Part 22 (1/2)

They said, 'Poor Constance!'

-- 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to the strength of his pa.s.sion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom of a.s.syria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices. 'Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, ”Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.”' So, still more, the thought of the presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment.

'The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.'

-- 15. But by how much this feeling is n.o.ble when it is justified by the strength of its cause, by so much it is ign.o.ble when there is not cause enough for it; and beyond all other ign.o.bleness is the mere affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful metaphorical expressions, as a sort of current coin; yet there is even a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of writing than this, in which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead leaves, or white-hot, with h.o.a.r-frost.

When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim:

Where shall I find him? angels, tell me where.

You know him; he is near you; point him out.

Shall I see glories beaming from his brow, Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?

This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl:

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above.

But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call, And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall.

This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language of pa.s.sion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly a.s.serted in the teeth of nature and fact. Pa.s.sion will indeed go far in deceiving itself; but it must be a strong pa.s.sion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel pa.s.sage in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress:

Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid, When thus his moan he made:--

'Oh move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky.

If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, Headlong, the waterfall must come, Oh, let it, then, be dumb-- Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'

Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a waterfall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening: but with what different relation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,--that nature is kind, and G.o.d is kind, and that grief is strong: it knows not well what _is_ possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall,--one might think it could do as much as that!

-- 16. I believe these instances are enough to ill.u.s.trate the main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,--that so far as it _is_ a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it springs; always, however, implying necessarily _some_ degree of weakness in the character.

Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, says:

If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, 'Hope not to find delight in us,' they say, 'For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure.'

Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:

'Ah, why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself, 'Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, And nature, that is kind in woman's breast, And reason, that in man is wise and good, And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,-- Why do not these prevail for human life, To keep two hearts together, that began Their springtime with one love, and that have need Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet To grant, or be received; while that poor bird-- O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature, One of G.o.d's simple children, that yet know not The Universal Parent, _how_ he sings!

As if he wished the firmament of heaven Should listen, and give back to him the voice Of his triumphant constancy and love.

The proclamation that he makes, how far His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.'

The perfection of both these pa.s.sages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable. But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her. G.o.d meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly.

Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion.

There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought.

'As if,' she says,--'I know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if.' The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear though pa.s.sionate strength.[34]

[34] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in _Maud_:

For a great speculation had fail'd; And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove, thro'

the air_.