Part 63 (2/2)

--'Tis but the living who are dumb.'

Resurrection, this, you see like Burger's; but not of death unto death.

'Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the _whole_ heart of Byron was in this pa.s.sage. First its compa.s.sion, then its indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world in which the three--unholy--children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over c.u.mnock Hills,--for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar _with Ida_, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.

Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:--

'And silence aids--though the steep hills Send to the lake a thousand rills; In summer tide, so soft they weep, The sound but lulls the ear asleep; Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude, So stilly is the solitude.

Naught living meets the eye or ear, But well I ween the dead are near; For though, in feudal strife, a foe Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low, Yet still beneath the hallowed soil, The peasant rests him from his toil, And, dying, bids his bones be laid Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'

And last take the same note of sorrow--with Burns's finger on the fall of it:

'Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens, Ye hazly shaws and briery dens, Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens Wi' toddlin' din, Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stens Frae lin to lin.'

As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their pa.s.sion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that of 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? Is it more profane, think you--or more tender--nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?

For instance, when we are told that

'Wharfe, as he moved along, To matins joined a mournful voice,'

is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by no means rhythmically dulcet,) that

'The boy is in the arms of Wharfe, And strangled by a merciless force'?

Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,

'How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more Then 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline, From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!'

--is the divinity of the extract a.s.sured to us by its being made at leisure, and in a reclining att.i.tude--as compared with the meditations of otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and Humanity,--poetical extraction, and moral position?

On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words more of the school of Belial?

Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some very wicked people--mutineers, in fact--have retired, misanthropically, into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves safe, indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to drink:

'A little stream came tumbling from the height And straggling into ocean as it might.

Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray, Close on the wild wide ocean,--yet as pure And fresh as Innocence; and more secure.

Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep, While, far below, the vast and sullen swell Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.'[189]

Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to a.s.sure the reader that here _is_ entirely first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpa.s.sably good, the closing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by the race of the sea-kings.

But Lucifer himself _could_ not have written it; neither any servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,--or check,--his poetical pa.s.sion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, _know_ good 'style' when you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad?

I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in the s.p.a.ce of a couple of pages.

I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, _i.

e._ kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger, the second of love.

(1) 'We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us, His present, and your pains, we thank you for.

When we have match'd our rackets to these b.a.l.l.s, We will in France, by G.o.d's grace, play a set, Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.'

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