Chapter XII: Part 12

----“hardby the reverent (!) ruines
Of a once glorious temple rear’d to Jove
Whose very rubbish ...
... yet beares
A deathlesse majesty, though now quite rac’d, [razed,]
Hurl’d down by wrath and lust of impious kings,
So that where holy Flamins [Flamens] wont to sing
Sweet hymnes to Heaven, there the daw and crow,
The ill-voyc’d raven, and still chattering pye,
Send out ungratefull sounds and loathsome filth;
Where statues and Joves acts were vively limbs,

* * * * *

Where tombs and beautious urnes of well dead men
Stood in assured rest,” etc.

The last verse and a half are worthy of Chapman; but why did not Mr. Halliwell, who explains _up-pont_ and _I um_, change “Joves acts were vively limbs” to “Jove’s acts were lively limned,” which was unquestionably what Marston wrote?

In the “Scourge of Villanie,” (Vol. III. p. 252,) there is a passage which till lately had a modern application in America, though happily archaic in England, which Mr. Halliwell suffers to stand thus:--

“Once Albion lived in such a cruel age
Than man did hold by servile vilenage:
Poore brats were slaves of bondmen that were borne,
And marted, sold: but that rude law is torne
And disannuld, as too too inhumane.”

This should read--

“_Man_ man did hold in servile villanage;
Poor brats were slaves (of bondmen that were born)”;

and perhaps some American poet will one day write in the past tense similar verses of the barbarity of his forefathers.

We will give one more scrap of Mr. Halliwell’s text:--

“Yfaith, why then, caprichious mirth,
Skip, light moriscoes, in our frolick blond,
Flagg’d veines, sweete, plump with fresh-infused joyes!”

which Marston, doubtless, wrote thus:--

“I’faith, why then, capricious Mirth,
Skip light moriscoes in our frolic blood!
Flagg’d veins, swell plump with fresh-infused joys!”

We have quoted only a few examples from among the scores that we had marked, and against such a style of “editing” we invoke the shade of Marston himself. In the Preface to the Second Edition of the “Fawn,” he says, “Reader, know I have perused this coppy, _to make some satisfaction for the first faulty impression; yet so urgent hath been my business that some errors have styll passed, which thy discretion may amend_.”

Literally, to be sure, Mr. Halliwell has availed himself of the permission of the poet, in leaving all emendation to the reader; but certainly he has been false to the spirit of it in his self-assumed office of editor. The notes to explain _up-pont_ and _I um_ give us a kind of standard of the highest intelligence which Mr. Halliwell dares to take for granted in the ordinary reader. Supposing this _nousometer_ of his to be a centigrade, in what hitherto unconceived depths of cold obstruction can he find his zero-point of entire idiocy? The expansive force of average wits cannot be reckoned upon, as we see, to drive them up as far as the temperate degree of misprints in one syllable, and those, too, in their native tongue. _A fortiori_, then, Mr. Halliwell is bound to lend us the aid of his great learning wherever his author has introduced foreign words and the old printers have made _pie_ of them. In a single case he has accepted his responsibility as dragoman, and the amount of his success is not such as to give us any poignant regret that he has everywhere else left us to our own devices. On p. 119, Vol. II., _Francischina_, a Dutchwoman, exclaims, “O, mine aderliver love.” Here is Mr. Halliwell’s note. “_Aderliver._--This is the speaker’s error for _alder-liever_, the best beloved by all.” Certainly not “the _speaker’s_ error,” for Marston was no such fool as intentionally to make a Dutchwoman blunder in her own language. But is it an error for _alderliever_? No, but for _alderliefster_. Mr. Halliwell might have found it in many an old Dutch song. For example, No. 96 of Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s “Niederländische Volkslieder” begins thus:--

“Mijn hert altijt heeft verlanghen
Naer u, die _alderliefste_ mijn.”

But does the word mean “best beloved by all”? No such thing, of course; but “best beloved of all,”--that is, by the speaker.

In “Antonio and Mellida” (Vol. I. pp. 50, 51) occur some Italian verses, and here we hoped to fare better; for Mr. Halliwell (as we learn from the title-page of his Dictionary) is a member of the “_Reale Academia di Firenze_.” This is the _Accademia della Crusca_, founded for the conservation of the Italian language in its purity, and it is rather a fatal symptom that Mr. Halliwell should indulge in the heresy of spelling _Accademia_ with only one _c_. But let us see what our Della Cruscan’s notions of conserving are. Here is a specimen:--

“Bassiammi, coglier l’ aura odorata
Che in sua neggia in quello dolce labra.
Dammi pimpero del tuo gradit’ amore.”

It is clear enough that we ought to read,

“Lasciami coglier,.... Che ha sua seggia,.... Dammi l’ impero.”

A Della Cruscan academician might at least have corrected by his dictionary the spelling and number of _labra_.

We think that we have sustained our indictment of Mr. Halliwell’s text with ample proof. The title of the book should have been, “The Works of John Marston, containing all the Misprints of the Original Copies, together with a few added for the First Time in this Edition, the whole carefully let alone by James Orchard Halliwell, F. R. S., F. S. A.” It occurs to us that Mr. Halliwell may be also a Fellow of the Geological Society, and may have caught from its members the enthusiasm which leads him to attach so extraordinary a value to every goose-track of the Elizabethan formation. It is bad enough to be, as Marston was, one of those middling poets whom neither gods nor men nor columns (Horace had never seen a newspaper) tolerate; but, really, even they do not deserve the frightful retribution of being reprinted by a Halliwell.

We have said that we could not feel even the dubious satisfaction of knowing that the blunders of the old copies had been faithfully followed in the reprinting. We see reason for doubting whether Mr. Halliwell ever read the proof-sheets. In his own notes we have found several mistakes. For instance, he refers to p. 159 when he means p. 153; he cites “I, but her _life_,” instead of “_lip_”; and he makes Spenser speak of “old Pithonus.” Marston is not an author of enough importance to make it desirable that we should be put in possession of all the corrupted readings of his text, were such a thing possible even with the most minute painstaking, and Mr. Halliwell’s edition loses its only claim to value the moment a doubt is cast upon the accuracy of its inaccuracies. It is a matter of special import to us (whose means of access to originals are exceedingly limited) that the English editors of our old authors should be faithful and trustworthy, and we have singled out Mr. Halliwell’s Marston for particular animadversion only because we think it on the whole the worst edition we ever saw of any author.

Having exposed the condition in which our editor has left the text, we proceed to test his competency in another respect, by examining some of the emendations and explanations of doubtful passages which he proposes. These are very few; but had they been even fewer, they had been too many.

Among the _dramatis personæ_ of the “Fawn,” as we said before, occurs “Granuffo, _a silent lord_.” He speaks only once during the play, and that in the last scene. In Act I. Scene 2, _Gonzago_ says, speaking to _Granuffo_,--

“Now, sure, thou art a man
Of a most learned _scilence_, and one whose words
Have bin most pretious to me.”

This seems quite plain, but Mr. Halliwell annotates thus: “_Scilence._--Query, _science_? The common reading, _silence_, may, however, be what is intended. That the spelling should have troubled Mr. Halliwell is remarkable; for elsewhere we find “god-boy” for “good-bye,” “seace” for “cease,” “bodies” for “boddice,” “pollice” for “policy,” “pitittying” for “pitying,” “scence” for “sense,” “Misenzius” for “Mezentius,” “Ferazes” for “Ferrarese,”--and plenty beside, equally odd. That he should have doubted the meaning is no less strange; for on p. 41 of the same play we read, “My Lord Granuffo, you may likewise stay, for I know _you’l say nothing_,”--on pp. 55, 56, “This Granuffo is a right wise good lord, _a man of excellent discourse and never speaks_,”--and on p. 94, we find the following dialogue:--

“_Gon._ My Lord Granuffo, this Fawne is an excellent fellow.
“_Don._ Silence.
“_Gon._ _I warrant you for my lord here._”

In the same play (p. 44) are these lines:--

“I apt for love?
Let lazy idlenes fild full of wine
Heated with meates, high fedde with lustfull ease
Goe dote on culler [color]. As for me, why, death a sence,
I court the ladie?”

This is Mr. Halliwell’s note: “_Death a sence._--‘Earth a sense,’ ed. 1633. Mr. Dilke suggests: ‘For me, why, earth’s as sensible.’ The original is not necessarily corrupt. It may mean,--why, you might as well think Death was a sense, one of the senses. See a like phrase at p. 77.” What help we should get by thinking Death one of the senses, it would demand another Œdipus to unriddle. Mr. Halliwell can astonish us no longer, but we are surprised at Mr. Dilke, the very competent editor of the “Old English Plays,” 1815. From him we might have hoped for better things. “Death o’ sense!” is an exclamation. Throughout these volumes we find _a_ for _o’_,--as, “a clock” for “o’clock,” “a the side” for “o’ the side.” A similar exclamation is to be found in three other places in the same play, where the sense is obvious. Mr. Halliwell refers to one of them on p. 77,--“Death a man! is she delivered?” The others are,--“Death a justice! are we in Normandy?” (p. 98); and “Death a discretion! if I should prove a foole now,” or, as given by Mr. Halliwell, “Death, a discretion!” Now let us apply Mr. Halliwell’s explanation. “Death a man!” you might as well think Death was a man, that is, one of the men!--or a discretion, that is, one of the discretions!--or a justice, that is, one of the quorum! We trust Mr. Halliwell may never have the editing of Bob Acres’s imprecations. “Odd’s triggers!” he would say, “that is, as odd as, or as strange as, triggers.”

Vol. III. p. 77, “the vote-killing mandrake.” Mr. Halliwell’s note is, “_vote-killing_.--‘Voice-killing,’ ed. 1613. It may well be doubted whether either be the correct reading.” He then gives a familiar citation from Browne’s “Vulgar Errors.” “Vote-killing” may be a mere misprint for “note-killing,” but “voice-killing” is certainly the better reading. Either, however, makes sense. Although Sir Thomas Browne does not allude to the deadly property of the mandrake’s shriek, yet Mr. Halliwell, who has edited Shakespeare, might have remembered the

“Would curses kill, _as doth the mandrake’s groan_.”
(Second Part of Henry VI., Act III. Scene 2.)

and the notes thereon in the _variorum_ edition. In Jacob Grimm’s “Deutsche Mythologie,” (Vol. II. p. 1154,) under the word _Alraun_, may be found a full account of the superstitions concerning the mandrake. “When it is dug up, it groans and shrieks so dreadfully that the digger will surely die. One must, therefore, before sunrise on a Friday, having first stopped one’s ears with wax or cotton-wool, take with him an entirely black dog without a white hair on him, make the sign of the cross three times over the _alraun_, and dig about it till the root holds only by thin fibres. Then tie these by a string to the tail of the dog, show him a piece of bread, and run away as fast as possible. The dog runs eagerly after the bread, pulls up the root, and falls stricken dead by its groan of pain.”

These, we believe, are the only instances in which Mr. Halliwell has ventured to give any opinion upon the text, except as to a palpable misprint, here and there. Two of these we have already cited. There is one other,--“p. 46, line 10. _Iuconstant._--An error for _inconstant_.” Wherever there is a real difficulty, he leaves us in the lurch. For example, in “What you Will,” he prints without comment,--

“Ha! he mount Chirall on the wings of fame!”
(Vol. I. p. 239.)

which should be “mount cheval,” as it is given in Mr. Dilke’s edition (Old English Plays, Vol. II. p. 222). We cite this, not as the worst, but the shortest, example at hand.

Some of Mr. Halliwell’s notes are useful and interesting,--as that on “keeling the pot,” and a few others,--but the greater part are utterly useless. He thinks it necessary, for instance, to explain that “_to speak pure foole_, is in sense equivalent to ‘I will speak like a pure fool,’”--that “belkt up” means “belched up,”--that “aprecocks” means “apricots.” He has notes also upon “meal-mouthed,” “luxuriousnesse,” “termagant,” “fico,” “estro,” “a nest of goblets,” which indicate either that the “ general reader” is a less intelligent person in England than in America, or that Mr. Halliwell’s standard of scholarship is very low. We ourselves, from our limited reading, can supply him with a reference which will explain the allusion to the “Scotch barnacle” much better than his citations from Sir John Maundeville and Giraldus Cambrensis,--namely, note 8, on page 179 of a Treatise on Worms, by Dr. Ramesey, court physician to Charles II.

* * * * *

We turn now to Mr. Hazlitt’s edition of Webster. We wish he had chosen Chapman; for Mr. Dyce’s Webster is hardly out of print, and, we believe, has just gone through a second and revised edition. Webster was a far more considerable man than Marston, and infinitely above him in genius. Without the poetic nature of Marlowe, or Chapman’s somewhat unwieldy vigor of thought, he had that inflammability of mind which, untempered by a solid understanding, made his plays a strange mixture of vivid expression, incoherent declamation, dramatic intensity, and extravagant conception of character. He was not, in the highest sense of the word, a great dramatist. Shakespeare is the only one of that age. Marlowe had a rare imagination, a delicacy of sense that made him the teacher of Shakespeare and Milton in versification, and was, perhaps, as purely a poet as any that England has produced; but his mind had no balance-wheel. Chapman abounds in splendid enthusiasms of diction, and now and then dilates our imaginations with suggestions of profound poetic depth. Ben Jonson was a conscientious and intelligent workman, whose plays glow, here and there, with the golden pollen of that poetic feeling with which his age impregnated all thought and expression; but his leading characteristic, like that of his great namesake, Samuel, was a hearty common sense, which fitted him rather to be a great critic than a great poet. He had a keen and ready eye for the comic in situation, but no humor. Fletcher was as much a poet as fancy and sentiment can make any man. Only Shakespeare wrote comedy and tragedy with truly ideal elevation and breadth. Only Shakespeare had that true sense of humor which, like the universal solvent sought by the alchemists, so fuses together all the elements of a character, (as in Falstaff,) that any question of good or evil, of dignified or ridiculous, is silenced by the apprehension of its thorough humanity. Rabelais shows gleams of it in Panurge; but, in our opinion, no man ever possessed it in an equal degree with Shakespeare, except Cervantes; no man has since shown anything like an approach to it, (for Molière’s quality was comic power rather than humor,) except Sterne, Fielding, and perhaps Richter. Only Shakespeare was endowed with that healthy equilibrium of nature whose point of rest was midway between the imagination and the understanding,--that perfectly unruffled brain which reflected all objects with almost inhuman impartiality,--that outlook whose range was ecliptical, dominating all zones of human thought and action,--that power of veri-similar conception which could take away Richard III. from History, and Ulysses from Homer,--and that creative faculty whose equal touch is alike vivifying in Shallow and in Lear. He alone never seeks in abnormal and monstrous characters to evade the risks and responsibilities of absolute truthfulness, nor to stimulate a jaded imagination by Caligulan horrors of plot. He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as “great dramatists,”--as if Shakespeare did not differ from them in kind as well as in degree. Fine poets some of them were; but though imagination and the power of poetic expression are, singly, not uncommon gifts, and even in combination not without secular examples, yet it is the rarest of earthly phenomena to find them joined with those faculties of perception, arrangement, and plastic instinct in the loving union which alone makes a great dramatic poet possible. We suspect that Shakespeare will long continue the only specimen of the genus. His contemporaries, in their comedies, either force what they call “a humor” till it becomes fantastical, or hunt for jokes, like rat-catchers, in the sewers of human nature and of language. In their tragedies they become heavy without grandeur, like Jonson, or mistake the stilts for the cothurnus, as Chapman and Webster too often do. Every new edition of an Elizabethan dramatist is but the putting of another witness into the box to prove the inaccessibility of Shakespeare’s stand-point as poet and artist.

Webster’s most famous works are “The Duchess of Malfy” and “Vittoria Corombona,” but we are strongly inclined to call “The Devil’s Law-Case” his best play. The two former are in a great measure answerable for the “spasmodic” school of poets, since the extravagances of a man of genius are as sure of imitation as the equable self-possession of his higher moments is incapable of it. Webster had, no doubt, the primal requisite of a poet, imagination, but in him it was truly untamed, and Aristotle’s admirable distinction between the _Horrible_ and the _Terrible_ in tragedy was never better illustrated and confirmed than in the “Duchess” and “Vittoria.” His nature had something of the sleuth-hound quality in it, and a plot, to keep his mind eager on the trail, must be sprinkled with fresh blood at every turn. We do not forget all the fine things that Lamb has said of Webster, but, when Lamb wrote, the Elizabethan drama was an El Dorado, whose micaceous sand, even, was treasured as auriferous,--and no wonder, in a generation which admired the “Botanic Garden.” Webster is the Gherardo della Notte of his day, and himself calls his “Vittoria Corombona” a “night-piece.” Though he had no conception of Nature in its large sense, as something pervading a whole character and making it consistent with itself, nor of Art, as that which dominates an entire tragedy and makes all the characters foils to each other and tributaries to the catastrophe, yet there are flashes of Nature in his plays, struck out by the collisions of passion, and dramatic intensities of phrase for which it would be hard to find the match. The “prithee, undo this button” of Lear, by which Shakespeare makes us feel the swelling of the old king’s heart, and that the bodily results of mental anguish have gone so far as to deaden for the moment all intellectual consciousness and forbid all expression of grief, is hardly finer than the broken verse which Webster puts into the mouth of Ferdinand when he sees the body of his sister, murdered by his own procurement:--

“Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died young.”

He has not the condensing power of Shakespeare, who squeezed meaning into a phrase with an hydraulic press, but he could carve a cherry-stone with any of the _concettisti_, and abounds in imaginative quaintnesses that are worthy of Donne, and epigrammatic tersenesses that remind us of Fuller. Nor is he wanting in poetic phrases of the purest crystallization. Here are a few examples:--

“Oh, if there be another world i’ th’ moon,
As some fantastics dream, I could wish all _men_,
The whole race of them, for their inconstancy,
Sent thither to people that!”

(Old Chaucer was yet slier. After saying that Lamech was the first faithless lover, he adds,--

“And he invented _tents_, unless men lie,”--

implying that he was the prototype of nomadic men.)

“Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds:
In the trenches, for the soldier; in the wakeful study,
For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea,
For men of our profession [merchants]; all of which
Arise and spring up honor.”

(“Of all which,” Mr. Hazlitt prints it.)

“Poor Jolenta! should she hear of this,
She would not after the report keep fresh
So long as flowers on graves.”

“For sin and shame are ever tied together
With Gordian knots of such a strong thread spun,
They cannot without violence be undone.”

“One whose mind
Appears more like a ceremonious chapel
Full of sweet music, than a thronging presence.”

“What is death?
The safest trench i’ th’ world to keep man free
From Fortune’s gunshot.”

“It has ever been my opinion
That there are none love perfectly indeed,
But those that hang or drown themselves for love,”

says Julio, anticipating Butler’s

“But he that drowns, or blows out ’s brains,
The Devil’s in him, if he feigns.”

He also anticipated La Rochefoucauld and Byron in their apophthegm concerning woman’s last love. In “The Devil’s Law-Case,” Leonora says,--

“For, as we love our youngest children best,
So the last fruit of our affection,
Wherever we bestow it, is most strong,
Most violent, most unresistible;
Since ’t is, indeed, our latest harvest-home,
Last merriment ’fore winter.”

In editing Webster, Mr. Hazlitt had the advantage (except in a single doubtful play) of a predecessor in the Rev. Alexander Dyce, beyond all question the best living scholar of the literature of the times of Elizabeth and James I. If he give no proof of remarkable fitness for his task, he seems, at least, to have been diligent and painstaking. His notes are short and to the point, and--which we consider a great merit--at the foot of the page. If he had added a glossarial index, we should have been still better pleased. Mr. Hazlitt seems to have read over the text with some care, and he has had the good sense to modernize the orthography, or, as he says, has “observed the existing standard of spelling throughout.” Yet--for what reason we cannot imagine--he prints “I” for “ay,” taking the pains to explain it every time in a note, and retains “banquerout” and “coram” apparently for the sake of telling us that they mean “bankrupt” and “quorum.” He does not seem to have a quick ear for scansion, which would sometimes have assisted him to the true reading. We give an example or two:--

“The obligation wherein we all stood bound
Cannot be concealed [_cancelled_] without great reproach.”

“The realm, not they,
Must be regarded. Be [we] strong and bold,
We are the people’s factors.”

“Shall not be o’erburdened [_overburdened_] in our reign

“A merry heart
And a good stomach to [a] feast are all.”

“Have her meat serv’d up by bawds and ruffians” [_dele_ “up.”]

“Brother or father
In [a] dishonest suit, shall be to me.”

“What’s she in Rome your greatness cannot awe.
Or your rich purse purchase? Promises and threats.”
[_dele_ the second “your.”]

“Through clouds of envy and disast [rous] change.”

“The Devil drives, ’tis [it is] full time to go.”

He has overlooked some strange blunders. What is the meaning of

“Laugh at your misery, as foredeeming you
An idle meteor, which drawn forth, the earth
Would soon be lost i’ the air”?

We hardly need say that it should be

“An idle meteor, which, drawn forth the earth,
Would,” &c.

“_For_wardness” for _fro_wardness,” (Vol. II. p. 87,) “tennis-balls struck and ban_ded_” for “ban_died_,” (Ib. p. 275,) may be errors of the press; but

“Come, I’ll love you wisely:
That’s jealousy,”

has crept in by editorial oversight for “wisely, that ’s jealously.” So have

“Ay, the great emperor of [_or_] the mighty Cham”;

and

“This wit [_with_] taking long journeys”;

and

“Virginius, thou dost but supply my place,
I thine: Fortune hath lift me [_thee_] to my chair,
And thrown me headlong to thy pleading bar”;

and

“I’ll pour my soul into my daughter’s belly, [_body_,]
And with my soldier’s tears embalm her wounds.”

We suggest that the change of an _a_ to an _r_ would make sense of the following: “Come, my little punk, with thy two compositors, to this unlawful painting-house,” [printing-house,] which Mr. Hazlitt awkwardly endeavors to explain by this note on the word _compositors_,--“i. e. (conjecturally), making up the composition of the picture “! Our readers can decide for themselves;--the passage occurs Vol. I. p. 214.

We think Mr. Hazlitt’s notes are, in the main, good; but we should like to know his authority for saying that _pench_ means “the hole in a bench by which it was taken up,”--that “descant” means “look askant on,”--and that “I wis” is equivalent to “I surmise, imagine,” which it surely is not in the passage to which his note is appended. On page 9, Vol. I., we read in the text,

“To whom, my lord, bends thus your awe,”

and in the note, “i. e. submission. The original has _aue_, which, if it mean _ave_, is unmeaning here.” Did Mr. Hazlitt never see a picture of the Annunciation with _ave_ written on the scroll proceeding from the bending angel’s mouth? We find the same word in Vol. III. p. 217:--

“Whose station’s built on avees and applause.”

Vol. III. pp. 47, 48:--

“And then rest, gentle bones; yet pray
That when by the precise you are view’d,
A supersedeas be not sued
To remove you to a place more airy,
That in your stead they may keep chary
Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turned graves to viler uses.”

To the last verse Mr. Hazlitt appends this note, “Than that of burning men’s bones for fuel.” There is no allusion here to burning men’s bones, but simply to the desecration of graveyards by building warehouses upon them, in digging the foundations for which the bones would be thrown out. The allusion is, perhaps, to the “Churchyard of the Holy Trinity”;--see Stow’s _Survey_, ed. 1603, p. 126. Elsewhere, in the same play, Webster alludes bitterly to “begging church-land.”

Vol. I. p. 73, “And if he walk through the street, he ducks at the penthouses, like an ancient that dares not nourish at the oathtaking of the prætor for fear of the signposts.” Mr. Hazlitt’s note is, “_Ancient_ was a standard or flag; also an _ensign_, of which Skinner says it is a corruption. What the meaning of the simile is the present editor cannot suggest.” We confess we find no difficulty. The meaning plainly is, that he ducks for fear of hitting the penthouses, as an ensign on the Lord Mayor’s day dares not flourish his standard for fear of hitting the signposts. We suggest the query, whether _ancient_, in this sense, be not a corruption of the Italian word _anziano_.

Want of space compels us to leave many other passages, which we had marked for comment, unnoticed. We are surprised that Mr. Hazlitt, (see his Introduction to “Vittoria Corombona,”) in undertaking to give us some information concerning the Dukedom and Castle of Bracciano, should uniformly spell it _Brachiano_. Shakespeare’s _Petruchio_ might have put him on his guard. We should be glad also to know in what part of Italy he places _Malfi_.

Mr. Hazlitt’s General Introduction supplies us with no new information, but this was hardly to be expected where Mr. Dyce had already gone over the field. We wish that he had been able to give us better means of distinguishing the three almost contemporary John Websters one from the other, for we think the internal evidence is enough to show that all the plays attributed to the author of the “Duchess” and “Vittoria” could not have been written by the same person. On the whole, he has given us a very respectable, and certainly a very pretty, edition of an eminent poet.

* * * * *

We could almost forgive all other shortcomings of Mr. Smith’s _library_ for the great gift it brings us in the five volumes of Chapman’s translations. Coleridge, sending Chapman’s Homer to Wordsworth, writes, “What is stupidly said of Shakespeare is really true and appropriate of Chapman; mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties.... It is as truly an original poem as the Faery Queene;--it will give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than Pope’s epigrams, or Cowper’s cumbersome most anti-Homeric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet,--as Homer might have written had he lived in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in spite of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and harshnesses, which are, however, amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of language, all over spirit and feeling.”[28] From a passage of his Preface it would appear that Chapman had been criticised pretty sharply in his own day for amplifying his author. “And this one example I thought necessary to insert here to show my detractors that they have no reason to vilify my circumlocution sometimes, when their most approved Grecians, Homer’s interpreters generally, hold him fit to be so converted. Yet how much I differ, and with what authority, let my impartial and judicial reader judge. Always conceiving how pedantical and absurd an affectation it is in the interpretation of any author (much more of Homer) to turn him word for word, when (according to Horace and other best lawgivers to translators) it is the part of every knowing and judicial interpreter not to follow the number and order of words, but the material things themselves, and sentences to weigh diligently, and to clothe and adorn them with words and such a style and form of oration as are most apt for the language in which they are converted.” Again in his verses _To the Reader_, he speaks of

“The _ample transmigration_ to be shown
By nature-loving Poesy,”

and defends his own use of “needful periphrases,” and says that “word for word” translation is to

“Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender.”

“For even as different a production
Ask Greek and English: since, as they in sounds
And letters shun one form and unison,
So have their sense and elegancy bounds
In their distinguished natures, and require
Only a judgment to make both consent
In sense and elocution.”

There are two theories of translation,--literal paraphrase and free reproduction. At best, the translation of poetry is but an imitation of natural flowers in cambric or wax; and however much of likeness there may be, the aroma, whose charm of indefinable suggestion in the association of ideas is so powerful, is precisely what is lost irretrievably. From where it lurked in the immortal verse, a presence divined rather than ascertained, baffling the ear which it enchanted, escaping the grasp which yet it thrilled, airy, evanescent, imperishable, beckoning the imagination with promises better than any fulfilment,

“The parting _genius_ is with sighing sent.”

The paraphrase is a plaster-cast of the Grecian urn; the reproduction, if by a man of genius, is like Keats’s ode, which makes the figures move and the leaves tremble again, if not with the old life, with a sorcery which deceives the fancy. Of all English poets, Keats was the one to have translated Homer.

In any other than a mere prose version of a great poem, we have a right to demand that it give us at least an adequate impression of force and originality. We have a right to ask, If this poem were published now for the first time, as the work of a contemporary, should we read it, not with the same, but with anything like the same conviction of its freshness, vigor, and originality, its high level of style and its witchery of verse, that Homer, if now for the first time discovered, would infallibly beget in us? Perhaps this looks like asking for a new Homer to translate the old one; but if this be too much, it is certainly not unfair to insist that the feeling given us should be that of life, and not artifice.

The Homer of Chapman, whatever its defects, alone of all English versions has this crowning merit of being, where it is most successful, thoroughly alive. He has made for us the best poem that has yet been Englished out of Homer, and in so far gives us a truer idea of him. Of all translators he is farthest removed from the fault with which he charges others, when he says that “our divine master’s most ingenious imitating the life of things (which is the soul of a poem) is never respected nor perceived by his interpreters only standing pedantically on the grammar and words, utterly ignorant of the sense and grace of him.” His mastery of English is something wonderful even in an age of masters, when the language was still a mother-tongue, and not a contrivance of pedants and grammarians. He had a reverential sense of “our divine Homer’s depth and gravity, which will not open itself to the curious austerity of belaboring art, but only to the natural and most ingenious soul of our thrice-sacred Poesy.” His task was as holy to him as a version of Scripture; he justifies the tears of Achilles by those of Jesus, and the eloquence of his horse by that of Balaam’s less noble animal. He does not always keep close to his original, but he sins no more, even in this, than any of his rivals. He is especially great in the similes. Here he rouses himself always, and if his enthusiasm sometimes lead him to heighten a little, or even to add outright, he gives us a picture full of life and action, or of the grandeur and beauty of nature, as stirring to the fancy as his original. Of all who have attempted Homer, he has the topping merit of being inspired by him.

In the recent discussions of Homeric translation in England, it has always been taken for granted that we had or could have some adequate conception of Homer’s metre. Lord Derby, in his Preface, plainly assumes this. But there can be no greater fallacy. No human ears, much less Greek ones, could have endured what, with our mechanical knowledge of the verse, ignorance of the accent, and English pronunciation, we blandly accept for such music as Homer chanted. We have utterly lost the tune and cannot reproduce it. Mr. Newman conjectures it to have been something like Yankee Doodle; Mr. Arnold is sure it was the English hexameter; and they are both partly right so far as we may trust our reasonable impressions; for, after all, an impression is all that we have. Cowper attempts to give the ring of the ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο by

“Dread-sounding, bounding on the silver bow,”

which only too fatally recalls the old Scottish dancing-tune,--

“Amaisit I gaisit
To see, led at command,
A strampant and rampant
Ferss lyon in his hand.”

The attempt was in the right direction, however, for Homer, like Dante and Shakespeare, like all who really command language, seems fond of playing with assonances. No doubt the Homeric verse consented at will to an eager rapidity, and no doubt also its general character is that of prolonged but unmonotonous roll. Everybody says it is like the long ridges of the sea, some overtopping their neighbors a little, each with an independent undulation of its crest, yet all driven by a common impulse, and breaking, not with the sudden snap of an unyielding material, but one after the other, with a stately curve, to slide back and mingle with those that follow. Chapman’s measure has the disadvantage of an association with Sternhold and Hopkins, but it has the merit of length, and, where he is in the right mood, is free, spirited, and sonorous. Above all, there is everywhere the movement of life and passion in it. Chapman was a master of verse, making it hurry, linger, or stop short, to suit the meaning. Like all great versifiers he must be read with study, for the slightest change of accent loses the expression of an entire passage. His great fault as a translator is that he takes fire too easily and runs beyond his author. Perhaps he _intensifies_ too much, though this be a fault on the right side; he certainly sometimes weakens the force of passages by crowding in particulars which Homer had wisely omitted, for Homer’s simplicity is by no means mere simplicity of thought, nor, as it is often foolishly called, of nature. It is the simplicity of consummate art, the last achievement of poets and the invariable characteristic of the greatest among them. To Chapman’s mind once warmed to its work, the words are only a mist, suggesting, while it hides, the divine form of the original image or thought; and his imagination strives to body forth that, as he conceives it, in all its celestial proportions. Let us compare with Lord Derby’s version, as the latest, a passage where Chapman merely intensities (Book XIII., beginning at the 86th verse in Lord Derby, the 73d of Chapman, and the 76th of Homer):--

“Whom answered thus the son of Telamon:
‘My hands, too, grasp with firmer hold the spear,
My spirit, like thine, is stirred; I feel my feet
Instinct with fiery life; nor should I fear
With Hector, son of Priam, in his might
Alone to meet, and grapple to the death.’”

Thus Lord Derby. Chapman renders:--

“This Telamonius thus received: ‘So, to my thoughts, my hands
Burn with desire to toss my lance; _each foot beneath me stands
Bare on bright fire to use his speed_; my heart is raised so high,
That to encounter Hector’s self I long insatiately.’”

There is no question which version is the more energetic. Is Lord Derby’s nearer the original in being tamer? He has taken the “instinct with fiery life” from Chapman’s hint. The original has simply “restless,” or more familiarly “in a fidget.” There is nothing about “grappling to the death,” and “nor should I fear” is feeble where Chapman with his “long insatiately” is literal. We will give an example where Chapman has amplified his original (Book XVI. v. 426; Derby, 494; Chapman, 405):--

“Down jumped he from his chariot; down leapt his foe as light;
And as, on some far-looking rock, a cast of vultures fight,
Fly on each other, strike and truss, part, meet, and then stick by,
Tug both with crooked beaks and seres, cry, fight, and fight and cry,
So fiercely fought these angry kings.”[29]

Lord Derby’s version is nearer:--

“He said, and from his car, accoutred, sprang;
Patroclus saw and he too leaped to earth.
As on a lofty rock, with angry screams,
Hook-beaked, with talons curved, two vultures fight,
So with loud shouts these two to battle rushed.”

Chapman has made his first line out of two in Homer, but, granting the license, how rapid and springy is the verse! Lord Derby’s “withs” are not agreeable, his “shouts” is an ill-chosen word for a comparison with vultures, “talons curved” is feeble, and his verse is, as usual, mainly built up of little blocks of four syllables each. “To battle” also is vague. With whom? Homer says that they rushed each at other. We shall not discuss how much license is loyal in a translator, but, as we think his chief aim should be to give a feeling of that life and spirit which makes the immortality of his original, and is the very breath in the nostrils of all poetry, he has a right to adapt himself to the genius of his own language. If he would do justice to his author, he must make up in one passage for his unavoidable shortcomings in another. He may here and there take for granted certain exigencies of verse in his original which he feels in his own case. Even Dante, who boasted that no word had ever made him say what he did not wish, should have made an exception of rhyming ones, for these sometimes, even in so abundant a language as the Italian, have driven the most straightforward of poets into an awkward _détour_.

We give one more passage from Chapman:--

“And all in golden weeds
He clothed himself; the golden scourge most elegantly done
He took and mounted to his seat; and then the god begun
To drive his chariot through the waves. From whirl-pits every way
The whales exulted under him, and knew their king; the sea
For joy did open, and his horse so swift and lightly flew
The under axle-tree of brass no drop of water drew.”

Here the first half is sluggish and inadequate, but what surging vigor, what tumult of the sea, what swiftness, in the last! Here is Lord Derby’s attempt:--

“All clad in gold, the golden lash he grasped
Of curious work, and, mounting on his car,
Skimmed o’er the waves; from all the depths below
Gambolled around the monsters of the deep,
Acknowledging their king: the joyous sea
Parted her waves; swift flew the bounding steeds,
Nor was the brazen axle wet with spray.”

Chapman here is truer to his master, and the motion is in the verse itself. Lord Derby’s is description, and not picture. “Monsters of the deep” is an example of the hackneyed periphrases in which he abounds, like all men to whom language is a literary tradition, and not a living gift of the Muses. “_Lash_” is precisely the wrong word. Chapman is always great at sea. Here is another example from the Fourteenth Book:--

“And as, when with unwieldy waves _the great sea forefeels winds_
That both ways murmur, and no way her certain current finds,
But pants and swells confusedly, here goes, and there will stay,
Till on it air casts one firm wind, and then it rolls away.”

Observe how the somewhat ponderous movement of the first verse assists the meaning of the words.

He is great, too, in single phrases and lines:--

“And as, from top of some steep hill, the Lightener strips a cloud
_And lets a great sky out of Heaven_, in whose delightsome light
All prominent foreheads, forests, towers, and temples cheer the sight.’
(Book XVI. v. 286.)

The lion “lets his rough brows down so low they hide his eyes”; the flames “wrastle” in the woods; “rude feet dim the day with a fog of dust;” and so in a hundred other instances.

For an example of his more restrained vigor, take the speech of Sarpedon in the Twelfth Book of the Iliad, and for poetic beauty, the whole story of Ulysses and Nausikaa in the Odyssey. It was here that Keats made himself Grecian and learned to versify.

Mr. Hooper has done his work of editing well. But he has sometimes misapprehended his author, and distorted his meaning by faulty punctuation. In one of the passages already cited, Mr. Hooper’s text stands thus: “Lest I be prejudiced with opinion, to dissent of ignorance, or singularity.” All the commas which darken the sense should be removed. Chapman meant to say, “Lest I be condemned beforehand by people thinking I dissent out of ignorance or singularity.” (Iliad Vol. I. p. 23.) So on the next page the want of a hyphen makes nonsense: “And saw the round coming [round-coming] of this silver bow of our Phoebus,” that is, the crescent coming to the full circle. In the translations, too, the pointing needs reformation now and then, but shows, on the whole, a praiseworthy fidelity. We will give a few examples of what we believe to be errors on the part of Mr. Hooper, who, by the way, is weakest on points which concern the language of Chapman’s day. We follow the order of the text as most convenient.

“Bid” (Il. i.) is explained to mean “threaten, challenge,” where “offer” would be the right word.

“And cast
The offal of all to the deep.” (Il. i. 309.)

Surely a slip of Chapman’s pen. He must have intended to write “Of all the offal,” a transversion common with him and needed here to avoid a punning jingle.

“So much I must affirm our power exceeds th’ inhabitant.” (Il. ii. 110.)

Mr. Hooper’s note is “inhabiters, viz. of Troy.” “Inhabitant” is an adjective agreeing with “power.” Our power without exceeds that within.

“Yet all this time to stay,
Out of our judgments, for our end, and now to take our way
Without it were absurd and vile.” (Il. ii, 257.)

A note on this passage tells us that “out of judgments” means “against our inclinations.” It means simply “in accordance with our good judgment,” just as we still say “out of his wisdom.” Compare Il. iii. 63,

“Hector, because thy sharp reproof is _out of justice_ given, I
take it well.”

“And as Jove, brandishing a star which men a comet call, Hurls out
his curled hair abroad, that from his brand exhals A thousand
sparks.” (Il. iv. 85.)

Mr. Hooper’s note is “‘_Which men a comet call_’--so both the folios. Dr. Taylor has printed ‘_which man a comet calls_.’ This certainly suits the rhyme, but I adhere to Chapman’s text.” Both editors have misunderstood the passage. The fault is not in “call” but in “exhals,” a clear misprint for “exhall,” the spelling, as was common, being conformed to the visible rhyme. “That” means “so that” (a frequent Elizabethan construction) and “exhall” is governed by “sparks.” The meaning is, “As when Jove, brandishing a comet, hurls out its curled hair so that a thousand sparks exhale from its burning.”

“The _evicke_ skipping from the rock.”

Mr. Hooper tells us, “It is doubtful what this word really is. Dr. Taylor suggests that it may probably mean the _evict_, or doomed one--but? It is possible Chapman meant to Anglicize the Greek αἴξ; or should we read Ibex, as the αἴξ ἴξαλος was such?” The word means the _chamois_, and is merely the English form of the French _ibiche_. Dr. Taylor’s reading would amaze us were we not familiar with the commentators on Shakespeare.

“And now they _out-ray_ to your fleet.” (Il. v. 793.)

“_Out-ray_--spread out in array; abbreviated from array. Dr. Taylor says ‘rush out,’ from the Anglo-Saxon ‘_rean_,’ to flow; but there seems no necessity for such an etymology.” We should think not! Chapman, like Pope, made his first sketch from the French, and corrected it by the Greek. Those who would understand Chapman’s English must allow for traces of his French guide here and there. This is one of them, perhaps. The word is etymologically unrelated to _array_. It is merely the old French _oultréer_, a derivative of _ultra_. It means “they pass beyond their gates even to your fleet.” He had said just before that formerly “your foes durst not a foot address _without their ports_.” The word occurs again Il. xxiii. 413.

“When none, though many kings put on, could make his vaunt, he led
Tydides to renewed assault or issued first the dike.” (Il. viii. 217.)

“_Tydides_.--He led Tydides, i. e. Tydides he led. An unusual construction.” Not in the least. The old printers or authors sometimes put a comma where some connecting particle was left out. We had just now an instance where one took the place of _so_. Here it supplies _that_. “None could make his vaunt that he led (that is, was before) Tydides.” We still use the word in the same sense, as the “leading” horse in a race.

“And all did wilfully expect the silver-throned morn.” (Il. viii. 497.)

“_Wilfully_--willingly, anxiously.” _Wishfully_, as elsewhere in Chapman.

“And as, upon a rich man’s crop of barley or of wheat,
Opposed for swiftness at their work, a sort of reapers sweat.”

“_Opposed_--standing opposite to one another for expedition’s sake.” We hope Mr. Hooper understood his own note, for it baffles us utterly. The meaning is simply “pitted against each other to see which will reap most swiftly.” In a note (Il. xi. 417.) we are told that “the etymology [of _lucern_] seems uncertain.” It is nothing more than a corruption of the old French _leucerve_ (_loup-cervier_).

“I would then make-in in deed and steep
My income in their bloods.” (Il. xvii. 481.)

“_Income_--communication, or infusion, of courage from the Gods. The word in this sense Todd says was a favorite in Cromwell’s time.” A surprising note! _Income_ here means nothing more than “onfall,” as the context shows.

“To put the best in _ure_.” (Il. xvii. 545.)

“_Ure_--use. Skinner thinks it a contraction of _usura_. It is frequent in Chaucer. Todd gives examples from Hooker and L’Estrange.” The word is common enough, but how Mr. Hooper could seriously quote good old Skinner for such an etymology we cannot conceive. It does not mean “in use,” but “to work,” being merely the English form of _en œuvre_, as “manure” is of _manœuvrer_.

“So troop-meal Troy pursued a while.” (Il. xvii. 634.)

“_Troop-meal_--in troops, troop by troop. So piecemeal. To _meal_ was to mingle, mix together; from the French _mêler_.... The reader would do well to consult Dr. Jamieson’s excellent ‘Dictionary of the Scottish Language’ in voce ‘_mell_.’” No doubt the reader might profit by consulting it under any other word beginning with M, and any of them would be as much to the purpose as _mell_. _Troop-meal_, like _inch-meal_, _piece-meal_, implies separation, not mingling, and is from a Teutonic root. Mr. Hooper is always weak in his linguistic. In a note on Il. xviii. 144, he informs us that “To _sterve_ is to _die_; and the sense of _starve_, with cold or hunger originated in the 17th century.” We would it had! But we suspect that men had died of both these diseases earlier. What he should have said was that the restriction of meaning to dying with hunger was modern.

Il. xx. 239 we have “the God’s” for “the Gods’” and a few lines below “Anchisiades’” for “Anchisiades’s”; Il. xxi. 407, “press’d” for “prest.”

We had noted a considerable number of other slips, but we will mention only two more. “Treen broches” is explained to mean “branches of trees.” (Hymn to Hermes, 227.) It means “wooden spits.” In the Bacchus (28, 29) Mr. Hooper restores a corrupt reading which Mr. Singer (for a wonder) had set right. He prints,--

“Nay, which of all the Pow’r fully-divined
Esteem ye him?”

Of course it should be powerfully-divined, for otherwise we must read “Pow’rs.” The five volumes need a very careful revision in their punctuation, and in another edition we should advise Mr. Hooper to strike out every note in which he has been tempted into etymology.

* * * * *

We come next to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Lovelace. Three short pieces of Lovelace’s have lived, and deserved to live: “To Lucasta from Prison,” “To Lucasta on going to the Wars,” and “The Grasshopper.” They are graceful, airy, and nicely finished. The last especially is a charming poem, delicate in expression, and full of quaint fancy, which only in the latter half is strained to conceit. As the verses of a gentleman they are among the best, though not of a very high order as poetry. He is to be classed with the _lucky_ authors who, without great powers, have written one or two pieces so facile in thought and fortunate in phrase as to be carried lightly in the memory, poems in which analysis finds little, but which are charming in their frail completeness. This faculty of hitting on the precise _lilt_ of thought and measure that shall catch the universal ear and sing themselves in everybody’s memory, is a rare gift. We have heard many ingenious persons try to explain the _cling_ of such a poem as “The Burial of Sir John Moore,” and the result of all seemed to be, that there were certain verses that were good, not because of their goodness, but because one could not forget them. They have the great merit of being portable, and we have to carry so much luggage through life, that we should be thankful for what will pack easily and take up no room.