; Steele and Sterne +wrote prose in an age which set before itself the Classic ideal. Yet +there is hardly any distinctively Classical beauty in English verse which +cannot be exemplified from the poetry of Landor and Crabbe; and there are +not very many characteristics of Romantic prose which find no +illustration in the writings of Steele and Sterne. Nevertheless, the +very name of romance has wielded such a power in human affairs, and has +so habitually impressed the human imagination, that time is not misspent +in exhibiting its historical bearings. These great vague words, invented +to facilitate reference to whole centuries of human history--Middle Ages, +Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Revival of Romance--are very often +invoked as if they were something ultimate, as if the names themselves +were a sufficient explanation of all that they include. So an imperfect +terminology is used to gain esteem for an artificial and rigid conception +of things which were as fluid as life itself. The Renaissance, for +instance, in its strict original meaning, is the name for that renewed +study of the classical literatures which manifested itself throughout the +chief countries of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In +Italy, where the movement had its origin, no single conspicuous event can +be used to date it. The traditions inherited from Greece and Rome had +never lost their authority; but with the increase of wealth and leisure +in the city republics they were renewed and strengthened. From being +remnants and memories they became live models; Latin poetry was revived, +and Italian poetry was disciplined by the ancient masters. But the +Renaissance, when it reached the shores of England, so far from giving +new life to the literature it found there, at first degraded it. It +killed the splendid prose school of Malory and Berners, and prose did not +run clear again for a century. It bewildered and confused the minds of +poets, and blending itself with the national tradition, produced the rich +lawlessness of the English sixteenth century. It was a strong tributary +to the stream of our national literature; but the popular usage, which +assigns all that is good in the English literature of the sixteenth and +seventeenth centuries to a mysterious event called the Renaissance, is +merely absurd. Modern scholars, if they are forced to find a beginning +for modern literature, would prefer to date it from the wonderful +outburst of vernacular poetry in the latter part of the twelfth century, +and, if they must name a birthplace, would claim attention for the Court +of King Henry II. + +In some of its aspects, the Romantic revival may be exhibited as a +natural consequence of the Renaissance. Classical scholarship at first +scorned the vernacular literatures, and did all its work of criticism and +imitation in the Latin tongue. By degrees the lesson was widened, and +applied to the modern languages. Study; imitation in Latin; extension of +classical usages and principles to modern literature,--these were the +regular stages in the progress of the classical influence. When the +poets of France and England, to name no others, had learned as much as +they were able and willing to learn from the masters of Greece and Rome, +the work of the Renaissance was done. By the middle of the eighteenth +century there was no notable kind of Greek or Latin +literature--historical, philosophical, poetical; epic, elegy, ode, +satire--which had not worthy disciples and rivals in the literatures of +France and England. Nothing remained to do but to go further afield and +seek for new masters. These might easily have been found among the poets +and prophets of the East, and not a few notable writers of the time began +to forage in that direction. But the East was too remote and strange, +and its languages were too little known, for this attempt to be carried +far; the imitation of Chinese and Persian models was practised chiefly by +way of fantasy and joke. The study of the neglected and forgotten matter +of mediaeval times, on the other hand, was undertaken by serious +scholars. The progress of the mediaeval influence reproduced very +exactly the successive phases of the Classical Renaissance. At first +there was study; and books like Sainte Palaye's _Memoirs of Ancient +Chivalry_, and Paul Henri Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, enjoyed a +European reputation. Then followed the period of forgery and imitation, +the age of Ossian and Chatterton, Horace Walpole and Bishop Percy. +Lastly, the poets enrolled themselves in the new school, and an original +literature, suggested by the old, was created by Sir Walter Scott, +Coleridge, and Keats. It was the temper of the antiquary and the +sceptic, in the age of Gibbon and Hume, that begot the Romantic Revival; +and the rebellion of the younger age against the spirit of the eighteenth +century was the rebellion of a child against its parents. + +It is not needful, nor indeed is it possible, to define Romance. In the +mathematical sciences definitions are all-important, because with them +the definition is the thing. When a mathematician asks you to describe a +circle, he asks you to create one. But the man who asks you to describe +a monkey is less exacting; he will be content if you mention some of the +features that seem to you to distinguish a monkey from other animals. +Such a description must needs be based on personal impressions and ideas; +some features must be chosen as being more significant than the rest. In +the history of literature there are only two really significant +things--men, and books. To study the ascertained facts concerning men +and books is to study biography and bibliography, two sciences which +between them supply the only competent and modest part of the history of +literature. To discern the significance of men and books, to classify +and explain them, is another matter. We have not, and we never shall +have, a calculus sufficient for human life even at its weakest and +poorest. Let him who conceives high hopes from the progress of knowledge +and the pertinacity of thought tame and subdue his pride by considering, +for a moment, the game of chess. That game is played with thirty-two +pieces, of six different kinds, on a board of sixty-four squares. Each +kind of piece has one allotted mode of action, which is further cramped +by severe limitations of space. The conditions imposed upon the game are +strict, uniform, and mechanical. Yet those who have made of chess a life- +long study are ready to confess their complete ignorance of the +fundamental merits of particular moves; one game does not resemble +another; and from the most commonplace of developments there may spring +up, on the sudden, wild romantic possibilities and situations that are +like miracles. If these surprising flowers of fancy grow on the chess- +board, how shall we set a limit to the possibilities of human life, which +is chess, with variety and uncertainty many million times increased? It +is prudent, therefore, to say little of the laws which govern the course +of human history, to avoid, except for pastime, the discussion of +tendencies and movements, and to speak chiefly of men and books. If an +author can be exhibited as the effect of certain causes (and I do not +deny that some authors can plausibly be so exhibited) he loses his virtue +as an author. He thought of himself as a cause, a surprising intruder +upon the routine of the world, an original creator. I think that he is +right, and that the profitable study of a man is the study which regards +him as an oddity, not a quiddity. + +A general statement of the law that governs literary history may perhaps +be borrowed from the most unreasonable of the arts--the art of dress. One +of the powerful rulers of men, and therefore of books, is Fashion, and +the fluctuations of literary fashion make up a great part of literary +history. If the history of a single fashion in dress could ever be +written, it would illuminate the literary problem. The motives at work +are the same; thoughtful wearers of clothes, like thoughtful authors, are +all trying to do something new, within the limits assigned by practical +utility and social sympathy. Each desires to express himself and yet in +that very act to win the admiration and liking of his fellows. The great +object is to wear the weeds of humanity with a difference. Some authors, +it is true, like timid or lazy dressers, desire only to conform to usage. +But these, as M. Brunetiere remarks in one of his historical essays, are +precisely the authors who do not count. An author who respects himself +is not content if his work is mistaken for another's, even if that other +be one of the gods of his idolatry. He would rather write his own +signature across faulty work than sink into a copyist of merit. This +eternal temper of self-assertion, this spirit of invention, this +determination to add something or alter something, is no doubt the +principle of life. It questions accepted standards, and makes of +reaction from the reigning fashion a permanent force in literature. The +young want something to do; they will not be loyal subjects in a kingdom +where no land remains to be taken up, nor will they allow the praise of +the dead to be the last word in criticism. Why should they paraphrase +old verdicts? + +The sway of Fashion often bears hardest on a good author just dead, when +the generation that discovered him and acclaimed him begins to pass away. +Then it is not what he did that attracts the notice of the younger sort, +but what he left undone. Tennyson is discovered to be no great thinker. +Pope, who, when his star was in the ascendant, was "Mr. Pope, the new +Poet," has to submit to examination by the Headmaster of Winchester, who +decides that he is not a poet, except in an inferior sense. Shakespeare +is dragged to the bar by Thomas Rymer, who demonstrates, with what degree +of critical ability is still disputed, but certainly in clear and +vigorous English, that Shakespeare has no capacity for tragic writing. +Dante is banished, by the critics of the Renaissance, into the Gothic +darkness. So the pendulum of fashion swings to and fro, compelled, even +in the shortest of its variable oscillations, to revisit the greatest +writers, who are nearest to the centre of rest. Wit and sense, which are +raised by one age into the very essentials of good poetry, are denied the +name of poetry by the next; sentiment, the virtue of one age, is the +exploded vice of another; and Romance comes in and goes out with secular +regularity. + +The meaning of Romance will never come home to him who seeks for it in +modern controversies. The name Romance is itself a memorial of the +conquest of Europe by the Romans. They imposed their language on half +Europe, and profoundly influenced the other half. The dialectical, +provincial Latin, of various kinds, spoken by the conquered peoples, +became the Romance speech; and Romance literature was the new literature +which grew up among these peoples from the ninth century onwards,--or +from an earlier time, if the fringe of Celtic peoples, who kept their +language but felt the full influence of Christianity, be taken into the +account. The chief thing to be noted concerning Romance literature is +that it was a Christian literature, finding its background and +inspiration in the ideas to which the Christian Church gave currency. +While Rome spread her conquests over Europe, at the very heart of her +empire Christianity took root, and by slow process transformed that +empire. During the Middle Ages the Bishops of Rome sat in the seat of +the Roman Emperors. This startling change possessed Gibbon's +imagination, and is the theme of his great work. But the whole of +Gibbon's history was anticipated and condensed by Hobbes in a single +sentence--"If a man considers the original of this great ecclesiastical +dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the +ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave +thereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of +that heathen power." + +Here, then, is the answer to a question which at once suggests itself. +How do we get this famous opposition between the older Latin literature +and the literature of those countries which had inherited or accepted the +Latin tradition? Why did not the Romans hand over their literature and +teach it, as they handed over and taught their law? They did teach it in +their schools; grammar and rhetoric, two of the chief subjects of a +liberal education, were purely literary studies, based on the work of the +literary masters of Rome. Never was there an education so completely +literary as the organized education of Rome and of her provinces. How +came it that there was any breach between the old and the new? + +A question of this kind, involving centuries of history, does not admit +of a perfectly simple answer. It may be very reasonably maintained that +in Rome education killed literature. A carefully organized, universal +system of education, which takes for its material the work of great poets +and orators, is certain to breed a whole army of slaves. The teachers, +employed by the machine to expound ideas not their own, soon erect +systems of pedantic dogma, under which the living part of literature is +buried. The experience of ancient Rome is being repeated in the England +of to-day. The officials responsible for education, whatever they may +uneasily pretend, are forced by the necessities of their work to +encourage uniformity, and national education becomes a warehouse of +second-hand goods, presided over by men who cheerfully explain the mind +of Burke or of Shakespeare, adjusting the place of each, and balancing +faults against merits. But Roman education throughout the Empire had +further difficulties to encounter. To understand these it must be +remembered what Latin literature was. The Latins, when we first discern +them in the dim light of the past, were a small, strenuous, political +people, with a passion for government and war. They first subdued Italy, +and no very serious culture-problem resulted from that conquest. The +Etruscans certainly contributed much to Latin civilization, but their +separate history is lost. No one knows what the Etruscans thought. The +Romans do not seem to have cared. They welded Italy together, and +thereafter came into contact with the older, richer civilizations of the +Mediterranean shores. The chief of these, in its influence, was the +Greek civilization, as it had developed in that famous group of free city +states, fostered by the sun and air, and addicted to life. In Athens, at +the time of her glory, life was not a habit, but an experiment. Even the +conservative Romans were infected. They fell under the sway of Greek +thought. When a practical man of business becomes intimate with an +artist, he is never the same man again. The thought of that +disinterested mode of life haunts his dreams. So Rome, though she had +paid little regard to the other ancient peoples with whom she had had +traffic and war, put herself to school to the Greeks. She accepted the +Greek pantheon, renamed the Greek gods and goddesses, and translated and +adopted Greek culture. The real Roman religion was a religion of the +homestead, simple, pious, domestic, but they now added foreign ornaments. +So also with literature; their own native literature was scanty and +practical--laws and rustic proverbs--but they set themselves to produce a +new literature, modelled on the Greek. Virgil followed Homer; Plautus +copied Menander; and Roman literature took on that secondary and +reminiscent character which it never lost. It was a literature of +culture, not of creed. This people had so practical a genius that they +could put the world in harness; for the decoration of the world they were +willing to depend on foreign loans. + +In so far as Latin literature was founded on the Greek, that is, in so +far as it was a derivative and imitative literature, it was not very fit +for missionary purposes. One people can give to another only what is its +own. The Greek gods were useless for export. An example may be taken +from the English rule in India. We can give to the peoples of India our +own representative institutions. We can give them our own authors, +Shakespeare, Burke, Macaulay. But we cannot give them Homer and Virgil, +who nevertheless continue to play an appreciable part in training the +English mind; and we can hardly give them Milton, whose subtlest beauties +depend on the niceties of the Latin speech. The trial for Latin +literature came when obscurely, in the purlieus and kennels of Rome, like +a hidden fermentation, Christianity arose. The earliest Christians were +for the most part illiterate; but when at last Christianity reached the +high places of the government, and controlled the Empire, a problem of +enormous difficulty presented itself for solution. The whole elaborate +educational system of the Romans was founded on the older literature and +the older creeds. All education, law, and culture were pagan. How could +the Christians be educated; and how, unless they were educated, could +they appeal to the minds of educated men? So began a long struggle, +which continued for many centuries, and swayed this way and that. Was +Christianity to be founded barely on the Gospel precepts and on a way of +life, or was it to seek to subdue the world by yielding to it? This, the +religious problem, is the chief educational problem in recorded history. +There were the usual parties; and the fiercest, on both sides, counselled +no surrender. Tertullian, careful for the purity of the new religion, +held it an unlawful thing for Christians to become teachers in the Roman +schools. Later, in the reign of Julian the Apostate, an edict forbade +Christians to teach in the schools, but this time for another reason, +lest they should draw away the youth from the older faith. In the end +the result was a practical compromise, arranged by certain ecclesiastical +politicians, themselves lovers of letters, between the old world and the +new. It was agreed, in effect, that the schools should teach humane +letters and mythology, leaving it to the Church to teach divine doctrine +and the conduct of life. All later history bears the marks of this +compromise. Here was the beginning of that distinction and apportionment +between the secular and the sacred which is so much more conspicuous in +Christian communities than ever it has been among the followers of other +religions. Here also was the beginning of that strange mixture, familiar +to all students of literature, whereby the Bible and Virgil are quoted as +equal authorities, Plato is set over against St. Paul, the Sibyl confirms +the words of David, and, when a youth of promise, destined for the +Church, is drowned, St. Peter and a river-god are the chief mourners at +his poetic obsequies. This mixture is not a fantasy of the Renaissance; +it has been part and parcel, from the earliest times, of the tradition of +the Christian church. + +History is larger than morality; and a wise man will not attempt to pass +judgment on those who found themselves in so unparalleled a position. A +new religion, claiming an authority not of this world, prevailed in this +world, and was confronted with all the resources of civilization, +inextricably entangled with the ancient pagan faiths. What was to be +done? The Gospel precepts seemed to admit of no transaction. "They that +say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if +they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they +might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a +better country, that is an heavenly." The material prosperity and social +order which Law and Politics take such pains to preserve and increase are +no part of their care. They are strangers and pilgrims in the country +where they pitch their tent for a night. How dare they spend time on +cherishing the painted veil called Life, when their desires are fixed on +what it conceals? When Tacitus called the Christian religion "a deadly +superstition," he spoke as a true Roman, a member of the race of Empire- +builders. His subtle political instinct scented danger from those who +looked with coldness on the business and desire of this world. The +Christian faith, which presents no social difficulties while it is +professed here and there by a lonely saint or seer, is another thing when +it becomes the formal creed of a nation. The Christians themselves knew +that to cut themselves off from the country of their birth would have +been a fatal choice, so far as this world is concerned. Their ultimate +decision was to accept Roman civilization and Roman culture, and to add +Christianity to it. + +Then followed an age-long attempt to Christianize Latin literature, to +supply believers with a new poetry, written in polished and accomplished +verse, and inspired by Christian doctrine. Of those who attempted this +task, Prudentius is perhaps the greatest name. The attempt could never +have been very successful; those who write in Latin verse must submit to +be judged, not by the truth of their teaching, but by the formal beauties +of their prosody, and the wealth of their allusive learning. Even +Milton, zealot though he be, is esteemed for his manner rather than for +his matter. But the experiment was cut short by the barbarian invasions. +When the Empire was invaded, St. Jerome and St. Augustine, Prudentius and +Symmachus, Claudian and Paulinus of Nola, were all alive. These men, in +varying degrees, had compounded and blended the two elements, the pagan +and the Christian. The two have been compounded ever since. The famous +sevententh century controversy concerning the fitness of sacred subjects +for poetic treatment is but a repetition and an echo of that older and +more vital difference. The two strains could never be perfectly +reconciled, so that a certain impurity and confusion was bequeathed to +modern European literature, not least to English literature. Ours is a +great and various literature, but its rarest virtue is simplicity. Our +best ballads and lyrics are filled with the matter of faith, but as often +as we try the larger kinds of poetry, we inevitably pass over into +reminiscence, learning, criticism,--in a word, culture. + +The barbarians seized, or were granted, land; and settled down under +their chiefs. They accepted Christianity, and made it into a warlike +religion. They learned and "corrupted" the Latin language. In their +dialects they had access neither to the literature of ancient Rome, nor +to the imitative scholarly Christian literature, poetry and homily, which +competed with it. Latin continued to be the language of religion and +law. It was full of terms and allusions which meant nothing to them. +They knew something of government,--not of the old republic, but of their +own men and estates. They believed wholly and simply in Christianity, +especially the miraculous part of it. To them (as to all whom it has +most profoundly influenced) it was not a philosophy, but a history of +marvellous events. When, by the operation of society, their dialect had +formed itself, a new literature, unlike anything that had flourished in +ancient Rome, grew up among them. This was Romance, the great literary +form of the Middle Ages. It was a sincere literature, expressive of +their pride in arms and their simple religious faith. The early songs +and ballads, chanted in the Romance speech, have all perished. From a +later time there have come down to us the _Chansons de Geste_, narrative +poems composed by the professional caste of poets to celebrate the deeds +and adventures of the knights who fought the battles of Charlemagne +against the Saracen invader. + +The note of this Romance literature is that it was actual, modern, +realistic, at a time when classical literature had become a remote +convention of bookish culture. It was sung in the banqueting-hall, while +Latin poetry was read in the cells of monks. It flourished enormously, +and extended itself to all the matter of history and legend, to King +Arthur, Theseus, Alexander, ancient heroes and warriors who were brought +alive again in the likeness of knights and emperors. Its triumph was so +complete, that its decadence followed swiftly. Like the creatures that +live in the blood of man, literary forms and species commonly die of +their own excess. Romances were multiplied, and imitated; professional +poets, not content with marvels that had now become familiar, sought for +a new sensation in extravagant language and incident. The tales became +more and more sophisticated, elaborate, grotesque, and unreal, until, in +the fourteenth century, a stout townsman, who ticketed bales in a custom- +house, and was the best English poet of his time, found them ridiculous. +In _Sir Thopas_ Chaucer parodies the popular literature of his day. Sir +Thopas is a great reader of romances; he models himself on the heroes +whose deeds possess his imagination, and scours the English countryside, +seeking in vain for the fulfilment of his dreams of prowess. + +So Romance declined; and by the end of the seventeenth century the +fashion is completely reversed; the pendulum has swung back; now it is +the literature inspired by the old classical models that is real, and +handles actual human interests, while Romantic literature has become +remote, fictitious, artificial. This does not mean that the men of the +later seventeenth century believed in the gods and Achilles, but not in +the saints and Arthur. It means that classical literature was found best +to imitate for its form. The greater classical writers had described the +life of man, as they saw it, in direct and simple language, carefully +ordered by art. After a long apprenticeship of translation and +imitation, modern writers adopted the old forms, and filled them with +modern matter. The old mythology, when it was kept, was used +allegorically and allusively. Common-sense, pointedly expressed, with +some traditional ornament and fable, became the matter of poetry. + +A rough summary of this kind is enough to show how large a question is +involved in the history of Romance. All literary history is a long +record of the struggle between those two rival teachers of man--books, +and the experience of life. Good books describe the world, and teach +whole generations to interpret the world. Because they throw light on +the life of man, they enjoy a vast esteem, and are set up in a position +of authority. Then they generate other books; and literature, receding +further and further from the source of truth, becomes bookish and +conventional, until those who have been taught to see nature through the +spectacles of books grow uneasy, and throw away the distorting glasses, +to look at nature afresh with the naked eye. They also write books, it +may be, and attract a crowd of imitators, who produce a literature no +less servile than the literature it supplants. + +This movement of the sincere and independent human mind is found in the +great writers of all periods, and is called the Return to Nature. It is +seen in Pope no less than in Wordsworth; in _The Rape of the Lock_ no +less than in _Peter Bell_. Indeed the whole history of the mock-heroic, +and the work of Tassoni, Boileau, and Pope, the three chief masters in +that kind, was a reassertion of sincerity and nature against the stilted +conventions of the late literary epic. The _Iliad_ is the story of a +quarrel. What do men really quarrel about? Is there any more +distinctive mark of human quarrels than the eternal triviality of the +immediate cause? The insulting removal of a memorial emblem from an +Italian city; the shifting of a reading-desk from one position to another +in a French church; the playful theft of a lock of hair by an amorous +young English nobleman--these were enough, in point of fact, to set whole +communities by the ears, and these are the events celebrated in _The Rape +of the Bucket_, _The Rape of the Lectern_, _The Rape of the Lock_. How +foolish it is to suppose that nature and truth are to be found in one +school of poetry to the exclusion of another! The eternal virtues of +literature are sincerity, clarity, breadth, force, and subtlety. They +are to be found, in diverse combinations, now here and now there. While +the late Latin Christian poets were bound over to Latin models--to +elegant reminiscences of a faded mythology and the tricks of a +professional rhetoric--there arose a new school, intent on making +literature real and modern. These were the Romance poets. If they +pictured Theseus as a duke, and Jason as a wandering knight, it was +because they thought of them as live men, and took means to make them +live for the reader or listener. The realism of the early literature of +the Middle Ages is perhaps best seen in old Irish. The monk bewails the +lawlessness of his wandering thoughts, which run after dreams of beauty +and pleasure during the hour of divine service. The hermit in the wood +describes, with loving minuteness, the contents of his larder. Never was +there a fresher or more spontaneous poetry than the poetry of this early +Christian people. But it is not in the direct line of descent, for it +was written in the Celtic speech of a people who did not achieve the +government of Europe. The French romances inherited the throne, and +passed through all the stages of elaboration and decadence. They too, in +their turn, became a professional rhetoric, false and tedious. When they +ceased to be a true picture of life, they continued in esteem as a school +of manners and deportment for the fantastic gallantry of a court. Yet +through them all their Christian origin shines. Their very themes bear +witness to the teaching of Christian asceticism and Christian idealism. +The quest of a lady never seen; the temptations that present themselves +to a wandering knight under the disguise of beauty and ease;--these, and +many other familiar romantic plots borrow their inspiration from the same +source. Not a few of the old fairy stories, preserved in folk-lore, are +full of religious meaning--they are the Christian literature of the Dark +Ages. Nor is it hard to discern the Christian origins of later Romantic +poetry. Pope's morality has little enough of the religious character: + + Know then this truth (enough for Man to know), + Virtue alone is Happiness below. + +But Coleridge, when he moralizes, speaks the language of Christianity: + + He prayeth best, who loveth best + All things both great and small; + For the dear God who loveth us + He made and loveth all. + +The like contrast holds between Dryden and Shelley. It is perhaps hardly +fair to take an example from Dryden's poems on religion; they are +rational arguments on difficult topics, after this fashion: + + In doubtful questions 'tis the safest way + To learn what unsuspected ancients say; + For 'tis not likely we should higher soar + In search of heaven than all the church before. + +When Dryden writes in his most fervent and magnificent style, he writes +like this: + + I will not rake the Dunghill of thy Crimes, + For who would read thy Life that reads thy rhymes? + But of King _David's_ Foes be this the Doom, + May all be like the Young-man _Absalom_; + And for my Foes may this their Blessing be, + To talk like _Doeg_ and to write like Thee. + +Nor is it fair to bring Shelley's lame satires into comparison with these +splendors. When Shelley is inspired by his demon, this is how he writes: + + To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; + To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; + To defy Power which seems omnipotent; + To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates + From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; + Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; + This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be + Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; + This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory. + +Some of the great poets of the Romantic Revival took mediaeval literature +for their model, but they did more than that. They returned to the cult +of wild nature; they reintroduced the supernatural, which is a part of +the nature of man; they described seas, and deserts, and mountains, and +the emotions of the soul in loneliness. But so soon as it passed out of +the hands of the greater poets, this revived Romance became as bookish as +decadent Classicism, and ran into every kind of sentimental extravagance. +Indeed revived Romance also became a school of manners, and by making a +fashion and a code of rare emotions, debased the descriptive parts of the +language. A description by any professional reporter of any Royal +wedding is further from the truth to-day than it was in the eighteenth +century. The average writer is looser and more unprincipled. + +The word Romance supplies no very valuable instrument of criticism even +in regard to the great writers of the early nineteenth century. +Wordsworth, like Defoe, drew straight from the life. Those who will may +call him a Romantic. He told of adventures--the adventures of the mind. +He did not write of Bacchus, Venus, and Apollo; neither did he concern +himself with Merlin, Tristram, and the Lady of the Lake. He shunned what +is derived from other books. His theme is man, nature, and human life. +Scott, in rich and careless fashion, dealt in every kind of material that +came his way. He described his own country and his own people with +loving care, and he loved also the melodrama of historical fiction and +supernatural legend. "His romance and antiquarianism," says Ruskin, "his +knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false." +Certainly, _The Heart of Midlothian_ and _The Antiquary_ are better than +_Ivanhoe_. Scott's love for the knighthood and monkery was real, but it +was playful. His heart was with Fielding. + +There is nothing inconsistent in the best of the traditions of the two +parties. The Classical school taught simplicity, directness, and modesty +of speech. They are right: it is the way to tell a ghost story. The +Romantic school taught a wider imaginative outlook and a more curious +analysis of the human mind. They also are right: it is the way to +investigate a case in the police courts. Both were cumbered, at times, +with the dead things that they found in the books they loved. All +literature, except the strongest and purest, is cumbered with useless +matter--the conventional epithet, the grandiose phrase, the outworn +classical quotation, the self-conscious apology, the time-honored joke. +But there are only two schools of literature--the good, and the bad. As +for national legend, its growth is the same in all ages. The Greeks told +tales of Achilles, the Romans of Aeneas, the French of Charlemagne, the +British of Arthur. It is a part of the same process, and an expression +of the same humanity. + +I have tried to show that the Renaissance bears the same relation to +classical literature as the Revival of Romance bears to mediaeval +literature, and that the whole history of the literature of Europe is an +oscillation between Christian and Pagan ideals during that long and +wavering process whereby Christianity was partially established as the +creed and way of life of a group of diverse nations. The historical +meaning of the word Romance is exact and easy to define. But in common +usage the word means something much vaguer than this. It is a note, an +atmosphere, a kind of feeling that is awakened not only by literature but +by the behavior of men and the disposition of material objects. John +Evelyn, the diarist, enjoys the reputation of having been the first to +speak of a "romantic site,"--a phrase which leads the way to immeasurable +possibilities in the application of the word. Accuracy in the definition +of this larger meaning is unattainable; and would certainly be false, for +the word has taken its meaning from centuries of usage by inaccurate +thinkers. A whole cluster of feelings, impressions, and desires, dimly +recognized as cognate, has grown around the word, which has now been a +centre of critical discussion and controversy for the better part of a +century. Heine, in his dissertation on the Romantic School, takes the +Christianity of the Middle Ages as his starting-point, and relates +everything to that. Perhaps he makes too much of allegory and symbolism, +which have always been dear to the church, but are not conspicuous in +early Romance. Yet no one can go far astray who keeps in touch, as Heine +does, with the facts of history. Goethe, impatient of the wistful +intensities of youth, said that the Classical is health, and the Romantic +disease. Much has been made, by many critics, of the statue and the +picture, as types of ancient and modern art, the one complete in itself, +the other suggesting more than it portrays. Mr. Walter Pater, borrowing +a hint from a sentence of Bacon, finds the essence of Romance in the +addition of strangeness to beauty, of curiosity to desire. It would be +easy to multiply these epigrammatic statements, which are all not +obscurely related to the fundamental changes wrought on the world by +Christian ideas. No single formula can hope to describe and distinguish +two eras, or define two tempers of mind. If I had to choose a single +characteristic of Romance as the most noteworthy, I think I should choose +Distance, and should call Romance the magic of Distance. What is the +most romantic line in Virgil? Surely it is the line which describes the +ghosts, staying for waftage on the banks of the river, and stretching out +their hands in passionate desire to the further shore: + + Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore. + +Scott expounds the harmonizing power of distance in his _Journal_, where +he describes the funeral of his friend Laidlaw's infant: + + I saw the poor child's funeral from a distance. Ah, that Distance! + What a magician for conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing + all asperities, reconciling all incongruities, veiling all absurdness, + softening every coarseness, doubling every effect by the influence of + the imagination. A Scottish wedding should be seen at a distance; the + gay band of the dancers just distinguished amid the elderly group of + the spectators,--the glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is + swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch picture, when + it becomes brutal and boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard + from a distance. The grunt and the snuffle, and the whine and the + scream, should be all blended in that deep and distant sound, which + rising and falling like the Eolian harp, may have some title to be + called the praise of our Maker. Even so the distant funeral: the few + mourners on horseback with their plaids wrapped around them--the + father heading the procession as they enter the river, and pointing + out the ford by which his darling is to be carried on the last long + road--not one of the subordinate figures in discord with the general + tone of the incident--seeming just accessories, and no more--this _is_ + affecting. + +The same idea is the subject of T. E. Brown's poem, _The Schooner_: + + Just mark that schooner westward far at sea-- + 'Tis but an hour ago + When she was lying hoggish at the quay, + And men ran to and fro, + And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed and swore, + And ever and anon, with crapulous glee, + Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore. + * * * * * + And now, behold! a shadow of repose + Upon a line of gray, + She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose-- + She sleeps, and dreams away, + Soft blended in a unity of rest + All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes, + 'Neath the broad benediction of the West. + +Shelley finds the suggestion of distance in beautiful music: + + Though the sound overpowers, + Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing + A tone + Of some world far from ours, + Where music and moonlight and feeling + Are one. + +Wordsworth hears it in the song of the Highland Girl: + + Will no one tell me what she sings?-- + Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow + For old, unhappy, far-off things, + And battles long ago. + +These quotations are enough to show what a width of view is given to +modern Romantic poetry. Man is, in one sense, more truly seen in a wide +setting of the mountains and the sea than close at hand in the street. +But the romantic effect of distance may delude and conceal as well as +glorify and liberate. The weakness of the modern Romantic poet is that +he must keep himself aloof from life, that he may see it. He rejects the +authority, and many of the pleasures, along with the duties, of society. +He looks out from his window on the men fighting in the plain, and sees +them transfigured under the rays of the setting sun. He enjoys the +battle, but not as the fighters enjoy it. He nurses himself in all the +luxury of philosophic sensation. He does not help to bury the child, or +to navigate the schooner, or to discover the Fortunate Islands. The +business of every poet, it may be said, is vision, not action. But the +epic poet holds his reader fast by strong moral bonds of sympathy with +the actors in the poem. "I should have liked to do that" is what the +reader says to himself. He is asked to think and feel as a man, not as a +god. + +The weakness of revived Romance found the most searching of its critics +in Tennyson, who was fascinated, when he was shaping his own poetic +career, by the picture and the past, yet could not feel satisfied with +the purely aesthetic attitude of art to life. In poem after poem he +returns to the question, Is poetry an escape from life? Must it lull the +soul in a selfish security? The struggle that went on in his mind has +left its mark on _The Lady of Shalott_, _The Palace of Art_, _The +Voyage_, _The Vision of Sin_, _The Lotos-Eaters_, and others of his +poems. The Lady of Shalott lives secluded in her bower, where she weaves +a magic web with gay colors. She has heard that a curse will fall on her +if she looks out on the world and down to the city of Camelot. She sees +the outer world only in a mirror, and + + In her web she still delights + To weave the mirror's magic sights + +--villages, market-girls, knights riding two and two, funerals, or pairs +of lovers wandering by. At last she grows half-sick of seeing the world +only in shadows and reflections. Then a sudden vivid experience breaks +up this life of dream. Sir Lancelot rides past, in shining armor, +singing as he rides. She leaves her magic web and mirror, and looks upon +the real world. + + Out flew the web and floated wide; + The mirror crack'd from side to side; + "The curse is come upon me," cried + The Lady of Shalott. + +She goes into the world, and there she meets her death. The poem is not +an allegory, but there is no mistaking the thought that generated it. The +mirror and the web are the emblems of Romantic art. The feelings which +stir the heart to action, which spring to meet the occasion or the +object, are contrasted, in the poem, with the more pensive feelings which +are excited by the sight of the object in a mirror, and the suggestions +of color and design which are to be transferred to the embroidery. The +mirror is a true and subtle symbol. When Shakespeare treated the same +problem, he made King Richard II, the most romantically minded of all his +kings, call for a mirror. The thing that it is easiest for a man to see +in a mirror is himself; egotism in its many forms, self-pity, +self-cultivation, self-esteem, dogs Romanticism like its shadow. The +desire to be the spectator of your own life, to see yourself in all kinds +of heroic and pathetic attitudes, is the motive-power of Romantic poetry +in many of its later developments. Yet life must be arrested and +falsified before the desire can be fulfilled. No one has ever seen +himself in a mirror as he is seen by others. He cannot catch himself +looking away, self-forgetful, intent on something outward; yet only when +he is in these attitudes does his true character show itself in his face. +Nor, if he could so see himself, would he be a witness of the truth. The +sensation of drowning, or of leading an assault in war, is very unlike +the sentiment which is aroused in the spectator of either of these +adventures. Romanticism, in its decline, confuses the sentiment with the +sensation, and covets the enjoyment of life on the easy terms of a by- +stander. + +These faults and failings of late Romance are far enough removed from the +simple heroism of the death of Roland in the pass of Roncesvalles. Later +Romance is known everywhere by its derivative, secondary, consciously +literary character. Yet it draws sometimes from the original source of +inspiration, and attains, by devious ways, to poetic glories not inferior +to the old. + + + + +IMITATION AND FORGERY + + +Romance is a perennial form of modern literature, and has passed through +many phases. No period has been without it, though the esteem in which +it is held has varied a good deal from age to age. English literature is +strong in romance; there is something in the English temper which makes +scepticism ungrateful to it, and disposes it to treat even dreams +seriously. Chaucer, who laughed at the romantic writers of his day, yet +gave a new lease of life to Romance in _Troilus and Cressida_ and _The +Knightes Tale_. Many of the poets of the seventeenth century chose +romantic themes for their most serious work; if Davenant and Chamberlayne +and others had been as successful as they were ambitious, they would have +anticipated the Revival of Romance. Even in the age of Pope, the old +romance subjects were still popular, though they were celebrated in books +which have long been forgotten. Everyone who has studied the Troy legend +of the Middle Ages knows how great a share in the popularization of the +legend belongs to the Sicilian lawyer, Guido delle Colonne, who +summarized, in the dull style of a Latin chronicle, and without +acknowledgment, the brilliant _Roman de Troie_ which the French poet, +Benoit de Sainte-More had written for Queen Eleanor of England. Guide's +matter-of-fact compilation had an enormous vogue; Chaucer, Lydgate, and +Shakespeare treated it as an authority; and Caxton translated it into +English prose. Through all the changes of fashion Caxton's version +continued in esteem; it was repeatedly revised and reissued; and, in the +very age of Pope, found what was doubtless a large public under the title +_The Destruction of Troy_, _In Three Books . . . With many Admirable Acts +of Chivalry and Martial Prowess_, _effected by Valiant Knights_, _in the +Defence and Love of distressed Ladies. The Thirteenth Edition_, +_Corrected and much Amended_. London, _Printed for Eben. Tracey_, _at +the Three Bibles on London-Bridge_. _1708_. In the underworld of +literature Romance never died out. The Revival of Romance took its +special character from a gradual and powerful reaction against Dryden and +Pope and all those masters of Classical method who, during half a +century, had legislated for English poetry. It began very early in the +eighteenth century, long before the death of Pope. No sooner did a +dynasty of moralists and satirists claim possession of the high places, +and speak in the name of English literature, than all the other interests +and kinds, which survived among the people, began to range themselves in +opposition, and to assert their right to be heard. The supremacy of +Dryden and Pope was the most despotic rule that English poetry has ever +known, and the revolt was strong in proportion. Satire and morality very +easily becomes tedious, especially when they are in close alliance. +Despotism may be tempered by epigrams, and so become tolerable, but it is +important that the epigrams should not be made by the despot. Outside +the charmed circle of his friendships, Pope was ready enough to use his +wit against any pretender. + +The change began gradually, and in very innocent fashion. Poetry had +been taught to be scholarly, self-conscious, experimental; and it showed +its skill in half-playful imitations of the older English masters. Pope +himself imitated Chaucer and Spenser in burlesque fashion. John Philips, +in _The Splendid Shilling_, used Milton's heightened style to describe +the distresses of an impecunious poet. William Shenstone in _The School- +mistress_, parodied Spenser, yet the parody is in no way hostile, and +betrays an almost sentimental admiration. Spenser, like Milton, never +lost credit as a master, though his fame was obscured a little during the +reign of Dryden. His style, it must be remembered, was archaic in his +own time; it could not grow old, for it had never been young. Addison, +in _An Account of the Greatest English Poets_, says that Spenser's verse + + Can charm an understanding age no more; + The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, + While the dull moral lies too plain below. + +But the _Account_ is a merely juvenile work; its dogma is not the sword +of judgment, but the shield of ignorance. "The character he gives of +Spenser," said Pope, "is false; and I have heard him say that he never +read Spenser till fifteen years after he wrote it." As for Pope himself, +among the English poets Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were his childhood's +favorites, in that order; and the year before his death he said to +Spence--"I don't know how it is; there is something in Spenser that +pleases one as strongly in one's old age as it did in one's youth. I +read the Faerie Queene, when I was about twelve, with infinite delight; +and I think it gave me as much when I read it over, about a year or two +ago." + +The lyrical Milton and the romantic Spenser found disciples among poets +in the early half of the eighteenth century. Two of these disciples may +be mentioned, both born about the year 1700, only twelve years later than +Pope. John Dyer, the son of a solicitor in Wales, was bred to the law, +but gave it up to study painting under Jonathan Richardson. His earlier +and better poems were written while he wandered about South Wales in +pursuit of his art. _Grongar Hill_, the most notable of them, was +published in 1726. Love of the country is what inspires his verses, +which have a very winning simplicity, only touched here and there by the +conventions deemed proper for poetry: + + Grass and flowers Quiet treads, + On the meads and mountain-heads, + Along with Pleasure, close ally'd, + Ever by each other's side; + And often, by the murmuring rill, + Hears the thrush, while all is still, + Within the groves of Grongar Hill. + +The truth of his observation endeared him to Wordsworth; and his moral, +when he finds a moral, is without violence: + + How close and small the hedges lie! + What streaks of meadows cross the eye! + A step methinks may pass the stream, + So little distant dangers seem; + So we mistake the Future's face, + Ey'd thro' Hope's deluding glass; + As yon summits soft and fair, + Clad in colours of the air, + Which, to those who journey near, + Barren, and brown, and rough appear, + Still we tread tir'd the same coarse way, + The present's still a cloudy day. + +It takes a good poet to strike a clear note, with no indecision, in the +opening lines of his poem, as Dyer does in _The Country Walk_: + + I am resolv'd, this charming day, + In the open fields to stray; + And have no roof above my head + But that whereon the Gods do tread. + +His landscapes are delicately etched, and are loved for their own sake: + + And there behold a bloomy mead, + A silver stream, a willow shade, + Beneath the shade a fisher stand, + Who, with the angle in his hand, + Swings the nibbling fry to land. + +It would be absurd to speak solemnly of Dyer's debt to Milton; he is an +original poet; but the writer of the lines quoted above can never have +been blind to the beauties of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_. His two +arts brought him little material prosperity; in 1740 he took orders in +the Church of England, and in his later years did harm to his fame by a +long industrial poem called _The Fleece_, which has on it none of the dew +that glistens on his youthful verses. + +James Thomson, who won a great reputation in his own age, was the son of +a parish minister in Scotland. He was educated in Edinburgh, and came to +London to seek his fortune. All Thomson's work shows the new tendencies +in poetry struggling with the accepted fashions. His language in _The +Seasons_ is habitually rhetorical and stilted, yet there is hardly a page +without its vignettes of truth and beauty. When he forgets what he has +learned in the Rhetoric class, and falls back on his own memories and +likings, the poet in him reappears. In _The Castle of Indolence_, +published just before his death in 1748, he imitates Spenser. One stanza +of this poem is more famous than all the rest; it is pure and high +romance: + + As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-Isles, + Placed far amid the melancholy main, + (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles, + Or that aerial beings sometimes deign + To stand embodied to our senses plain), + Sees on the naked hill, or valley low, + The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain, + A vast assembly moving to and fro; + Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show. + +Many who are familiar with this simile have never been at the pains to +remember, or enquire, what it illustrates. Indeed its appearance in the +poem is almost startling, as if it were there for no purpose but to +prophesy of the coming glories of English poetry. The visitors to the +Castle of Indolence are met at the gate by the porter, who supplies them +with dressing-gowns and slippers, wherein to take their ease. They then +stroll off to various parts of the spacious grounds, and their +disappearance is the occasion for this wonderful verse. Thomson cared no +more than his readers for the application of the figure; what possessed +him was his memory of the magic twilight on the west coast of Scotland. + +Pope and Prior were metropolitan poets; it is worth noting that Dyer +belonged to Wales, and Thomson to Scotland. It is even more significant +that Dyer was by profession a painter, and that Thomson's poems were +influenced by memories of the fashionable school of landscape painting. +The development of Romantic poetry in the eighteenth century is +inseparably associated with pictorial art, and especially with the rise +of landscape painting. Two great masters of the seventeenth century, +Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain, are more important than all the rest. +We have here to do not with the absolute merits of painting, nor with its +technical beauties and subtleties, but with its effect on the popular +imagination, which in this matter does not much differ from the poetic +imagination. The landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Claude were made +familiar to an enormous public by the process of engraving, and poetry +followed where painting led. There are exquisite landscapes in the +backgrounds of the great Italian masters; Leonardo, Titian, and others; +but now the background became the picture, and the groups of figures were +reduced to serve as incidents in a wider scheme. Exactly the same +change, the same shift of the centre of interest, may be seen in +Thomson's poetry compared with Spenser's. No doubt it would be difficult +to balance the creditor and debtor account as between poetry and +painting; the earlier pictorial landscapes borrowed some hints from the +older romances; but in England, at least, landscapes of wild rocks, and +calm lakes, and feudal castles lit up by the glow of the setting sun were +familiar before the reaction in poetry set in. Romance, in its modern +development, is largely a question of background. A romantic love-affair +might be defined as a love-affair in other than domestic surroundings. +Who can use the word "romantic" with more authority than Coleridge? In +_Kubla Khan_, a poem which some would choose as the high-water mark of +English romantic poetry, he gets his effect from the description of a +landscape combining the extremes of beauty and terror: + + But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted + Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! + A savage place! as holy and enchanted + As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted + By woman wailing for her demon lover! + And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, + * * * * * + It flung up momently the sacred river. + Five miles meandering with a mazy motion + Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, + Then reached the caverns measureless to man, + And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; + And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far + Ancestral voices prophesying war! + +Romance demands scenery; and it should never be forgotten that the age of +Pope, the age of symmetry and correctness in poetry, was an age when the +taste for wild scenery in painting and in gardening was at its height. If +the house was set in order, the garden broke into a wilderness. Addison +in the _Spectator_ (No. 414) praises the new art of landscape gardening: + + There is generally in nature something more grand and august, than + what we meet with in the curiosities of art. When, therefore, we see + this imitated in any measure, it gives us a nobler and more exalted + kind of pleasure, than what we receive from the nicer and more + accurate productions of art. On this account our _English_ gardens + are not so entertaining to the fancy as those in _France_ and _Italy_, + where we see a larger extent of ground covered over with an agreeable + mixture of garden and forest, which represent everywhere an artificial + wildness, much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we + meet with in those of our own country. + +Addison would have hesitated to apply this doctrine to poetry; indeed the +orthodoxy of that age favored the highest possible contrast between the +orderly works of man, and the garden, which it chose to treat as the +outpost of rebellious nature. Pope was a gardener as well as a poet, and +his gardening was extravagantly romantic. He describes his ideal garden +in the _Epistle to the Earl of Burlington_: + + Let not each beauty everywhere be spy'd, + Where half the skill is decently to hide. + He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, + Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds. + Consult the genius of the place in all; + That tells the waters or to rise, or fall; + Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale, + Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; + Calls in the country, catches opening glades, + Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades; + Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines; + Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. + +Pope carried out these ideas as well as he could in his garden at +Twickenham, where he attempted to compress every variety of scenic effect +within the space of five acres, so that it became a kind of melodramatic +peep-show. The professional landscape-gardeners worked on a larger +scale; the two chief of them perhaps were Bridgeman, who invented the +haha for the purpose of concealing the bounds; and William Kent, Pope's +associate and contemporary, who disarranged old gardens, and designed +illustrations for Spenser's _Faerie Queene_. Kent was an architect and +bad painter, much favored by George I. Lord Chesterfield compares him to +Apelles, who alone was permitted to paint the portrait of Alexander: + + Equal your varied wonders! save + This difference we see, + One would no other painter have-- + No other would have thee. + +From 1716 onward he was much employed by the Earl of Burlington. He +helped to lay out Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, with a fresh and surprising +view at every turn; the wandering visitor was introduced, among other +delights, to the Hermitage, the Temple of Venus, the Egyptian pyramid, +St. Augustine's cave (artfully constructed of roots and moss), the Saxon +Temple, the Temple of Bacchus, and Dido's cave. The craze for romantic +gardening, with its illusions of distance, and its ruins and groves, +persisted throughout the eighteenth century. Shenstone's garden at The +Leasowes enjoyed a higher reputation even than his poetry, and it is well +known how he strained his slender means in the effort to outshine his +neighbors. "In time," says Johnson, "his expenses brought clamours about +him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his +groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies." + +The chief of Kent's successors was Launcelot Brown, commonly called +"Capability Brown" from his habit of murmuring to himself, as he gazed on +a tract of land submitted for his diagnosis--"It has capabilities; it has +capabilities." He laid out Kew and Blenheim. Gazing one day on one of +his own made rivers, he exclaimed, with an artist's rapture,--"Thames! +Thames! Thou wilt never forgive me." He certainly imposed himself upon +his own time, and, so far, was a great man. "Mr. Brown," said Richard +Owen Cambridge, "I very earnestly wish that I may die before you." "Why +so?" said Brown with some surprise. "Because," said he, "I should like +to see Heaven before you had improved it." Among the romantic writers +who were bitten by the mania for picturesque improvement were Horace +Walpole and even Sir Walter Scott. Everyone knows how Walpole bought +from Mrs. Chevenix, the toy-shop woman, a little house called "Chopp'd +Straw Hall" which he converted into the baronial splendors of Strawberry +Hill; and how Scott transmitted a mean Tweedside farm, called Clarty +Hole, into the less pretentious glories of Abbotsford. + +After the practice came the theory. The painters and landscape-gardeners +were followed by a school of philosophers, who expounded Taste and the +laws of the Picturesque. Some extracts from the work of one of these, +Thomas Whately, whose _Observations on Modern Gardening_ appeared in +1770, will show to what excesses the whole nonsensical business had been +carried. "In wild and romantic scenes," says Whately, "may be introduced +a ruined stone bridge, of which some arches may be still standing, and +the loss of those which are fallen may be supplied by a few planks, with +a rail, thrown over the vacancy. It is a picturesque object: it suits +the situation; and the antiquity of the passage, the care taken to keep +it still open, though the original building is decayed, the apparent +necessity which thence results for a communication, give it an imposing +air of reality." The context of this passages shows that the bridge +leads nowhither. On the management of rocks Whately is a connoisseur. +"Their most distinguished characters," he says, "are _dignity_, _terror_, +and _fancy_: the expressions of all are constantly wild; and sometimes a +rocky scene is only wild, without pretensions to any particular +character." But ruins are what he likes best, and he recommends that +they shall be constructed on the model of Tintern Abbey. They must be +obvious ruins, much dilapidated, or the visitors will examine them too +closely. "An appendage evidently more modern than the principal +structure will sometimes corroborate the effect; the shed of a cottager +amidst the remains of a temple, is a contrast both to the former and the +present state of the building." It seems almost impossible that this +should have been offered as serious advice; but it was the admired usage +of the time. Whately's book was a recognized authority, and ran through +several editions. He is also known as a Shakespeare critic, of no +particular mark. + +A more influential writer than Whately was William Gilpin, an industrious +clergyman and schoolmaster, who spent his holidays wandering and +sketching in the most approved parts of England, Wales and Scotland. His +books on the Picturesque were long held in esteem. The earliest of them +was entitled _Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South +Wales . . . relative chiefly to picturesque beauty_ (1782). Others, +which followed in steady succession, rendered a like service to the Lake +district, the Highlands of Scotland, the New Forest, and the Isle of +Wight. Those books taught the aesthetic appreciation of wild nature to a +whole generation. It is a testimony to their influence that for a time +they enslaved the youth of Wordsworth. In _The Prelude_ he tells how, in +early life, he misunderstood the teaching of Nature, not from +insensibility, but from the presumption which applied to the impassioned +life of Nature the "rules of mimic art." He calls this habit "a strong +infection of the age," and tells how he too, for a time, was wont to +compare scene with scene, and to pamper himself "with meagre novelties of +colour and proportion." In another passage he speaks of similar +melodramatic errors, from conformity to book-notions, in his early study +of poetry. + + The dignities of plain occurrence then + Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point, + Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. + +But imaginative power, and the humility which had been his in childhood, +returned to him-- + + I shook the habit off + Entirely and for ever. + +Yet in one curious respect Gilpin's amateur teaching did leave its mark +on the history of English poetry. When Wordsworth and Coleridge chose +the Wye and Tintern Abbey for their walking tour, they were probably +determined in that direction by the fame of the scenery; and when they +and Southey settled in the Lake district, it may be surmised that they +felt other and stronger attractions than those that came from +Wordsworth's early associations with the place. The Wye, Tintern Abbey, +the English Lakes, the Scottish Highlands--these were the favored places +of the apostles of the picturesque, and have now become memorial places +in our poetic history. + +All these gardeners and aesthetic critics who busied themselves with wild +nature were aiming at an ideal which had been expressed in many painted +landscapes, and had been held up as the top of admiration by one of the +greatest English poets. The influence of Milton on the new landscape +interest must be held to be not less than the influence of his +contemporaries, Salvator Rosa and Claude. His descriptions of Paradise +did more than any painting to alter the whole practice of gardening. They +are often appealed to, even by the technical gardeners. In garden-lore +Milton was a convinced Romantic. He has two descriptions of the Garden +of Eden; the slighter of the two occurs on the occasion of Raphael's +entry, and merely resumes the earlier and fuller account: + + Their glittering tents they passed, and now is come + Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrhe, + And flowering Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balme; + A Wilderness of Sweets; for Nature here + Wantoned as in her prime and plaid at will + Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet, + Wilde above rule or art; enormous bliss. + +Coleridge has some remarks, in his _Table Talk_, on Milton's disregard of +painting. There are only two pictures, he says, in Milton; Adam bending +over the sleeping Eve, and the entrance of Dalilah, like a ship under +full sail. Certainly the above lines are no picture; but they are more +exciting than any clear delineation could be; they are full of scent, and +air, and the emotions of ease and bliss. The other passage has more of +architectural quality in it, and describes what first met Satan's gaze, +when he entered the Garden and sat, perched like a cormorant, upon the +Tree of Life. + + The crisped Brooks + With mazie error under pendant shades + Ran Nectar, visiting each plant, and fed + Flours worthy of Paradise which not nice Art + In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon + Poured forth profuse on Hill and Dale and Plaine + Both where the morning sun first warmly smote + The open field, and where the unpierc't shade + Imbround the noontide Bowers: Thus was this place, + A happy rural seat of various view: + Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gumms and Balme, + Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rinde + Hung amiable, _Hesperian_ Fables true, + If true, here onely, and of delicious taste: + Betwixt the Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks + Grasing the tender herb, were interpos'd, + Or palmie hilloc, or the flourie lap + Of some irriguous Valley spread her store, + Flours of all hue, and without Thorn the Rose: + Another side, umbrageous Grots and Caves + Of coole recess, o'er which the mantling Vine + Layes forth her purple Grape, and gently creeps + Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall + Down the slope hills, disperst, or in a Lake, + That to the fringed Bank with Myrtle crown'd, + Her chrystall mirror holds, unite their streams. + The Birds their quire apply; aires, vernal aires, + Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune + The trembling leaves, while Universal _Pan_ + Knit with the _Graces_ and the _Hours_ in dance + Led on th' Eternal Spring. + +Here is all the variety of hill and valley, wood and lawn, rock and +meadow, waterfall and lake, rose and vine, which the landscape artists +also loved to depict, and which, together with ruined temples and +castles, unknown in Paradise, became the cherished ideal of landscape +gardening. By the influence of _Paradise Lost_ upon the gardeners, no +less than by the influence of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ upon the +poets, Milton may claim to be regarded as one of the forefathers of the +Romantic Revival. There is no need to distinguish carefully between +poetry and painting in discussing their contributions to Romance. A +great outcry was raised, in the last age, against literary criticism of +pictures. But in this question we are concerned with this effect of +pictures on the normal imagination, which is literary, which cares for +story, and suggested action, and the whole chain of memories and desires +that a picture may set in motion. Do not most of those who look at a +romantic landscape imagine themselves wandering among the scenes that are +portrayed? And are not men prone to admire in Nature what they have been +taught by Art to notice? The landscape art of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries taught them to imagine themselves in lonely scenes, +among old ruins or frowning rocks, by the light of sunrise or sunset, +cast on gleaming lakes. These were the theatre of Romance; and the +emotions awakened by scenes like these played an enormous part in the +Revival. It was thus that poets were educated to find that exaltation in +the terrors of mountainous regions which Gray expressed when he said: +"Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with +religion and poetry." + +The weaker side of modern Romance, the play-acting and pretence that has +always accompanied it, may be seen in the gardening mania. It was not +enough to be a country gentleman; the position must be improved by the +added elegances of a hermit's cell and an Egyptian pyramid. It is like +children's play; the day is long, the affairs of our elders are tedious, +we are tired of a life in which there is no danger and no hunger; let us +pretend that we are monks, or ancient Romans. The mature imagination +interprets the facts; this kind of imagination escapes from the facts +into a world of make-believe, where the tyranny and cause and effect is +no longer felt. It is not a hard word to call it childish; the +imagination of these early Romantics had a child's weakness and a child's +delightful confidence and zest. + +The same play activity expressed itself in literature, where an orgy of +imitation ushered in the real movement. The antiquarian beginnings of +Romantic poetry may be well illustrated by the life and works of Thomas +Warton. He passed his life as a resident Fellow of Trinity College, +Oxford, and devoted his leisure, which was considerable, to the study of +English poetry and Gothic architecture. He was not yet thirty when, in +1757, he was elected Professor of Poetry, a post which he held for ten +years. During this time he planned a complete History of English Poetry, +a task which Pope and Gray in turn had contemplated and abandoned. The +historical interest which is so conspicuous in early Romanticism owed not +a little, it may be remarked in passing, to the initiative of Pope, who +must therefore be given a place in any full genealogy of the Romantic +family. Warton's _History_, so far as it was completed, was published +between 1774 and 1781, when he relaxed his efforts, and took up lesser +tasks. In 1785 he was made Poet Laureate on the strength of his early +poems and later scholarship. He died in 1790. + +Warton's poems are a curious study. Spenser and Milton are his masters, +and he is a docile pupil. His poetry is all derivative, and might be +best described as imitation poetry. Christopher North said of him that +"the gods had made him poetical, but not a poet," a saying which contains +the whole truth. He puts together a mosaic of phrases borrowed from his +teachers, and frames them in a sentimental setting of his own. Here are +some passages from _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, which, though he wrote +it at the age of seventeen, does not differ in method or inspiration from +the rest of his poetical work: + + Beneath yon ruin'd abbey's moss-grown piles + Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, + Where thro' some western window the pale moon + Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light; + While sullen sacred silence reigns around, + Save the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bow'r + Amid the mould'ring caverns dark and damp, + Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves + Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green + Invests some wasted tow'r. . . . + Then, when the sullen shades of ev'ning close, + Where thro' the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam + The dying embers scatter, far remote + From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof + Resound with festive echo, let me sit, + Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge. . . . + O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought! + O come with saintly look, and steadfast step, + From forth thy cave embower'd with mournful yew, + Where ever to the curfeu's solemn sound + List'ning thou sitt'st, and with thy cypress bind + Thy votary's hair, and seal him for thy son. + +Melancholy seems not to have answered these advances. In later life +Warton was a short, squat, red-faced man, fond of ale, and a cheerful +talker, with a thick utterance, so that he gobbled like a turkey-cock. +Some of his verses are cheerful. This is from the _Ode on the Approach +of Summer_: + + Haste thee, Nymph! and hand in hand + With thee lead a buxom band; + Bring fantastic-footed Joy, + With Sport, that yellow-tressed boy: + Leisure, that through the balmy sky + Chases a crimson butterfly. + Bring Health, that loves in early dawn + To meet the milk-maid on the lawn; + Bring Pleasure, rural nymph, and Peace, + Meek, cottage-loving shepherdess! + +It is all like this, fluent and unnecessary. Perhaps no verses in +English were ever made so exactly in the approved fashion of modern Latin +verses. Warton writes pleasantly, his cento of reminiscences is skilful, +and his own epithets are sometimes happy, yet nothing comes of it. His +work suggests the doubt whether any modern Latin verse, even the best, +would deceive an intelligent citizen of ancient Rome. + +The strange thing about the Romantic Revival is that an epidemic of this +sort of imitation at last produced real poetry and real romance. The +industrious simulation of the emotions begot the emotions simulated. Is +there not a story told of a young officer who, having dressed himself in +a sheet to frighten his fellows, was embarrassed by the company of a real +ghost, bent on the same errand; and retired from the enterprise, leaving +it wholly to the professional? That, at any rate, is very much what +happened to the Romantic impersonators. + +Another parallel may perhaps be found in the power of vulgarity to +advance civilization. Take, for instance, the question of manners. +Politeness is a codification of the impulses of a heart that is moved by +good will and consideration for others. If the impulses are not there, +the politeness is so far unreal and insincere--a cheap varnish. Yet it +is insisted on by society, and enforced by fear and fashion. If the +forms are taught, the soul of them may be, and sometimes is, breathed in +later. So this imitative and timid artifice, this conformity to opinions +the ground and meaning of which is not fully understood, becomes a great +engine of social progress. Imitation and forgery, which are a kind of +literary vulgarity, were the school of Romanticism in its nonage. Some +of the greater poets who passed this way went on to express things +subtler and more profound than had found a voice in the poetry that they +imitated. + +The long debate on the so-called poems of Ossian is now ended. They are +known to be a not very skilful forgery by James Macpherson. Yet their +importance in literary history remains undiminished, and the life of +Macpherson has a curious kind of pathos. He was the creature and victim +of the Romantic movement, and was led, by almost insensible degrees, into +supplying fraudulent evidence for the favorite Romantic theory that a +truer and deeper vein of poetry is to be found among primitive peoples. +Collins's _Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland_ +and Gray's _Bard_ show the literary world prepared to put itself to +school to Celtic tradition. Macpherson supplied it with a body of poetry +which exactly fulfilled its expectations. The crucial date in his +history is his meeting in 1759 with John Home, the author of the once +famous tragedy of _Douglas_. In the summer of that year Home was +drinking the waters at Moffat, and among the visitors assembled there +found Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, then a boy of ten, and his +tutor, James Macpherson, a young Highlander, shy and ambitious, who had +been educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and had dabbled in verse. Home, +full of the literary gossip of the hour, seized upon the opportunity to +question Macpherson concerning the poems that were rumored to have +survived among the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland. In the light +of what we now know it is not difficult to understand the genesis of this +great European fraud. Macpherson was proud of his race, which he had +celebrated in an heroic poem called _The Highlander_. He had interested +himself in Gaelic poetry, though his knowledge of the tongue was not +good, and he had by him some fragments of genuine Gaelic poems. He was +flattered by Home's appeal to him, and, feeling perhaps that the few and +slight genuine poems which he could produce would hardly warrant the +magnificence of his allusions to Gaelic literature, he forged a tale in +poetic prose, called _The Death of Oscar_, and presented it to Home as a +translation from the Gaelic. The poem was much admired, and Macpherson, +unable now to retrace his steps without declaring himself a cheat, soon +produced others from the same source. These were submitted to the +literary society of Edinburgh, with the great Dr. Blair at its head, and +were pronounced to be the wonder of the world. From this point onward, +during a long and melancholy life, poor Macpherson was enslaved to the +fraud which had its beginning in the shyness and vanity of his own +character. He was bound now to forge or to fail; and no doubt the +consciousness that it was his own work which called forth such rapturous +applause supported him in his labors and justified him to his own +conscience. A subscription was easily raised in Edinburgh to enable him +to travel and collect the remains of Celtic poetry. For a few months he +perambulated the western highlands and islands, and returned to Edinburgh +bringing with him _Fingal_, a complete epic poem in six books. This was +followed by _Temora_, in eight books, also attributed to the great Gaelic +bard Ossian; and the new Celtic fashion was established. + +These poems had an immense success. Everyone knows how they influenced +the youth of Goethe, and captured the imagination of Napoleon. It is +less surprising that they enraptured the poet Gray, and were approved by +the professor Blair, for they were exactly modelled on the practice and +theory of these two critics. All the fashionable doctrine of that age +concerning the history of poetry was borne out by these works. Poetry, +so it was held, is to be found in its perfection only in primitive +society, before it is overlaid by the complexities of modern +civilization. Its most perfect, and therefore its earliest, form, is the +epic; and Dr. Blair must have been delighted to find that the laws of the +epic, which he so often explained to his class in Edinburgh University, +were minutely observed by the oldest of Scottish bards. He died without +suspecting that the inspiration of the Ossianic poems had come partly +from himself. + +The belief that Celtic literature is essentially and eternally +melancholy,--a belief which persisted down to the time of Matthew Arnold, +also drew its strength from the poems of Ossian. Here again theory +showed the way to practice. The melancholy of the Ossianic poems is not +the melancholy of the Celt, but a melancholy compounded of many simples, +and extracted from works that were held in high esteem in the eighteenth +century--Young's _Night Thoughts_, Blair's _Grave_, Gray's _Bard_, and +the soliloquies of Milton's Satan. + +Macpherson was soon challenged, and his whole life was passed in a brawl +of controversy. Two famous men dismissed him contemptuously. Dr. +Johnson, who knew what honesty means among scholars, treated him as an +impudent impostor. Wordsworth, who knew what simplicity means in poetry, +declared that all the imagery of the poems is false and spurious. But +the whole question early became a national quarrel, and the honor of +Scotland was involved in it. There are signs that Macpherson would +gladly have escaped from the storm he had raised. Aided by his early +literary success, he became a prosperous man, held a well-paid post at +court, entered Parliament, and was pensioned by the government. Still +the controversy persisted. He had found it easy to take up a haughty +attitude towards those hostile critics who had doubted his good faith and +had asked him to produce his Gaelic originals. But now the demand for +the originals came from his champions and friends, who desired to place +the fame of Scotland's oldest and greatest poet on a sure foundation. He +wriggled on the hook, and more than once timidly hinted that the poems +owed not a little to the poetic genius of the translator. But this half- +hearted attempt to rob the great Ossian of a part of his fame stirred the +Caledonian enthusiasts to a frenzy of indignation. At last, when he was +no longer able to restrain his supporters, the wretched Macpherson found +no escape but one. In middle age, some twenty years after his first +appearance on the poetic horizon, he sat down, with a heavy heart and an +imperfect knowledge of the Gaelic tongue, to forge the originals. In +1807, eleven years after his death, these were at last published. The +progress of genuine Celtic scholarship during the succeeding century did +the rest; and the old blind bard rejoined the mists and vapors which were +the inspiration of his Muse. {78} The poems of Ossian are only one, +though perhaps the most signal, instance of the forgeries which prevailed +like an epidemic at the time of the Romantic Revival. Some of these, +like Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries, were little better than +cold-blooded mercenary frauds. Others, like Chatterton's Rowley Poems +and Horace Walpole's _Castle of Otranto_, are full of the zest and +delight of play-acting. Even Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_, though it is +free from the reproach of forgery, is touched by the same spirit. The +severe morality of scholarship had not yet been applied to mediaeval or +modern matter. Scholars are the trustees of poets; but where this trust +is undertaken by men who are poets themselves, there is usually a good +deal of gaiety and exuberance in its performance. + +I have now traced some of the neglected sources of revived Romance, and +have shown how in this movement, more notably, perhaps, than in any other +great movement in literature, it was not the supply which created the +demand, but the demand which created the supply. The Romantic change was +wrought, not by the energy of lonely pioneers, but by a shift in public +taste. Readers of poetry knew what it was they wanted, even before they +knew whether it existed. Writers were soon at hand to prove that it had +existed in the past, and could still be made. The weakness of vague +desire is felt everywhere in the origins of the change. Out of the +weakness came strength; the tinsel Gothic castle of Walpole was enlarged +to house the magnanimous soul of Scott; the Sorrows of Werther gave birth +to _Faust_. + +The weakness of the Romantic movement, its love of mere sensation and +sentiment, is well exhibited in its effect upon the sane and strong mind +of Keats. He was a pupil of the Romantics; and poetry, as he first +conceived of it, seemed to open to him boundless fields of passive +enjoyment. His early work shows the struggle between the delicious swoon +of reverie and the growing pains of thought. His verse, in its +beginnings, was crowded with "luxuries, bright, milky, soft, and rosy." +He was a boy at the time of England's greatest naval glory, but he thinks +more of Robin Hood than of Nelson. If Robin Hood could revisit the +forest, says Keats, + + He would swear, for all his oaks + Fallen beneath the dockyard strokes, + Have rotted on the briny seas. + +His use of a word like "rich," as Mr. Robert Bridges has remarked, is +almost inhuman in its luxurious detachment from the human situation. + + Now more than ever seems it rich to die, + To cease upon the midnight with no pain. + Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, + Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave. + +By his work in this kind Keats became the parent and founder of the +Aesthetic School of poetry, which is more than half in love with easeful +death, and seeks nothing so ardently as rest and escape from the world. +The epilogue to the Aesthetic movement was written by William Morris +before ever he broke out from those enchanted bowers: + + So with this earthly paradise it is, + If ye will read aright, and pardon me + Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss + Midmost the beating of the steely sea, + Where tossed about all hearts of men must be, + Whose ravening monsters mighty men must slay, + Not the poor singer of an empty day. + +Yet there is another side to the work of Keats, more wonderful in its +broken promise than all the soft perfections of his tender Muse. He grew +tired of imitation and ease. Weakness may exclude the world by +forgetting it; only strength can conquer the world. What if this law be +also the law of beauty? The thought inspires his last great attempt, the +fragment of _Hyperion_. Men have their dynasties and revolutions; but +the immortals also, whom men worship, must change to live. + + So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, + A power more strong in beauty. + +And this power cannot be won by those who shirk the challenge of ugly +facts. + + O folly! for to bear all naked truths, + And to envisage circumstance, all calm, + That is the top of sovereignty. + +As if to enforce his thought by repetition, Keats made an allegorical +framework for his revised version of the poem. There he exhibits himself +as wandering among the delights of the garden of this life, and indulging +himself to the point of drunkenness. Awaked from his swoon, he finds +himself at the steps of the temple of fame. He is told he must climb or +die. After an agony of struggle he mounts to the top, and has speech +there with a veiled figure, who tells him that this temple is all that +has been spared in the war between the rival houses of the Gods. When he +asks why he has been saved from death, the veiled figure makes reply: + + "None can usurp this height," return'd that shade, + "But those to whom the miseries of the world + Are misery, and will not let them rest." + * * * * * + "Are there not thousands in the world," said I, + Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, + "Who love their fellows even to the death, + Who feel the giant agony of the world, + And more, like slaves to poor humanity, + Labour for mortal good? I sure should see + Other men here, but I am here alone." + "Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries," + Rejoined that voice; "they are no dreamers weak; + They seek no wonder but the human face, + No music but a happy-noted voice: + They come not here, they have no thought to come; + And thou art here, for thou art less than they. + What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe, + To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing, + A fever of thyself: think of the earth; + What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee? + What haven? every creature hath its home, + Every sole man hath days of joy and pain, + Whether his labours be sublime or low-- + The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct: + Only the dreamer venoms all his days, + Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve." + +In this, which is almost his last deliberate utterance, Keats expresses +his sense of the futility of romance, and seems to condemn poetry itself. +A condemnation of the expression of profound thought in beautiful forms +would come very ill from Keats, but this much he surely had learned, that +poetry, the real high poetry, cannot be made out of dreams. The worst of +dreams is that you cannot discipline them. Their tragedy is night-mare; +their comedy is nonsense. Only what can stand severe discipline, and +emerge the purer and stronger for it, is fit to endure. For all its sins +of flatness and prosiness the Classical School has always taught +discipline. No doubt it has sometimes trusted too absolutely to +discipline, and has given us too much of the foot-rule and the tuning- +fork. But one discipline, at least, poetry cannot afford to neglect--the +discipline of facts and life. The poetry that can face this ordeal and +survive it is rare. Some poets are tempted to avoid the experience and +save the dream. Others, who were poets in their youth, undergo the +experience and are beaten by it. But the poetry which can bear all naked +truth and still keep its singing voice is the only immortal poetry. + + + + +Footnotes: + + +{78} For some of the facts in this account of Ossian I am indebted to +Mr. J. S. Smart's fascinating book, _James Macpherson_, _an Episode in +Literature_ (David Nutt, 1905). + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE*** + + +******* This file should be named 19367.txt or 19367.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/3/6/19367 + + + +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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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