Biographia Literaria
“For first, the Norman, conqu’ring all by might,
By might was forc’d to keep what he had got;
Mixing our customs and the form of right
With foreign constitutions, he had brought;
Mast’ring the mighty, humbling the poorer wight,
By all severest means that could be wrought;
And, making the succession doubtful, rent
His new-got state, and left it turbulent.”
Will it be contended on the one side, that these lines are mean and
senseless? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that
reason unpoetic? This poet’s well-merited epithet is that of the
“well-languaged Daniel;” but likewise, and by the consent of his
contemporaries no less than of all succeeding critics, “the prosaic
Daniel.” Yet those, who thus designate this wise and amiable writer
from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction to his metre in
the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and
interesting on other accounts; but willingly admit, that there are to
be found throughout his poems, and especially in his EPISTLES and in his
HYMEN’S TRIUMPH, many and exquisite specimens of that style which, as
the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both. A fine and
almost faultless extract, eminent as for other beauties, so for its
perfection in this species of diction, may be seen in Lamb’s DRAMATIC
SPECIMENS, a work of various interest from the nature of the selections
themselves, (all from the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries),--and
deriving a high additional value from the notes, which are full of just
and original criticism, expressed with all the freshness of originality.
Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory, that aims
to identify the style of prose and verse,--(if it does not indeed claim
for the latter a yet nearer resemblance to the average style of men
in the viva voce intercourse of real life)--we might anticipate the
following as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I have
indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole acknowledged
difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye only. The
existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the merit of a poem,
must at length be conceded, when a number of successive lines can be
rendered, even to the most delicate ear, unrecognizable as verse, or
as having even been intended for verse, by simply transcribing them as
prose; when if the poem be in blank verse, this can be effected without
any alteration, or at most by merely restoring one or two words to
their proper places, from which they have been transplanted [69] for no
assignable cause or reason but that of the author’s convenience; but if
it be in rhyme, by the mere exchange of the final word of each line
for some other of the same meaning, equally appropriate, dignified and
euphonic.
The answer or objection in the preface to the anticipated remark
“that metre paves the way to other distinctions,” is contained in the
following words. “The distinction of rhyme and metre is regular and
uniform, and not, like that produced by (what is usually called) poetic
diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon which no
calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is utterly
at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may
choose to connect with the passion.” But is this a poet, of whom a poet
is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain
or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient
make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to
effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy
of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it not his own
fault? The ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the
principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass judgment on
what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two
could be separated. But if it be asked, by what principles the poet is
to regulate his own style, if he do not adhere closely to the sort
and order of words which he hears in the market, wake, high-road, or
plough-field? I reply; by principles, the ignorance or neglect of which
would convict him of being no poet, but a silly or presumptuous usurper
of the name. By the principles of grammar, logic, psychology. In one
word by such a knowledge of the facts, material and spiritual, that most
appertain to his art, as, if it have been governed and applied by good
sense, and rendered instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and
reward of our past conscious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and
acquires the name of Taste. By what rule that does not leave the
reader at the poet’s mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter
to distinguish between the language suitable to suppressed, and the
language, which is characteristic of indulged, anger? Or between that of
rage and that of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search
of angry or jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy
their words? Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding
upon the all in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by
observation? And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As
eyes, for which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and
to which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? There
is not, I firmly believe, a man now living, who has, from his own inward
experience, a clearer intuition, than Mr. Wordsworth himself, that the
last mentioned are the true sources of genial discrimination. Through
the same process and by the same creative agency will the poet
distinguish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very
act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, what differences
of style it at once inspires and justifies; what intermixture of
conscious volition is natural to that state; and in what instances
such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere creatures of an
arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of ornament or connection.
For, even as truth is its own light and evidence, discovering at once
itself and falsehood, so is it the prerogative of poetic genius
to distinguish by parental instinct its proper offspring from the
changelings, which the gnomes of vanity or the fairies of fashion may
have laid in its cradle or called by its names. Could a rule be
given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a
mechanical art. It would be morphosis, not poiaesis. The rules of the
Imagination are themselves the very powers of growth and production.
The words to which they are reducible, present only the outlines
and external appearance of the fruit. A deceptive counterfeit of the
superficial form and colours may be elaborated; but the marble peach
feels cold and heavy, and children only put it to their mouths. We find
no difficulty in admitting as excellent, and the legitimate language of
poetic fervour self-impassioned, Donne’s apostrophe to the Sun in the
second stanza of his PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.
“Thee, eye of heaven! this great Soul envies not;
By thy male force is all, we have, begot.
In the first East thou now beginn’st to shine,
Suck’st early balm and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein’d career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night this western world of mine:
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
Who before thee one day began to be,
And, thy frail light being quench’d, shall long, long outlive
thee.”
Or the next stanza but one:
“Great Destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast mark’d out a path and period
For every thing! Who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends see’st at one instant: thou
Knot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless brow
Ne’er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look,
And shew my story in thy eternal book,” etc.
As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of
unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudopoesy, or
the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on
the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms.
Such are the Odes to jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in
Dodsley’s collection and the magazines of that day, which seldom fail
to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two SUTTONS, commencing
with
“Inoculation, heavenly maid! descend!”
It is not to be denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets
of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory
deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read
to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory period
of Cowley’s preface to his “Pindaric Odes,” written in imitation of
the style and manner of the odes of Pindar. “If,” (says Cowley), “a man
should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought
that one madman had translated another as may appear, when he, that
understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into
Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving.” I then proceeded
with his own free version of the second Olympic, composed for the
charitable purpose of rationalizing the Theban Eagle.
“Queen of all harmonious things,
Dancing words and speaking strings,
What god, what hero, wilt thou sing?
What happy man to equal glories bring?
Begin, begin thy noble choice,
And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice.
Pisa does to Jove belong,
Jove and Pisa claim thy song.
The fair first-fruits of war, th’ Olympic games,
Alcides, offer’d up to Jove;
Alcides, too, thy strings may move,
But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy prove?
Join Theron boldly to their sacred names;
Theron the next honour claims;
Theron to no man gives place,
Is first in Pisa’s and in Virtue’s race;
Theron there, and he alone,
Ev’n his own swift forefathers has outgone.”
One of the company exclaimed, with the full assent of the rest, that
if the original were madder than this, it must be incurably mad. I then
translated the ode from the Greek, and as nearly as possible, word
for word; and the impression was, that in the general movement of the
periods, in the form of the connections and transitions, and in the
sober majesty of lofty sense, it appeared to them to approach more
nearly, than any other poetry they had heard, to the style of our Bible,
in the prophetic books. The first strophe will suffice as a specimen:
“Ye harp-controlling hymns! (or) ye hymns the sovereigns of harps!
What God? what Hero?
What Man shall we celebrate?
Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,
But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,
The first-fruits of the spoils of war.
But Theron for the four-horsed car,
That bore victory to him,
It behoves us now to voice aloud:
The Just, the Hospitable,
The Bulwark of Agrigentum,
Of renowned fathers
The Flower, even him
Who preserves his native city erect and safe.”
But are such rhetorical caprices condemnable only for their deviation
from the language of real life? and are they by no other means to be
precluded, but by the rejection of all distinctions between prose and
verse, save that of metre? Surely good sense, and a moderate insight
into the constitution of the human mind, would be amply sufficient to
prove, that such language and such combinations are the native product