Chapter IV: Part 4

Little or nothing more than the name of the author of this fine old heroic ballad, is at present known. Dr. Percy's conjecture with regard to the date of its composition, may or may not be correct. But I will assume it as an accurate one. The manuscript copy belonging to the Harleian Library, has the name of Richard Sheale attached to it. Sheale perhaps lived in the reign of Henry VI, and as probably was from the north country. He may indeed have been a minstrel in the Percy family; but this is mere conjecture. In reference to some of the characteristics of this ballad, it strikes me that Sir Philip Sidney's remark, in his "Apology for Poetry," is in very bad taste. After regretting that so fine and stirring an old song should be "apparelled in the dust and cobwebb of that uncivill age," he asks, "what would it not work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" Dr. Percy speaks of the song as one "recommended to the most refined, and endeared to the most simple reader, by genuine strokes of nature and artless passion." Are gorgeous eloquence and nature fit comates? Would the natural and manly simplicity, for which the greatest works of man are so renowned, be well exchanged for the diffuse and ornate style of a Grecian lyric poet? I think not. As for this old ballad's roughness, I think _that_ rather a merit. Bating some uncouthness, I think the language really better, much better adapted to the subject than our own more polished diction might be possibly. Dr. Johnson, in a paper of the Rambler, treats of the adaptation of sound to meaning; and quotes many examples illustrating his ground, from Greek, Latin and English poetry. He certainly is correct to a certain extent, if not wholly, and I will apply his rules to the present case.

"Through the hunt and battle, the author's style is fiery and severe, with the exception of a stanza or more, in which Percy and Douglass rest upon their swords, and after the manner of Homer's heroes, applaud each the other's gallantry. The poet in this place, seems to pause in the same graceful rest which he has given his heroes. But the battle renews; and his metre _personates_ its stormy vigor. At last the minstrel sinks from his high place into the hollows of grief; for the 'weeping widows' are before us, with 'birch and hazel biers,' carrying the dead men to their burial. And then with what skill does he shake off individual tenderness, and proclaim the 'national regret!'"

All in all--beauty on beauty-- Chevy Chase has never been matched, and does much better "unapparelled in the gorgeous eloquence of a Pindar." Truly, the obscure author of this one ballad stands alone--the father of English heroic poetry.

"Res gestæ, regumque, ducumque, et tristia bella,
Quo scribi possent numero monstravit Homerus."

But he has attained excellence, without following the path which Homer "has shown;" and without using Homer's "numbers," has sung a great song.

III. Next on the list of those poets to whom the English language and English literature are indebted, stand Wyatt and Surrey. With regard to the first, I will hardly say more than that he was an Anacreon compared with his contemporaries. Rather gentle in his genius, he wrote love verses intuitively, and added in no slight degree to the melody of the language.

But Surrey added more. His love for the fair haired Lady Geraldine sent him "knight-erranting" among the romances and romantic grounds of Italy; and he is said to have been so well acquainted with the Tuscan tongue, and so well read in Italian authors, as to be a marvel, even in the days when Venice was the Paris of young English noblemen, and the Appenines their Switzerland. It may be as well to quote a few lines from Surrey's poems, as he has the reputation of having introduced much of the southern softness into English verse.

"_Lines writ by Henry Howard Lord Surrey--being a complaynt that hys Ladie, after she knew of hys love, kept her face always hydden from hym._

"I never sawe my ladie laye apart
Her cornet blacke, in colde, nor yet in heate,
Sith first she knew my griefe was growen so greate,
(Whyche other fansies dryveth from my harte,
That to myself, I do the thought reserve,--
The which, unwares, did wound my woful brest;)
But on her face, mine eies mote never rest:
Yet synce I knew I dyd her love and serve,
Her golden tresses--cladd allway with blacke,
Her smyling lookes, that had thus evermore,
And that restraynes which I desire so sore:
So doth this cornet governe me alacke!
In sommer sunne, in winter's breathe, a frost
Wherebye the lyghte of her fayre lookes I lost."

The reader will recognize this as a paraphrase, or indeed almost literal version of one of Petrarch's _canzoni_. He may, if curious enough, amuse himself by studying it with the original, not for the purpose of detecting the very visible theft, but for comparing a specimen of English verse, while not nearly escaped from its rudeness, with the Tuscan of perhaps the most musical of all bards.

The sonnet, so frequently used by Surrey, and after him by Shakspeare and nearly every other English poet, was (according to Sir W. Jones,) introduced from Arabia into Italy: thence, with other stanzaic structures into England by Chaucer, who in one of his visits to the south, is reported to have met Petrarch and made his friendship, in Genoa. Surrey was doubtless the most skilful sonnet-weaver of his day, and though too fond of the inversion, for which Milton is so much blamed, for the most part pleases both ear and understanding. His end was an unfortunate one. Henry VIII added the poet lover to the list of those whom tyranny brought to the scaffold. He was beheaded in the year 1500.

IV. Sir Philip Sidney was famous throughout all Europe for his intellectual and personal accomplishments. He was spoken of as a candidate for the throne of Poland on the death of Sigismond Augustus, but Elizabeth was unwilling to lose the "prime jewel of all England," and retained him at the English court. It is more than probable that he would have been defeated; for the claim of a Duke of Anjou, pleaded by so wily an advocate as Montluc, "the happy embassador," would have been more than strong enough to vanquish that of an honest, open-minded British gentleman.

The character of Sir Philip Sidney was without reproach. Not unlike Lord Surrey in his renown, he was yet more a hero than his illustrious precursor. Lord Surrey was an accomplished and illustrious patrician, the first of his age; but Sidney was a refinement upon nobility. He was like the abstract and essence of romantic fiction, having the courage (but not the barbarity) of the _preux chevaliers_ of ancient time--their unwearied patience--their tender and stainless attachment. He was a hero of chivalry, without the grossness and frailty of the flesh. He lived beloved and admired, and died universally and deservedly lamented. He is the last of those who have passed into a marvel; and he is now remembered almost as the ideal personification of a true knight.

Sir Philip Sidney's poetry was not without the faults of his time. It abounds with conceits and strained similes, and the versification is occasionally cramped. Nevertheless, many of his sonnets contain beautiful images and deep sentiment, (such as the 31, 82, 84, and others,) though a little impoverished by this alloy. But Sidney's reputation was won upon crimson fields, as well as upon poetic mountains. He wooed Bellona, as well as the Muses; and his last great act, when dying at Zutphen, is of itself enough to justify the high admiration of his countrymen.[7]

[Footnote 7: Vid. article "_Poetry_," in No. LXXXIII of Edin. Review, April 1825.]

V. Edmond Spenser--Dryden's "father," and Southey's "dear master"--the poet who "threw a rainbow across the heaven of poetry," was born in London. He found, at the age of eighteen or thereabout, that a cousin whom he loved would not receive his suit, and went into Cumberland, where, to pour out his sorrow, he wrote the most mournful portions of the "Shepherd's Calendar." He was for some time Secretary in Ireland,[8] under Lord Grey de Wilton, where his Fairy Queen was conceived and partly written; and died A.D. 1598, aged forty-five years.

[Footnote 8: If I mistake not, Edmund Burke spent a portion of his boyhood within sight of the garden where Spenser composed much of his Fairy Queen. What better spot could there be for the education of genius? This life, among scenes constantly exciting associations of the most poetical and refined nature, may have assisted in giving Burke's mind the poetic coloring for which it was so remarkable.]

Spenser and the other "fathers" of the English schools of poetry should rather be called "masters of ceremonies," for they certainly did not _beget_ their different orders of composition. Italy was the cradle of these orders, not England. I will however adopt the first and common title, and call Spenser father of the English allegorical and pastoral poetry. And on these I will say a few words before I proceed to his more striking excellencies.

The ancients were particularly fond of allegory. A field as vast as could be desired was here opened for their poets. The whole heathen mythology was a splendid allegory. Virgil's Ænead may be called an allegory. As Eneas conducted the remnant of his countrymen from the Trojan ruins to a new settlement in Italy, so Augustus, from the ruins of the aristocracy, modelled a completely new government. I have not leisure to pursue the parallel. Homer has in the Odyssey many allegorical fables; as for instance those of Circe and Calypso. In imitation of these, Virgil introduced his Dido. Going farther on we find the love of allegory increasing in Italy. Ariosto's Alcina and the Armida of Tasso are "copies from the copy" of Virgil; and coming on English ground we find Spenser stealing from Tasso. As for the kinds of poetry in which allegory should be used--In an epic, persons of the "imaginary life," such as Virgil's

"_Strife_ that shakes
Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes,"

and Spenser's "gnawing JEALOUSY sitting alone and biting his bitter lips"--should by no means enter into the action of the poem. Virgil knew this and made them nothing more than "_gate posts to his entrance into Hades_."[9] The introduction of allegorical personages into the drama is unpardonable. Even in ages when men were laid open by superstition to the insinuating beauty of allegory; when the ignorant imagined every rock to be the pent-house of some spirit; when the timid walked abroad in fear and trembling, and when in consequence of this feeling allegorical paintings even of a wild sort seemed natural and agreeable to truth, its introduction into the drama met with but little applause. Æschylus has often been criticised severely for his frequent errors of this sort; one of which is his introduction of STRENGTH, as a character who assists Vulcan in binding Prometheus to his rock.

[Footnote 9: All lavish embellishment--such as Tasso's description of the bower of bliss, in his "Jerusalem," which the reader will find transplanted into the second book of Spenser's Fairy Queen--should likewise be excluded from the epic. This species of poem--the grandest of _all_ species--should be superior to such embellishment.]

Though excluded from epic and dramatic poetry, it may be used with great aptness in poems of a descriptive nature. We thus find that pastoral poetry often admits of an allegorical vein. Spenser knew this, and has given us a happy instance in that eclogue of his Shepherd's Calendar, in which he represents the union of the rivers Briqoq and Mulla. He has still happier instances in _Æcloga tertia_ and in _Æcloga quinta_.

Spenser likewise acted as master of ceremonies to pastoral poetry in its introduction to English literature. The great father of this order was Theocritus. His follower was Virgil, who combined very skilfully the _merum rus_ of the Idyllia with his own courtly grace. Tasso in his Aminta imitated Virgil, and was in turn imitated by a host of contemporary and subsequent poets among his countrymen. Without copying Tasso in this as in other things, Spenser became the head of English pastoral poetry, and has never yet been excelled.

Mr. Pope's remarks in the preface to his pastorals are evidently correct. "The simplest states of life and feeling best suit this style of poetry." Spenser's early pastorals, written

"amongst the cooly shade
Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore,"

are minute and beautiful pictures of the country and of country life. Indeed, one of his poems may be likened to a country scene. Here are musical brooks; there old woods cloaked in ornamental foliage; here a succession of bold thoughts shaped into a chain of tall hills; there the low vale of quiet unobtrusive beauty--all this, too, mellowed by the gawsy twilight of love. Such are Spenser's early pictures, but after mingling with the world, and losing his primitive simplicity of temper, the elegance and refinement which gave such a charm to the "Fairy Queen," spoiled his rural poetry. It was no longer a picture of nature: his plant was a hot house one: his fruit had the _hortus siccus_ flavor: his nightingales were caged, and sang from an embayed window. This difference may be seen by comparing "Colin come home again" with its predecessors.

But the Fairy Queen is his wonderful work. The elegant and sometimes magnificent beauty of that lay, where the "great bard"

"In sage and solemn tunes hath sung
Of tourneys and of trophies hung,
Of forests and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear"--

has elevated his name to the high place which it fills with such brilliancy. Every poetic palate will relish "the grapes of hidden meaning so abundant under the vine-leaves of his exquisite allegory."

On the whole, as for Spenser as a _natural_ poet, all unite in pronouncing him imaginative, bold, and even witty: as an artist, or _educated_ poet, skilful, elegant, and full. His language is, for the most part, rich and expressive; his verse (remarkably various in arrangement) could scarcely be more melodious and pleasing. I will close this portion of my remarks with a quotation, the source of which I forget, but which I find pencilled upon the margin of my Chaucer.

"Spenser and Chaucer, instead of being forced into death by their antiquated language, will, by their use of it, perpetuate its remembrance. The ancient English is their servant. They are not and never will be its victims."

VI. These are biographical times. A moiety of centuries ago, not even a Shakspeare could find a biographer willing to follow the windings of his career. We know nothing more of him _certainly_ than that he remained on the Avon with his wife Anne Hatheway--his senior by eight years--and three children, the last two of which were twins--until ambition led him to London. That there his plays were written; and his evenings spent with Ned Alleyne, Ben Jonson, Marlow and others, in drinking canary wine, and in "tilting in the lists of literary controversie." We have little knowledge of their pleasant discussions--

"words--
Spoke in the mermaid"--

but in such a company, wit and humor must have been gods of the entertainment. We are told that in table debate, "Jonson was like a great Spanish gallion, and Shakspeare an English man of war. Master Jonson was built far higher in learning; solid but slow in his performances. Shakspeare lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." We can easily fancy the plethoric Ben writhing and chafing under the quickness of his adversary's attacks.

Within the last twenty years Shakspeare has become popular with the German critics--the best perhaps of the age. The critical mania has been imparted to the English, and I have observed lately in the English Magazines several articles pretty much in the German tone. One writer, for example, is engaged in building up a "life" of the poet from rather strange _materiel_--his sonnets. This idea was started by Schlegel, I believe--and is certainly a happy one: for all authors have sorrows, and at times must seek relief by giving them utterance. Indeed the works of an author's leisure moments are usually all of one piece--all of the same tone--all harping upon the one black thread in his fortune. Shakspeare asks in one of his sonnets--

"Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed
That every word doth almost tell my name
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument."

This brooding and inward looking is a common habit.[10] Chatterton, Kirk White, and Dermody, have dissected their very hearts. Byron lives in his vagrant "Childe," and bating some most disgusting affectation in his Corsair--Lara--Giaour. Shelley groans with his Prometheus--breathes in his Laon--and draws his own image with the life of his Helen.[11] This may have been the case with Shakspeare. Giving free scope to his heart's inmost workings, he has given posterity, in his sonnets, a record of feeling so expressed as to render it easy to build upon it a fabric of fact--a true and accurate 'life.'

[Footnote 10: Bulwer says in the Disowned, that his _effort_ is, at all times to "avoid a self-picture in his writings." The very fact that an _effort_ must be made, proves the existence of this yearning egotism. In writings never intended for the world's eye there is no drawback to the inclination, and it is followed. Shakspeare's sonnets were not "writ for the world."]

[Footnote 11: This self-identity is not so visible in the tragedies of Byron and Shelley, for the simple reason, perhaps, that these are more the works of art--more the creatures of the brain than heart--abound more in skill than feeling.]

His sonnets, as they now stand, are hardly intelligible, but when placed in proper order, tell one unbroken story. We learn, _inter alia_ that Shakspeare had a _male_ friend whom he loved most dearly: that this friend "broke a two-fold truth"--and the question is, in what manner. Searching farther we gain the clew, and find that the poet had imbodied his vision of poetic loveliness--his _Iris en air_--in one, whom in the midst of his dream of purity and beauty unearthly, he found "as black as hell and as dark as night." That friend wins her to his arms, and this is where he is "led to riot" and to break a "two-fold truth." The poet finally discovers her wretched nature and asks--

"Why should my heart think that a several plot
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?"

Then pauses in the midst of the deeply affecting portraiture of self-feeling, to whisper the exquisite self-excuse: "How could

Love's eye be true
That is so vexed with watching and with tears."

Perhaps self-portraiture might be even detected in his plays. Goethe's comprehension of the incomprehensible Hamlet, (viz. That with a great and philosophic mind he was too shrinking and sensitive for the execution of his high resolves--in a word, that like a porcelain jar attempting to enfold the roots of an oak, until shattered in the attempt, his shrinking nature tottered under the pressure of a purpose too mighty,) may have been a picture of Shakspeare's self: violent ambition acting upon the poet's fine nature, as other passions did upon that of Hamlet.

I have occupied so much space with that part of Shakspeare's history little known, that it has given me an excuse for shunning the beaten track altogether. I will however quote Dryden's eulogy, as it is short and famous for its pith.[12]

"He was the man who of all modern and perhaps all ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clinches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

'Quantum lenta solent inter viberna cupressi.'"

[Footnote 12: Dryden lauds the "commixture of comedy and tragedy," of which Shakspeare has been so often guilty. This always seemed to me unhappy. The "tragi-comic feeling" is at best an April day matter--a fit of the hystericks--neither downright weeping, nor hearty laughter. Or, yielding that sorrow is deeply impressed on the mind by the melancholy pictures of the one portion, will a sudden transition to merriment wipe it away? Dryden says, "why should we imagine the soul of man more heavy than his senses? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object to a pleasant in a very moment?" Receiving this sophistry as genuine wisdom, it follows of course, that all actual grief is transient. I would it were so. There would _then_ be no need for the fountain of Lethe or the poppies of Ennor. One does not forget the fall of the sod when his _eye_ turns from the newly covered grave to the glitter and glare of life.

The mixture certainly is unhappy. Perhaps, as Coleridge has surmised, it was the fruit of a proud carelesness. The poet, in the hour of composition, feels that he has just written successfully. He is elated and runs riot for awhile heedless, or, it may be, scarcely conscious of what he writes. On this principle we may account for a prodigious deal of extravagance, otherwise unaccountable.]

VII. Of Ben Jonson I will hardly say much. His "learning and heavy-headedness" would scarcely render him the 'rare Ben' that he once was, in this age of _learned professors_ and _profound scholars._

His learning gave him an undue admiration of Aristotle, and in his plays he has followed the Grecian model too closely. Unity of time and place is particularly inculcated in the rules of the Grecian schools; and in France this had long been strictly observed. It was made matter of minute inquiry in tragedy, whether such and such transactions could be gone through while a talkative hero ranted so many verses. Or, in comedy, whether an unfortunate shepherdess could go through the _Juno Lucina fer opem_ ceremony, while a lewd city clerk stood by, and made so many studied surmises--_sotto voce_. Unless unity of time and place was observed in a drama, these 'line and rule Greekling Franks' damned it. The consequence was that one plot--one method--Aristotle's [Greek: go êythos]--was worked upon by successive dramatists, too timid to 'blanch the beaten track,' until it was threadbare. These fetters which Shakspeare snapped, Jonson hugged.

Old Ben, as he was called, was once young, but the history of his youth is rather cloudy. It seems probable, however, that the accounts delivered us by his contemporaries, are true, notwithstanding Mr. Gifford's sweeping denial. Following them, we learn, that Ben's step-father was a bricklayer; that Ben himself "served at the trade," until he left it from weariness, and joined a company of strolling players: that he enlisted and went with the English army into Flanders, where he "killed his man, and bore off the spoils." His prime and after life were spent in literary pursuits.

Old Ben was a quarrelsome, peevish companion; his body that of a bloated giant; his face filthy, with a scorbutic affection, or, as Decker quaintly says, "a face par-boiled, punched full of eyelet holes, like the cover of a warming pan." His literary quarrels with Decker, Marston, and other "men of London," eventuated in a surly retreat on the part of Jonson. He was driven from comedy to Tragedy, and we find him closing one of his poetic defences with the consoling reflection, that

"There's something come into my thought,
That must and shall be sung, high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof."

But the poet "died of sack," and lies in Westminster with a plain slab above him, on which are these words:

"O RARE BEN JONSON!"

VIII. I pass with reluctance over the contemporaries of Spenser and Shakspeare; contemporaries who aided in gaining for the Elizabethan age the title of "_Augustan_."[13] I will not, however, leave this ground, without quoting a few verses, imitated from the Italian of Petrarch, by Elizabeth herself. The lines begin a little poem, composed by the queen, "upon Mount Zeur's departure."[14] They are not wanting in music:

"I grieve, yet dare not shew my discontent;
I love, and yet am forst to seem to hate;
I doe, yet dare not say I ever meant;
I seeme starke mute, but inwardly do prate;
I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself my other self I turned."

[Footnote 13: It was for wit that the reign of Augustus was celebrated. The age preceding, was that of strength. The Elizabethan age combined these.]

[Footnote 14: Ashmol. muss. MSS. p. 142.]

Passing on, we find "the melancholy Cowley." Cowley has ever been a favorite with lovers; for love maddens men, and madness will always find pleasant aliment in the metaphysical and metaphorical love verses of this unnatural poet. The following is a loose paraphrase of one of Anacreon's wine songs; so loose that we may as well style it original, and adduce it as a specimen not only of Cowley's strange conceits, but also of all the poetry in England, or rather at the court of the King, during the reign of Charles II.[15] The sample is a happy one.

[Footnote 15: Cowley died in 1667, too early to have thoroughly imbibed the peculiarities of the "poets of the restoration," if he had remained in England before. But this was not the case; he was secretary to the Earl of St. Albans, in Paris, during the Protectorature, and there acquired these peculiarities.]

"DRINKING.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck from the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself, (which one would think,
Should have but little need of drink,)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So filled that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun, (and one would guess
By his drunken, fiery face no less,)
Drinks up the sea; and when he's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun:
They drink and dance by their own light;
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round;
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high;
Fill all the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?"

The question in the last line, is easily answered. If in no other way, by the ridiculous death of Polycrates' minion, the immortal Anacreon, who lost his mortality through the agency of an ingrate grape stone.

IX. To praise such men as Shakspeare and Milton, is like praising Hercules. However, I am not one of those who think it idle to cry out "O deare moon, O choyce stars!" when we look upon these in their loveliness. And, leaving this question of the utility or inutility of panegyric, to be discussed elsewhere, I will continue _pari passu_ upon the same track which I have hitherto pursued.--Of,

"A genius universal as his theme;
Astonishing as chaos; as the bloom
Of blowing Eden, fair; as heaven, sublime,"

Milton was fully equal to the vast labor, at his daring in undertaking which, his friend old Andrew Marvel so marvelled. Like Amphion, he sung of the wonders of creation; of Gods and immortal essences. His Satan is a magnificent creation; a personification of all gloom and all grandeur. Vast strength, angelic fashioning, revenge that nothing can soothe, endurance that never shrinks, the intellect of heaven and the pride of earth, ambition immeasurably high, and a courage which quails not even before God, go to constitute a creation essentially _ideal_. Satan is not like Macbeth or Lear, real in himself, literally true, and only lifted into poetry by circumstance: but he is altogether moulded in a dream of the imagination. Heaven, and earth, and hell, are explored for gifts to make him eminent and peerless. He is compounded of all; and at last stands up before us, with the starry grandeur of darkness upon his forehead, but having the passions of clay within his heart, and his home and foundation in the depths below. It is thus gleaning, as it were, from every element, and compounding them all in one grand design, which constitutes the poetry of the character. Perhaps Ariel and Caliban are as purely ideal, as the hero of Milton, and approach as nearly to him as any other fiction; but the latter is incontestably a grander formation, and a mightier agent, and moves through the perplexities of his career, with a power that defies competition. And these are his comrades of Pandemonium: Moloch, who changed the pleasant valley of Hinnom into black Gehenna; Belial, the "manna tongued," than whom "a fairer person lost not heaven;" Azaziel, Chemos, Peor, and the wonderful Astarte;

"_To whose bright image, nightly by the moon,
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs._"

Rimmon, too--he so dreaded by the "men of Abbana and Pharphar;" and the wily Mammon,

"_The least erected spirit that fell
From heaven....
... admiring more,
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Then aught divine or holy else enjoyed;
A vision beatific._"

These, all these, are splendid creations of the human intellect; and how rich and poetic is his account of Mulsiber, who "dropt from the zenith like _a falling star_." Of this description it has been written, that "music and poetry run clasped together down a stream of divine verse." But it is most in his Satan, that Milton's way becomes the "_terribile via_" of Michael Angelo, which no one before or since has been able to tread.

Comparisons have been instituted between Milton and Dantè; but however excellent the Florentine may be, he had not the grasp, nor the soaring power of the English poet. The images of Dantè, pass by like the phantasms on a wall, clear indeed, and picturesque; but although true, in a great measure to fact, wanting in reality. They have complexion and shape, but not flesh or blood. Milton's earthly creatures have the flush of living beauty upon them, and shew the changes of human infirmity. They inhale the odors of the garden of Paradise, and wander at will over lawns and flowers: they listen to God; they talk to angels; they love, and are tempted, and fall! and with all this there is a living principle about them, and (although Milton's faculty was by no means generally dramatic,) they are brought before the reader, and made, not the shadows of what once existed, but present probable truths. His fiercer creations possess the grandeur of dreams, but they have vitality within them also, and in character and substance are as solid as the rock.[16]

[Footnote 16: Vide art. "_Poetry_," No. 82, Edin. Rev. April, 1825. This article is another proof how difficult a matter it is to write of poetry, without becoming poetical.]

His "Il Pensoroso," L'Allegro, and many of his sonnets, are enriched by an antique vein. "Barbaric pearl and gold," crusted with age, mingle with the airy and twinkling gems of his fancy. His spirit was, at times, idle, dreaming, and voluptuous. He sometimes seems as though he had slumbered through summer evenings in caves or forests, by solitary streams, or by the murmuring ocean.

Dr. Blair's parallel between Homer and Milton, throws more light upon the true character of Milton's mind, so far as sublimity is concerned, than anything I have seen. "Homer's (sublimity) is generally accompanied with fire and impetuosity; Milton's possesses more of a calm and amazing grandeur. Homer warms and hurries us along; Milton fixes us in a state of astonishment and elevation. Homer's sublimity appears most in the description of actions; Milton's in that of wonderful and stupendous objects." I would further apply a remark which I have seen in the "table talk" of Coleridge, the poet, upon the sublimity of Schiller, and that of Shakspeare. "Both are sublime, but Homer's is the _material_ sublime."

These remarks are confined to his sublimity; but beauty, tender beauty, was on the catalogue of his excellencies. I heard a lady once liken Milton's mind to a sea shell. The wildest and most terrible blasts, the gentlest and most honeyed breathings issue from the same secret depths.

Milton has many singularities. One which, Addison I believe, praises, is a habit of repeating in the answer the words of the question. Take for example, these lines in Comus:

"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err: there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night."[17]

[Footnote 17: The reader will remember a beautiful instance of this in "Alroy," a work brimful of genius.]

He was also a pedant; but pedantry should only call forth censure, when coupled with weakness. He used inversion to excess; about the propriety of which no two critics agree. And any other faults than these excusable ones, it would be difficult to discover.

In his Sampson Agonistes, he manifested great solidity and power: in his Lycidas, the most exquisitely pathetic elegance; in his Comus, a fine wandering philosophy. All these qualities were united in his Paradise Lost, and (in not so great a degree, however,) in the "Paradise Regained."

As a man, John Milton has been accused of time-serving. The truth of this charge is rather problematical. Milton was no more a time-server, so far at least as I am able to discover, than _any_ timid old man living in his troubled age, would have been, from fear. Terror led him into acts assuredly mean; but that terror should be his excuse; it overruled a natural soundness and rectitude of heart. However, meanness it was, and the reason that he has had his fame injured, is a simple one. A beautiful thing, when at all tainted, is more disgusting than if a greater taint were upon one less beautiful.

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

X. Butler,[18] the comic satirist, was well drugged with the burlesque sentiments and humorous conceits so prevalent in the reign of Charles the second.

[Footnote 18: I will quote here a paragraph upon the "effect (of the restoration) on national literature and national feeling." "The restoration of Charles the second was fatal to poetry. That prince brought with him a long train of wits; and large bands of exiled courtiers flocked round him, who knew the points of a ruff, and were connoisseurs in silk stockings and Flanders lace; but of English literature they were utterly ignorant. Adversity had taught them nothing, except hatred for their countrymen at home, and contempt for their taste in all things. French fashions, French literature, French morals, prevailed; and the wholesome examples of conjugal love and social integrity, were fast melting away and disappearing before the dazzling influence of a vicious court. The time of the English exiles had been employed in patching their broken fortunes and rendering themselves agreeable to their French patrons. Had they been reduced simply to banishment, and left to ponder on the past, it is possible that they might have taken a lesson from misfortune, which would have strengthened the relaxed state of their moral constitution, and awakened them to the high gratification derivable from the works of intellect alone. But they had no example, and little motive. Their King was utterly without any character, and the French did not require any sterling accomplishments to admit them to the full benefits of their society. They were, however, compelled to turn their wit to present account, and so they contented themselves with paying court to their hosts, with emulating their gallantry, with play, and other such ordinary palliatives, as offer themselves most readily to the unhappy. If our exiles ever thought seriously, it was how they might circumvent old Noll and his Roundheads, not how they might endure philosophically, or qualify themselves for prosperity again. Under all circumstances, it was scarcely possible to avoid adopting the tone and manners of the people with whom they lived. They _did_ adopt them, and the literature of the age of Charles the second, may be considered as one consequence of the exile of the Stuarts."]

Hudibras is well known as a rough satire, but few, even of those familiar with that poem, I presume, ever thought of giving Butler credit for the refinement of thought and style so frequently entwined about masses of obscurity and ridiculous vulgarity. These silver threads are often visible to the searching eye, and lead the student to believe, that had the satirist not fallen into the vein, since his day called Hudibrastic, he would have taken fair place among the followers of Wyat.

Butler was, in his intercourse with the world, dull and unmoved, wholly wanting in the rich humor for which his writings are so famous. King Charles could scarcely be persuaded, that a man, to all appearances, so stupid, could be the author of so much written wit.

XI. Waller is the next of those who produced any, the least improvement in English literature; and he, indeed, rather should be called a versifier than a poet; for there is assuredly none of the divine afflatus about him. He wrote _prose_ in metre, and metre too of great polish. He has been celebrated for the music of his numbers, and, as usual, accused of borrowing from the well-head of all melodious versification--the Italian schools. Tasso, translated by old Fairfax, was his model.

XII. And now John Dryden starts up in my path, at first a Polyphemus blinded by ill taste, and although a giant, never aiming his blows aright--afterward a clear sighted and skilful Longinus. His taste became pure with age, and before his death, he had become an admirable critic.[19] In translation, satire and lyric poetry, he was unrivalled until the coming of Pope. Indeed in the last, he has never been rivalled. Satire is, perhaps, the only species of poetry into which logic may be happily introduced. In every other, it straightens and curbs the genius. If this be true, the Anglo-latins before the time of Surrey, made a great mistake in their choice of subjects. The heavy and operose reasoning with which their metrical folios on the trinity &c. abound, would have been of assistance in satire. Dryden's logical talent rendered his great political satire "Absolom and Achitophel," the best perhaps of his works. His McFlecnoe was thought inimitable, until Pope made it the model of his Dunciad, and drew a picture better than the original.

[Footnote 19: Of twenty-seven plays written by Dryden, nineteen were in rhyme. These nineteen were his earliest works--and the very fact that they are in rhyme, proves a want of taste. The remaining eight were written later when his taste had ripened.]

In one night, Dryden began and completed the greatest ode in the English language. The ode to St. Cecilia stands an unrivalled example of lyric excellence. The ode by Pope with the same title, that by Addison sung on the same day, fall far short of it, as do Cowley's famous paraphrases from Pindar. Indeed, Campbell's Last Man is the only lyric poem in the language at all akin in merit to that of Dryden.

Pindar full of the spirit of his age, committed no extravagance in the opinion of those who heard him at the Olympic games. But being regarded as the father of lyric poetry, his wildness was imitated in after ages, when that spirit was departed. This led to a great many extravagant absurdities in Italy and in England. Poets made Pindar their master and forgot Horace. The odes of the fifteenth century are scarcely intelligible; and how those who preach simplicity, and complain that Shelly's obscurity renders his poetry a sealed book, can, as I have sometimes heard them do--applaud Cowley for the beauty of his Pindarics is rather wonderful. In this unnatural state the ode fell into Dryden's hands, and he new-modelled it with strange felicity.

As a translator, Dryden shunned the latitude of those who, like Cowley, paraphrased instead of translating, and at the same time avoided the opposite evil. His translations are sufficiently accurate to convey the original author's meaning, and sufficiently polished to please an ear not too fastidious. He has fallen into error by carrying out what he calls his principle of adaptation too far. It was his opinion that "translation should be adapted to the present." For example, that the sailors of Virgil should speak the sea phrases of modern times, in order to make the description seem natural to the modern reader. This principle he carried on shore too, and many laughable instances of its application are to be found in his version of the Æneid. He translates--

"Læva tibi tellus, et longo læva petantur
Æquora circuitu: dextrum fuge et littas"--

"Tack to the larboard and stand off to sea
Veer starboard sea and land."

A direction which Scott suspects would have been unintelligible not only to Palinurus, but to the best pilot in the British navy.

He often too gives precedence in the arrangement of his verse to the name that should be deferred, as in this line,

"The angels, _God_, the virgin and the saints, &c."

which as Mr. Ezekiel Sanford wittily enough observes reminds one of the clown, who in giving an account of his hunt, begins with--"the dog and I, and dad." In describing the appeal of the vagabond Trojans, he falls into an odd blunder. We find

"Diamond buckles sparkling in their shoes."

A new version this, of _Pulchra Sicyona!_ However, this is _descending into the cobbler's criticism on the painting of Apelles_. Cibber in his parallel between Dryden and Pope yields to the first greater genius, to the latter more elegance--and the remark seems a just one. But I must leave this ground, haunted as it is with the genius of "glorious John Dryden."

Dryden was hard and haughty in appearance. He had a deep thick brow--a wide forehead, rather full at the temples. His mouth was spoiled by wrinkles which gave him a too determined and stern appearance. He died leaving two sons by Lady Elizabeth Howard, both of whom manifested talent, and became scholars and gentlemen of reputation.

XIII. The poets between Dryden and Pope, did little toward the advancement of English poetry. Although many of these were men of no mean capability, and met with merited honor in their day, their excellencies are not great enough to entitle them to a prominent place in a paper whose limits enforce _selection_. It is perhaps better for them that they are not admitted, as my applause even might, like paint on the brush of a bad artist, injure rather than assist. Let them pass then:--the odd and witty Prior; the melodious and animated Lansdown; the pointed Congreve; the elaborate and particular Addison; the penetrating Rowe; the easy and sweet Parnell--one and every one.

Alexander Pope, of a family at whose head was the Earl of Downe, lived fifty-five years, during the greater part of which time he was a distinguished contributor to his country's literature in pastoral, lyric and didactic poetry--and most of all in satire and translation. In noticing Cibber's parallel, I have already touched upon Pope's peculiar excellence--elegance.

It was said by Warburton in the early part of that strange career which ended in a steady friendship for Pope, that "Dryden borrowed from the ancients through want of leisure; Pope from _want of genius_," and on this latter, the enemies of the abused poet have harped severely. One prominent argument which they adduce is the seeming difficulty with which he wrote! "His polish," say they, "is but the labored polish of a common hand. There are none of the sudden and strong outbreaks of great genius. He piles his thoughts with the labor of an ant building its hill." They shew his manuscript, lined and interlined, corrected and re-corrected, until no eye can detect the real reading, and forget that Isocrates was engaged nine years on one short panegyric. It would strike me that Pope's numerous corrections evinced fertility of mind. That the constant aim toward excellence, was but the yearning of great genius after perfection. This yearning did not display itself in Dryden, to whom belonged even greater genius, for the simple reason that he had no leisure for it. _He_ was Old Jacob Tonson's hack, and depended on his writings for subsistence, while Pope was the receiver of annuities which rendered him wholly independent. As a didactic writer, Pope stands conspicuous among the philosophic poets, not only of England, but of the world. Neither Virgil nor Lucretius can in this, boast superiority. And Akenside, Armstrong, and even Boileau, fall far beneath. I have remarked, that logic suited no order of poetry, except the satirical: I do not contradict myself here. Lucretius pleases us with his bold and original conceptions, no matter how faulty they are, Virgil, by the poetic elegance which he throws upon his disjointed philosophy. And Pope is the more pleasing for his want of method. Virgil's mode of reasoning is the most orderly and best arranged of the three, and consequently his didactic poems resemble more the Anglo-Latin treatises of the twelfth and following centuries, than those of the others do. In brief, sprightly carelesness of restraint, and _want of method_, render Pope's "Essay on Criticism," and the "De rerum natura" of Lucretius more agreeable to the reader than the best of Virgil's Georgics. In satire, Pope was superior to Dryden, chiefly I presume, in consequence of the latter's want of leisure to perfect the reasoning which enters so importantly into that species of composition. As a translator, he was unhappy in his choice of authors. Virgil would have suited his style of genius far better than Homer. His anglicized Greek lines wear too much frippery of dress. A happy mean yet remains to be filled, between the extreme polish of Pope's Homer, and the naked abruptness of both Chapman and Cowper. There was a degree of hypocrisy in Pope's mode of publishing his letters which should be censured. (Vide Quarrels of Authors.)

Pope perfected the music and elegance of the English verse. Drawn out of chaos by old Chaucer; softened by Spenser; twisted into pliancy by Surrey; subtilized by Cowley; smoothed by Waller; strongly and beautifully modelled by Dryden;--it still wanted the finishing touch, and this, Pope gave. But he was more than an accomplished linguist. A skilful satirist, a touching eulogist, a philosophic tutor, and in fine, in spite of bodily infirmities, a good and amiable man,[20] his life was like the passage of a health-infusing river through the sands of the earth. Useful to all within reach of its influence; when the stream curdled in its bed, the loss was deeply felt. And although the poet's works remain among us, it is only as the cedar and palm remain upon the banks of the once living stream. "So good a man was he, his presence doubled their beauty."[21]

L. L.

[Footnote 20: I have been particular in noticing Pope's goodness of heart, because the devotees of Addison have spoken of him as "twisted in body and mind--as peevish as he was deformed."]

[Footnote 21: Surgeons and critics love new subjects, and the latter have so raked up from the dunghills of the forgotten past, poets (God save the mark!) innumerable. To mention in this paper the names of one half would be bringing sad company to old Chaucer and his great successors; however, the other half is made up of no mean names. _Lydgate_, _James I_, of Scotland, _Skelton_, _Gawin_, _Douglass_, Lord _Rochford_, Lord _Vaux_, _Gascoigne_, _Marlowe_, _Churchyard_, _Tuberville_, _Sir Walter Raleigh_, _Silvester_, (translator of Du Bartal,) _Fairfax_, _Beaumont and Fletcher_, _Chapman_, _Carew_, _Quarles_, _Drummond_, _Lovelace_, (the cavalier and lover of Althea,) _Herrick_, _Marvel_, _Cotton_, _Walton_, _Lee_, _Shadwell_, and one or two others, I have passed over with regret.]

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

HANS PHAALL--A TALE.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

By late accounts from Rotterdam that city seems to be in a singularly high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected, so entirely novel, so utterly at variance with pre-conceived opinions, as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all Physics in a ferment, all Dynamics and Astronomy together by the ears.

It appears that on the ---- day of ----, (I am not positive about the date) a vast crowd of people, for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the Exchange in the goodly and well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm--unusually so for the season--there was hardly a breath of air stirring, and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration. These occasionally fell from large white masses of cloud which chequered in a fitful manner the blue vault of the firmament. Nevertheless about noon a slight but remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly; the clattering of ten thousand tongues succeeded; and in an instant afterwards ten thousand faces were upturned towards the heavens, ten thousand pipes descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand mouths, and a shout which could be compared to nothing but the roaring of Niagara resounded long, loud, and furiously, through all the environs of Rotterdam.

The origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently evident. From behind the huge bulk of one of those sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned, was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid body or substance, so oddly shaped, so _outré_ in appearance, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open-mouthed and thunderstruck below. What could it be? In the name of all the vrows and devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend? No one knew--no one could imagine--no one, not even the burgomaster Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk, had the slightest clue by which to unravel the mystery: so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man replaced his pipe carefully in the left corner of his mouth, and, cocking up his right eye towards the phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly--then waddled back, grunted, paused, and finally--puffed again.