An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients Part 1

An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients.

by John Ogilvie.

INTRODUCTION

John Ogilvie (1733-1813), Presbyterian divine and author, was one of a group of Scottish literary clergy and a fellow of the Edinburgh Royal Society. Chambers and Thomson print the following generous estimation of his work:

Of all his books, there is not one which, as a whole, can be expected to please the general reader. n.o.ble sentiments, brilliant conceptions, and poetic graces, may be culled in profusion from the ma.s.s; but there is no one production in which they so predominate, (if we except some of the minor pieces,) as to induce it to be selected for a happier fate than the rest. Had the same talent which Ogilvie threw away on a number of objects, been concentrated on one, and that one chosen with judgment and taste, he might have rivalled in popularity the most renowned of his contemporaries.[1]

The present letters reproduced here, along with the two volumes of his _Philosophical and Critical Observations on Composition_ (London, 1774), are Ogilvie's major contributions to literary criticism. The remainder of his work, which is extensive, is divided almost equally between poetry and theological inquiry. At least one of his poems, "The Day of Judgment" (1758), was known to Churchill, Boswell, and Johnson, but unfortunately for Ogilvie's reputation Johnson "saw nothing" in it.[2]

I shall attempt no special pleading for Ogilvie here; he is and shall remain a minor neocla.s.sic theorist. At the very least, however, it can be said that his methods are reasonably various and that, while his general critical a.s.sumptions are not unique, his control is strong. The fluidity with which he moves from one related position to another indicates a mind well informed by the critical tenets of his own time.

If he does not surprise, he is nevertheless an interesting and worthy exemplar of the psychological tradition in later eighteenth-century criticism; and his historicism provides, and is intended to provide, an extensive field for the workings of psychological inquiry.

Thus his initial inquiry, in the first letter, into the Aristotelian principles of imitation and harmony establishes each as "natural" to the mind, and his distinctions between the separate provinces of reason and imagination are for the purpose of a.s.signing to each its separate intellectual capacities. From these orderings follows his idea that poetry is of an earlier date than philosophy, the product of an irregular faculty, less governable than the reason and of swifter development. In turn, these a.s.sumptions lead into a form of historical primitivism in which the products of the first poets were "extemporary effusions," rudely imitative of pastoral scenes or celebratory of the divine being. Thus the first generic distinction Ogilvie makes is between pastoral poetry and lyric; the function of the former is to produce pleasure, the latter to raise admiration of the powers presiding over nature. As poetry is more natural to the young mind than philosophy, so is the end of pastoral poetry more easily achieved than that of the lyric. The difference resides essentially in Ogilvie's notion that the pastoral poet contemplates "external objects," while the lyric poet regards that which is not immediately available to the senses and consequently requires a more exuberant invention. What follows upon these reflections is a rather ingenious form of historical progressivism in which the civilizing powers of the poet provide the princ.i.p.al justification for lyric poetry. At work in Ogilvie's thought is a conception of the mythopoeic function of the earliest poets whose names have come down to us. Such poets, however, did not create their mythos, but imbibed it from the earlier Egyptian civilization and formed disguised allegorical poems. Here the instructive function of the first poets is related to the enlarging of the reader's imagination, so that Ogilvie's rather shrewd defense of lyric poetry is based upon the civilizing effects of imaginative appeal.

The infancy of poetry is related to the infancy of civilization, and the a.n.a.logical possibilities of the one to the other sustain his argument at every point. If his historicism is dubious, his discourse is neatly ill.u.s.trative of a neocla.s.sic critical method and of the kind of psychological a.s.sumptions upon which such arguments could proceed. From the rather copious use of allegory and metaphor, as civilizing instruments, Ogilvie traces the rise of the religious fable as part of the inevitable sequence of imaginative development. To account, therefore, for the irregularity of the ode, for the "enthusiasm, obscurity and exuberance" (p. xxiv) which continue to characterize it, he refers to its anciently established character, a character not susceptible to amelioration by speculative rules. He allows, however, that both the "Epopee" (or epic) and the drama were gradually improved, and the informing principle of his historical progressivism is again patent.

The modifications of the ode are from the fict.i.tious theology of Orpheus and Museus to the elegance and grace of Anacreon, Horace, and Sappho. It is mainly Horace whom Ogilvie has in view as the exemplar of the lyric poet, though "a professed imitator both of Anacreon and Pindar"

(p. x.x.x). We can distinguish, therefore, several different criteria which contribute to Ogilvie's criticism: (1) a unity of sentiment consistent with a variety of emotions; (2) a propriety of the pa.s.sions in which vivacity is controlled by the circ.u.mstances of character; (3) a just relation between language and sentiment; (4) elegant and pointed expression ("sallies and picturesque epithets" [p. x.x.xi.]) both to heighten the pa.s.sions expressed and to draw from them their less obvious effects. Such distinctions define Ogilvie's typical insistence upon copying Nature, by which he means that the lyric poet's task is not only to follow the workings of the mind, but to heighten pa.s.sion in a way that is more consistent with the nature of the pa.s.sion itself than with its action in any particular mind. His criticism looks to the representation of "the internal movements of the mind warmed by imagination," yet "exposed in the happiest and most agreeable att.i.tudes"

(p. x.x.xv). The relation between the empirical and the ideal is a crux common to Ogilvie and neocla.s.sic theory, not entirely resolved here by the practical and referential method of citing Horace's shorter odes.

But it is a subject which comes in for more extended treatment in his second letter, in my judgment a far more critically ambitious letter and one in which his very fair critical abilities are more conspicuously apparent.

The second letter undertakes to explain the rules of lyric poetry, even as the first was concerned with the defects and causes of the poetry.

Ogilvie rehea.r.s.es a characteristic later eighteenth-century view of the imagination and makes again the conventional distinctions between faculties appropriate to philosophy and to poetry. His discussion of the function of judgment is, if anything, more conventional within the boundaries of neocla.s.sic criticism than is his view of the imagination.

Its typical role as concerned with the "disposition of materials" has a pedigree extending backward to Hobbes and the critical climate of the early years of Restoration England. Princ.i.p.ally, Ogilvie is eager to a.s.sert that the poet is as judicious as the philosopher, by which, however, he does not intend to put forth a view of the cognitive function of the poet, but rather the justice with which he paints the pa.s.sions. Essentially, therefore, Ogilvie's distinction between poet and philosopher is for the sake of distinguishing between the former's greater interest in the pa.s.sions, the latter's more proper concern with the reason. Once again there is nothing unusual in his treatment of the subject at this time, with the possible exception that Ogilvie's conception of the imagination is not so comprehensive as that being developed by Alexander Gerard, William Duff, and some of the other contemporary a.s.sociatioa.s.sociationistsnlsts. In order, however, to emphasize the importance of imagination, by which he largely means the imagistic liveliness of the poet's mind, he allows that the imagination is secondary only in didactic or ethical poetry. Such forms are perhaps best understood as hybrid, a kind of poetizing of philosophy, a sort of reasoning in verse, and therefore forms in which the imagination is not given full exercise. Given his premises it is not surprising that Ogilvie often emphasizes ornamentation or imagistic display and supports his position by conceiving of the modern lyric as descended from the religiously consecrated ode. The sublime and exuberant imagery of the latter exists reductively as an important virtue of the present lyric.

As Ogilvie develops his argument in the second letter, it is apparent also that the imagination functions as that faculty which best contemplates the sublime and the wonderful. The imagination is thus contemplative and expressive, and both functions are justified through the pa.s.sions that admiration evokes. In sum, the imagination is evoked by the pa.s.sions, a proposition which suggests why, for Ogilvie, the characteristic mark of genius is a highly animated sensibility. It is apparent also that Ogilvie's criteria include sympathy, for sympathy is that which compels the transmission of the poet's sentiments to his readers. What is dimly present here is a theory of the poetic occasion, an occasion brought about by the poet's partic.i.p.ation in a common cultural condition which inspires the communication of sentiments, both common and important, from one person to another. Corollary to this proposition is the notion that the poetic achievement is measured by the uniqueness of the poet's invention. Thus, it is not merely the poet's choice of a sublime subject that is important, but also the excellence with which he treats an unpromising subject. Ogilvie's criteria demand not merely a celerity of imagining, or a facility for the sublime, but a degree of innovativeness which wins the highest regard.

To follow the argument is to realize that his conception of the imagination includes judgment, celerity, and innovation. All three functions are basic to the imaginative act. It is the last, however, which he most emphasizes; and it is apparent, I think, that one intention of his argument is to refute the a.s.sumption that the sublime is the princ.i.p.al object of the poetic imagination. It is clear also that Ogilvie is attentive to the excesses of imagism, even as he makes the variety of a poet's images (along with the boldness of his transitions and the picturesque vivacity of his descriptions) one of the major terms of critical a.s.sessment. Especially, he is attentive to that which detracts from the princ.i.p.al object, and thus a kind of concentration of purpose emerges as a tacit poetic value, a concentration to which he refers as a "succession of sentiments which resemble ... the subject of his Poem" (lii). Here again Ogilvie has not so much a unity of structure in view as a unity of the pa.s.sions, and it is this particular theme which generally guides his discourse; it is the general premise upon which his inquiry depends and on which his major justification of lyric poetry is based. In more modern terms we might here speak of the principle of the correlative, which Ogilvie rehea.r.s.es in his treatment of the correspondence of subject and metaphor, and even indeed of metaphor as a mode of vision. Poetic discourse, for Ogilvie, does not depend upon metaphor, but without metaphor such discourse would be impossible.

What is important, then, is the principle of propriety, a neat accord between the figure and the subject, a kind of apercu. Thus, metaphors properly employed are "generally short, expressive, and fitted to correspond with great accuracy to the point which requires to be ill.u.s.trated" (pp. liii-liv). Second only to this consideration is that of color, by which he means tone or emphasis, and here again with a view toward the overall unity of the pa.s.sions. It is perhaps worth noting that both considerations are relevant to Ogilvie's sense of the imagination as a judicious faculty operating independently of the reason, but nevertheless obedient to the laws of logical form, organic relationships, and proper successions, all of which imply an idea of structure.

Much of the time Ogilvie is occupied with quite familiar and conventional critical problems. The relation between regularity and irregularity is one that he particularly stresses, and his resolutions tend to allow a certain wildness as natural to the imagination, even as evidence of the faculty. He is, however, more inclined to permit bold and spirited transitions in the shorter ode than in the longer ode. As usual Ogilvie's critical principles are related to the nature of the work in question, and a greater irregularity is natural to the shorter ode since it presumes the imitation of the pa.s.sions. But it is important to recognize that Ogilvie stresses not only the imitation of the pa.s.sions, but the exercise of them as well; and the relation between the one and the other forms at bottom the larger principles on which his second letter is based. We might wish to say that he has in view the education of the pa.s.sions, not merely by imitating them, but, as it were, by drawing from the reader his own possibilities for sensible response. It does not at all imply pre-romantic values to suggest that Ogilvie's criticism is directed toward a frank exploitation of the reader's emotion. As Maclean makes clear,[3] such interests are hardly unique to romantic criticism. Bishop Lowth, for example, distinguished between the internal source and the external source of poetry, preferring the former because through it the mind is immediately conscious of itself and its own emotions.[4] Ogilvie does not quite make the same statement, but his position easily coincides with it; and if, with John Crowe Ransom,[5] we consider romantic poetry as uniquely directed toward the exploitation of the feelings, we shall be surprised by any number of minor eighteenth-century critics who are unabashedly interested in similar values. Ogilvie's position very much resembles Thomas Twining's view that the "description of pa.s.sions and emotions by their sensible effects ... [is what] princ.i.p.ally deserves the name of imitative."[6]

In accord with the psychological bias informing his essay, Ogilvie tends to reduce the importance of narrative events in favor of vivid and picturesque descriptions, for the latter most immediately communicate themselves to the reader and most expressly realize the translation from thought to feeling. Once again it is the uniqueness of rendering that he has in mind, the innovative cast of the poet's mind which transforms the familiar and by so doing gives it a newly affective power. It is important to recognize that Ogilvie shares with his contemporaries a more limited sense of the varieties of subject-matter than we are likely to grant. But as this is so for him, and as indeed this condition is a function of eighteenth-century historiography, it helps to explain the emphasis he places upon the uniqueness with which the subject is realized. Over and again such an interest shapes his inquiries and becomes both an attribute and a test of a poet's capacity. These remarks need to be qualified only by his inquiry into personification: for here it is the expectation of the mind that must not be disappointed, and that which is iconographically established (the figure of Time, for example) should not be violated.

While Ogilvie is not a major critic a good part of his charm and interest for us stems from a mind that is not in the least doctrinaire.

His method is inductive, his appeal is always to the human psychology as that can be known experientially, and his standards are Aristotelian (if by such a reference we mean to signify a procedure based upon the known effects of known works). While there is nothing in these letters that deviates from the psychological tradition in later eighteenth-century criticism, it is also evident that Ogilvie is not really an a.s.sociationist, and that he is less interested in the creative functioning of the poet's imagination than in the precepts of a psychological humanism which underscore his criteria and give validity to his remarks on the range and appeal of lyric poetry. In sum, his historicism exists as a justification for his defense of lyric poetry and is intended to provide a basis for the psychological bias of his argument.

Duke University

LETTER I.

MY LORD,

It is an observation, no doubt, familiar to your Lordship, that Genius is the offspring of Reason and Imagination properly moderated, and co-operating with united influence to promote the discovery, or the ill.u.s.tration of truth. Though it is certain that a separate province is a.s.signed to each of these faculties, yet it often becomes a matter of the greatest difficulty to prevent them from making mutual encroachments, and from leading to extremes which are the more dangerous, because they are brought on by an imperceptible progression.

--Reason in every mind is an uniform power, and its appearance is regular, and invariably permanent. When this Faculty therefore predominates in the sphere of composition, sentiments will follow each other in connected succession, the arguments employed to prove any point will be just and forcible; the stability of a work will be princ.i.p.ally considered, and little regard will be payed to its exterior ornament.

Such a work however, though it may be valued by a few for its intrinsic excellence, yet can never be productive of general improvement, as attention can only be fixed by entertainment, and entertainment is incompatible with unvaried uniformity[1].

[Footnote 1: Neque ipsa Ratio (says the elegant and sensible Quintilian speaking of Eloquence) tam nos juvaret, nisi quae concep.i.s.semus mente, promere etiam loquendo possemus,--ita, ut non modo orare, sed quod Pericli contigit fulgerare, ac tonare videamur. Inst.i.tut. Orat. Lib. XI. c. 16.]

On the contrary, when Imagination is permitted to bestow the graces of ornament indiscriminately, we either find in the general that sentiments are superficial, and thinly scattered through a work, or we are obliged to search for them beneath a load of superfluous colouring. Such, my Lord, is the appearance of the superior Faculties of the mind when they are disunited from each other, or when either of them seems to be remarkably predominant.

Your Lordship is too well acquainted with this subject not to have observed, that in composition, as in common life, extremes, however pernicious, are not always so distant from each other, as upon superficial inspection we may be apt to conclude. Thus in the latter, an obstinate adherence to particular opinions is contracted by observing the consequences of volatility; indifference ariseth from despising the softer feelings of tenderness; pride takes its origin from the disdain of compliance; and the first step to avarice is the desire of avoiding profusion. Inconveniencies similar to these are the consequences of temerity in canva.s.sing the subjects of speculation. The mind of an Author receives an early bias from prepossession, and the dislike which he conceives to a particular fault precipitates him at once to the opposite extreme. For this reason perhaps it is, that young authors who possess some degree of Genius, affect on all occasions a florid manner[2], and clothe their sentiments in the dress of imagery. To them nothing appears so disgusting as dry and lifeless uniformity; and instead of pursuing a middle course betwixt the extremes of profusion and sterility, they are only solicitous to shun that error of which Prejudice hath shown the most distorted resemblance. It is indeed but seldom, that Nature adjusts the intellectual balance so accurately as not to throw an _unequal weight_ into either of the scales. Such likewise is the situation of man, that in the first stage of life the predominant Faculty engrosseth _his attention_, as the predominant Pa.s.sion influenceth _his actions_. Instead therefore of strengthening the weaker power by a.s.sisting its exertions, and by supplying its defects, he is adding force to that which was originally too strong; and the same reflection which discovers _his error_, shows him likewise the difficulty of correcting it. Even in those minds, in which the distribution was primarily equal, education, habit, or some early bias is ready to break _that perfect poise_ which is necessary to const.i.tute consummate excellence.

[Footnote 2: This is the manner which Quintilian appropriates particularly to young persons. --In juvenibus etiam uberiora paulo & pene peric.l.i.tantia feruntur. At in iisdem sicc.u.m, & contractum dicendi propositum plerunque affectatione ipsa severitatis invisum est: quando etiam morum senilis autoritas immatura in adolescentibus creditur. Lib. II. c. 1.]

From this account of the different manners, in which the faculties of the mind exert themselves in the sphere of compet.i.tion, your Lordship will immediately observe, that the Poet who attempts to combine distant ideas, to catch remote allusions, to form vivid and agreeable pictures; is more apt from the very nature of his profession to set up a _false standard_ of _excellence_, than the cool and dispa.s.sionate Philosopher who proceeds deliberately from position to argument, and who employs Imagination only as the Handmaid of a superior faculty. Having gone thus far, like persons who have got into a track from which they cannot recede, we may venture to proceed a step farther; and affirm that the _Lyric Poet_ is exposed to this hazard more nearly than any other, and that to prevent him from falling into the extreme we have mentioned, will require the exercise of the closest attention.

That I may ill.u.s.trate this observation as fully as the nature of the subject will permit, it will be expedient to enquire into the end which Lyric Poetry proposeth to obtain, and to examine the original standards from which the rules of this art are deduced.

Aristotle, who has treated of poetry at great length, a.s.signs two causes of its origin,--_Imitation_ and Harmony; both of which are natural to the human mind[3]. By Imitation he understands, "whatever employs means to represent any subject in a natural manner, whether it hath a real or imaginary existence[4]." The desire of imitating is originally stamped on the mind, and is a source of perpetual pleasure. "Thus" (says the great Critic) "though the figures of wild beasts, or of dead men, cannot be viewed as they naturally are without horror and reluctance; yet the Imitation of these in painting is highly agreeable, and our pleasure is augmented in proportion to that degree of resemblance which we conceive to subsist betwixt the Original and the Copy[5]." By Harmony he understands not the numbers or measures of poetry only, but that music of language, which when it is justly adapted to variety of sentiment or description, contributes most effectually to unite the pleasing with the instructive[6]. This indeed seems to be the opinion of all the Ancients who have written on this subject. Thus Plato says expressly, that those Authors who employ numbers and images without music have no other merit than that of throwing prose into measure[7].

[Footnote 3: ????as? de ?e???sa? e? ???? t?? ????t????, a?t?a?

d?? ?a? a?ta? f?s??a?. ?? ?e?s?a? s?f?t?? t??? a????p???, &c.

?a? ?????a ?a? ????? e? a???? ?? pef???te? p??? a?ta a??sta ?ata ????? p??a???te? e?e???sa? t?? ????s??? Arist. Poet. c. 4.]

[Footnote 4: The Reader of curiosity may see this subject particularly discussed in Dacier's Remarks on the Poeticks of Aristotle, c. 4.]

[Footnote 5: ? ?a? a?ta ??p???? ???e?, t??t?? ta? e????a? ta?

a??sta ?????e?a?, ?a???e? ?e?????te?, ??t??e? ???e?? te ??fa?

t?? a????tat?? ?a? ?e????, &c. Poet. c. 4.]

[Footnote 6: ?a ?a? et?a ?t? ????? t?? ????? est?, fa?e???. Ub.

sup.]

[Footnote 7: ????? e? ?a? s??ata e???? ????? ?????? ?????? e??

et?a t??e?te?. The persons who do this, he compares to Musicians.

?e??? de a? ?a? ?????? a?e? ??a{t??} ???? ???a???e? te ?a?

a???se? p??s???e???. Plat. de Legib. Lib. XI.]

You will no doubt be of opinion, my Lord, upon reflecting on this subject, that Poetry was originally of an earlier date than Philosophy, and that its different species were brought to a certain pitch of perfection before that Science had been cultivated in an equal degree.

Experience informs us on every occasion, that Imagination shoots forward to its full growth, and even becomes wild and luxuriant, when the reasoning Faculty is only beginning to open, and is wholly unfit to connect the series of accurate deduction. The information of the senses (from which Fancy generally borrows her images) always obtains the earliest credit, and makes for that reason the most lasting impressions.

The sallies of this irregular Faculty are likewise abrupt and instantaneous, as they are generally the effects of a sudden impulse which reason is not permitted to restrain. As therefore we have already seen, that the desire of imitating is _innate_ to the mind (if your Lordship will permit me to make use of an unphilosophical epithet) and as the first inhabitants of the world were employed in the culture of the field, and in surveying the scenery of external Nature, it is probable that the first rude draughts of Poetry were extemporary effusions, either descriptive of the scenes of pastoral life, or extolling the attributes of the Supreme Being. On this account Plato says that Poetry was originally ???e?? ???s??[8], or an inspired imitation of those objects which produced either pleasure or admiration.

To paint those objects which produced pleasure was the business of the pastoral, and to display those which raise admiration was the task consigned to the Lyric Poet. --To excite this pa.s.sion, no method was so effectual as that of celebrating the perfections of the Powers who were supposed to preside over Nature. The Ode therefore in its first formation was a song in honour of these Powers[9], either sung at solemn festivals or after the days of Amphion who was the inventor of the Lyre, accompanied with the musick of that instrument. Thus Horace tells us,

_Musa dedit fidibus Divos, puerosque Divorum_[10],

The Muse to n.o.bler subjects tun'd her lyre, G.o.ds, and the sons of G.o.ds her song inspire. FRANCIS.

[Footnote 8: Plat. Io.]

[Footnote 9: Nec prima illa post secula per aetates sane complures alio Lyrici spectarunt, quam ut Deorum laudes ac decora, aut virorum fortium res preclare gestas Hymnis ac Paeanibus, ad templa & aras complecterentur;--ut ad emulationem captos admiratione mortales invitarent. Strad. Prolus. 4 Poet.]