Why we should read Part 4

But to prove how absolutely the cla.s.sical spirit can bring perfection to our native language what need is there of quoting more than this:

"Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before.

It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past, and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodope, that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of pa.s.sionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last."

The white heat of austere, restrained pa.s.sion is here, it is the sublimation of the Latin model. This surely is English as we would have her written, that which is rightly said and therefore sounds rightly.

This is one of those certain occasions on which prose can bear a great deal of poetry: indeed there is more real poetry latent in the cadences of this paragraph than in many so-called poems of to-day.

Sir Sidney Colvin happily contrasts Landor's twilight with that more famous one of Keats:

"Within how few minutes has the night closed in upon us! Nothing is left discernible of the promontories, or the long irregular breakers under them. We have before us only a faint glimmering from the sh.e.l.ls in our path, and from the blossoms of the arbutus."

"The presence of the twilight and its spell," he very justly comments, "are in the work of Landor not less keenly felt and realised than in the work of Keats, only they are felt and realised in a widely different manner."

This difference is simply that which lies between the romantic and the cla.s.sical. Landor will never trust himself to go beyond a bare statement of fact, but beauty is no less implicit in the architecture of straight lines than in the architecture of adornments and embellishments. His aphorisms have pa.s.sed into our common speech and men call up many beautifully coined phrases from the depths of their consciousness about life and death, forgetful of their source, which are attributable to Landor.

"To stand upon one's guard against Death exasperates her malice, and protracts our sufferings"; "Goodness does not more certainly make men happy than happiness makes them good"; "Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world"; "We often hear that such or such a thing 'is not worth an old song.' Alas! how very few things are! What precious recollections do some of them awaken! What pleasurable tears do they excite? They purify the stream of life; they can delay it on its shelves and rapids; they can turn it back again to the soft moss amidst which its sources issue."

"Friends.h.i.+p is a vase, which, when it is flamed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it never can be trusted after.

The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coa.r.s.e stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious ones never."

Reading exquisite thoughts like these clothed in such a perfectly firm manner, we are led to think of the values of phrases and words which, like many of our blessings, lie unrecognised.

"How carelessly, for example, do we say, 'I am delighted to _hear from you_.' No other language has this beautiful expression, which, like some of the most lovely flowers, loses its charm for want of close inspection."

The cla.s.sical method, you will notice again, of getting close to the object and keeping one's eyes on it, not moving away to such a distance that all the beauty lies in the vagueness and mystery of the scene.

Just as in his dramatic and narrative conversations he springs easily from age to age, shedding a flood of new light on historical episodes, so in his reflective and discursive notes he touches on every topic of human interest, religion, fame, death, love, manners, society, politics, literature; as a critic he moves easily, with felicity of expression and breadth of survey, "the herald of the G.o.ds," with a sure sense of what is required of him.

"A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit _where_ a work is good or bad; _why_ it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad; must also demonstrate in what manner and to what extent the same ideas or reflections have come to others, and if they be clothed in poetry, why, by an apparently slight variation, what in one author is mediocrity, in another is excellence."

"To be useful to as many as possible is the especial duty of a critic, and his utility can only be attained by rect.i.tude and precision. He walks in a garden which is not his own; and he neither must gather the blossoms to embellish his discourse, nor break the branches to display his strength. Rather let him point to what is out of order, and help to raise what is lying on the ground."

"When a writer is praised above his merits in his own times, he is certain of being estimated below them in the times succeeding."

"To const.i.tute a great writer the qualities are, adequate expression of just sentiments, plainness without vulgarity, elevation without pomp, sedateness without austerity, alertness without impetuosity."

As we should expect, he lays most stress upon the virtues of moderation and composure. "Whoever has the power of creating has likewise the inferior power of keeping his creations in order. The best poets are the most impressive, because their steps are regular; for without regularity there is neither strength nor state. Look at Sophocles, look at aeschylus, look at Homer."

"There are four things requisite to const.i.tute might, majesty and dominion in a poet: these are creativeness, constructiveness, the sublime, the pathetic. A poet of the first order must have formed, or taken to himself and modified, some great subject. He must be creative and constructive."

"It is only the wretchedest of poets that wish all they ever wrote to be remembered: some of the best would be willing to lose the most."

When he descends to the particular we find the same strong, sane, comprehensive att.i.tude of criticism. What could be better than his note on Addison?

"I have always been an admirer of Addison, and the oftener I read him, I mean his prose, the more he pleases me. Perhaps it is not so much his style, which, however, is easy and graceful and harmonious, as the sweet temperature of thought in which we always find him, and the attractive countenance, if you will allow me the expression, with which he meets me upon every occasion. It is very remarkable, and therefore I stopped to notice it, that not only what little strength he had, but even all his grace and ease, forsake him when he ventures into poetry."

He defends the use of idiom ("Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language") and attacks the use of quotation: "Before I let fall a quotation I must be taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversation, seldomer in composition; for it mars the beauty and unity of style; especially when it invades it from a foreign tongue. A quoter is either ostentatious of his acquirements, or doubtful of his cause. And, moreover, he never walks gracefully who leans upon the shoulder of another, however gracefully that other may walk."

Of his verse epigrams all the world knows _Rose Aylmer_ and most people his of himself:

"I strove with none, for none was worth my strife, Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life, It sinks, and I am ready to depart."

It would be hard to improve upon the accuracy of that description or the artistry with which it is expressed.

"I shall dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select."

It is with the object of enticing you to join that group of eclectics that I have attempted to show you what manner of man he is who invites you to his table. The conversation will be rich, the viands delicious to an Epicurean palate, but if you have no taste and your talk is vulgar you will only be bored.

VIII

JOHN DONNE

Readers of Rupert Brooke will almost certainly have made the acquaintance of Donne the poet, admirers of Mr Logan Pearsall Smith will with equal certainty have dipped into the excellent selections which that versatile writer has made of Dr Donne's sermons.

But to search for a reason why everyone should read Donne we need go no further than George Saintsbury's words:

"For those who have experienced, or who at least understand, the ups-and-downs, the ins-and-outs of human temperament, the alternations not merely of pa.s.sion and satiety, but of pa.s.sion and laughter, of pa.s.sion and melancholy reflection, of pa.s.sion earthly enough and spiritual rapture almost heavenly, there is no poet and hardly any writer like Donne."

Our appet.i.te for Donne was probably first whetted by Izaak Walton, who wrote so admirable a biography of him. His personality intrigues us from the start, his Marlowesque thirst for experience, experience of the intellect and experience of sensation, finds a sympathetic echo to-day in the minds of most of us. He knew a good deal about medicine, law, astronomy and physiology, as well as theology: he joined the expedition of Ess.e.x to Cadiz in 1596: he was ever adventuring in science, in love and in travel. At the age of forty-two, poverty-stricken and a failure, he took Orders and became one of the greatest preachers we have ever had. He poured his whole soul into his sermons, and held his congregations spellbound with his gorgeous prose, "perhaps never equalled for the beauty of its rhythm and the Shakespearean magnificence of its diction": he dwelt mainly on the subject of Sin (about which he knew a good deal from experience), Death, G.o.d, Heaven and Infinity.

Listen to this on Eternity: "And all the powerfull Kings, and all the beautifull Queenes of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, All in one Morning, in respect of this Day. In all the two thousand yeares of Nature, before the Law given by _Moses_, and the two thousand yeares of Law.... In all this six thousand, and in all those, which G.o.d may be pleased to adde, ... in this House of his Fathers, there was never heard quarter clock to strike, never seen minute gla.s.se to turne." Or this personal confession (rarest of delights in sermons): "I throw my selfe downe in my Chamber, and I call in, and invite G.o.d, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect G.o.d and his Angels, for the noise of a Flie, for the ratling of a Coach, for the whining of a doore; I talke on, in the same posture of praying; Eyes lifted up; knees bowed downe; as though I prayed to G.o.d; and, if G.o.d, or his Angels should aske me, when I thought last of G.o.d in that prayer, I cannot tell; Sometimes I finde that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterdays pleasures, a feare of to morrows dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine eare, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a Chimera in my braine, troubles me in my prayer. So certainely is there nothing, nothing in spirituall things, perfect in this world."

"If Donne," says Robert Lynd, "had written much prose in this kind, his _Sermons_ would be as famous as the writings of any of the saints since the days of the Apostles."

If only more sermons contained such human touches as the following, the modern church-goers would be more plentiful:--

"I am not all here, I am here now preaching upon this text, and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory, or S. Hierome, have said best of this text, before. I am here speaking to you, and yet I consider by the way, in the same instant, what it is likely you will say to one another, when I have done, you are not all here neither; you are here now, hearing me, and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better sermon somewhere else, of this text before."

But as an example of his highest power of eloquence and impa.s.sioned imagination I will quote a pa.s.sage that can challenge any pa.s.sage in the whole range of English prose:

"The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney, are no Epitaph of that Oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; It tels me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons graves is speechlesse too, it sayes nothing, it distinguishes nothing: As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a Prince whom thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the winde blow it thither; and when a whirle-winde hath blowne the dust of the Church-yard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to p.r.o.nounce, This is the Patrician, this is the n.o.ble flowre, and this the Yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran...."

But it is Donne the poet, the Donne who wrote

"Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say her body thought,"

the Donne of

"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the G.o.d of Love was born,"

of

"I wonder by my troth what thou and I Did till we loved?"

of the

"Bracelet of bright hair about the bone,"