|
CLI.
Had John Bernouilli lived to have
experience of Fuller's
occiput and sinciput, he would have abandoned, in dismay, his theory of
the non-existence of hard bodies.
CLII.
They have ascertained, in China, that the abdomen
is the seat of the soul; and the acute Greeks considered it a waste of
words to employ more than a single term, [[Greek text:]] xxxxx [[:Greek
text]] [[Apexes]], for the expression
both
of the mind and of the diaphragm. [page 550:]
CLIII.
Mr. Grattan, who, in general, writes
well, has a
bad habit of loitering — of toying with his subject, as a cat with a
mouse,
instead of grasping it firmly at once, and devouring it without ado. He
takes up
too much time in the ante-room. He has never done with his
introductions.
Sometimes one introduction is merely the vestibule to another; so that
by the time he arrives at his main theme, there is none of it left. He
is afflicted with a perversity common enough even among otherwise good
talkers — an irrepressible desire of tantalizing by circumlocution.
If the greasy print here
exhibited
is, indeed, like
Mr. Grattan,* then is Mr. Grattan like nobody
else — for who else ever
thrust
forth, from beneath a wig of wire, the countenance of an over-done
apple-dumpling?
CLIV.
"What does a man learn by
travelling?" demanded Doctor
Johnson, one day, in a great rage — "What did Lord Charlemont learn in
his
travels, except that there was a snake in one of the pyramids of
Egypt?" — but
had Doctor Johnson lived in the days of the Silk Buckinghams, he would
have seen that, so far from thinking anything of finding a snake in a
pyramid,
your traveller would take his oath, at a moment's notice, of having
found
a pyramid in a snake.
CLV.
"The author of "Miserrimus" might
have
been W. G. Simms (whose "Martin Faber" is just such a work)
— but is † G. M. W. Reynolds, an
Englishman, who wrote, also, "Albert
de Rosann," and "Pickwick Abroad" — both excellent things in
their
way.
CLVI.
L—— is busy in attempting to prove that his play was not fairly
d——d — that it is only "skotched, not killed;" but if the poor play
could
speak
from the tomb, I fancy it would sing with the opera heroine:
The flattering error cease to prove!
Oh, let me be deceased! [page 551:]
|
CLVII.
We may safely grant that the effects of the
oratory of Demosthenes were vaster than those wrought by the eloquence
of any modern, and yet not controvert the idea that the modern
eloquence,
itself, is superior to that of the Greek. The Greeks were an excitable,
unread race, for they had no printed books. Vivâ
voce exhortations
carried with them, to their quick apprehensions, all the gigantic force
of the new. They had much of that vivid interest which the
first
fable has upon the dawning intellect of the child — an interest which
is
worn away by the frequent perusal of similar things — by the frequent
inception
of similar fancies. The suggestions, the arguments, the incitements of
the ancient rhetorician were, when compared with those of the modern,
absolutely
novel; possessing thus an immense adventitious force — a force which
has
been, oddly enough, left out of sight in all estimates of the eloquence
of the two eras.
The finest philippic of the Greek
would have been
hooted at in the British House of Peers, while an impromptu of
Sheridan,
or of Brougham, would have carried by storm all the hearts and all the
intellects of Athens.
CLVIII.
Much has been said, of late, about
the necessity
of maintaining a proper nationality in American Letters; but
what this
nationality is, or what is to be gained by it, has never been
distinctly
understood. That an American should confine himself to American themes,
or even prefer them, is rather a political than a literary idea — and
at
best is a questionable point. We would do well to bear in mind that
"distance
lends enchantment to the view." Ceteris paribus, a foreign
theme
is, in a strictly literary sense, to be preferred. After all, the world
at large is the only legitimate stage for the autorial histrio.
But of the need of that nationality
which defends
our own literature, sustains our own men of letters, upholds our own
dignity,
and depends upon our own resources, there cannot be the shadow of a
doubt.
Yet here is the very point at which we are most supine. We complain of
our want of an International Copyright, on the ground that this want
justifies
our publishers in inundating us with British opinion in British books;
and yet [page 552:] when these very publishers, at their own
obvious risk, and even
obvious loss, do publish an American book, we turn up our noses at it
with
supreme contempt (this as a general thing) until it (the American book)
has been dubbed "readable" by some illiterate Cockney critic. Is it too
much to say that, with us, the opinion of Washington Irving — of
Prescott — of
Bryant — is a mere nullity in comparison with that of any anonymous
sub-sub-editor
of the Spectator, the Athenæum, or the "London Punch"? It is not
saying
too much, to say this. It is a solemn — an absolutely awful act. Every
publisher
in the country will admit it to be a fact. There is not a more
disgusting
spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It
is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile,
pusillanimous — secondly,
because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear
us
little
but ill will — we know that, in no case, do they utter unbiassed
opinions
of American books — we know that in the few instances in which our
writers
have been treated with common decency in England, these writers have
either
openly paid homage to English institutions, or have had lurking at the
bottom of their hearts a secret principle at war with Democracy: — we
know
all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading
yoke
of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland. Now if we
must
have nationality, let it be a nationality that will throw off this
yoke.
The chief of the rhapsodists who have
ridden us to
death like the Old Man of the Mountain, is the ignorant and egotistical
Wilson. We use the term rhapsodists with perfect deliberation; for,
Macaulay,
and Dilke, and one or two others, excepted, there is not in Great
Britain
a critic who can be fairly considered worthy the name. The Germans,
and
even the French, are infinitely superior. As regards Wilson, no man
ever
penned worse criticism or better rhodomontade. That he is "egotistical"
his works show to all men, running as they read. That he is "ignorant"
let his absurd and continuous schoolboy blunders about Homer bear
witness.
Not long ago we ourselves pointed out a series of similar inanities in
his review of Miss Barrett's poems — a series, we say, of gross
blunders,
arising from sheer ignorance — and we defy him or any one to answer a
single
syllable of what we then advanced)
And yet this is the man whose simple
dictum (to our
shame be it spoken) has the power to make or to mar any American
reputation!
In the last number of Blackwood, he has a continuation of the dull
"Specimens
of the British Critics," and makes occasion wantonly to insult one of
the
noblest of our poets, Mr. Lowell. The point of the whole attack
consists
in the use of slang epithets and phrases of the most ineffably vulgar
description.
"Squabashes" is a pet term. "Faugh!" is another. We are Scotsmen to the
spine!" says Sawney — as if the thing were not more
than self- evident.
Mr. Lowell is called "a magpie," an "ape," a "Yankee cockney," and his
name is intentionally miswritten John Russell Lowell. Now were
these
indecencies perpetrated by an American critic, that critic would be
sent
to Coventry by the whole press of the country, but since it is Wilson
who
insults, we, as in duty bound, not only submit to the insult, but echo
it, as an excellent jest, throughout the length and breadth of the
land. Quamdiu Catilina? We do indeed demand the
nationality of self-respect.
In Letters as in Government we require a Declaration of Independence. A
better thing still would be a Declaration of War — and that war should
be carried forthwith "into Africa."
CLIX.
The Doctor has excited great
attention in America
as well as in England, and has given rise to every variety of
conjecture
and opinion, not only concerning the author's individuality, but in
relation
to the meaning, purpose, and character of the book itself. It is now
said
to be the work of one author — now of two, three, four, five — as far
even
as nine or ten. These writers are sometimes thought to have composed
the Doctor conjointly — sometimes to have written each a
portion. These
individual
portions have even been pointed out by the supremely acute, and the
names
of their respective fathers assigned. Supposed discrepancies of taste
and
manner, together with the prodigal introduction of mottoes, and other
scraps
of erudition (apparently beyond the compass of a single individual's
reading)
have given rise to this idea of a [page 554:] multiplicity of
writers — among whom
are
mentioned in turn all the most witty, all the most eccentric, and
especially
all the most learned of Great Britain. Again — in regard to the nature
of
the book. It has been called an imitation of Sterne — an august and
most
profound exemplification, under the garb of eccentricity, of some
all-important
moral law — a true, under guise of a fictitious, biography — a simple
jeu
d'esprit — a
mad farrago by a Bedlamite, and a great multiplicity of other equally
fine
names and hard. Undoubtedly, the best method of arriving at a decision
in relation to a work of this nature, is to read it through with
attention,
and thus see what can be made of it. We have done so, and can make
nothing
of it, and are therefore clearly of opinion that the Doctor is
precisely — nothing.
We mean to say that it is nothing better than a hoax.
That any serious truth is meant to be
inculcated
by a tissue of bizarre and disjointed rhapsodies, whose general
meaning
no person can fathom, is a notion altogether untenable, unless we
suppose
the author a madman. But there are none of the proper evidences of
madness
in the book — while of mere banter there are instances
innumerable. One
half,
at least, of the entire publication is taken up with palpable quizzes,
reasonings in a circle, sentences, like the nonsense verses of Du
Bartas,
evidently framed to mean nothing, while wearing an air of profound
thought,
and grotesque speculations in regard to the probable excitement to be
created
by the book.
It appears to have been written with
a sole view
(or nearly with the sole view) of exciting inquiry and comment. That
this
object should be fully accomplished cannot be thought very wonderful,
when
we consider the excessive trouble taken to accomplish it, by vivid and
powerful intellect. That the Doctor is the offspring of such
intellect,
is proved sufficiently by many passages of the book, where the writer
appears
to have been led off from his main design. That it is written by more
than
one man should not be deduced either from the apparent immensity of its
erudition, or from discrepancies of style. That man is a desperate
mannerist
who cannot vary his style ad infinitum; and although the book may
have
been written by a number of learned bibliophagi, still there
is, we
think,
nothing to be found in the book [page 555:] itself at variance
with the possibility
of its being written by any one individual of even mediocre reading.
Erudition
is only certainly known in its total results. The mere grouping
together
of mottoes from the greatest multiplicity of the rarest works, or even
the apparently natural inweaving into any composition, of the
sentiments
and manner of these works, are attainments within the reach of any
well-informed,
ingenious and industrious man having access to the great libraries of
London.
Moreover, while a single individual possessing these requisites and
opportunities,
might, through a rabid desire of creating a sensation, have
written,
with
some trouble, the Doctor, it is by no means easy to imagine that a
plurality
of sensible persons could be found willing to embark in such absurdity
from a similar, or indeed from any imaginable inducement.
The present edition of the Harpers
consists of two
volumes in one. Volume one commences with a Prelude of Mottoes
occupying
two pages. Then follows a Postscript — then a Table of
Contents to the
first
volume, occupying eighteen pages. Volume two has a similar Prelude
of
Mottoes
and Table of Contents. The whole is subdivided into Chapters
Ante-Initial,
Initial, and Post-Initial, with Inter-Chapters. The pages have now and
then a typographical queerity — monogram, a scrap of
grotesque music,
old
English, &c. Some characters of this latter kind are printed with
colored
ink in the British edition, which is gotten up with great care. All
these
oddities are in the manner of Sterne, and some of them are exceedingly
well conceived. The work professes to be a Life of one Doctor Daniel
Dove
and his horse Nobs — but we should put no very great faith in this
biography.
On the back of the book is a monogram — which appears again once or
twice
in the text, and whose solution is a fertile source of trouble with all
readers. This monogram is a triangular pyramid; and as, in geometry,
the
solidity of every polyedral body may be computed by dividing the body
into
pyramids, the pyramid is thus considered as the base or essence of
every
polyedron. The author then, after his own fashion, may mean to imply
that
his book is the basis of all solidity or wisdom — or perhaps, since the
polyedron
is not only a solid, but a solid terminated by plane faces,
that the Doctor
is the very essence of all that spurious [page 556:] wisdom
which will terminate in
just nothing at all — in a hoax, and a consequent multiplicity of blank
visages.
The wit and humor of the Doctor have seldom been equalled. We
cannot
think
Southey wrote it, but have no idea who did.
CLX.
These twelve Letters* are
occupied,
in part, with
minute details of such atrocities on the part of the British, during
their
sojourn in Charleston, as the quizzing of Mrs. Wilkinson and the
pilfering
of her shoe-buckles — the remainder being made up of the indignant
comments
of Mrs. Wilkinson herself.
It is very true, as the Preface
assures us, that
"few records exist of American women either before or during the war of
the Revolution, and that those perpetuated by History want the charm of
personal narration," — but then we are well delivered from such charms
of
personal narration as we find here. The only supposable merit in the
compilation
is that dogged air of truth with which the fair authoress relates the
lamentable
story of her misadventures. I look in vain for that "useful
information"
about which I have heard — unless, indeed, it is in the passage where
we
are told that the letter-writer "was a young and beautiful widow; that
her hand-writing is clear and feminine; and that the letters were
copied
by herself into a blank quarto book, on which the extravagant
sale-price
marks one of the features of the times:" — there are other extravagant
sale-prices,
however, besides that; — it was seventy-five cents that I paid for
these
"Letters." Besides, they are silly, and I cannot conceive why Mrs.
Gilman
thought the public wished to read them. It is really too bad for her to
talk at a body, in this style, about "gathering relics of past
history,"
and "floating down streams of time."
As for Mrs. Wilkinson, I am really
rejoiced that
she lost her shoe-buckles.
CLX. [[CLXI]]
Advancing briskly
with a rapier, he did the business for him at a blow. — Smollett.
This vulgar colloquialism had its
type among the
Romans. Et ferro subitus grassatus, agit rem. — Juvenal. [page
557:]
CLXI. [[CLXII]
It cannot, we think, be a matter of
doubt with any
reflecting mind, that at least one-third of the reverence, or
of the affection,
with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain, should be
credited
to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry — we mean to the
simple
love of the antique — and that again a third of even the proper poetic
sentiment
inspired by these writings should be ascribed to a fact which, while it
has a strict connexion with poetry in the abstract, and also with the
particular
poems in question, must not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to
the
writers of the poems. Almost every devout reader of the old English
bards,
if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely,
yet
with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and, he
would
perhaps say, undefinable delight. Upon being required to point out the
source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the
quaint
in phraseology and of the grotesque in rhythm. And this quaintness and
grotesqueness are, as we have elsewhere endeavored to show, very
powerful,
and, if well managed, very admissible adjuncts to ideality. But in the
present instance they arise independently of the author's will, and are
matters altogether apart from his intention.
CLXII. [[CLXIII]]
As to this last term ("high-binder")
which is so
confidently quoted as modern ("not in use, certainly, before
1819,")
I can refute all that is said by referring to a journal in my own
possession — "The
Weekly Inspector," for Dec. 17, 1806 — published in New York:
On Christmas Eve, a
party of banditti,
amounting, it is stated, to forty or fifty members of an
association,
calling themselves "High-Binders," assembled in front of St.
Peter's
Church,
in Barclay-street, expecting that the Catholic ritual would be
performed
with a degree of pomp and splendor which has usually been omitted in
this
city. These ceremonies, however, not taking place, the High-Binders
manifested
great displeasure.
In a subsequent number, the association are
called "High-Binders."
They were Irish.
CLXIII. [[CLXIV]]
Perhaps Mr. Barrow* is right
after
all, and the dearth
of genius in America is owing to the continual teasing of the
musquitoes. [page 558:]
CLXIV. [[CLXV]]
The title of this book*
deceives us.
It is by no
means "talk" as men understand it — not that true talk of which Boswell
has been the best historiographer. In a word it is not gossip,
which has
been never better defined than by Basil, who calls it "talk for talk's
sake," nor more thoroughly comprehended than by Horace Walpole and Mary
Wortley Montague, who made it a profession and a purpose. Embracing all
things, it has neither beginning, middle, nor end. Thus of the
gossipper
it was not properly said that "he commences his discourse by jumping in
medias res." For, clearly, your gossipper commences
not at all. He
is begun. He is already begun. He is always begun. In the matter of end
he is indeterminate. And by these extremes shall ye know him to be of
the
Cæsars — porphyrogenitus — of the right vein — of the
true
blood — of
the blue blood — of the sangre azula. As for laws, he is
cognizant
of but one, the invariable absence of all. And for his road, were it as
straight as the Appia and as broad as that "which leadeth to
destruction,"
nevertheless would he be malcontent without a frequent
hop-skip-and-jump,
over the hedges, into the tempting pastures of digression beyond. Such
is the gossipper, and of such alone is the true talk. But when
Coleridge
asked Lamb if he had ever heard him preach, the answer was
quite
happy — "I have never heard you do anything else." The truth is that
"Table
Discourse" might have answered as a title to this book; but
its
character can be fully conveyed only in "Post-Prandian Sub-Sermons," or
"Three-Bottle Sermonoids."
CLXV. [[CLXVI]]
A rather bold and quite unnecessary plagiarism —
from
a book too well known to promise impunity.
It is now full time
to begin to brush
away the insects of literature, whether creeping or fluttering, which
have
too long crawled over and soiled the intellectual ground of this
country.
It is high time to shake the little sickly stems of many a puny plant,
and make its fading flowerets fall. — Monthly Register — p. 243
— Vol.
2, New York, 1807.
On the other hand —
I have brushed away
the insects of
Literature, whether fluttering or creeping; I have shaken the little
stems
of many a puny plant, and the flowerets have fallen. — Preface to
the
Pursuits of Literature. [page 559:]
CLXVI. [[CLXVII.]]
Men of genius are far more abundant
than is supposed.
In fact, to appreciate thoroughly the work of what we call genius, is
to
possess all the genius by which the work was produced. But the person
appreciating
may be utterly incompetent to reproduce the work, or anything similar,
and this solely through lack of what may be termed the constructive
ability — a
matter quite independent of what we agree to understand in the term
"genius"
itself. This ability is based, to be sure, in great part, upon the
faculty
of analysis, enabling the artist to get full view of the machinery of
his
proposed effect, and thus work it and regulate it at will; but a great
deal depends also upon properties strictly moral — for example, upon
patience,
upon concentrativeness, or the power of holding the attention steadily
to the one purpose, upon self-dependence and contempt for all opinion
which
is opinion and no more — in especial, upon energy or industry. So
vitally
important is this last, that it may well be doubted if anything to
which
we have been accustomed to give the title of a "work of genius" was
ever
accomplished without it; and it is chiefly because this quality and
genius
are nearly incompatible, that "works of genius" are few, while mere
men
of genius are, as I say, abundant. The Romans, who excelled us in
acuteness
of observation, while falling below us in induction from facts
observed,
seem to have been so fully aware of the inseparable connexion between
industry and a "work of genius," as to have adopted the error that
industry,
in great measure, was genius itself. The highest compliment is intended
by a Roman, when, of an epic, or anything similar, he says that it is
written industriâ mirabili or incredibili
industriâ.
CLXVII. [[CXLVIII.]]
The merely mechanical style of
"Athens" is far better
than that of any of Bulwer's previous books. In general he is
atrociously
involute — this is his main defect. He wraps one sentence in another ad
infinitum — very much in the fashion of those "nests of boxes"
sold
in our wooden-ware shops, or like the islands within lakes, within
islands
within lakes, within islands within lakes, of which we read so much in
the "Periplus" of Hanno. [page 560:]
CLXVIII. [[CLXIX.]]
All true men must rejoice to perceive
the decline
of the miserable rant and cant against originality, which was so much
in
vogue a few years ago among a class of microscopical critics, and which
at one period threatened to degrade all American literature to the
level
of Flemish art.
Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who
are least able
to utter them; but with far more of truth may it be asserted that
invectives
against originality proceed only from persons at once hypocritical and
commonplace. I say hypocritical — for the love of novelty is an
indisputable
element of the moral nature of man; and since to be original is merely
to be novel, the dolt who professes a distaste for originality, in
letters
or elsewhere, proves in no degree his aversion for the thing in itself,
but merely that uncomfortable hatred which ever arises in the heart of
an envious man for an excellence he cannot hope to attain.
CLXIX. [[CLXX.]]
When I call to mind the preposterous
"asides" and
soliloquies of the drama among civilized nations, the shifts employed
by
the Chinese playwrights appear altogether respectable. If a general, on
a Pekin or Canton stage, is ordered on an expedition, "he brandishes a
whip," says Davis, "or takes in his hand the reins of a bridle, and
striding
three or four times around a platform, in the midst of a tremendous
crash
of gongs, drums, and trumpets, finally stops short and tells the
audience
where he has arrived." It would sometimes puzzle an European stage hero
in no little degree to "tell an audience where he has arrived." Most of
them seem to have a very imperfect conception of their whereabouts. In
the "Mort de Cæsar," for example, Voltaire makes his populace
rush to
and fro, exclaiming, "Courons au Capitole!" Poor fellows —
they
are
in the capitol all the time; — in his scruples about unity of place,
the
author has never once let them out of it.
CLXX. [[CLXXI.]]
Sallust, too. He had much the same
free-and-easy
idea, and Metternich himself could not have quarrelled with his "Impune
quœ libet facele, id est esse regem." [page
561:]
CLXXI. [[CLXXII.]]
A ballad entitled "Indian Serenade,"
and put
into the mouth of the hero, Vasco Nunez, is, perhaps, the most really
meritorious
portion of Mr. Simms' "Damsel of Darien." This stanza is full of music:
And their wild and mellow voices
Still to hear along the deep,
Every brooding star rejoices,
While the billow, on its pillow,
Lulled to silence seems to sleep. |
And also this:
'Tis the wail for life they waken
By Samana's yielding shore —
With the tempest it is shaken;
The wild ocean is in motion,
And the song is heard no more. |
CLXXII. [[CLXXIII.]]
Here is a man who is
a scholar and
an artist, who knows precisely how every effect has been produced by
every
great writer, and who is resolved to reproduce them. But the heart
passes
by his pitfalls and traps, and carefully-planned springes, to be taken
captive
by some simple fellow who expected the event as little as did his
prisoner.*
Perhaps I err in quoting these words
as the author's
own — they are in the mouth of one of his interlocutors — but whoever
claims
them, they are poetical and no more. The error is exactly that common
one
of separating practice from the theory which includes it. In all cases,
if the practice fail, it is because the theory is imperfect. If Mr.
Lowell's
heart be not caught in the pitfall or trap, then the pitfall is
ill-concealed
and the trap is not properly baited or set. One who has some
artistical
ability may know how to do a thing, and even show how to do it,
and
yet fail in doing it after all; but the artist and the man of some
artistic
ability must not be confounded. He only is the former who can carry his
most shadowy precepts into successful application. To say that a critic
could not have written the work which he criticises, is to put forth a
contradiction in terms.
CLXXIII. [[CLXXIV.]]
Talking of conundrums: — Why will a
geologist put
no faith in the fable of the fox that lost his tail? Because he knows
that
no animal remains have ever been found in trap. [page 562:]
CLXXIV. [[CLXXV.]]
We have long learned to reverence the fine intellect
of
Bulwer. We take
up any production of his pen with a positive certainty that, in reading
it, the wildest passions of our nature, the most profound of our
thoughts,
the brightest visions of our fancy, and the most ennobling and lofty of
our aspirations will, in due turn, be enkindled within us. We feel sure
of rising from the perusal a wiser if not a better man. In no instance
are we deceived. From the brief tale — from the "Monos and Daimonos" of
the
author — to his most ponderous and labored novels all is richly, and
glowingly
intellectual — all is energetic, or astute, or brilliant, or profound.
There may be men now living who possess the power of
Bulwer — but it is
quite evident that very few have made that power so palpably manifest.
Indeed we know of none. Viewing him as a novelist — a point of
view
exceedingly unfavorable (if we hold to the common acceptation of "the
novel")
for a proper contemplation of his genius — he is unsurpassed by any
writer
living or dead. Why should we hesitate to say this, feeling, as we do,
thoroughly persuaded of its truth. Scott has excelled him in many
points,
and "The Bride of Lammormuir" is a better book than any individual work
by the author of Pelham — "Ivanhoe" is, perhaps, equal to any.
Descending
to particulars, D'Israeli has a more brilliant, a more lofty, and a
more
delicate (we do not say a wilder) imagination. Lady Dacre has
written
Ellen Wareham, a more forcible tale of passion. In some species of wit
Theodore Hook rivals, and in broad humor our own Paulding surpasses
him.
The writer of "Godolphin" equals him in energy. Banim is a better
sketcher
of character. Hope is a richer colorist. Captain Trelawney is as
original — Moore is as fanciful, and Horace Smith is as learned. But
who is
there
uniting in one person the imagination, the passion, the humor, the
energy,
the knowledge of the heart, the artist-like eye, the originality, the
fancy,
and the learning of Edward Lytton Bulwer? In a vivid wit — in
profundity
and a Gothic massiveness of thought — in style — in a calm certainty
and
definitiveness of purpose — in industry — and above all, in the power
of
controlling and regulating by volition his illimitable faculties of
mind,
he is unequalled — he is unapproached. [page 563:]
CLXXV. [[CLXXVI.]]
The author of "Richelieu" and "Darnley" is lauded,
by a great majority of those who laud him, from mere motives of duty,
not
of inclination — duty erroneously conceived. He is looked upon as the
head
and representative of those novelists who, in historical romance,
attempt
to blend interest with instruction. His sentiments are found to be
pure — his morals unquestionable, and pointedly shown forth —
his
language
indisputably correct. And for all this, praise, assuredly, but then
only
a certain degree of praise, should be awarded him. To be pure in his
expressed
opinions is a duty; and were his language as correct as any spoken, he
would speak only as every gentleman should speak. In regard to his
historical
information, were it much more accurate, and twice as extensive as,
from
any visible indications, we have reason to believe it, it should still
be remembered that similar attainments are possessed by many thousands
of well-educated men of all countries, who look upon their knowledge
with
no more than ordinary complacency; and that a far, very far higher
reach
of erudition is within the grasp of any general reader having access to
the great libraries of Paris or the Vatican. Something more than we
have
mentioned is necessary to place our author upon a level with the best
of
the English novelists — for here his admirers would desire us to place
him.
Had Sir Walter Scott never existed, and Waverley never been written, we
would not, of course, award Mr. J. the merit of being the first to
blend
history, even successfully, with fiction. But as an indifferent
imitator
of the Scotch novelist in this respect, it is unnecessary to speak of
the
author of "Richelieu" any farther. To genius of any kind, it seems to
us,
that he has little pretension. In the solemn tranquility of his pages
we
seldom stumble across a novel emotion, and if any matter of deep
interest
arises in the path, we are pretty sure to find it an interest
appertaining
to some historical fact equally vivid or more so in the original
chronicles.
CLXXVI. [[CLXXVII.]]
Jack Birkenhead, apud Bishop
Sprat, says that
"a great wit's great work is to refuse." The apophtegm [[apothegm]]
must be swallowed cum
grano salis. His greatest work is to originate
no matter that
shall require refusal. [page 564:]
CLXXVII. [[CLXXVIII.]]
"Frequently since his recent death,"
says the American
editor of Hood, "he has been called a great author — a phrase used not
inconsiderately or in vain." Yet, if we adopt the conventional idea of
"a great author," there has lived, perhaps, no writer of the last half
century who, with equal notoriety, was less entitled than Hood to be so
called. In fact, he was a literary merchant, whose main stock in trade
was littleness; for, during the larger portion of his life, he
seemed
to breathe only for the purpose of perpetrating puns — things of so
despicable
a platitude that the man who is capable of habitually committing them,
is seldom found capable of anything else. Whatever merit may be
discovered in a pun, arises altogether from unexpectedness. This
is the pun's element and is two-fold. First, we demand that the combination
of the pun be unexpected; and, secondly, we require the
most entire
unexpectedness in the pun per se. A rare pun, rarely
appearing,
is, to a certain extent, a pleasurable effect; but to no mind, however
debased in taste, is a continuous effort at punning otherwise than
unendurable.
The man who maintains that he derives gratification from any such
chapters
of punnage as Hood was in the daily practice of committing to paper,
should
not be credited upon oath.
The puns of the author of "Fair
Inez," however, are
to be regarded as the weak points of the man. Independently of their
ill
effect, in a literary view, as mere puns, they leave upon us a painful
impression; for too evidently they are the hypochondriac's struggles at
mirth — the grinnings of the death's head. No one can read his
"Literary
Reminiscences" without being convinced of his habitual despondency: —
and
the species of false wit in question is precise of that character which
would be adopted by an author of Hood's temperament and cast of
intellect,
when compelled to write at an emergency. That his heart had no interest
in these niäiseries, is clear. I allude, of course, to
his mere puns for the pun's sake — a class of letters
by which he attained
his widest renown. That he did more in this way than in any
other,
is but a corollary from what I have already said, for, generally, he
was
unhappy, and almost continually he wrote invitâ Minerva. But
his true province was a very rare and ethereal humor, [page
565:] in which
the
mere pun was left out of sight, or took the character of the richest grotesquerie;
impressing the imaginative reader with remarkable force, as if by a new
phase of the ideal. It is in this species of brilliant, or, rather, glowing
grotesquerie, uttered with a rushing abandon vastly
heightening
its effect, that Hood's marked originality mainly consisted: — and it
is
this which entitles him, at times, to the epithet "great:" — for that
undeniably may be considered great (of whatever seeming
littleness
in itself) which is capable of inducing intense emotion in the minds
or
hearts of those who are themselves undeniably great.
The field in which Hood is
distinctive is a
border-land between Fancy and Fantasy. In this region he reigns
supreme.
Nevertheless, he has made successful and frequent incursions, although
vacillatingly, into the domain of the true Imagination. I mean to say
that
he is never truly or purely imaginative for more than a paragraph at a
time. In a word, his peculiar genius was the result of vivid Fancy impelled
by Hypochondriasis.
CLXXVIII. [[CLXXIX.]]
There is an old German chronicle
about Reynard the
Fox, when crossed in love — about how he desired to turn hermit, but
could
find no spot in which he could be ''thoroughly alone," until he came
upon
the desolate fortress of Malspart. He should have taken to reading the
"American Drama" of "Witchcraft." I fancy he would have found himself
"thoroughly
alone"
in that.
CLXXIX. [[CLXXX.]]
Since it has become fashionable to
trundle houses
about the streets, should there not be some remodelling of the legal
definition
of reality, as "that which is permanent, fixed, and immoveable, that
cannot
be carried out of its place?" According to this, a house is by no means
real estate.
CLXXX. [[CLXXXI.]]
The enormous multiplication of books
in every branch
of knowledge, is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it
presents
one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct
information,
by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber, in which he must
painfully
grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed. [page
566:]
CLXXXI. [[CLXXXII.]]
That Professor Wilson is one of the
most gifted and
altogether one of the most remarkable men of his day, few persons will
be weak enough to deny. His ideality — his enthusiastic appreciation of
the
beautiful, conjoined with a temperament compelling him into action and
expression, has been the root of his prëeminent success. Much of
it,
undoubtedly,
must be referred to that so-called moral courage which is but the
consequence
of the temperament in its physical elements. In a word, Professor
Wilson
is what he is, because he possesses ideality, energy and audacity, each
in a very unusual degree. The first, almost unaided by the two latter,
has enabled him to produce much impression, as a poet, upon the
secondary
or tertiary grades of the poetic comprehension. His "Isle of Palms"
appeals
effectively to all those poetic intellects in which the poetic
predominates
greatly over the intellectual element. It is a composition which
delights
through the glow of its imagination, but which repels (comparatively,
of
course) through the niaiseries of its general conduct and
construction.
As a critic, Professor Wilson has derived, as might easily be supposed,
the greatest aid from the qualities for which we have given him
credit — and
it is in criticism especially, that it becomes very difficult to say
which
of these qualities has assisted him the most. It is sheer audacity,
however,
to which, perhaps, after all, he is the most particularly indebted. How
little he owes to intellectual prëeminence, and how much to the
mere
overbearing
impetuosity of his opinions, would be a singular subject for
speculation.
Nevertheless it is true, that this rash spirit of domination would have
served, without his rich ideality, but to hurry him into contempt. Be
this
as it may, in the first requisite of a critic the Scotch Aristarchus is
grossly deficient. Of one who instructs we demand, in the first
instance,
a certain knowledge of the principles which regulate the instruction.
Professor
Wilson's capability is limited to a keen appreciation of the beautiful,
and fastidious sense of the deformed. Why or how either is either, he
never
dreams of pretending to inquire, because he sees clearly his own
inability
to comprehend. He is no analyst. He is ignorant of the machinery of his
own thoughts and the thoughts of other men. His criticism is
emphatically
on the [page 567:] surface — superficial. His opinions are mere
dicta — unsupported verba magistri — and are
just or unjust at the
variable taste of
the individual who reads them. He persuades — he bewilders — he
overwhelms — at
times he even argues — but there has been no period at which he ever demonstrated
anything beyond his own utter incapacity for demonstration.
CLXXXII. [[CLXXXIII.]]
One of the most singular styles in
the world — certainly
one of the most loose — is that of the elder D'Israeli. For example he
thus begins his Chapter on Bibliomania: "The preceding article [that on
Libraries] is honorable to literature." Here no self-praise is
intended.
The writer means to say merely that the facts narrated in the preceding
article are honorable, etc. Three-fourths of his sentences are
constructed
in a similar manner. The blunders evidently arise, however, from the
author's
pre-occupation with his subject. His thought, or rather matter, outruns
his pen, and drives him upon condensation at the expense of
luminousness.
The manner of D'Israeli has many of the traits of Gibbon — although
little
of the latter's precision.
CLXXXIII. [[CLXXXIV.]]
Words — printed ones especially — are
murderous things.
Keats did (or did not) die of a criticism, Cromwell of Titus's pamphlet
"Killing no Murder," and Montfleury perished of the "Andromache." The
author
of the ''Parnasse Réformé" makes him thus speak in Hades
— "L'homme
donc
qui voudrait savoir ce dont je suis mort qu'il ne demande pas s'il
fût
de fieve ou de podagre ou d'autre chose, mais qu'il entende que
ce fut ce L'Andromache." As for myself, I am fast dying of the "Sartor
Resartus."
CLXXXIV. [[CLXXXV.]]
Captain Hall is one of the most
agreeable of writers.
We like him for the same reason that we like a good drawing-room
conversationist — there is such a pleasure in listening to his elegant
nothings. Not that
the captain is unable to be profound. He has, on the contrary, some
reputation
for science. But in his hands even the most trifling personal
adventures
become interesting from the very piquancy with which they are told. [page
568:]
CLXXXV. [[CLXXXVI.]]
How truthful an air of deep lamentation hangs here*
upon
every gentle
syllable! It pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of the words,
over the gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden
herself,
even over the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on
the beauties and good qualities of her favorite — like the cool shadow
of
a summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, and "all sweet
flowers."
The whole thing is redolent with poetry of the very loftiest order.
It
is positively crowded with nature and with pathos.
Every line is an
idea — conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the
artlessness
of the maiden, or the love of the maiden, or her admiration, or her
grief,
or the fragrance, and sweet warmth, and perfect appropriateness
of the
little
nest-like bed of lilies and roses, which the fawn devoured as it lay
upon
them, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy
little
damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile upon her
face.
Consider the great variety of truth and delicate thought in the
few
lines
we have quoted — the wonder of the maiden at the fleetness of
her
favorite — the
"little silver feet" — the fawn challenging his mistress to the
race,
"with
a pretty skipping grace," running on before, and then, with head turned
back, awaiting her approach only to fly from it again — can we not
distinctly
perceive all these things? The exceeding vigor, too, and beauty of the
line,
And trod as if on the four winds.
which are vividly apparent when we regard the artless
nature of the
speaker, and the four feet of the favorite — one for each
wind. Then
the
garden of "my own," so overgrown — entangled — with lilies and
roses as
to
be "a little wilderness" — the fawn loving to be there and there "only"
— the maiden seeking it "where it should lie," and not being
able to
distinguish
it from the flowers until "itself would rise" — the lying among the
lilies
"like a bank of lilies" — the loving to "fill" itself with
roses,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold, |
and these things being its "chief" delights — and then
the pre-eminent [page 569:]
beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines — whose very outrageous
hyperbole
and absurdity only render them the more true to nature and to
propriety,
when we consider the innocence, the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the
passionate
grief, and more passionate admiration of the bereaved child.
Had it lived long it would have
been
Lilies
without — roses within.
|
CLXXXVI. [[CLXXXVII.]]
We are not among those who regard the
genius of Petrarch
as a subject for enthusiastic admiration. The characteristics of his
poetry
are not traits of the highest, or even of a high order; and in
accounting
for his fame, the discriminating critic will look rather to the
circumstances
which surrounded the man, than to the literary merits of the
pertinacious
sonnetteer. Grace and tenderness we grant him — but these qualities are
surely
insufficient to establish his poetical apotheosis.
In other respects he is entitled to
high consideration.
As a patriot, notwithstanding some accusations which have been rather
urged
than established, we can only regard him with approval. In his
republican
principles; in his support of Rienzi at the risk of the displeasure of
the Colonna family; in his whole political conduct, in short, he seems
to have been nobly and disinterestedly zealous for the welfare of his
country.
But Petrarch is most important when we look upon him as the bridge by
which,
over the dark gulf of the middle ages, the knowledge of the old world
made
its passage into the new. His influence on what is termed the revival
of
letters was, perhaps, greater than that of any man who ever lived;
certainly
far greater than that of any of his immediate contemporaries. His
ardent
zeal in recovering and transcribing the lost treasures of antique lore
cannot be too highly appreciated. But for him, many of our most valued
classics might have been numbered with Pindar's hymns and dithyrambics.
He devoted days and nights to this labor of love; snatching numerous
precious
books from the very brink of oblivion. His judgment in these things was
strikingly correct, while his erudition, for the age in which he lived,
and for the opportunities he enjoyed, has always been a subject of
surprise. [page 569:]
CLXXXVII. [[CLXXXVIII.]]
One of the most singular pieces of
literary Mosaic
is Mr. Longfellow's "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year." The general
idea
and manner are from Tennyson's "Death of the Old Year," several of the
most prominent points are from the death scene of Cordelia in "Lear,"
and
the line about the "hooded friars" is from the "Comus" of Milton. Some
approach to this patchwork may be found in these lines from Tasso —
Giace l'alta Cartago: à pena
i
segni
De l'alte sui ruine il lido serba:
Muoino le città, muoino i regni;
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena et herba:
E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni. |
This is entirely made up from Lucan and Sulspicius.
The
former says
of Troy —
Iam tota teguntur
Pergama dumetis: etiam perire ruinæ. |
Sulspicius, in a letter to Cicero, says of Megara, Egina
and Corinth — "Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrûm
interiit,
quorum vita brevior
esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavers projecta jaceant."
CLXXXVIII. [[CLXXXIX.]]
The ordinary pickpocket filches a purse, and the matter
is at an end. He neither takes honor to himself, openly, on the score
of
the purloined purse, nor does he subject the individual robbed to the
charge
of pick-pocketism in his own person; by so much the less odious is he,
then, than the filcher of literary property. It is impossible, we
should
think, to imagine a more sickening spectacle than that of the
plagiarist,
who walks among mankind with an erecter step, and who feels his heart
beat
with a prouder impulse, on account of plaudits which he is conscious
are
the due of another. It is the purity, the nobility, the ethereality of
just fame — it is the contrast between this ethereality and the
grossness
of the crime of theft, which places the sin of plagiarism in so
detestable
a light. We are horror-stricken to find existing in the same bosom the
soul-uplifting thirst for fame, and the debasing propensity to pilfer.
It is the anomaly — the discord — which so grossly offends.
CLXXXIX. [[CXC.]]
Voltaire, in his preface to "Brutus,"
actually boasts of having introduced the Roman Senate on the
stage in
red mantles. [page 571:]
CXC. [[CXCI.]]
"Les anges," says Madame Dudevant, a
woman who intersperses
many an admirable sentiment amid a chaos of the most shameless and
altogether
objectionable fiction — "Les anges ne sant plus pures [[sic]]
que le cœur
d'un
jeune homme qui aime en verite." The angels are not more pure than
the
heart of a young man who loves with fervor. The hyperbole is scarcely
less
than true. It would be truth itself, were it averred of the love of him
who is at the same time young and a poet. The boyish poet-love is
indisputably
that one of the human sentiments which most nearly realizes our dreams
of the chastened voluptuousness of heaven.
In every allusion made by the author
of "Childe Harold"
to his passion for Mary Chaworth, there runs a vein of almost spiritual
tenderness and purity, strongly in contrast with the gross earthliness
pervading and disfiguring his ordinary love-poems. The Dream, in which
the incidents of his parting with her when about to travel, are said to
be delineated, or at least paralleled, has never been excelled
(certainly
never excelled by him) in the blended fervor, delicacy, truthfulness
and
ethereality which sublimate and adorn it. For this reason, it may well
be doubted if he has written anything so universally popular. That his
attachment for this "Mary" (in whose very name there indeed seemed to
exist
for him an "enchantment") was earnest, and long-abiding, we have every
reason to believe. There are a hundred evidences of this fact,
scattered
not only through his own poems and letters, but in the memoirs of his
relatives,
and cotemporaries in general. But that it was thus earnest and
enduring,
does not controvert, in any degree, the opinion that it was a passion
(if
passion it can properly be termed) of the most thoroughly romantic,
shadowy
and imaginative character. It was born of the hour, and of the youthful
necessity to love, while it was nurtured by the waters and the hills,
and
the flowers, and the stars. It had no peculiar regard to the person, or
to the character, or to the reciprocating affection of Mary Chaworth.
Any
maiden, not immediately and positively repulsive, he would have loved,
under the same circumstances of hourly and unrestricted communion, such
as the engravings of the subject shadow forth. They met without
restraint
and without reserve. As mere children they sported together; [page
572:] in boyhood
and girlhood they read from the same books, sang the same songs, or
roamed
hand in hand, through the grounds of the conjoining estates. The result
was not merely natural or merely probable, it was as inevitable as
destiny
itself.
In view of a passion thus engendered,
Miss Chaworth,
(who is represented as possessed of no little personal beauty and some
accomplishments,) could not have failed to serve sufficiently well as
the
incarnation of the ideal that haunted the fancy of the poet. It is
perhaps
better, nevertheless, for the mere romance of the love-passages between
the two, that their intercourse was broken up in early life and never
uninterruptedly
resumed in after years. Whatever of warmth, whatever of soul-passion,
whatever
of the truer nare and essentiality of romance was elicited during the
youthful
association is to be attributed altogether to the poet. If she
felt at
all, it was only while the magnetism of his actual presence
compelled
her
to feel. If she responded at all, it was merely because the
necromancy
of his words of fire could not do otherwise than exhort a
response. In
absence, the bard bore easily with him all the fancies which were the
basis
of his flame — a flame which absence itself but served to keep in
vigor — while
the less ideal but at the same time the less really substantial
affection
of his lady-love, perished utterly and forthwith, through simple lack
of
the element which had fanned it into being. He to her, in brief, was a
not unhandsome, and not ignoble, but somewhat portionless, somewhat
eccentric
and rather lame young man. She to him was the Egeria of his dreams —
the
Venus Aphrodite that sprang, in full and supernal loveliness, from the
bright foam upon the storm-tormented ocean of his thoughts.
CXCI. [[CXCII.]]
Mill says that he has "demonstrated"
his propositions.
Just in the same way Anaxagoras demonstrated snow to be black, (which,
perhaps, it is, if we could see the thing in the proper light,) and
just
in the same way the French advocate, Linguet, with Hippocrates in his
hand,
demonstrated bread to be a slow poison. The worst of the matter is,
that
propositions such as these seldom stay demonstrated long
enough
to be thoroughly understood. [page 573:]
CXCII. [[CXCIII.]]
We have read Mr. Paulding's Life of
Washington with
a degree of interest seldom excited in us by the perusal of any book
whatever.
We are convinced by a deliberate examination of the design, manner, and
rich material of the work, that, as it grows in age, it will grow in
the
estimation of our countrymen, and, finally, will not fail to take a
deeper
hold upon the public mind, and upon the public affections, than any
work
upon the same subject, or of a similar nature, which has been yet
written — or,
possibly, which may be written hereafter. Indeed, we cannot perceive
the
necessity of anything farther upon the great theme of Washington. Mr.
Paulding
has completely and most beautifully filled the vacuum which the
works
of
Marshall and Sparks have left open. He has painted the boy, the man,
the
husband, and the christian. He has introduced us to the private
affections,
aspirations, and charities of that hero whose affections of all
affections
were the most serene, whose aspirations the most God-like, and whose
charities
the most gentle and pure. He has taken us abroad with the
patriot-farmer
in his rambles about his homestead. He has seated us in his study and
shown
us the warrior-christian in unobtrusive communion with his God. He has
done all this too, and more, in a simple and quiet manner, in a manner
peculiarly his own, and which mainly because it is his own, cannot fail
to be exceedingly effective. Yet it is very possible that the public
may,
for many years to come, overlook the rare merits of a work whose want
of
arrogant assumption is so little in keeping with the usages of the day,
and whose striking simplicity and naiveté of manner
give, to a cursory
examination, so little evidence of the labor of composition. We have no
fears, however, for the future. Such books as these before us, go down
to posterity like rich wines, with a certainty of being more valued as
they go. They force themselves with the gradual but rapidly
accumulating
power of strong wedges into the hearts and understandings of a
community.
In regard to the style of Mr.
Paulding's Washington,
it would scarcely be doing it justice to speak of it merely as well
adapted
to its subject, and to its immediate design. Perhaps a rigorous
examination
would detect an occasional want of euphony, and [page 574:]
some inaccuracies of
syntatical [[syntactical]]
arrangement. But nothing could be more out of place than any such
examination
in respect to a book whose forcible, rich, vivid, and comprehensive
English
might advantageously be held up, as a model for the young writers of
the
land. There is no better literary manner than the manner of Mr.
Paulding.
Certainly no American, and possibly no living writer of England, has
more
of those numerous peculiarities which go to the formation of a happy
style.
It is questionable, we think, whether any writer of any country
combines
as many of these peculiarities with as much of that essential negative
virtue, the absence of affectation. We repeat, as our confident
opinion,
that it would be difficult, even with great care and labor, to improve
upon the general manner of the volumes now before us, and that they
contain
many long individual passages of a force and beauty not to be surpassed
by the finest passages of the finest writers in any time or country. It
is this striking character in the Washington of Mr. Paulding —
striking
and
peculiar indeed at a season when we are so culpably inattentive to all
matters of this nature, as to mistake for style the fine airs at second
hand of the silliest romancers — it is this character we say, which
should
insure the fulfilment of the writer's principal design, in the
immediate
introduction of his book into every respectable academy in the land.
CXCIII. [[CXCIV.]]
Scott, in his "Presbyterian
Eloquence," speaks of
"that ancient fable, not much known," in which a trial of skill in
singing
being agreed upon between the cuckoo and the nightingale, the ass was
chosen
umpire. When each bird had done his best, the umpire declared that the
nightingale sang extremely well, but that "for a good plain song give
him
the cuckoo." The judge with the long ears, in this case, is a fine type
of the tribe of critics who insist upon what they call "quietude" as
the
supreme literary excellence — gentlemen who rail at Tennyson and
elevate
Addison into apotheosis. By the way, the following passage from
Sterne's
"Letter from France," should be adopted at once as a motto by the
"Down-East
Review:" "As we rode along the valley, we saw a herd of asses on the
top
of one of the mountains. How they viewed and reviewed us!" [page
575:]
CXCIV. [[CXCV.]]
A hundred criticisms to the contrary
notwithstanding, I must regard
"The Lady of Lyons" as one of the most successful dramatic efforts of
modern
times. It is popular, and justly so. It could not fail to be popular so
long as the people have a heart. It abounds in sentiments which stir
the
soul as the sound of a trumpet. It proceeds rapidly and
consequentially;
the interest not for one moment being permitted to flag. Its incidents
are admirably conceived and skilfully wrought into execution. Its dramatis
personæ, throughout, have the high merit of being natural,
although,
except in the case of Pauline, there is no marked individuality. She is
a creation which would have done no dishonor to Shakspeare. She excites
profound emotion. It has been sillily objected to her, that she is
weak,
mercenary, and at points ignoble. She is; and what then? We are not
dealing
with Clarissa Harlowe. Bulwer has painted a woman. The chief defect of
the play lies in the heroine's consenting to wed Beauseant, while aware
of the existence and even the continued love of Claude. As the plot
runs,
there is a question in Pauline's soul between a comparatively trivial
(because
merely worldly) injury to her father, and utter ruin and despair
inflicted
upon her husband. Here there should not have been an instant's
hesitation.
The audience have no sympathy with any. Nothing on earth should have
induced
the wife to give up the living Melnotte. Only the assurance of his
death
could have justified her in sacrificing herself to Beauseant. As it is,
we hate her for the sacrifice. The effect is repulsive — but I must be
understood
as calling this effect objectionable solely on the ground of its being
at war with the whole genius of the play.
CXCV. [[CXCVI.]]
"Contempt," says an eastern proverb, "pierces even
through the shell
of the tortoise;" but the skull of a Fuller would feel themselves
insulted
by a comparison, in point of impermeability, with the shell of a
Gallipago
turtle.
CXCVI. [[CXCVII.]]
How thoroughly comprehensive is the
account of Adam,
as given at the bottom of the old picture in the Vatican! — "Adam,
divinitus
edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor." VII [[The "VII"
is a typesetting error.]] [page 576:]
CXCVII. [[CXCVIII.]]
If need were, I should have little
difficulty, perhaps,
in defending a certain apparent dogmatism to which I am prone, on the
topic
of versification.
"What is Poetry?" notwithstanding
Leigh Hunt's rigmarolic
attempt at answering it, is a query that, with great care and
deliberate
agreement beforehand on the exact value of certain leading words, may,
possibly, be settled to the partial satisfaction of a
few analytical
intellects, but which, in the existing condition of metaphysics, never can
be settled to the satisfaction of the majority;
for the question
is purely metaphysical, and the whole science of metaphysics is at
present
a chaos, through the impossibility of fixing the meanings of the words
which its very nature compels it to employ. But as regards
versification,
this difficulty is only partial; for although one-third of the topic
may
be considered metaphysical, and thus may be mooted at the fancy of this
individual or of that, still the remaining two-thirds belong,
undeniably,
to the mathematics. The questions ordinarily discussed with so much
gravity
in regard to rhythm, metre, etc., are susceptible of positive
adjustment
by demonstration. Their laws are merely a portion of the Median laws of
form and quantity — of relation. In respect, then, to any of
these
ordinary
questions — these sillily moot points which so often arise in common
criticism — the
prosodist would speak as weakly in saying "this or that proposition is probably
so and so, or possibly so and
so," as would the
mathematician in admitting that, in his humble opinion, or if he were
not
greatly mistaken, any two sides of a triangle were, together, greater
than
the third side. I must add, however, as some palliation of the
discussions
referred to, and of the objections so often urged with a sneer to
"particular
theories of versification binding no one but their inventor" — that
there
is really extant no such work as a Prosody Raisonnée. The
Prosodies
of the schools are merely collections of vague laws, with
their
more vague exceptions, based upon no principles whatever, but extorted
in
the most speculative manner from the usages of the ancients, who had no
laws beyond those of their ears and fingers. "And these
were sufficient,"
it will be said, "since 'The Iliad' is melodious and harmonious beyond
anything of modern [page 577:] times." Admit
this: — but neither do we write in
Greek,
nor has the invention of modern times been as yet exhausted. An
analysis
based on the natural laws of which the bard of Scios was ignorant,
would
suggest multitudinous improvements to the best passages of even "The
Iliad" — nor
does it in any manner follow from the supposititious fact that Homer
found
in his ears and fingers a satisfactory system of rules (the point which
I have just denied) — nor does it follow, I say, from this, that the
rules
which we deduce from the Homeric effects are to
supersede
those immutable principles of time, quantity, etc. — the mathematics,
in
short, of music — which must have stood to these Homeric effects in the
relation of causes — the mediate causes of which
these
"ears
and fingers" are simply the intermedia.
CXCVIII. [[CXCIX.]]
Of Berryer, somebody says "he is the man in whose
description is the
greatest possible consumption of antithesis." For "description" read
"lectures,"
and the sentence would apply well to Hudson, the lecturer on
Shakspeare.
Antithesis is his end — he has no other. He does not employ it to
enforce
thought, but he gathers thought from all quarters with the sole view to
its capacity for antithetical expression. His essays have thus only
paragraphical
effect; as wholes, they produce not the slightest impression. No man
living
could say what it is Mr. Hudson proposes to demonstrate; and if the
question
were propounded to Mr. H. himself, we can fancy how particularly
embarrassed
he would be for a reply. In the end, were he to answer honestly, he
would
say — "antithesis."
As for his reading, Julius Cæsar would have
said of him
that he sang
ill, and undoubtedly he must have "gone to the dogs" for his experience
in pronouncing the r as if his throat were bored like a
rifle-barrel.*
CXCIX. [[CC.]]
It is James Montgomery who thinks
proper to style
McPherson's "Ossian" a [["]]collection of halting, dancing, lumbering,
grating,
nondescript paragraphs."
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