No More Learning

For the second class,
subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and
incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its
vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after
them, or to notice them, when they present themselves.

In this idea originated the plan of the LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was
agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters
supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our
inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to
procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension
of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr.
Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object,
to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a
feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention
to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the
wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for
which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude,
we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither
feel nor understand.

With this view I wrote THE ANCIENT MARINER, and was preparing among
other poems, THE DARK LADIE, and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should have
more nearly realized my ideal, than I had done in my first attempt. But
Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and the
number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead of
forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous
matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own
character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction, which is
characteristic of his genius. In this form the LYRICAL BALLADS were
published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether
subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and
extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed in
the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest,
which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the
second edition he added a preface of considerable length; in which,
notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was
understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry of all
kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms
of speech that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think,
adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life. From
this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the
presence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might
be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy. For from the
conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy I explain the
inveteracy and in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious
passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by the
assailants.

Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things, which
they were for a long time described as being had they been really
distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness of
language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing more
than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of them;
they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of oblivion,
and have dragged the preface along with them. But year after year
increased the number of Mr. Wordsworth's admirers. They were found too
not in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among young
men of strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their admiration
(inflamed perhaps in some degree by opposition) was distinguished by its
intensity, I might almost say, by its religious fervour. These facts,
and the intellectual energy of the author, which was more or less
consciously felt, where it was outwardly and even boisterously denied,
meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and of alarm at
their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, which would of itself
have borne up the poems by the violence with which it whirled them round
and round. With many parts of this preface in the sense attributed
to them and which the words undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never
concurred; but on the contrary objected to them as erroneous in
principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at least) both to other
parts of the same preface, and to the author's own practice in the
greater part of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth in his recent
collection has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end
of his second volume, to be read or not at the reader's choice. But he
has not, as far as I can discover, announced any change in his poetic
creed. At all events, considering it as the source of a controversy,
in which I have been honoured more than I deserve by the frequent
conjunction of my name with his, I think it expedient to declare once
for all, in what points I coincide with the opinions supported in that
preface, and in what points I altogether differ. But in order to render
myself intelligible I must previously, in as few words as possible,
explain my views, first, of a Poem; and secondly, of Poetry itself, in
kind, and in essence.

The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction;
while it is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself
constantly aware, that distinction is not division. In order to obtain
adequate notions of any truth, we must intellectually separate its
distinguishable parts; and this is the technical process of philosophy.
But having so done, we must then restore them in our conceptions to
the unity, in which they actually co-exist; and this is the result of
philosophy. A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition;
the difference therefore must consist in a different combination of
them, in consequence of a different object being proposed. According to
the difference of the object will be the difference of the combination.
It is possible, that the object may be merely to facilitate the
recollection of any given facts or observations by artificial
arrangement; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is
distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly.
In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem to
the well-known enumeration of the days in the several months;

"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November," etc.

and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure
is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities,
all compositions that have this charm super-added, whatever be their
contents, may be entitled poems.

So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents
supplies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose
may be the communication of truths; either of truth absolute and
demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced and
recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the highest and most
permanent kind, may result from the attainment of the end; but it is not
itself the immediate end. In other works the communication of pleasure
may be the immediate purpose; and though truth, either moral or
intellectual, ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will distinguish
the character of the author, not the class to which the work belongs.
Blest indeed is that state of society, in which the immediate purpose
would be baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end; in which
no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the BATHYLLUS even of an
Anacreon, or the ALEXIS of Virgil, from disgust and aversion!

But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work
not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high degree
attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere superaddition
of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The
answer is, that nothing can permanently please, which does not contain
in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be
superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it. They must be
such, as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each
part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are
calculated to excite. The final definition then, so deduced, may be thus
worded. A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works
of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth;
and from all other species--(having this object in common with it)--it
is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as
is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.

Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants
attaching each a different meaning to the same word; and in few
instances has this been more striking, than in disputes concerning the
present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a
poem, which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion
uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize
the writer's intention. If it were subjoined, that the whole is likewise
entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of interesting
reflections; I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a poem,
and an additional merit. But if the definition sought for be that of a
legitimate poem, I answer, it must be one, the parts of which mutually
support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonizing
with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical
arrangement. The philosophic critics of all ages coincide with the
ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the praises of a
just poem, on the one hand, to a series of striking lines or distiches,
each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader to itself,
becomes disjoined from its context, and forms a separate whole,
instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained
composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result
unattracted by the component parts. The reader should be carried
forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity,
or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the
pleasureable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey
itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the
emblem of intellectual power; or like the path of sound through
the air;--at every step he pauses and half recedes; and from the
retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him
onward. Praecipitandus est liber spiritus, says Petronius most happily.
The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb; and it is not easy
to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.

But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem,
we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato,
and Jeremy Taylor, and Burnet's Theory of the Earth, furnish undeniable
proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even
without the contradistringuishing objects of a poem. The first chapter
of Isaiah--(indeed a very large portion of the whole book)--is poetry
in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less irrational than
strange to assert, that pleasure, and not truth was the immediate object
of the prophet. In short, whatever specific import we attach to the
word, Poetry, there will be found involved in it, as a necessary
consequence, that a poem of any length neither can be, nor ought to be,
all poetry. Yet if an harmonious whole is to be produced, the remaining
parts must be preserved in keeping with the poetry; and this can be
no otherwise effected than by such a studied selection and artificial
arrangement, as will partake of one, though not a peculiar property of
poetry. And this again can be no other than the property of exciting a
more continuous and equal attention than the language of prose aims at,
whether colloquial or written.

My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of the
word, have been in part anticipated in some of the remarks on the Fancy
and Imagination in the early part of this work. What is poetry? --is so
nearly the same question with, what is a poet? --that the answer to the
one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction
resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the
images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own mind.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man
into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other
according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and
spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each,
by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively
appropriate the name of Imagination. This power, first put in action by
the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though
gentle and unnoticed, control, laxis effertur habenis, reveals "itself
in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant" qualities:
of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea
with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of
novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual
state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and
steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement;
and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still
subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration
of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. Doubtless, as Sir John
Davies observes of the soul--(and his words may with slight alteration
be applied, and even more appropriately, to the poetic Imagination)--

Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.

From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.

Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through the senses to our minds.

Finally, Good Sense is the Body of poetic genius, Fancy its Drapery,
Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is everywhere, and in
each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.




CHAPTER XV

The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a critical analysis
of Shakespeare's VENUS AND ADONIS, and RAPE of LUCRECE.


In the application of these principles to purposes of practical
criticism, as employed in the appraisement of works more or less
imperfect, I have endeavoured to discover what the qualities in a poem
are, which may be deemed promises and specific symptoms of poetic power,
as distinguished from general talent determined to poetic composition
by accidental motives, by an act of the will, rather than by the
inspiration of a genial and productive nature. In this investigation, I
could not, I thought, do better, than keep before me the earliest work
of the greatest genius, that perhaps human nature has yet produced, our
myriad-minded [61] Shakespeare. I mean the VENUS AND ADONIS, and the
LUCRECE; works which give at once strong promises of the strength,
and yet obvious proofs of the immaturity, of his genius. From these I
abstracted the following marks, as characteristics of original poetic
genius in general.

1. In the VENUS AND ADONIS, the first and most obvious excellence is the
perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the subject;
and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without
passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the
thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of melody
predominant. The delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to
a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and not the result of an
easily imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favourable promise in
the compositions of a young man. The man that hath not music in his soul
can indeed never be a genuine poet. Imagery,--(even taken from nature,
much more when transplanted from books, as travels, voyages, and works
of natural history),--affecting incidents, just thoughts, interesting
personal or domestic feelings, and with these the art of their
combination or intertexture in the form of a poem,--may all by incessant
effort be acquired as a trade, by a man of talent and much reading,
who, as I once before observed, has mistaken an intense desire of poetic
reputation for a natural poetic genius; the love of the arbitrary
end for a possession of the peculiar means. But the sense of musical
delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of imagination; and
this together with the power of reducing multitude into unity of effect,
and modifying a series of thoughts by some one predominant thought or
feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can never be learned. It is
in these that "poeta nascitur non fit. "

2. A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote from
the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself. At least
I have found, that where the subject is taken immediately from the
author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a
particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a fallacious
pledge, of genuine poetic power. We may perhaps remember the tale of the
statuary, who had acquired considerable reputation for the legs of his
goddesses, though the rest of the statue accorded but indifferently with
ideal beauty; till his wife, elated by her husband's praises, modestly
acknowledged that she had been his constant model. In the VENUS
AND ADONIS this proof of poetic power exists even to excess. It is
throughout as if a superior spirit more intuitive, more intimately
conscious, even than the characters themselves, not only of every
outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its
subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view;
himself meanwhile unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only
by that pleasurable excitement, which had resulted from the energetic
fervour of his own spirit in so vividly exhibiting what it had
so accurately and profoundly contemplated. I think, I should have
conjectured from these poems, that even then the great instinct, which
impelled the poet to the drama, was secretly working in him, prompting
him--by a series and never broken chain of imagery, always vivid and,
because unbroken, often minute; by the highest effort of the picturesque
in words, of which words are capable, higher perhaps than was ever
realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted; to provide a
substitute for that visual language, that constant intervention and
running comment by tone, look and gesture, which in his dramatic works
he was entitled to expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem
at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of those
characters by the most consummate actors. You seem to be told nothing,
but to see and hear everything. Hence it is, from the perpetual activity
of attention required on the part of the reader; from the rapid flow,
the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts and images; and
above all from the alienation, and, if I may hazard such an expression,
the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings, from those of which he
is at once the painter and the analyst; that though the very subject
cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was
poem less dangerous on a moral account. Instead of doing as Ariosto, and
as, still more offensively, Wieland has done, instead of degrading and
deforming passion into appetite, the trials of love into the struggles
of concupiscence; Shakespeare has here represented the animal impulse
itself, so as to preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the
reader's notice among the thousand outward images, and now beautiful,
now fanciful circumstances, which form its dresses and its scenery; or
by diverting our attention from the main subject by those frequent witty
or profound reflections, which the poet's ever active mind has deduced
from, or connected with, the imagery and the incidents. The reader is
forced into too much action to sympathize with the merely passive of our
nature. As little can a mind thus roused and awakened be brooded on by
mean and indistinct emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep upon the
surface of a lake, while a strong gale is driving it onward in waves and
billows.

3. It has been before observed that images, however beautiful, though
faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words,
do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of
original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant
passion; or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion;
or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or
succession to an instant; or lastly, when a human and intellectual life
is transferred to them from the poet's own spirit,

Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air.

In the two following lines for instance, there is nothing objectionable,
nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their proper place,
part of a descriptive poem:

Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd
Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.

But with a small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be equally
in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive tour. The
same image will rise into semblance of poetry if thus conveyed:

Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,
By twilight glimpse discerned, mark! how they flee
From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
Streaming before them.

I have given this as an illustration, by no means as an instance, of
that particular excellence which I had in view, and in which Shakespeare
even in his earliest, as in his latest, works surpasses all other
poets. It is by this, that he still gives a dignity and a passion to
the objects which he presents. Unaided by any previous excitement, they
burst upon us at once in life and in power,--

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye. "

"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come--

* * * * * *
* * * * * *

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent. "

As of higher worth, so doubtless still more characteristic of poetic
genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to the
circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the mind.
For unrivalled instances of this excellence, the reader's own memory
will refer him to the LEAR, OTHELLO, in short to which not of the
"great, ever living, dead man's" dramatic works? Inopem em copia
fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the
instance of love in his 98th Sonnet.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April drest in all its trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them, where they grew
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were, tho' sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play! "

Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less indispensable mark

Gonimon men poiaetou------
------hostis rhaema gennaion lakoi,

will the imagery supply, when, with more than the power of the painter,
the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the feeling of
simultaneousness:--

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms, which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;--

* * * * * *

Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.

4. The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but
little, except as taken conjointly with the former;--yet without which
the former could scarce exist in a high degree, and (even if this were
possible) would give promises only of transitory flashes and a meteoric
power;--is depth, and energy of thought. No man was ever yet a great
poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry
is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts,
human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare's poems the creative
power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in
its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other.
At length in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its
shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams, that,
at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive
to repel each other and intermix reluctantly and in tumult; but soon
finding a wider channel and more yielding shores blend, and dilate, and
flow on in one current and with one voice. The VENUS AND ADONIS did
not perhaps allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of
Lucretia seems to favour and even demand their intensest workings. And
yet we find in Shakespeare's management of the tale neither pathos,
nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faithful
imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by
the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with
the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties;
and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge
and reflection; and lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often
domination, over the whole world of language. What then shall we say?
even this; that Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of
genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration, possessed by the spirit, not
possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood
minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself
to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous
power, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own
class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten
summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer not rival.
While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of
human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood;
the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of
his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in
the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever
remaining himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England, my
country! --Truly indeed--

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue,
Which Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold,
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.




CHAPTER XVI

Striking points of difference between the Poets of the present age and
those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--Wish expressed for the
union of the characteristic merits of both.


Christendom, from its first settlement on feudal rights, has been so
far one great body, however imperfectly organized, that a similar spirit
will be found in each period to have been acting in all its members.
The study of Shakespeare's poems--(I do not include his dramatic works,
eminently as they too deserve that title)--led me to a more careful
examination of the contemporary poets both in England and in other
countries. But my attention was especially fixed on those of Italy, from
the birth to the death of Shakespeare; that being the country in which
the fine arts had been most sedulously, and hitherto most successfully
cultivated. Abstracted from the degrees and peculiarities of individual
genius, the properties common to the good writers of each period seem
to establish one striking point of difference between the poetry of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that of the present age. The
remark may perhaps be extended to the sister art of painting. At least
the latter will serve to illustrate the former. In the present age the
poet--(I would wish to be understood as speaking generally, and without
allusion to individual names)--seems to propose to himself as his main
object, and as that which is the most characteristic of his art, new and
striking images; with incidents that interest the affections or excite
the curiosity. Both his characters and his descriptions he renders,
as much as possible, specific and individual, even to a degree of
portraiture. In his diction and metre, on the other hand, he is
comparatively careless. The measure is either constructed on no previous
system, and acknowledges no justifying principle but that of the
writer's convenience; or else some mechanical movement is adopted, of
which one couplet or stanza is so far an adequate specimen, as that the
occasional differences appear evidently to arise from accident, or the
qualities of the language itself, not from meditation and an intelligent
purpose. And the language from Pope's translation of Homer, to Darwin's
Temple of Nature [62], may, notwithstanding some illustrious exceptions,
be too faithfully characterized, as claiming to be poetical for no
better reason, than that it would be intolerable in conversation or in
prose. Though alas! even our prose writings, nay even the style of our
more set discourses, strive to be in the fashion, and trick themselves
out in the soiled and over-worn finery of the meretricious muse. It is
true that of late a great improvement in this respect is observable in
our most popular writers. But it is equally true, that this recurrence
to plain sense and genuine mother English is far from being general; and
that the composition of our novels, magazines, public harangues, and the
like is commonly as trivial in thought, and yet enigmatic in expression,
as if Echo and Sphinx had laid their heads together to construct it.
Nay, even of those who have most rescued themselves from this contagion,
I should plead inwardly guilty to the charge of duplicity or cowardice,
if I withheld my conviction, that few have guarded the purity of their
native tongue with that jealous care, which the sublime Dante in his
tract De la volgare Eloquenza, declares to be the first duty of a poet.
For language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains
the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests.
Animadverte, says Hobbes, quam sit ab improprietate verborum pronum
hominihus prolabi in errores circa ipsas res! Sat [vero], says
Sennertus, in hac vitae brevitate et naturae obscuritate, rerum est,
quibus cognoscendis tempus impendatur, ut [confusis et multivotis]
sermonibus intelligendis illud consumere opus non sit. [Eheu! quantas
strages paravere verba nubila, quae tot dicunt ut nihil dicunt;--nubes
potius, e quibus et in rebus politicis et in ecclesia turbines et
tonitrua erumpunt! ] Et proinde recte dictum putamus a Platone in Gorgia:
os an ta onomata eidei, eisetai kai ta pragmata: et ab Epicteto,
archae paideuseos hae ton onomaton episkepsis: et prudentissime Galenus
scribit, hae ton onomaton chraesis tarachtheisa kai taen ton pragmaton
epitarattei gnosin.

Egregie vero J. C. Scaliger, in Lib. I. de Plantis: Est primum, inquit,
sapientis officium, bene sentire, ut sibi vivat: proximum, bene loqui,
ut patriae vivat.

Something analogous to the materials and structure of modern poetry I
seem to have noticed--(but here I beg to be understood as speaking
with the utmost diffidence)--in our common landscape painters. Their
foregrounds and intermediate distances are comparatively unattractive:
while the main interest of the landscape is thrown into the background,
where mountains and torrents and castles forbid the eye to proceed, and
nothing tempts it to trace its way back again. But in the works of the
great Italian and Flemish masters, the front and middle objects of the
landscape are the most obvious and determinate, the interest gradually
dies away in the background, and the charm and peculiar worth of the
picture consists, not so much in the specific objects which it conveys
to the understanding in a visual language formed by the substitution of
figures for words, as in the beauty and harmony of the colours, lines,
and expression, with which the objects are represented. Hence novelty of
subject was rather avoided than sought for. Superior excellence in
the manner of treating the same subjects was the trial and test of the
artist's merit.

Not otherwise is it with the more polished poets of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, especially those of Italy. The imagery is almost
always general: sun, moon, flowers, breezes, murmuring streams, warbling
songsters, delicious shades, lovely damsels cruel as fair, nymphs,
naiads, and goddesses, are the materials which are common to all, and
which each shaped and arranged according to his judgment or fancy,
little solicitous to add or to particularize. If we make an honourable
exception in favour of some English poets, the thoughts too are as
little novel as the images; and the fable of their narrative poems,
for the most part drawn from mythology, or sources of equal notoriety,
derive their chief attractions from the manner of treating them; from
impassioned flow, or picturesque arrangement. In opposition to the
present age, and perhaps in as faulty an extreme, they placed the
essence of poetry in the art. The excellence, at which they aimed,
consisted in the exquisite polish of the diction, combined with perfect
simplicity. This their prime object they attained by the avoidance of
every word, which a gentleman would not use in dignified conversation,
and of every word and phrase, which none but a learned man would use;
by the studied position of words and phrases, so that not only each
part should be melodious in itself, but contribute to the harmony of
the whole, each note referring and conducting to the melody of all the
foregoing and following words of the same period or stanza; and lastly
with equal labour, the greater because unbetrayed, by the variation and
various harmonies of their metrical movement. Their measures, however,
were not indebted for their variety to the introduction of new metres,
such as have been attempted of late in the Alonzo and Imogen, and others
borrowed from the German, having in their very mechanism a specific
overpowering tune, to which the generous reader humours his voice and
emphasis, with more indulgence to the author than attention to the
meaning or quantity of the words; but which, to an ear familiar with the
numerous sounds of the Greek and Roman poets, has an effect not unlike
that of galloping over a paved road in a German stage-waggon without
springs. On the contrary, the elder bards both of Italy and England
produced a far greater as well as more charming variety by countless
modifications, and subtle balances of sound in the common metres of
their country. A lasting and enviable reputation awaits that man of
genius, who should attempt and realize a union;--who should recall the
high finish, the appropriateness, the facility, the delicate proportion,
and above all, the perfusive and omnipresent grace, which have
preserved, as in a shrine of precious amber, the Sparrow of Catullus,
the Swallow, the Grasshopper, and all the other little loves of
Anacreon; and which, with bright, though diminished glories, revisited
the youth and early manhood of Christian Europe, in the vales of [63]
Arno, and the groves of Isis and of Cam; and who with these should
combine the keener interest, deeper pathos, manlier reflection, and the
fresher and more various imagery, which give a value and a name that
will not pass away to the poets who have done honour to our own times,
and to those of our immediate predecessors.




CHAPTER XVII

Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--Rustic life (above
all, low and rustic life) especially unfavourable to the formation of a
human diction--The best parts of language the product of philosophers,
not of clowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and generic--The
language of Milton as much the language of real life, yea, incomparably
more so than that of the cottager.


As far then as Mr. Wordsworth in his preface contended, and most ably
contended, for a reformation in our poetic diction, as far as he has
evinced the truth of passion, and the dramatic propriety of those
figures and metaphors in the original poets, which, stripped of their
justifying reasons, and converted into mere artifices of connection or
ornament, constitute the characteristic falsity in the poetic style of
the moderns; and as far as he has, with equal acuteness and clearness,
pointed out the process by which this change was effected, and the
resemblances between that state into which the reader's mind is thrown
by the pleasurable confusion of thought from an unaccustomed train
of words and images; and that state which is induced by the natural
language of impassioned feeling; he undertook a useful task, and
deserves all praise, both for the attempt and for the execution. The
provocations to this remonstrance in behalf of truth and nature were
still of perpetual recurrence before and after the publication of this
preface. I cannot likewise but add, that the comparison of such poems
of merit, as have been given to the public within the last ten or twelve
years, with the majority of those produced previously to the appearance
of that preface, leave no doubt on my mind, that Mr. Wordsworth is fully
justified in believing his efforts to have been by no means ineffectual.
Not only in the verses of those who have professed their admiration
of his genius, but even of those who have distinguished themselves
by hostility to his theory, and depreciation of his writings, are the
impressions of his principles plainly visible. It is possible, that with
these principles others may have been blended, which are not equally
evident; and some which are unsteady and subvertible from the narrowness
or imperfection of their basis. But it is more than possible, that
these errors of defect or exaggeration, by kindling and feeding the
controversy, may have conduced not only to the wider propagation of the
accompanying truths, but that, by their frequent presentation to the
mind in an excited state, they may have won for them a more permanent
and practical result. A man will borrow a part from his opponent the
more easily, if he feels himself justified in continuing to reject a
part. While there remain important points in which he can still feel
himself in the right, in which he still finds firm footing for continued
resistance, he will gradually adopt those opinions, which were the least
remote from his own convictions, as not less congruous with his own
theory than with that which he reprobates. In like manner with a kind of
instinctive prudence, he will abandon by little and little his weakest
posts, till at length he seems to forget that they had ever belonged
to him, or affects to consider them at most as accidental and "petty
annexments," the removal of which leaves the citadel unhurt and
unendangered.

My own differences from certain supposed parts of Mr. Wordsworth's
theory ground themselves on the assumption, that his words had been
rightly interpreted, as purporting that the proper diction for poetry
in general consists altogether in a language taken, with due exceptions,
from the mouths of men in real life, a language which actually
constitutes the natural conversation of men under the influence of
natural feelings. My objection is, first, that in any sense this rule
is applicable only to certain classes of poetry; secondly, that even
to these classes it is not applicable, except in such a sense, as
hath never by any one (as far as I know or have read,) been denied or
doubted; and lastly, that as far as, and in that degree in which it
is practicable, it is yet as a rule useless, if not injurious, and
therefore either need not, or ought not to be practised. The poet
informs his reader, that he had generally chosen low and rustic life;
but not as low and rustic, or in order to repeat that pleasure of
doubtful moral effect, which persons of elevated rank and of superior
refinement oftentimes derive from a happy imitation of the rude
unpolished manners and discourse of their inferiors.
For the pleasure
so derived may be traced to three exciting causes. The first is the
naturalness, in fact, of the things represented. The second is the
apparent naturalness of the representation, as raised and qualified
by an imperceptible infusion of the author's own knowledge and talent,
which infusion does, indeed, constitute it an imitation as distinguished
from a mere copy. The third cause may be found in the reader's conscious
feeling of his superiority awakened by the contrast presented to
him; even as for the same purpose the kings and great barons of yore
retained, sometimes actual clowns and fools, but more frequently shrewd
and witty fellows in that character. These, however, were not Mr.
Wordsworth's objects. He chose low and rustic life, "because in that
condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in
which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and
speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of
life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity,
and consequently may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly
communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from
those elementary feelings; and from the necessary character of rural
occupations are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and
lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated
with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. "

Now it is clear to me, that in the most interesting of the poems, in
which the author is more or less dramatic, as THE BROTHERS, MICHAEL,
RUTH, THE MAD MOTHER, and others, the persons introduced are by no means
taken from low or rustic life in the common acceptation of those words!
and it is not less clear, that the sentiments and language, as far as
they can be conceived to have been really transferred from the minds
and conversation of such persons, are attributable to causes and
circumstances not necessarily connected with "their occupations and
abode. " The thoughts, feelings, language, and manners of the shepherd-
farmers in the vales of Cumberland and Westmoreland, as far as they are
actually adopted in those poems, may be accounted for from causes, which
will and do produce the same results in every state of life, whether in
town or country. As the two principal I rank that independence, which
raises a man above servitude, or daily toil for the profit of others,
yet not above the necessity of industry and a frugal simplicity
of domestic life; and the accompanying unambitious, but solid and
religious, education, which has rendered few books familiar, but the
Bible, and the Liturgy or Hymn book. To this latter cause, indeed, which
is so far accidental, that it is the blessing of particular countries
and a particular age, not the product of particular places or
employments, the poet owes the show of probability, that his personages
might really feel, think, and talk with any tolerable resemblance to his
representation. It is an excellent remark of Dr. Henry More's, that "a
man of confined education, but of good parts, by constant reading of the
Bible will naturally form a more winning and commanding rhetoric than
those that are learned: the intermixture of tongues and of artificial
phrases debasing their style. "

It is, moreover, to be considered that to the formation of healthy
feelings, and a reflecting mind, negations involve impediments not less
formidable than sophistication and vicious intermixture. I am
convinced, that for the human soul to prosper in rustic life a certain
vantage-ground is prerequisite. It is not every man that is likely to be
improved by a country life or by country labours. Education, or original
sensibility, or both, must pre-exist, if the changes, forms, and
incidents of nature are to prove a sufficient stimulant. And where
these are not sufficient, the mind contracts and hardens by want of
stimulants: and the man becomes selfish, sensual, gross, and hard-
hearted. Let the management of the Poor Laws in Liverpool, Manchester,
or Bristol be compared with the ordinary dispensation of the poor
rates in agricultural villages, where the farmers are the overseers and
guardians of the poor. If my own experience have not been particularly
unfortunate, as well as that of the many respectable country clergymen
with whom I have conversed on the subject, the result would engender
more than scepticism concerning the desirable influences of low and
rustic life in and for itself. Whatever may be concluded on the other
side, from the stronger local attachments and enterprising spirit of the
Swiss, and other mountaineers, applies to a particular mode of pastoral
life, under forms of property that permit and beget manners truly
republican, not to rustic life in general, or to the absence of
artificial cultivation. On the contrary the mountaineers, whose manners
have been so often eulogized, are in general better educated and greater
readers than men of equal rank elsewhere. But where this is not the
case, as among the peasantry of North Wales, the ancient mountains, with
all their terrors and all their glories, are pictures to the blind, and
music to the deaf.

I should not have entered so much into detail upon this passage,
but here seems to be the point, to which all the lines of difference
converge as to their source and centre;--I mean, as far as, and in
whatever respect, my poetic creed does differ from the doctrines
promulgated in this preface. I adopt with full faith, the principle of
Aristotle, that poetry, as poetry, is essentially ideal, that it avoids
and excludes all accident; that its apparent individualities of rank,
character, or occupation must be representative of a class; and that
the persons of poetry must be clothed with generic attributes, with the
common attributes of the class: not with such as one gifted individual
might possibly possess, but such as from his situation it is most
probable before-hand that he would possess. If my premises are right and
my deductions legitimate, it follows that there can be no poetic medium
between the swains of Theocritus and those of an imaginary golden age.

The characters of the vicar and the shepherd-mariner in the poem of THE
BROTHERS, and that of the shepherd of Green-head Ghyll in the MICHAEL,
have all the verisimilitude and representative quality, that the
purposes of poetry can require. They are persons of a known and
abiding class, and their manners and sentiments the natural product of
circumstances common to the class. Take Michael for instance:

An old man stout of heart, and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength: his mind was keen,
Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs,
And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone; and oftentimes
When others heeded not, He heard the South
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant Highland hills.
The Shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him, and he to himself would say,
`The winds are now devising work for me! '
And truly, at all times, the storm, that drives
The traveller to a shelter, summoned him
Up to the mountains: he had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists,
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So lived he, until his eightieth year was past.
And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd's thoughts.
Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air; the hills, which he so oft
Had climbed with vigorous steps; which had impressed
So many incidents upon his mind
Of hardship, skill or courage, joy or fear;
Which, like a book, preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals, whom he had saved,
Had fed or sheltered, linking to such acts,
So grateful in themselves, the certainty
Of honourable gain; these fields, these hills
Which were his living Being, even more
Than his own blood--what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.

On the other hand, in the poems which are pitched in a lower key, as the
HARRY GILL, and THE IDIOT BOY, the feelings are those of human nature in
general; though the poet has judiciously laid the scene in the country,
in order to place himself in the vicinity of interesting images, without
the necessity of ascribing a sentimental perception of their beauty
to the persons of his drama. In THE IDIOT BOY, indeed, the mother's
character is not so much the real and native product of a "situation
where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in which
they can attain their maturity and speak a plainer and more emphatic
language," as it is an impersonation of an instinct abandoned by
judgment. Hence the two following charges seem to me not wholly
groundless: at least, they are the only plausible objections, which I
have heard to that fine poem. The one is, that the author has not, in
the poem itself, taken sufficient care to preclude from the reader's
fancy the disgusting images of ordinary morbid idiocy, which yet it was
by no means his intention to represent. He was even by the "burr, burr,
burr," uncounteracted by any preceding description of the boy's beauty,
assisted in recalling them. The other is, that the idiocy of the boy
is so evenly balanced by the folly of the mother, as to present to the
general reader rather a laughable burlesque on the blindness of anile
dotage, than an analytic display of maternal affection in its ordinary
workings.

In THE THORN, the poet himself acknowledges in a note the necessity of
an introductory poem, in which he should have portrayed the character
of the person from whom the words of the poem are supposed to proceed:
a superstitious man moderately imaginative, of slow faculties and deep
feelings, "a captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who, being
past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity, or small
independent income, to some village or country town of which he was
not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live. Such men
having nothing to do become credulous and talkative from indolence. " But
in a poem, still more in a lyric poem--and the Nurse in ROMEO AND JULIET
alone prevents me from extending the remark even to dramatic poetry, if
indeed even the Nurse can be deemed altogether a case in point--it is
not possible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourser, without
repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I
dare assert, that the parts--(and these form the far larger portion of
the whole)--which might as well or still better have proceeded from the
poet's own imagination, and have been spoken in his own character,
are those which have given, and which will continue to give, universal
delight; and that the passages exclusively appropriate to the supposed
narrator, such as the last couplet of the third stanza [64]; the seven
last lines of the tenth [65]; and the five following stanzas, with
the exception of the four admirable lines at the commencement of the
fourteenth, are felt by many unprejudiced and unsophisticated hearts,
as sudden and unpleasant sinkings from the height to which the poet had
previously lifted them, and to which he again re-elevates both himself
and his reader.

If then I am compelled to doubt the theory, by which the choice of
characters was to be directed, not only a priori, from grounds of
reason, but both from the few instances in which the poet himself
need be supposed to have been governed by it, and from the comparative
inferiority of those instances; still more must I hesitate in my assent
to the sentence which immediately follows the former citation; and
which I can neither admit as particular fact, nor as general rule. "The
language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what
appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of
dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best
objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and
because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle
of their intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity,
they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated
expressions. " To this I reply; that a rustic's language, purified from
all provincialism and grossness, and so far reconstructed as to be made
consistent with the rules of grammar--(which are in essence no
other than the laws of universal logic, applied to psychological
materials)--will not differ from the language of any other man of
common sense, however learned or refined he may be, except as far as
the notions, which the rustic has to convey, are fewer and more
indiscriminate. This will become still clearer, if we add the
consideration--(equally important though less obvious)--that the rustic,
from the more imperfect development of his faculties, and from the
lower state of their cultivation, aims almost solely to convey insulated
facts, either those of his scanty experience or his traditional belief;
while the educated man chiefly seeks to discover and express those
connections of things, or those relative bearings of fact to fact, from
which some more or less general law is deducible. For facts are valuable
to a wise man, chiefly as they lead to the discovery of the indwelling
law, which is the true being of things, the sole solution of their modes
of existence, and in the knowledge of which consists our dignity and our
power.

As little can I agree with the assertion, that from the objects with
which the rustic hourly communicates the best part of language is
formed. For first, if to communicate with an object implies such an
acquaintance with it, as renders it capable of being discriminately
reflected on, the distinct knowledge of an uneducated rustic would
furnish a very scanty vocabulary. The few things and modes of action
requisite for his bodily conveniences would alone be individualized;
while all the rest of nature would be expressed by a small number of
confused general terms. Secondly, I deny that the words and combinations
of words derived from the objects, with which the rustic is familiar,
whether with distinct or confused knowledge, can be justly said to form
the best part of language. It is more than probable, that many classes
of the brute creation possess discriminating sounds, by which they can
convey to each other notices of such objects as concern their food,
shelter, or safety. Yet we hesitate to call the aggregate of such
sounds a language, otherwise than metaphorically. The best part of human
language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts
of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed
symbols to internal acts, to processes and results of imagination, the
greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated
man; though in civilized society, by imitation and passive remembrance
of what they hear from their religious instructors and other superiors,
the most uneducated share in the harvest which they neither sowed,
nor reaped. If the history of the phrases in hourly currency among our
peasants were traced, a person not previously aware of the fact would
be surprised at finding so large a number, which three or four centuries
ago were the exclusive property of the universities and the schools;
and, at the commencement of the Reformation, had been transferred from
the school to the pulpit, and thus gradually passed into common life.
The extreme difficulty, and often the impossibility, of finding words
for the simplest moral and intellectual processes of the languages of
uncivilized tribes has proved perhaps the weightiest obstacle to the
progress of our most zealous and adroit missionaries. Yet these tribes
are surrounded by the same nature as our peasants are; but in still more
impressive forms; and they are, moreover, obliged to particularize many
more of them. When, therefore, Mr. Wordsworth adds, "accordingly, such
a language"--(meaning, as before, the language of rustic life purified
from provincialism)--"arising out of repeated experience and regular
feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language,
than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think
that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in
proportion as they indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of
expression;" it may be answered, that the language, which he has in
view, can be attributed to rustics with no greater right, than the style
of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir Roger L'Estrange. Doubtless, if
what is peculiar to each were omitted in each, the result must needs be
the same. Further, that the poet, who uses an illogical diction, or a
style fitted to excite only the low and changeable pleasure of wonder by
means of groundless novelty, substitutes a language of folly and vanity,
not for that of the rustic, but for that of good sense and natural
feeling.

Here let me be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions, which
I controvert, are contained in the sentences--"a selection of the real
language of men;"--"the language of these men" (that is, men in low and
rustic life) "has been adopted; I have proposed to myself to imitate,
and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men. "

"Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition, there
neither is, nor can be, any essential difference:" it is against these
exclusively that my opposition is directed.

I object, in the very first instance, to an equivocation in the use of
the word "real. " Every man's language varies, according to the extent of
his knowledge, the activity of his faculties, and the depth or quickness
of his feelings. Every man's language has, first, its individualities;
secondly, the common properties of the class to which he belongs; and
thirdly, words and phrases of universal use. The language of Hooker,
Bacon, Bishop Taylor, and Burke differs from the common language of the
learned class only by the superior number and novelty of the thoughts
and relations which they had to convey. The language of Algernon Sidney
differs not at all from that, which every well-educated gentleman would
wish to write, and (with due allowances for the undeliberateness, and
less connected train, of thinking natural and proper to conversation)
such as he would wish to talk. Neither one nor the other differ half as
much from the general language of cultivated society, as the language
of Mr. Wordsworth's homeliest composition differs from that of a common
peasant. For "real" therefore, we must substitute ordinary, or lingua
communis. And this, we have proved, is no more to be found in the
phraseology of low and rustic life than in that of any other class. Omit
the peculiarities of each and the result of course must be common to
all. And assuredly the omissions and changes to be made in the language
of rustics, before it could be transferred to any species of poem,
except the drama or other professed imitation, are at least as numerous
and weighty, as would be required in adapting to the same purpose the
ordinary language of tradesmen and manufacturers. Not to mention,
that the language so highly extolled by Mr. Wordsworth varies in every
county, nay in every village, according to the accidental character
of the clergyman, the existence or non-existence of schools; or even,
perhaps, as the exciteman, publican, and barber happen to be, or not to
be, zealous politicians, and readers of the weekly newspaper pro bono
publico. Anterior to cultivation the lingua communis of every country,
as Dante has well observed, exists every where in parts, and no where as
a whole.

Neither is the case rendered at all more tenable by the addition of
the words, "in a state of excitement. " For the nature of a man's words,
where he is strongly affected by joy, grief, or anger, must necessarily
depend on the number and quality of the general truths, conceptions and
images, and of the words expressing them, with which his mind had been
previously stored. For the property of passion is not to create; but
to set in increased activity. At least, whatever new connections of
thoughts or images, or--(which is equally, if not more than equally,
the appropriate effect of strong excitement)--whatever generalizations
of truth or experience the heat of passion may produce; yet the terms of
their conveyance must have pre-existed in his former conversations, and
are only collected and crowded together by the unusual stimulation. It
is indeed very possible to adopt in a poem the unmeaning repetitions,
habitual phrases, and other blank counters, which an unfurnished or
confused understanding interposes at short intervals, in order to keep
hold of his subject, which is still slipping from him, and to give him
time for recollection; or, in mere aid of vacancy, as in the scanty
companies of a country stage the same player pops backwards and
forwards, in order to prevent the appearance of empty spaces, in the
procession of Macbeth, or Henry VIII. But what assistance to the poet,
or ornament to the poem, these can supply, I am at a loss to conjecture.
Nothing assuredly can differ either in origin or in mode more widely
from the apparent tautologies of intense and turbulent feeling, in which
the passion is greater and of longer endurance than to be exhausted or
satisfied by a single representation of the image or incident exciting
it. Such repetitions I admit to be a beauty of the highest kind; as
illustrated by Mr. Wordsworth himself from the song of Deborah. At her
feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell:
where he bowed, there he fell down dead. Judges v. 27.




CHAPTER XVIII

Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially different
from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre--Its necessary
consequences, and the conditions thereby imposed on the metrical writer
in the choice of his diction.


I conclude, therefore, that the attempt is impracticable; and that, were
it not impracticable, it would still be useless. For the very power of
making the selection implies the previous possession of the language
selected. Or where can the poet have lived? And by what rules could
he direct his choice, which would not have enabled him to select and
arrange his words by the light of his own judgment? We do not adopt the
language of a class by the mere adoption of such words exclusively, as
that class would use, or at least understand; but likewise by following
the order, in which the words of such men are wont to succeed each
other. Now this order, in the intercourse of uneducated men, is
distinguished from the diction of their superiors in knowledge and
power, by the greater disjunction and separation in the component parts
of that, whatever it be, which they wish to communicate. There is a want
of that prospectiveness of mind, that surview, which enables a man
to foresee the whole of what he is to convey, appertaining to any one
point; and by this means so to subordinate and arrange the different
parts according to their relative importance, as to convey it at once,
and as an organized whole.

Now I will take the first stanza, on which I have chanced to open, in
the Lyrical Ballads. It is one the most simple and the least peculiar in
its language.

"In distant countries have I been,
And yet I have not often seen
A healthy man, a man full grown,
Weep in the public roads, alone.
But such a one, on English ground,
And in the broad highway, I met;
Along the broad highway he came,
His cheeks with tears were wet
Sturdy he seemed, though he was sad;
And in his arms a lamb he had. "

The words here are doubtless such as are current in all ranks of life;
and of course not less so in the hamlet and cottage than in the shop,
manufactory, college, or palace. But is this the order, in which the
rustic would have placed the words? I am grievously deceived, if the
following less compact mode of commencing the same tale be not a far
more faithful copy. "I have been in a many parts, far and near, and I
don't know that I ever saw before a man crying by himself in the public
road; a grown man I mean, that was neither sick nor hurt," etc. , etc.
But when I turn to the following stanza in The Thorn:

"At all times of the day and night
This wretched woman thither goes;
And she is known to every star,
And every wind that blows
And there, beside the Thorn, she sits,
When the blue day-light's in the skies,
And when the whirlwind's on the hill,
Or frosty air is keen and still,
And to herself she cries,
Oh misery! Oh misery!
Oh woe is me! Oh misery! "

and compare this with the language of ordinary men; or with that which
I can conceive at all likely to proceed, in real life, from such a
narrator, as is supposed in the note to the poem; compare it either in
the succession of the images or of the sentences; I am reminded of the
sublime prayer and hymn of praise, which Milton, in opposition to an
established liturgy, presents as a fair specimen of common extemporary
devotion, and such as we might expect to hear from every self-inspired
minister of a conventicle! And I reflect with delight, how little a mere
theory, though of his own workmanship, interferes with the processes of
genuine imagination in a man of true poetic genius, who possesses, as
Mr. Wordsworth, if ever man did, most assuredly does possess,

"The Vision and the Faculty divine. "

One point then alone remains, but that the most important; its
examination having been, indeed, my chief inducement for the preceding
inquisition. "There neither is nor can be any essential difference
between the language of prose and metrical composition. " Such is Mr.
Wordsworth's assertion. Now prose itself, at least in all argumentative
and consecutive works, differs, and ought to differ, from the language
of conversation; even as [66] reading ought to differ from talking.
Unless therefore the difference denied be that of the mere words, as
materials common to all styles of writing, and not of the style itself
in the universally admitted sense of the term, it might be naturally
presumed that there must exist a still greater between the ordonnance
of poetic composition and that of prose, than is expected to distinguish
prose from ordinary conversation.

There are not, indeed, examples wanting in the history of literature,
of apparent paradoxes that have summoned the public wonder as new and
startling truths, but which, on examination, have shrunk into tame and
harmless truisms; as the eyes of a cat, seen in the dark, have been
mistaken for flames of fire. But Mr. Wordsworth is among the last men,
to whom a delusion of this kind would be attributed by anyone, who
had enjoyed the slightest opportunity of understanding his mind and
character. Where an objection has been anticipated by such an author as
natural, his answer to it must needs be interpreted in some sense which
either is, or has been, or is capable of being controverted. My object
then must be to discover some other meaning for the term "essential
difference" in this place, exclusive of the indistinction and community
of the words themselves. For whether there ought to exist a class of
words in the English, in any degree resembling the poetic dialect of
the Greek and Italian, is a question of very subordinate importance. The
number of such words would be small indeed, in our language; and even in
the Italian and Greek, they consist not so much of different words, as
of slight differences in the forms of declining and conjugating the same
words; forms, doubtless, which having been, at some period more or less
remote, the common grammatic flexions of some tribe or province, had
been accidentally appropriated to poetry by the general admiration of
certain master intellects, the first established lights of inspiration,
to whom that dialect happened to be native.

Essence, in its primary signification, means the principle of
individuation, the inmost principle of the possibility of any thing, as
that particular thing. It is equivalent to the idea of a thing, whenever
we use the word, idea, with philosophic precision. Existence, on the
other hand, is distinguished from essence, by the superinduction of
reality. Thus we speak of the essence, and essential properties of a
circle; but we do not therefore assert, that any thing, which really
exists, is mathematically circular. Thus too, without any tautology we
contend for the existence of the Supreme Being; that is, for a reality
correspondent to the idea. There is, next, a secondary use of the word
essence, in which it signifies the point or ground of contra-distinction
between two modifications of the same substance or subject. Thus we
should be allowed to say, that the style of architecture of Westminster
Abbey is essentially different from that of St. Paul, even though both
had been built with blocks cut into the same form, and from the same
quarry. Only in this latter sense of the term must it have been denied
by Mr. Wordsworth (for in this sense alone is it affirmed by the general
opinion) that the language of poetry (that is the formal construction,
or architecture, of the words and phrases) is essentially different from
that of prose. Now the burden of the proof lies with the oppugner,
not with the supporters of the common belief. 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.