English Critical Essays Part 21

[31] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson).

But both of these must be _first_-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in _quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind.

There is quite enough of the best,--much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to enc.u.mber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, 'that they believe there is _some_ good in what they have written: that they hope to do better in time,' &c. _Some_ good! If there is not _all_ good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this; all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more n.o.ble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to enc.u.mber temporarily the world.

Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron 'as dead leaves flutter from a bough', he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, pa.s.siveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that _these_ are souls, and _those_ are leaves; he makes no confusion of one with the other. But when Coleridge speaks of

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can,

he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the leaf: he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music. Here, however, there is some beauty, even in the morbid pa.s.sage; but take an instance in Homer and Pope.

Without the knowledge of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader, or companions, in the haste of their departure. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus. The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen in Hamlet,[32] addresses the spirit with the simple, startled words:--

Elpenor! How camest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship?

[32] 'Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?'

Which Pope renders thus:--

O, say, what angry power Elpenor led To glide in shades, and wander with the dead?

How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?

I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! And yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to us in the other instances?

-- 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong pa.s.sion--a pa.s.sion which never could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity.

Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in anywise what was _not_ a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written the pa.s.sage.[33]

[33] It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats:--

He wept, and his bright tears Went trickling down the golden bow he held.

Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood; While from beneath some c.u.mb'rous boughs hard by, With solemn step, an awful G.o.ddess came.

And there was purport in her looks for him, Which he with eager guess began to read: Perplexed the while, melodiously he said, '_How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?_'

Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther questioning, I will endeavour to state the main bearings of this matter.

-- 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or overclouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less n.o.ble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to a.s.sert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the pa.s.sions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight.

So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself--a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the a.s.sociations and pa.s.sions may be, that crowd around it. And, in general, these three cla.s.ses may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there are always some subjects which _ought_ to throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things.

-- 9. And thus, in full, there are four cla.s.ses: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.

-- 10. I separate these cla.s.ses, in order that their character may be clearly understood; but of course they are united each to the other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the influences to which it is subjected, pa.s.ses at different times into the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. That is to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much of the past and future, and of all things beside and around that which immediately affects him, to be in anywise shaken by it. His mind is made up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways are steadfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at once unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a rock with deep moss upon it; but there is too much ma.s.s of him to be moved.

The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at once carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want to do before; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or pa.s.sionate, as things come and go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, to a great extent, impa.s.sive (as shallow people think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from far off.

Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, and can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expressions and modes of thought which are in some sort diseased or false.

-- 11. Now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces: we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cold blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of pa.s.sion, may speak wisely and truly of 'raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame'; but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of 'raging waves', 'remorseless floods', 'ravenous billows', &c.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the _pure fact_, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.

To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man in despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea,

_Whose changing mound, and foam that pa.s.sed away,_ Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay.

Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged, expression.

'Mound' of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true; 'changing' is as familiar as may be; 'foam that pa.s.sed away', strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and ma.s.siveness of a large wave. The word 'wave' is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or gra.s.s: it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word 'mound' is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then the term 'changing' has a peculiar force also. Most people think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and fall. They change. Change both place and form, but they do not fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not how,--becomes another wave.

The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still more perfectly,--'foam that pa.s.sed away'. Not merely melting, disappearing, but pa.s.sing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave. Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite fact,--the image of the green mounds that do not change, and the white and written stones that do not pa.s.s away; and thence to follow out also the a.s.sociated images of the calm life with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with the fading foam:

Let no man move his bones.

As for Samaria, her king is out off like the foam upon the water.

But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the word 'mock' is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for 'deceive' or 'defeat', without implying any impersonation of the waves.

-- 12. It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances to show the peculiar dignity possessed by all pa.s.sages which thus limit their expression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather what he can from it. Here is a notable one from the Iliad. Helen, looking from the Scaean gate of Troy over the Grecian host, and telling Priam the names of its captains, says at last:

I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot see,--Castor and Pollux,--whom one mother bore with me. Have they not followed from fair Lacedaemon, or have they indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in Me?

Then Homer:

So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear fatherland.

Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No; though Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else than these. Make what you will of them.

-- 13. Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's terrible ballad, _La Toilette de Constance_. I must quote a few lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader who has not the book by him, to understand its close.

Vite, Anna, vite; au miroir Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance, Et je vais au bal ce soir Chez l'amba.s.sadeur de France.

Y pensez-vous, ils sont fanes, ces nuds, Ils sont d'hier, mon Dieu, comme tout pa.s.se!

Que du reseau qui retient mes cheveux Les glands d'azur retombent avec grace.

Plus haut! Plus bas! Vous ne comprenez rien!

Que sur mon front ce saphir etincelle: Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien, Bien,--chere Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle.

Celui qu'en vain je voudrais...o...b..ier (Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espere.

(Ah, fi! profane, est-ce la mon collier?

Quoi! ces grains d'or benits par le Saint-Pere!) Il y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, En y pensant, a peine je respire; Pere Anselmo doit m'entendre demain, Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire?

Vite un coup d'il au miroir, Le dernier. ----J'ai l'a.s.surance Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir Chez l'amba.s.sadeur de France.

Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait.

Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle!

Au feu! Courez! Quand l'espoir l'enivrait, Tout perdre ainsi! Quoi! Mourir,--et si belle!

L'horrible feu ronge avec volupte Ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'eleve, Et sans pitie devore sa beaute, Ses dix-huit ans, helas, et son doux reve!

Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour!

On disait, Pauvre Constance!

Et on dansait, jusqu'au jour, Chez l'amba.s.sadeur de France.

Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say.

What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There they danced, till the morning, at the Amba.s.sador's of France. Make what you will of it.

If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression, except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing.

The poet stands by, impa.s.sive as a statue, recording her words just as they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire gnaws with _voluptuousness--without pity_. It is soon past. The fate is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity,