Part 19 (1/2)
To Wordsworth in the progression of spirit, once Simonides, or Empedocles, or both in one--
”Oh! that my spirit, purged by death of its weaknesses, which are, alas!
my ident.i.ty, might flow into thine, and live and act in thee and be thine!”
Death, first of all, eats of the Tree of Life and becomes immortal.
Describe the frightful metamorphosis. He weds the Hamadryad of the Tree [and begets a twy-form] progeny. This in the manner of Dante.
Sad drooping children of a wretched parent are those yellowing leaflets of a broken twig, broke ere its June.
We are not inert in the grave. St. Paul's corn in the ground proves this scripturally, and the growth of infants in their sleep by natural a.n.a.logy. What, then, if our spiritual growth be in proportion to the length and depth of the sleep! With what mysterious grandeur does not this thought invest the grave, and how poor compared with this an immediate Paradise!
I awake and find my beloved asleep, gaze upon her by the taper that feebly illumines the darkness, then fall asleep by her side; and we both awake together for _good_ and _all_ in the broad daylight of heaven.
Forget not to impress as often and as manifoldly as possible the _totus in omni parte_ of Truth, and its consequent interdependence on co-operation and, _vice versa_, the fragmentary character of action, and its absolute dependence on society, a majority, etc. The blindness to this distinction creates fanaticism on one side, alarm and prosecution on the other. Jacobins or soul-gougers. It is an interesting fact or fable that the stork (the emblem of filial or conjugal piety) never abides in a monarchy.
Commend me to the Irish architect who took out the foundation-stone to repair the roof.
Knox and the other reformers were _Scopae viarum_--that is, highway besoms.
The Pine Tree blasted at the top was applied by Swift to himself as a prophetic emblem of his own decay. The Chestnut is a fine shady tree, and its wood excellent, were it not that it dies away at the _heart_ first. Alas! poor me!
[Sidenote: TASTE, AN ETHICAL QUALITY]
Modern poetry is characterised by the poets' _anxiety_ to be always striking. There is the same march in the Greek and Latin poets.
Claudian, who had powers to have been anything--observe in him this anxious, craving vanity! Every line, nay, every word, stops, looks full in your face, and asks and _begs_ for praise! As in a Chinese painting, there are no distances, no perspective, but all is in the foreground; and this is nothing but vanity. I am pleased to think that, when a mere stripling, I had formed the opinion that true taste was virtue, and that bad writing was bad feeling.
[Sidenote: A PLEA FOR POETIC LICENSE]
The desire of carrying things to a greater height of pleasure and admiration than, _omnibus trutinatis_, they are susceptible of, is one great cause of the corruption of poetry. Both to understand my own reasoning and to communicate it, ponder on Catullus' hexameters and pentameters, his ”_numine abusum homines_” [Carmen, lxxvi. 4] [and similar harsh expressions]. It is not whether or no the very same ideas expressed with the very same force and the very same naturalness and simplicity in the versification of Ovid and Tibullus, would not be still more delightful (though even that, for any number of poems, may well admit a doubt), but whether it is _possible_ so to express them and whether, in every attempt, the result has not been to subst.i.tute manner for matter, and point that will not bear reflection (so fine that it breaks the moment you try it) for genuine sense and true feeling, and, lastly, to confine both the subjects, thoughts, and even words of poetry within a most beggarly cordon. _N.B._--The same criticism applies to Metastasio, and, in Pope, to his quaintness, perversion, unnatural metaphors, and, still more, the cold-blooded use, for artifice or connection, of language justifiable only by enthusiasm and pa.s.sion.
[Sidenote: RICHARDSON]
I confess that it has cost, and still costs, my philosophy some exertion not to be vexed that I must admire, aye, greatly admire, Richardson. His mind is so very vile a mind, so oozy, hypocritical, praise-mad, canting, envious, concupiscent! But to understand and draw _him_ would be to produce a work almost equal to his own; and, in order to do this, ”_down, proud Heart, down_” (as we teach little children to say to themselves, bless them!), all hatred down! and, instead thereof, charity, calmness, a heart fixed on the good part, though the understanding is surveying all. Richardson felt truly the defect of Fielding, or what was not his excellence, and made that his _defect_--a trick of uncharitableness often played, though not exclusively, by contemporaries. Fielding's talent was observation, not meditation. But Richardson was not philosopher enough to know the difference--say, rather, to understand and develop it.
[Sidenote: HIS NEED OF EXTERNAL SOLACE]
O there are some natures which under the most cheerless all-threatening nothing-promising circ.u.mstances can draw hope from the invisible, as the tropical trees that in the sandy desolation produce their own lidded vessels full of the waters from air and dew! Alas! to my root not a drop trickles down but from the watering-pot of immediate friends. And, even so, it seems much more a sympathy with their feeling rather than hope of my own. So should I feel sorrow, if Allston's mother, whom I have never seen, were to die?