Part 11
There is undoubtedly singular merit in this description. I shall contrast it with one which the French Virgil has written, in an age whose faith was stronger in ghosts than ours, yet which perhaps had less skill in describing them. There are some circumstances which seem to indicate that the author of the _Castle Spectre_ lighted his torch at the altar of the French muse. Athalia thus narrates her dream, in which the spectre of Jezabel, her mother, appears:
C'étoit pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit, Ma mère Jezabel devant moi s'est montrée, Comme au jour de sa mort, pompeusement paree.-- ---- En achevant ces mots epouvantables, Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser, Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour l'embrasser, Mais _je n'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible mélange D'os et de chair meurtris_, et trainée dans la fange, _Des lambeaux pleins de sang et des membres affreux_. RACINE'S _Athalie_, Acte ii. s. 5.
Goldsmith, when, in his pedestrian tour, he sat amid the Alps, as he paints himself in his "Traveller," and felt himself the solitary neglected genius he was, desolate amidst the surrounding scenery, probably at that moment applied to himself the following beautiful imagery of Thomson:
As in the hollow breast of Apennine Beneath the centre of encircling hills, A myrtle rises, far from human eyes, And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild. _Autumn_, v. 202.
Goldsmith very pathetically applies a similar image:
E'en now where Alpine solitudes ascend, I sit me down a pensive hour to spend, Like yon _neglected shrub_ at random cast, That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast. _Traveller_.
Akenside illustrates the native impulse of genius by a simile of Memnon's marble statue, sounding its lyre at the touch of the sun:
For as old Memnon's image, long renown'd By fabling Nilus, to the quivering touch Of Titan's ray, with each repulsive string Consenting, sounded through the warbling air Unbidden strains; even so did nature's hand, &c.
It is remarkable that the same image, which does not appear obvious enough to have been the common inheritance of poets, is precisely used by old Regnier, the first French satirist, in the dedication of his Satires to the French king. Louis XIV. supplies the place of nature to the courtly satirist. These are his words:--"On lit qu'en Ethiope il y avoit une statue qui rendoit un son harmonieux, toutes les fois que le soleil levant la regardoit. Ce même miracle, Sire, avez vous fait en moi, qui touché de l'astre de Votre Majesté, ai reçu la voix et la parole."
In that sublime passage in "Pope's Essay on Man," Epist. i. v. 237, beginning,
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
and proceeds to
From nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Waller, whose last verse is as fine as any in the "Essay on Man:"--
The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove, On which the fabric of our world depends, One link dissolv'd, the whole creation ends. _Of the Danger his Majesty escaped_, &c. v. 168.
It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression _imbrowned_ and _brown_, which he applies to the evening shade, from the Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. iv., v. 246:
----And where the unpierced shade _Imbrowned_ the noon tide bowers.
And B. ix., v. 1086:
---- Where highest Woods impenetrable To sun or star-light, spread their umbrage broad, And _brown as evening_.
_Fa l'imbruno_ is an expression used by the Italians to denote the approach of the evening. Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso, have made a very picturesque use of this term, noticed by Thyer. I doubt if it be applicable to our colder climate; but Thomson appears to have been struck by the fine effect it produces in poetical landscape; for he has
----With quickened step _Brown night_ retires. _Summer_, v. 51.
If the epithet be true, it cannot be more appropriately applied than in the season he describes, which most resembles the genial clime with the deep serenity of an Italian heaven. Milton in Italy had experienced the _brown evening_, but it may be suspected that Thomson only recollected the language of the poet.
The same observation may be made on two other poetical epithets. I shall notice the epithet "LAUGHING" applied to inanimate objects; and "PURPLE" to beautiful objects."
The natives of Italy and the softer climates receive emotions from the view of their WATERS in the SPRING not equally experienced in the British roughness of our skies. The fluency and softness of the water are thus described by Lucretius:--
----Tibi suaveis Dædala tellus Submittit flores: _tibi_ RIDENT _æquora ponti_.
Inelegantly rendered by Creech,
The roughest sea puts on smooth looks, and SMILES.
Dryden more happily,
The ocean SMILES, and smooths her wavy breast.
But Metastasio has copied Lucretius:--
A te fioriscono Gli erbosi prat: E i flutti RIDONO Nel mar placati.
It merits observation, that the _Northern Poets_ could not exalt their imagination higher than that the water SMILED, while the modern Italian, having before his eyes _a different Spring_, found no difficulty in agreeing with the ancients, that the waves LAUGHED. Modern poetry has made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has LAUGHING FLOWERS: and Langhorne in two beautiful lines personifies Flora:--
Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie, And Flora LAUGHS beneath an azure sky.
Sir William Jones, in the spirit of Oriental poetry, has "the LAUGHING AIR." Dryden has employed this epithet boldly in the delightful lines, almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer:--
The morning lark, the messenger of day, Saluted in her song the morning gray; And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright, That all THE HORIZON LAUGHED to see the joyous sight. _Palamon and Arcite_, B. ii.[25]
It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients precisely meant by the word _purpureus_. They seem to have designed by it anything BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classical friend has furnished me with numerous significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus, in his elegy on Livia, mentions _Nivem purpureum_. Catullus, _Quercus ramos purpureos_. Horace, _Purpureo bibet ore nectar_, and somewhere mentions _Olores purpureos_. Virgil has _Purpuream vomit ille animam_; and Homer calls the sea _purple_, and gives it in some other book the same epithet, when in a storm.
The general idea, however, has been fondly adopted by the finest writers in Europe. The PURPLE of the ancients is not known to us. What idea, therefore, have the moderns affixed to it? Addison, in his Vision of the Temple of Fame, describes the country as "being covered with a kind of PURPLE LIGHT." Gray's beautiful line is well known:--
The bloom of young desire and _purple light_ of love.
And Tasso, in describing his hero Godfrey, says, Heaven
Gli empie d'onor la faccia, e vi riduce Di Giovinezza _il bel purpureo lume_.
Both Gray and Tasso copied Virgil, where Venus gives to her son Æneas--
----_Lumenque_ Juventæ _Purpureum_.
Dryden has omitted the _purple light_ in his version, nor is it given by Pitt; but Dryden expresses the general idea by
---- With hands divine, Had formed his curling locks and _made his temples shine_, And given his rolling eys a _sparkling grace_.
It is probable that Milton has given us his idea of what was meant by _this purple light_, when applied to the human countenance, in the felicitous expression of
CELESTIAL ROSY-RED.
Gray appears to me to be indebted to Milton for a hint for the opening of his Elegy: as in the first line he had Dante and Milton in his mind, he perhaps might also in the following passage have recollected a congenial one in Comus, which he altered. Milton, describing the evening, marks it out by
---- What time the _laboured ox_ In his loose traces from the furrow came, And the _swinkt hedger_ at his supper sat.
Gray has
The _lowing herd_ wind slowly o'er the lea, The _ploughman_ homeward plods his weary way.
Warton has made an observation on this passage in Comus; and observes further that it is a _classical_ circumstance, but not a _natural_ one, in an _English landscape_, for our ploughmen quit their work at noon. I think, therefore, the imitation is still more evident; and as Warton observes, both Gray and Milton copied here from books, and not from life.
There are three great poets who have given us a similar incident.
Dryden introduces the highly finished picture of the _hare_ in his Annus Mirabilis:--
_Stanza_ 131. So I have seen some _fearful hare_ maintain A course, till tired before the dog she lay, Who stretched behind her, pants upon the plain, Past power to kill, as she to get away.
132. With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey; His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies: She trembling creeps upon the ground away And looks back to him with _beseeching eyes_.
Thomson paints the _stag_ in a similar situation:--
----Fainting breathless toil Sick seizes on his heart--he stands at bay: The _big round tears_ run down his _dappled_ face, He _groans_ in anguish. _Autumn_, v. 451.
Shakspeare exhibits the same object:--
The wretched animal heaved forth such _groans_, That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat Almost to bursting; and the _big round tears_ Coursed one another down his _innocent nose_ In piteous chase.
Of these three pictures the _beseeching eyes_ of Dryden perhaps is more pathetic than _the big round tears_, certainly borrowed by Thomson from Shakspeare, because the former expression has more passion, and is therefore more poetical. The sixth line in Dryden is perhaps exquisite for its imitative harmony, and with peculiar felicity paints the action itself. Thomson adroitly drops the _innocent nose_, of which one word seems to have lost its original signification, and the other offends now by its familiarity. _The dappled face_ is a term more picturesque, more appropriate, and more poetically expressed.
EXPLANATION OF THE FAC-SIMILE.
The manuscripts of Pope's version of the Iliad and Odyssey are preserved in the British Museum in three volumes, the gift of David Mallet. They are written chiefly on the backs of letters, amongst which are several from Addison, Steele, Jervaise, Rowe, Young, Caryl, Walsh, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Fenton, Craggs, Congreve, Hughes, his mother Editha, and Lintot and Tonson the booksellers.[26]
From these letters no information can be gathered, which merits public communication; they relate generally to the common civilities and common affairs of life. What little could be done has already been given in the additions to Pope's works.
It has been observed, that Pope taught himself to write, by copying printed books: of this singularity we have in this collection a remarkable instance; several parts are written in Roman and Italic characters, which for some time I mistook for print; no imitation can be more correct.
What appears on this Fac-Simile I have printed, to assist its deciphering; and I have also subjoined the passage as it was given to the public, for immediate reference. The manuscript from whence this page is taken consists of the first rude sketches; an intermediate copy having been employed for the press; so that the corrected verses of this Fac-Simile occasionally vary from those published.
This passage has been selected, because the parting of Hector and Andromache is perhaps the most pleasing episode in the Iliad, while it is confessedly one of the most finished passages.
The lover of poetry will not be a little gratified, when he contemplates the variety of epithets, the imperfect idea, the gradual embellishment, and the critical rasures which are here discovered.[27] The action of Hector, in lifting his infant in his arms, occasioned Pope much trouble; and at length the printed copy has a different reading.
I must not omit noticing, that the whole is on the back of a letter franked by Addison; which cover I have given at one corner of the plate.
The parts distinguished by Italics were rejected.
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy _Extends his eager arms to embrace his boy_, lovely Stretched his fond arms to seize the _beauteous_ boy; babe The _boy_ clung crying to his nurse's breast, Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. each _kind_ With silent pleasure _the_ fond parent smil'd, And Hector hasten'd to relieve his child. The glittering terrors unbound, _His radiant helmet_ from his brows _unbrac'd_, _on the ground, he And on the ground the glittering terror plac'd_, beamy And placed the _radiant_ helmet on the ground, _Then seized the boy and raising him in air_, lifting Then _fondling_ in his arms his infant heir, _dancing_ Thus to the gods addrest a father's prayer. glory fills O thou, whose _thunder shakes_ th' ethereal throne, deathless And all ye other _powers_ protect my son! _Like mine, this war, blooming youth with every virtue blest_, _grace_ _The shield and glory of the Trojan race; Like mine his valour, and his just renown. Like mine his labours, to defend the crown_. Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown, the Trojans To guard _my country_, to defend the crown: _In arms like me, his country's war to wage_, And rise the Hector of the future age! Against his country's foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age! successful So when triumphant from the _glorious_ toils Of heroes slain, he bears the reeking spoils, Whole hosts may _All Troy shall_ hail him, with deserv'd acclaim, own the son And _cry, this chief_ transcends his father's fame. While pleas'd, amidst the general shouts of Troy, His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy. fondly on her He said, and gazing _o'er his consort's charms_, Restor'd his infant to her longing arms. on Soft _in_ her fragrant breast the babe she laid, _Prest to her heart_, and with a smile survey'd; to repose Hush'd _him to rest_, and with a smile survey'd. _passion_ But soon the troubled pleasure _mixt with rising fears_, dash'd with fear, The tender pleasure soon, chastised by fear, She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The passage appears thus in the printed work. I have marked in Italics the _variations_.
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy Stretch'd his fond arms to _clasp_ the lovely boy. The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast, Scar'd at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. With _secret_[28] pleasure each fond parent smil'd, And Hector hasted to relieve his child, The glittering terrors from his brows unbound, And placed the _beaming_ helmet on the ground: _Then kiss'd the child_, and lifting high in air, Thus to the gods _preferr'd_ a father's prayer:
O thou, whose glory fills th' ethereal throne, And all ye deathless powers, protect my son! Grant him like me to purchase just renown, To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown; Against his country's foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age! So when, triumphant from successful toils, Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils, Whole hosts may hail him, with deserv'd acclaim, And say, _this chief_ transcends his father's fame: While pleas'd amidst the general shouts of Troy, His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy.
He _spoke_, and fondly gazing on her charms, Restor'd _the pleasing burden to her arms_: Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid, Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd. The _troubled pleasure_ soon chastis'd by fear, She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
LITERARY FASHIONS.
There is such a thing as Literary Fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats. Dr. Kippis, who had a taste for literary history, has observed that "'Dodsley's Oeconomy of Human Life' long received the most extravagant applause, from the supposition that it was written by a celebrated nobleman; an instance of the power of _Literary Fashion_; the history of which, as it hath appeared in various ages and countries, and as it hath operated with respect to the different objects of science, learning, art, and taste, would form a work that might be highly instructive and entertaining."
The favourable reception of Dodsley's "Oeconomy of Human Life," produced a whole family of oeconomies; it was soon followed by a _second part_, the gratuitous ingenuity of one of those officious imitators, whom an original author never cares to thank. Other oeconomies trod on the heels of each other.
For some memoranda towards a history of literary fashions, the following may be arranged:--
At the restoration of letters in Europe, commentators and compilers were at the head of the literati; translators followed, who enriched themselves with their spoils on the commentators. When in the progress of modern literature, writers aimed to rival the great authors of antiquity, the different styles, in their servile imitations, clashed together; and parties were formed who fought desperately for the style they chose to adopt. The public were long harassed by a fantastic race, who called themselves Ciceronian, of whom are recorded many ridiculous practices, to strain out the words of Cicero into their hollow verbosities. They were routed by the facetious Erasmus. Then followed the brilliant æra of epigrammatic points; and good sense, and good taste, were nothing without the spurious ornaments of false wit. Another age was deluged by a million of sonnets; and volumes were for a long time read, without their readers being aware that their patience was exhausted. There was an age of epics, which probably can never return again; for after two or three, the rest can be but repetitions with a few variations.
In Italy, from 1530 to 1580, a vast multitude of books were written on Love; the fashion of writing on that subject (for certainly it was not always a passion with the indefatigable writer) was an epidemical distemper. They wrote like pedants, and pagans; those who could not write their love in verse, diffused themselves in prose. When the Poliphilus of Colonna appeared, which is given in the form of a dream, this dream made a great many dreamers, as it happens in company (says the sarcastic Zeno) when one yawner makes many yawn. When Bishop Hall first published his satires, he called them "Toothless Satires," but his latter ones he distinguished as "Biting Satires;" many good-natured men, who could only write good-natured verse, crowded in his footsteps, and the abundance of their labours only showed that even the "toothless" satires of Hall could bite more sharply than those of servile imitators. After Spenser's "Faerie Queen" was published, the press overflowed with many mistaken imitations, in which fairies were the chief actors--this circumstance is humorously animadverted on by Marston, in his satires, as quoted by Warton: every scribe now falls asleep, and in his
----dreams, straight tenne pound to one Outsteps some _fairy_---- Awakes, straiet rubs his eyes, and PRINTS HIS TALE.
The great personage who gave a fashion to this class of literature was the courtly and romantic Elizabeth herself; her obsequious wits and courtiers would not fail to feed and flatter her taste. Whether they all felt the beauties, or languished over the tediousness of "The Faerie Queen," and the "Arcadia" of Sidney, at least her majesty gave a vogue to such sentimental and refined romance. The classical Elizabeth introduced another literary fashion; having translated the Hercules Oetacus, she made it fashionable to translate Greek tragedies. There was a time, in the age of fanaticism, and the Long Parliament, that books were considered the more valuable for their length. The seventeenth century was the age of folios. Caryl wrote a "Commentary on Job" in two volumes folio, of above one thousand two hundred sheets! as it was intended to inculcate the virtue of patience, these volumes gave at once the theory and the practice. One is astonished at the multitude of the divines of this age; whose works now lie buried under the brick and mortar tombs of four or five folios, which, on a moderate calculation, might now be "wire-woven" into thirty or forty modern octavos.
In Charles I.'s time, love and honour were heightened by the wits into florid romance; but Lord Goring turned all into ridicule; and he was followed by the Duke of Buckingham, whose happy vein of ridicule was favoured by Charles II., who gave it the vogue it obtained.
Sir William Temple justly observes, that changes in veins of wit are like those of habits, or other modes. On the return of Charles II., none were more out of fashion among the new courtiers than the old Earl of Norwich, who was esteemed the greatest wit, in his father's time, among the old.
Modern times have abounded with what may be called fashionable literature. Tragedies were some years ago as fashionable as comedies are at this day;[29] Thomson, Mallet, Francis, Hill, applied their genius to a department in which they lost it all. Declamation and rant, and over-refined language, were preferred to the fable, the manners, and to nature--and these now sleep on our shelves! Then too we had a family of paupers in the parish of poetry, in "Imitations of Spenser." Not many years ago, Churchill was the occasion of deluging the town with _political poems in quarto_.--These again were succeeded by _narrative poems_, in the ballad measure, from all sizes of poets.--The Castle of Otranto was the father of that marvellous, which once over-stocked the circulating library and closed with Mrs. Radcliffe.--Lord Byron has been the father of hundreds of graceless sons!--Travels and voyages have long been a class of literature so fashionable, that we begin to prepare for, or to dread, the arrival of certain persons from the Continent!
Different times, then, are regulated by different tastes. What makes a strong impression on the public at one time, ceases to interest it at another; an author who sacrifices to the prevailing humours of his day has but little chance of being esteemed by posterity; and every age of modern literature might, perhaps, admit of a new classification, by dividing it into its periods of _fashionable literature_.
THE PANTOMIMICAL CHARACTERS.
Il est des gens de qui l'esprit guindé Sous un front jamais déridé Ne souffre, n'approuve, et n'estime Que le pompeux, et le sublime; Pour moi j'ose poser en fait Qu'en de certains momens l'esprit le plus parfait Peut aimer sans rougir jusqu'aux marionettes; Et qu'il est des tems et des lieux, Où le grave, et le sérieux, Ne valent pas d'agréables sornettes. Peau d'Ane.
People there are who never smile; Their foreheads still unsmooth'd the while, Some lambent flame of mirth will play, That wins the easy heart away; Such only choose in prose or rhyme A bristling pomp,--they call sublime! I blush not to like Harlequin, Would he but talk,--and all his kin. Yes, there are times, and there are places, When flams and old wives' tales are worth the Graces.
Cervantes, in the person of his hero, has confessed the delight he received from amusements which disturb the gravity of some, who are apt, however, to be more entertained by them than they choose to acknowledge. Don Quixote thus dismisses a troop of merry strollers--"_Andad con Dios, buena gente, y hazad vuestra fiesta, porque desde muchacho fui aficionado a la_ Carátula, _y en mi mocedad se ne ivan los ojos tras la_ Farándula." In a literal version the passage may run thus:--"Go, good people, God be with you, and keep your merry making! for from childhood I was in love with the _Carátula_, and in my youth my eyes would lose themselves amidst the _Farándula_." According to Pineda, _La Carátula_ is an actor masked, and _La Farándula_ is a kind of farce.[30]