Biographia Literaria
neither of the fancy nor of the imagination; that their operation
consists in the excitement of surprise by the juxta-position and
apparent reconciliation of widely different or incompatible things. As
when, for instance, the hills are made to reflect the image of a
voice. Surely, no unusual taste is requisite to see clearly, that
this compulsory juxtaposition is not produced by the presentation of
impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any sympathy
with the modifying powers with which the genius of the poet had united
and inspirited all the objects of his thought; that it is therefore
a species of wit, a pure work of the will, and implies a leisure and
self-possession both of thought and of feeling, incompatible with the
steady fervour of a mind possessed and filled with the grandeur of its
subject. To sum up the whole in one sentence. When a poem, or a part of
a poem, shall be adduced, which is evidently vicious in the figures and
centexture of its style, yet for the condemnation of which no reason can
be assigned, except that it differs from the style in which men actually
converse, then, and not till then, can I hold this theory to be either
plausible, or practicable, or capable of furnishing either rule,
guidance, or precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as
well as more naturally, have been deduced in the author’s own mind from
considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things,
confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of one country
nor of one age.
CHAPTER XIX
Continuation--Concerning the real object which, it is probable, Mr.
Wordsworth had before him in his critical preface--Elucidation and
application of this.
It might appear from some passages in the former part of Mr.
Wordsworth’s preface, that he meant to confine his theory of style, and
the necessity of a close accordance with the actual language of men,
to those particular subjects from low and rustic life, which by way of
experiment he had purposed to naturalize as a new species in our English
poetry. But from the train of argument that follows; from the reference
to Milton; and from the spirit of his critique on Gray’s sonnet; those
sentences appear to have been rather courtesies of modesty, than actual
limitations of his system. Yet so groundless does this system appear
on a close examination; and so strange and overwhelming [70] in its
consequences, that I cannot, and I do not, believe that the poet did
ever himself adopt it in the unqualified sense, in which his expressions
have been understood by others, and which, indeed, according to all the
common laws of interpretation they seem to bear. What then did he
mean? I apprehend, that in the clear perception, not unaccompanied with
disgust or contempt, of the gaudy affectations of a style which passed
current with too many for poetic diction, (though in truth it had as
little pretensions to poetry, as to logic or common sense,) he narrowed
his view for the time; and feeling a justifiable preference for the
language of nature and of good sense, even in its humblest and least
ornamented forms, he suffered himself to express, in terms at once too
large and too exclusive, his predilection for a style the most remote
possible from the false and showy splendour which he wished to explode.
It is possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative,
deviated for a time into direct partiality. But the real object which
he had in view, was, I doubt not, a species of excellence which had
been long before most happily characterized by the judicious and amiable
Garve, whose works are so justly beloved and esteemed by the Germans,
in his remarks on Gellert, from which the following is literally
translated. “The talent, that is required in order to make, excellent
verses, is perhaps greater than the philosopher is ready to admit, or
would find it in his power to acquire: the talent to seek only the apt
expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same time with it the
rhyme and the metre. Gellert possessed this happy gift, if ever any one
of our poets possessed it; and nothing perhaps contributed more to the
great and universal impression which his fables made on their first
publication, or conduces more to their continued popularity. It was
a strange and curious phaenomenon, and such as in Germany had been
previously unheard of, to read verses in which everything was expressed
just as one would wish to talk, and yet all dignified, attractive,
and interesting; and all at the same time perfectly correct as to the
measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It is certain, that poetry when
it has attained this excellence makes a far greater impression than
prose. So much so indeed, that even the gratification which the very
rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a contemptible or trifling
gratification.” [71]
However novel this phaenomenon may have been in Germany at the time
of Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our
language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spenser occasionally
compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his rhymes,
the whole FAIRY QUEEN is an almost continued instance of this beauty.
Waller’s song GO, LOVELY ROSE, is doubtless familiar to most of my
readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of Cotton,
more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the VIRGIL
TRAVESTIED, I should have indulged myself, and I think have gratified
many, who are not acquainted with his serious works, by selecting some
admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few poems in that
volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image, and passion,
which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder muse; and yet so
worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in the selection or
the order of the words, why he might not have said the very same in an
appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how indeed he could have
expressed such thoughts otherwise without loss or injury to his meaning.
But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever
has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this
excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer’s age was either
sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either “beloved”
or “belov’d” according as the rhyme, or measure, or the purpose of
more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then only adopt the
pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he lived, both with
respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the last syllable;
I would then venture to ask, what even in the colloquial language of
elegant and unaffected women, (who are the peculiar mistresses of “pure
English and undefiled,”) what could we hear more natural, or seemingly
more unstudied, than the following stanzas from Chaucer’s TROILUS AND
CRESEIDE.
“And after this forth to the gate he wente,
Ther as Creseide out rode a ful gode pass,
And up and doun there made he many’ a wente,
And to himselfe ful oft he said, Alas!
Fro hennis rode my blisse and my solas
As woulde blisful God now for his joie,
I might her sene agen come in to Troie!
And to the yondir hil I gan her Bide,
Alas! and there I toke of her my leve
And yond I saw her to her fathir ride;
For sorow of whiche mine hert shall to-cleve;
And hithir home I came whan it was eve,
And here I dwel, out-cast from ally joie,
And steal, til I maie sene her efte in Troie.
“And of himselfe imaginid he ofte
To ben defaitid, pale and woxin lesse
Than he was wonte, and that men saidin softe,
What may it be? who can the sothe gesse,
Why Troilus hath al this hevinesse?
And al this n’ as but his melancolie,
That he had of himselfe suche fantasie.
Anothir time imaginin he would
That every wight, that past him by the wey,
Had of him routhe, and that thei saien should,
I am right sory, Troilus wol dey!
And thus he drove a daie yet forth or twey,
As ye have herde: suche life gan he to lede
As he that stode betwixin hope and drede:
For which him likid in his songis shewe
Th’ encheson of his wo as he best might,
And made a songe of words but a fewe,
Somwhat his woful herte for to light,
And whan he was from every mann’is sight
With softe voice he of his lady dere,
That absent was, gan sing as ye may here:
* * * * * *
This song, when he thus songin had, ful Bone
He fil agen into his sighis olde
And every night, as was his wonte to done;
He stode the bright moone to beholde
And all his sorowe to the moone he tolde,
And said: I wis, whan thou art hornid newe,
I shall be glad, if al the world be trewe!”
Another exquisite master of this species of style, where the scholar and
the poet supplies the material, but the perfect well-bred gentleman the
expressions and the arrangement, is George Herbert. As from the nature
of the subject, and the too frequent quaintness of the thoughts, his
TEMPLE; or SACRED POEMS AND PRIVATE EJACULATIONS are Comparatively but
little known, I shall extract two poems. The first is a sonnet, equally
admirable for the weight, number, and expression of the thoughts, and
for the simple dignity of the language. Unless, indeed, a fastidious
taste should object to the latter half of the sixth line. The second is
a poem of greater length, which I have chosen not only for the present
purpose, but likewise as a striking example and illustration of an
assertion hazarded in a former page of these sketches namely, that the
characteristic fault of our elder poets is the reverse of that, which
distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying
the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language;
the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial
thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of
thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in Drayton’s IDEAS
As other men, so I myself do muse,
Why in this sort I wrest invention so;
And why these giddy metaphors I use,
Leaving the path the greater part do go;
I will resolve you: I am lunatic! [72]
The other recalls a still odder passage in THE SYNAGOGUE: or THE SHADOW
OF THE TEMPLE, a connected series of poems in imitation of Herbert’s
TEMPLE, and, in some editions, annexed to it.
O how my mind
Is gravell’d!
Not a thought,
That I can find,
But’s ravell’d
All to nought!
Short ends of threds,
And narrow shreds
Of lists,
Knots, snarled ruffs,
Loose broken tufts
Of twists,
Are my torn meditations ragged clothing,
Which, wound and woven, shape a suit for nothing:
One while I think, and then I am in pain
To think how to unthink that thought again.
Immediately after these burlesque passages I cannot proceed to the
extracts promised, without changing the ludicrous tone of feeling by the
interposition of the three following stanzas of Herbert’s.
VIRTUE.
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,