Volume Ii Part 40 (2/2)

We quote to save proving what has been demonstrated, referring to where the proofs may be found. We quote to screen ourselves from the odium of doubtful opinions, which the world would not willingly accept from ourselves; and we may quote from the curiosity which only a quotation itself can give, when in our own words it would be divested of that tint of ancient phrase, that detail of narrative, and that _navete_ which we have for ever lost, and which we like to recollect once had an existence.

The ancients, who in these matters were not, perhaps, such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory. Cicero, even in his philosophical works, is as little sparing of quotations as Plutarch. Old Montaigne is so stuffed with them, that he owns, if they were taken out of him little of himself would remain; and yet this never injured that original turn which the old Gascon has given to his thoughts. I suspect that Addison hardly ever composed a Spectator which was not founded on some quotation, noted in those three folio ma.n.u.script volumes which he previously collected; and Addison lasts, while Steele, who always wrote from first impressions and to the times, with perhaps no inferior genius, has pa.s.sed away, insomuch that Dr. Beattie once considered that he was obliging the world by collecting Addison's papers, and carefully omitting Steele's.

Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause. ”Retournons a nos moutons,” was the cry of the client. But these vagrant prowlers must be consigned to the beadles of criticism. Such do not always understand the authors whose names adorn their barren pages, and which are taken, too, from the third or the thirtieth hand. Those who trust to such false quoters will often learn how contrary this transmission is to the sense and the application of the original. Every transplantation has altered the fruit of the tree; every new channel the quality of the stream in its remove from the spring-head. Bayle, when writing on ”Comets,” discovered this; for having collected many things applicable to his work, as they stood quoted in some modern writers, when he came to compare them with their originals, he was surprised to find that they were nothing for his purpose! the originals conveyed a quite contrary sense to that of the pretended quoters, who often, from innocent blundering, and sometimes from purposed deception, had falsified their quotations. This is an useful story for second-hand authorities!

Selden had formed some notions on this subject of quotations in his ”Table-talk,” art. ”_Books and Authors_;” but, as Le Clerc justly observes, proud of his immense reading, he has too often violated his own precept. ”In quoting of books,” says Selden, ”quote such authors as are usually read; others read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.” Now it happens that no writer names more authors, except Prynne,[279] than the learned Selden. La Mothe le Vayer's curious works consist of fifteen volumes; he is among the greatest quoters. Whoever turns them over will perceive that he is an original thinker, and a great wit; his style, indeed, is meagre, which, as much as his quotations, may have proved fatal to him. But in both these cases it is evident that even quoters who have abused the privilege of quotation are not necessarily writers of a mean genius.

The Quoters who deserve the t.i.tle, and it ought to be an honorary one, are those who trust to no one but themselves. In borrowing a pa.s.sage, they carefully observe its connexion; they collect authorities to reconcile any disparity in them before they furnish the one which they adopt; they advance no fact without a witness, and they are not loose and general in their references, as I have been told is our historian Henry so frequently, that it is suspected he deals much in second-hand ware. Bayle lets us into a mystery of author-craft. ”Suppose an able man is to prove that an ancient author entertained certain particular opinions, which are only insinuated here and there through his works, I am sure it will take him up more days to collect the pa.s.sages which he will have occasion for, than to _argue at random_ on those pa.s.sages.

Having once found out his authorities and his quotations, which perhaps will not fill six pages, and may have cost him a month's labour, he may finish in two mornings' work twenty pages of arguments, objections, and answers to objections; and consequently, _what proceeds from our own genius sometimes costs much less time than what is requisite for collecting_. Corneille would have required more time to defend a tragedy by a great collection of authorities, than to write it; and I am supposing the same number of pages in the tragedy and in the defence.

Heinsius perhaps bestowed more time in defending his _Herodes infanticida_ against Balzac, than a Spanish (or a Scotch) metaphysician bestows on a large volume of controversy, where he takes all from his own stock.” I am somewhat concerned in the truth of this principle.

There are articles in the present work occupying but a few pages, which could never have been produced had not more time been allotted to the researches which they contain than some would allow to a small volume, which might excel in genius, and yet be likely not to be long remembered! All this is labour which never meets the eye. It is quicker work, with special pleading and poignant periods, to fill sheets with generalising principles; those bird's-eye views of philosophy for the _nonce_ seem as if things were seen clearer when at a distance and _en ma.s.se_, and require little knowledge of the individual parts. Such _an art of writing_ may resemble the famous Lullian method, by which the _doctor illuminatus_ enabled any one to invent arguments by a machine!

Two tables, one of _attributes_, and the other of _subjects_, worked about circularly in a frame, and placed correlatively to one another produced certain combinations; the number of _questions_ multiplied as they were worked! So that here was a mechanical invention by which they might dispute without end, and write on without any particular knowledge of their subject!

But the painstaking gentry, when heaven sends them genius enough, are the most instructive sort, and they are those to whom we shall appeal while time and truth can meet together. A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men;[280] he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of those agreeable books, the _deliciae_ of literature, that will outlast the fading meteors of his day. Epicurus is said to have borrowed from no writer in his three hundred inspired volumes, while Plutarch, Seneca, and the elder Pliny made such free use of their libraries; and it has happened that Epicurus, with his unsubstantial nothingness, has ”melted into thin air,” while the solid treasures have buoyed themselves up amidst the wrecks of nations.

On this subject of quotation, literary politics,--for the commonwealth has its policy and its cabinet-secrets,--are more concerned than the reader suspects. Authorities in matters of fact are often called for; in matters of opinion, indeed, which perhaps are of more importance, no one requires any authority. But too open and generous a revelation of the chapter and the page of the original quoted has often proved detrimental to the legitimate honours of the quoter. They are unfairly appropriated by the next comer; the quoter is never quoted, but the authority he has afforded is produced by his successor with the air of an original research. I have seen MSS. thus confidently referred to, which could never have met the eye of the writer. A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, grat.i.tude is not a silent virtue. Gilbert Stuart thus lived on Robertson: and as Professor Dugald Stewart observes, ”his curiosity has seldom led him into any path where the genius and industry of his predecessor had not previously cleared the way.” It is for this reason some authors, who do not care to trust to the equity and grat.i.tude of their successors, will not furnish the means of supplanting themselves; for, by not yielding up their authorities, they themselves become one. Some authors, who are pleased at seeing their names occur in the margins of other books than their own, have practised this political management; such as Alexander ab Alexandro, and other compilers of that stamp, to whose labours of small value we are often obliged to refer, from the circ.u.mstance that they themselves have not pointed out their authorities.

One word more on this long chapter of QUOTATION. To make a happy one is a thing not easily to be done.[281] Cardinal du Perron used to say, that the happy application of a verse from Virgil was worth a talent; and Bayle, perhaps too much prepossessed in their favour, has insinuated, that there is not less invention in a just and happy application of a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.

Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority. Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonise. Perhaps no writers of our times have discovered more of this delicacy of quotation than the author of the ”Pursuits of Literature;” and Mr. Southey, in some of his beautiful periodical investigations, where we have often acknowledged the solemn and striking effect of a quotation from our elder writers.

THE ORIGIN OF DANTE'S INFERNO.

Nearly six centuries have elapsed since the appearance of the great work of Dante, and the literary historians of Italy are even now disputing respecting the origin of this poem, singular in its nature and in its excellence. In ascertaining a point so long inquired after, and so keenly disputed, it will rather increase our admiration than detract from the genius of this great poet; and it will ill.u.s.trate the useful principle, that every great genius is influenced by the objects and the feelings which occupy his own times, only differing from the race of his brothers by the magical force of his developments: the light he sends forth over the world he often catches from the faint and un.o.bserved spark which would die away and turn to nothing in another hand.

The _Divina Commedia_ of Dante is a visionary journey through the three realms of the after-life existence; and though, in the cla.s.sical ardour of our poetical pilgrim, he allows his conductor to be a Pagan, the scenes are those of monkish imagination. The invention of a VISION was the usual vehicle for religious instruction in his age; it was adapted to the genius of the sleeping Homer of a monastery, and to the comprehension, and even to the faith of the populace, whose minds were then awake to these awful themes.

The mode of writing visions has been imperfectly detected by several modern inquirers. It got into the Fabliaux of the Jongleurs, or Provencal bards, before the days of Dante; they had these visions or pilgrimages to h.e.l.l; the adventures were no doubt solemn to them--but it seemed absurd to attribute the origin of a sublime poem to such inferior, and to us even ludicrous, inventions. Every one, therefore, found out some other origin of Dante's Inferno--since they were resolved to have one--in other works more congenial to its nature; the description of a second life, the melancholy or the glorified scenes of punishment or bliss, with the animated shades of men who were no more, had been opened to the Italian bard by his favourite Virgil, and might have been suggested, according to Warton, by the _Somnium Scipionis_ of Cicero.

But the entire work of Dante is Gothic; it is a picture of his times, of his own ideas, of the people about him; nothing of cla.s.sical antiquity resembles it; and although the name of Virgil is introduced into a Christian Hades, it is a.s.suredly not the Roman, for Dante's Virgil speaks and acts as the Latin poet could never have done. It is one of the absurdities of Dante, who, like our Shakspeare, or like Gothic architecture itself, has many things which ”lead to nothing” amidst their ma.s.sive greatness.

Had the Italian and the French commentators who have troubled themselves on this occasion known the art which we have happily practised in this country, of ill.u.s.trating a great national bard by endeavouring to recover the contemporary writings and circ.u.mstances which were connected with his studies and his times, they had long ere this discovered the real framework of the Inferno.

Within the last twenty years it had been rumoured that Dante had borrowed or stolen his _Inferno_ from ”The Vision of Alberico,” which was written two centuries before his time. The literary antiquary, Bottari, had discovered a ma.n.u.script of this Vision of Alberico, and, in haste, made extracts of a startling nature. They were well adapted to inflame the curiosity of those who are eager after anything new about something old; it throws an air of erudition over the small talker, who otherwise would care little about the original! This was not the first time that the whole edifice of genius had been threatened by the motion of a remote earthquake; but in these cases it usually happens that those early discoverers who can judge of a little part, are in total blindness when they would decide on a whole. A poisonous mildew seemed to have settled on the laurels of Dante; nor were we relieved from our constant inquiries, till il Sigr. Abbate Cancellieri at Rome published, in 1814, this much talked-of ma.n.u.script, and has now enabled us to see and to decide, and even to add the present little article as an useful supplement.

True it is that Dante must have read with equal attention and delight this authentic _vision_ of Alberico; for it is given, so we are a.s.sured by the whole monastery, as it happened to their ancient brother when a boy; many a striking, and many a positive resemblance in the ”Divina Commedia” has been pointed out; and Mr. Gary, in his English version of Dante, so English, that he makes Dante speak in blank verse very much like Dante in stanzas, has observed, that ”The reader will, in these marked resemblances, see enough to convince him that Dante _had read this singular work_.” The truth is, that the ”Vision of Alberico” must not be considered as a _singular_ work--but, on the contrary, as the prevalent mode of composition in the monastic ages. It has been ascertained that Alberico was written in the twelfth century, judging of the age of a ma.n.u.script by the writing. I shall now preserve a vision which a French antiquary had long ago given, merely with the design to show how the monks abused the simplicity of our Gothic ancestors, and with an utter want of taste for such inventions, he deems the present one to be ”monstrous.” He has not told us the age in which it was written. This vision, however, exhibits such complete scenes of the _Inferno_ of the great poet, that the writer must have read Dante, or Dante must have read this writer. The ma.n.u.script, with another of the same kind, is in the King's library at Paris, and some future researcher may ascertain the age of these Gothic compositions; doubtless they will be found to belong to the age of Alberico, for they are alike stamped by the same dark and awful imagination, the same depth of feeling, the solitary genius of the monastery!

It may, however, be necessary to observe, that these ”Visions” were merely a vehicle for popular instruction; nor must we depend on the age of their composition by the names of the supposit.i.tious visionaries affixed to them: they were the satires of the times. The following elaborate views of some scenes in the _Inferno_ were composed by an honest monk who was dissatisfied with the bishops, and took this covert means of pointing out how the neglect of their episcopal duties was punished in the after-life; he had an equal quarrel with the feudal n.o.bility for their oppressions: and he even boldly ascended to the throne.

”The Vision of Charles the Bald, of the places of punishment, and the happiness of the Just.[282]

”I, Charles, by the gratuitous gift of G.o.d, king of the Germans, Roman patrician, and likewise emperor of the Franks;

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