Biographia Literaria
of poems, I doubt whether the objectionable passages would amount in the
whole to one hundred lines; not the eighth part of the number of pages.
In THE EXCURSION the feeling of incongruity is seldom excited by
the diction of any passage considered in itself, but by the sudden
superiority of some other passage forming the context.
The second defect I can generalize with tolerable accuracy, if the
reader will pardon an uncouth and new-coined word. There is, I should
say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in certain poems. This may
be divided into, first, a laborious minuteness and fidelity in the
representation of objects, and their positions, as they appeared to the
poet himself; secondly, the insertion of accidental circumstances,
in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their
dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to
establish the probability of a statement in real life, where nothing is
taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry, where
the reader is willing to believe for his own sake. To this actidentality
I object, as contravening the essence of poetry, which Aristotle
pronounces to be spoudaiotaton kai philosophotaton genos, the most
intense, weighty and philosophical product of human art; adding, as the
reason, that it is the most catholic and abstract. The following passage
from Davenant’s prefatory letter to Hobbes well expresses this truth.
“When I considered the actions which I meant to describe; (those
inferring the persons), I was again persuaded rather to choose those
of a former age, than the present; and in a century so far removed, as
might preserve me from their improper examinations, who know not the
requisites of a poem, nor how much pleasure they lose, (and even the
pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable), who take away the
liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian.
For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of fortune
by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions, because austere
historians have entered into bond to truth? An obligation, which were
in poets as foolish and unnecessary, as is the bondage of false martyrs,
who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would imply,
that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians, (who worship
a dead thing), and truth operative, and by effects continually alive,
is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter, but in
reason.”
For this minute accuracy in the painting of local imagery, the lines in
THE EXCURSION, pp. 96, 97, and 98, may be taken, if not as a striking
instance, yet as an illustration of my meaning. It must be some strong
motive--(as, for instance, that the description was necessary to the
intelligibility of the tale)--which could induce me to describe in
a number of verses what a draughtsman could present to the eye with
incomparably greater satisfaction by half a dozen strokes of his pencil,
or the painter with as many touches of his brush. Such descriptions too
often occasion in the mind of a reader, who is determined to understand
his author, a feeling of labour, not very dissimilar to that, with
which he would construct a diagram, line by line, for a long geometrical
proposition. It seems to be like taking the pieces of a dissected map
out of its box. We first look at one part, and then at another, then
join and dove-tail them; and when the successive acts of attention have
been completed, there is a retrogressive effort of mind to behold it as
a whole. The poet should paint to the imagination, not to the fancy; and
I know no happier case to exemplify the distinction between these two
faculties. Master-pieces of the former mode of poetic painting abound
in the writings of Milton, for example:
“The fig-tree; not that kind for fruit renown’d,
“But such as at this day, to Indians known,
“In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms
“Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
“The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
“About the mother tree, a pillar’d shade
“High over-arch’d and ECHOING WALKS BETWEEN;
“There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
“Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
“At hoop-holes cut through thickest shade.”
This is creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and
with such co-presence of the whole picture flashed at once upon the
eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. But the poet must likewise
understand and command what Bacon calls the vestigia communia of the
senses, the latency of all in each, and more especially as by a magical
penny duplex, the excitement of vision by sound and the exponents of
sound. Thus, “The echoing walks between,” may be almost said to reverse
the fable in tradition of the head of Memnon, in the Egyptian statue.
Such may be deservedly entitled the creative words in the world of
imagination.
The second division respects an apparent minute adherence to
matter-of-fact in character and Incidents; a biographical attention to
probability, and an anxiety of explanation and retrospect. Under this
head I shall deliver, with no feigned diffidence, the results of my
best reflection on the great point of controversy between Mr.
Wordsworth and his objectors; namely, on the choice of his characters.
I have already declared, and, I trust justified, my utter dissent from
the mode of argument which his critics have hitherto employed. To their
question, “Why did you choose such a character, or a character from
such a rank of life?”--the poet might in my opinion fairly retort: why
with the conception of my character did you make wilful choice of mean
or ludicrous associations not furnished by me, but supplied from your
own sickly and fastidious feelings? How was it, indeed, probable, that
such arguments could have any weight with an author, whose plan, whose
guiding principle, and main object it was to attack and subdue that
state of association, which leads us to place the chief value on those
things on which man differs from man, and to forget or disregard the
high dignities, which belong to Human Nature, the sense and the
feeling, which may be, and ought to be, found in all ranks? The
feelings with which, as Christians, we contemplate a mixed congregation
rising or kneeling before their common Maker, Mr. Wordsworth would have
us entertain at all times, as men, and as readers; and by the
excitement of this lofty, yet prideless impartiality in poetry, he
might hope to have encouraged its continuance in real life. The praise
of good men be his! In real life, and, I trust, even in my imagination,
I honour a virtuous and wise man, without reference to the presence or
absence of artificial advantages. Whether in the person of an armed
baron, a laurelled bard, or of an old Pedlar, or still older
Leech-gatherer, the same qualities of head and heart must claim the
same reverence. And even in poetry I am not conscious, that I have ever
suffered my feelings to be disturbed or offended by any thoughts or
images, which the poet himself has not presented.
But yet I object, nevertheless, and for the following reasons. First,
because the object in view, as an immediate object, belongs to the moral
philosopher, and would be pursued, not only more appropriately, but in
my opinion with far greater probability of success, in sermons or moral
essays, than in an elevated poem. It seems, indeed, to destroy the main
fundamental distinction, not only between a poem and prose, but even
between philosophy and works of fiction, inasmuch as it proposes truth
for its immediate object, instead of pleasure. Now till the blessed time
shall come, when truth itself shall be pleasure, and both shall be so
united, as to be distinguishable in words only, not in feeling, it will
remain the poet’s office to proceed upon that state of association,
which actually exists as general; instead of attempting first to make
it what it ought to be, and then to let the pleasure follow. But here
is unfortunately a small hysteron-proteron. For the communication of
pleasure is the introductory means by which alone the poet must expect
to moralize his readers. Secondly: though I were to admit, for a moment,
this argument to be groundless: yet how is the moral effect to be
produced, by merely attaching the name of some low profession to powers
which are least likely, and to qualities which are assuredly not more
likely, to be found in it? The Poet, speaking in his own person, may
at once delight and improve us by sentiments, which teach us the
independence of goodness, of wisdom, and even of genius, on the favours
of fortune. And having made a due reverence before the throne of
Antonine, he may bow with equal awe before Epictetus among his
fellow-slaves
------“and rejoice
In the plain presence of his dignity.”
Who is not at once delighted and improved, when the Poet Wordsworth
himself exclaims,
“Oh! many are the Poets that are sown
By Nature; men endowed with highest gifts
The vision and the faculty divine,
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse,
Nor having e’er, as life advanced, been led
By circumstance to take unto the height
The measure of themselves, these favoured Beings,
All but a scattered few, live out their time,
Husbanding that which they possess within,
And go to the grave, unthought of. Strongest minds
Are often those of whom the noisy world
Hears least.”
To use a colloquial phrase, such sentiments, in such language, do one’s
heart good; though I for my part, have not the fullest faith in the
truth of the observation. On the contrary I believe the instances to
be exceedingly rare; and should feel almost as strong an objection to
introduce such a character in a poetic fiction, as a pair of black swans
on a lake, in a fancy landscape. When I think how many, and how much
better books than Homer, or even than Herodotus, Pindar or Aeschylus,
could have read, are in the power of almost every man, in a country
where almost every man is instructed to read and write; and how
restless, how difficultly hidden, the powers of genius are; and yet find
even in situations the most favourable, according to Mr. Wordsworth, for
the formation of a pure and poetic language; in situations which ensure
familiarity with the grandest objects of the imagination; but one Burns,
among the shepherds of Scotland, and not a single poet of humble life
among those of English lakes and mountains; I conclude, that Poetic
Genius is not only a very delicate but a very rare plant.
But be this as it may, the feelings with which,
“I think of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy,
The sleepless Soul, that perished in his pride;
Of Burns, who walk’d in glory and in joy
Behind his plough, upon the mountain-side”--
are widely different from those with which I should read a poem,
where the author, having occasion for the character of a poet and a
philosopher in the fable of his narration, had chosen to make him a
chimney-sweeper; and then, in order to remove all doubts on the subject,
had invented an account of his birth, parentage and education, with all
the strange and fortunate accidents which had concurred in making him at
once poet, philosopher, and sweep! Nothing, but biography, can justify
this. If it be admissible even in a novel, it must be one in the manner
of De Foe’s, that were meant to pass for histories, not in the manner of
Fielding’s: In THE LIFE OF MOLL FLANDERS, Or COLONEL JACK, not in a TOM
JONES, or even a JOSEPH ANDREWS. Much less then can it be legitimately
introduced in a poem, the characters of which, amid the strongest
individualization, must still remain representative. The precepts of