Chapter XII: Book I: , St. vii, viii, and ix (9)

Of fancy, so full of gusto as to border on imagination, Sir John Suckling, in his _Ballad on a Wedding_, has given some of the most playful and charming specimens in the language. They glance like twinkles of the eye, or cherries bedewed:

_Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they fear'd the light:_
But oh! she dances such a way!
_No sun upon an Easter day_
Is half so fine a sight.

It is very daring, and has a sort of playful grandeur, to compare a lady's dancing with the sun. But as the sun has it all to himself in the heavens, so she, in the blaze of her beauty, on earth. This is imagination fairly displacing fancy. The following has enchanted everybody:

Her lips were red, _and one was thin_
_Compared with that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly._

Every reader has stolen a kiss at that lip, gay or grave.

With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by which verse ought to be modulated, and oneness of impression diversely produced, it has been contended by some, that Poetry need not be written in verse at all; that prose is as good a medium, provided poetry be conveyed through it; and that to think otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or form with essence. But the opinion is a prosaical mistake. Fitness and unfitness for _song_, or metrical excitement, just make all the difference between a poetical and prosaical subject; and the reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry, is, that the perfection of poetical spirit demands it;--that the circle of its enthusiasm, beauty and power, is incomplete without it. I do not mean to say that a poet can never show himself a poet in prose; but that, being one, his desire and necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he were unable to do so, he would not, and could not, deserve his title. Verse to the true poet is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and a difficulty. It is a help. It springs from the same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is necessary to their satisfaction and effect. Verse is no more a clog than the condition of rushing upward is a clog to fire, or than the roundness and order of the globe we live on is a clog to the freedom and variety that abound within its sphere. Verse is no dominator over the poet, except inasmuch as the bond is reciprocal, and the poet dominates over the verse. They are lovers, playfully challenging each other's rule, and delighted equally to rule and to obey. Verse is the final proof to the poet that his mastery over his art is complete. It is the shutting up of his powers in '_measureful_ content'; the answer of form to his spirit; of strength and ease to his guidance. It is the willing action, the proud and fiery happiness, of the winged steed on whose back he has vaulted,

To witch the world with wondrous horsemanship.

Verse, in short, is that finishing, and rounding, and 'tuneful planetting' of the poet's creations, which is produced of necessity by the smooth tendencies of their energy or inward working, and the harmonious dance into which they are attracted round the orb of the beautiful. Poetry, in its complete sympathy with beauty, must, of necessity, leave no sense of the beautiful, and no power over its forms, unmanifested; and verse flows as inevitably from this condition of its integrity, as other laws of proportion do from any other kind of embodiment of beauty (say that of the human figure), however free and various the movements may be that play within their limits. What great poet ever wrote his poems in prose? or where is a good prose poem, of any length, to be found? The poetry of the Bible is understood to be in verse, in the original. Mr. Hazlitt has said a good word for those prose enlargements of some fine old song, which are known by the name of Ossian; and in passages they deserve what he said; but he judiciously abstained from saying anything about the form. Is Gesner's _Death of Abel_ a poem? or Hervey's _Meditations_? The _Pilgrim's Progress_ has been called one; and, undoubtedly, Bunyan had a genius which tended to make him a poet, and one of no mean order: and yet it was of as ungenerous and low a sort as was compatible with so lofty an affinity; and this is the reason why it stopped where it did. He had a craving after the beautiful, but not enough of it in himself to echo to its music. On the other hand, the possession of the beautiful will not be sufficient without force to utter it. The author of _Telemachus_ had a soul full of beauty and tenderness. He was not a man who, if he had had a wife and children, would have run away from them, as Bunyan's hero did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was 'a little lower than the angels', like our own Bishop Jewells and Berkeleys; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of the seraphic choir.

Every poet, then, is a versifier; every fine poet an excellent one; and he is the best whose verse exhibits the greatest amount of strength, sweetness, straightforwardness, unsuperfluousness, _variety_, and _oneness_;--oneness, that is to say, consistency, in the general impression, metrical and moral; and variety, or every pertinent diversity of tone and rhythm, in the process. _Strength_ is the muscle of verse, and shows itself in the number and force of the marked syllables; as,

Sonòrous mètal blòwing màrtial sòunds.

_Paradise Lost._

Behèmoth, bìggest born of eàrth, ùphèav'd
His vàstness.

_Id._

Blòw wìnds and cràck your chèeks! ràge! blòw!
You càt[)a]r[)a]cts and hurricànoes, spòut,
Till you have drènch'd our stèeples, dròwn'd the còcks!
You sùlphurous and thoùght-èxecuting fìres,
Vaùnt coùriers of òak-clèaving thùnderbòlts,
Sìnge my whìte hèad! and thòu, àll-shàking thùnder,
Strìke flàt the thìck rotùndity o' the wòrld!

_Lear._

Unexpected locations of the accent double this force, and render it characteristic of passion and abruptness. And here comes into play the reader's corresponding fineness of ear, and his retardations and accelerations in accordance with those of the poet:

Then in the keyhole turns
The ìntr[)i]c[)a]te wards, and every bolt and bar
Unfastens.--On [)a] s[)u]dd[)e]n òpen fly
W[)i]th [)i]mpètuous recoil and jarring sound
The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.

_Paradise Lost_, Book II.

Abòm[)i]n[)a]bl[)e]--unùtt[)e]r[)a]bl[)e]--and worse
Than fables yet have feigned.

_Id._

Wàll[)o]w[)i]ng [)u]nwì[)e]ldy--[)e]nòrmous in their gait.

_Id._

Of unusual passionate 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 noble lord,
How does he find in cruel heart to hate
Her that him lov'd, and ever most ador'd
_As the gòd of my lìfe?_[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
retardation of true verse' which Coleridge speaks of. There
is to be a hurry on the words _as the_, and a passionate
emphasis and passing stop on the word _god_; and so of the
next three words.

The abuse of strength is harshness and heaviness; the reverse of it is weakness. There is a noble 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
God 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 sìlence (òrder's help, and màrk of càre)
They chìde thàt nòise which hèedless yòuth affèct;
Stìll coùrse for ùse, for heàlth thèy clèanness wèar,
And sàve in wèll-fìx'd àrms, all nìceness chèck'd.
Thèy thoùght, thòse that, unàrm'd, expòs'd fràil lìfe,
But nàked nàture vàliantly betrày'd;
Whò wàs, thoùgh nàked, sàfe, till prìde màde strìfe,
But màde defènce must ùse, nòw dànger's màde.

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 passage in Congreve, intended to be particularly fine, contains an instance:

And lo! Silence himself is here;
Methinks I see the midnight god 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 noble 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 admirèd much of fools, _wòmen_, and boys--

altered to

And was admirèd 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 sex, 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 brushing away the gnats;--the open and the close _e's_ in the one,

As gèntle shèpherd in sw[=e][=e]t [=e]ventide--

and the repetition 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 màr their m[=u]rm[)u]rings.

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 repetition 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 classical and Virgilian manner. What has since been called Artificial Poetry was then flourishing, 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 god 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 classical air, and as a help lying next to them, instead of a salvation which they are obliged to seek. In jesting passages 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 illustrate 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.

_Unsuperfluousness_ is rather a matter of style in general, than of the sound and order of words: and yet versification is so much strengthened by it, and so much weakened by its opposite, that it could not but come within the category of its requisites. When superfluousness of words is not occasioned by overflowing animal spirits, as in Beaumont and Fletcher, or by the very genius of luxury, as in Spenser (in which cases it is enrichment as well as overflow), there is no worse sign for a poet altogether, except pure barrenness. Every word that could be taken away from a poem, unreferable to either of the above reasons for it, is a damage; and many such are death; for there is nothing that posterity seems so determined to resent as this want of respect for its time and trouble. The world is too rich in books to endure it. Even true poets have died of this Writer's Evil. Trifling ones have survived, with scarcely any pretensions but the terseness of their trifles. What hope can remain for wordy mediocrity? Let the discerning reader take up any poem, pen in hand, for the purpose of discovering how many words he can strike out of it that give him no requisite ideas, no relevant ones that he cares for, and no reasons for the rhyme beyond its necessity, and he will see what blot and havoc he will make in many an admired production of its day,--what marks of its inevitable fate. Bulky authors in particular, however safe they may think themselves, would do well to consider what parts of their cargo they might dispense with in their proposed voyage down the gulfs of time; for many a gallant vessel, thought indestructible in its age, has perished;--many a load of words, expected to be in eternal demand, gone to join the wrecks of self-love, or rotted in the warehouses of change and vicissitude. I have said the more on this point, because in an age when the true inspiration has undoubtedly been reawakened by Coleridge and his fellows, and we have so many new poets coming forward, it may be as well to give a general warning against that tendency to an accumulation and ostentation of _thoughts_, which is meant to be a refutation in full of the pretensions of all poetry less cogitabund, whatever may be the requirements of its class. Young writers should bear in mind, that even some of the very best materials for poetry are not poetry built; and that the smallest marble shrine, of exquisite workmanship, outvalues all that architect ever chipped away. Whatever can be so dispensed with is rubbish.

_Variety_ in versification consists in whatsoever can be done for the prevention of monotony, by diversity of stops and cadences, distribution of emphasis, and retardation and acceleration of time; for the whole real secret of versification is a musical secret, and is not attainable to any vital effect, save by the ear of genius. All the mere knowledge of feet and numbers, of accent and quantity, will no more impart it, than a knowledge of the 'Guide to Music' will make a Beethoven or a Paisiello. It is a matter of sensibility and imagination; of the beautiful in poetical passion, accompanied by musical; of the imperative necessity for a pause here, and a cadence there, and a quicker or slower utterance in this or that place, created by analogies of sound with sense, by the fluctuations of feeling, by the demands of the gods and graces that visit the poet's harp, as the winds visit that of Aeolus. The same time and quantity which are occasioned by the spiritual part of this secret, thus become its formal ones,--not feet and syllables, long and short, iambics or trochees; which are the reduction of it to its _less_ than dry bones. You might get, for instance, not only ten and eleven, but thirteen or fourteen syllables into a rhyming, as well as blank, heroical verse, if time and the feeling permitted; and in irregular measure this is often done; just as musicians put twenty notes in a bar instead of two, quavers instead of minims, according as the feeling they are expressing impels them to fill up the time with short and hurried notes, or with long; or as the choristers in a cathedral retard or precipitate the words of the chant, according as the quantity of its notes, and the colon which divides the verse of the psalm, conspire to demand it. Had the moderns borne this principle in mind when they settled the prevailing systems of verse, instead of learning them, as they appear to have done, from the first drawling and one-syllabled notation of the church hymns, we should have retained all the advantages of the more numerous versification of the ancients, without being compelled to fancy that there was no alternative for us between our syllabical uniformity and the hexameters or other special forms unsuited to our tongues. But to leave this question alone, we will present the reader with a few sufficing specimens of the difference between monotony and variety in versification, first from Pope, Dryden, and Milton, and next from Gay and Coleridge. The following is the boasted melody of the nevertheless exquisite poet of the _Rape of the Lock_,--exquisite in his wit and fancy, though not in his numbers. The reader will observe that it is literally _see-saw_, like the rising and falling of a plank, with a light person at one end who is jerked up in the briefer time, and a heavier one who is set down more leisurely at the other. It is in the otherwise charming description of the heroine of that poem:

On her white breast--a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss--and infidels adore;
Her lively looks--a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes--and as unfix'd as those;
Favours to none--to all she smiles extends,
Oft she rejects--but never once offends;
Bright as the sun--her eyes the gazers strike,
And like the sun--they shine on all alike;
Yet graceful ease--and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults--if belles had faults to hide;
If to her share--some female errors fall,
Look on her face--and you'll forget them all.

Compare with this the description of Iphigenia in one of Dryden's stories from Boccaccio:

It happen'd--on a summer's holiday, }
That to the greenwood shade--he took his way, }
For Cymon shunn'd the church--and used not much to pray. }
His quarter-staff--which he could ne'er forsake,
Hung half before--and half behind his back;
He trudg'd along--not knowing what he sought,
And whistled as he went--for want of thought.

By chance conducted--or by thirst constrain'd,
The deep recesses of a grove he gain'd:--
Where--in a plain defended by a wood, }
Crept through the matted grass--a crystal flood, }
By which--an alabaster fountain stood; }
And on the margent of the fount was laid--
Attended by her slaves--a sleeping maid;
Like Dian and her nymphs--when, tir'd with sport,
To rest by cool Eurotas they resort.--
The dame herself--the goddess well express'd,
Not more distinguished by her purple vest--
Than by the charming features of the face--
And e'en in slumber--a superior grace:
Her comely limbs--compos'd with decent care, }
Her body shaded--by a light cymar, }
Her bosom to the view--was only bare; }
Where two beginning paps were scarcely spied--
For yet their places were but signified.--
The fanning wind upon her bosom blows-- }
To meet the fanning wind--the bosom rose; }
The fanning wind--and purling stream--continue her repose. }

For a further variety take, from the same author's _Theodore and Honoria_, a passage in which the couplets are run one into the other, and all of it modulated, like the former, according to the feeling demanded by the occasion:

Whilst listening to the murmuring leaves he stood--
More than a mile immers'd within the wood--
At once the wind was laid.|--The whispering sound
Was dumb.|--A rising earthquake rock'd the ground.
With deeper brown the grove was overspread-- }
A sudden horror seiz'd his giddy head-- }
And his ears tinkled--and his colour fled. }

Nature was in alarm.--Some danger nigh
Seem'd threaten'd--though unseen to mortal eye.
Unus'd to fear--he summon'd all his soul,
And stood collected in himself--and whole:
Not long.--

But for a crowning specimen of variety of pause and accent, apart from emotion, nothing can surpass the account, in _Paradise Lost_, of the Devil's search for an accomplice:

There was a plàce,
Nòw nòt--though Sìn--not Tìme--fìrst wroùght the chànge,
Where Tìgris--at the foot of Pàradise,
Into a gùlf--shòt under ground--till pàrt
Ròse up a foùntain by the Trèe of Lìfe.
_In_ with the river sunk--and _wìth_ it _ròse_
Sàtan--invòlv'd in rìsing mìst--then soùght
Whère to lie hìd.--Sèa he had search'd--and lànd
From Eden over Pòntus--and the pòol
Maeòtis--_ùp_ beyond the river _Ob_;
Dòwnward as fàr antàrctic;--and in lèngth
Wèst from Oròntes--to the òcean bàrr'd
At Dàriën--thènce to the lànd whère flòws
Gànges and Indus.--Thùs the òrb he ròam'd
With nàrrow sèarch;--and with inspèction dèep
Consìder'd èvery crèature--whìch of àll
Mòst opportùne mìght sèrve his wìles--and foùnd
The sèrpent--sùbtlest bèast of all the fièld.

If the reader cast his eye again over this passage, he will not find a verse in it which is not varied and harmonized in the most remarkable manner. Let him notice in particular that curious balancing of the lines in the sixth and tenth verses:

_In_ with the river sunk, &c.

and

_Up_ beyond the river _Ob_.

It might, indeed, be objected to the versification of Milton, that it exhibits too constant a perfection of this kind. It sometimes forces upon us too great a sense of consciousness on the part of the composer. We miss the first sprightly runnings of verse,--the ease and sweetness of spontaneity. Milton, I think, also too often condenses weight into heaviness.

Thus much concerning the chief of our two most popular measures. The other, called octo-syllabic, or the measure of eight syllables, offered such facilities for _namby-pamby_, that it had become a jest as early as the time of Shakespeare, who makes Touchstone call it the 'butterwoman's rate to market', and the 'very false gallop of verses'. It has been advocated, in opposition to the heroic measure, upon the ground that ten syllables lead a man into epithets and other superfluities, while eight syllables compress him into a sensible and pithy gentleman. But the heroic measure laughs at it. So far from compressing, it converts one line into two, and sacrifices everything to the quick and importunate return of the rhyme. With Dryden, compare Gay, even in the strength of Gay,--

The wind was high, the window shakes;
With sudden start the miser wakes;
Along the silent room he stalks,

(A miser never 'stalks'; but a rhyme was desired for 'walks')

Looks back, and trembles as he walks:
Each lock and every bolt he tries,
In every creek and corner pries;
Then opes the chest with treasure stor'd,
And stands in rapture o'er his hoard;

('Hoard' and 'treasure stor'd' are just made for one another)

But now, with sudden qualms possess'd,
He wrings his hands, he beats his breast;
By conscience stung, he wildly stares,
And thus his guilty soul declares.

And so he denounces his gold, as miser never denounced it; and sighs, because

Virtue resides on earth no more!

Coleridge saw the mistake which had been made with regard to this measure, and restored it to the beautiful freedom of which it was capable, by calling to mind the liberties allowed its old musical professors the minstrels, and dividing it by _time_ instead of _syllables_;--by the _beat of four_ into which you might get as many syllables as you could, instead of allotting eight syllables to the poor time, whatever it might have to say. He varied it further with alternate rhymes and stanzas, with rests and omissions precisely analogous to those in music, and rendered it altogether worthy to utter the manifold thoughts and feelings of himself and his lady Christabel. He even ventures, with an exquisite sense of solemn strangeness and licence (for there is witchcraft going forward), to introduce a couplet of blank verse, itself as mystically and beautifully modulated as anything in the music of Gluck or Weber.

'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;
Tu-whit!--Tu-whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
_How drowsily he crew._
Sir Leoline, the baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
_Fòur f[)o]r th[)e] qùart[)e]rs [)a]nd twèlve f[)o]r th[)e] hoùr,_
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud:
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

_Is the nìght chìlly and dàrk?
The nìght is chìlly, but nòt dàrk._
The thin grey cloud is spread on high,
It covers, but not hides, the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full,
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chilly, the cloud is grey;

(These are not superfluities, but mysterious returns of importunate feeling)

_'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the spring comes slowly up this way._
The lovely lady, Christabel,
Whom her father loves so well,
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle-gate?

She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothèd knight;
And shè [)i]n th[)e] midnight wood will pray
For the wèal [)o]f h[)e]r lover that's far away.

She stole along, she nothing spoke,
The sighs she heav'd were soft and low,
And nought was green upon the oak,
But moss and rarest mistletoe;
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
And in silence prayeth she.

The lady sprang up suddenly,
The lovely lady, Christabel!
It moan'd as near as near can be,
But what it is, she cannot tell.
On the other side it seems to be
Of th[)e] hùge, broàd-breàsted, òld oàk trèe.

The night is chill, the forest bare;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?

(This 'bleak moaning' is a witch's)

There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek--
There is not wind enough to twirl
_The òne rèd lèaf, the làst [)o]f [)i]ts clan,
That dànc[)e]s [)a]s òft[)e]n [)a]s dànce it càn,
Hàng[)i]ng s[)o] lìght and hàng[)i]ng s[)o] hìgh,
On th[)e] tòpmost twìg th[)a]t lo[)o]ks ùp [)a]t th[)e] sky._

Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
Jesu Maria, shield her well!
She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Drest in a robe of silken white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck and arms were bare:
Her blue-vein'd feet unsandall'd were;
And wildly glitter'd, here and there,
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess 'twas _frightful_ there to see
_A lady so richly clad as she--
Beautiful exceedingly._

The principle of Variety in Uniformity is here worked out in a style 'beyond the reach of art'. Everything is diversified according to the demand of the moment, of the sounds, the sights, the emotions; the very uniformity of the outline is gently varied; and yet we feel that _the whole is one and of the same character_, the single and sweet unconsciousness of the heroine making all the rest seem more conscious, and ghastly, and expectant. It is thus that _versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem_, and vindicates the pains that have been taken to show its importance. I know of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry; no poetry of a mean order accompanied with verse of the highest.

As to Rhyme, which might be thought too insignificant to mention, it is not at all so. The universal consent of modern Europe, and of the East in all ages, has made it one of the musical beauties of verse for all poetry but epic and dramatic, and even for the former with Southern Europe,--a sustainment for the enthusiasm, and a demand to enjoy. The mastery of it consists in never writing it for its own sake, or at least never appearing to do so; in knowing how to vary it, to give it novelty, to render it more or less strong, to divide it (when not in couplets) at the proper intervals, to repeat it many times where luxury or animal spirits demand it (see an instance in Titania's speech to the Fairies), to impress an affecting or startling remark with it, and to make it, in comic poetry, a new and surprising addition to the jest.

Large was his bounty and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send;
He gave to misery all he had, _a tear_;
He gain'd from heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) _a friend_.

Gray's _Elegy_.

The fops are proud of scandal; for they cry
At every lewd, low character, 'That's _I_'.

Dryden's _Prologue to the Pilgrim_.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
_About two hundred pounds a-year._
And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again? _Two hundred more._

_Hudibras._

Compound for sins they are _inclin'd to_,
By damning those they have _no mind to_.

_Id._

----Stor'd with deletery _med'cines_,
Which whosoever took is _dead since_.

_Id._

Sometimes it is a grace in a master like Butler to force his rhyme, thus showing a laughing wilful power over the most stubborn materials:

Win
The women, and make them draw in
The men, as Indians with a _fèmale_
Tame elephant inveigle _the_ male.

_Hudibras._

He made an instrument to know
If the moon shines at full or no;
That would, as soon as e'er she _shone, straight_
Whether 'twere day or night _demonstrate_;
Tell what her diameter to an _inch is_,
And prove that she's not made of _green cheese_.

_Id._

Pronounce it, by all means, _grinches_, to make the joke more wilful. The happiest triple rhyme, perhaps, that ever was written, is in _Don Juan_:

But oh! ye lords of ladies _intellectual_,
Inform us truly,--haven't they _hen-peck'd you all_?

The sweepingness of the assumption completes the flowing breadth of effect.

Dryden confessed that a rhyme often gave him a thought. Probably the happy word 'sprung' in the following passage from Ben Jonson was suggested by it; but then the poet must have had the feeling in him.

--Let our trumpets sound,
And cleave both air and ground
With beating of our drums.
Let every lyre be strung,
Harp, lute, theorbo, _sprung_
_With touch of dainty thumbs_.

Boileau's trick for appearing to rhyme naturally was to compose the second line of his couplet first! which gives one the crowning idea of the 'artificial school of poetry'. Perhaps the most perfect master of rhyme, the easiest and most abundant, was the greatest writer of comedy that the world has seen,--Molière.

If a young reader should ask, after all, What is the quickest way of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best, and so on? the answer is, the only and twofold way: first, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention; and, second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry partakes a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature; and no one can be completely such, who does not love, or take an interest in, everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy,--from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of the low. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realizes the greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates reference. It enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up towards the stature of its exalter.

If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the highest? I should say, undoubtedly, the Epic; for it includes the drama, with narration besides; or the speaking and action of the characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose utmost address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. Whether this class has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial; for Shakespeare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claimant is Homer; though, if a judgement may be drawn from his early narratives (_Venus and Adonis_, and the _Rape of Lucrece_), it is to be doubted whether even Shakespeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfoetation of thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even in his plays;--if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to wish it away. Next to Homer and Shakespeare come such narrators as the less universal, but still intenser Dante; Milton, with his dignified imagination; the universal, profoundly simple Chaucer; and luxuriant, remote Spenser--immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes: then the great second-rate dramatists; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am, demand a place for them before Chaucer: then the airy yet robust universality of Ariosto; the hearty, out-of-door nature of Theocritus, also a universalist; the finest lyrical poets (who only take short flights, compared with the narrators); the purely contemplative poets who have more thought than feeling; the descriptive, satirical, didactic, epigrammatic. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the first poet of an inferior class may be superior to followers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted; otherwise Pope would be superior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope. Imagination, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest poets; feeling and thought the next; fancy (by itself) the next; wit the last. Thought by itself makes no poet at all; for the mere conclusions of the understanding can at best be only so many intellectual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious thought, stands a far better poetical chance; feeling being a sort of thought without the process of thinking,--a grasper of the truth without seeing it. And what is very remarkable, feeling seldom makes the blunders that thought does. An idle distinction has been made between taste and judgement. Taste is the very maker of judgement. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, or only handle it, and you will soon perceive the difference between judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract figment called judgement. The latter does but throw you into guesses and doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us in the gravest, and even subtlest, thinkers, whose taste is not proportionate to their mental perceptions; men like Donne, for instance; who, apart from accidental personal impressions, seem to look at nothing as it really is, but only as to what may be thought of it. Hence, on the other hand, the delightfulness of those poets who never violate truth of feeling, whether in things real or imaginary; who are always consistent with their object and its requirements; and who run the great round of nature, not to perplex and be perplexed, but to make themselves and us happy. And luckily, delightfulness is not incompatible with greatness, willing soever as men may be in their present imperfect state to set the power to subjugate above the power to please. Truth, of any great kind whatsoever, makes great writing. This is the reason why such poets as Ariosto, though not writing with a constant detail of thought and feeling like Dante, are justly considered great as well as delightful. Their greatness proves itself by the same truth of nature, and sustained power, though in a different way. Their action is not so crowded and weighty; their sphere has more territories less fertile; but it has enchantments of its own, which excess of thought would spoil,--luxuries, laughing graces, animal spirits; and not to recognize the beauty and greatness of these, treated as they treat them, is simply to be defective in sympathy. Every planet is not Mars or Saturn. There is also Venus and Mercury. There is one genius of the south, and another of the north, and others uniting both. The reader who is too thoughtless or too sensitive to like intensity of any sort, and he who is too thoughtful or too dull to like anything but the greatest possible stimulus of reflection or passion, are equally wanting in complexional fitness for a thorough enjoyment of books. Ariosto occasionally says as fine things as Dante, and Spenser as Shakespeare; but the business of both is to enjoy; and in order to partake their enjoyment to its full extent, you must feel what poetry is in the general as well as the particular, must be aware that there are different songs of the spheres, some fuller of notes, and others of a sustained delight; and as the former keep you perpetually alive to thought or passion, so from the latter you receive a constant harmonious sense of truth and beauty, more agreeable perhaps on the whole, though less exciting. Ariosto, for instance, does not _tell a story_ with the brevity and concentrated passion of Dante; every sentence is not so full of matter, nor the style so removed from the indifference of prose; yet you are charmed with a truth of another sort, equally characteristic of the writer, equally drawn from nature and substituting a healthy sense of enjoyment for intenser emotion. Exclusiveness of liking for this or that mode of truth, only shows, either that a reader's perceptions are limited, or that he would sacrifice truth itself to his favourite form of it. Sir Walter Raleigh, who was as trenchant with his pen as his sword, hailed the _Faerie Queene_ of his friend Spenser in verses in which he said that 'Petrarch' was thenceforward to be no more heard of; and that in all English poetry, there was nothing he counted 'of any price' but the effusions of the new author. Yet Petrarch is still living; Chaucer was not abolished by Sir Walter; and Shakespeare is thought somewhat valuable. A botanist might as well have said, that myrtles and oaks were to disappear, because acacias had come up. It is with the poet's creations, as with nature's, great or small. Wherever truth and beauty, whatever their amount, can be worthily shaped into verse, and answer to some demand for it in our hearts, there poetry is to be found; whether in productions grand and beautiful as some great event, or some mighty, leafy solitude, or no bigger and more pretending than a sweet face or a bunch of violets; whether in Homer's epic or Gray's _Elegy_, in the enchanted gardens of Ariosto and Spenser, or the very pot-herbs of the _Schoolmistress_ of Shenstone, the balms of the simplicity of a cottage. Not to know and feel this, is to be deficient in the universality of Nature herself, who is a poetess on the smallest as well as the largest scale, and who calls upon us to admire all her productions; not indeed with the same degree of admiration, but with no refusal of it, except to defect.

I cannot draw this essay towards its conclusion better than with three memorable words of Milton; who has said, that poetry, in comparison with science, is 'simple, sensuous, and passionate'. By simple, he means unperplexed and self-evident; by sensuous, genial and full of imagery; by passionate, excited and enthusiastic. I am aware that different constructions have been put on some of these words; but the context seems to me to necessitate those before us. I quote, however, not from the original, but from an extract in the _Remarks on Paradise Lost_ by Richardson.

What the poet has to cultivate above all things is love and truth;--what he has to avoid, like poison, is the fleeting and the false. He will get no good by proposing to be 'in earnest at the moment'. His earnestness must be innate and habitual; born with him, and felt to be his most precious inheritance. 'I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings,' says Coleridge, in the Preface to his Poems; 'and I consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its "_own exceeding great reward_"; it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.'

'Poetry', says Shelley, 'lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, _and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar_. It reproduces all that it represents; and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it co-exists. The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others: the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.'

I would not willingly say anything after perorations like these; but as treatises on poetry may chance to have auditors who think themselves called upon to vindicate the superiority of what is termed useful knowledge, it may be as well to add, that if the poet may be allowed to pique himself on any one thing more than another, compared with those who undervalue him, it is on that power of undervaluing nobody, and no attainments different from his own, which is given him by the very faculty of imagination they despise. The greater includes the less. They do not see that their inability to comprehend him argues the smaller capacity. No man recognizes the worth of utility more than the poet: he only desires that the meaning of the term may not come short of its greatness, and exclude the noblest necessities of his fellow-creatures. He is quite as much pleased, for instance, with the facilities for rapid conveyance afforded him by the railroad, as the dullest confiner of its advantages to that single idea, or as the greatest two-idea'd man who varies that single idea with hugging himself on his 'buttons' or his good dinner. But he sees also the beauty of the country through which he passes, of the towns, of the heavens, of the steam-engine itself, thundering and fuming along like a magic horse, of the affections that are carrying, perhaps, half the passengers on their journey, nay, of those of the great two-idea'd man; and, beyond all this, he discerns the incalculable amount of good, and knowledge, and refinement, and mutual consideration, which this wonderful invention is fitted to circulate over the globe, perhaps to the displacement of war itself, and certainly to the diffusion of millions of enjoyments.

'And a button-maker, after all, invented it!' cries our friend.

Pardon me--it was a nobleman. A button-maker may be a very excellent, and a very poetical man too, and yet not have been the first man visited by a sense of the gigantic powers of the combination of water and fire. It was a nobleman who first thought of this most poetical bit of science. It was a nobleman who first thought of it--a captain who first tried it--and a button-maker who perfected it. And he who put the nobleman on such thoughts was the great philosopher, Bacon, who said that poetry had 'something divine in it', and was necessary to the satisfaction of the human mind.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

1822-1888

THE CHOICE OF SUBJECTS IN POETRY

[Preface to 'Poems', 1853]

In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.

I have, in the present collection, omitted the Poem from which the volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great monuments of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust.

The representation of such a man's feelings must be interesting, if consistently drawn. We all naturally take pleasure, says Aristotle, in any imitation or representation whatever: this is the basis of our love of Poetry: and we take pleasure in them, he adds, because all knowledge is naturally agreeable to us; not to the philosopher only, but to mankind at large. Every representation therefore which is consistently drawn may be supposed to be interesting, inasmuch as it gratifies this natural interest in knowledge of all kinds. What is _not_ interesting, is that which does not add to our knowledge of any kind; that which is vaguely conceived and loosely drawn; a representation which is general, indeterminate, and faint, instead of being particular, precise, and firm.

Any accurate representation may therefore be expected to be interesting; but, if the representation be a poetical one, more than this is demanded. It is demanded, not only that it shall interest, but also that it shall inspirit and rejoice the reader: that it shall convey a charm, and infuse delight. For the Muses, as Hesiod says, were born that they might be 'a forgetfulness of evils, and a truce from cares'; and it is not enough that the Poet should add to the knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he should add to their happiness. 'All Art', says Schiller, 'is dedicated to Joy, and there is no higher and no more serious problem, than how to make men happy. The right Art is that alone, which creates the highest enjoyment.'

A poetical work, therefore, is not yet justified when it has been shown to be an accurate, and therefore interesting, representation; it has to be shown also that it is a representation from which men can derive enjoyment. In presence of the most tragic circumstances, represented in a work of Art, the feeling of enjoyment, as is well known, may still subsist: the representation of the most utter calamity, of the liveliest anguish, is not sufficient to destroy it: the more tragic the situation, the deeper becomes the enjoyment; and the situation is more tragic in proportion as it becomes more terrible.