Part 3 (2/2)
Book I, Can. 5, St. 2.
On the contrary to how many pa.s.sages, both in hymn books and in blank verse poems, could I (were it not invidious) direct the reader's attention, the style of which is most unpoetic, because, and only because, it is the style of prose? He will not suppose me capable of having in my mind such verses, as
I put my hat upon my head And walk'd into the Strand; And there I met another man, Whose hat was in his hand.
To such specimens it would indeed be a fair and full reply, that these lines are not bad, because they are unpoetic; but because they are empty of all sense and feeling; and that it were an idle attempt to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is evident that he is not a man. But the sense shall be good and weighty, the language correct and dignified, the subject interesting and treated with feeling; and yet the style shall, notwithstanding all these merits, be justly blamable as prosaic, and solely because the words and the order of the words would find their appropriate place in prose, but are not suitable to metrical composition. The _Civil Wars_ of Daniel is an instructive, and even interesting work; but take the following stanzas (and from the hundred instances which abound I might probably have selected others far more striking):
And to the end we may with better ease Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to show What were the times foregoing near to these, That these we may with better profit know.
Tell how the world fell into this disease; And how so great distemperature did grow; So shall we see with what degrees it came; How things at full do soon wax out of frame.
Ten kings had from the Norman conqu'ror reign'd With intermixt and variable fate, When England to her greatest height attain'd Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state; After it had with much ado sustain'd The violence of princes, with debate For t.i.tles and the often mutinies Of n.o.bles for their ancient liberties.
For first, the Norman, conqu'ring all by might, By might was forc'd to keep what he had got; Mixing our customs and the form of right With foreign const.i.tutions he had brought; Mast'ring the mighty, humbling the poorer wight, By all severest means that could be wrought; And, making the succession doubtful, rent His new-got state, and left it turbulent.
Book I, St. vii, viii, and ix.
Will it be contended on the one side, that these lines are mean and senseless? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that reason unpoetic? This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the '_well-languaged Daniel_'; but likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries no less than of all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those, who thus designate this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction to his metre in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that there are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his _Epistles_ and in his _Hymen's Triumph_, many and exquisite specimens of that style which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both. A fine and almost faultless extract, eminent, as for other beauties, so for its perfection in these species of diction, may be seen in Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_, &c., a work of various interest from the nature of the selections themselves, (all from the plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries), and deriving a high additional value from the notes, which are full of just and original criticism, expressed with all the freshness of originality.
Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory that aims to identify the style of prose and verse,--(if it does not indeed claim for the latter a yet nearer resemblance to the average style of men in the viva voce intercourse of real life)--we might antic.i.p.ate the following as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I have indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole acknowledged difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye only. The existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the merit of a poem, must at length be conceded, when a number of successive lines can be rendered, even to the most delicate ear, unrecognizable as verse, or as having even been intended for verse, by simply transcribing them as prose; when if the poem be in blank verse, this can be effected without any alteration, or at most by merely restoring one or two words to their proper places, from which they have been transplanted[5] for no a.s.signable cause or reason but that of the author's convenience; but if it be in rhyme, by the mere exchange of the final word of each line for some other of the same meaning, equally appropriate, dignified and euphonic.
[5] 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 good morning, 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 in 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: viz. a short pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed that way some two hours after, but they did not find him at the appointed place, _a circ.u.mstance 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 n.o.body 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 connexion by the genitive p.r.o.noun. Men in general would have said, 'but that was a circ.u.mstance 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.
The answer or objection in the preface to the antic.i.p.ated remark 'that metre paves the way to other distinctions', is contained in the following words. 'The distinction of rhyme and metre is voluntary and uniform, and not, like that produced by (what is called) poetic diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon which no calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the pa.s.sion.' But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it not his own fault? The ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pa.s.s judgement on what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two could be separated. But if it be asked, by what principles the poet is to regulate his own style, if he do not adhere closely to the sort and order of words which he hears in the market, wake, high-road, or plough-field? I reply; by principles, the ignorance or neglect of which would convict him of being no poet, but a silly or presumptuous usurper of the name! By the principles of grammar, logic, psychology! In one word, by such a knowledge of the facts, material and spiritual, that most appertain to his art, as, if it have been governed and applied by good sense, and rendered instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and reward of our past conscious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and acquires the name of TASTE. By what rule that does not leave the reader at the poet's mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter to distinguish between the language suitable to suppressed, and the language, which is characteristic of indulged, anger? Or between that of rage and that of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search of angry or jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy their words?
Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding upon the all in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by observation?
And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As eyes, for which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and to which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? There is not, I firmly believe, a man now living, who has, from his own inward experience, a clearer intuition than Mr. Wordsworth himself, that the last mentioned are the true sources of genial discrimination. Through the same process and by the same creative agency will the poet distinguish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, what differences of style it at once inspires and justifies; what intermixture of conscious volition is natural to that state; and in what instances such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere creatures of an arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of ornament or connexion. For, even as truth is its own light and evidence, discovering at once itself and falsehood, so is it the prerogative of poetic genius to distinguish by parental instinct its proper offspring from the changelings, which the gnomes of vanity or the fairies of fas.h.i.+on may have laid in its cradle or called by its names. Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be ??f?s??, not p???s??. The rules of the IMAGINATION are themselves the very powers of growth and production. The words to which they are reducible, present only the outlines and external appearance of the fruit. A deceptive counterfeit of the superficial form and colours may be elaborated; but the marble peach feels cold and heavy, and children only put it to their mouths. We find no difficulty in admitting as excellent, and the legitimate language of poetic fervour self-impa.s.sioned, Donne's apostrophe to the Sun in the second stanza of his _Progress of the Soul_.
Thee, eye of heaven! this great soul envies not; By thy male force is all, we have, begot.
In the first East thou now beginn'st to s.h.i.+ne, Suck'st early balm and island spices there, And wilt anon in thy loose-rein'd career At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine, And see at night this western world of mine: Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she, Who before thee one day began to be, And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive thee!
Or the next stanza but one:
Great destiny, the commissary of G.o.d, That hast mark'd out a path and period For ev'ry thing! Who, where we offspring took, Our way and ends see'st at one instant: thou Knot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless brow Ne'er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look, And show my story in thy eternal book, &c.
As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudo-poesy, or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms. Such are the Odes to Jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in Dodsley's collection and the magazines of that day, which seldom fail to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two Suttons, commencing with
INOCULATION, heavenly maid! descend!
It is not to be denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory period of Cowley's preface to his _Pindaric Odes, written in imitation of the style and manner of the odes of Pindar_. 'If (says Cowley) a man should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another: as may appear, when he, that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving.' I then proceeded with his own free version of the second Olympic, composed for the charitable purpose of rationalizing the Theban Eagle.
Queen of all harmonious things, Dancing words and speaking strings, What G.o.d, what hero, wilt thou sing?
What happy man to equal glories bring?
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