Chapter XI: Part 11

These deceiving interchanges run through a passage otherwise of great lucidity and beauty, and of sterling strength and worth. Probably, most attentive of readers, though possibly not the least perplexed, thou wilt not rest with less satisfaction upon what is truly good in the passage, now thou hast with us taken the trouble of detecting the slight disorder which overshadows it. The possibility of the first confusion which slips from the critic to the poet, attests the strength of the opinion in Pope's mind, that the poet must entertain as an intellectual inmate a spirit of criticism, as learned and severe as that of the mere critic. Perhaps the latter infers how close the cognation of the creative and the critical faculty.

And now for another striking instance of sliding, unconsciously, from critic to poet.

"But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong:
In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music, there.
These equal syllables alone require,
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find the 'cooling western breeze,'
In the next line, it 'whispers through the trees;'
If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep,'
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with 'sleep;'
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes!"--

Who are the "MOST" that "JUDGE a poet's song by numbers?" with whom "smooth or rough is RIGHT or WRONG?" Who are "the tuneful fools," who, of the Muse's thousand charms, "ADMIRE her tuneful voice" only? The haunters of Parnassus, whose attraction thither is the "PLEASURE" of their ear, not the instruction of their mind; who "REQUIRE" nothing more than "equal syllables?"--For these first eight lines, you have the bad critic, and the bad critic only.

But who are "THEY" that "ring round the same unvaried chimes" of rhymes; who bestow upon "you," "the reader,"--"breeze," "trees;" "creep," and "sleep;" whose one thought has no meaning; who have scotched the snake, not killed it; and who are to be abandoned to the solitary delight of their own bad verses? In these last ELEVEN lines, you have the bad poet, and the bad poet only. Whilst in the three intermediate verses, "Though oft the ear," &c., you have the imperceptible slide effected from critic to poet. Did Pope know and intend this? We think not; and we think there is in the construction itself proof positive to the inadvertency. For where is the antecedent referred to in

"While THEY ring round?"

He who looks for it will arrive first at the "THESE," who "equal syllables alone require." But he has now escaped from the bad poet's into almost worse company. The said "THESE" are clearly a SECOND smaller division of the condemned EAR-CRITICS. The greater division, the "MOST", _have_ ears, forsooth, and can distinguish "smooth" and "rough." But "THESE" WOULD HAVE ears. They have none; they have only FINGERS. They can tell that the syllables keep the RULE of the measure, and that is all. They stand on the lowest round of the ladder, or on the ground at the foot of the ladder.

| | | | |
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire,

is to them "excellent music," an unimpeachable verse, for it COUNTS RIGHT. They are the arithmeticians of the Muse--no musicians.

We agree with Warburton, who says that it is "impossible to give a full and exact idea of poetical criticism without considering at the same time the _art of poetry_, so far as poetry is an ART." But we must contend, that a poet who addresses or discourses of two such distinct species as the writer who criticizes, and the writer who is criticized--two human beings, at least, placed in such very different predicaments--is bound continually to know and to keep his reader aware, which he exhorts and which he smites--the sacrificer or the victim.

You have in your memory, and a thousand times recollected, the following fine passage; but are you sure that you have fully and clearly understood, as well as felt it?

"A _little learning_ is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow drafts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the length behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
Far distant views of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last.
But those attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wondering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise."

The precept must be given to somebody. To whom? The whole Essay addresses itself to two descriptions of persons--to those who _will be_ critics, and to those who _will be_ poets. Both are here addressed, and indistinctively. But we may distinguish--nay, must--in turning verse into prose. What is the counsel bestowed? "Meddle not with criticism, as a professed or unprofessed critic, unless you are prepared to invade the depths of criticism." "Touch not the lyre of Apollo to call forth a tone, unless you are willing to put your hand under the most rigorous discipline in the school of the musicians." What is the motive, the reason of the counsel? The twofold monitory and hortatory counsel, proceeds upon a twofold contemplation; upon the view of the beginning, and upon that of the end.

A taste of criticism--the possession of half a dozen rules--the sitting, for a few furtive and perilous instants, upon that august seat of high judgment, before which the great wits of all ages and nations come to receive their award--infatuates the youthful untempered brain with dazzling, bewildering, and blinding self-opinion. Enough to mislead is easily learned. Right dictates of clearest minds--oracles of the old wisdom--crudely misunderstood. Rules of general enunciation made false in the applying, by the inability of perceiving in the instance the differencing conditions which qualify the rule, or suspend it. So, on the other hand, canons of a narrower scope, stretched beyond their true intent. And last, and worst of all, in the ignorance and in the disdain of statutes, and sanctions, and preceding authoritative judgments--the humours and fancies, the likings and the mislikings, the incapable comprehension and the precipitate misapprehensions of an untrained, uninstructed, inexperienced, self-unknowing spirit, howsoever of Nature gifted or ungifted, to be taken for the standard of the worth which the generations of mankind have approved, or which has newly risen up to enlighten the generations of mankind!

Abstain, then, from judging, O Critic that wilt be! Humble thine understanding in reverence! Open thy soul to beliefs! Yield up thy heart, dissolving and overcome, to love! Cultivate self-suspicion! and learn! learn! learn! The bountiful years that lift up the oak to maturity, shall rear, and strengthen, and ripen thee! Knowledge of books, knowledge of men, knowledge of Nature--and solicited, and roused, and sharpened, in the manifold and studious conversation with books, and with men, and with Nature--last and greatest--the knowledge of thyself--shall bring thee out large-hearted, high-minded, sensitive, apprehensive, comprehensive, informed and original, clear and profound, genial and exact, scrutinizing and pardoning, candid, and generous, and just--in a word, a finished CRITIC. The steadfast and mighty laws of the moral and intellectual world have taken safe care and tutelage of thee, and confer upon thee, in thy now accomplished powers, the natural and well-earned remuneration of honestly, laboriously, and pertinaciously dedicated powers!

And as for thee, O Poet that wilt be, con thou, by night and by day, the biography of JOHN MILTON!

And now--in conclusion--for the very noblest strain in didactic poetry.

"Those Rules of old discover'd, not devised,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodised;
Nature, like Liberty, is but restrain'd
By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.
"Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus' top her sons she show'd,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise:
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.
The gen'rous critic fann'd the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then Criticism the Muse's handmaid proved,
To dress her charms, and make her more beloved.

* * * * *

"You, then, whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each Ancient's proper character:
His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.
Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your Judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
"When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t' outlast immortal Rome design'd,
Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law,
And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw:
But when t' examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;
And rules as strict his labour'd work confine,
As if the Stagyrite o'erlook'd each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.
Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry; in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master-hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end,)
Some lucky license answer to the full
Th' intent proposed, that license is a rule.
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common track;
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend.
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.
In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature's common order rise,
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.
But though the ancients thus their rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,)
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compell'd by need,
And have, at least, their precedent to plead,
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.
I know there are, to whose presumptuous thought
Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near;
Which, but proportion'd to their light or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks, and fair array,
But with the occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem;
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;
Secure from flames, from Envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
See from each clime the learn'd their incense bring!
Hear, in all tongues consenting paeans ring!
In praise so just let ev'ry voice be join'd,
And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind.
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found
O may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

A magnificent burst of thoughtful enthusiasm! an urgent and monitory exhortation, in which Pope calls upon rising critics and poets to pursue, in the great writings of classical antiquity, the study of that art which proceeds from the true study of Nature. It depictures his own studies; and expresses the admiration of a glowing disciple, who, having found his own strength and light in the conversation of his high instructors, will utter his own gratitude, will advance their honour, and will satisfy his zeal for the good of his brethren, by engaging others to use the means that have prospered with himself.

The art delivered by Greece was self-regulated nature. Criticism was the well-expounded Reason of inspiration, calling and instructing emulation. The critic that will be, must transport himself into the mind of antiquity; and, in particular, into the mind of his author for the time being. Homer is your one great, all-sufficient lesson. Read him, after Virgil's manner of reading him, who sought Nature by submitting himself to rules drawn from her, and emblazoned in the Iliad and Odyssey.

Nevertheless, the rules do not yet comprehend every thing; and emergencies occur when they whom the rules have trained to mastery, inspired by their spirit, and following out their design, transcend them: so creating a new excellence, which, in its turn, becomes a rule--but, O ye moderns! beware, and dare tremblingly!

There are critics of a confined and self-confident wit, who impeach these liberties, even of the masters, most unthinkingly and rashly; for sometimes the skillful tactician is on his way to winning the victory, when you think him flying.

The fame of those ancients is now safe and universal. Withhold not your solitary voice. Hail, ye victorious inheritors of ever-gathering renown! And, oh! enable the last and least of poets to teach the pretenders of criticism modesty and reverence!

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._

Footnotes:

[1] Daguerreotype, &c.

[2] Valerius Flaccus.

[3] Cicero, in a well-known passage of his _Ethics_, speaks of trade as irredeemably base, if petty; but as not so absolutely felonious if wholesale. He gives a _real_ merchant (one who is such in the English sense) leave to think himself a shade above small-beer.

[4] "_The astonishment of science._"--Her medical attendants were Dr Percival, a well-known literary physician, who had been a correspondent of Condorcet, D'Alembert, &c., and Mr Charles White, a very distinguished surgeon. It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in its structure and development of any that he had ever seen--an assertion which, to my own knowledge, he repeated in after years, and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this, that he wrote and published a work on the human skull, supported by many measurements which he had made of heads selected from all varieties of the human species. Meantime, as I would be loth that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this record, I will candidly admit that she died of hydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect in cases of that class, is altogether morbid--forced on, in fact, by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would, however, suggest, as a possibility, the very inverse order of relation between the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect, but, on the contrary, this growth coming on spontaneously, and outrunning the capacities of the physical structure, may have caused the disease.

[5] Amongst the oversights in the _Paradise Lost_, some of which have not yet been perceived, it is certainly _one_--that, by placing in such overpowering light of pathos the sublime sacrifice of Adam to his love for his frail companion, he has too much lowered the guilt of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say afterwards, does not, and cannot, obscure the beauty of that action: reviewing it calmly, we condemn--but taking the impassioned station of Adam at the moment of temptation, we approve in our hearts. This was certainly an oversight; but it was one very difficult to redress. I remember, amongst the many exquisite thoughts of John Paul, (Richter,) one which strikes me as peculiarly touching upon this subject. He suggests--not as any grave theological comment, but as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart--that, had Adam conquered the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of obedience to God, his reward would have been the pardon and reconciliation of Eve, together with her restoration to innocence.

[6]

"I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony, which cannot be remember'd."

--_Speech of Alhadra in Coleridge's Remorse._

[7] Some readers will question the _fact_, and seek no reason. But did they ever suffer grief at _any_ season of the year?

[8] [Greek: Phyge monou pros monon].--PLOTINUS.

[9] The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes; as at this point they seemed too much to interrupt the course of the narrative.

[10] "Everlasting Jew!"--_der ewige Jude_--which is the common German expression for _The Wandering Jew_, and sublimer even than our own.

[11] "_I felt._"--The reader must not forget, in reading this and other passages, that, though a child's feelings are spoken of, it is not the child who speaks. _I_ decipher what the child only felt in cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from pointing to any thing metaphysical or doubtful, that a man must be grossly unobservant who is not aware of what I am here noticing, not as a peculiarity of this child or that, but as a necessity of all children. Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to his own consciousness in mature life, must have pre-existed in germ during his infancy. I, for instance, did not, as a child, _consciously_ read in my own deep feeling these ideas. No, not at all; nor was it possible for a child to do so. I the child had the feelings, I the man decipher them. In the child lay the handwriting mysterious to _him_; in me the interpretation and the comment.

[12] I except, however, one case--the case of a child dying of an organic disorder, so therefore as to die slowly, and aware of its own condition. Because such a child is solemnized, and sometimes, in a partial sense, inspired--inspired by the depth of its sufferings, and by the awfulness of its prospect. Such a child having put off the earthly mind in many things, may naturally have put off the childish mind in all things. I therefore, speaking for myself only, acknowledge to have read with emotion a record of a little girl, who, knowing herself for months to be amongst the elect of death, became anxious even to sickness of heart for what she called the _conversion_ of her father. Her filial duty and reverence had been swallowed up in filial love.

[13] _The Englishwoman in Egypt._--Letters from Cairo, written during a residence in 1842, 1843, and 1844, with E. W. Lane, Esq., author of the _Modern Egyptians_. By his SISTER.

[14] Blue eyes are regarded in the East as so unlucky, that the epithet "blue-eyed" is commonly applied as a term of abuse--(see Lane's _Thousand and One Nights_, chap. XV. note 9.) We find from Miss Pardoe, that a similar prejudice prevails among the Osmanlis.

[15] A representation of ladies thus mounted, is found in the _Modern Egyptians_, Vol. i. p. 240, first edit.

[16] _Observations on the Mussulmans of India_, by Mrs Meer Hassan Ali, (Parbury and Allen, 1832.) The authoress of these volumes became, under what circumstances she does not inform us, the wife of a Moslem native of wealth and rank in India, of whose hareem she had been twelve years an inmate, without once having had reason, by her own account, to regret her apparently strange choice of a partner.

[17] Knight's _Quarterly Magazine_, ii. 414, a talented but shortlived periodical, chiefly by members of the University of Cambridge, to which Praed was a principal contributor under the assumed signature of Peregrine Courtenay.

[18] Lane's _Thousand and One Nights_, i. 176, ii. 345.

[19] A representation of the Mahmal is given in the _Modern Egyptians_, ii. 182.

[20] Mrs Damer describes this lady, to whose amiability and accomplishments she does ample justice, as "a sort of Turkish _chanoinesse_," who had renounced marriage in order to devote herself to her mother--a circumstance which, if correctly stated, would be almost unparalleled in the East. But Mrs Poole's silence would rather lead us to suppose that Mrs Damer was mistaken.

[21] A belief precisely similar prevailed throughout Christendom, previous to the year 1260 of our own era: the reference being to the two mystic periods in the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse.

[22] An anecdote of this personage is given in Mr Lane's works, i. 153.

[23] It is hareem etiquette to address mothers by the names of their children.

[24] Marriages of slaves from the khalif's hareem occur more than once in the Thousand and One Nights.

[25] The higher classes are not free from this reproach if we are to believe the story told by Mrs Damer, that Nezleh Hanum punished a female slave who had offended her by the daily amputation of a joint of one of her fingers!

[26] A Spanish proverb of former days, defines "Castilian faith and Moorish works" as the ingredients of a good Christian.

[27] _Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology._ 1 vol. 8vo.

_Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology._ 4th Edition.

_Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology._ 7th Edition.

[28] _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology_, 4th Edition, p. 239.

[29] Yet we are sometimes led to doubt if our author be really so kind-hearted as he would have us to believe. The following passage, for example, would lead us to believe that he is really savage at heart, and that his humanity is little better than affectation. The contrast between the two passages which we have put in italics is very amusing. He is speaking of the _weeding_ of pigeons.

"Every bird that is caught should be examined and recognized and every one exhibiting signs of old age should be destroyed, by pushing the joint of the thumb with force into the back of the head, and severing the cervical vertebrae, or _applying the teeth for that purpose_; but should these modes be disliked or impracticable, _rather than torture the poor devoted animals_ by abortive attempts, let their heads be cut off at once by a sharp table-knife."--(Vol. ii. p. 253.)

[30] _Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury._ Edited by his GRANDSON, the Third Earl, Vols. 3 and 4, London: 1844.

[31] Barrancas are those immense clefts or ravines, some of them several thousand feet deep, which abound upon the plateau, or table-land, on which the city of Mexico stands.

[32] Orizava--in Mexican, Citlatepetl, or the Star Mountain.

[33] The Mexican wolf.

[34] A proverbial expression amongst the Indians, signifying something inimical or prejudicial; the day of ill luck.

[35] Bixa Orellana--a species of dye-wood. String is made out of the bark. The wood takes fire easily upon friction.

[36] Infamous by birth. The children of whites and negroes, or whites and Indians, or Indians and negroes, were _infames de derecho_.

[37] Guachinango is another name for Lepero. Pulque is the favourite drink of the Mexicans, made from the sap of the agave or aloe.

[38] Beef, salted and dried.

[39] _Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III._ London: 1845. 2 vols.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

The first numbered page in the original text is 269.

The following misprints have been corrected:
"subjct" corrected to "subject" (page 392)
"tougue" corrected to "tongue" (page 396)

Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained.

Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors have been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have been left open.

Other punctuation has been corrected without note.