LITMIR.BIZ

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produce a sort of damp and interruption for some minutes after. But in the perusal of works of literary art, we prepare ourselves for such language; and the business of the writer, like that of a painter whose subject requires unusual splendour and prominence, is so to raise the lower and neutral tints, that what in a different style would be the commanding colours, are here used as the means of that gentle degradation requisite in order to produce the effect of a whole. Where this is not achieved in a poem, the metre merely reminds the reader of his claims in order to disappoint them; and where this defect occurs frequently, his feelings are alternately startled by anticlimax and hyperclimax.

      I refer the reader to the exquisite stanzas cited for another purpose from THE BLIND HIGHLAND BOY; and then annex, as being in my opinion instances of this disharmony in style, the two following:

      “And one, the rarest, was a shell,

      Which he, poor child, had studied well:

      The shell of a green turtle, thin

      And hollow; — you might sit therein,

      It was so wide, and deep.”

      “Our Highland Boy oft visited

      The house which held this prize; and, led

      By choice or chance, did thither come

      One day, when no one was at home,

      And found the door unbarred.”

      Or page 172, vol. I.

      “‘Tis gone forgotten, let me do

      My best. There was a smile or two —

      I can remember them, I see

      The smiles worth all the world to me.

      Dear Baby! I must lay thee down:

      Thou troublest me with strange alarms;

      Smiles hast thou, sweet ones of thine own;

      I cannot keep thee in my arms;

      For they confound me: as it is,

      I have forgot those smiles of his!”

      Or page 269, vol. I.

      “Thou hast a nest, for thy love and thy rest

      And though little troubled with sloth

      Drunken lark! thou would’st be loth

      To be such a traveller as I.

      Happy, happy liver!

      With a soul as strong as a mountain river

      Pouring out praise to th’ Almighty giver,

      Joy and jollity be with us both!

      Hearing thee or else some other,

      As merry a brother

      I on the earth will go plodding on

      By myself cheerfully till the day is done.”

      The incongruity, which I appear to find in this passage, is that of the two noble lines in italics with the preceding and following. So vol. II. page 30.

      “Close by a Pond, upon the further side,

      He stood alone; a minute’s space I guess,

      I watch’d him, he continuing motionless

      To the Pool’s further margin then I drew;

      He being all the while before me full in view.”

      Compare this with the repetition of the same image, the next stanza but two.

      “And, still as I drew near with gentle pace,

      Beside the little pond or moorish flood

      Motionless as a Cloud the Old Man stood,

      That heareth not the loud winds when they call;

      And moveth altogether, if it move at all.”

      Or lastly, the second of the three following stanzas, compared both with the first and the third.

      “My former thoughts returned; the fear that kills;

      And hope that is unwilling to be fed;

      Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;

      And mighty Poets in their misery dead.

      But now, perplex’d by what the Old Man had said,

      My question eagerly did I renew,

      ‘How is it that you live, and what is it you do?’

      “He with a smile did then his words repeat;

      And said, that gathering Leeches far and wide

      He travell’d; stirring thus about his feet

      The waters of the Ponds where they abide.

      `Once I could meet with them on every side;

      ‘But they have dwindled long by slow decay;

      ‘Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may.’

      While he was talking thus, the lonely place,

      The Old Man’s shape, and speech, all troubled me

      In my mind’s eye I seemed to see him pace

      About the weary moors continually,

      Wandering about alone and silently.”

      Indeed this fine poem is especially characteristic of the author. There is scarce a defect or excellence in his writings of which it would not present a specimen. But it would be unjust not to repeat that this defect is only occasional. From a careful reperusal of the two volumes of poems, I doubt whether the objectionable passages would amount in the whole to one hundred lines; not the eighth part of the number of pages. In THE EXCURSION the feeling of incongruity is seldom excited by the diction of any passage considered in itself, but by the sudden superiority of some other passage forming the context.

      The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the reader will pardon an uncouth and new-coined word. There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the representation of objects, and their positions, as they appeared to the poet himself; secondly, the insertion of accidental circumstances, in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to establish the probability of a statement in real life, where nothing is taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry, where the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. To this actidentality I object, as contravening the essence of poetry, which Aristotle pronounces to be spoudaiotaton kai philosophotaton genos, the most intense, weighty and philosophical product of human art; adding, as the reason, that it is the most catholic and abstract. The following passage from Davenant’s prefatory letter to Hobbes well expresses this truth. “When I considered the actions which I meant to describe; (those inferring the persons), I was again persuaded rather to choose those of a former age, than the present; and in a century so far removed, as might preserve me from their improper examinations, who know not the requisites of a poem, nor how much pleasure they lose, (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable), who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian. For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of fortune by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions, because austere historians have entered into bond to truth? An obligation, which were in poets as foolish and unnecessary, as is the bondage of false martyrs, who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would imply, that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians, (who worship a dead thing), and truth operative, and by effects continually alive, is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter, but in reason.”

      For

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