No More Learning

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.

Putting aside the too manifest and too frequent interference of national
party, and even personal predilection or aversion; and reserving for
deeper feelings those worse and more criminal intrusions into the
sacredness of private life, which not seldom merit legal rather than
literary chastisement, the two principal objects and occasions which I
find for blame and regret in the conduct of the review in question are
first, its unfaithfulness to its own announced and excellent plan, by
subjecting to criticism works neither indecent nor immoral, yet of such
trifling importance even in point of size and, according to the critic's
own verdict, so devoid of all merit, as must excite in the most candid
mind the suspicion, either that dislike or vindictive feelings were at
work; or that there was a cold prudential pre-determination to increase
the sale of the review by flattering the malignant passions of human
nature. That I may not myself become subject to the charge, which I am
bringing against others, by an accusation without proof, I refer to
the article on Dr. Rennell's sermon in the very first number of the
EDINBURGH REVIEW as an illustration of my meaning. If in looking through
all the succeeding volumes the reader should find this a solitary
instance, I must submit to that painful forfeiture of esteem, which
awaits a groundless or exaggerated charge.

The second point of objection belongs to this review only in common with
all other works of periodical criticism: at least, it applies in common
to the general system of all, whatever exception there may be in favour
of particular articles. Or if it attaches to THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, and
to its only corrival (THE QUARTERLY), with any peculiar force, this
results from the superiority of talent, acquirement, and information
which both have so undeniably displayed; and which doubtless deepens
the regret though not the blame. I am referring to the substitution
of assertion for argument; to the frequency of arbitrary and sometimes
petulant verdicts, not seldom unsupported even by a single quotation
from the work condemned, which might at least have explained the
critic's meaning, if it did not prove the justice of his sentence. Even
where this is not the case, the extracts are too often made without
reference to any general grounds or rules from which the faultiness or
inadmissibility of the qualities attributed may be deduced; and without
any attempt to show, that the qualities are attributable to the passage
extracted. I have met with such extracts from Mr. Wordsworth's poems,
annexed to such assertions, as led me to imagine, that the reviewer,
having written his critique before he had read the work, had then
pricked with a pin for passages, wherewith to illustrate the various
branches of his preconceived opinions. By what principle of rational
choice can we suppose a critic to have been directed (at least in a
Christian country, and himself, we hope, a Christian) who gives the
following lines, portraying the fervour of solitary devotion excited by
the magnificent display of the Almighty's works, as a proof and
example of an author's tendency to downright ravings, and absolute
unintelligibility?

"O then what soul was his, when on the tops
Of the high mountains he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked--
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth,
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces did he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy: his spirit drank
The spectacle! sensation, soul, and form,
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live: they were his life. "

Can it be expected, that either the author or his admirers, should be
induced to pay any serious attention to decisions which prove nothing
but the pitiable state of the critic's own taste and sensibility? On
opening the review they see a favourite passage, of the force and truth
of which they had an intuitive certainty in their own inward experience
confirmed, if confirmation it could receive, by the sympathy of their
most enlightened friends; some of whom perhaps, even in the world's
opinion, hold a higher intellectual rank than the critic himself would
presume to claim. And this very passage they find selected, as the
characteristic effusion of a mind deserted by reason! --as furnishing
evidence that the writer was raving, or he could not have thus strung
words together without sense or purpose! No diversity of taste seems
capable of explaining such a contrast in judgment.

That I had over-rated the merit of a passage or poem, that I had erred
concerning the degree of its excellence, I might be easily induced to
believe or apprehend. But that lines, the sense of which I had analysed
and found consonant with all the best convictions of my understanding;
and the imagery and diction of which had collected round those
convictions my noblest as well as my most delightful feelings; that I
should admit such lines to be mere nonsense or lunacy, is too much for
the most ingenious arguments to effect. But that such a revolution of
taste should be brought about by a few broad assertions, seems little
less than impossible. On the contrary, it would require an effort of
charity not to dismiss the criticism with the aphorism of the wise man,
in animam malevolam sapientia haud intrare potest.

What then if this very critic should have cited a large number of single
lines and even of long paragraphs, which he himself acknowledges to
possess eminent and original beauty? What if he himself has owned, that
beauties as great are scattered in abundance throughout the whole
book? And yet, though under this impression, should have commenced his
critique in vulgar exultation with a prophecy meant to secure its own
fulfilment? With a "This won't do! " What? if after such acknowledgments
extorted from his own judgment he should proceed from charge to charge
of tameness and raving; flights and flatness; and at length, consigning
the author to the house of incurables, should conclude with a strain of
rudest contempt evidently grounded in the distempered state of his own
moral associations? Suppose too all this done without a single leading
principle established or even announced, and without any one attempt at
argumentative deduction, though the poet had presented a more than usual
opportunity for it, by having previously made public his own principles
of judgment in poetry, and supported them by a connected train of
reasoning!

The office and duty of the poet is to select the most dignified as well
as

"The gayest, happiest attitude of things. "

The reverse, for in all cases a reverse is possible, is the appropriate
business of burlesque and travesty, a predominant taste for which has
been always deemed a mark of a low and degraded mind. When I was at
Rome, among many other visits to the tomb of Julius II. I went thither
once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and great vivacity of
feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo's MOSES, our conversation
turned on the horns and beard of that stupendous statue; of the
necessity of each to support the other; of the super-human effect of the
former, and the necessity of the existence of both to give a harmony and
integrity both to the image and the feeling excited by it. Conceive
them removed, and the statue would become un-natural, without being
super-natural. We called to mind the horns of the rising sun, and I
repeated the noble passage from Taylor's HOLY DYING. That horns were the
emblem of power and sovereignty among the Eastern nations, and are still
retained as such in Abyssinia; the Achelous of the ancient Greeks; and
the probable ideas and feelings, that originally suggested the mixture
of the human and the brute form in the figure, by which they realized
the idea of their mysterious Pan, as representing intelligence blended
with a darker power, deeper, mightier, and more universal than the
conscious intellect of man; than intelligence;--all these thoughts and
recollections passed in procession before our minds. My companion who
possessed more than his share of the hatred, which his countrymen bore
to the French, had just observed to me, "a Frenchman, Sir! is the only
animal in the human shape, that by no possibility can lift itself up to
religion or poetry:" when, lo! two French officers of distinction and
rank entered the church! "Mark you," whispered the Prussian, "the
first thing which those scoundrels will notice--(for they will begin by
instantly noticing the statue in parts, without one moment's pause of
admiration impressed by the whole)--will be the horns and the beard. And
the associations, which they will immediately connect with them will be
those of a he-goat and a cuckold. " Never did man guess more luckily. Had
he inherited a portion of the great legislator's prophetic powers, whose
statue we had been contemplating, he could scarcely have uttered words
more coincident with the result: for even as he had said, so it came to
pass.

In THE EXCURSION the poet has introduced an old man, born in humble but
not abject circumstances, who had enjoyed more than usual advantages of
education, both from books and from the more awful discipline of nature.
This person he represents, as having been driven by the restlessness of
fervid feelings, and from a craving intellect to an itinerant life; and
as having in consequence passed the larger portion of his time, from
earliest manhood, in villages and hamlets from door to door,

"A vagrant Merchant bent beneath his load. "

Now whether this be a character appropriate to a lofty didactick poem,
is perhaps questionable. It presents a fair subject for controversy; and
the question is to be determined by the congruity or incongruity of such
a character with what shall be proved to be the essential constituents
of poetry. But surely the critic who, passing by all the opportunities
which such a mode of life would present to such a man; all the
advantages of the liberty of nature, of solitude, and of solitary
thought; all the varieties of places and seasons, through which his
track had lain, with all the varying imagery they bring with them; and
lastly, all the observations of men,

"Their manners, their enjoyments, and pursuits,
Their passions and their feelings="

which the memory of these yearly journeys must have given and recalled
to such a mind--the critic, I say, who from the multitude of possible
associations should pass by all these in order to fix his attention
exclusively on the pin-papers, and stay-tapes, which might have been
among the wares of his pack; this critic, in my opinion, cannot be
thought to possess a much higher or much healthier state of moral
feeling, than the Frenchmen above recorded.




CHAPTER XXII

The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the principles
from which the judgment, that they are defects, is deduced--Their
proportion to the beauties--For the greatest part characteristic of his
theory only.


If Mr. Wordsworth have set forth principles of poetry which his
arguments are insufficient to support, let him and those who have
adopted his sentiments be set right by the confutation of those
arguments, and by the substitution of more philosophical principles. And
still let the due credit be given to the portion and importance of the
truths, which are blended with his theory; truths, the too exclusive
attention to which had occasioned its errors, by tempting him to carry
those truths beyond their proper limits. If his mistaken theory have at
all influenced his poetic compositions, let the effects be pointed
out, and the instances given. But let it likewise be shown, how far the
influence has acted; whether diffusively, or only by starts; whether the
number and importance of the poems and passages thus infected be great
or trifling compared with the sound portion; and lastly, whether they
are inwoven into the texture of his works, or are loose and separable.
The result of such a trial would evince beyond a doubt, what it is high
time to announce decisively and aloud, that the supposed characteristics
of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, whether admired or reprobated; whether they
are simplicity or simpleness; faithful adherence to essential nature, or
wilful selections from human nature of its meanest forms and under the
least attractive associations; are as little the real characteristics of
his poetry at large, as of his genius and the constitution of his mind.

In a comparatively small number of poems he chose to try an experiment;
and this experiment we will suppose to have failed. Yet even in these
poems it is impossible not to perceive that the natural tendency of
the poet's mind is to great objects and elevated conceptions. The
poem entitled FIDELITY is for the greater part written in language,
as unraised and naked as any perhaps in the two volumes. Yet take the
following stanza and compare it with the preceding stanzas of the same
poem.

"There sometimes doth a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere;
Thither the rainbow comes--the cloud--
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sun-beams; and the sounding blast,
That, if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier holds it fast. "

Or compare the four last lines of the concluding stanza with the former
half.

"Yes, proof was plain that, since the day
On which the Traveller thus had died,
The Dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his Master's side:
How nourish'd here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime,--
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate! "

Can any candid and intelligent mind hesitate in determining, which of
these best represents the tendency and native character of the poet's
genius? Will he not decide that the one was written because the poet
would so write, and the other because he could not so entirely repress
the force and grandeur of his mind, but that he must in some part or
other of every composition write otherwise? In short, that his only
disease is the being out of his element; like the swan, that, having
amused himself, for a while, with crushing the weeds on the river's
bank, soon returns to his own majestic movements on its reflecting and
sustaining surface. Let it be observed that I am here supposing the
imagined judge, to whom I appeal, to have already decided against the
poet's theory, as far as it is different from the principles of the art,
generally acknowledged.

I cannot here enter into a detailed examination of Mr. Wordsworth's
works; but I will attempt to give the main results of my own judgment,
after an acquaintance of many years, and repeated perusals. And though,
to appreciate the defects of a great mind it is necessary to understand
previously its characteristic excellences, yet I have already expressed
myself with sufficient fulness, to preclude most of the ill effects that
might arise from my pursuing a contrary arrangement. I will therefore
commence with what I deem the prominent defects of his poems hitherto
published.

The first characteristic, though only occasional defect, which I appear
to myself to find in these poems is the inconstancy of the style. Under
this name I refer to the sudden and unprepared transitions from lines
or sentences of peculiar felicity--(at all events striking and
original)--to a style, not only unimpassioned but undistinguished. He
sinks too often and too abruptly to that style, which I should place
in the second division of language, dividing it into the three species;
first, that which is peculiar to poetry; second, that which is only
proper in prose; and third, the neutral or common to both. There have
been works, such as Cowley's Essay on Cromwell, in which prose and verse
are intermixed (not as in the Consolation of Boetius, or the ARGENIS
of Barclay, by the insertion of poems supposed to have been spoken or
composed on occasions previously related in prose, but) the poet passing
from one to the other, as the nature of the thoughts or his own feelings
dictated. Yet this mode of composition does not satisfy a cultivated
taste. There is something unpleasant in the being thus obliged to
alternate states of feeling so dissimilar, and this too in a species of
writing, the pleasure from which is in part derived from the preparation
and previous expectation of the reader. A portion of that awkwardness
is felt which hangs upon the introduction of songs in our modern comic
operas; and to prevent which the judicious Metastasio (as to whose
exquisite taste there can be no hesitation, whatever doubts may be
entertained as to his poetic genius) uniformly placed the aria at the
end of the scene, at the same time that he almost always raises and
impassions the style of the recitative immediately preceding. Even in
real life, the difference is great and evident between words used as the
arbitrary marks of thought, our smooth market-coin of intercourse,
with the image and superscription worn out by currency; and those which
convey pictures either borrowed from one outward object to enliven and
particularize some other; or used allegorically to body forth the inward
state of the person speaking; or such as are at least the exponents of
his peculiar turn and unusual extent of faculty. So much so indeed, that
in the social circles of private life we often find a striking use of
the latter put a stop to the general flow of conversation, and by the
excitement arising from concentred attention produce a sort of damp
and interruption for some minutes after. But in the perusal of works of
literary art, we prepare ourselves for such language; and the business
of the writer, like that of a painter whose subject requires unusual
splendour and prominence, is so to raise the lower and neutral tints,
that what in a different style would be the commanding colours, are
here used as the means of that gentle degradation requisite in order to
produce the effect of a whole. Where this is not achieved in a poem,
the metre merely reminds the reader of his claims in order to disappoint
them; and where this defect occurs frequently, his feelings are
alternately startled by anticlimax and hyperclimax.

I refer the reader to the exquisite stanzas cited for another purpose
from THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY; and then annex, as being in my opinion
instances of this disharmony in style, the two following:

"And one, the rarest, was a shell,
Which he, poor child, had studied well:
The shell of a green turtle, thin
And hollow;--you might sit therein,
It was so wide, and deep. "

"Our Highland Boy oft visited
The house which held this prize; and, led
By choice or chance, did thither come
One day, when no one was at home,
And found the door unbarred. "

Or page 172, vol. I.

"'Tis gone forgotten, let me do
My best. There was a smile or two--
I can remember them, I see
The smiles worth all the world to me.
Dear Baby! I must lay thee down:
Thou troublest me with strange alarms;
Smiles hast thou, sweet ones of thine own;
I cannot keep thee in my arms;
For they confound me: as it is,
I have forgot those smiles of his! "

Or page 269, vol. I.

"Thou hast a nest, for thy love and thy rest
And though little troubled with sloth
Drunken lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveller as I.
Happy, happy liver!
_With a soul as strong as a mountain river
Pouring out praise to th' Almighty giver,_
Joy and jollity be with us both!
Hearing thee or else some other,
As merry a brother
I on the earth will go plodding on
By myself cheerfully till the day is done. "

The incongruity, which I appear to find in this passage, is that of the
two noble lines in italics with the preceding and following. So vol. II.
page 30.

"Close by a Pond, upon the further side,
He stood alone; a minute's space I guess,
I watch'd him, he continuing motionless
To the Pool's further margin then I drew;
He being all the while before me full in view. "

Compare this with the repetition of the same image, the next stanza but
two.

"And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,
Beside the little pond or moorish flood
Motionless as a Cloud the Old Man stood,
That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
And moveth altogether, if it move at all. "

Or lastly, the second of the three following stanzas, compared both with
the first and the third.

"My former thoughts returned; the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
But now, perplex'd by what the Old Man had said,
My question eagerly did I renew,
'How is it that you live, and what is it you do? '

"He with a smile did then his words repeat;
And said, that gathering Leeches far and wide
He travell'd; stirring thus about his feet
The waters of the Ponds where they abide.
`Once I could meet with them on every side;
'But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
'Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may. '

While he was talking thus, the lonely place,
The Old Man's shape, and speech, all troubled me
In my mind's eye I seemed to see him pace
About the weary moors continually,
Wandering about alone and silently. "

Indeed this fine poem is especially characteristic of the author. There
is scarce a defect or excellence in his writings of which it would
not present a specimen. But it would be unjust not to repeat that this
defect is only occasional. From a careful reperusal of the two volumes
of poems, I doubt whether the objectionable passages would amount in the
whole to one hundred lines; not the eighth part of the number of pages.
In THE EXCURSION the feeling of incongruity is seldom excited by
the diction of any passage considered in itself, but by the sudden
superiority of some other passage forming the context.

The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the
reader will pardon an uncouth and new-coined word. There is, I should
say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may
be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the
representation of objects, and their positions, as they appeared to the
poet himself; secondly, the insertion of accidental circumstances,
in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their
dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to
establish the probability of a statement in real life, where nothing is
taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry, where
the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. To this actidentality
I object, as contravening the essence of poetry, which Aristotle
pronounces to be spoudaiotaton kai philosophotaton genos, the most
intense, weighty and philosophical product of human art; adding, as the
reason, that it is the most catholic and abstract. The following passage
from Davenant's prefatory letter to Hobbes well expresses this truth.
"When I considered the actions which I meant to describe; (those
inferring the persons), I was again persuaded rather to choose those
of a former age, than the present; and in a century so far removed, as
might preserve me from their improper examinations, who know not the
requisites of a poem, nor how much pleasure they lose, (and even the
pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable), who take away the
liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian.
For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of fortune
by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions, because austere
historians have entered into bond to truth? An obligation, which were
in poets as foolish and unnecessary, as is the bondage of false martyrs,
who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would imply,
that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians, (who worship
a dead thing), and truth operative, and by effects continually alive,
is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter, but in
reason. "

For this minute accuracy in the painting of local imagery, the lines in
THE EXCURSION, pp. 96, 97, and 98, may be taken, if not as a striking
instance, yet as an illustration of my meaning. It must be some strong
motive--(as, for instance, that the description was necessary to the
intelligibility of the tale)--which could induce me to describe in
a number of verses what a draughtsman could present to the eye with
incomparably greater satisfaction by half a dozen strokes of his pencil,
or the painter with as many touches of his brush. Such descriptions too
often occasion in the mind of a reader, who is determined to understand
his author, a feeling of labour, not very dissimilar to that, with
which he would construct a diagram, line by line, for a long geometrical
proposition. It seems to be like taking the pieces of a dissected map
out of its box. We first look at one part, and then at another, then
join and dove-tail them; and when the successive acts of attention have
been completed, there is a retrogressive effort of mind to behold it as
a whole. The poet should paint to the imagination, not to the fancy; and
I know no happier case to exemplify the distinction between these two
faculties. Master-pieces of the former mode of poetic painting abound
in the writings of Milton, for example:

"The fig-tree; not that kind for fruit renown'd,
"But such as at this day, to Indians known,
"In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms
"Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
"The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
"About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade
"High over-arch'd and ECHOING WALKS BETWEEN;
"There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
"Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
"At hoop-holes cut through thickest shade. "

This is creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and
with such co-presence of the whole picture flashed at once upon the
eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. But the poet must likewise
understand and command what Bacon calls the vestigia communia of the
senses, the latency of all in each, and more especially as by a magical
penny duplex, the excitement of vision by sound and the exponents of
sound. Thus, "The echoing walks between," may be almost said to reverse
the fable in tradition of the head of Memnon, in the Egyptian statue.
Such may be deservedly entitled the creative words in the world of
imagination.

The second division respects an apparent minute adherence to matter-
of-fact in character and Incidents; a biographical attention to
probability, and an anxiety of explanation and retrospect. Under this
head I shall deliver, with no feigned diffidence, the results of my best
reflection on the great point of controversy between Mr. Wordsworth and
his objectors; namely, on the choice of his characters. I have already
declared, and, I trust justified, my utter dissent from the mode of
argument which his critics have hitherto employed. To their question,
"Why did you choose such a character, or a character from such a rank
of life? "--the poet might in my opinion fairly retort: why with the
conception of my character did you make wilful choice of mean or
ludicrous associations not furnished by me, but supplied from your own
sickly and fastidious feelings? How was it, indeed, probable, that
such arguments could have any weight with an author, whose plan, whose
guiding principle, and main object it was to attack and subdue that
state of association, which leads us to place the chief value on those
things on which man differs from man, and to forget or disregard the
high dignities, which belong to Human Nature, the sense and the feeling,
which may be, and ought to be, found in all ranks? The feelings with
which, as Christians, we contemplate a mixed congregation rising
or kneeling before their common Maker, Mr. Wordsworth would have us
entertain at all times, as men, and as readers; and by the excitement of
this lofty, yet prideless impartiality in poetry, he might hope to have
encouraged its continuance in real life. The praise of good men be his!
In real life, and, I trust, even in my imagination, I honour a virtuous
and wise man, without reference to the presence or absence of artificial
advantages. Whether in the person of an armed baron, a laurelled bard,
or of an old Pedlar, or still older Leech-gatherer, the same qualities
of head and heart must claim the same reverence. And even in poetry I am
not conscious, that I have ever suffered my feelings to be disturbed
or offended by any thoughts or images, which the poet himself has not
presented.

But yet I object, nevertheless, and for the following reasons. First,
because the object in view, as an immediate object, belongs to the moral
philosopher, and would be pursued, not only more appropriately, but in
my opinion with far greater probability of success, in sermons or moral
essays, than in an elevated poem. It seems, indeed, to destroy the main
fundamental distinction, not only between a poem and prose, but even
between philosophy and works of fiction, inasmuch as it proposes truth
for its immediate object, instead of pleasure. Now till the blessed time
shall come, when truth itself shall be pleasure, and both shall be so
united, as to be distinguishable in words only, not in feeling, it will
remain the poet's office to proceed upon that state of association,
which actually exists as general; instead of attempting first to make
it what it ought to be, and then to let the pleasure follow. But here
is unfortunately a small hysteron-proteron. For the communication of
pleasure is the introductory means by which alone the poet must expect
to moralize his readers. Secondly: though I were to admit, for a moment,
this argument to be groundless: yet how is the moral effect to be
produced, by merely attaching the name of some low profession to powers
which are least likely, and to qualities which are assuredly not more
likely, to be found in it? The Poet, speaking in his own person, may
at once delight and improve us by sentiments, which teach us the
independence of goodness, of wisdom, and even of genius, on the favours
of fortune. And having made a due reverence before the throne of
Antonine, he may bow with equal awe before Epictetus among his
fellow-slaves

------"and rejoice
In the plain presence of his dignity. "

Who is not at once delighted and improved, when the Poet Wordsworth
himself exclaims,

"Oh! many are the Poets that are sown
By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts
The vision and the faculty divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,
Nor having e'er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least. "

To use a colloquial phrase, such sentiments, in such language, do one's
heart good; though I for my part, have not the fullest faith in the
truth of the observation. On the contrary I believe the instances to
be exceedingly rare; and should feel almost as strong an objection to
introduce such a character in a poetic fiction, as a pair of black swans
on a lake, in a fancy landscape. When I think how many, and how much
better books than Homer, or even than Herodotus, Pindar or Aeschylus,
could have read, are in the power of almost every man, in a country
where almost every man is instructed to read and write; and how
restless, how difficultly hidden, the powers of genius are; and yet find
even in situations the most favourable, according to Mr. Wordsworth, for
the formation of a pure and poetic language; in situations which ensure
familiarity with the grandest objects of the imagination; but one Burns,
among the shepherds of Scotland, and not a single poet of humble life
among those of English lakes and mountains; I conclude, that Poetic
Genius is not only a very delicate but a very rare plant.

But be this as it may, the feelings with which,

"I think of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul, that perished in his pride;
Of Burns, who walk'd in glory and in joy
Behind his plough, upon the mountain-side"--

are widely different from those with which I should read a poem,
where the author, having occasion for the character of a poet and a
philosopher in the fable of his narration, had chosen to make him a
chimney-sweeper; and then, in order to remove all doubts on the subject,
had invented an account of his birth, parentage and education, with all
the strange and fortunate accidents which had concurred in making him at
once poet, philosopher, and sweep! Nothing, but biography, can justify
this. If it be admissible even in a novel, it must be one in the manner
of De Foe's, that were meant to pass for histories, not in the manner of
Fielding's: In THE LIFE OF MOLL FLANDERS, Or COLONEL JACK, not in a TOM
JONES, or even a JOSEPH ANDREWS. Much less then can it be legitimately
introduced in a poem, the characters of which, amid the strongest
individualization, must still remain representative. The precepts of
Horace, on this point, are grounded on the nature both of poetry and of
the human mind. They are not more peremptory, than wise and prudent.
For in the first place a deviation from them perplexes the reader's
feelings, and all the circumstances which are feigned in order to make
such accidents less improbable, divide and disquiet his faith, rather
than aid and support it. Spite of all attempts, the fiction will appear,
and unfortunately not as fictitious but as false. The reader not only
knows, that the sentiments and language are the poet's own, and his
own too in his artificial character, as poet; but by the fruitless
endeavours to make him think the contrary, he is not even suffered to
forget it. The effect is similar to that produced by an Epic Poet, when
the fable and the characters are derived from Scripture history, as in
THE MESSIAH of Klopstock, or in CUMBERLAND'S CALVARY; and not merely
suggested by it as in the PARADISE LOST of Milton. That illusion,
contradistinguished from delusion, that negative faith, which simply
permits the images presented to work by their own force, without either
denial or affirmation of their real existence by the judgment, is
rendered impossible by their immediate neighbourhood to words and facts
of known and absolute truth. A faith, which transcends even historic
belief, must absolutely put out this mere poetic analogon of faith, as
the summer sun is said to extinguish our household fires, when it shines
full upon them. What would otherwise have been yielded to as pleasing
fiction, is repelled as revolting falsehood. The effect produced in
this latter case by the solemn belief of the reader, is in a less degree
brought about in the instances, to which I have been objecting, by the
balked attempts of the author to make him believe.

Add to all the foregoing the seeming uselessness both of the project and
of the anecdotes from which it is to derive support.