The German, not less
than the Greek, is a polysyllable language.
than the Greek, is a polysyllable language.
Coleridge - Biographia Literaria
"What then are we to understand?
That whatever is produced is an
intuition, I silent; and that, which is thus generated, is by its nature
a theorem, or form of contemplation; and the birth; which results to
me from this contemplation, attains to have a contemplative nature. " So
Synesius:
'Odis hiera
'Arraeta gona
The after comparison of the process of the natura naturans with that of
the geometrician is drawn from the very heart of philosophy. ]
[Footnote 49: This is happily effected in three lines by Synesius, in his THIRD
HYMN:
'En kai Pan'ta--(taken by itself) is Spinozism.
'En d' 'Apan'ton--a mere Anima Mundi.
'En te pro panton--is mechanical Theism.
But unite all three, and the result is the Theism of Saint Paul and
Christianity. Synesius was censured for his doctrine of the pre-
existence of the soul; but never, that I can find, arraigned or deemed
heretical for his Pantheism, though neither Giordano Bruno, nor Jacob
Behmen ever avowed it more broadly.
Mystas de Noos,
Ta te kai ta legei,
Buthon arraeton
Amphichoreuon.
Su to tikton ephus,
Su to tiktomenon;
Su to photizon,
Su to lampomenon;
Su to phainomenon,
Su to kryptomenon
Idiais augais.
'En kai panta,
'En kath' heauto,
Kai dia panton.
Pantheism is therefore not necessarily irreligious or heretical; though
it may be taught atheistically. Thus Spinoza would agree with Synesius
in calling God Physis en Noerois, the Nature in Intelligences; but
he could not subscribe to the preceding Nous kai noeros, i. e. Himself
Intelligence and intelligent.
In this biographical sketch of my literary life I may be excused, if I
mention here, that I had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the
Greek into English Anacreontics before my fifteenth year. ]
[Footnote 50: See Schell. Abhandl. zur Erlaeuter. des Id. der Wissenschafslehre. ]
[Footnote 51: Des Cartes, Diss. de Methodo. ]
[Footnote 52: The impossibility of an absolute thing (substantia unica) as
neither genus, species, nor individuum: as well as its utter unfitness
for the fundamental position of a philosophic system, will be
demonstrated in the critique on Spinozism in the fifth treatise of my
Logosophia. ]
[Footnote 53: It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation
of himself, not confined to individuals; indeed in the very first
revelation of his absolute being, Jehovah at the same time revealed the
fundamental truth of all philosophy, which must either commence with
the absolute, or have no fixed commencement; that is, cease to be
philosophy. I cannot but express my regret, that in the equivocal use
of the word that, for in that, or because, our admirable version has
rendered the passage susceptible of a degraded interpretation in the
mind of common readers or hearers, as if it were a mere reproof to an
impertinent question, I am what I am, which might be equally affirmed of
himself by any existent being.
The Cartesian Cogito ergo sum is objectionable, because either the
Cogito is used extra gradum, and then it is involved to the sum and is
tautological; or it is taken as a particular mode or dignity, and then
it is subordinated to the sum as the species to the genus, or rather
as a particular modification to the subject modified; and not pre-
ordinated as the arguments seem to require. For Cogito is Sum Cogitans.
This is clear by the inevidence of the converse. Cogitat, ergo est is
true, because it is a mere application of the logical rule: Quicquid in
genere est, est et in specie. Est (cogitans), ergo est. It is a cherry
tree; therefore it is a tree. But, est ergo cogitat, is illogical: for
quod est in specie, non NBCESSARIO in genere est. It may be true. I hold
it to be true, that quicquid vere est, est per veram sui affirmationem;
but it is a derivative, not an immediate truth. Here then we have, by
anticipation, the distinction between the conditional finite! (which, as
known in distinct consciousness by occasion of experience, is called by
Kant's followers the empirical! ) and the absolute I AM, and likewise the
dependence or rather the inherence of the former in the latter; in whom
"we live, and move, and have our being," as St. Paul divinely asserts,
differing widely from the Theists of the mechanic school (as Sir J.
Newton, Locke, and others) who must say from whom we had our being, and
with it life and the powers of life. ]
[Footnote 54: TRANSLATION. "Hence it is clear, from what cause many
reject the notion of the continuous and the infinite. They take, namely,
the words irrepresentable and impossible in one and the same meaning;
and, according to the forms of sensuous evidence, the notion of the
continuous and the infinite is doubtless impossible. I am not now
pleading the cause of these laws, which not a few schools have thought
proper to explode, especially the former (the law of continuity). But it
is of the highest importance to admonish the reader, that those, who
adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are under a grievous error.
Whatever opposes the formal principles of the understanding and the
reason is confessedly impossible; but not therefore that, which is
therefore not amenable to the forms of sensuous evidence, because it is
exclusively an object of pure intellect. For this non-coincidence of the
sensuous and the intellectual (the nature of which I shall presently lay
open) proves nothing more, but that the mind cannot always adequately
represent to the concrete, and transform into distinct images, abstract
notions derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction, which
is in itself merely subjective (i. e. an incapacity in the nature of
man), too often passes for an incongruity or impossibility in the object
(i. e. the notions themselves), and seduces the incautious to mistake the
limitations of the human faculties for the limits of things, as they
really exist. "
I take this occasion to observe, that here and elsewhere Kant uses the
term intuition, and the verb active (intueri Germanice anschauen) for
which we have unfortunately no correspondent word, exclusively for that
which can be represented in space and time. He therefore consistently
and rightly denies the possibility of intellectual intuitions. But as
I see no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the term, I have
reverted to its wider signification, authorized by our elder theologians
and metaphysicians, according to whom the term comprehends all truths
known to us without a medium.
From Kant's Treatise De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et
principiis. 1770. ]
[Footnote 55: Franc. Baconis de Verulam, NOVUM ORGANUM. ]
[Footnote 56: This phrase, a priori, is in common, most grossly misunderstood,
and as absurdity burdened on it, which it does not deserve. By knowledge
a priori, we do not mean, that we can know anything previously to
experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but that having
once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting
upon us from without) we then know, that it must have existed, or the
experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only now,
that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had
eyes in order to the experience. ]
[Footnote 57: Jer. Taylor's Via Pacis. ]
[Footnote 58: Par. Lost. Book V. I. 469. ]
[Footnote 59: Leibnitz. Op. T. II. P. II. p. 53. --T. III. p. 321. ]
[Footnote 60: Synesii Episcop. Hymn. III. I. 231]
[Footnote 61: 'Anaer morionous, a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk,
who applies it to a Patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that
I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed, it: for it seems to belong to
Shakespeare, de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturae. ]
[Footnote 62: First published in 1803. ]
[Footnote 63: These thoughts were suggested to me during the perusal of the
Madrigals of Giovambatista Strozzi published in Florence in May, 1593,
by his sons Lorenzo and Filippo Strozzi, with a dedication to their
paternal uncle, Signor Leone Strozzi, Generale delle battaglie di Santa
Chiesa. As I do not remember to have seen either the poems or their
author mentioned in any English work, or to have found them in any of
the common collections of Italian poetry; and as the little work is of
rare occurrence; I will transcribe a few specimens. I have seldom
met with compositions that possessed, to my feelings, more of that
satisfying entireness, that complete adequateness of the manner to the
matter which so charms us in Anacreon, joined with the tenderness,
and more than the delicacy of Catullus. Trifles as they are, they were
probably elaborated with great care; yet to the perusal we refer them
to a spontaneous energy rather than to voluntary effort. To a cultivated
taste there is a delight in perfection for its own sake, independently
of the material in which it is manifested, that none but a cultivated
taste can understand or appreciate.
After what I have advanced, it would appear presumption to offer a
translation; even if the attempt were not discouraged by the different
genius of the English mind and language, which demands a denser body of
thought as the condition of a high polish, than the Italian. I cannot
but deem it likewise an advantage in the Italian tongue, in many other
respects inferior to our own, that the language of poetry is more
distinct from that of prose than with us. From the earlier appearance
and established primacy of the Tuscan poets, concurring with the
number of independent states, and the diversity of written dialects,
the Italians have gained a poetic idiom, as the Greeks before them
had obtained from the same causes with greater and more various
discriminations, for example, the Ionic for their heroic verses; the
Attic for their iambic; and the two modes of the Doric for the lyric or
sacerdotal, and the pastoral, the distinctions of which were doubtless
more obvious to the Greeks themselves than they are to us.
I will venture to add one other observation before I proceed to the
transcription. I am aware that the sentiments which I have avowed
concerning the points of difference between the poetry of the present
age, and that of the period between 1500 and 1650, are the reverse of
the opinion commonly entertained. I was conversing on this subject with
a friend, when the servant, a worthy and sensible woman, coming in, I
placed before her two engravings, the one a pinky-coloured plate of the
day, the other a masterly etching by Salvator Rosa from one of his
own pictures. On pressing her to tell us, which she preferred, after a
little blushing and flutter of feeling, she replied "Why, that, Sir, to
be sure! (pointing to the ware from the Fleet-street print shops);--it's
so neat and elegant. T'other is such a scratchy slovenly thing. " An
artist, whose writings are scarcely less valuable than his pictures, and
to whose authority more deference will be willingly paid, than I
could even wish should be shown to mine, has told us, and from his own
experience too, that good taste must be acquired, and like all other
good things, is the result of thought and the submissive study of the
best models. If it be asked, "But what shall I deem such? "--the answer
is; presume those to be the best, the reputation of which has been
matured into fame by the consent of ages. For wisdom always has a final
majority, if not by conviction, yet by acquiescence. In addition to
Sir J. Reynolds I may mention Harris of Salisbury; who in one of his
philosophical disquisitions has written on the means of acquiring a just
taste with the precision of Aristotle, and the elegance of Quinctilian.
MADRIGALI.
Gelido suo ruscel chiaro, e tranquillo
M'insegno Amor di state a mezzo'l giorno;
Ardean le solve, ardean le piagge, e i colli.
Ond' io, ch' al piu gran gielo ardo e sfavillo,
Subito corsi; ma si puro adorno
Girsene il vidi, che turbar no'l volli:
Sol mi specchiava, e'n dolce ombrosa sponda
Mi stava intento al mormorar dell' onda.
Aure dell' angoscioso viver mio
Refrigerio soave,
E dolce si, che piu non mi par grave
Ne'l ardor, ne'l morir, anz' il desio;
Deh voil ghiaccio, e le nubi, e'l tempo rio
Discacciatene omai, che londa chiara,
E l'ombra non men cara
A scherzare, a cantar per suoi boschetti,
E prati festa et allegrezza alletti.
Pacifiche, ma spesso in amorosa
Guerra co'fiori, e l'erba
Alla stagione acerba
Verdi insegne del giglio e della rosa,
Movete, Aure, pian pian; che tregua o posa,
Se non pace, io ritrove;
E so ben dove:--Oh vago, a mansueto
Sguardo, oh labbra d'ambrosia, oh rider, lieto!
Hor come un scoglio stassi,
Hor come un rio se'n fugge,
Ed hor crud' orsa rugge,
Hor canta angelo pio: ma che non fassi!
E che non fammi, O sassi,
O rivi, o belue, o Dii, questa mia vaga
Non so, se ninfa, o magna,
Non so, se donna, o Dea,
Non so, se dolce o rea?
Piangendo mi baciaste,
E ridendo il negaste:
In doglia hebbivi pin,
In festa hebbivi ria:
Nacque gioia di pianti,
Dolor di riso: O amanti
Miseri, habbiate insieme
Ognor paura e speme.
Bel Fior, tu mi rimembri
La rugiadosa guancia del bet viso;
E si vera l'assembri,
Che'n te sovente, come in lei m'affiso:
Et hor del vago riso,
Hor del serene sguardo
Io pur cieco riguardo. Ma qual fugge,
O Rosa, il mattin lieve!
E chi te, come neve,
E'l mio cor teco, e la mia vita strugge!
Anna mia, Anna dolce, oh sempre nuovo
E piu chiaro concento,
Quanta dolcezza sento
In sol Anna dicendo? Io mi pur pruovo,
Ne qui tra noi ritruovo,
Ne tra cieli armonia,
Che del bel nome suo piu dolce sia:
Altro il Cielo, altro Amore,
Altro non suona l'Ecco del mio core.
Hor che'l prato, e la selva si scoiora,
Al tuo serena ombroso
Muovine, alto Riposo,
Deh ch'io riposi una sol notte, un hora:
Han le fere, e git augelli, ognun talora
Ha qualche pace; io quando,
Lasso! non vonne errando,
E non piango, e non grido? e qual pur forte?
Ma poiche, non sent' egli, odine, Morte.
Risi e piansi d'Amor; ne pero mai
Se non in fiamma, o'n onda, o'n vento scrissi
Spesso msrce trovai
Crudel; sempre in me morto, in altri vissi:
Hor da' piu scuri Abissi al ciel m'aizai,
Hor ne pur caddi giuso;
Stance al fin qui son chiuso.
[Footnote 64: --
"I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide. "]
[Footnote 65: --
"Nay, rack your brain--'tis all in vain,
I'll tell you every thing I know;
But to the Thorn, and to the Pond
Which is a little step beyond,
I wish that you would go:
Perhaps, when you are at the place,
You something of her tale may trace.
I'll give you the best help I can
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I'll tell you all I know.
'Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden's true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,
And she was happy, happy still
Whene'er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fixed the wedding-day,
The morning that must wed them both
But Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And, with this other maid, to church
Unthinking Stephen went--
Poor Martha! on that woeful day
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent;
A fire was kindled in her breast,
Which might not burn itself to rest.
They say, full six months after this,
While yet the summer leaves were green,
She to the mountain-top would go,
And there was often seen;
'Tis said a child was in her womb,
As now to any eye was plain;
She was with child, and she was mad;
Yet often she was sober sad
From her exceeding pain.
Oh me! ten thousand times I'd rather
That he had died, that cruel father!
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
Last Christmas when they talked of this,
Old Farmer Simpson did maintain,
That in her womb the infant wrought
About its mother's heart, and brought
Her senses back again:
And, when at last her time drew near,
Her looks were calm, her senses clear.
No more I know, I wish I did,
And I would tell it all to you
For what became of this poor child
There's none that ever knew
And if a child was born or no,
There's no one that could ever tell;
And if 'twas born alive or dead,
There's no one knows, as I have said:
But some remember well,
That Martha Ray about this time
Would up the mountain often climb. "]
[Footnote 66: It is no less an error in teachers, than a torment to the poor
children, to enforce the necessity of reading as they would talk. In
order to cure them of singing as it is called, that is, of too great a
difference, the child is made to repeat the words with his eyes from off
the book; and then, indeed, his tones resemble talking, as far as his
fears, tears and trembling will permit. But as soon as the eye is again
directed to the printed page, the spell begins anew; for an instinctive
sense tells the child's feelings, that to utter its own momentary
thoughts, and to recite the written thoughts of another, as of another,
and a far wiser than himself, are two widely different things; and as
the two acts are accompanied with widely different feelings, so must
they justify different modes of enunciation. Joseph Lancaster, among
his other sophistications of the excellent Dr. Bell's invaluable system,
cures this fault of singing, by hanging fetters and chains on the child,
to the music of which one of his school-fellows, who walks before,
dolefully chants out the child's last speech and confession, birth,
parentage, and education. And this soul-benumbing ignominy, this unholy
and heart-hardening burlesque on the last fearful infliction of outraged
law, in pronouncing the sentence to which the stern and familiarized
judge not seldom bursts into tears, has been extolled as a happy and
ingenious method of remedying--what? and how? --why, one extreme in order
to introduce another, scarce less distant from good sense, and certainly
likely to have worse moral effects, by enforcing a semblance of petulant
ease and self-sufficiency, in repression and possible after-perversion
of the natural feelings. I have to beg Dr. Bell's pardon for this
connection of the two names, but he knows that contrast is no less
powerful a cause of association than likeness. ]
[Footnote 67: Altered from the description of Night-Mair in the REMORSE.
"Oh Heaven! 'twas frightful! Now ran down and stared at
By hideous shapes that cannot be remembered;
Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing;
But only being afraid--stifled with fear!
While every goodly or familiar form
Had a strange power of spreading terror round me! "
N. B. --Though Shakespeare has, for his own all justifying purposes,
introduced the Night-Mare with her own foals, yet Mair means a Sister,
or perhaps a Hag. ]
[Footnote 68: But still more by the mechanical system of philosophy which
has needlessly infected our theological opinions, and teaching us to
consider the world in its relation to god, as of a building to its
mason, leaves the idea of omnipresence a mere abstract notion in the
stateroom of our reason. ]
[Footnote 69: As the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the Tragic Muse
contrived to dislocate, "I wish you a good morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir,
and I wish you the same," into two blank-verse heroics:--
To you a morning good, good Sir! I wish.
You, Sir! I thank: to you the same wish I.
In those parts of Mr. Wordsworth's works which I have thoroughly
studied, I find fewer instances in which this would be practicable
than I have met to many poems, where an approximation of prose has been
sedulously and on system guarded against. Indeed excepting the stanzas
already quoted from THE SAILOR'S MOTHER, I can recollect but one
instance: that is to say, a short passage of four or five lines in THE
BROTHERS, that model of English pastoral, which I never yet read with
unclouded eye. --"James, pointing to its summit, over which they had all
purposed to return together, informed them that he would wait for them
there. They parted, and his comrades passed that way some two hours
after, but they did not find him at the appointed place, _a circumstance
of which they took no heed:_ but one of them, going by chance into the
house, which at this time was James's house, learnt _there,_ that nobody
had seen him all that day. " The only change which has been made is in
the position of the little word there in two instances, the position
in the original being clearly such as is not adopted in ordinary
conversation. The other words printed in italics were so marked because,
though good and genuine English, they are not the phraseology of common
conversation either in the word put in apposition, or in the connection
by the genitive pronoun. Men in general would have said, "but that was
a circumstance they paid no attention to, or took no notice of;" and
the language is, on the theory of the preface, justified only by the
narrator's being the Vicar. Yet if any ear could suspect, that these
sentences were ever printed as metre, on those very words alone could
the suspicion have been grounded. ]
[Footnote 70: I had in my mind the striking but untranslatable epithet, which
the celebrated Mendelssohn applied to the great founder of the Critical
Philosophy "Der alleszermalmende KANT," that is, the all-becrushing,
or rather the all-to-nothing-crushing Kant. In the facility and force
of compound epithets, the German from the number of its cases and
inflections approaches to the Greek, that language so
"Bless'd in the happy marriage of sweet words. "
It is in the woful harshness of its sounds alone that the German need
shrink from the comparison. ]
[Footnote 71: Sammlung einiger Abhandlungen von Christian Garve. ]
[Footnote 72: Sonnet IX. ]
[Footnote 73: Mr. Wordsworth's having judiciously adopted "concourse wild" in
this passage for "a wild scene" as it stood to the former edition,
encourages me to hazard a remark, which I certainly should not have made
in the works of a poet less austerely accurate in the use of words, than
he is, to his own great honour. It respects the propriety of the word,
"scene," even in the sentence in which it is retained. Dryden, and he
only in his more careless verses, was the first, as far as my researches
have discovered, who for the convenience of rhyme used this word in the
vague sense, which has been since too current even in our best writers,
and which (unfortunately, I think) is given as its first explanation in
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary and therefore would be taken by an incautious
reader as its proper sense. In Shakespeare and Milton the word is
never used without some clear reference, proper or metaphorical, to the
theatre. Thus Milton:
"Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. "
I object to any extension of its meaning, because the word is already
more equivocal than might be wished; inasmuch as to the limited use,
which I recommend, it may still signify two different things; namely,
the scenery, and the characters and actions presented on the stage
during the presence of particular scenes. It can therefore be preserved
from obscurity only by keeping the original signification full in the
mind. Thus Milton again,
------"Prepare thee for another scene. "]
[Footnote 74: --
Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,
Upon her verge that stands, the neighbouring vallies fill;
Helvillon from his height, it through the mountains threw,
From whom as soon again, the sound Dunbalrase drew,
From whose stone-trophied head, it on the Windross went,
Which tow'rds the sea again, resounded it to Dent.
That Brodwater, therewith within her banks astound,
In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound,
Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long,
Did mightily commend old Copland for her song.
Drayton's POLYOLBION: Song XXX. ]
[Footnote 75: Translation. It behoves me to side with my friends, but only as far
as the gods. ]
[Footnote 76: "Slender. I bruised my shin with playing with sword and dagger for
a dish of stewed prunes, and by my troth I cannot abide the smell of hot
meat since. "--So again, Evans. "I will make an end of my dinner: there's
pippins and cheese to come. "]
[Footnote 77: This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman at
Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bed-fellow. Among other
boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a particular value
on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always slept with it under
his pillow. ]
[Footnote 78: Klopstock's observation was partly true and partly erroneous. In
the literal sense of his words, and, if we confine the comparison to the
average of space required for the expression of the same thought in the
two languages, it is erroneous. I have translated some German hexameters
into English hexameter; and find, that on the average three English
lines will express four lines German. The reason is evident: our
language abounds in monosyllables and dissyllables.
The German, not less
than the Greek, is a polysyllable language. But in another point of view
the remark was not without foundation. For the German possessing the
same unlimited privilege of forming compounds, both with prepositions
and with epithets, as the Greek, it can express the richest single Greek
word in a single German one, and is thus freed from the necessity
of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content myself with one at
present, viz. the use of the prefixed participles ver, zer, ent, and
weg: thus reissen to rend, verreissen to rend away, zerreissen to rend
to pieces, entreissen to rend off or out of a thing, in the active
sense: or schmelzen to melt--ver, zer, ent, schmelzen--and in like
manner through all the verbs neuter and active. If you consider only
how much we should feel the loss of the prefix be, as in bedropt,
besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language, and then think
that this same mode of composition is carved through all their simple
and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most
of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have of dividing them
from the verb and placing them at the end of the sentence; you will
have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and the cause of this
superior power in the German of condensing meaning, in which its great
poet exulted. It is impossible to read half a dozen pages of Wieland
without perceiving that in this respect the German has no rival but the
Greek. And yet I feel, that concentration or condensation is not the
happiest mode of expressing this excellence, which seems to consist not
so much in the less time required for conveying an impression, as in
the unity and simultaneousness with which the impression is conveyed.
It tends to make their language more picturesque: it depictures images
better. We have obtained this power in part by our compound verbs
derived from the Latin: and the sense of its great effect no doubt
induced our Milton both to the use and the abuse of Latin derivatives.
But still these prefixed particles, conveying no separate or separable
meaning to the mere English reader, cannot possibly act on the mind with
the force or liveliness of an original and homogeneous language such as
the German is, and besides are confined to certain words. ]
[Footnote 79: Praecludere calumniam, in the original. ]
[Footnote 80: Better thus: Forma specifica per formam individualem translucens:
or better yet--Species individualisata, sive Individuum cuilibet Speciei
determinatae in omni parte correspondens et quasi versione quadam eam
interpretans et repetens. ]
[Footnote 81: --
------"The big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase,"
says Shakespeare of a wounded stag hanging its head over a stream:
naturally, from the position of the head, and most beautifully, from
the association of the preceding image, of the chase, in which "the
poor sequester'd stag from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt. " In the
supposed position of Bertram, the metaphor, if not false, loses all the
propriety of the original. ]
[Footnote 82: Among a number of other instances of words chosen without reason,
Imogine in the first act declares, that thunder-storms were not able
to intercept her prayers for "the desperate man, in desperate ways who
dealt"----
"Yea, when the launched bolt did sear her sense,
Her soul's deep orisons were breathed for him;"
that is, when a red-hot bolt, launched at her from a thunder-cloud, had
cauterized her sense, to plain English, burnt her eyes out of her head,
she kept still praying on.
"Was not this love? Yea, thus doth woman love! "]
[Footnote 83: This sort of repetition is one of this writers peculiarities, and
there is scarce a page which does not furnish one or more instances--Ex.
gr. in the first page or two. Act I, line 7th, "and deemed that I might
sleep. "--Line 10, "Did rock and quiver in the bickering glare. "--Lines
14, 15, 16, "But by the momently gleams of sheeted blue, Did the pale
marbles dare so sternly on me, I almost deemed they lived. "--Line
37, "The glare of Hell. "--Line 35, "O holy Prior, this is no earthly
storm. "--Line 38, "This is no earthly storm. "--Line 42, "Dealing
with us. "--Line 43, "Deal thus sternly:"--Line 44, "Speak! thou hast
something seen? "--"A fearful sight! "--Line 45, "What hast thou seen! A
piteous, fearful sight. "--Line 48, "quivering gleams. "--Line 50, "In the
hollow pauses of the storm. "--Line 61, "The pauses of the storm, etc. "]
[Footnote 84: The child is an important personage, for I see not by what possible
means the author could have ended the second and third acts but for its
timely appearance. How ungrateful then not further to notice its fate! ]
[Footnote 85: Classically too, as far as consists with the allegorizing fancy
of the modern, that still striving to project the inward,
contradistinguishes itself from the seeming ease with which the poetry
of the ancients reflects the world without. Casimir affords, perhaps,
the most striking instance of this characteristic difference. --For his
style and diction are really classical: while Cowley, who resembles
Casimir in many respects, completely barbarizes his Latinity, and even
his metre, by the heterogeneous nature of his thoughts. That Dr. Johnson
should have passed a contrary judgment, and have even preferred Cowley's
Latin Poems to Milton's, is a caprice that has, if I mistake not,
excited the surprise of all scholars. I was much amused last summer with
the laughable affright, with which an Italian poet perused a page of
Cowley's Davideis, contrasted with the enthusiasm with which he first
ran through, and then read aloud, Milton's Mansus and Ad Patrem. ]
[Footnote 86: Flectit, or if the metre had allowed, premit would have supported
the metaphor better. ]
[Footnote 87: Poor unlucky Metaphysicks! and what are they? A single sentence
expresses the object and thereby the contents of this science. Gnothi
seauton:
Nosce te ipsum,
Tuque Deum, quantum licet, inque Deo omnia noscas. ]
Know thyself: and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to
a creature, and in God all things. --Surely, there is a strange--nay,
rather too natural--aversion to many to know themselves.
intuition, I silent; and that, which is thus generated, is by its nature
a theorem, or form of contemplation; and the birth; which results to
me from this contemplation, attains to have a contemplative nature. " So
Synesius:
'Odis hiera
'Arraeta gona
The after comparison of the process of the natura naturans with that of
the geometrician is drawn from the very heart of philosophy. ]
[Footnote 49: This is happily effected in three lines by Synesius, in his THIRD
HYMN:
'En kai Pan'ta--(taken by itself) is Spinozism.
'En d' 'Apan'ton--a mere Anima Mundi.
'En te pro panton--is mechanical Theism.
But unite all three, and the result is the Theism of Saint Paul and
Christianity. Synesius was censured for his doctrine of the pre-
existence of the soul; but never, that I can find, arraigned or deemed
heretical for his Pantheism, though neither Giordano Bruno, nor Jacob
Behmen ever avowed it more broadly.
Mystas de Noos,
Ta te kai ta legei,
Buthon arraeton
Amphichoreuon.
Su to tikton ephus,
Su to tiktomenon;
Su to photizon,
Su to lampomenon;
Su to phainomenon,
Su to kryptomenon
Idiais augais.
'En kai panta,
'En kath' heauto,
Kai dia panton.
Pantheism is therefore not necessarily irreligious or heretical; though
it may be taught atheistically. Thus Spinoza would agree with Synesius
in calling God Physis en Noerois, the Nature in Intelligences; but
he could not subscribe to the preceding Nous kai noeros, i. e. Himself
Intelligence and intelligent.
In this biographical sketch of my literary life I may be excused, if I
mention here, that I had translated the eight Hymns of Synesius from the
Greek into English Anacreontics before my fifteenth year. ]
[Footnote 50: See Schell. Abhandl. zur Erlaeuter. des Id. der Wissenschafslehre. ]
[Footnote 51: Des Cartes, Diss. de Methodo. ]
[Footnote 52: The impossibility of an absolute thing (substantia unica) as
neither genus, species, nor individuum: as well as its utter unfitness
for the fundamental position of a philosophic system, will be
demonstrated in the critique on Spinozism in the fifth treatise of my
Logosophia. ]
[Footnote 53: It is most worthy of notice, that in the first revelation
of himself, not confined to individuals; indeed in the very first
revelation of his absolute being, Jehovah at the same time revealed the
fundamental truth of all philosophy, which must either commence with
the absolute, or have no fixed commencement; that is, cease to be
philosophy. I cannot but express my regret, that in the equivocal use
of the word that, for in that, or because, our admirable version has
rendered the passage susceptible of a degraded interpretation in the
mind of common readers or hearers, as if it were a mere reproof to an
impertinent question, I am what I am, which might be equally affirmed of
himself by any existent being.
The Cartesian Cogito ergo sum is objectionable, because either the
Cogito is used extra gradum, and then it is involved to the sum and is
tautological; or it is taken as a particular mode or dignity, and then
it is subordinated to the sum as the species to the genus, or rather
as a particular modification to the subject modified; and not pre-
ordinated as the arguments seem to require. For Cogito is Sum Cogitans.
This is clear by the inevidence of the converse. Cogitat, ergo est is
true, because it is a mere application of the logical rule: Quicquid in
genere est, est et in specie. Est (cogitans), ergo est. It is a cherry
tree; therefore it is a tree. But, est ergo cogitat, is illogical: for
quod est in specie, non NBCESSARIO in genere est. It may be true. I hold
it to be true, that quicquid vere est, est per veram sui affirmationem;
but it is a derivative, not an immediate truth. Here then we have, by
anticipation, the distinction between the conditional finite! (which, as
known in distinct consciousness by occasion of experience, is called by
Kant's followers the empirical! ) and the absolute I AM, and likewise the
dependence or rather the inherence of the former in the latter; in whom
"we live, and move, and have our being," as St. Paul divinely asserts,
differing widely from the Theists of the mechanic school (as Sir J.
Newton, Locke, and others) who must say from whom we had our being, and
with it life and the powers of life. ]
[Footnote 54: TRANSLATION. "Hence it is clear, from what cause many
reject the notion of the continuous and the infinite. They take, namely,
the words irrepresentable and impossible in one and the same meaning;
and, according to the forms of sensuous evidence, the notion of the
continuous and the infinite is doubtless impossible. I am not now
pleading the cause of these laws, which not a few schools have thought
proper to explode, especially the former (the law of continuity). But it
is of the highest importance to admonish the reader, that those, who
adopt so perverted a mode of reasoning, are under a grievous error.
Whatever opposes the formal principles of the understanding and the
reason is confessedly impossible; but not therefore that, which is
therefore not amenable to the forms of sensuous evidence, because it is
exclusively an object of pure intellect. For this non-coincidence of the
sensuous and the intellectual (the nature of which I shall presently lay
open) proves nothing more, but that the mind cannot always adequately
represent to the concrete, and transform into distinct images, abstract
notions derived from the pure intellect. But this contradiction, which
is in itself merely subjective (i. e. an incapacity in the nature of
man), too often passes for an incongruity or impossibility in the object
(i. e. the notions themselves), and seduces the incautious to mistake the
limitations of the human faculties for the limits of things, as they
really exist. "
I take this occasion to observe, that here and elsewhere Kant uses the
term intuition, and the verb active (intueri Germanice anschauen) for
which we have unfortunately no correspondent word, exclusively for that
which can be represented in space and time. He therefore consistently
and rightly denies the possibility of intellectual intuitions. But as
I see no adequate reason for this exclusive sense of the term, I have
reverted to its wider signification, authorized by our elder theologians
and metaphysicians, according to whom the term comprehends all truths
known to us without a medium.
From Kant's Treatise De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et
principiis. 1770. ]
[Footnote 55: Franc. Baconis de Verulam, NOVUM ORGANUM. ]
[Footnote 56: This phrase, a priori, is in common, most grossly misunderstood,
and as absurdity burdened on it, which it does not deserve. By knowledge
a priori, we do not mean, that we can know anything previously to
experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but that having
once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting
upon us from without) we then know, that it must have existed, or the
experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only now,
that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had
eyes in order to the experience. ]
[Footnote 57: Jer. Taylor's Via Pacis. ]
[Footnote 58: Par. Lost. Book V. I. 469. ]
[Footnote 59: Leibnitz. Op. T. II. P. II. p. 53. --T. III. p. 321. ]
[Footnote 60: Synesii Episcop. Hymn. III. I. 231]
[Footnote 61: 'Anaer morionous, a phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk,
who applies it to a Patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that
I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed, it: for it seems to belong to
Shakespeare, de jure singulari, et ex privilegio naturae. ]
[Footnote 62: First published in 1803. ]
[Footnote 63: These thoughts were suggested to me during the perusal of the
Madrigals of Giovambatista Strozzi published in Florence in May, 1593,
by his sons Lorenzo and Filippo Strozzi, with a dedication to their
paternal uncle, Signor Leone Strozzi, Generale delle battaglie di Santa
Chiesa. As I do not remember to have seen either the poems or their
author mentioned in any English work, or to have found them in any of
the common collections of Italian poetry; and as the little work is of
rare occurrence; I will transcribe a few specimens. I have seldom
met with compositions that possessed, to my feelings, more of that
satisfying entireness, that complete adequateness of the manner to the
matter which so charms us in Anacreon, joined with the tenderness,
and more than the delicacy of Catullus. Trifles as they are, they were
probably elaborated with great care; yet to the perusal we refer them
to a spontaneous energy rather than to voluntary effort. To a cultivated
taste there is a delight in perfection for its own sake, independently
of the material in which it is manifested, that none but a cultivated
taste can understand or appreciate.
After what I have advanced, it would appear presumption to offer a
translation; even if the attempt were not discouraged by the different
genius of the English mind and language, which demands a denser body of
thought as the condition of a high polish, than the Italian. I cannot
but deem it likewise an advantage in the Italian tongue, in many other
respects inferior to our own, that the language of poetry is more
distinct from that of prose than with us. From the earlier appearance
and established primacy of the Tuscan poets, concurring with the
number of independent states, and the diversity of written dialects,
the Italians have gained a poetic idiom, as the Greeks before them
had obtained from the same causes with greater and more various
discriminations, for example, the Ionic for their heroic verses; the
Attic for their iambic; and the two modes of the Doric for the lyric or
sacerdotal, and the pastoral, the distinctions of which were doubtless
more obvious to the Greeks themselves than they are to us.
I will venture to add one other observation before I proceed to the
transcription. I am aware that the sentiments which I have avowed
concerning the points of difference between the poetry of the present
age, and that of the period between 1500 and 1650, are the reverse of
the opinion commonly entertained. I was conversing on this subject with
a friend, when the servant, a worthy and sensible woman, coming in, I
placed before her two engravings, the one a pinky-coloured plate of the
day, the other a masterly etching by Salvator Rosa from one of his
own pictures. On pressing her to tell us, which she preferred, after a
little blushing and flutter of feeling, she replied "Why, that, Sir, to
be sure! (pointing to the ware from the Fleet-street print shops);--it's
so neat and elegant. T'other is such a scratchy slovenly thing. " An
artist, whose writings are scarcely less valuable than his pictures, and
to whose authority more deference will be willingly paid, than I
could even wish should be shown to mine, has told us, and from his own
experience too, that good taste must be acquired, and like all other
good things, is the result of thought and the submissive study of the
best models. If it be asked, "But what shall I deem such? "--the answer
is; presume those to be the best, the reputation of which has been
matured into fame by the consent of ages. For wisdom always has a final
majority, if not by conviction, yet by acquiescence. In addition to
Sir J. Reynolds I may mention Harris of Salisbury; who in one of his
philosophical disquisitions has written on the means of acquiring a just
taste with the precision of Aristotle, and the elegance of Quinctilian.
MADRIGALI.
Gelido suo ruscel chiaro, e tranquillo
M'insegno Amor di state a mezzo'l giorno;
Ardean le solve, ardean le piagge, e i colli.
Ond' io, ch' al piu gran gielo ardo e sfavillo,
Subito corsi; ma si puro adorno
Girsene il vidi, che turbar no'l volli:
Sol mi specchiava, e'n dolce ombrosa sponda
Mi stava intento al mormorar dell' onda.
Aure dell' angoscioso viver mio
Refrigerio soave,
E dolce si, che piu non mi par grave
Ne'l ardor, ne'l morir, anz' il desio;
Deh voil ghiaccio, e le nubi, e'l tempo rio
Discacciatene omai, che londa chiara,
E l'ombra non men cara
A scherzare, a cantar per suoi boschetti,
E prati festa et allegrezza alletti.
Pacifiche, ma spesso in amorosa
Guerra co'fiori, e l'erba
Alla stagione acerba
Verdi insegne del giglio e della rosa,
Movete, Aure, pian pian; che tregua o posa,
Se non pace, io ritrove;
E so ben dove:--Oh vago, a mansueto
Sguardo, oh labbra d'ambrosia, oh rider, lieto!
Hor come un scoglio stassi,
Hor come un rio se'n fugge,
Ed hor crud' orsa rugge,
Hor canta angelo pio: ma che non fassi!
E che non fammi, O sassi,
O rivi, o belue, o Dii, questa mia vaga
Non so, se ninfa, o magna,
Non so, se donna, o Dea,
Non so, se dolce o rea?
Piangendo mi baciaste,
E ridendo il negaste:
In doglia hebbivi pin,
In festa hebbivi ria:
Nacque gioia di pianti,
Dolor di riso: O amanti
Miseri, habbiate insieme
Ognor paura e speme.
Bel Fior, tu mi rimembri
La rugiadosa guancia del bet viso;
E si vera l'assembri,
Che'n te sovente, come in lei m'affiso:
Et hor del vago riso,
Hor del serene sguardo
Io pur cieco riguardo. Ma qual fugge,
O Rosa, il mattin lieve!
E chi te, come neve,
E'l mio cor teco, e la mia vita strugge!
Anna mia, Anna dolce, oh sempre nuovo
E piu chiaro concento,
Quanta dolcezza sento
In sol Anna dicendo? Io mi pur pruovo,
Ne qui tra noi ritruovo,
Ne tra cieli armonia,
Che del bel nome suo piu dolce sia:
Altro il Cielo, altro Amore,
Altro non suona l'Ecco del mio core.
Hor che'l prato, e la selva si scoiora,
Al tuo serena ombroso
Muovine, alto Riposo,
Deh ch'io riposi una sol notte, un hora:
Han le fere, e git augelli, ognun talora
Ha qualche pace; io quando,
Lasso! non vonne errando,
E non piango, e non grido? e qual pur forte?
Ma poiche, non sent' egli, odine, Morte.
Risi e piansi d'Amor; ne pero mai
Se non in fiamma, o'n onda, o'n vento scrissi
Spesso msrce trovai
Crudel; sempre in me morto, in altri vissi:
Hor da' piu scuri Abissi al ciel m'aizai,
Hor ne pur caddi giuso;
Stance al fin qui son chiuso.
[Footnote 64: --
"I've measured it from side to side;
'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide. "]
[Footnote 65: --
"Nay, rack your brain--'tis all in vain,
I'll tell you every thing I know;
But to the Thorn, and to the Pond
Which is a little step beyond,
I wish that you would go:
Perhaps, when you are at the place,
You something of her tale may trace.
I'll give you the best help I can
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I'll tell you all I know.
'Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden's true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,
And she was happy, happy still
Whene'er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fixed the wedding-day,
The morning that must wed them both
But Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And, with this other maid, to church
Unthinking Stephen went--
Poor Martha! on that woeful day
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent;
A fire was kindled in her breast,
Which might not burn itself to rest.
They say, full six months after this,
While yet the summer leaves were green,
She to the mountain-top would go,
And there was often seen;
'Tis said a child was in her womb,
As now to any eye was plain;
She was with child, and she was mad;
Yet often she was sober sad
From her exceeding pain.
Oh me! ten thousand times I'd rather
That he had died, that cruel father!
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
Last Christmas when they talked of this,
Old Farmer Simpson did maintain,
That in her womb the infant wrought
About its mother's heart, and brought
Her senses back again:
And, when at last her time drew near,
Her looks were calm, her senses clear.
No more I know, I wish I did,
And I would tell it all to you
For what became of this poor child
There's none that ever knew
And if a child was born or no,
There's no one that could ever tell;
And if 'twas born alive or dead,
There's no one knows, as I have said:
But some remember well,
That Martha Ray about this time
Would up the mountain often climb. "]
[Footnote 66: It is no less an error in teachers, than a torment to the poor
children, to enforce the necessity of reading as they would talk. In
order to cure them of singing as it is called, that is, of too great a
difference, the child is made to repeat the words with his eyes from off
the book; and then, indeed, his tones resemble talking, as far as his
fears, tears and trembling will permit. But as soon as the eye is again
directed to the printed page, the spell begins anew; for an instinctive
sense tells the child's feelings, that to utter its own momentary
thoughts, and to recite the written thoughts of another, as of another,
and a far wiser than himself, are two widely different things; and as
the two acts are accompanied with widely different feelings, so must
they justify different modes of enunciation. Joseph Lancaster, among
his other sophistications of the excellent Dr. Bell's invaluable system,
cures this fault of singing, by hanging fetters and chains on the child,
to the music of which one of his school-fellows, who walks before,
dolefully chants out the child's last speech and confession, birth,
parentage, and education. And this soul-benumbing ignominy, this unholy
and heart-hardening burlesque on the last fearful infliction of outraged
law, in pronouncing the sentence to which the stern and familiarized
judge not seldom bursts into tears, has been extolled as a happy and
ingenious method of remedying--what? and how? --why, one extreme in order
to introduce another, scarce less distant from good sense, and certainly
likely to have worse moral effects, by enforcing a semblance of petulant
ease and self-sufficiency, in repression and possible after-perversion
of the natural feelings. I have to beg Dr. Bell's pardon for this
connection of the two names, but he knows that contrast is no less
powerful a cause of association than likeness. ]
[Footnote 67: Altered from the description of Night-Mair in the REMORSE.
"Oh Heaven! 'twas frightful! Now ran down and stared at
By hideous shapes that cannot be remembered;
Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing;
But only being afraid--stifled with fear!
While every goodly or familiar form
Had a strange power of spreading terror round me! "
N. B. --Though Shakespeare has, for his own all justifying purposes,
introduced the Night-Mare with her own foals, yet Mair means a Sister,
or perhaps a Hag. ]
[Footnote 68: But still more by the mechanical system of philosophy which
has needlessly infected our theological opinions, and teaching us to
consider the world in its relation to god, as of a building to its
mason, leaves the idea of omnipresence a mere abstract notion in the
stateroom of our reason. ]
[Footnote 69: As the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the Tragic Muse
contrived to dislocate, "I wish you a good morning, Sir! Thank you, Sir,
and I wish you the same," into two blank-verse heroics:--
To you a morning good, good Sir! I wish.
You, Sir! I thank: to you the same wish I.
In those parts of Mr. Wordsworth's works which I have thoroughly
studied, I find fewer instances in which this would be practicable
than I have met to many poems, where an approximation of prose has been
sedulously and on system guarded against. Indeed excepting the stanzas
already quoted from THE SAILOR'S MOTHER, I can recollect but one
instance: that is to say, a short passage of four or five lines in THE
BROTHERS, that model of English pastoral, which I never yet read with
unclouded eye. --"James, pointing to its summit, over which they had all
purposed to return together, informed them that he would wait for them
there. They parted, and his comrades passed that way some two hours
after, but they did not find him at the appointed place, _a circumstance
of which they took no heed:_ but one of them, going by chance into the
house, which at this time was James's house, learnt _there,_ that nobody
had seen him all that day. " The only change which has been made is in
the position of the little word there in two instances, the position
in the original being clearly such as is not adopted in ordinary
conversation. The other words printed in italics were so marked because,
though good and genuine English, they are not the phraseology of common
conversation either in the word put in apposition, or in the connection
by the genitive pronoun. Men in general would have said, "but that was
a circumstance they paid no attention to, or took no notice of;" and
the language is, on the theory of the preface, justified only by the
narrator's being the Vicar. Yet if any ear could suspect, that these
sentences were ever printed as metre, on those very words alone could
the suspicion have been grounded. ]
[Footnote 70: I had in my mind the striking but untranslatable epithet, which
the celebrated Mendelssohn applied to the great founder of the Critical
Philosophy "Der alleszermalmende KANT," that is, the all-becrushing,
or rather the all-to-nothing-crushing Kant. In the facility and force
of compound epithets, the German from the number of its cases and
inflections approaches to the Greek, that language so
"Bless'd in the happy marriage of sweet words. "
It is in the woful harshness of its sounds alone that the German need
shrink from the comparison. ]
[Footnote 71: Sammlung einiger Abhandlungen von Christian Garve. ]
[Footnote 72: Sonnet IX. ]
[Footnote 73: Mr. Wordsworth's having judiciously adopted "concourse wild" in
this passage for "a wild scene" as it stood to the former edition,
encourages me to hazard a remark, which I certainly should not have made
in the works of a poet less austerely accurate in the use of words, than
he is, to his own great honour. It respects the propriety of the word,
"scene," even in the sentence in which it is retained. Dryden, and he
only in his more careless verses, was the first, as far as my researches
have discovered, who for the convenience of rhyme used this word in the
vague sense, which has been since too current even in our best writers,
and which (unfortunately, I think) is given as its first explanation in
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary and therefore would be taken by an incautious
reader as its proper sense. In Shakespeare and Milton the word is
never used without some clear reference, proper or metaphorical, to the
theatre. Thus Milton:
"Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. "
I object to any extension of its meaning, because the word is already
more equivocal than might be wished; inasmuch as to the limited use,
which I recommend, it may still signify two different things; namely,
the scenery, and the characters and actions presented on the stage
during the presence of particular scenes. It can therefore be preserved
from obscurity only by keeping the original signification full in the
mind. Thus Milton again,
------"Prepare thee for another scene. "]
[Footnote 74: --
Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,
Upon her verge that stands, the neighbouring vallies fill;
Helvillon from his height, it through the mountains threw,
From whom as soon again, the sound Dunbalrase drew,
From whose stone-trophied head, it on the Windross went,
Which tow'rds the sea again, resounded it to Dent.
That Brodwater, therewith within her banks astound,
In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound,
Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long,
Did mightily commend old Copland for her song.
Drayton's POLYOLBION: Song XXX. ]
[Footnote 75: Translation. It behoves me to side with my friends, but only as far
as the gods. ]
[Footnote 76: "Slender. I bruised my shin with playing with sword and dagger for
a dish of stewed prunes, and by my troth I cannot abide the smell of hot
meat since. "--So again, Evans. "I will make an end of my dinner: there's
pippins and cheese to come. "]
[Footnote 77: This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman at
Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bed-fellow. Among other
boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a particular value
on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always slept with it under
his pillow. ]
[Footnote 78: Klopstock's observation was partly true and partly erroneous. In
the literal sense of his words, and, if we confine the comparison to the
average of space required for the expression of the same thought in the
two languages, it is erroneous. I have translated some German hexameters
into English hexameter; and find, that on the average three English
lines will express four lines German. The reason is evident: our
language abounds in monosyllables and dissyllables.
The German, not less
than the Greek, is a polysyllable language. But in another point of view
the remark was not without foundation. For the German possessing the
same unlimited privilege of forming compounds, both with prepositions
and with epithets, as the Greek, it can express the richest single Greek
word in a single German one, and is thus freed from the necessity
of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content myself with one at
present, viz. the use of the prefixed participles ver, zer, ent, and
weg: thus reissen to rend, verreissen to rend away, zerreissen to rend
to pieces, entreissen to rend off or out of a thing, in the active
sense: or schmelzen to melt--ver, zer, ent, schmelzen--and in like
manner through all the verbs neuter and active. If you consider only
how much we should feel the loss of the prefix be, as in bedropt,
besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language, and then think
that this same mode of composition is carved through all their simple
and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most
of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have of dividing them
from the verb and placing them at the end of the sentence; you will
have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and the cause of this
superior power in the German of condensing meaning, in which its great
poet exulted. It is impossible to read half a dozen pages of Wieland
without perceiving that in this respect the German has no rival but the
Greek. And yet I feel, that concentration or condensation is not the
happiest mode of expressing this excellence, which seems to consist not
so much in the less time required for conveying an impression, as in
the unity and simultaneousness with which the impression is conveyed.
It tends to make their language more picturesque: it depictures images
better. We have obtained this power in part by our compound verbs
derived from the Latin: and the sense of its great effect no doubt
induced our Milton both to the use and the abuse of Latin derivatives.
But still these prefixed particles, conveying no separate or separable
meaning to the mere English reader, cannot possibly act on the mind with
the force or liveliness of an original and homogeneous language such as
the German is, and besides are confined to certain words. ]
[Footnote 79: Praecludere calumniam, in the original. ]
[Footnote 80: Better thus: Forma specifica per formam individualem translucens:
or better yet--Species individualisata, sive Individuum cuilibet Speciei
determinatae in omni parte correspondens et quasi versione quadam eam
interpretans et repetens. ]
[Footnote 81: --
------"The big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase,"
says Shakespeare of a wounded stag hanging its head over a stream:
naturally, from the position of the head, and most beautifully, from
the association of the preceding image, of the chase, in which "the
poor sequester'd stag from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt. " In the
supposed position of Bertram, the metaphor, if not false, loses all the
propriety of the original. ]
[Footnote 82: Among a number of other instances of words chosen without reason,
Imogine in the first act declares, that thunder-storms were not able
to intercept her prayers for "the desperate man, in desperate ways who
dealt"----
"Yea, when the launched bolt did sear her sense,
Her soul's deep orisons were breathed for him;"
that is, when a red-hot bolt, launched at her from a thunder-cloud, had
cauterized her sense, to plain English, burnt her eyes out of her head,
she kept still praying on.
"Was not this love? Yea, thus doth woman love! "]
[Footnote 83: This sort of repetition is one of this writers peculiarities, and
there is scarce a page which does not furnish one or more instances--Ex.
gr. in the first page or two. Act I, line 7th, "and deemed that I might
sleep. "--Line 10, "Did rock and quiver in the bickering glare. "--Lines
14, 15, 16, "But by the momently gleams of sheeted blue, Did the pale
marbles dare so sternly on me, I almost deemed they lived. "--Line
37, "The glare of Hell. "--Line 35, "O holy Prior, this is no earthly
storm. "--Line 38, "This is no earthly storm. "--Line 42, "Dealing
with us. "--Line 43, "Deal thus sternly:"--Line 44, "Speak! thou hast
something seen? "--"A fearful sight! "--Line 45, "What hast thou seen! A
piteous, fearful sight. "--Line 48, "quivering gleams. "--Line 50, "In the
hollow pauses of the storm. "--Line 61, "The pauses of the storm, etc. "]
[Footnote 84: The child is an important personage, for I see not by what possible
means the author could have ended the second and third acts but for its
timely appearance. How ungrateful then not further to notice its fate! ]
[Footnote 85: Classically too, as far as consists with the allegorizing fancy
of the modern, that still striving to project the inward,
contradistinguishes itself from the seeming ease with which the poetry
of the ancients reflects the world without. Casimir affords, perhaps,
the most striking instance of this characteristic difference. --For his
style and diction are really classical: while Cowley, who resembles
Casimir in many respects, completely barbarizes his Latinity, and even
his metre, by the heterogeneous nature of his thoughts. That Dr. Johnson
should have passed a contrary judgment, and have even preferred Cowley's
Latin Poems to Milton's, is a caprice that has, if I mistake not,
excited the surprise of all scholars. I was much amused last summer with
the laughable affright, with which an Italian poet perused a page of
Cowley's Davideis, contrasted with the enthusiasm with which he first
ran through, and then read aloud, Milton's Mansus and Ad Patrem. ]
[Footnote 86: Flectit, or if the metre had allowed, premit would have supported
the metaphor better. ]
[Footnote 87: Poor unlucky Metaphysicks! and what are they? A single sentence
expresses the object and thereby the contents of this science. Gnothi
seauton:
Nosce te ipsum,
Tuque Deum, quantum licet, inque Deo omnia noscas. ]
Know thyself: and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to
a creature, and in God all things. --Surely, there is a strange--nay,
rather too natural--aversion to many to know themselves.
