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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5353ba0 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63547 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63547) diff --git a/old/63547-0.txt b/old/63547-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index afab220..0000000 --- a/old/63547-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1827 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Homage to John Dryden, by Thomas Stearns Eliot - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States -and most other parts of the world 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. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook. - - -Title: Homage to John Dryden - Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century - -Author: Thomas Stearns Eliot - -Release Date: October 25, 2020 [EBook #63547] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMAGE TO JOHN DRYDEN *** - - - - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Google Books.) - - - - - - -HOMAGE TO -JOHN DRYDEN - - - -THREE ESSAYS ON POETRY OF THE -SEVENTEENTH CENTURY - - - -T. S. ELIOT - - - - -PUBLISHED BY LEONARD AND VIRGINIA WOOLF -AT THE HOGARTH PRESS, TAVISTOCK SQUARE -LONDON, W.C.1 - -1924 - - - - -TO - -GEORGE SAINTSBURY - - - - -PREFACE - - -The three essays composing this small book were written several years -ago for publication in the "Times Literary Supplement," to the editor of -which I owe the encouragement to write them, and now the permission to -reprint them. Inadequate as periodical criticism, they need still more -justification in a book. Some apology, therefore, is required. - -My intention had been to write a series of papers on the poetry of the -seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: beginning with Chapman and Donne, -and ending with Johnson. This forbidden fruit of impossible leisure -might have filled two volumes. At best, it would not have pretended to -completeness; the subjects would have been restricted by my own -ignorance and caprice, but the series would have included Aurelian -Townshend and Bishop King, and the authors of "Cooper's Hill" and "The -Vanity of Human Wishes," as well as Swift and Pope. That which -dissipation interrupts, the infirmities of age come to terminate. One -learns to conduct one's life with greater economy: I have abandoned this -design in the pursuit of other policies. I have long felt that the -poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even much of that of -inferior inspiration, possesses an elegance and a dignity absent from -the popular and pretentious verse of the Romantic Poets and their -successors. To have urged this claim persuasively would have led me -indirectly into considerations of politics, education, and theology -which I no longer care to approach in this way. I hope that these three -papers may in spite of and partly because of their defects preserve in -cryptogram certain notions which, if expressed directly, would be -destined to immediate obloquy, followed by perpetual oblivion. - - -T. S. ELIOT. - - - - -CONTENTS -PREFACE -I. JOHN DRYDEN -II. THE METAPHYSICAL POETS -III. ANDREW MARVELL - - - - -I. JOHN DRYDEN - - -If the prospect of delight be wanting (which alone justifies the perusal -of poetry) we may let the reputation of Dryden sleep in the manuals of -literature. To those who are genuinely insensible of his genius (and -these are probably the majority of living readers of poetry) we can only -oppose illustrations of the following proposition: that their -insensibility does not merely signify indifference to satire and wit, -but lack of perception of qualities not confined to satire and wit and -present in the work of other poets whom these persons feel that they -understand. To those whose taste in poetry is formed entirely upon the -English poetry of the nineteenth-century--to the majority--it is -difficult to explain or excuse Dryden: the twentieth century is still -the nineteenth, although it may in time acquire its own character. The -nineteenth century had, like every other, limited tastes and peculiar -fashions; and, like every other, it was unaware of its own limitations. -Its tastes and fashions had no place for Dryden; yet Dryden is one of -the tests of a catholic appreciation of poetry. - -He is a successor of Jonson, and therefore the descendant of Marlowe; he -is the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the -eighteenth century. Once we have mastered Dryden--and by mastery is -meant a full and essential enjoyment, not the enjoyment of a private -whimsical fashion--we can extract whatever enjoyment and edification -there is in his contemporaries--Oldham, Denham, or the less remunerative -Waller; and still more his successors--not only Pope, but Phillips, -Churchill, Gray, Johnson, Cowper, Goldsmith. His inspiration is -prolonged in Crabbe and Byron; it even extends, as Mr. van Doren -cleverly points out, to Poe. Even the poets responsible for the revolt -were well acquainted with him: Wordsworth knew his work, and Keats -invoked his aid. We cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred -years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden; and to enjoy -Dryden means to pass beyond the limitations of the nineteenth century -into a new freedom. - - -All, all of a piece throughout! -Thy Chase had a Beast in View; -Thy Wars brought nothing about; -Thy Lovers were all untrue. -'Tis well an Old Age is out, -And time to begin a New. - -* * * * - -The world's great age begins anew, -The golden years return, -The earth doth like a snake renew -Her winter weeds outworn: -Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam -Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. - - -The first of these passages is by Dryden, the second by Shelley; the -second is found in the "Oxford Book of English Verse," the first is not; -yet we might defy anyone to show that the second is superior on -intrinsically poetic merit. It is easy to see why the second should -appeal more readily to the nineteenth, and what is left of the -nineteenth under the name of the twentieth, century. It is not so easy -to see propriety in an image which divests a snake of "winter weeds"; -and this is a sort of blemish which would have been noticed more quickly -by a contemporary of Dryden than by a contemporary of Shelley. - -These reflections are occasioned by an admirable book on Dryden which -has appeared at this very turn of time, when taste is becoming perhaps -more fluid and ready for a new mould.[1] It is a book which every -practitioner of English verse should study. The consideration is so -thorough, the matter so compact, the appreciation so just, temperate, -and enthusiastic, and supplied with such copious and well-chosen -extracts from the poetry, the suggestion of astutely placed facts leads -our thought so far, that there only remain to mention, as defects which -do not detract from its value, two omissions: the prose is not dealt -with, and the plays are somewhat slighted. What is especially impressive -is the exhibition of the very wide range of Dryden's work, shown by the -quotations of every species. Everyone knows "MacFlecknoe," and parts of -"Absalom and Achitophel"; in consequence, Dryden has sunk by the persons -he has elevated to distinction--Shadwell of Settle, Shaftesbury and -Buckingham. Dryden was much more than a satirist; to dispose of him as a -satirist is to place an obstacle in the way of our understanding. At all -events, we must satisfy ourselves of our definition of the term satire; -we must not allow our familiarity with the word to blind us to -differences and refinements; we must not assume that satire is a fixed -type, and fixed to the prosaic, suited only to prose; we must -acknowledge that satire is not the same thing in the hands of two -different writers of genius. The connotations of "satire" and of "wit," -in short, may be only prejudices of nineteenth-century taste. Perhaps, -we think, after reading Mr. van Doren's book, a juster view of Dryden -may be given by beginning with some other portion of his work than his -celebrated satires; but even here there is much more present, and much -more that is poetry, than is usually supposed. - -The piece of Dryden's which is the most fun, which is the most sustained -display of surprise after surprise of wit from line to line, is -"MacFlecknoe." Dryden's method here is something very near to parody; he -applies vocabulary, images, and ceremony which arouse epic associations -of grandeur, to make an enemy helplessly ridiculous. But the effect, -though disastrous for the enemy, is very different from that of the -humour which merely belittles, such as the satire of Mark Twain. Dryden -continually enhances: he makes his object great, in a way contrary to -expectation; and the total effect is due to the transformation of the -ridiculous into poetry. As an example may be taken a fine passage -plagiarized from Cowley, from lines which Dryden must have marked well, -for he quotes them directly in one of his prefaces. Here is Cowley:-- - - -Where their vast courts the mother-waters keep, -And undisturbed by moons in silence sleep. . . . -Beneath the dens where unfledged tempests lie, -And infant winds their tender voices try. - - -In "MacFlecknoe" this becomes:-- - - -Where their vast courts the mother-strumpets keep, -And undisturbed by watch, in silence sleep. -Near these, a nursery erects its head, -Where queens are formed, and future heroes bred; -Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry, -Where infant punks their tender voices try, -And little Maximins the gods defy. - - -The passage from Cowley is by no means despicable verse. But it is a -commonplace description of commonly poetic objects; it has not the -element of _surprise_ so essential to poetry, and this Dryden provides. -A clever versifier might have written Cowley's lines; only a poet could -have made what Dryden made of them. It is impossible to dismiss his -verses as "prosaic"; turn them into prose and they are transmuted, the -fragrance is gone. The reproach of the prosaic, levelled at Dryden, -rests upon a confusion between the emotions considered to be -poetic--which is a matter allowing considerable latitude of fashion--and -the _result_ of personal emotion in poetry; and, in the third place, -there is the emotion _depicted_ by the poet in some kinds of poetry, of -which the "Testaments" of Villon is an example. Again, there is the -intellect, the originality and independence and clarity of what we -vaguely call the poet's "point of view." Our valuation of poetry, in -short, depends upon several considerations, upon the permanent and upon -the mutable and upon the transitory. When we try to isolate the -essentially poetic, we bring our pursuit in the end to something -insignificant; our standards vary with every poet whom we consider. All -we can hope to do, in the attempt to introduce some order into our -preferences, is to clarify our reasons for finding pleasure in the -poetry that we like. - -With regard to Dryden, therefore, we can say this much. Our taste in -English poetry has been largely founded upon a partial perception of the -value of Shakespeare and Milton, a perception which dwells upon -sublimity of theme and action. Shakespeare had a great deal more; he had -nearly everything to satisfy our various desires for poetry. The point -is that the depreciation or neglect of Dryden is not due to the fact -that his work is not poetry, but to a prejudice that the material, the -feelings, out of which he built is not poetic. Thus Matthew Arnold -observes, in mentioning Dryden and Pope together, that "their poetry is -conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived in the -soul." Arnold was, perhaps, not altogether the detached critic when he -wrote this line; he may have been stirred to a defence of his own -poetry, conceived and composed in the soul of a mid-century Oxford -graduate. Pater remarks that Dryden-- - - -"Loved to emphasize the distinction between poetry and prose, the -protest against their confusion coming with somewhat diminished effect -from one whose poetry was so prosaic." - -But Dryden was right, and the sentence of Pater is cheap journalism. -Hazlitt, who had perhaps the most uninteresting mind of all our -distinguished critics, says-- - -"Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry -in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated--Chaucer, -Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton--were of the natural." - - -In one sentence Hazlitt has committed at least four crimes against -taste. It is bad enough to lump Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and -Milton together under the denomination of "natural"; it is bad to commit -Shakespeare to one style only; it is bad to join Dryden and Pope -together; but the last absurdity is the contrast, of Milton, our -greatest master of the _artificial_ style, with Dryden, whose style -(vocabulary, syntax, and order of thought) is in a high degree natural. -And what all these objections come to, we repeat, is a repugnance for -the material out of which Dryden's poetry is built. - -It would be truer to say, indeed, even in the form of the unpersuasive -paradox, that Dryden is distinguished principally by his poetic ability. -We prize him, as we do Mallarmé, for what he made of his material. Our -estimate is only in part the appreciation of ingenuity: in the end the -result is poetry. Much of Dryden's unique merit consists in his ability -to make the small into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the -trivial into the magnificent. In this he differs not only from Milton, -who required a canvas of the largest size, but from Pope, who required -one of the smallest. If you compare any satiric "character" of Pope with -one of Dryden, you will see that the method and intention are widely -divergent. When Pope alters, he diminishes; he is a master of miniature. -The singular skill of his portrait of Addison, for example, in the -"Epistle to Arbuthnot," depends upon the justice and reserve, the -apparent determination not to exaggerate. The genius of Pope is not for -caricature. But the effect of the portraits of Dryden is to transform -the object into something greater, as were transformed the verses of -Cowley quoted above. - - -A fiery soul, which working out its way, -Fretted the pigmy body to decay: -And o'er informed the tenement of clay. - - -These lines are not merely a magnificent tribute. They create the object -which they contemplate; the poetry is purer than anything in Pope except -the last lines of the "Dunciad." Dryden is in fact much nearer to the -master of comic creation than to Pope. As in Jonson, the effect is far -from laughter; the comic is the material, the result is poetry. The -Civic Guards of Rhodes-- - - -The country rings around with loud alarms, -And raw in fields the rude militia swarms; -Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense, -In peace a charge, in war a weak defence; -Stout once a month they march, a blust'ring band, -And ever, but in times of need, at hand; -This was the morn, when issuing on the guard, -Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepared -Of seeming arms to make a short essay, -Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day. - - -Sometimes the wit appears as a delicate flavour to the magnificence, -as in "Alexander's Feast":-- - - -Sooth'd with the sound the king grew vain; -Fought all his battles o'er again; -And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain. - - -The great advantage of Dryden over Milton is that while the former is -always in control of his ascent, and can rise or fall at will (and how -masterfully, like his own Timotheus, he directs the transitions!), the -latter has elected a perch from which he cannot afford to fall, and from -which he is in danger of slipping. - - -food alike those pure -Intelligential substances require -As doth your Rational; and both contain -Within them every lower faculty -Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, -Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, -And corporeal to incorporeal turn. - - -Dryden might have made poetry out of that; his translation from -Lucretius is poetry. But we have an ingenious example, on which to test -our contrast of Dryden and Milton: it is Dryden's "Opera," called _The -State of Innocence and Fall of Man_, of which Nathaniel Lee neatly says -in his preface:-- - - -Milton did the wealthy mine disclose, -And rudely cast what you could well dispose: -He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground, -A chaos, for no perfect world were found, -Till through the heap, your mighty genius shined. - - -In the author's preface Dryden acknowledges his debt generously -enough:-- - -"The original being undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most -noble, and most sublime poems, which either this age or nation -has produced." - - -The poem begins auspiciously:-- - - -_Lucifer_: Is this the seat our conqueror has given? -And this the climate we must change for Heaven? -These regions and this realm my wars have got; -This mournful empire is the loser's lot: -In liquid burnings, or on dry to dwell, -Is all the sad variety of hell. - - -It is an early work; it is on the whole a feeble work; it is not -deserving of sustained comparison with "Paradise Lost." But "all the sad -variety of hell"! Dryden is already stirring; he has assimilated what he -could from Milton; and he has shown himself capable of producing as -splendid verse. - -The capacity for assimilation, and the consequent extent of range, are -conspicuous qualities of Dryden. He advanced and exhibited his variety -by constant translation; and his translations of Horace, of Ovid, of -Lucretius, are admirable. His gravest defects are supposed to be -displayed in his dramas, but if these were more read they might be more -praised. From the point of view of either the Elizabethan or the French -drama they are obviously inferior; but the charge of inferiority loses -part of its force if we admit that Dryden was not quite trying to -compete with either, but was pursuing a direction of his own. He created -no character; and although his arrangements of plot manifest exceptional -ingenuity, it is the pure magnificence of diction, of poetic diction, -that keeps his plays alive:-- - - -How I loved -Witness ye days and nights, and all ye hours, -That danced away with down upon your feet, -As all your business were to count my passion. -One day passed by, and nothing saw but love;-- -Another came, and still 'twas only love: -The suns were wearied out with looking on, -And I untired with loving. -I saw you every day and all the day; -And every day was still but as the first: -So eager was I still to see you more . . . - -While within your arms I lay, -The world fell mould'ring from my hands each hour. - - -Such language is pure Dryden: it sounds, in Mr. van Doren's phrase, -"like a gong." _All for Love_, from which the lines are taken, is -Dryden's best play, and this is perhaps the highest reach. In general, -he is best in his plays when dealing with situations which do not demand -great emotional concentration; when his situation is more trivial, and -he can practise his art of making the small great. The back-talk between -the Emperor and his Empress Nourmahal, in _Aurungzebe_ is admirable -purple comedy:-- - - -_Emperor_: Such virtue is the plague of human life: -A virtuous woman, but a cursed wife. -In vain of pompous chastity y'are proud: -Virtue's adultery of the tongue, when loud. -I, with less pain, a prostitute could bear, -Than the shrill sound of virtue, virtue hear. -In unchaste wives-- -There's yet a kind of recompensing ease: -Vice keeps 'em humble, gives 'em care to please: -But against clamourous virtue, what defence? -It stops our mouths, and gives your noise pretence. . . - -What can be sweeter than our native home? -Thither for ease, and soft repose, we come; -Home is the sacred refuge of our life: -Secure from all approaches but a wife. -If thence we fly, the cause admits no doubt: -None but an inmate foe could force us out. -Clamours, our privacies uneasy make: -Birds leave their nests disturbed, and beasts their haunts -forsake. - - -But drama is a mixed form; pure magnificence will not carry it through. -The poet who attempts to achieve a play by the single force of the word -provokes comparison, however strictly he confine himself to his -capacity, with poets of other gifts. Corneille and Racine do not attain -their triumphs by magnificence of this sort; they have concentration -also, and, in the midst of their phrases, an undisturbed attention to -the human soul as they knew it. - -Nor is Dryden unchallenged in his supreme ability to make the -ridiculous, or the trivial, great. - - -Avez-vous observé que maints cercueils de vieilles -Sont presque aussi petits que celui d'un enfant? - - -Those lines are the work of a man whose verse is as magnificent as -Dryden's, and who could see profounder possibilities in wit, and in -violently joined images, than ever were in Dryden's mind. For Dryden, -with all his intellect, had a commonplace mind. His powers were, we -believe, wider, but no greater, than Milton's; he was confined by -boundaries as impassable, though less strait. He bears a curious -antithetical resemblance to Swinburne. Swinburne was also a master of -words, but Swinburne's words are all suggestions and no denotation; if -they suggest nothing, it is because they suggest too much. Dryden's -words, on the other hand, are precise, they state immensely, but their -suggestiveness is almost nothing. - - -That short dark passage to a future state; -That melancholy riddle of a breath, -That something, or that nothing, after death. - - -is a riddle, but not melancholy enough, in Dryden's splendid verse. The -question, which has certainly been waiting, may justly be asked: -whether, without this which Dryden lacks, verse can be poetry? What is -man to decide what poetry is? Dryden's use of language is not, like that -of Swinburne, weakening and demoralizing. Let us take as a final test -his elegy upon Oldham, which deserves not to be mutilated:-- - - -Farewell, too little and too lately known, -Whom I began to think and call my own; -For sure our souls were near allied, and thine -Cast in the same poetic mould with mine. -One common note on either lyre did strike, -And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike. -To the same goal did both our studies drive; -The last set out the soonest did arrive. -Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place, -Whilst his young friend performed and won the race. -O early ripe! to thy abundant store -What could advancing age have added more? -It might (what nature never gives the young) -Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue. -But satire needs not those, and wit will shine -Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line. -A noble error, and but seldom made, -When poets are by too much force betrayed. -Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime, -Still showed a quickness; and maturing time -But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme. -Once more, hail, and farewell; farewell, thou young, -But ah! too short, Marcellus of our tongue! -Thy brows with ivy and with laurels bound; -But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around. - - -From the perfection of such an elegy we cannot detract; the lack of -nebula is compensated by the satisfying completeness of the statement. -Dryden lacked what his master Jonson possessed, a large and unique view -of life; he lacked insight, he lacked profundity. But where Dryden fails -to satisfy, the nineteenth-century does not satisfy us either; and where -that century has condemned him, it is itself condemned. In the next -revolution of taste it is possible that poets may turn to the study of -Dryden. He remains one of those who have set standards for English verse -which, it is desperate to ignore. - - -[Footnote 1: "John Dryden," by Mark van Doren (New York: Harcourt, -Brace and Howe).] - - - - -II. THE METAPHYSICAL -POETS - - -By collecting these poems[2] from the work of a generation more often -named than read, and more often read than profitably studied, Professor -Grierson has rendered a service of some importance. Certainly the reader -will meet with many poems already preserved in other anthologies, at the -same time that he discovers poems such as those of Aurelian Townshend or -Lord Herbert of Cherbury here included. But the function of such an -anthology as this is neither that of Professor Saintsbury's admirable -edition of Caroline poets nor that of the "Oxford Book of English -Verse." Mr. Grierson's book is in itself a piece of criticism, and a -provocation of criticism; and we think that he was right in including so -many poems of Donne, elsewhere (though not in many editions) accessible, -as documents in the case of "metaphysical poetry." The phrase has long -done duty as a term of abuse, or as the label of a quaint and pleasant -taste. The question is to what extent the so-called metaphysicals formed -a school (in our own time we should say a "movement"), and how far this -so-called school or movement is a digression from the main current. - -Not only is it extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but -difficult to decide what poets practise it and in which of their verses. -The poetry of Donne (to whom Marvell and Bishop King are sometimes -nearer than any of the other authors) is late Elizabethan, its feeling -often very close to that of Chapman. The "courtly" poetry is derivative -from Jonson, who borrowed liberally from the Latin; it expires in the -next century with the sentiment and witticism of Prior. There is finally -the devotional verse of Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw (echoed long after -by Christina Rossetti and Francis Thompson); Crashaw, sometimes more -profound and less sectarian than the others, has a quality which returns -through the Elizabethan period to the early Italians. It is difficult to -find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or other conceit, which is -common to all the poets and at the same time important enough as an -element of style to isolate these poets as a group. Donne, and often -Cowley, employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically -"metaphysical"; the elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of a -figure of speech to the farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. -Thus Cowley develops the commonplace comparison of the world to a -chess-board through long stanzas ("To Destiny"), and Donne, with more -grace, in "A Valediction," the comparison of two lovers to a pair of -compasses. But elsewhere we find, instead of the mere explication of the -content of a comparison, a development by rapid association of thought -which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader. - - -On a round ball -A workeman that hath copies by, can lay -An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia, -And quickly make that, which was nothing, _All_, -So doth each teare, -Which thee doth weare, -A globe, yea world by that impression grow, -Till thy tears mixt with mine doe overflow -This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so. - - -Here we find at least two connexions which are not implicit in the first -figure, but are forced upon it by the poet: from the geographer's globe -to the tear, and the tear to the deluge. On the other hand, some of -Donne's most successful and characteristic effects are secured by brief -words and sudden contrasts-- - - -A bracelet of bright hair about the bone, - - -where the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden contrast of -associations of "bright hair" and of "bone." This telescoping of images -and multiplied association is characteristic of the phrase of some of -the dramatists of the period which Donne knew: not to mention -Shakespeare, it is frequent in Middleton, Webster, and Tourneur, and is -one of the sources of the vitality of their language. - -Johnson, who employed the term "metaphysical poets," apparently having -Donne, Cleveland, and Cowley chiefly in mind, remarks of them that "the -most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together." The force of -this impeachment lies in the failure of the conjunction, the fact that -often the ideas are yoked but not united; and if we are to judge of -styles of poetry by their abuse, enough examples may be found in -Cleveland to justify Johnson's condemnation. But a degree of -heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the -poet's mind is omnipresent in poetry. We need not select for -illustration such a line as-- - - -Notre âme est un trois-mâts cherchant son Icarie; - - -we may find it in some of the best lines of Johnson himself ("The -Vanity of Human Wishes"):-- - - -His fate was destined to a barren strand, -A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; -He left a name at which the world grew pale, -To point a moral, or adorn a tale, - - -where the effect is due to a contrast of ideas, different in degree but -the same in principle, as that which Johnson mildly reprehended. And in -one of the finest poems of the age (a poem which could not have been -written in any other age), the "Exequy" of Bishop King, the extended -comparison is used with perfect success: the idea and the simile become -one, in the passage in which the Bishop illustrates his impatience to -see his dead wife, under the figure of a journey:-- - - -Stay for me there; I will not faile -To meet thee in that hollow Vale. -And think not much of my delay; -I am already on the way, -And follow thee with all the speed -Desire can make, or sorrows breed. -Each minute is a short degree, -And ev'ry houre a step towards thee. -At night when I betake to rest, -Next morn I rise nearer my West -Of life, almost by eight houres sail, -Than when sleep breath'd his drowsy gale. . . . -But heark! My Pulse, like a soft Drum -Beats my approach, tells _Thee_ I come; -And slow howere my marches be, -I shall at last sit down by _Thee._ - - -(In the last few lines there is that effect of terror which is several -times attained by one of Bishop King's admirers, Edgar Poe.) Again, we -may justly take these quatrains from Lord Herbert's Ode, stanzas which -would, we think, be immediately pronounced to be of the metaphysical -school:-- - - -So when from hence we shall be gone, -And be no more, nor you, nor I, -As one another's mystery, -Each shall be both, yet both but one. - -This said, in her up-lifted face, -Her eyes, which did that beauty crown, -Were like two starrs, that having faln down, -Look up again to find their place: - -While such a moveless silent peace -Did seize on their becalmed sense, -One would have thought some influence -Their ravished spirits did possess. - - -There is nothing in these lines (with the possible exception of the -stars, a simile not at once grasped, but lovely and justified) which -fits Johnson's general observations on the metaphysical poets in his -essay on Cowley. A good deal resides in the richness of association -which is at the same time borrowed from and given to the word -"becalmed"; but the meaning is clear, the language simple and elegant. -It is to be observed that the language of these poets is as a rule -simple and pure; in the verse of George Herbert this simplicity is -carried as far as it can go--a simplicity emulated without success by -numerous modern poets. The _structure_ of the sentences, on the other -hand, is sometimes far from simple, but this is not a vice; it is a -fidelity to thought and feeling. The effect, at its best, is far less -artificial than that of an ode by Gray. And as this fidelity induces -variety of thought and feeling, so it induces variety of music. We doubt -whether, in the eighteenth century, could be found two poems in -nominally the same metre, so dissimilar as Marvell's "Coy Mistress" and -Crashaw's "Saint Teresa"; the one producing an effect of great speed by -the use of short syllables, and the other an ecclesiastical solemnity by -the use of long ones:-- - - -Love, thou art absolute sole lord -Of life and death. - - -If so shrewd and sensitive (though so limited) a critic as Johnson -failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults, it is worth while to -inquire whether we may not have more success by adopting the opposite -method: by assuming that the poets of the seventeenth century (up to the -Revolution) were the direct and normal development of the precedent age; -and, without prejudicing their case by the adjective "metaphysical," -consider whether their virtue was not something permanently valuable, -which subsequently disappeared, but ought not to have disappeared. -Johnson has hit, perhaps by accident, on one of their peculiarities, -when he observes that "their attempts were always analytic"; he would -not agree that, after the dissociation, they put the material together -again in a new unity. - -It is certain that the dramatic verse of the later Elizabethan and early -Jacobean poets expresses a degree of development of sensibility which is -not found in any of the prose, good as it often is. If we except -Marlowe, a man of prodigious intelligence, these dramatists were -directly or indirectly (it is at least a tenable theory) affected by -Montaigne. Even if we except also Jonson and Chapman, these two were -notably erudite, and were notably men who incorporated their erudition -into their sensibility: their mode of feeling was directly and freshly -altered by their reading and thought. In Chapman especially there is a -direct sensuous apprehension of thought, or a recreation of thought into -feeling, which is exactly what we find in Donne:-- - - -in this one thing, all the discipline -Of manners and of manhood is contained; -A man to join himself with th' Universe -In his main sway, and make in all things fit -One with that All, and go on, round as it; -Not plucking from the whole his wretched part, -And into straits, or into nought revert, -Wishing the complete Universe might be -Subject to such a rag of it as he; -But to consider great Necessity. - - -We compare this with some modern passage:-- - - -No, when the fight begins within himself, -A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, -Satan looks up between his feet--both tug-- -He's left, himself, i' the middle; the soul wakes -And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! - - -It is perhaps somewhat less fair, though very tempting (as both poets -are concerned with the perpetuation of love by offspring), to compare -with the stanzas already quoted from Lord Herbert's Ode the following -from Tennyson:-- - - -One walked between his wife and child, -With measured footfall firm and mild, -And now and then he gravely smiled. -The prudent partner of his blood -Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good, -Wearing the rose of womanhood. -And in their double love secure. -The little maiden walked demure, -Pacing with downward eyelids pure. -These three made unity so sweet, -My frozen heart began to beat, -Remembering its ancient heat. - - -The difference is not a simple difference of degree between poets. It is -something which had happened to the mind of England between the time of -Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning; -it is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective -poet, Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not -feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to -Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet's mind -is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating -disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, -irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and -these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the -noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet -these experiences are always forming new wholes. - -We may express the difference by the following theory:--The poets of the -seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth, -possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of -experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as -their predecessors were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, -Guinizelli, or Cino. In the seventeenth century a dissociation of -sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this -dissociation, as is natural, was due to the influence of the two most -powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men -performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the -magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language -went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, -Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands -better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language -became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the -sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of -Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress." - -The second effect of the influence of Milton and Dryden followed from -the first, and was therefore slow in manifestation. The sentimental age -began early in the eighteenth century, and continued. The poets revolted -against the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt by -fits, unbalanced; they reflected. In one or two passages of Shelley's -"Triumph of Life," in the second "Hyperion," there are traces of a -struggle toward unification of sensibility. But Keats and Shelley died, -and Tennyson and Browning ruminated. - -After this brief exposition of a theory--too brief, perhaps, to carry -conviction--we may ask, what would have been the fate of the -"metaphysical" had the current of poetry descended in a direct line from -them, as it descended in a direct line to them? They would not, -certainly, be classified as metaphysical. The possible interests of a -poet are unlimited; the more intelligent he is the better; the more -intelligent he is the more likely that he will have interests: our only -condition is that he turn them into poetry, and not merely meditate on -them poetically. A philosophical theory which has entered into poetry is -established, for its truth or falsity in one sense ceases to matter, and -its truth in another sense is proved. The poets in question have, like -other poets, various faults. But they were, at best, engaged in the task -of trying to find the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling. -And this means both that they are more mature, and that they wear -better, than later poets of certainly not less literary ability. - -It is not a permanent necessity that poets should be interested in -philosophy, or in any other subject. We can only say that it appears -likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be -_difficult._ Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, -and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, -must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and -more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to -dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning. (A brilliant and -extreme statement of this view, with which it is not requisite to -associate oneself, is that of M. Jean Epstein, "La Poésie -d'aujourd-hui.") Hence we get something which looks very much like the -conceit--we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of the -"metaphysical poets," similar also in its use of obscure words and of -simple phrasing. - - -O géraniums diaphanes, guerroyeurs sortilèges, -Sacrilèges monomanes! -Emballages, dévergondages, douches! O pressoirs -Des vendanges des grands soirs! -Layettes aux abois, -Thyrses au fond des bois! -Transfusions, représailles, -Relevailles, compresses et l'éternal potion, -Angélus! n'en pouvoir plus -De débâcles nuptiales! de débâcles nuptiales! - - -The same poet could write also simply:-- - - -Elle est bien loin, elle pleure, -Le grand vent se lamente aussi . . . - - -Jules Laforgue, and Tristan Corbière in many of his poems, are nearer -to the "school of Donne" than any modern English poet. But poets more -classical than they have the same essential quality of transmuting ideas -into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind. - - -Pour l'enfant, amoureux de cartes et d'estampes, -L'univers est égal à son vaste appétit. -Ah, que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes! -Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit! - - -In French literature the great master of the seventeenth -century--Racine--and the great master of the nineteenth--Baudelaire--are -more like each other than they are like anyone else. The greatest two -masters of diction are also the greatest two psychologists, the most -curious explorers of the soul. It is interesting to speculate whether it -is not a misfortune that two of the greatest masters of diction in our -language, Milton and Dryden, triumph with a dazzling disregard of the -soul. If we continued to produce Miltons and Drydens it might not so -much matter, but as things are it is a pity that English poetry has -remained so incomplete. Those who object to the "artificiality" of -Milton or Dryden sometimes tell us to "look into our hearts and write." -But that is not looking deep enough; Racine or Donne looked into a good -deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the -nervous system, and the digestive tracts. - -May we not conclude, then, that Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan, Herbert and -Lord Herbert, Marvell, King, Cowley at his best, are in the direct -current of English poetry, and that their faults should be reprimanded -by this standard rather than coddled by antiquarian affection? They have -been enough praised in terms which are implicit limitations because they -are "metaphysical" or "witty," "quaint" or "obscure," though at their -best they have not these attributes more than other serious poets. On -the other hand, we must not reject the criticism of Johnson (a dangerous -person to disagree with) without having mastered it, without having -assimilated the Johnsonian canons of taste. In reading the celebrated -passage in his essay on Cowley we must remember that by wit he clearly -means something more serious than we usually mean to-day; in his -criticism of their versification we must remember in what a narrow -discipline he was trained, but also how well trained; we must remember -that Johnson tortures chiefly the chief offenders, Cowley and Cleveland. -It would be a fruitful work, and one requiring a substantial book, to -break up the classification of Johnson (for there has been none since) -and exhibit these poets in all their difference of kind and of degree, -from the massive music of Donne to the faint, pleasing tinkle of -Aurelian Townshend--whose "Dialogue between a Pilgrim and Time" is one -of the few regrettable omissions from this excellent anthology. - - -[Footnote 2: "Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century": -Donne to Butler. Selected and edited, with an Essay, by Herbert J. C. -Grierson (Oxford: Clarendon Press. London: Milford. 6s. net).] - - - - -III. ANDREW MARVELL - - -The tercentenary of the former member for Hull deserves not only the -celebration proposed by that favoured borough, but a little serious -reflection upon his writing. That is an act of piety, which is very -different from the resurrection of a deceased reputation. Marvell has -stood high for some years; his best poems are not very many, and not -only must be well known, from the "Golden Treasury" and the "Oxford Book -of English Verse," but must also have been enjoyed by numerous readers. -His grave needs neither rose nor rue nor laurel; there is no imaginary -justice to be done; we may think about him, if there be need for -thinking, for our own benefit, not his. To bring the poet back to -life--the great, the perennial, task of criticism--is in this case to -squeeze the drops of the essence of two or three poems; even confining -ourselves to these, we may find some precious liquor unknown to the -present age. Not to determine rank, but to isolate this quality, is the -critical labour. The fact that of all Marvell's verse, which is itself -not a great quantity, the really valuable part consists of a very few -poems indicates that the unknown quality of which we speak is probably a -literary rather than a personal quality; or, more truly, that it is a -quality of a civilization, of a traditional habit of life. A poet like -Donne, or like Baudelaire or Laforgue, may almost be considered the -inventor of an attitude, a system of feeling or of morals. Donne is -difficult to analyse: what appears at one time a curious personal point -of view may at another time appear rather the precise concentration of a -kind of feeling diffused in the air about him. Donne and his shroud, the -shroud and his motive for wearing it, are inseparable, but they are not -the same thing. The seventeenth century sometimes seems for more than a -moment to gather up and to digest into its art all the experience of the -human mind which (from the same point of view) the later centuries seem -to have been partly engaged in repudiating. But Donne would have been an -individual at any time and place; Marvell's best verse is the product of -European, that is to say Latin, culture. - -Out of that high style developed from Marlowe through Jonson (for -Shakespeare does not lend himself to these genealogies) the seventeenth -century separated two qualities: wit and magniloquence. Neither is as -simple or as apprehensible as its name seems to imply, and the two are -not in practice antithetical; both are conscious and cultivated, and the -mind which cultivates one may cultivate the other. The actual poetry, of -Marvell, of Cowley, of Milton, and of others, is a blend in varying -proportions. And we must be on guard not to employ the terms with too -wide a comprehension; for like the other fluid terms with which literary -criticism deals, the meaning alters with the age, and for precision we -must rely to some degree upon the literacy and good taste of the reader. -The wit of the Caroline poets is not the wit of Shakespeare, and it is -not the wit of Dryden, the great master of contempt, or of Pope, the -great master of hatred, or of Swift, the great master of disgust. What -is meant is something which is a common quality to the songs in "Comus" -and Cowley's Anacreontics and Marvell's Horatian Ode. It is more than a -technical accomplishment, or the vocabulary and syntax of an epoch; it -is, what we have designated tentatively as wit, a tough reasonableness -beneath the slight lyric grace. You cannot find it in Shelley or Keats -or Wordsworth; you cannot find more than an echo of it in Landor; still -less in Tennyson or Browning; and among contemporaries Mr. Yeats is an -Irishman and Mr. Hardy is a modern Englishman--that is to say, Mr. Hardy -is without it and Mr. Yeats is outside of the tradition altogether. On -the other hand, as it certainly exists in Lafontaine, there is a large -part of it in Gautier. And of the magniloquence, the deliberate -exploitation of the possibilities of magnificence in language which -Milton used and abused, there is also use and even abuse in the poetry -of Baudelaire. - -Wit is not a quality that we are accustomed to associate with "Puritan" -literature, with Milton or with Marvell. But if so, we are at fault -partly in our conception of wit and partly in our generalizations about -the Puritans. And if the wit of Dryden or of Pope is not the only kind -of wit in the language, the rest is not merely a little merriment or a -little levity or a little impropriety or a little epigram. And, on the -other hand, the sense in which a man like Marvell is a "Puritan" is -restricted. The persons who opposed Charles I. and the persons who -supported the Commonwealth were not all of the flock of Rabbi -Zeal-of-the-land Busy or the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance -Association. Many of them were gentlemen of the time who merely -believed, with considerable show of reason, that government by a -Parliament of gentlemen was better than government by a Stuart; though -they were, to that extent, Liberal Practitioners, they could hardly -foresee the tea-meeting and the Dissidence of Dissent. Being men of -education and culture, even of travel, some of them were exposed to that -spirit of the age which was coming to be the French spirit of the age. -This spirit, curiously enough, was quite opposed to the tendencies -latent or the forces active in Puritanism; the contest does great damage -to the poetry of Milton; Marvell, an active servant of the public, but a -lukewarm partisan, and a poet on a smaller scale, is far less injured by -it. His line on the statue of Charles II., "It is such a King as no -chisel can mend," may be set off against his criticism of the Great -Rebellion: "Men . . . ought and might have trusted the King." Marvell, -therefore, more a man of the century than a Puritan, speaks more clearly -and unequivocally with the voice of his literary age than does Milton. - -This voice speaks out uncommonly strong in the "Coy Mistress." The theme -is one of the great traditional commonplaces of European literature. It -is the theme of "O mistress mine," of "Gather ye rosebuds," of "Go, -lovely rose"; it is in the savage austerity of Lucretius and the intense -levity of Catullus. Where the wit of Marvell renews the theme is in the -variety and order of the images. In the first of the three paragraphs -Marvell plays with a fancy which begins by pleasing and leads to -astonishment. - - -Had we but world enough and time, -This coyness, lady, were no crime, -. . . I would -Love you ten years before the Flood, -And you should, if you please, refuse -Till the conversion of the Jews; -My vegetable love should grow -Vaster than empires and more slow. . . . - - -We notice the high speed, the succession of concentrated images, each -magnifying the original fancy. When this process has been carried to the -end and summed up, the poem turns suddenly with that surprise which has -been one of the most important means of poetic effect since Homer:-- - - -But at my back I always hear -Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near, -And yonder all before us lie -Deserts of vast eternity. - - -A whole civilization resides in these lines:-- - - -Pallida Mors æqua pulsat pede pauperumb tabernas, -Regumque turris. . . . - - -And not only Horace but Catullus himself:-- - - -Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, -Nox est perpetua una dormienda. - - -The verse of Marvell has not the grand reverberation of Catullus's -Latin; but the image of Marvell is certainly more comprehensive and -penetrates greater depths than Horace's. - -A modern poet, had he reached the height, would very likely have closed -on this moral reflection. But the three strophes of Marvell's poem have -something like a syllogistic relation to each other. After a close -approach to the mood of Donne, - - -then worms shall try -That long-preserved virginity . . . -The grave's a fine and private place, -But none, I think, do there embrace, - - -the conclusion, - - -Let us roll all our strength and all -Our sweetness up into one ball, -And tear our pleasures with rough strife, -Thorough the iron gates of life. - - -It will hardly be denied that this poem contains wit; but it may not be -evident that this wit forms the crescendo and diminuendo of a scale of -great imaginative power. The wit is not only combined with, but fused -into, the imagination. We can easily recognize a witty fancy in the -successive images ("my _vegetable_ love," "till the conversion of the -Jews"), but this fancy is not indulged, as it sometimes is by Cowley or -Cleveland, for its own sake. It is structural decoration of a serious -idea. In this it is superior to the fancy of "L'Allegro," "Il -Penseroso," or the lighter and less successful poems of Keats. In fact, -this alliance of levity and seriousness (by which the seriousness is -intensified) is a characteristic of the sort of wit we are trying to -identify. It is found in - - -Le squelette était invisible -Au temps heureux de l'art païen! - - -of Gautier, and in the _dandysme_ of Baudelaire and Laforgue. It is in -the poem of Catullus which has been quoted, and in the variation by Ben -Jonson:-- - - -Cannot we deceive the eyes -Of a few poor household spies? -'Tis no sin love's fruits to steal, -But that sweet sin to reveal, -To be taken, to be seen, -These have sins accounted been. - - -It is in Propertius and Ovid. It is a quality of a sophisticated -literature; a quality which expands in English literature just at the -moment before the English mind altered; it is not a quality which we -should expect Puritanism to encourage. When we come to Gray and Collins, -the sophistication remains only in the language, and has disappeared -from the feeling. Gray and Collins were masters, but they had lost that -hold on human values, that firm grasp of human experience, which is a -formidable achievement of the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets. This -wisdom, cynical perhaps but untired (in Shakespeare, a terrifying -clairvoyance), leads toward, and is only completed by, the religious -comprehension; it leads to the point of the _Ainsi tout leur a craqué -dans la main_ of Bouvard and Pécuchet. - -The difference between imagination and fancy, in view of this poetry of -wit, is a very narrow one. Obviously, an image which is immediately and -unintentionally ridiculous is merely a fancy. In the poem "Upon Appleton -House," Marvell falls in with one of these undesirable images, -describing the attitude of the house toward its master:-- - - -Yet thus the laden house does sweat, -And scarce endures the master great; -But, where he comes, the swelling hall -Stirs, and the square grows spherical; - - -which, whatever its intention, is more absurd than it was intended to -be. Marvell also falls into the even commoner error of images which are -over-developed or distracting; which support nothing but their own -misshapen bodies:-- - - -And now the salmon-fishers moist -Their leathern boats begin to hoist; -And, like Antipodes in shoes, -Have shod their heads in their canoes. - - -Of this sort of image a choice collection may be found in Johnson's -"Life of Cowley." But the images in the "Coy Mistress" are not only -witty, but satisfy the elucidation of Imagination given by Coleridge:-- - - -"This power . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of -opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the -general, with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with -the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and -familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than -usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with -enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement. . . ." - - -Coleridge's statement applies also to the following verses, which are -selected because of their similarity, and because they illustrate the -marked caesura which Marvell often introduces in a short line:-- - - -The tawny mowers enter next, -Who seem like Israelites to be -Walking on foot through a green sea. - -And now the meadows fresher dyed, -Whose grass, with moister colour dashed, -Seems as green silks but newly washed. - -He hangs in shades the orange bright, -Like golden lamps in a green night. - -Annihilating all that's made -To a green thought in a green shade. - -Had it lived long, it would have been -Lilies without, roses within. - - -The whole poem, from which the last of these quotations is drawn ("The -Nymph and the Fawn"), is built upon a very slight foundation, and we can -imagine what some of our modern practitioners of slight themes would -have made of it. But we need not descend to an invidious contemporaneity -to point the difference. Here are six lines from "The Nymph and the -Fawn":-- - - -I have a garden of my own, -But so with roses overgrown -And lilies, that you would it guess -To be a little wilderness; -And all the spring-time of the year -It only loved to be there. - - -And here are five lines from "The Nymph's Song to Hylas" in the "Life -and Death of Jason," by William Morris:-- - - -I know a little garden close -Set thick with lily and red rose. -Where I would wander if I might -From dewy dawn to dewy night, -And have one with me wandering. - - -So far the resemblance is more striking than the difference, although we -might just notice the vagueness of allusion in the last line to some -indefinite person, form, or phantom, compared with the more explicit -reference of emotion to object which we should expect from Marvell. But -in the latter part of the poem Morris divaricates widely:-- - - -Yet tottering as I am, and weak, -Still have I left a little breath -To seek within the jaws of death -An entrance to that happy place; -To seek the unforgotten face -Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me -Anigh the murmuring of the sea. - - -Here the resemblance, if there is any, is to the latter part of "The Coy -Mistress." As for the difference, it could not be more pronounced. The -effect of Morris's charming poem depends upon the mistiness of the -feeling and the vagueness of its object; the effect of Marvell's upon -its bright, hard precision. And this precision is not due to the fact -that Marvell is concerned with cruder or simpler or more carnal -emotions. The emotion of Morris is not more refined or more spiritual; -it is merely more vague: if anyone doubts whether the more refined or -spiritual emotion can be precise, he should study the treatment of the -varieties of discarnate emotion in the "Paradiso." A curious result of -the comparison of Morris's poem with Marvell's is that the former, -though it appears to be more serious, is found to be the slighter; and -Marvell's "Nymph and the Fawn," appearing more slight, is the more -serious. - - -So weeps the wounded balsam; so -The holy frankincense doth flow; -The brotherless Heliades -Melt in such amber tears as these. - - -These verses have the suggestiveness of true poetry; and the verses of -Morris, which are nothing if not an attempt to suggest, really suggest -nothing; and we are inclined to infer that the suggestiveness is the -aura around a bright clear centre, that you cannot have the aura alone. -The day-dreamy feeling of Morris is essentially a slight thing; Marvell -takes a slight affair, the feeling of a girl for her pet, and gives it a -connexion with that inexhaustible and terrible nebula of emotion which -surrounds all our exact and practical passions and mingles with them. -Again, Marvell does this in a poem which, because of its formal pastoral -machinery, may appear a trifling object:-- - - -_Clorinda_: Near this, a fountain's liquid bell -Tinkles within the concave shell. - -_Damon_: Might a soul bathe there and be clean. -Or slake its drought? - - -where we find that a metaphor has suddenly rapt us to the image of -spiritual purgation. There is here the element of _surprise_, as when -Villon says:-- - - -Necessité faict gens mesprendre -Et faim saillir le loup des boys, - - -the surprise which Poe considered of the highest importance, and also -the restraint and quietness of tone which make the surprise possible. -And in the verses of Marvell which have been quoted there is the making -the familiar strange, and the strange familiar, which Coleridge -attributed to good poetry. - -The effort to construct a dream-world, which alters English poetry so -greatly in the nineteenth-century, a dream-world utterly different from -the visionary realities of the Vita Nuova or of the poetry of Dante's -contemporaries, is a problem of which various explanations may no doubt -be found; in any case, the result makes a poet of the nineteenth -century, of the same size as Marvell, a more trivial and less serious -figure. Marvell is no greater personality than William Morris, but he -had something much more solid behind him: he had the vast and -penetrating influence of Ben Jonson. Jonson never wrote anything so pure -as Marvell's Horatian Ode; but this ode has that same quality of wit -which was diffused over the whole Elizabethan product and concentrated -in the work of Jonson. And, as was said before, this wit which pervades -the poetry of Marvell is more Latin, more refined, than anything that -succeeded it. The great danger, as well as the great interest and -excitement, of English prose and verse, compared with French, is that it -permits and justifies an exaggeration of particular qualities to the -exclusion of others. Dryden was great in wit, as Milton in -magniloquence; but the former, by isolating this quality and making it -by itself into great poetry, and the latter, by coming to dispense with -it altogether, may perhaps have injured the language. In Dryden wit -becomes almost fun, and thereby loses some contact with reality; becomes -pure fun, which French wit almost never is. - - -The midwife placed her hand on his thick skull, -With this prophetic blessing: _Be thou dull._ - -A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed, -Of the true old enthusiastic breed. - - -This is audacious and splendid; it belongs to satire besides which -Marvell's Satires are random babbling; but it is perhaps as exaggerated -as-- - - -Oft he seems to hide his face, -But unexpectedly returns, -And to his faithful champion hath in place -Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns, -And all that band them to resist -His uncontrollable intent. - - -How oddly the sharp Dantesque phrase "whence Gaza mourns" springs out -from the brilliant but ridiculous contortions of Milton's sentence! - - -Who from his private gardens, where -He lived reservèd and austere, -(As if his highest plot -To plant the bergamot) - -Could by industrious valour climb -To ruin the great work of Time, -And cast the kingdoms old -Into another mold; - -* * * * - -The Piet no shelter now shall find -Within his parti-coloured mind, -But, from this valour sad, -Shrink underneath the plaid: - - -There is here an equipoise, a balance and proportion of tones, which, -while it cannot raise Marvell to the level of Dryden or Milton, extorts -an approval which these poets do not receive from us, and bestows a -pleasure at least different in kind from any they can often give. It is -what makes Marvell a classic; or classic in a sense in which Gray and -Collins are not; for the latter, with all their accredited purity, are -comparatively poor in shades of feeling to contrast and unite. - -We are baffled in the attempt to translate the quality indicated by the -dim and antiquated term wit into the equally unsatisfactory nomenclature -of our own time. Even Cowley is only able to define it by negatives:-- - - -Comely in thousand shapes appears; -Yonder we saw it plain; and here 'tis now, -Like spirits in a place, we know not how. - - -It has passed out of our critical coinage altogether, and no new term -has been struck to replace it; the quality seldom exists, and is never -recognized. - - -In a true piece of Wit all things must be -Yet all things there agree; -As in the Ark, join'd without force or strife, -All creatures dwelt, all creatures that had life. -Or as the primitive forms of all -(If we compare great things with small) -Which, without discord or confusion, lie -In that strange mirror of the Deity. - - -So far Cowley has spoken well. But if we are to attempt even no more -than Cowley, we, placed in a retrospective attitude, must risk much more -than anxious generalizations. With our eye still on Marvell, we can say -that wit is not erudition; it is sometimes stifled by erudition, as in -much of Milton. It is not cynicism, though it has a kind of toughness -which may be confused with cynicism by the tender-minded. It is confused -with erudition because it belongs to an educated mind, rich in -generations of experience; and it is confused with cynicism because it -implies a constant inspection and criticism of experience. It involves, -probably, a recognition, implicit in the expression of every experience, -of other kinds of experience which are possible, which we find as -clearly in the greatest as in poets like Marvell. Such a general -statement may seem to take us a long way from "The Nymph and the Fawn," -or even from the Horatian Ode; but it is perhaps justified by the desire -to account for that precise taste of Marvell's which finds for him the -proper degree of seriousness for every subject which he treats. His -errors of taste, when he trespasses, are not sins against this virtue; -they are conceits, distended metaphors and similes, but they never -consist in taking a subject too seriously or too lightly. This virtue of -wit is not a peculiar quality of minor poets, or of the minor poets of -one age or of one school; it is an intellectual quality which perhaps -only becomes noticeable by itself, in the work of lesser poets. -Furthermore, it is absent from the work of Wordsworth, Shelley, and -Keats, on whose poetry nineteenth-century criticism has unconsciously -been based. To the best of their poetry wit is irrelevant:-- - - -Art thou pale for weariness -Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, -Wandering companionless -Among the stars that have a different birth, -And ever changing, like a joyless eye, -That finds no object worth its constancy? - - -We should find it difficult to draw any useful comparison between these -lines of Shelley and anything by Marvell. But later poets, who would -have been the better for Marvell's quality, were without it; even -Browning seems oddly immature, in some way, beside Marvell. And nowadays -we find occasionally good irony, or satire, which lack wit's internal -equilibrium, because their voices are essentially protests against some -outside sentimentality or stupidity; or we find serious poets who are -afraid of acquiring wit, lest they lose intensity. The quality which -Marvell had, this modest and certainly impersonal virtue--whether we -call it wit or reason, or even urbanity--we have patently failed to -define. By whatever name we call it, and however we define that name, it -is something precious and needed and apparently extinct; it is what -should preserve the reputation of Marvell. _C'était une belle âme, -comme on ne fait plus à Londres._ - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Homage to John Dryden, by Thomas Stearns Eliot - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMAGE TO JOHN DRYDEN *** - -***** This file should be named 63547-0.txt or 63547-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/5/4/63547/ - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Google Books.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook. - - -Title: Homage to John Dryden - Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century - -Author: Thomas Stearns Eliot - -Release Date: October 25, 2020 [EBook #63547] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMAGE TO JOHN DRYDEN *** - - - - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Google Books.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/dryden_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - - -<h2>HOMAGE TO<br /> -JOHN DRYDEN</h2> - - - -<h4>THREE ESSAYS ON POETRY OF THE<br /> -SEVENTEENTH CENTURY</h4> - - - -<h3>T. S. ELIOT</h3> - - - - -<h5>PUBLISHED BY LEONARD AND VIRGINIA WOOLF<br /> -AT THE HOGARTH PRESS, TAVISTOCK SQUARE<br /> -LONDON, W.C.1</h5> - -<h5>1924</h5> - -<p><br /></p> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h5>TO</h5> - -<h4>GEORGE SAINTSBURY</h4> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="PREFACE">PREFACE</a></h4> - - -<p>The three essays composing this small book were written several years -ago for publication in the "Times Literary Supplement," to the editor of -which I owe the encouragement to write them, and now the permission to -reprint them. Inadequate as periodical criticism, they need still more -justification in a book. Some apology, therefore, is required.</p> - -<p>My intention had been to write a series of papers on the poetry of the -seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: beginning with Chapman and Donne, -and ending with Johnson. This forbidden fruit of impossible leisure -might have filled two volumes. At best, it would not have pretended to -completeness; the subjects would have been restricted by my own -ignorance and caprice, but the series would have included Aurelian -Townshend and Bishop King, and the authors of "Cooper's Hill" and "The -Vanity of Human Wishes," as well as Swift and Pope. That which -dissipation interrupts, the infirmities of age come to terminate. One -learns to conduct one's life with greater economy: I have abandoned this -design in the pursuit of other policies. I have long felt that the -poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even much of that of -inferior inspiration, possesses an elegance and a dignity absent from -the popular and pretentious verse of the Romantic Poets and their -successors. To have urged this claim persuasively would have led me -indirectly into considerations of politics, education, and theology -which I no longer care to approach in this way. I hope that these three -papers may in spite of and partly because of their defects preserve in -cryptogram certain notions which, if expressed directly, would be -destined to immediate obloquy, followed by perpetual oblivion.</p> - - -<p style="margin-left: 60%;">T. S. ELIOT.</p> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<p><br /></p> - -<h4>CONTENTS</h4> -<p><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE</a><br /> -<a href="#I._JOHN_DRYDEN">I. JOHN DRYDEN</a><br /> -<a href="#II._THE_METAPHYSICAL_POETS">II. THE METAPHYSICAL POETS</a><br /> -<a href="#III._ANDREW_MARVELL">III. ANDREW MARVELL</a></p> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="I._JOHN_DRYDEN">I. JOHN DRYDEN</a></h4> - - -<p>If the prospect of delight be wanting (which alone justifies the perusal -of poetry) we may let the reputation of Dryden sleep in the manuals of -literature. To those who are genuinely insensible of his genius (and -these are probably the majority of living readers of poetry) we can only -oppose illustrations of the following proposition: that their -insensibility does not merely signify indifference to satire and wit, -but lack of perception of qualities not confined to satire and wit and -present in the work of other poets whom these persons feel that they -understand. To those whose taste in poetry is formed entirely upon the -English poetry of the nineteenth-century—to the majority—it is -difficult to explain or excuse Dryden: the twentieth century is still -the nineteenth, although it may in time acquire its own character. The -nineteenth century had, like every other, limited tastes and peculiar -fashions; and, like every other, it was unaware of its own limitations. -Its tastes and fashions had no place for Dryden; yet Dryden is one of -the tests of a catholic appreciation of poetry.</p> - -<p>He is a successor of Jonson, and therefore the descendant of Marlowe; he -is the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the -eighteenth century. Once we have mastered Dryden—and by mastery is -meant a full and essential enjoyment, not the enjoyment of a private -whimsical fashion—we can extract whatever enjoyment and edification -there is in his contemporaries—Oldham, Denham, or the less -remunerative Waller; and still more his successors—not only Pope, but -Phillips, Churchill, Gray, Johnson, Cowper, Goldsmith. His inspiration is -prolonged in Crabbe and Byron; it even extends, as Mr. van Doren -cleverly points out, to Poe. Even the poets responsible for the revolt -were well acquainted with him: Wordsworth knew his work, and Keats -invoked his aid. We cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred -years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden; and to enjoy -Dryden means to pass beyond the limitations of the nineteenth century -into a new freedom.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">All, all of a piece throughout!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy Chase had a Beast in View;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy Wars brought nothing about;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy Lovers were all untrue.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">'Tis well an Old Age is out,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And time to begin a New.</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">* * * *</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">The world's great age begins anew,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The golden years return,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The earth doth like a snake renew</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her winter weeds outworn:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The first of these passages is by Dryden, the second by Shelley; the -second is found in the "Oxford Book of English Verse," the first is not; -yet we might defy anyone to show that the second is superior on -intrinsically poetic merit. It is easy to see why the second should -appeal more readily to the nineteenth, and what is left of the -nineteenth under the name of the twentieth, century. It is not so easy -to see propriety in an image which divests a snake of "winter weeds"; -and this is a sort of blemish which would have been noticed more quickly -by a contemporary of Dryden than by a contemporary of Shelley.</p> - -<p>These reflections are occasioned by an admirable book on Dryden which -has appeared at this very turn of time, when taste is becoming perhaps -more fluid and ready for a new mould.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> It is a book which every -practitioner of English verse should study. The consideration is so -thorough, the matter so compact, the appreciation so just, temperate, -and enthusiastic, and supplied with such copious and well-chosen -extracts from the poetry, the suggestion of astutely placed facts leads -our thought so far, that there only remain to mention, as defects which -do not detract from its value, two omissions: the prose is not dealt -with, and the plays are somewhat slighted. What is especially impressive -is the exhibition of the very wide range of Dryden's work, shown by the -quotations of every species. Everyone knows "MacFlecknoe," and parts of -"Absalom and Achitophel"; in consequence, Dryden has sunk by the persons -he has elevated to distinction—Shadwell of Settle, Shaftesbury and -Buckingham. Dryden was much more than a satirist; to dispose of him as a -satirist is to place an obstacle in the way of our understanding. At all -events, we must satisfy ourselves of our definition of the term satire; -we must not allow our familiarity with the word to blind us to -differences and refinements; we must not assume that satire is a fixed -type, and fixed to the prosaic, suited only to prose; we must -acknowledge that satire is not the same thing in the hands of two -different writers of genius. The connotations of "satire" and of "wit," -in short, may be only prejudices of nineteenth-century taste. Perhaps, -we think, after reading Mr. van Doren's book, a juster view of Dryden -may be given by beginning with some other portion of his work than his -celebrated satires; but even here there is much more present, and much -more that is poetry, than is usually supposed.</p> - -<p>The piece of Dryden's which is the most fun, which is the most sustained -display of surprise after surprise of wit from line to line, is -"MacFlecknoe." Dryden's method here is something very near to parody; he -applies vocabulary, images, and ceremony which arouse epic associations -of grandeur, to make an enemy helplessly ridiculous. But the effect, -though disastrous for the enemy, is very different from that of the -humour which merely belittles, such as the satire of Mark Twain. Dryden -continually enhances: he makes his object great, in a way contrary to -expectation; and the total effect is due to the transformation of the -ridiculous into poetry. As an example may be taken a fine passage -plagiarized from Cowley, from lines which Dryden must have marked well, -for he quotes them directly in one of his prefaces. Here is Cowley:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where their vast courts the mother-waters keep,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And undisturbed by moons in silence sleep. . . .</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Beneath the dens where unfledged tempests lie,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And infant winds their tender voices try.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>In "MacFlecknoe" this becomes:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where their vast courts the mother-strumpets keep,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And undisturbed by watch, in silence sleep.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Near these, a nursery erects its head,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where queens are formed, and future heroes bred;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where unfledged actors learn to laugh and cry,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where infant punks their tender voices try,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And little Maximins the gods defy.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The passage from Cowley is by no means despicable verse. But it is a -commonplace description of commonly poetic objects; it has not the -element of <i>surprise</i> so essential to poetry, and this Dryden -provides. A clever versifier might have written Cowley's lines; only a -poet could have made what Dryden made of them. It is impossible to -dismiss his verses as "prosaic"; turn them into prose and they are -transmuted, the fragrance is gone. The reproach of the prosaic, levelled -at Dryden, rests upon a confusion between the emotions considered to be -poetic—which is a matter allowing considerable latitude of -fashion—and the <i>result</i> of personal emotion in poetry; and, -in the third place, there is the emotion <i>depicted</i> by the poet in -some kinds of poetry, of which the "Testaments" of Villon is an example. -Again, there is the intellect, the originality and independence and -clarity of what we vaguely call the poet's "point of view." Our -valuation of poetry, in short, depends upon several considerations, upon -the permanent and upon the mutable and upon the transitory. When we try -to isolate the essentially poetic, we bring our pursuit in the end to -something insignificant; our standards vary with every poet whom we -consider. All we can hope to do, in the attempt to introduce some order -into our preferences, is to clarify our reasons for finding pleasure in -the poetry that we like.</p> - - -<p>With regard to Dryden, therefore, we can say this much. Our taste in -English poetry has been largely founded upon a partial perception of the -value of Shakespeare and Milton, a perception which dwells upon -sublimity of theme and action. Shakespeare had a great deal more; he had -nearly everything to satisfy our various desires for poetry. The point -is that the depreciation or neglect of Dryden is not due to the fact -that his work is not poetry, but to a prejudice that the material, the -feelings, out of which he built is not poetic. Thus Matthew Arnold -observes, in mentioning Dryden and Pope together, that "their poetry is -conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetry is conceived in the -soul." Arnold was, perhaps, not altogether the detached critic when he -wrote this line; he may have been stirred to a defence of his own -poetry, conceived and composed in the soul of a mid-century Oxford -graduate. Pater remarks that Dryden—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>"Loved to emphasize the distinction between poetry and prose, the -protest against their confusion coming with somewhat diminished effect -from one whose poetry was so prosaic."</p> - -<p>But Dryden was right, and the sentence of Pater is cheap journalism. -Hazlitt, who had perhaps the most uninteresting mind of all our -distinguished critics, says—</p> - -<p>"Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry -in our language, as the poets of whom I have already treated—Chaucer, -Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton—were of the natural."</p></blockquote> - -<p>In one sentence Hazlitt has committed at least four crimes against -taste. It is bad enough to lump Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and -Milton together under the denomination of "natural"; it is bad to commit -Shakespeare to one style only; it is bad to join Dryden and Pope -together; but the last absurdity is the contrast, of Milton, our -greatest master of the <i>artificial</i> style, with Dryden, whose style -(vocabulary, syntax, and order of thought) is in a high degree natural. -And what all these objections come to, we repeat, is a repugnance for -the material out of which Dryden's poetry is built.</p> - -<p>It would be truer to say, indeed, even in the form of the unpersuasive -paradox, that Dryden is distinguished principally by his poetic ability. -We prize him, as we do Mallarmé, for what he made of his material. Our -estimate is only in part the appreciation of ingenuity: in the end the -result is poetry. Much of Dryden's unique merit consists in his ability -to make the small into the great, the prosaic into the poetic, the -trivial into the magnificent. In this he differs not only from Milton, -who required a canvas of the largest size, but from Pope, who required -one of the smallest. If you compare any satiric "character" of Pope with -one of Dryden, you will see that the method and intention are widely -divergent. When Pope alters, he diminishes; he is a master of miniature. -The singular skill of his portrait of Addison, for example, in the -"Epistle to Arbuthnot," depends upon the justice and reserve, the -apparent determination not to exaggerate. The genius of Pope is not for -caricature. But the effect of the portraits of Dryden is to transform -the object into something greater, as were transformed the verses of -Cowley quoted above.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">A fiery soul, which working out its way,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Fretted the pigmy body to decay:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And o'er informed the tenement of clay.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>These lines are not merely a magnificent tribute. They create the object -which they contemplate; the poetry is purer than anything in Pope except -the last lines of the "Dunciad." Dryden is in fact much nearer to the -master of comic creation than to Pope. As in Jonson, the effect is far -from laughter; the comic is the material, the result is poetry. The -Civic Guards of Rhodes—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">The country rings around with loud alarms,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And raw in fields the rude militia swarms;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Stout once a month they march, a blust'ring band,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And ever, but in times of need, at hand;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">This was the morn, when issuing on the guard,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Drawn up in rank and file they stood prepared</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of seeming arms to make a short essay,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Sometimes the wit appears as a delicate flavour to the magnificence, -as in "Alexander's Feast":—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sooth'd with the sound the king grew vain;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Fought all his battles o'er again;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The great advantage of Dryden over Milton is that while the former is -always in control of his ascent, and can rise or fall at will (and how -masterfully, like his own Timotheus, he directs the transitions!), the -latter has elected a perch from which he cannot afford to fall, and from -which he is in danger of slipping.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 15em;">food alike those pure</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Intelligential substances require</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As doth your Rational; and both contain</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Within them every lower faculty</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And corporeal to incorporeal turn.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Dryden might have made poetry out of that; his translation from -Lucretius is poetry. But we have an ingenious example, on which to test -our contrast of Dryden and Milton: it is Dryden's "Opera," called <i>The -State of Innocence and Fall of Man</i>, of which Nathaniel Lee neatly says -in his preface:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And rudely cast what you could well dispose:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A chaos, for no perfect world were found,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Till through the heap, your mighty genius shined.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>In the author's preface Dryden acknowledges his debt generously -enough:—</p> - -<p>"The original being undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most -noble, and most sublime poems, which either this age or nation -has produced."</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The poem begins auspiciously:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><i>Lucifer</i>:<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is this the seat our conqueror has given?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And this the climate we must change for Heaven?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">These regions and this realm my wars have got;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">This mournful empire is the loser's lot:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">In liquid burnings, or on dry to dwell,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Is all the sad variety of hell.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>It is an early work; it is on the whole a feeble work; it is not -deserving of sustained comparison with "Paradise Lost." But "all the sad -variety of hell"! Dryden is already stirring; he has assimilated what he -could from Milton; and he has shown himself capable of producing as -splendid verse.</p> - -<p>The capacity for assimilation, and the consequent extent of range, are -conspicuous qualities of Dryden. He advanced and exhibited his variety -by constant translation; and his translations of Horace, of Ovid, of -Lucretius, are admirable. His gravest defects are supposed to be -displayed in his dramas, but if these were more read they might be more -praised. From the point of view of either the Elizabethan or the French -drama they are obviously inferior; but the charge of inferiority loses -part of its force if we admit that Dryden was not quite trying to -compete with either, but was pursuing a direction of his own. He created -no character; and although his arrangements of plot manifest exceptional -ingenuity, it is the pure magnificence of diction, of poetic diction, -that keeps his plays alive:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 12em;">How I loved</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Witness ye days and nights, and all ye hours,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That danced away with down upon your feet,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As all your business were to count my passion.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">One day passed by, and nothing saw but love;—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Another came, and still 'twas only love:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The suns were wearied out with looking on,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And I untired with loving.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I saw you every day and all the day;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And every day was still but as the first:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">So eager was I still to see you more . . .</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 10em;">While within your arms I lay,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The world fell mould'ring from my hands each hour.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Such language is pure Dryden: it sounds, in Mr. van Doren's phrase, -"like a gong." <i>All for Love</i>, from which the lines are taken, is -Dryden's best play, and this is perhaps the highest reach. In general, -he is best in his plays when dealing with situations which do not demand -great emotional concentration; when his situation is more trivial, and -he can practise his art of making the small great. The back-talk between -the Emperor and his Empress Nourmahal, in <i>Aurungzebe</i> is admirable -purple comedy:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><i>Emperor</i>:<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Such virtue is the plague of human life:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">A virtuous woman, but a cursed wife.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">In vain of pompous chastity y'are proud:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Virtue's adultery of the tongue, when loud.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">I, with less pain, a prostitute could bear,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Than the shrill sound of virtue, virtue hear.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">In unchaste wives—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">There's yet a kind of recompensing ease:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Vice keeps 'em humble, gives 'em care to please:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">But against clamourous virtue, what defence?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">It stops our mouths, and gives your noise pretence. . .</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">What can be sweeter than our native home?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Thither for ease, and soft repose, we come;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Home is the sacred refuge of our life:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Secure from all approaches but a wife.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">If thence we fly, the cause admits no doubt:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">None but an inmate foe could force us out.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Clamours, our privacies uneasy make:</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Birds leave their nests disturbed, and beasts their haunts</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 6em;">forsake.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>But drama is a mixed form; pure magnificence will not carry it through. -The poet who attempts to achieve a play by the single force of the word -provokes comparison, however strictly he confine himself to his -capacity, with poets of other gifts. Corneille and Racine do not attain -their triumphs by magnificence of this sort; they have concentration -also, and, in the midst of their phrases, an undisturbed attention to -the human soul as they knew it.</p> - -<p>Nor is Dryden unchallenged in his supreme ability to make the -ridiculous, or the trivial, great.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Avez-vous observé que maints cercueils de vieilles</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sont presque aussi petits que celui d'un enfant?</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Those lines are the work of a man whose verse is as magnificent as -Dryden's, and who could see profounder possibilities in wit, and in -violently joined images, than ever were in Dryden's mind. For Dryden, -with all his intellect, had a commonplace mind. His powers were, we -believe, wider, but no greater, than Milton's; he was confined by -boundaries as impassable, though less strait. He bears a curious -antithetical resemblance to Swinburne. Swinburne was also a master of -words, but Swinburne's words are all suggestions and no denotation; if -they suggest nothing, it is because they suggest too much. Dryden's -words, on the other hand, are precise, they state immensely, but their -suggestiveness is almost nothing.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">That short dark passage to a future state;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That melancholy riddle of a breath,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That something, or that nothing, after death.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>is a riddle, but not melancholy enough, in Dryden's splendid verse. The -question, which has certainly been waiting, may justly be asked: -whether, without this which Dryden lacks, verse can be poetry? What is -man to decide what poetry is? Dryden's use of language is not, like that -of Swinburne, weakening and demoralizing. Let us take as a final test -his elegy upon Oldham, which deserves not to be mutilated:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Farewell, too little and too lately known,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Whom I began to think and call my own;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">For sure our souls were near allied, and thine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Cast in the same poetic mould with mine.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">One common note on either lyre did strike,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To the same goal did both our studies drive;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The last set out the soonest did arrive.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thus Nisus fell upon the slippery place,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Whilst his young friend performed and won the race.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">O early ripe! to thy abundant store</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">What could advancing age have added more?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">It might (what nature never gives the young)</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But satire needs not those, and wit will shine</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A noble error, and but seldom made,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">When poets are by too much force betrayed.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Still showed a quickness; and maturing time</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Once more, hail, and farewell; farewell, thou young,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But ah! too short, Marcellus of our tongue!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thy brows with ivy and with laurels bound;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But fate and gloomy night encompass thee around.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>From the perfection of such an elegy we cannot detract; the lack of -nebula is compensated by the satisfying completeness of the statement. -Dryden lacked what his master Jonson possessed, a large and unique view -of life; he lacked insight, he lacked profundity. But where Dryden fails -to satisfy, the nineteenth-century does not satisfy us either; and where -that century has condemned him, it is itself condemned. In the next -revolution of taste it is possible that poets may turn to the study of -Dryden. He remains one of those who have set standards for English verse -which, it is desperate to ignore.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>"John Dryden," by Mark van Doren (New York: Harcourt, -Brace and Howe).</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="II._THE_METAPHYSICAL_POETS">II. THE METAPHYSICAL<br /> -POETS</a></h4> - - -<p>By collecting these poems<a name="FNanchor_2_1" id="FNanchor_2_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_1" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> from the work of a generation more often -named than read, and more often read than profitably studied, Professor -Grierson has rendered a service of some importance. Certainly the reader -will meet with many poems already preserved in other anthologies, at the -same time that he discovers poems such as those of Aurelian Townshend or -Lord Herbert of Cherbury here included. But the function of such an -anthology as this is neither that of Professor Saintsbury's admirable -edition of Caroline poets nor that of the "Oxford Book of English -Verse." Mr. Grierson's book is in itself a piece of criticism, and a -provocation of criticism; and we think that he was right in including so -many poems of Donne, elsewhere (though not in many editions) accessible, -as documents in the case of "metaphysical poetry." The phrase has long -done duty as a term of abuse, or as the label of a quaint and pleasant -taste. The question is to what extent the so-called metaphysicals formed -a school (in our own time we should say a "movement"), and how far this -so-called school or movement is a digression from the main current.</p> - -<p>Not only is it extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but -difficult to decide what poets practise it and in which of their verses. -The poetry of Donne (to whom Marvell and Bishop King are sometimes -nearer than any of the other authors) is late Elizabethan, its feeling -often very close to that of Chapman. The "courtly" poetry is derivative -from Jonson, who borrowed liberally from the Latin; it expires in the -next century with the sentiment and witticism of Prior. There is finally -the devotional verse of Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw (echoed long after -by Christina Rossetti and Francis Thompson); Crashaw, sometimes more -profound and less sectarian than the others, has a quality which returns -through the Elizabethan period to the early Italians. It is difficult to -find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or other conceit, which is -common to all the poets and at the same time important enough as an -element of style to isolate these poets as a group. Donne, and often -Cowley, employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically -"metaphysical"; the elaboration (contrasted with the condensation) of a -figure of speech to the farthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. -Thus Cowley develops the commonplace comparison of the world to a -chess-board through long stanzas ("To Destiny"), and Donne, with more -grace, in "A Valediction," the comparison of two lovers to a pair of -compasses. But elsewhere we find, instead of the mere explication of the -content of a comparison, a development by rapid association of thought -which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;">On a round ball</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A workeman that hath copies by, can lay</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And quickly make that, which was nothing, <i>All</i>,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">So doth each teare,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 8em;">Which thee doth weare,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A globe, yea world by that impression grow,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Till thy tears mixt with mine doe overflow</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Here we find at least two connexions which are not implicit in the first -figure, but are forced upon it by the poet: from the geographer's globe -to the tear, and the tear to the deluge. On the other hand, some of -Donne's most successful and characteristic effects are secured by brief -words and sudden contrasts—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>where the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden contrast of -associations of "bright hair" and of "bone." This telescoping of images -and multiplied association is characteristic of the phrase of some of -the dramatists of the period which Donne knew: not to mention -Shakespeare, it is frequent in Middleton, Webster, and Tourneur, and is -one of the sources of the vitality of their language.</p> - -<p>Johnson, who employed the term "metaphysical poets," apparently having -Donne, Cleveland, and Cowley chiefly in mind, remarks of them that "the -most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together." The force of -this impeachment lies in the failure of the conjunction, the fact that -often the ideas are yoked but not united; and if we are to judge of -styles of poetry by their abuse, enough examples may be found in -Cleveland to justify Johnson's condemnation. But a degree of -heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the -poet's mind is omnipresent in poetry. We need not select for -illustration such a line as—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Notre âme est un trois-mâts cherchant son Icarie;</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>we may find it in some of the best lines of Johnson himself ("The -Vanity of Human Wishes"):—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">His fate was destined to a barren strand,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He left a name at which the world grew pale,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To point a moral, or adorn a tale,</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>where the effect is due to a contrast of ideas, different in degree but -the same in principle, as that which Johnson mildly reprehended. And in -one of the finest poems of the age (a poem which could not have been -written in any other age), the "Exequy" of Bishop King, the extended -comparison is used with perfect success: the idea and the simile become -one, in the passage in which the Bishop illustrates his impatience to -see his dead wife, under the figure of a journey:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Stay for me there; I will not faile</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To meet thee in that hollow Vale.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And think not much of my delay;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I am already on the way,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And follow thee with all the speed</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Desire can make, or sorrows breed.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Each minute is a short degree,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And ev'ry houre a step towards thee.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">At night when I betake to rest,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Next morn I rise nearer my West</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of life, almost by eight houres sail,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Than when sleep breath'd his drowsy gale. . . .</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But heark! My Pulse, like a soft Drum</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Beats my approach, tells <i>Thee</i> I come;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And slow howere my marches be,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I shall at last sit down by <i>Thee.</i></span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>(In the last few lines there is that effect of terror which is several -times attained by one of Bishop King's admirers, Edgar Poe.) Again, we -may justly take these quatrains from Lord Herbert's Ode, stanzas which -would, we think, be immediately pronounced to be of the metaphysical -school:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">So when from hence we shall be gone,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And be no more, nor you, nor I,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">As one another's mystery,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Each shall be both, yet both but one.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">This said, in her up-lifted face,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Her eyes, which did that beauty crown,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Were like two starrs, that having faln down,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Look up again to find their place:</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">While such a moveless silent peace</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Did seize on their becalmed sense,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">One would have thought some influence</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Their ravished spirits did possess.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>There is nothing in these lines (with the possible exception of the -stars, a simile not at once grasped, but lovely and justified) which -fits Johnson's general observations on the metaphysical poets in his -essay on Cowley. A good deal resides in the richness of association -which is at the same time borrowed from and given to the word -"becalmed"; but the meaning is clear, the language simple and elegant. -It is to be observed that the language of these poets is as a rule -simple and pure; in the verse of George Herbert this simplicity is -carried as far as it can go—a simplicity emulated without success by -numerous modern poets. The <i>structure</i> of the sentences, on the other -hand, is sometimes far from simple, but this is not a vice; it is a -fidelity to thought and feeling. The effect, at its best, is far less -artificial than that of an ode by Gray. And as this fidelity induces -variety of thought and feeling, so it induces variety of music. We doubt -whether, in the eighteenth century, could be found two poems in -nominally the same metre, so dissimilar as Marvell's "Coy Mistress" and -Crashaw's "Saint Teresa"; the one producing an effect of great speed by -the use of short syllables, and the other an ecclesiastical solemnity by -the use of long ones:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Love, thou art absolute sole lord</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of life and death.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>If so shrewd and sensitive (though so limited) a critic as Johnson -failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults, it is worth while to -inquire whether we may not have more success by adopting the opposite -method: by assuming that the poets of the seventeenth century (up to the -Revolution) were the direct and normal development of the precedent age; -and, without prejudicing their case by the adjective "metaphysical," -consider whether their virtue was not something permanently valuable, -which subsequently disappeared, but ought not to have disappeared. -Johnson has hit, perhaps by accident, on one of their peculiarities, -when he observes that "their attempts were always analytic"; he would -not agree that, after the dissociation, they put the material together -again in a new unity.</p> - -<p>It is certain that the dramatic verse of the later Elizabethan and early -Jacobean poets expresses a degree of development of sensibility which is -not found in any of the prose, good as it often is. If we except -Marlowe, a man of prodigious intelligence, these dramatists were -directly or indirectly (it is at least a tenable theory) affected by -Montaigne. Even if we except also Jonson and Chapman, these two were -notably erudite, and were notably men who incorporated their erudition -into their sensibility: their mode of feeling was directly and freshly -altered by their reading and thought. In Chapman especially there is a -direct sensuous apprehension of thought, or a recreation of thought into -feeling, which is exactly what we find in Donne:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">in this one thing, all the discipline</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of manners and of manhood is contained;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A man to join himself with th' Universe</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In his main sway, and make in all things fit</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">One with that All, and go on, round as it;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Not plucking from the whole his wretched part,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And into straits, or into nought revert,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Wishing the complete Universe might be</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Subject to such a rag of it as he;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But to consider great Necessity.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>We compare this with some modern passage:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">No, when the fight begins within himself,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Satan looks up between his feet—both tug—</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He's left, himself, i' the middle; the soul wakes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>It is perhaps somewhat less fair, though very tempting (as both poets -are concerned with the perpetuation of love by offspring), to compare -with the stanzas already quoted from Lord Herbert's Ode the following -from Tennyson:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">One walked between his wife and child,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With measured footfall firm and mild,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And now and then he gravely smiled.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The prudent partner of his blood</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Wearing the rose of womanhood.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And in their double love secure.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The little maiden walked demure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Pacing with downward eyelids pure.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">These three made unity so sweet,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">My frozen heart began to beat,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Remembering its ancient heat.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The difference is not a simple difference of degree between poets. It is -something which had happened to the mind of England between the time of -Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning; -it is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective -poet, Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not -feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to -Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. When a poet's mind -is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating -disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, -irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and -these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the -noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet -these experiences are always forming new wholes.</p> - -<p>We may express the difference by the following theory:—The poets -of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the -sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind -of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as -their predecessors were; no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, -Guinizelli, or Cino. In the seventeenth century a dissociation of -sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this -dissociation, as is natural, was due to the influence of the two most -powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men -performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the -magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language -went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, -Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands -better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language -became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the -sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of -Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress."</p> - -<p>The second effect of the influence of Milton and Dryden followed from -the first, and was therefore slow in manifestation. The sentimental age -began early in the eighteenth century, and continued. The poets revolted -against the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt by -fits, unbalanced; they reflected. In one or two passages of Shelley's -"Triumph of Life," in the second "Hyperion," there are traces of a -struggle toward unification of sensibility. But Keats and Shelley died, -and Tennyson and Browning ruminated.</p> - -<p>After this brief exposition of a theory—too brief, perhaps, to -carry conviction—we may ask, what would have been the fate of the -"metaphysical" had the current of poetry descended in a direct line from -them, as it descended in a direct line to them? They would not, -certainly, be classified as metaphysical. The possible interests of a -poet are unlimited; the more intelligent he is the better; the more -intelligent he is the more likely that he will have interests: our only -condition is that he turn them into poetry, and not merely meditate on -them poetically. A philosophical theory which has entered into poetry is -established, for its truth or falsity in one sense ceases to matter, and -its truth in another sense is proved. The poets in question have, like -other poets, various faults. But they were, at best, engaged in the task -of trying to find the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling. -And this means both that they are more mature, and that they wear -better, than later poets of certainly not less literary ability.</p> - -<p>It is not a permanent necessity that poets should be interested in -philosophy, or in any other subject. We can only say that it appears -likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be -<i>difficult.</i> Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, -and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, -must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and -more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to -dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning. (A brilliant and -extreme statement of this view, with which it is not requisite to -associate oneself, is that of M. Jean Epstein, "La Poésie -d'aujourd-hui.") Hence we get something which looks very much like the -conceit—we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of the -"metaphysical poets," similar also in its use of obscure words and of -simple phrasing.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">O géraniums diaphanes, guerroyeurs sortilèges,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sacrilèges monomanes!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Emballages, dévergondages, douches! O pressoirs</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Des vendanges des grands soirs!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Layettes aux abois,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thyrses au fond des bois!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Transfusions, représailles,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Relevailles, compresses et l'éternal potion,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Angélus! n'en pouvoir plus</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">De débâcles nuptiales! de débâcles nuptiales!</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The same poet could write also simply:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Elle est bien loin, elle pleure,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Le grand vent se lamente aussi . . .</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Jules Laforgue, and Tristan Corbière in many of his poems, are nearer -to the "school of Donne" than any modern English poet. But poets more -classical than they have the same essential quality of transmuting ideas -into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Pour l'enfant, amoureux de cartes et d'estampes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">L'univers est égal à son vaste appétit.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Ah, que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes!</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>In French literature the great master of the seventeenth -century—Racine—and the great master of the -nineteenth—Baudelaire—are more like each other than they are -like anyone else. The greatest two masters of diction are also the -greatest two psychologists, the most curious explorers of the soul. It -is interesting to speculate whether it is not a misfortune that two of -the greatest masters of diction in our language, Milton and Dryden, -triumph with a dazzling disregard of the soul. If we continued to -produce Miltons and Drydens it might not so much matter, but as things -are it is a pity that English poetry has remained so incomplete. Those -who object to the "artificiality" of Milton or Dryden sometimes tell us -to "look into our hearts and write." But that is not looking deep -enough; Racine or Donne looked into a good deal more than the heart. One -must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the -digestive tracts.</p> - -<p>May we not conclude, then, that Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan, Herbert and -Lord Herbert, Marvell, King, Cowley at his best, are in the direct -current of English poetry, and that their faults should be reprimanded -by this standard rather than coddled by antiquarian affection? They have -been enough praised in terms which are implicit limitations because they -are "metaphysical" or "witty," "quaint" or "obscure," though at their -best they have not these attributes more than other serious poets. On -the other hand, we must not reject the criticism of Johnson (a dangerous -person to disagree with) without having mastered it, without having -assimilated the Johnsonian canons of taste. In reading the celebrated -passage in his essay on Cowley we must remember that by wit he clearly -means something more serious than we usually mean to-day; in his -criticism of their versification we must remember in what a narrow -discipline he was trained, but also how well trained; we must remember -that Johnson tortures chiefly the chief offenders, Cowley and Cleveland. -It would be a fruitful work, and one requiring a substantial book, to -break up the classification of Johnson (for there has been none since) -and exhibit these poets in all their difference of kind and of degree, -from the massive music of Donne to the faint, pleasing tinkle of -Aurelian Townshend—whose "Dialogue between a Pilgrim and Time" is one -of the few regrettable omissions from this excellent anthology.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_1" id="Footnote_2_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_1"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>"Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century": -Donne to Butler. Selected and edited, with an Essay, by Herbert J. C. -Grierson (Oxford: Clarendon Press. London: Milford. 6s. net).</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="III._ANDREW_MARVELL">III. ANDREW MARVELL</a></h4> - - -<p>The tercentenary of the former member for Hull deserves not only the -celebration proposed by that favoured borough, but a little serious -reflection upon his writing. That is an act of piety, which is very -different from the resurrection of a deceased reputation. Marvell has -stood high for some years; his best poems are not very many, and not -only must be well known, from the "Golden Treasury" and the "Oxford Book -of English Verse," but must also have been enjoyed by numerous readers. -His grave needs neither rose nor rue nor laurel; there is no imaginary -justice to be done; we may think about him, if there be need for -thinking, for our own benefit, not his. To bring the poet back to -life—the great, the perennial, task of criticism—is in this -case to squeeze the drops of the essence of two or three poems; even -confining ourselves to these, we may find some precious liquor unknown to -the present age. Not to determine rank, but to isolate this quality, is the -critical labour. The fact that of all Marvell's verse, which is itself -not a great quantity, the really valuable part consists of a very few -poems indicates that the unknown quality of which we speak is probably a -literary rather than a personal quality; or, more truly, that it is a -quality of a civilization, of a traditional habit of life. A poet like -Donne, or like Baudelaire or Laforgue, may almost be considered the -inventor of an attitude, a system of feeling or of morals. Donne is -difficult to analyse: what appears at one time a curious personal point -of view may at another time appear rather the precise concentration of a -kind of feeling diffused in the air about him. Donne and his shroud, the -shroud and his motive for wearing it, are inseparable, but they are not -the same thing. The seventeenth century sometimes seems for more than a -moment to gather up and to digest into its art all the experience of the -human mind which (from the same point of view) the later centuries seem -to have been partly engaged in repudiating. But Donne would have been an -individual at any time and place; Marvell's best verse is the product of -European, that is to say Latin, culture.</p> - -<p>Out of that high style developed from Marlowe through Jonson (for -Shakespeare does not lend himself to these genealogies) the seventeenth -century separated two qualities: wit and magniloquence. Neither is as -simple or as apprehensible as its name seems to imply, and the two are -not in practice antithetical; both are conscious and cultivated, and the -mind which cultivates one may cultivate the other. The actual poetry, of -Marvell, of Cowley, of Milton, and of others, is a blend in varying -proportions. And we must be on guard not to employ the terms with too -wide a comprehension; for like the other fluid terms with which literary -criticism deals, the meaning alters with the age, and for precision we -must rely to some degree upon the literacy and good taste of the reader. -The wit of the Caroline poets is not the wit of Shakespeare, and it is -not the wit of Dryden, the great master of contempt, or of Pope, the -great master of hatred, or of Swift, the great master of disgust. What -is meant is something which is a common quality to the songs in "Comus" -and Cowley's Anacreontics and Marvell's Horatian Ode. It is more than a -technical accomplishment, or the vocabulary and syntax of an epoch; it -is, what we have designated tentatively as wit, a tough reasonableness -beneath the slight lyric grace. You cannot find it in Shelley or Keats -or Wordsworth; you cannot find more than an echo of it in Landor; still -less in Tennyson or Browning; and among contemporaries Mr. Yeats is an -Irishman and Mr. Hardy is a modern Englishman—that is to say, Mr. -Hardy is without it and Mr. Yeats is outside of the tradition altogether. -On the other hand, as it certainly exists in Lafontaine, there is a large -part of it in Gautier. And of the magniloquence, the deliberate -exploitation of the possibilities of magnificence in language which -Milton used and abused, there is also use and even abuse in the poetry -of Baudelaire.</p> - -<p>Wit is not a quality that we are accustomed to associate with "Puritan" -literature, with Milton or with Marvell. But if so, we are at fault -partly in our conception of wit and partly in our generalizations about -the Puritans. And if the wit of Dryden or of Pope is not the only kind -of wit in the language, the rest is not merely a little merriment or a -little levity or a little impropriety or a little epigram. And, on the -other hand, the sense in which a man like Marvell is a "Puritan" is -restricted. The persons who opposed Charles I. and the persons who -supported the Commonwealth were not all of the flock of Rabbi -Zeal-of-the-land Busy or the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance -Association. Many of them were gentlemen of the time who merely -believed, with considerable show of reason, that government by a -Parliament of gentlemen was better than government by a Stuart; though -they were, to that extent, Liberal Practitioners, they could hardly -foresee the tea-meeting and the Dissidence of Dissent. Being men of -education and culture, even of travel, some of them were exposed to that -spirit of the age which was coming to be the French spirit of the age. -This spirit, curiously enough, was quite opposed to the tendencies -latent or the forces active in Puritanism; the contest does great damage -to the poetry of Milton; Marvell, an active servant of the public, but a -lukewarm partisan, and a poet on a smaller scale, is far less injured by -it. His line on the statue of Charles II., "It is such a King as no -chisel can mend," may be set off against his criticism of the Great -Rebellion: "Men . . . ought and might have trusted the King." Marvell, -therefore, more a man of the century than a Puritan, speaks more clearly -and unequivocally with the voice of his literary age than does Milton.</p> - -<p>This voice speaks out uncommonly strong in the "Coy Mistress." The theme -is one of the great traditional commonplaces of European literature. It -is the theme of "O mistress mine," of "Gather ye rosebuds," of "Go, -lovely rose"; it is in the savage austerity of Lucretius and the intense -levity of Catullus. Where the wit of Marvell renews the theme is in the -variety and order of the images. In the first of the three paragraphs -Marvell plays with a fancy which begins by pleasing and leads to -astonishment.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Had we but world enough and time,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">This coyness, lady, were no crime,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 11em;">. . . I would</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Love you ten years before the Flood,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And you should, if you please, refuse</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Till the conversion of the Jews;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My vegetable love should grow</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Vaster than empires and more slow. . . .</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>We notice the high speed, the succession of concentrated images, each -magnifying the original fancy. When this process has been carried to the -end and summed up, the poem turns suddenly with that surprise which has -been one of the most important means of poetic effect since Homer:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">But at my back I always hear</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And yonder all before us lie</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Deserts of vast eternity.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>A whole civilization resides in these lines:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Pallida Mors æqua pulsat pede pauperumb tabernas,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Regumque turris. . . .</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>And not only Horace but Catullus himself:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nox est perpetua una dormienda.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The verse of Marvell has not the grand reverberation of Catullus's -Latin; but the image of Marvell is certainly more comprehensive and -penetrates greater depths than Horace's.</p> - -<p>A modern poet, had he reached the height, would very likely have closed -on this moral reflection. But the three strophes of Marvell's poem have -something like a syllogistic relation to each other. After a close -approach to the mood of Donne,</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">then worms shall try</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That long-preserved virginity . . .</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The grave's a fine and private place,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But none, I think, do there embrace,</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>the conclusion,</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Let us roll all our strength and all</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Our sweetness up into one ball,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And tear our pleasures with rough strife,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Thorough the iron gates of life.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>It will hardly be denied that this poem contains wit; but it may not be -evident that this wit forms the crescendo and diminuendo of a scale of -great imaginative power. The wit is not only combined with, but fused -into, the imagination. We can easily recognize a witty fancy in the -successive images ("my <i>vegetable</i> love," "till the conversion of the -Jews"), but this fancy is not indulged, as it sometimes is by Cowley or -Cleveland, for its own sake. It is structural decoration of a serious -idea. In this it is superior to the fancy of "L'Allegro," "Il -Penseroso," or the lighter and less successful poems of Keats. In fact, -this alliance of levity and seriousness (by which the seriousness is -intensified) is a characteristic of the sort of wit we are trying to -identify. It is found in</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Le squelette était invisible</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Au temps heureux de l'art païen!</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>of Gautier, and in the <i>dandysme</i> of Baudelaire and Laforgue. It is -in the poem of Catullus which has been quoted, and in the variation by Ben -Jonson:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Cannot we deceive the eyes</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of a few poor household spies?</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">'Tis no sin love's fruits to steal,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But that sweet sin to reveal,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To be taken, to be seen,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">These have sins accounted been.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>It is in Propertius and Ovid. It is a quality of a sophisticated -literature; a quality which expands in English literature just at the -moment before the English mind altered; it is not a quality which we -should expect Puritanism to encourage. When we come to Gray and Collins, -the sophistication remains only in the language, and has disappeared -from the feeling. Gray and Collins were masters, but they had lost that -hold on human values, that firm grasp of human experience, which is a -formidable achievement of the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets. This -wisdom, cynical perhaps but untired (in Shakespeare, a terrifying -clairvoyance), leads toward, and is only completed by, the religious -comprehension; it leads to the point of the <i>Ainsi tout leur a craqué -dans la main</i> of Bouvard and Pécuchet.</p> - -<p>The difference between imagination and fancy, in view of this poetry of -wit, is a very narrow one. Obviously, an image which is immediately and -unintentionally ridiculous is merely a fancy. In the poem "Upon Appleton -House," Marvell falls in with one of these undesirable images, -describing the attitude of the house toward its master:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Yet thus the laden house does sweat,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And scarce endures the master great;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But, where he comes, the swelling hall</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Stirs, and the square grows spherical;</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>which, whatever its intention, is more absurd than it was intended to -be. Marvell also falls into the even commoner error of images which are -over-developed or distracting; which support nothing but their own -misshapen bodies:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">And now the salmon-fishers moist</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Their leathern boats begin to hoist;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And, like Antipodes in shoes,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Have shod their heads in their canoes.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Of this sort of image a choice collection may be found in Johnson's -"Life of Cowley." But the images in the "Coy Mistress" are not only witty, -but satisfy the elucidation of Imagination given by Coleridge:—</p> - - -<blockquote> -<p>"This power . . . reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of -opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the -general, with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with -the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and -familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than -usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with -enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement. . . ."</p></blockquote> - - -<p>Coleridge's statement applies also to the following verses, which are -selected because of their similarity, and because they illustrate the -marked caesura which Marvell often introduces in a short line:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">The tawny mowers enter next,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Who seem like Israelites to be</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Walking on foot through a green sea.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And now the meadows fresher dyed,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Whose grass, with moister colour dashed,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Seems as green silks but newly washed.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He hangs in shades the orange bright,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Like golden lamps in a green night.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Annihilating all that's made</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To a green thought in a green shade.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Had it lived long, it would have been</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Lilies without, roses within.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>The whole poem, from which the last of these quotations is drawn ("The -Nymph and the Fawn"), is built upon a very slight foundation, and we can -imagine what some of our modern practitioners of slight themes would -have made of it. But we need not descend to an invidious contemporaneity -to point the difference. Here are six lines from "The Nymph and the -Fawn":—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">I have a garden of my own,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But so with roses overgrown</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And lilies, that you would it guess</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To be a little wilderness;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And all the spring-time of the year</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">It only loved to be there.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>And here are five lines from "The Nymph's Song to Hylas" in the "Life -and Death of Jason," by William Morris:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">I know a little garden close</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Set thick with lily and red rose.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Where I would wander if I might</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">From dewy dawn to dewy night,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And have one with me wandering.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>So far the resemblance is more striking than the difference, although we -might just notice the vagueness of allusion in the last line to some -indefinite person, form, or phantom, compared with the more explicit -reference of emotion to object which we should expect from Marvell. But -in the latter part of the poem Morris divaricates widely:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Yet tottering as I am, and weak,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Still have I left a little breath</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To seek within the jaws of death</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">An entrance to that happy place;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To seek the unforgotten face</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Anigh the murmuring of the sea.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>Here the resemblance, if there is any, is to the latter part of "The Coy -Mistress." As for the difference, it could not be more pronounced. The -effect of Morris's charming poem depends upon the mistiness of the -feeling and the vagueness of its object; the effect of Marvell's upon -its bright, hard precision. And this precision is not due to the fact -that Marvell is concerned with cruder or simpler or more carnal -emotions. The emotion of Morris is not more refined or more spiritual; -it is merely more vague: if anyone doubts whether the more refined or -spiritual emotion can be precise, he should study the treatment of the -varieties of discarnate emotion in the "Paradiso." A curious result of -the comparison of Morris's poem with Marvell's is that the former, -though it appears to be more serious, is found to be the slighter; and -Marvell's "Nymph and the Fawn," appearing more slight, is the more -serious.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">So weeps the wounded balsam; so</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The holy frankincense doth flow;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The brotherless Heliades</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Melt in such amber tears as these.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>These verses have the suggestiveness of true poetry; and the verses of -Morris, which are nothing if not an attempt to suggest, really suggest -nothing; and we are inclined to infer that the suggestiveness is the -aura around a bright clear centre, that you cannot have the aura alone. -The day-dreamy feeling of Morris is essentially a slight thing; Marvell -takes a slight affair, the feeling of a girl for her pet, and gives it a -connexion with that inexhaustible and terrible nebula of emotion which -surrounds all our exact and practical passions and mingles with them. -Again, Marvell does this in a poem which, because of its formal pastoral -machinery, may appear a trifling object:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><i>Clorinda</i>:<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Near this, a fountain's liquid bell</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Tinkles within the concave shell.</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>Damon</i>:<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Might a soul bathe there and be clean.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Or slake its drought?</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>where we find that a metaphor has suddenly rapt us to the image of -spiritual purgation. There is here the element of <i>surprise</i>, as when -Villon says:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Necessité faict gens mesprendre</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Et faim saillir le loup des boys,</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>the surprise which Poe considered of the highest importance, and also -the restraint and quietness of tone which make the surprise possible. -And in the verses of Marvell which have been quoted there is the making -the familiar strange, and the strange familiar, which Coleridge -attributed to good poetry.</p> - -<p>The effort to construct a dream-world, which alters English poetry so -greatly in the nineteenth-century, a dream-world utterly different from -the visionary realities of the Vita Nuova or of the poetry of Dante's -contemporaries, is a problem of which various explanations may no doubt -be found; in any case, the result makes a poet of the nineteenth -century, of the same size as Marvell, a more trivial and less serious -figure. Marvell is no greater personality than William Morris, but he -had something much more solid behind him: he had the vast and -penetrating influence of Ben Jonson. Jonson never wrote anything so pure -as Marvell's Horatian Ode; but this ode has that same quality of wit -which was diffused over the whole Elizabethan product and concentrated -in the work of Jonson. And, as was said before, this wit which pervades -the poetry of Marvell is more Latin, more refined, than anything that -succeeded it. The great danger, as well as the great interest and -excitement, of English prose and verse, compared with French, is that it -permits and justifies an exaggeration of particular qualities to the -exclusion of others. Dryden was great in wit, as Milton in -magniloquence; but the former, by isolating this quality and making it -by itself into great poetry, and the latter, by coming to dispense with -it altogether, may perhaps have injured the language. In Dryden wit -becomes almost fun, and thereby loses some contact with reality; becomes -pure fun, which French wit almost never is.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">The midwife placed her hand on his thick skull,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With this prophetic blessing: <i>Be thou dull.</i></span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of the true old enthusiastic breed.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>This is audacious and splendid; it belongs to satire besides which -Marvell's Satires are random babbling; but it is perhaps as exaggerated -as—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oft he seems to hide his face,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">But unexpectedly returns,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And to his faithful champion hath in place</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And all that band them to resist</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">His uncontrollable intent.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>How oddly the sharp Dantesque phrase "whence Gaza mourns" springs out -from the brilliant but ridiculous contortions of Milton's sentence!</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Who from his private gardens, where</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He lived reservèd and austere,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">(As if his highest plot</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To plant the bergamot)</span><br /> -<br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Could by industrious valour climb</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To ruin the great work of Time,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">And cast the kingdoms old</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Into another mold;</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">* * * *</span></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">The Piet no shelter now shall find</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Within his parti-coloured mind,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">But, from this valour sad,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Shrink underneath the plaid:</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>There is here an equipoise, a balance and proportion of tones, which, -while it cannot raise Marvell to the level of Dryden or Milton, extorts -an approval which these poets do not receive from us, and bestows a -pleasure at least different in kind from any they can often give. It is -what makes Marvell a classic; or classic in a sense in which Gray and -Collins are not; for the latter, with all their accredited purity, are -comparatively poor in shades of feeling to contrast and unite.</p> - -<p>We are baffled in the attempt to translate the quality indicated by the -dim and antiquated term wit into the equally unsatisfactory nomenclature -of our own time. Even Cowley is only able to define it by negatives:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Comely in thousand shapes appears;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Yonder we saw it plain; and here 'tis now,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Like spirits in a place, we know not how.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>It has passed out of our critical coinage altogether, and no new term -has been struck to replace it; the quality seldom exists, and is never -recognized.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">In a true piece of Wit all things must be</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Yet all things there agree;</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">As in the Ark, join'd without force or strife,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">All creatures dwelt, all creatures that had life.</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Or as the primitive forms of all</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 4em;">(If we compare great things with small)</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Which, without discord or confusion, lie</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In that strange mirror of the Deity.</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>So far Cowley has spoken well. But if we are to attempt even no more -than Cowley, we, placed in a retrospective attitude, must risk much more -than anxious generalizations. With our eye still on Marvell, we can say -that wit is not erudition; it is sometimes stifled by erudition, as in -much of Milton. It is not cynicism, though it has a kind of toughness -which may be confused with cynicism by the tender-minded. It is confused -with erudition because it belongs to an educated mind, rich in -generations of experience; and it is confused with cynicism because it -implies a constant inspection and criticism of experience. It involves, -probably, a recognition, implicit in the expression of every experience, -of other kinds of experience which are possible, which we find as -clearly in the greatest as in poets like Marvell. Such a general -statement may seem to take us a long way from "The Nymph and the Fawn," -or even from the Horatian Ode; but it is perhaps justified by the desire -to account for that precise taste of Marvell's which finds for him the -proper degree of seriousness for every subject which he treats. His -errors of taste, when he trespasses, are not sins against this virtue; -they are conceits, distended metaphors and similes, but they never -consist in taking a subject too seriously or too lightly. This virtue of -wit is not a peculiar quality of minor poets, or of the minor poets of -one age or of one school; it is an intellectual quality which perhaps -only becomes noticeable by itself, in the work of lesser poets. -Furthermore, it is absent from the work of Wordsworth, Shelley, and -Keats, on whose poetry nineteenth-century criticism has unconsciously -been based. To the best of their poetry wit is irrelevant:—</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">Art thou pale for weariness</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Wandering companionless</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Among the stars that have a different birth,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And ever changing, like a joyless eye,</span><br /> -<span style="margin-left: 3em;">That finds no object worth its constancy?</span></p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>We should find it difficult to draw any useful comparison between these -lines of Shelley and anything by Marvell. But later poets, who would -have been the better for Marvell's quality, were without it; even -Browning seems oddly immature, in some way, beside Marvell. And nowadays -we find occasionally good irony, or satire, which lack wit's internal -equilibrium, because their voices are essentially protests against some -outside sentimentality or stupidity; or we find serious poets who are -afraid of acquiring wit, lest they lose intensity. The quality which -Marvell had, this modest and certainly impersonal virtue—whether we -call it wit or reason, or even urbanity—we have patently failed to -define. By whatever name we call it, and however we define that name, it -is something precious and needed and apparently extinct; it is what -should preserve the reputation of Marvell. <i>C'était une belle âme, -comme on ne fait plus à Londres.</i></p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Homage to John Dryden, by Thomas Stearns Eliot - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOMAGE TO JOHN DRYDEN *** - -***** This file should be named 63547-h.htm or 63547-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/5/4/63547/ - -Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images -generously made available by Google Books.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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