English Critical Essays Part 17

Abminable--unutterable--and worse Than fables yet have feigned.

_Id._

Wallowing unweldy--enrmous in their gait.

_Id._

Of unusual pa.s.sionate accent, there is an exquisite specimen in the _Faerie Queene_, where Una is lamenting her desertion by the Red-Cross Knight:

But he, my lion, and my n.o.ble lord, How does he find in cruel heart to hate Her that him lov'd, and ever most ador'd _As the gd of my lfe?_[30] Why hath he me abhorr'd?

[30] Pray let not the reader consent to read this first half of the line in any manner less marked and peremptory. It is a striking instance of the beauty of that 'acceleration and r.e.t.a.r.dation of true verse' which Coleridge speaks of. There is to be a hurry on the words _as the_, and a pa.s.sionate emphasis and pa.s.sing stop on the word _G.o.d_; and so of the next three words.

The abuse of strength is harshness and heaviness; the reverse of it is weakness. There is a n.o.ble sentiment--it appears both in Daniel's and Sir John Beaumont's works, but is most probably the latter's,--which is a perfect outrage of strength in the sound of the words:

Only the firmest and the _constant'st_ hearts G.o.d sets to act the _stout'st_ and hardest parts.

_Stout'st_ and _constant'st_ for 'stoutest' and 'most constant'! It is as bad as the intentional crabbedness of the line in _Hudibras_:

He that hangs or _beats out's_ brains, The devil's in him if _he_ feigns.

_Beats out's brains_, for 'beats out his brains'. Of heaviness, Davenant's _Gondibert_ is a formidable specimen, almost throughout:

With slence (rder's help, and mark of care) They chde that nise which heedless yuth affect; Stll course for use, for health they cleanness wear, And save in well-fx'd arms, all nceness check'd.

They thought, thse that, unarm'd, exps'd frail lfe, But naked nature valiantly betray'd; Wh was, though naked, safe, till prde made strfe, But made defence must use, nw danger's made.

And so he goes digging and lumbering on, like a heavy preacher thumping the pulpit in italics, and spoiling many ingenious reflections.

Weakness in versification is want of accent and emphasis. It generally accompanies prosaicalness, and is the consequence of weak thoughts, and of the affectation of a certain well-bred enthusiasm. The writings of the late Mr. Hayley were remarkable for it; and it abounds among the lyrical imitators of Cowley, and the whole of what is called our French school of poetry, when it aspired above its wit and 'sense'. It sometimes breaks down in a horrible, hopeless manner, as if giving way at the first step. The following ludicrous pa.s.sage in Congreve, intended to be particularly fine, contains an instance:

And lo! Silence himself is here; Methinks I see the midnight G.o.d appear.

In all his downy pomp array'd, Behold the reverend shade.

_An ancient sigh he sits upon!!!_ Whose memory of sound is long since gone, _And purposely annihilated for his throne!!!_

_Ode on the singing of Mrs. Arabella Hunt._

See also the would-be enthusiasm of Addison about music:

For ever consecrate the _day_ To music and _Cecilia_; Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below, Music can n.o.ble HINTS _impart!!!_

It is observable that the unpoetic masters of ridicule are apt to make the most ridiculous mistakes, when they come to affect a strain higher than the one they are accustomed to. But no wonder. Their habits neutralize the enthusiasm it requires.

_Sweetness_, though not identical with smoothness, any more than feeling is with sound, always includes it; and smoothness is a thing so little to be regarded for its own sake, and indeed so worthless in poetry but for some taste of sweetness, that I have not thought necessary to mention it by itself; though such an all-in-all in versification was it regarded not a hundred years back, that Thomas Warton himself, an idolater of Spenser, ventured to wish the following line in the _Faerie Queene_,

And was admired much of fools, _wmen_, and boys--

altered to

And was admired much of women, fools, and boys--

thus destroying the fine scornful emphasis on the first syllable of 'women'! (an ungallant intimation, by the way, against the fair s.e.x, very startling in this no less woman-loving than great poet). Any poetaster can be smooth. Smoothness abounds in all small poets, as sweetness does in the greater. Sweetness is the smoothness of grace and delicacy,--of the sympathy with the pleasing and lovely. Spenser is full of it,--Shakespeare--Beaumont and Fletcher--Coleridge. Of Spenser's and Coleridge's versification it is the prevailing characteristic. Its main secrets are a smooth progression between variety and sameness, and a voluptuous sense of the continuous,--'linked sweetness long drawn out'. Observe the first and last lines of the stanza in the _Faerie Queene_, describing a shepherd brus.h.i.+ng away the gnats;--the open and the close _e's_ in the one,

As gentle shepherd in sweet eventide--

and the repet.i.tion of the word _oft_, and the fall from the vowel _a_, into the two _u's_ in the other,--

She brusheth _oft_, and _oft_ doth mar their murmurings.

So in his description of two substances in the handling, both equally smooth:

_Each smoother seems than each, and each than each seems smoother._

An abundance of examples from his poetry will be found in the volume before us. His beauty revolves on itself with conscious loveliness.

And Coleridge is worthy to be named with him, as the reader will see also, and has seen already. Let him take a sample meanwhile from the poem called the _Day Dream_! Observe both the variety and sameness of the vowels, and the repet.i.tion of the soft consonants:

My eyes make pictures when they're shut:-- I see a fountain, large and fair, A willow and a ruin'd hut, And _thee_ and _me_ and Mary there.

_O Mary! make thy gentle lap our pillow; Bend o'er us, like a bower, my beautiful green willow._

By _Straightforwardness_ is meant the flow of words, in their natural order, free alike from mere prose, and from those inversions to which bad poets recur in order to escape the charge of prose, but chiefly to accommodate their rhymes. In Shadwell's play of _Psyche_, Venus gives the sisters of the heroine an answer, of which the following is the _entire_ substance, literally, in so many words. The author had nothing better for her to say:

I receive your prayers with kindness, and will give success to your hopes. I have seen, with anger, mankind adore your sister's beauty and deplore her scorn: which they shall do no more. For I'll so resent their idolatry, as shall content your wishes to the full.

Now in default of all imagination, fancy, and expression, how was the writer to turn these words into poetry or rhyme? Simply by diverting them from their natural order, and twisting the halves of the sentences each before the other.

With kindness I your prayers receive, And to your hopes success will give.

I have, with anger, seen mankind adore Your sister's beauty and her scorn deplore; Which they shall do no more.

For their idolatry I'll so resent, As shall your wishes to the full content!!

This is just as if a man were to allow that there was no poetry in the words, 'How do you find yourself?' 'Very well, I thank you'; but to hold them inspired, if altered into

Yourself how do you find?

Very well, you I thank.

It is true, the best writers in Shadwell's age were addicted to these inversions, partly for their own reasons, as far as rhyme was concerned, and partly because they held it to be writing in the cla.s.sical and Virgilian manner. What has since been called Artificial Poetry was then flouris.h.i.+ng, in contradistinction to Natural; or Poetry seen chiefly through art and books, and not in its first sources. But when the artificial poet partook of the natural, or, in other words, was a true poet after his kind, his best was always written in his most natural and straightforward manner. Hear Shadwell's antagonist Dryden. Not a particle of inversion, beyond what is used for the sake of emphasis in common discourse, and this only in one line (the last but three), is to be found in his immortal character of the Duke of Buckingham:

A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, _always in the wrong_, _Was everything by starts, and nothing long;_ But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon: Then all for women, rhyming, dancing, drinking, _Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking._ _Blest madman!_ who could every hour employ _With something new to wish or to enjoy!_ Railing and praising were his usual themes; And both, to show his judgement, in extremes: So over violent, or over civil, _That every man with him was G.o.d or devil._ In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; _Nothing went unrewarded, but desert._ Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, _He had his jest, and they had his estate._

Inversion itself was often turned into a grace in these poets, and may be in others, by the power of being superior to it; using it only with a cla.s.sical air, and as a help lying next to them, instead of a salvation which they are obliged to seek. In jesting pa.s.sages also it sometimes gave the rhyme a turn agreeably wilful, or an appearance of choosing what lay in its way; as if a man should pick up a stone to throw at another's head, where a less confident foot would have stumbled over it. Such is Dryden's use of the word _might_--the mere sign of a tense--in his pretended ridicule of the monkish practice of rising to sing psalms in the night.

And much they griev'd to see so nigh their hall The bird that warn'd St. Peter of his fall; That he should raise his mitred crest on high, And clap his wings and call his family To sacred rites; and vex th' ethereal powers With midnight matins at uncivil hours; Nay more, his quiet neighbours should molest _Just in the sweetness of their morning rest._

(What a line full of 'another doze' is that!)

_Beast of a bird!_ supinely, when he _might_ Lie snug and sleep, to rise before the light!

What if his dull forefathers used that cry?

Could he not let a bad example die?

I the more gladly quote instances like those of Dryden, to ill.u.s.trate the points in question, because they are specimens of the very highest kind of writing in the heroic couplet upon subjects not heroical. As to prosaicalness in general, it is sometimes indulged in by young writers on the plea of its being natural; but this is a mere confusion of triviality with propriety, and is usually the result of indolence.