Modern Painters Volume III Part 13

Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above.

But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call, And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall."

This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language of pa.s.sion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly a.s.serted in the teeth of nature and fact. Pa.s.sion will indeed go far in deceiving itself; but it must be a strong pa.s.sion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel pa.s.sage in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress:

"Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid, When thus his moan he made:--

'Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky.

If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, Headlong, the waterfall must come, Oh, let it, then, be dumb-- Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'"

Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a waterfall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening; but with what different relation to the mind that contemplates them! Here, in the extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,--that nature is kind, and G.o.d is kind, and that grief is strong; it knows not well what _is_ possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall,--one might think it could do as much as that!

-- 16. I believe these instances are enough to ill.u.s.trate the main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,--that so far as it _is_ a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it springs; always, however, implying necessarily _some_ degree of weakness in the character.

Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, says:

"If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, 'Hope not to find delight in us,' they say, 'For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure.'"

Compare with this some of the words of Ellen:

"'Ah, why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself, 'Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, And nature, that is kind in woman's breast, And reason, that in man is wise and good, And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,-- Why do not these prevail for human life, To keep two hearts together, that began Their springtime with one love, and that have need Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet To grant, or be received; while that poor bird-- O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature, One of G.o.d's simple children, that yet know not The Universal Parent, _how_ he sings!

As if he wished the firmament of heaven Should listen, and give back to him the voice Of his triumphant constancy and love.

The proclamation that he makes, how far His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.'"

The perfection of both these pa.s.sages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable.

But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her. G.o.d meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly.

Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought. "As if," she says,--"I know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if." The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear though pa.s.sionate strength.

It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just state of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealing with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith.[58]

[52] It is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation, there may be a doubt whether different people receive the same sensation from the same thing (compare Part II. Sec. I.

Chap. V. -- 6.); but, though this makes such facts not distinctly explicable, it does not alter the facts themselves. I derive a certain sensation, which I call sweetness, from sugar. That is a fact. Another person feels a sensation, which _he_ also calls sweetness, from sugar. That is also a fact. The sugar's power to produce these two sensations, which we suppose to be, and which are, in all probability, very nearly the same in both of us, and, on the whole, in the human race, is its sweetness.

[53] In fact (for I may as well, for once, meet our German friends in their own style), all that has been subjected to us on this subject seems object to this great objection; that the subjection of all things (subject to no exceptions) to senses which are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of perpetual contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to subject ourselves to the senses, and to remove whatever objections existed to such subjection. So that, finally, that which is the subject of examination or object of attention, uniting thus in itself the characters of subness and obness (so that, that which has no obness in it should be called sub-subjective, or a sub-subject, and that which has no subness in it should be called upper or ober-objective, or an ob-object); and we also, who suppose ourselves the objects of every arrangement, and are certainly the subjects of every sensual impression, thus uniting in ourselves, in an obverse or adverse manner, the characters of obness and subness, must both become metaphysically dejected or rejected, nothing remaining in _us_ objective, but subjectivity, and the very objectivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this subjectivity of the Human.

There is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if the reader cares to make it out; but in a pure German sentence of the highest style there is often none whatever. See Appendix II. "German Philosophy."

[54] Contemplative, in the sense explained in Part III. Sec. II.

Chap. IV.

[55] Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her Recollections of a Literary Life.

[56] I admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders I mean the Creative (Shakspere, 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," etc. _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.

[57] "Well said, Old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?"

[58] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in Maude:

"For a great speculation had fail'd; And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro'

the air_."

"There has fallen a splendid tear From the pa.s.sion-flower at the gate.

_The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near!'_ _And the white rose weeps, 'She is late.'_ _The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear!'_ _And the lily whispers, 'I wait.'_"

CHAPTER XIII.

OF CLa.s.sICAL LANDSCAPE.

-- 1. My reason for asking the reader to give so much of his time to the examination of the pathetic fallacy was, that, whether in literature or in art, he will find it eminently characteristic of the modern mind; and in the landscape, whether of literature or art, he will also find the modern painter endeavoring to express something which he, as a living creature, imagines in the lifeless object, while the cla.s.sical and mediaeval painters were content with expressing the unimaginary and actual qualities of the object itself. It will be observed that, according to the principle stated long ago, I use the words painter and poet quite indifferently, including in our inquiry the landscape of literature, as well as that of painting; and this the more because the spirit of cla.s.sical landscape has hardly been expressed in any other way than by words.

-- 2. Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable circ.u.mstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing a wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it--

"Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all h.o.a.r, Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence."

That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. The idea of the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wave could not have been given by any other words so well as by this "wayward indolence." But Homer would never have written, never thought of, such words. He could not by any possibility have lost sight of the great fact that the wave, from the beginning to the end of it, do what it might, was still nothing else than salt water; and that salt water could not be either wayward or indolent. He will call the waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous,"

"compact-black," "dark-clear," "violet-colored," "wine-colored," and so on. But every one of these epithets is descriptive of pure physical nature. "Over-roofed" is the term he invariably uses of anything--rock, house, or wave--that nods over at the brow; the other terms need no explanation; they are as accurate and intense in truth as words can be, but they never show the slightest feeling of anything animated in the ocean. Black or clear, monstrous or violet-colored, cold salt water it is always, and nothing but that.

-- 3. "Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the tinge of fallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of the wave which Homer could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step in advance? Also there appears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling in the one writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has been received for a first principle that writers are great in proportion to the intensity of their feelings, and Homer seems to have no feelings about the sea but that it is black and deep, surely in this respect also the modern writer is the greater?"

Stay a moment. Homer _had_ some feeling about the sea; a faith in the animation of it much stronger than Keats's. But all this sense of something living in it, he separates in his mind into a great abstract image of a Sea Power. He never says the waves rage, or the waves are idle. But he says there is somewhat in, and greater than, the waves, which rages, and is idle, and _that_ he calls a G.o.d.

-- 4. I do not think we ever enough endeavor to enter into what a Greek's real notion of a G.o.d was. We are so accustomed to the modern mockeries of the cla.s.sical religion, so accustomed to hear and see the Greek G.o.ds introduced as living personages, or invoked for help, by men who believe neither in them nor in any other G.o.ds, that we seem to have infected the Greek ages themselves with the breath, and dimmed them with the shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think that Homer, as we know that Pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more than this, that all the nations of past time were ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty allegory, or a graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at the end of the garden.

This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about Greek faith; not, indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or ordinary powers of thought; but still so venomously inherent in the modern philosophy that all the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it out of any of us. And then, side by side with this mere infidel folly, stands the bitter short-sightedness of Puritanism, holding the cla.s.sical G.o.d to be either simply an idol,--a block of stone ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped,--or else an actual diabolic or betraying power, usurping the place of G.o.d.

-- 5. Both these Puritanical estimates of Greek deity are of course to some extent true. The corruption of cla.s.sical worship is barren idolatry; and that corruption was deepened, and variously directed to their own purposes, by the evil angels. But this was neither the whole, nor the princ.i.p.al part, of Pagan worship. Pallas was not, in the pure Greek mind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple at Athens; neither was the choice of Leonidas between the alternatives granted him by the oracle, of personal death, or ruin to his country, altogether a work of the Devil's prompting.

-- 6. What, then, was actually the Greek G.o.d? In what way were these two ideas of human form, and divine power, credibly a.s.sociated in the ancient heart, so as to become a subject of true faith, irrespective equally of fable, allegory, superst.i.tious trust in stone, and demoniacal influence?

It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the same instinctive feeling about the elements that we have ourselves; that to Homer, as much as to Casimir de la Vigne, fire seemed ravenous and pitiless; to Homer, as much as to Keats, the sea-wave appeared wayward or idle, or whatever else it may be to the poetical pa.s.sion. But then the Greek reasoned upon this sensation, saying to himself: "I can light the fire, and put it out; I can dry this water up, or drink it. It cannot be the fire or the water that rages, or that is wayward. But it must be something _in_ this fire and _in_ the water, which I cannot destroy by extinguishing the one, or evaporating the other, any more than I destroy myself by cutting off my finger; _I_ was _in_ my finger,--something of me at least was; I had a power over it, and felt pain in it, though I am still as much myself when it is gone. So there may be a power in the water which is not water, but to which the water is as a body;--which can strike with it, move in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed in it. This something, this great Water Spirit, I must not confuse with the waves, which are only its body. _They_ may flow hither and thither, increase or diminish. _That_ must be indivisible--imperishable--a G.o.d. So of fire also; those rays which I can stop, and in the midst of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than I. They cannot feel, but there may be something in them that feels,--a glorious intelligence, as much n.o.bler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are n.o.bler and swifter than my flesh;--the spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours."

-- 7. It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should be able to a.s.sume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse with men, or to perform any act for which their proper body, whether fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would have been to place them beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, a.s.suming the form of man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures. Hence the easy step to the more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at first to shock us, but which are indeed only dishonorable so far as they represent the G.o.ds as false and unholy. It is not the materialism, but the vice, which degrades the conception; for the materialism itself is never positive or complete. There is always some sense of exaltation in the spiritual and immortal body; and of a power proceeding from the visible form through all the infinity of the element ruled by the particular G.o.d. The precise nature of the idea is well seen in the pa.s.sage of the Iliad which describes the river Scamander defending the Trojans against Achilles. In order to remonstrate with the hero, the G.o.d a.s.sumes a human form, which nevertheless is in some way or other instantly recognized by Achilles as that of the river-G.o.d: it is addressed at once as a river, not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a river, "out of the deep whirlpools."[59] Achilles refuses to obey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly into its natural or divine one, and endeavors to overwhelm him with waves. Vulcan defends Achilles, and sends fire against the river, which suffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear no more. At last even the "nerve of the river," or "strength of the river" (note the expression), feels the fire, and this "strength of the river" addresses Vulcan in supplications for respite. There is in this precisely the idea of a vital part of the river-body, which acted and felt, and which, if the fire reached it, was death, just as would be the case if it touched a vital part of the human body. Throughout the pa.s.sage the manner of conception is perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in other places, the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is almost impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon such subjects without falling into inconsistencies, and gradually slackening its effort to grasp the entire truth; until the more spiritual part of it slips from its hold, and only the human form of the G.o.d is left, to be conceived and described as subject to all the errors of humanity. But I do not believe that the idea ever weakens itself down to mere allegory. When Pallas is said to attack and strike down Mars, it does not mean merely that Wisdom at that moment prevailed against Wrath. It means that there are indeed two great spirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chast.i.ty, the other to kindle wrath and prompt to battle. It means that these two spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a great contest was to be decided between all that they each governed in man, then and there a.s.sumed human form, and human weapons, and did verily and materially strike at each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was crushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods, it does not mean merely as Wordsworth puts it, that the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of the trees, and wished to say so figuratively. It means that there is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which takes delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild beasts as they wander through the night; and that this spirit sometimes a.s.sumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real arrows, pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere arrows of moonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all the while, its power, and being in the moonlight, and in all else that it rules.

-- 8. There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in this conception. If there were, it would attach equally to the appearance of the angels to Jacob, Abraham, Joshua, or Manoah. In all those instances the highest authority which governs our own faith requires us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form (a form so real that it is recognized for superhuman only by its "doing wondrously"), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all the world. This is precisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of a G.o.d; and it is impossible to comprehend any single part of the Greek mind until we grasp this faithfully, not endeavoring to explain it away in any wise, but accepting, with frank decision and definition, the tangible existence of its deities;--blue-eyed--white-fleshed--human-hearted,--capable at their choice of meeting man absolutely in his own nature--feasting with him--talking with him--fighting with him, eye to eye, or breast to breast, as Mars with Diomed; or else, dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks, when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as plague; or, finally, retiring completely into the material universe which they properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as Scamander with Achilles through his waves.

-- 9. Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions recorded of the G.o.ds, however apparently ign.o.ble, to indicate weakness of belief in them. Very frequently things which appear to us ign.o.ble are merely the simplicities of a pure and truthful age. When Juno beats Diana about the ears with her own quiver, for instance, we start at first, as if Homer could not have believed that they were both real G.o.ddesses. But what should Juno have done? Killed Diana with a look?

Nay, she neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the very faith of Diana's G.o.ddess-ship. Diana is as immortal as herself.

Frowned Diana into submission? But Diana has come expressly to try conclusions with her, and will by no means be frowned into submission.

Wounded her with a celestial lance? That sounds more poetical, but it is in reality partly more savage, and partly more absurd, than Homer.

More savage, for it makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and more absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the word "celestial," which means nothing. What sort of a thing is a "celestial" lance? Not a wooden one. Of what then? Of moonbeams, or clouds, or mist. Well, therefore, Diana's arrows were of mist too; and her quiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and all, vanish into mist. Why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that two mists met, and one drove the other back? That would have been rational and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer had no such misty fancy; he believed the two G.o.ddesses were there in true bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still I ask, what should Juno have done? Not beaten Diana? No; for it is un-lady-like. Un-English-lady-like, yes; but by no means un-Greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-like. If a modern lady does _not_ beat her servant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener because she is too weak, or too proud, than because she is of purer mind than Homer's Juno. She will not strike them; but she will overwork the one or slander the other without pity; and Homer would not have thought that one whit more G.o.ddess-like than striking them with her open hand.

-- 10. If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the two G.o.ddesses in personal presence thus fought with arrow and quiver, there was also a broader and vaster contest supposed by Homer between the elements they ruled; and that the G.o.ddess of the heavens, as she struck the G.o.ddess of the moon on the flushing cheek, was at the same instant exercising omnipresent power in the heavens themselves, and gathering clouds, with which, filled with the moon's own arrows or beams, she was enc.u.mbering and concealing the moon; he is welcome to this out-carrying of the idea, provided that he does not pretend to make it an interpretation instead of a mere extension, nor think to explain away my real, running, beautiful beaten Diana, into a moon behind clouds.[60]