No More Learning

Mr. Wordsworth, in
consequence, assigns as the proof of his position, "that not only
the language of a large portion of every good poem, even of the most
elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the
metre, in no respect differ from that of good prose, but likewise that
some of the most interesting parts of the best poems will be found to be
strictly the language of prose, when prose is well written. The truth of
this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost
all the poetical writings, even of Milton himself. " He then quotes
Gray's sonnet--

"In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
_A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire. _
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain:
_I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more, because I weep in vain. "_

and adds the following remark:--"It will easily be perceived, that the
only part of this Sonnet which is of any value, is the lines printed in
italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the
use of the single word `fruitless' for fruitlessly, which is so far a
defect, the language of these lines does in no respect differ from that
of prose. "

An idealist defending his system by the fact, that when asleep we often
believe ourselves awake, was well answered by his plain neighbour, "Ah,
but when awake do we ever believe ourselves asleep? " Things identical
must be convertible. The preceding passage seems to rest on a similar
sophism. For the question is not, whether there may not occur in prose
an order of words, which would be equally proper in a poem; nor whether
there are not beautiful lines and sentences of frequent occurrence in
good poems, which would be equally becoming as well as beautiful in good
prose; for neither the one nor the other has ever been either denied
or doubted by any one. The true question must be, whether there are not
modes of expression, a construction, and an order of sentences, which
are in their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but
would be disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and,
vice versa, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be
an arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection
of (what are called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their
frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would
be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that in both
cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will
and ought to exist.

And first from the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance
in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to hold in
check the workings of passion. It might be easily explained likewise
in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the very state,
which it counteracts; and how this balance of antagonists became
organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term), by a
supervening act of the will and judgment, consciously and for the
foreseen purpose of pleasure. Assuming these principles, as the data of
our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate conditions, which the
critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First, that, as
the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased
excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural
language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are formed
into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and for
the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of present
volition should throughout the metrical language be proportionately
discernible. Now these two conditions must be reconciled and co-
present. There must be not only a partnership, but a union; an
interpenetration of passion and of will, of spontaneous impulse and
of voluntary purpose. Again, this union can be manifested only in a
frequency of forms and figures of speech, (originally the offspring of
passion, but now the adopted children of power), greater than would be
desired or endured, where the emotion is not voluntarily encouraged and
kept up for the sake of that pleasure, which such emotion, so tempered
and mastered by the will, is found capable of communicating. It not only
dictates, but of itself tends to produce a more frequent employment of
picturesque and vivifying language, than would be natural in any other
case, in which there did not exist, as there does in the present, a
previous and well understood, though tacit, compact between the poet and
his reader, that the latter is entitled to expect, and the former bound
to supply this species and degree of pleasurable excitement. We may
in some measure apply to this union the answer of Polixenes, in the
Winter's Tale, to Perdita's neglect of the streaked gilliflowers,
because she had heard it said,

"There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature.
POL. Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art,
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art,
Which does mend nature,--change it rather; but
The art itself is nature. "

Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. As far as metre acts in and
for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both
of the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces by
the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick reciprocations
of curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, which are too slight
indeed to be at any one moment objects of distinct consciousness,
yet become considerable in their aggregate influence. As a medicated
atmosphere, or as wine during animated conversation, they act
powerfully, though themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, correspondent
food and appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and
feelings thus roused there must needs be a disappointment felt; like
that of leaping in the dark from the last step of a stair-case, when we
had prepared our muscles for a leap of three or four.

The discussion on the powers of metre in the preface is highly ingenious
and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any statement of
its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the contrary Mr.
Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers, which it exerts
during, (and, as I think, in consequence of) its combination with other
elements of poetry. Thus the previous difficulty is left unanswered,
what the elements are, with which it must be combined, in order
to produce its own effects to any pleasurable purpose. Double and
tri-syllable rhymes, indeed, form a lower species of wit, and, attended
to exclusively for their own sake, may become a source of momentary
amusement; as in poor Smart's distich to the Welsh Squire who had
promised him a hare:

"Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader!
Hast sent the hare? or hast thou swallow'd her? "

But for any poetic purposes, metre resembles, (if the aptness of the
simile may excuse its meanness), yeast, worthless or disagreeable by
itself, but giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is
proportionally combined.

The reference to THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD by no means satisfies my
judgment. We all willingly throw ourselves back for awhile into the
feelings of our childhood. This ballad, therefore, we read under such
recollections of our own childish feelings, as would equally endear to
us poems, which Mr. Wordsworth himself would regard as faulty in the
opposite extreme of gaudy and technical ornament. Before the invention
of printing, and in a still greater degree, before the introduction of
writing, metre, especially alliterative metre, (whether alliterative at
the beginning of the words, as in PIERCE PLOUMAN, or at the end, as in
rhymes) possessed an independent value as assisting the recollection,
and consequently the preservation, of any series of truths or incidents.
But I am not convinced by the collation of facts, that THE CHILDREN
IN THE WOOD owes either its preservation, or its popularity, to its
metrical form. Mr. Marshal's repository affords a number of tales in
prose inferior in pathos and general merit, some of as old a date, and
many as widely popular. TOM HICKATHRIFT, JACK THE GIANT-KILLER, GOODY
TWO-SHOES, and LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD are formidable rivals. And
that they have continued in prose, cannot be fairly explained by the
assumption, that the comparative meanness of their thoughts and images
precluded even the humblest forms of metre. The scene of GOODY TWO-SHOES
in the church is perfectly susceptible of metrical narration; and, among
the thaumata thaumastotata even of the present age, I do not recollect a
more astonishing image than that of the "whole rookery, that flew out
of the giant's beard," scared by the tremendous voice, with which this
monster answered the challenge of the heroic TOM HICKATHRIFT!

If from these we turn to compositions universally, and independently of
all early associations, beloved and admired; would the MARIA, THE MONK,
or THE POOR MAN'S ASS of Sterne, be read with more delight, or have a
better chance of immortality, had they without any change in the diction
been composed in rhyme, than in their present state? If I am not grossly
mistaken, the general reply would be in the negative. Nay, I will
confess, that, in Mr. Wordsworth's own volumes, the ANECDOTE FOR
FATHERS, SIMON LEE, ALICE FELL, BEGGARS, and THE SAILOR'S MOTHER,
notwithstanding the beauties which are to be found in each of them where
the poet interposes the music of his own thoughts, would have been more
delightful to me in prose, told and managed, as by Mr. Wordsworth they
would have been, in a moral essay or pedestrian tour.

Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the attention, and therefore
excites the question: Why is the attention to be thus stimulated? Now
the question cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre itself;
for this we have shown to be conditional, and dependent on the
appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions, to which the metrical
form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other answer that can be
rationally given, short of this: I write in metre, because I am about to
use a language different from that of prose. Besides, where the language
is not such, how interesting soever the reflections are, that are
capable of being drawn by a philosophic mind from the thoughts or
incidents of the poem, the metre itself must often become feeble. Take
the last three stanzas of THE SAILOR'S MOTHER, for instance. If I could
for a moment abstract from the effect produced on the author's feelings,
as a man, by the incident at the time of its real occurrence, I would
dare appeal to his own judgment, whether in the metre itself he found a
sufficient reason for their being written metrically?

And, thus continuing, she said,
"I had a Son, who many a day
Sailed on the seas; but he is dead;
In Denmark he was cast away;
And I have travelled far as Hull to see
What clothes he might have left, or other property.

The Bird and Cage they both were his
'Twas my Son's Bird; and neat and trim
He kept it: many voyages
This Singing-bird hath gone with him;
When last he sailed he left the Bird behind;
As it might be, perhaps, from bodings of his mind.

He to a Fellow-lodger's care
Had left it, to be watched and fed,
Till he came back again; and there
I found it when my Son was dead;
And now, God help me for my little wit!
I trail it with me, Sir! he took so much delight in it. "

If disproportioning the emphasis we read these stanzas so as to make the
rhymes perceptible, even tri-syllable rhymes could scarcely produce an
equal sense of oddity and strangeness, as we feel here in finding rhymes
at all in sentences so exclusively colloquial. I would further ask
whether, but for that visionary state, into which the figure of the
woman and the susceptibility of his own genius had placed the poet's
imagination,--(a state, which spreads its influence and colouring over
all, that co-exists with the exciting cause, and in which

"The simplest, and the most familiar things
Gain a strange power of spreading awe around them,") [67]

I would ask the poet whether he would not have felt an abrupt downfall
in these verses from the preceding stanza?

"The ancient spirit is not dead;
Old times, thought I, are breathing there;
Proud was I that my country bred
Such strength, a dignity so fair:
She begged an alms, like one in poor estate;
I looked at her again, nor did my pride abate. "

It must not be omitted, and is besides worthy of notice, that those
stanzas furnish the only fair instance that I have been able to discover
in all Mr. Wordsworth's writings, of an actual adoption, or true
imitation, of the real and very language of low and rustic life, freed
from provincialisms.

Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes elsewhere assigned,
which render metre the proper form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and
defective without metre. Metre, therefore, having been connected with
poetry most often and by a peculiar fitness, whatever else is combined
with metre must, though it be not itself essentially poetic, have
nevertheless some property in common with poetry, as an intermedium
of affinity, a sort, (if I may dare borrow a well-known phrase from
technical chemistry), of mordaunt between it and the super-added metre.
Now poetry, Mr. Wordsworth truly affirms, does always imply passion:
which word must be here understood in its most general sense, as an
excited state of the feelings and faculties. And as every passion has
its proper pulse, so will it likewise have its characteristic modes
of expression. But where there exists that degree of genius and talent
which entitles a writer to aim at the honours of a poet, the very act of
poetic composition itself is, and is allowed to imply and to produce,
an unusual state of excitement, which of course justifies and demands a
correspondent difference of language, as truly, though not perhaps in as
marked a degree, as the excitement of love, fear, rage, or jealousy. The
vividness of the descriptions or declamations in Donne or Dryden, is as
much and as often derived from the force and fervour of the describer,
as from the reflections, forms or incidents, which constitute their
subject and materials. The wheels take fire from the mere rapidity of
their motion. To what extent, and under what modifications, this may
be admitted to act, I shall attempt to define in an after remark on Mr.
Wordsworth's reply to this objection, or rather on his objection to this
reply, as already anticipated in his preface.

Fourthly, and as intimately connected with this, if not the same
argument in a more general form, I adduce the high spiritual instinct of
the human being impelling us to seek unity by harmonious adjustment, and
thus establishing the principle that all the parts of an organized whole
must be assimilated to the more important and essential parts. This and
the preceding arguments may be strengthened by the reflection, that the
composition of a poem is among the imitative arts; and that imitation,
as opposed to copying, consists either in the interfusion of the same
throughout the radically different, or of the different throughout a
base radically the same.

Lastly, I appeal to the practice of the best poets, of all countries
and in all ages, as authorizing the opinion, (deduced from all the
foregoing,) that in every import of the word essential, which would
not here involve a mere truism, there may be, is, and ought to be an
essential difference between the language of prose and of metrical
composition.

In Mr. Wordsworth's criticism of Gray's Sonnet, the reader's sympathy
with his praise or blame of the different parts is taken for granted
rather perhaps too easily. He has not, at least, attempted to win or
compel it by argumentative analysis. In my conception at least, the
lines rejected as of no value do, with the exception of the two first,
differ as much and as little from the language of common life, as those
which he has printed in italics as possessing genuine excellence. Of the
five lines thus honourably distinguished, two of them differ from prose
even more widely, than the lines which either precede or follow, in the
position of the words.

"A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire. "

But were it otherwise, what would this prove, but a truth, of which no
man ever doubted? --videlicet, that there are sentences, which would be
equally in their place both in verse and prose. Assuredly it does not
prove the point, which alone requires proof; namely, that there are not
passages, which would suit the one and not suit the other. The first
line of this sonnet is distinguished from the ordinary language of
men by the epithet to morning. For we will set aside, at present, the
consideration, that the particular word "smiling" is hackneyed, and,
as it involves a sort of personification, not quite congruous with
the common and material attribute of "shining. " And, doubtless, this
adjunction of epithets for the purpose of additional description, where
no particular attention is demanded for the quality of the thing, would
be noticed as giving a poetic cast to a man's conversation. Should the
sportsman exclaim, "Come boys! the rosy morning calls you up:" he will
be supposed to have some song in his head. But no one suspects this,
when he says, "A wet morning shall not confine us to our beds. " This
then is either a defect in poetry, or it is not. Whoever should decide
in the affirmative, I would request him to re-peruse any one poem, of
any confessedly great poet from Homer to Milton, or from Aeschylus to
Shakespeare; and to strike out, (in thought I mean), every instance of
this kind. If the number of these fancied erasures did not startle him;
or if he continued to deem the work improved by their total omission;
he must advance reasons of no ordinary strength and evidence, reasons
grounded in the essence of human nature. Otherwise, I should not
hesitate to consider him as a man not so much proof against all
authority, as dead to it.

The second line,

"And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;--"

has indeed almost as many faults as words. But then it is a bad line,
not because the language is distinct from that of prose; but because
it conveys incongruous images; because it confounds the cause and the
effect; the real thing with the personified representative of the thing;
in short, because it differs from the language of good sense! That the
"Phoebus" is hackneyed, and a school-boy image, is an accidental fault,
dependent on the age in which the author wrote, and not deduced from
the nature of the thing. That it is part of an exploded mythology, is an
objection more deeply grounded. Yet when the torch of ancient learning
was re-kindled, so cheering were its beams, that our eldest poets, cut
off by Christianity from all accredited machinery, and deprived of all
acknowledged guardians and symbols of the great objects of nature,
were naturally induced to adopt, as a poetic language, those fabulous
personages, those forms of the [68]supernatural in nature, which had
given them such dear delight in the poems of their great masters. Nay,
even at this day what scholar of genial taste will not so far sympathize
with them, as to read with pleasure in Petrarch, Chaucer, or Spenser,
what he would perhaps condemn as puerile in a modern poet?

I remember no poet, whose writings would safelier stand the test of Mr.
Wordsworth's theory, than Spenser. Yet will Mr. Wordsworth say, that the
style of the following stanza is either undistinguished from prose,
and the language of ordinary life? Or that it is vicious, and that the
stanzas are blots in THE FAERY QUEEN?

"By this the northern wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre,
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wild deep wandering arre
And chearfull chaunticlere with his note shrill
Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery carre
In hast was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that night so long his roome did fill. "

"At last the golden orientall gate
Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre,
And Phoebus fresh, as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre,
And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy ayre:
Which when the wakeful elfe perceived, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sun-bright armes and battailous array;
For with that pagan proud he combat will that day. "

On the contrary to how many passages, both in hymn books and in blank
verse poems, could I, (were it not invidious), direct the reader's
attention, the style of which is most unpoetic, because, and only
because, it is the style of prose? He will not suppose me capable of
having in my mind such verses, as

"I put my hat upon my head
And walk'd into the Strand;
And there I met another man,
Whose hat was in his hand. "

To such specimens it would indeed be a fair and full reply, that these
lines are not bad, because they are unpoetic; but because they are empty
of all sense and feeling; and that it were an idle attempt to prove that
"an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a
man. " But the sense shall be good and weighty, the language correct and
dignified, the subject interesting and treated with feeling; and yet
the style shall, notwithstanding all these merits, be justly blamable as
prosaic, and solely because the words and the order of the words would
find their appropriate place in prose, but are not suitable to metrical
composition. The CIVIL WARS of Daniel is an instructive, and even
interesting work; but take the following stanzas, (and from the hundred
instances which abound I might probably have selected others far more
striking):

"And to the end we may with better ease
Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to shew
What were the times foregoing near to these,
That these we may with better profit know.
Tell how the world fell into this disease;
And how so great distemperature did grow;
So shall we see with what degrees it came;
How things at full do soon wax out of frame. "

"Ten kings had from the Norman Conqu'ror reign'd
With intermix'd and variable fate,
When England to her greatest height attain'd
Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state;
After it had with much ado sustain'd
The violence of princes, with debate
For titles and the often mutinies
Of nobles for their ancient liberties. "

"For first, the Norman, conqu'ring all by might,
By might was forc'd to keep what he had got;
Mixing our customs and the form of right
With foreign constitutions, he had brought;
Mast'ring the mighty, humbling the poorer wight,
By all severest means that could be wrought;
And, making the succession doubtful, rent
His new-got state, and left it turbulent. "

Will it be contended on the one side, that these lines are mean and
senseless? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that
reason unpoetic? This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the
"well-languaged Daniel;" but likewise, and by the consent of his
contemporaries no less than of all succeeding critics, "the prosaic
Daniel. " Yet those, who thus designate this wise and amiable writer
from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction to his metre in
the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and
interesting on other accounts; but willingly admit, that there are to
be found throughout his poems, and especially in his EPISTLES and in his
HYMEN'S TRIUMPH, many and exquisite specimens of that style which, as
the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both. A fine and
almost faultless extract, eminent as for other beauties, so for its
perfection in this species of diction, may be seen in Lamb's DRAMATIC
SPECIMENS, a work of various interest from the nature of the selections
themselves, (all from the plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries),--and
deriving a high additional value from the notes, which are full of just
and original criticism, expressed with all the freshness of originality.

Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory, that aims
to identify the style of prose and verse,--(if it does not indeed claim
for the latter a yet nearer resemblance to the average style of men
in the viva voce intercourse of real life)--we might anticipate the
following as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I have
indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole acknowledged
difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye only. The
existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the merit of a poem,
must at length be conceded, when a number of successive lines can be
rendered, even to the most delicate ear, unrecognizable as verse, or
as having even been intended for verse, by simply transcribing them as
prose; when if the poem be in blank verse, this can be effected without
any alteration, or at most by merely restoring one or two words to
their proper places, from which they have been transplanted [69] for no
assignable cause or reason but that of the author's convenience; but if
it be in rhyme, by the mere exchange of the final word of each line
for some other of the same meaning, equally appropriate, dignified and
euphonic.

The answer or objection in the preface to the anticipated remark
"that metre paves the way to other distinctions," is contained in the
following words. "The distinction of rhyme and metre is regular and
uniform, and not, like that produced by (what is usually called) poetic
diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon which no
calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is utterly
at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may
choose to connect with the passion. " But is this a poet, of whom a poet
is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain
or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient
make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to
effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy
of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it not his own
fault? The ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the
principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass judgment on
what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two
could be separated. But if it be asked, by what principles the poet is
to regulate his own style, if he do not adhere closely to the sort
and order of words which he hears in the market, wake, high-road, or
plough-field? I reply; by principles, the ignorance or neglect of which
would convict him of being no poet, but a silly or presumptuous usurper
of the name. By the principles of grammar, logic, psychology. In one
word by such a knowledge of the facts, material and spiritual, that most
appertain to his art, as, if it have been governed and applied by good
sense, and rendered instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and
reward of our past conscious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and
acquires the name of Taste. By what rule that does not leave the
reader at the poet's mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter
to distinguish between the language suitable to suppressed, and the
language, which is characteristic of indulged, anger? Or between that of
rage and that of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search
of angry or jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy
their words? Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding
upon the all in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by
observation? And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As
eyes, for which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and
to which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? There
is not, I firmly believe, a man now living, who has, from his own inward
experience, a clearer intuition, than Mr. Wordsworth himself, that the
last mentioned are the true sources of genial discrimination. Through
the same process and by the same creative agency will the poet
distinguish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very
act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, what differences
of style it at once inspires and justifies; what intermixture of
conscious volition is natural to that state; and in what instances
such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere creatures of an
arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of ornament or connection.
For, even as truth is its own light and evidence, discovering at once
itself and falsehood, so is it the prerogative of poetic genius
to distinguish by parental instinct its proper offspring from the
changelings, which the gnomes of vanity or the fairies of fashion may
have laid in its cradle or called by its names. Could a rule be
given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a
mechanical art. It would be morphosis, not poiaesis. The rules of the
Imagination are themselves the very powers of growth and production.
The words to which they are reducible, present only the outlines
and external appearance of the fruit. A deceptive counterfeit of the
superficial form and colours may be elaborated; but the marble peach
feels cold and heavy, and children only put it to their mouths. We find
no difficulty in admitting as excellent, and the legitimate language of
poetic fervour self-impassioned, Donne's apostrophe to the Sun in the
second stanza of his PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

"Thee, eye of heaven! this great Soul envies not;
By thy male force is all, we have, begot.
In the first East thou now beginn'st to shine,
Suck'st early balm and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein'd career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night this western world of mine:
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
Who before thee one day began to be,
And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive
thee. "

Or the next stanza but one:

"Great Destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast mark'd out a path and period
For every thing! Who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends see'st at one instant: thou
Knot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless brow
Ne'er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look,
And shew my story in thy eternal book," etc.

As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of
unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudopoesy, or
the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on
the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms.
Such are the Odes to jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in
Dodsley's collection and the magazines of that day, which seldom fail
to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two SUTTONS, commencing
with

"Inoculation, heavenly maid! descend! "

It is not to be denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets
of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory
deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read
to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory period
of Cowley's preface to his "Pindaric Odes," written in imitation of
the style and manner of the odes of Pindar. "If," (says Cowley), "a man
should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought
that one madman had translated another as may appear, when he, that
understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into
Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving. " I then proceeded
with his own free version of the second Olympic, composed for the
charitable purpose of rationalizing the Theban Eagle.

"Queen of all harmonious things,
Dancing words and speaking strings,
What god, what hero, wilt thou sing?
What happy man to equal glories bring?
Begin, begin thy noble choice,
And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice.
Pisa does to Jove belong,
Jove and Pisa claim thy song.
The fair first-fruits of war, th' Olympic games,
Alcides, offer'd up to Jove;
Alcides, too, thy strings may move,
But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy prove?
Join Theron boldly to their sacred names;
Theron the next honour claims;
Theron to no man gives place,
Is first in Pisa's and in Virtue's race;
Theron there, and he alone,
Ev'n his own swift forefathers has outgone. "

One of the company exclaimed, with the full assent of the rest, that
if the original were madder than this, it must be incurably mad. I then
translated the ode from the Greek, and as nearly as possible, word
for word; and the impression was, that in the general movement of the
periods, in the form of the connections and transitions, and in the
sober majesty of lofty sense, it appeared to them to approach more
nearly, than any other poetry they had heard, to the style of our Bible,
in the prophetic books. The first strophe will suffice as a specimen:

"Ye harp-controlling hymns! (or) ye hymns the sovereigns of harps!
What God? what Hero?
What Man shall we celebrate?
Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,
But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,
The first-fruits of the spoils of war.
But Theron for the four-horsed car,
That bore victory to him,
It behoves us now to voice aloud:
The Just, the Hospitable,
The Bulwark of Agrigentum,
Of renowned fathers
The Flower, even him
Who preserves his native city erect and safe. "

But are such rhetorical caprices condemnable only for their deviation
from the language of real life?
and are they by no other means to be
precluded, but by the rejection of all distinctions between prose and
verse, save that of metre? Surely good sense, and a moderate insight
into the constitution of the human mind, would be amply sufficient to
prove, that such language and such combinations are the native product
neither of the fancy nor of the imagination; that their operation
consists in the excitement of surprise by the juxta-position and
apparent reconciliation of widely different or incompatible things. As
when, for instance, the hills are made to reflect the image of a
voice. Surely, no unusual taste is requisite to see clearly, that
this compulsory juxtaposition is not produced by the presentation of
impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any sympathy
with the modifying powers with which the genius of the poet had united
and inspirited all the objects of his thought; that it is therefore
a species of wit, a pure work of the will, and implies a leisure and
self-possession both of thought and of feeling, incompatible with the
steady fervour of a mind possessed and filled with the grandeur of its
subject. To sum up the whole in one sentence. When a poem, or a part of
a poem, shall be adduced, which is evidently vicious in the figures and
centexture of its style, yet for the condemnation of which no reason can
be assigned, except that it differs from the style in which men actually
converse, then, and not till then, can I hold this theory to be either
plausible, or practicable, or capable of furnishing either rule,
guidance, or precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as
well as more naturally, have been deduced in the author's own mind from
considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things,
confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of one country
nor of one age.




CHAPTER XIX

Continuation--Concerning the real object which, it is probable, Mr.
Wordsworth had before him in his critical preface--Elucidation and
application of this.


It might appear from some passages in the former part of Mr.
Wordsworth's preface, that he meant to confine his theory of style, and
the necessity of a close accordance with the actual language of men,
to those particular subjects from low and rustic life, which by way of
experiment he had purposed to naturalize as a new species in our English
poetry. But from the train of argument that follows; from the reference
to Milton; and from the spirit of his critique on Gray's sonnet; those
sentences appear to have been rather courtesies of modesty, than actual
limitations of his system. Yet so groundless does this system appear
on a close examination; and so strange and overwhelming [70] in its
consequences, that I cannot, and I do not, believe that the poet did
ever himself adopt it in the unqualified sense, in which his expressions
have been understood by others, and which, indeed, according to all the
common laws of interpretation they seem to bear. What then did he
mean? I apprehend, that in the clear perception, not unaccompanied with
disgust or contempt, of the gaudy affectations of a style which passed
current with too many for poetic diction, (though in truth it had as
little pretensions to poetry, as to logic or common sense,) he narrowed
his view for the time; and feeling a justifiable preference for the
language of nature and of good sense, even in its humblest and least
ornamented forms, he suffered himself to express, in terms at once too
large and too exclusive, his predilection for a style the most remote
possible from the false and showy splendour which he wished to explode.
It is possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative,
deviated for a time into direct partiality. But the real object which
he had in view, was, I doubt not, a species of excellence which had
been long before most happily characterized by the judicious and amiable
Garve, whose works are so justly beloved and esteemed by the Germans,
in his remarks on Gellert, from which the following is literally
translated. "The talent, that is required in order to make, excellent
verses, is perhaps greater than the philosopher is ready to admit, or
would find it in his power to acquire: the talent to seek only the apt
expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same time with it the
rhyme and the metre. Gellert possessed this happy gift, if ever any one
of our poets possessed it; and nothing perhaps contributed more to the
great and universal impression which his fables made on their first
publication, or conduces more to their continued popularity. It was
a strange and curious phaenomenon, and such as in Germany had been
previously unheard of, to read verses in which everything was expressed
just as one would wish to talk, and yet all dignified, attractive,
and interesting; and all at the same time perfectly correct as to the
measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It is certain, that poetry when
it has attained this excellence makes a far greater impression than
prose. So much so indeed, that even the gratification which the very
rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a contemptible or trifling
gratification. " [71]

However novel this phaenomenon may have been in Germany at the time
of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our
language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spenser occasionally
compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes,
the whole FAIRY QUEEN is an almost continued instance of this beauty.
Waller's song GO, LOVELY ROSE, is doubtless familiar to most of my
readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of Cotton,
more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the VIRGIL
TRAVESTIED, I should have indulged myself, and I think have gratified
many, who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some
admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that
volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image, and passion,
which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder muse; and yet so
worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or
the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an
appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have
expressed such thoughts otherwise without loss or injury to his meaning.

But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever
has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this
excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer's age was either
sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either "beloved"
or "belov'd" according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of
more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then only adopt the
pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he lived, both with
respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable;
I would then venture to ask, what even in the colloquial language of
elegant and unaffected women, (who are the peculiar mistresses of "pure
English and undefiled,") what could we hear more natural, or seemingly
more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer's TROILUS AND
CRESEIDE.

"And after this forth to the gate he wente,
Ther as Creseide out rode a ful gode pass,
And up and doun there made he many' a wente,
And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!
Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solas
As woulde blisful God now for his joie,
I might her sene agen come in to Troie!
And to the yondir hil I gan her Bide,
Alas! and there I toke of her my leve
And yond I saw her to her fathir ride;
For sorow of whiche mine hert shall to-cleve;
And hithir home I came whan it was eve,
And here I dwel, out-cast from ally joie,
And steal, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.
"And of himselfe imaginid he ofte
To ben defaitid, pale and woxin lesse
Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,
What may it be? who can the sothe gesse,
Why Troilus hath al this hevinesse?
And al this n' as but his melancolie,
That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.
Anothir time imaginin he would
That every wight, that past him by the wey,
Had of him routhe, and that thei saien should,
I am right sory, Troilus wol dey!
And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey,
As ye have herde: suche life gan he to lede
As he that stode betwixin hope and drede:
For which him likid in his songis shewe
Th' encheson of his wo as he best might,
And made a songe of words but a fewe,
Somwhat his woful herte for to light,
And whan he was from every mann'is sight
With softe voice he of his lady dere,
That absent was, gan sing as ye may here:

* * * * * *

This song, when he thus songin had, ful Bone
He fil agen into his sighis olde
And every night, as was his wonte to done;
He stode the bright moone to beholde
And all his sorowe to the moone he tolde,
And said: I wis, whan thou art hornid newe,
I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe! "

Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and
the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the
expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature
of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his
TEMPLE; or SACRED POEMS AND PRIVATE EJACULATIONS are Comparatively but
little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally
admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and
for the simple dignity of the language. Unless, indeed, a fastidious
taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line. The second is
a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present
purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an
assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches namely, that the
characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which
distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying
the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language;
the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial
thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of
thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton's IDEAS

As other men, so I myself do muse,
Why in this sort I wrest invention so;
And why these giddy metaphors I use,
Leaving the path the greater part do go;
I will resolve you: I am lunatic! [72]

The other recalls a still odder passage in THE SYNAGOGUE: or THE SHADOW
OF THE TEMPLE, a connected series of poems in imitation of Herbert's
TEMPLE, and, in some editions, annexed to it.

O how my mind
Is gravell'd!
Not a thought,
That I can find,
But's ravell'd
All to nought!
Short ends of threds,
And narrow shreds
Of lists,
Knots, snarled ruffs,
Loose broken tufts
Of twists,
Are my torn meditations ragged clothing,
Which, wound and woven, shape a suit for nothing:
One while I think, and then I am in pain
To think how to unthink that thought again.

Immediately after these burlesque passages I cannot proceed to the
extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the
interposition of the three following stanzas of Herbert's.


VIRTUE.

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box, where sweets compacted lie
My music shews, ye have your closes,
And all must die.


THE BOSOM SIN:
A SONNET BY GEORGE HERBERT.

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round,
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises;
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of Glory ringing in our ears
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.


LOVE UNKNOWN.

Dear friend, sit down, the tale is long and sad
And in my faintings, I presume, your love
Will more comply than help. A Lord I had,
And have, of whom some grounds, which may improve,
I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.
To him I brought a dish of fruit one day,
And in the middle placed my heart. But he
(I sigh to say)
Look'd on a servant, who did know his eye,
Better than you know me, or (which is one)
Than I myself. The servant instantly,
Quitting the fruit, seiz'd on my heart alone,
And threw it in a font, wherein did fall
A stream of blood, which issued from the side
Of a great rock: I well remember all,
And have good cause: there it was dipt and dyed,
And wash'd, and wrung: the very wringing yet
Enforceth tears. "Your heart was foul, I fear. "
Indeed 'tis true. I did and do commit
Many a fault, more than my lease will bear;
Yet still ask'd pardon, and was not denied.
But you shall hear. After my heart was well,
And clean and fair, as I one eventide
(I sigh to tell)
Walk'd by myself abroad, I saw a large
And spacious furnace flaming, and thereon
A boiling caldron, round about whose verge
Was in great letters set AFFLICTION.
The greatness shew'd the owner. So I went
To fetch a sacrifice out of my fold,
Thinking with that, which I did thus present,
To warm his love, which, I did fear, grew cold.
But as my heart did tender it, the man
Who was to take it from me, slipt his hand,
And threw my heart into the scalding pan;
My heart that brought it (do you understand? )
The offerer's heart. "Your heart was hard, I fear. "
Indeed 'tis true. I found a callous matter
Began to spread and to expatiate there:
But with a richer drug than scalding water
I bath'd it often, ev'n with holy blood,
Which at a board, while many drank bare wine,
A friend did steal into my cup for good,
Ev'n taken inwardly, and most divine
To supple hardnesses. But at the length
Out of the caldron getting, soon I fled
Unto my house, where to repair the strength
Which I had lost, I hasted to my bed:
But when I thought to sleep out all these faults,
(I sigh to speak)
I found that some had stuff'd the bed with thoughts,
I would say thorns. Dear, could my heart not break,
When with my pleasures ev'n my rest was gone?
Full well I understood who had been there:
For I had given the key to none but one:
It must be he. "Your heart was dull, I fear. "
Indeed a slack and sleepy state of mind
Did oft possess me; so that when I pray'd,
Though my lips went, my heart did stay behind.
But all my scores were by another paid,
Who took my guilt upon him. "Truly, Friend,
"For aught I hear, your Master shews to you
"More favour than you wot of. Mark the end.
"The font did only what was old renew
"The caldron suppled what was grown too hard:
"The thorns did quicken what was grown too dull:
"All did but strive to mend what you had marr'd.
"Wherefore be cheer'd, and praise him to the full
"Each day, each hour, each moment of the week
"Who fain would have you be new, tender quick. "




CHAPTER XX

The former subject continued--The neutral style, or that common to Prose
and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from Chaucer, Herbert, and others.


I have no fear in declaring my conviction, that the excellence defined
and exemplified in the preceding chapter is not the characteristic
excellence of Mr. Wordsworth's style; because I can add with equal
sincerity, that it is precluded by higher powers. The praise of uniform
adherence to genuine, logical English is undoubtedly his; nay, laying
the main emphasis on the word uniform, I will dare add that, of all
contemporary poets, it is his alone. For, in a less absolute sense of
the word, I should certainly include Mr. Bowies, Lord Byron, and, as to
all his later writings, Mr. Southey, the exceptions in their works being
so few and unimportant. But of the specific excellence described in
the quotation from Garve, I appear to find more, and more undoubted
specimens in the works of others; for instance, among the minor poems of
Mr. Thomas Moore, and of our illustrious Laureate. To me it will always
remain a singular and noticeable fact; that a theory, which would
establish this lingua communis, not only as the best, but as the only
commendable style, should have proceeded from a poet, whose diction,
next to that of Shakespeare and Milton, appears to me of all others the
most individualized and characteristic. And let it be remembered too,
that I am now interpreting the controverted passages of Mr. Wordsworth's
critical preface by the purpose and object, which he may be supposed to
have intended, rather than by the sense which the words themselves must
convey, if they are taken without this allowance.

A person of any taste, who had but studied three or four of
Shakespeare's principal plays, would without the name affixed scarcely
fail to recognise as Shakespeare's a quotation from any other play,
though but of a few lines. A similar peculiarity, though in a less
degree, attends Mr. Wordsworth's style, whenever he speaks in his own
person; or whenever, though under a feigned name, it is clear that he
himself is still speaking, as in the different dramatis personae of
THE RECLUSE. Even in the other poems, in which he purposes to be most
dramatic, there are few in which it does not occasionally burst forth.
The reader might often address the poet in his own words with reference
to the persons introduced:

"It seems, as I retrace the ballad line by line
That but half of it is theirs, and the better half is thine. "

Who, having been previously acquainted with any considerable portion
of Mr. Wordsworth's publications, and having studied them with a full
feeling of the author's genius, would not at once claim as Wordsworthian
the little poem on the rainbow?

"The Child is father of the Man, etc. "

Or in the LUCY GRAY?

"No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor;
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door. "

Or in the IDLE SHEPHERD-BOYS?

"Along the river's stony marge
The sand-lark chants a joyous song;
The thrush is busy in the wood,
And carols loud and strong.
A thousand lambs are on the rocks,
All newly born! both earth and sky
Keep jubilee, and more than all,
Those boys with their green coronal;
They never hear the cry,
That plaintive cry! which up the hill
Comes from the depth of Dungeon-Ghyll. "

Need I mention the exquisite description of the Sea-Loch in THE BLIND
HIGHLAND BOY. Who but a poet tells a tale in such language to the little
ones by the fire-side as--

"Yet had he many a restless dream;
Both when he heard the eagle's scream,
And when he heard the torrents roar,
And heard the water beat the shore
Near where their cottage stood.

Beside a lake their cottage stood,
Not small like our's, a peaceful flood;
But one of mighty size, and strange;
That, rough or smooth, is full of change,
And stirring in its bed.

For to this lake, by night and day,
The great Sea-water finds its way
Through long, long windings of the hills,
And drinks up all the pretty rills
And rivers large and strong:

Then hurries back the road it came
Returns on errand still the same;
This did it when the earth was new;
And this for evermore will do,
As long as earth shall last.

And, with the coming of the tide,
Come boats and ships that sweetly ride,
Between the woods and lofty rocks;
And to the shepherds with their flocks
Bring tales of distant lands. "

I might quote almost the whole of his RUTH, but take the following
stanzas:

But, as you have before been told,
This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,
And, with his dancing crest,
So beautiful, through savage lands
Had roamed about with vagrant bands
Of Indians in the West.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth--so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart
A kindred impulse, seemed allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.

Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of nature wrought,
Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent;
The stars had feelings, which they sent
Into those magic bowers.

Yet in his worst pursuits, I ween,
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent
For passions linked to forms so fair
And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment. "

But from Mr. Wordsworth's more elevated compositions, which already form
three-fourths of his works; and will, I trust, constitute hereafter a
still larger proportion;--from these, whether in rhyme or blank verse,
it would be difficult and almost superfluous to select instances of a
diction peculiarly his own, of a style which cannot be imitated without
its being at once recognised, as originating in Mr. Wordsworth. It would
not be easy to open on any one of his loftier strains, that does not
contain examples of this; and more in proportion as the lines are more
excellent, and most like the author. For those, who may happen to have
been less familiar with his writings, I will give three specimens
taken with little choice. The first from the lines on the BOY OF
WINANDER-MERE,--who

"Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,
That they might answer him. --And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
With long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced,
That pauses of deep silence mocked his skill,
Then sometimes in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene [73]
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake. "

The second shall be that noble imitation of Drayton [74] (if it was not
rather a coincidence) in the lines TO JOANNA.

--"When I had gazed perhaps two minutes' space,
Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld
That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud.
The Rock, like something starting from a sleep,
Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again!
That ancient woman seated on Helm-crag
Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar
And the tall Steep of Silver-How sent forth
A noise of laughter; southern Lougbrigg heard,
And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone.
Helvellyn far into the clear blue sky
Carried the lady's voice! --old Skiddaw blew
His speaking trumpet! --back out of the clouds
From Glaramara southward came the voice:
And Kirkstone tossed it from its misty head! "

The third, which is in rhyme, I take from the SONG AT THE FEAST OF
BROUGHAM CASTLE, upon the restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to
the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors.

------"Now another day is come,
Fitter hope, and nobler doom;
He hath thrown aside his crook,
And hath buried deep his book;
Armour rusting in his halls
On the blood of Clifford calls,--
'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the Lance!
Bear me to the heart of France,
Is the longing of the Shield--
Tell thy name, thou trembling Field! --
Field of death, where'er thou be,
Groan thou with our victory!
Happy day, and mighty hour,
When our Shepherd, in his power,
Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword,
To his ancestors restored,
Like a re-appearing Star,
Like a glory from afar,
First shall head the flock of war! "

"Alas! the fervent harper did not know,
That for a tranquil Soul the Lay was framed,
Who, long compelled in humble walks to go,
Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills. "

The words themselves in the foregoing extracts, are, no doubt,
sufficiently common for the greater part. --But in what poem are they not
so, if we except a few misadventurous attempts to translate the arts
and sciences into verse? In THE EXCURSION the number of polysyllabic
(or what the common people call, dictionary) words is more than usually
great. And so must it needs be, in proportion to the number and variety
of an author's conceptions, and his solicitude to express them with
precision. --But are those words in those places commonly employed in
real life to express the same thought or outward thing? Are they the
style used in the ordinary intercourse of spoken words? No! nor are the
modes of connections; and still less the breaks and transitions. Would
any but a poet--at least could any one without being conscious that he
had expressed himself with noticeable vivacity--have described a bird
singing loud by, "The thrush is busy in the wood? "--or have spoken of
boys with a string of club-moss round their rusty hats, as the boys
"with their green coronal? "--or have translated a beautiful May-day into
"Both earth and sky keep jubilee! "--or have brought all the different
marks and circumstances of a sealoch before the mind, as the actions of
a living and acting power? Or have represented the reflection of the sky
in the water, as "That uncertain heaven received into the bosom of the
steady lake? " Even the grammatical construction is not unfrequently
peculiar; as "The wind, the tempest roaring high, the tumult of a tropic
sky, might well be dangerous food to him, a youth to whom was given,
etc. " There is a peculiarity in the frequent use of the asymartaeton
(that is, the omission of the connective particle before the last of
several words, or several sentences used grammatically as single words,
all being in the same case and governing or governed by the same verb)
and not less in the construction of words by apposition ("to him, a
youth"). In short, were there excluded from Mr. Wordsworth's poetic
compositions all, that a literal adherence to the theory of his preface
would exclude, two thirds at least of the marked beauties of his poetry
must be erased. For a far greater number of lines would be sacrificed
than in any other recent poet; because the pleasure received from
Wordsworth's poems being less derived either from excitement of
curiosity or the rapid flow of narration, the striking passages form a
larger proportion of their value. I do not adduce it as a fair criterion
of comparative excellence, nor do I even think it such; but merely as
matter of fact. I affirm, that from no contemporary writer could so many
lines be quoted, without reference to the poem in which they are found,
for their own independent weight or beauty. From the sphere of my own
experience I can bring to my recollection three persons of no every-day
powers and acquirements, who had read the poems of others with more and
more unallayed pleasure, and had thought more highly of their authors,
as poets; who yet have confessed to me, that from no modern work had so
many passages started up anew in their minds at different times, and as
different occasions had awakened a meditative mood.




CHAPTER XXI

Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals.


Long have I wished to see a fair and philosophical inquisition into the
character of Wordsworth, as a poet, on the evidence of his published
works; and a positive, not a comparative, appreciation of their
characteristic excellencies, deficiencies, and defects. I know no claim
that the mere opinion of any individual can have to weigh down the
opinion of the author himself; against the probability of whose parental
partiality we ought to set that of his having thought longer and more
deeply on the subject. But I should call that investigation fair and
philosophical in which the critic announces and endeavours to establish
the principles, which he holds for the foundation of poetry in general,
with the specification of these in their application to the different
classes of poetry. Having thus prepared his canons of criticism for
praise and condemnation, he would proceed to particularize the most
striking passages to which he deems them applicable, faithfully noticing
the frequent or infrequent recurrence of similar merits or defects,
and as faithfully distinguishing what is characteristic from what is
accidental, or a mere flagging of the wing. Then if his premises be
rational, his deductions legitimate, and his conclusions justly applied,
the reader, and possibly the poet himself, may adopt his judgment in
the light of judgment and in the independence of free-agency. If he has
erred, he presents his errors in a definite place and tangible form, and
holds the torch and guides the way to their detection.

I most willingly admit, and estimate at a high value, the services which
the EDINBURGH REVIEW, and others formed afterwards on the same plan,
have rendered to society in the diffusion of knowledge. I think the
commencement of the EDINBURGH REVIEW an important epoch in periodical
criticism; and that it has a claim upon the gratitude of the literary
republic, and indeed of the reading public at large, for having
originated the scheme of reviewing those books only, which are
susceptible and deserving of argumentative criticism. Not less
meritorious, and far more faithfully and in general far more ably
executed, is their plan of supplying the vacant place of the trash or
mediocrity, wisely left to sink into oblivion by its own weight, with
original essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious,
or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed
furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign
the keenness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as
long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of
the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account,
as long as no personal allusions are admitted, and no re-commitment
(for new trial) of juvenile performances, that were published, perhaps
forgotten, many years before the commencement of the review: since for
the forcing back of such works to public notice no motives are easily
assignable, but such as are furnished to the critic by his own personal
malignity; or what is still worse, by a habit of malignity in the form
of mere wantonness.

"No private grudge they need, no personal spite
The viva sectio is its own delight!
All enmity, all envy, they disclaim,
Disinterested thieves of our good name:
Cool, sober murderers of their neighbour's fame! "
S. T. C.

Every censure, every sarcasm respecting a publication which the critic,
with the criticised work before him, can make good, is the critic's
right. The writer is authorized to reply, but not to complain. Neither
can anyone prescribe to the critic, how soft or how hard; how friendly,
or how bitter, shall be the phrases which he is to select for the
expression of such reprehension or ridicule. The critic must know, what
effect it is his object to produce; and with a view to this effect must
he weigh his words. But as soon as the critic betrays, that he knows
more of his author, than the author's publications could have told him;
as soon as from this more intimate knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he
avails himself of the slightest trait against the author; his censure
instantly becomes personal injury, his sarcasms personal insults. He
ceases to be a critic, and takes on him the most contemptible character
to which a rational creature can be degraded, that of a gossip,
backbiter, and pasquillant: but with this heavy aggravation, that he
steals the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world into the museum;
into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, should be our
sanctuary, and secure place of refuge; offers abominations on the altar
of the Muses; and makes its sacred paling the very circle in which he
conjures up the lying and profane spirit.

This determination of unlicensed personality, and of permitted and
legitimate censure, (which I owe in part to the illustrious Lessing,
himself a model of acute, spirited, sometimes stinging, but always
argumentative and honourable, criticism) is beyond controversy the
true one: and though I would not myself exercise all the rights of the
latter, yet, let but the former be excluded, I submit myself to
its exercise in the hands of others, without complaint and without
resentment.

Let a communication be formed between any number of learned men in the
various branches of science and literature; and whether the president
and central committee be in London, or Edinburgh, if only they
previously lay aside their individuality, and pledge themselves
inwardly, as well as ostensibly, to administer judgment according to
a constitution and code of laws; and if by grounding this code on the
two-fold basis of universal morals and philosophic reason, independent
of all foreseen application to particular works and authors, they obtain
the right to speak each as the representative of their body corporate;
they shall have honour and good wishes from me, and I shall accord to
them their fair dignities, though self-assumed, not less cheerfully than
if I could inquire concerning them in the herald's office, or turn
to them in the book of peerage. However loud may be the outcries for
prevented or subverted reputation, however numerous and impatient the
complaints of merciless severity and insupportable despotism, I shall
neither feel, nor utter aught but to the defence and justification of
the critical machine. Should any literary Quixote find himself provoked
by its sounds and regular movements, I should admonish him with Sancho
Panza, that it is no giant but a windmill; there it stands on its own
place, and its own hillock, never goes out of its way to attack anyone,
and to none and from none either gives or asks assistance. When
the public press has poured in any part of its produce between its
mill-stones, it grinds it off, one man's sack the same as another, and
with whatever wind may happen to be then blowing. All the two-and-thirty
winds are alike its friends. Of the whole wide atmosphere it does not
desire a single finger-breadth more than what is necessary for its sails
to turn round in. But this space must be left free and unimpeded. Gnats,
beetles, wasps, butterflies, and the whole tribe of ephemerals and
insignificants, may flit in and out and between; may hum, and buzz, and
jar; may shrill their tiny pipes, and wind their puny horns, unchastised
and unnoticed. But idlers and bravadoes of larger size and prouder show
must beware, how they place themselves within its sweep. Much less may
they presume to lay hands on the sails, the strength of which is
neither greater nor less than as the wind is, which drives them round.
Whomsoever the remorseless arm slings aloft, or whirls along with it in
the air, he has himself alone to blame; though, when the same arm throws
him from it, it will more often double than break the force of his fall.