Part 4 (1/2)
The flimsy metre of our day seems to add fresh value to his sinewy verse. We have no happier master of poetic numbers; none who better knew
To build the lofty rhyme.
The condensed vigor, so indispensable to blank verse, the skillful variation of the pause, the masterly structure of the period, and all the occult mysteries of the art, can, perhaps, be best learned from Akenside. If he could have conveyed to Thomson his melody and rhyme, and Thomson would have paid him back in perspicuity and transparency of meaning, how might they have enriched each other!”
”I confess,” said I, ”in reading Akenside, I have now and then found the same pa.s.sage at once enchanting and unintelligible. As it happens to many frequenters of the opera, the music always transports, but the words are not always understood.” I then desired my friend to gratify us with the first book of the Pleasures of Imagination.
Sir John is a pa.s.sionate lover of poetry, in which he has a fine taste.
He read it with much spirit and feeling, especially these truly cla.s.sical lines,
_Mind, Mind_ alone, bear witness earth and heaven, The living fountains in itself contains Of beauteous and sublime: here hand in hand Sit paramount the graces; here enthroned Celestial Venus, with divinest airs Invites the soul to never-fading joy.
”The reputation of this exquisite pa.s.sage,” said he, laying down the book, ”is established by the consenting suffrage of all men of taste, though by the critical countenance you are beginning to put on, you look as if you had a mind to attack it.”
”So far from it,” said I, ”that I know nothing more splendid in the whole ma.s.s of our poetry. And I feel almost guilty of high treason against the majesty of the sublimer Muses, in the remark I am going to hazard, on the celebrated lines which follow. The poet's object, through this and the two following pages, is to establish the infinite superiority of mind over unconscious matter, even in its fairest forms.
The idea is as just as the execution is beautiful; so also is his supreme elevation of intellect, over
Greatness of bulk, or symmetry of parts.
Nothing again can be finer, than his subsequent preference of
The powers of genius and design,
over even the stupendous range
Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres.
He proceeds to ransack the stores of the mental and the moral world, as he had done the world of matter, and with a pen dipped in Hippocrene, opposes to the latter,
The charms of virtuous friends.h.i.+p, etc.
The candid blush Of him who strives with fortune to be just.
All the mild majesty of private life.
The graceful tear that streams from others' woes.
”Why, Charles,” said Sir John, ”I am glad to find you the enthusiastic eulogist of the pa.s.sage of which I suspected you were about to be the saucy censurer.”
”Censure,” replied I, ”is perhaps too strong a term for any part especially the most admired part of this fine poem. I need not repeat the lines on which I was going to risk a slight observation; they live in the mind and memory of every lover of the Muses.”
”I will read the next pa.s.sage, however,” said Sir John, ”that I may be better able to controvert your criticism:
Look then abroad through nature to the range Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres, Wheeling unshaken through the void immense, And speak, oh man! does the capacious scene With half that kindling majesty dilate Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose Refulgent from the stroke of Caesar's fate Amid the crowd of patriots, and his arm Aloft extending, like eternal Jove When guilt brings down the thunder, call'd aloud On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel, And bade the father of his country hail; For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust, And Rome again is free?
”What a grand and powerful pa.s.sage!” said Sir John.
”I acknowledge it,” said I, ”but is it as just as it is grand? _Le vrai est le seul beau._ Is it a fair and direct opposition between mind and matter? The poet could not have expressed the image more n.o.bly, but might he not, out of the abundant treasures of his opulent mind have chosen it with more felicity? Is an act of murder, even of an usurper, as happily contrasted with the organization of matter, as the other beautiful instances I named, and which he goes on to select? The superiority of mental beauty is the point he is establis.h.i.+ng, and his elaborate preparation leads you to expect all his other instances to be drawn from pure mental excellence. His other exemplifications are general, this is particular. They are a cla.s.s, this is only a variety. I question if Milton, who was at least as ardent a champion for liberty, and as much of a party-man as Akenside, would have used this ill.u.s.tration. Milton, though he often insinuates a political stroke in his great poem, always, I think, generalizes. Whatever had been his principles, or at whatever period he had written, I question, when he wanted to describe the overthrow of authority by the rebel angels, if he would have ill.u.s.trated it by Cromwell's seizing the mace, or the decapitation of Charles. Much less, if he would have selected those two instances as the triumph of mind over matter.”
”But,” said Sir John, ”you forget that Akenside professedly adopts the language of Cicero in his second Philippic.” He then read the note beginning with, Caesare interfecto, etc.