Part 15

The passion in Shakespeare is full of dramatic fluctuation. In Chaucer it is like the course of a river--strong, full, and increasing; but in Shakespeare it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed by furious storms. Milton, on the other hand, takes only the imaginative part of passion, that which remains after the event, and abstracts it from the world of action to that of contemplation.

The great fault of a modern school of poetry [the Lake poets] is that it would reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility; or, what is worse, would divest it both of imaginary splendour and human passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings and devouring egotism of the writers' own minds. Milton and Shakespeare did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal interpretation both to Nature and art. They did not do all they could to get rid of the one and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the moods of their own minds.

Shakespeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his conception of character or passion. Its movement is rapid and devious, and unites the most opposite extremes. He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; but the stroke, like the lightning's, is as sure as it is sudden. His language and versification are like the rest of him. He has a magic power over words; they come winged at his bidding, and seem to know their places. His language is hieroglyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies are better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy. His female characters are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakespeare was the least of a coxcomb of anyone that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.

Shakespeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an indifference to personal reputation; in these respects, as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the muses, a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand warm from the touch of the ark of faith. The spirit of the poet, the patriot, and the prophet vied with each other in his breast. He thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about him. He strives hard to say the finest things in the world, and he does say them. In Milton there is always an appearance of effort; in Shakespeare, scarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer. The power of his mind is stamped on every line. He describes objects of which he could only have read in books with the vividness of actual observation.

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language, except Shakespeare's, that deserves the name of verse. The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very image.

_Dryden and Pope_

These are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry, as the four poets of whom I have already treated were of the natural, and they have produced a kind and degree of excellence which existed equally nowhere else.

Pope was a man of exquisite faculties and of the most refined taste; he was a wit and critic, a man of sense, of observation, and the world. He was the poet not of Nature, but of art. He saw Nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the feelings of others by his own. His muse never wandered with safety but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his library back again. That which was the nearest to him was the greatest; the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of Nature. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion. Yet within this narrow circle how much, and that how exquisite, was contained! The wrong end of the magnifier is held to everything, but still the exhibition is highly curious. If I had to choose, there are one or two persons--and but one or two--that I should like to have been better than Pope!

Dryden was a bolder and more various versifier than Pope; he had greater strength of mind, but he had not the same delicacy of feeling. Pope describes the thing, and goes on describing his own descriptions, till he loses himself in verbal repetitions; Dryden recurs to the object often, and gives us new strokes of character as well as of his pencil.

_Thomson and Cowper_

Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets; the colours with which he paints still seem wet. Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. He puts his heart into his subject, and it is for this reason that he is the most popular of all our poets. But his verse is heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring uphill.

Cowper had some advantages over Thomson, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain precision of graphical description, and in a more careful choice of topics. But there is an effeminacy about him which shrinks from and repels common and hearty sympathy. He shakes hands with Nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on; he is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back to the drawing-room and the ladies, the sofa, and the tea-urn. He was a nervous man; but to be a coward is not the way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love. Still, he is a genuine poet, and deserves his reputation.

_Robert Burns_

Burns was not like Shakespeare in the range of his genius; but there is something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected character about him. He was as much of a man, not a twentieth part as much of a poet, as Shakespeare. He had an eye to see, a heart to feel--no more. His pictures of good fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are equal to anything; they come up to Nature, and they cannot go beyond it. His strength is not greater than his weakness; his virtues were greater than his vices. His virtues belonged to his genius; his vices to his situation.

Nothing could surpass Burns's love-songs in beauty of expression and in true pathos, except some of the old Scottish ballads themselves. There is in these a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery; a closer intimacy with Nature, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, "thoughts that often lie too deep for tears." The old English ballads are of a gayer turn. They are adventurous and romantic; but they relate chiefly to good living and good fellowship, to drinking and hunting scenes.

_Some Contemporary Poets_

Tom Moore is heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth. Everything lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while, over all, love waves his purple light. His levity at last oppresses; his variety cloys, his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight.

Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Moore's is careless and dissipated. His passion is always of the same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is the passion of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to, all other things. There is nothing less poetical or more repulsive. But still there is power; and power forces admiration. In vigour of style and force of conception he surpasses every writer of the present day.

Walter Scott is deservedly the most popular of living poets. He differs from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of expression. The force of his mind is picturesque rather than moral. He is to the great poet what an excellent mimic is to a great actor.

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. His poetry is not external, but internal; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Many of the "Lyrical Ballads" are of inconceivable beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. But his powers have been mistaken by the age. He cannot form a whole. He has not the constructive faculty. His "Excursion" is a proof of this; the line labours, the sentiment moves slowly, but the poem stands stock-still.

The Lake school of poetry had its origin in the French Revolution, or rather in the sentiments and opinions which produced that event. The world was to be turned topsy-turvy, and poetry was to share its fate. The paradox they set out with was that all things are by Nature equally fit subjects for poetry, or rather, that the meanest and most unpromising are best. They aimed at exciting attention by reversing the established standards of estimation in the world. An adept in this school of poetry is jealous of all excellence but his own. He is slow to admire anything admirable, feels no interest in what is most interesting to others, no grandeur in anything grand. He sees nothing but himself and the universe. His egotism is, in some respects, a madness. The effect of this has been perceived as something odd; but the cause or principle has never been traced to its source before. The proofs are to be found throughout many of the poems of Mr. Southey, Mr. Coleridge, and Mr. Wordsworth.

I may say of Mr. Coleridge that he is the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius. But his "Ancient Mariner" is the only work that gives an adequate idea of his natural powers. In it, however, he seems to "conceive of poetry but as a drunken dream, reckless, careless, and heedless of past, present, and to come."

I have thus gone through my task. I have felt my subject sinking from under me as I advanced, and have been afraid of ending in nothing. The interest has unavoidably decreased at almost every step of the progress, like a play that has its catastrophe in the first or second act. This, however, I could not help.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

In 1857 Oliver Wendell Holmes (see Vol. V, p. 87) leapt into fame by his "Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" papers in the "Atlantic Monthly," then edited by Lowell. His "Professor" and "Poet" series of papers followed, with hardly less success. In these writings a robust idealism, humour, fancy, and tenderness are so gently mixed as to amount to genius.

_Every Man His Own Boswell_

"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'facts.' They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bulldogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalisation, or pleasant fancy? I allow no 'facts' at this table."

I continued, for I was in the talking vein, "This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. They are the talkers that have what may be called jerky minds. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel."

"Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady boarders.

"Madam," said I, "all men are bores except when we want them. Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop the vibrations as in twanging them to bring out the music. There is this, too, about talking," I continued; "it shapes our thoughts for us; the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it, but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine--if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it."

The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior excellence.

_The Ageing of Ideas_

"I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody has made before me. I never wrote a 'good' line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning."

I wish I had not said all this then and there. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me with a wild sort of expression; and all at once she melted away from her seat like an image of snow; a sling shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive me!

_The Confusion of Personality_

"We must remember that talking is one of the fine arts--the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult. It is not easy at the best for two persons talking together to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are so many of them."

The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.

"When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together," I continued, "it is natural that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension."

Our landlady turned pale. No doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellect, and that it involved the probable loss of a boarder. Everybody looked up, and the old gentleman opposite slid the carving-knife to one side, as it were, carelessly.

"I think," I said, "I can make it plain that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognised as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.

THREE JOHNS

1. The real John; known only to his Maker.

2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.

3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but often very unlike either.

THREE THOMASES

1. The real Thomas.

2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.

3. John's ideal Thomas.

"It follows that until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. No wonder two disputants often get angry when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time."

A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me _viâ_ this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical--but in the meantime he had eaten the peaches.

_More on Books_

"Some of you boarders ask me why I don't write a novel, or something of that kind. Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends, and I am afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well. And sometimes I have thought I might be too dull to write such a story as I should wish to write. And, finally, I think it is very likely I _shall_ write a story one of these days.

"I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being too dull to write a good story. When one arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillising and blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind.

"How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, 'I hate books!' I did not recognise in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character, and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many who read, with a mark to keep their place, that really 'hate books,' but never had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it."

_Dual Consciousness_

I am so pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain here, perhaps for years.

"Do thoughts have regular cycles? Take this: All at once a conviction flashes through us that we have been in the same precise circumstances as at the present instant once or many times before."

When I mentioned this the Schoolmistress said she knew the feeling well, and didn't like to experience it; it made her think she was a ghost, sometimes.

The young fellow whom they call John said he knew all about it. He had just lighted a cheroot the other day when a tremendous conviction came over him that he had done just that same thing ever so many times before.

"How do I account for it? Well, some think that one of the hemispheres of the brain hangs fire, and the small interval between the perceptions of the nimble and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, and therefore the second perception appears to be the copy of another, ever so old."

_The Race of Life_

"Nothing strikes one more in the race of life than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. 'Commencement day' always reminds me of the start of the 'Derby.' Here we are at Cambridge and a class is first 'graduating.' Poor Harry! he was to have been there, but he has paid forfeit.

"_Ten years gone._ First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. 'Cassock,' a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest. 'Meteor' has pulled up.

"_Twenty years._ Second corner turned. 'Cassock' has dropped from the front, and 'Judex,' an iron-grey, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat--five--six--how many? They will not get up again in this race be very sure!

"_Thirty years._ Third corner turned. 'Dives,' bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast--is getting to be the favourite with many. But who is that other one that now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown colt 'Asteroid,' with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts. 'Cassock' is now taking it easily in a gentle trot.

"_Forty years._ More dropping off, but places much as before.

"_Fifty years._ Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying, or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how!

"I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main-- The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed-- Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

_Sensibility and Scholarship_

"Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door by which they may be entered. The front-door is on the street. The side-door opens at once into the sacred chambers. There is almost always at least one key to this side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's bosom. Be very careful to whom you entrust one of these keys of the side-door. Some of those who come in at the side-door have a scale of your whole nervous system, and can play on all the gamut of your sensibilities in semi-tones. Married life is the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department are found. Be very careful to whom you give the side-door key.

"The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, if any; yet they represent to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, and I think if we could ask Abraham to dine with us men of letters next Saturday we should feel honoured by his company."

_A Growing Romance_

"I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating especially to my early life, if I thought you would like to hear them."

The schoolmistress turned in her chair and said, "If we should _like_ to hear them--we should _love_ to."

So I drew my chair a shade nearer her, and went on to speak of voices that had bewitched me.

"I wish you could hear my sister's voice," said the schoolmistress.

"If it is like yours it must be a pleasant one," said I.

Lately she has been walking early and has brought back roses in her cheeks. I love the damask rose best of all flowers.

Our talk had been of trees, and I had been comparing the American and the English elms in the walk we call the Mall. "Will you walk out and look at those elms with me after breakfast?" I said to the schoolmistress.