Biographia Literaria
of independent states, and the diversity of written dialects, the
Italians have gained a poetic idiom, as the Greeks before them had
obtained from the same causes with greater and more various
discriminations, for example, the Ionic for their heroic verses; the
Attic for their iambic; and the two modes of the Doric for the lyric or
sacerdotal, and the pastoral, the distinctions of which were doubtless
more obvious to the Greeks themselves than they are to us.
I will venture to add one other observation before I proceed to the
transcription. I am aware that the sentiments which I have avowed
concerning the points of difference between the poetry of the present
age, and that of the period between 1500 and 1650, are the reverse of
the opinion commonly entertained. I was conversing on this subject with
a friend, when the servant, a worthy and sensible woman, coming in, I
placed before her two engravings, the one a pinky-coloured plate of the
day, the other a masterly etching by Salvator Rosa from one of his own
pictures. On pressing her to tell us, which she preferred, after a
little blushing and flutter of feeling, she replied “Why, that, Sir, to
be sure! (pointing to the ware from the Fleet-street print
shops);--it’s so neat and elegant. T’other is such a scratchy slovenly
thing.” An artist, whose writings are scarcely less valuable than his
pictures, and to whose authority more deference will be willingly paid,
than I could even wish should be shown to mine, has told us, and from
his own experience too, that good taste must be acquired, and like all
other good things, is the result of thought and the submissive study of
the best models. If it be asked, “But what shall I deem such?”--the
answer is; presume those to be the best, the reputation of which has
been matured into fame by the consent of ages. For wisdom always has a
final majority, if not by conviction, yet by acquiescence. In addition
to Sir J. Reynolds I may mention Harris of Salisbury; who in one of his
philosophical disquisitions has written on the means of acquiring a
just taste with the precision of Aristotle, and the elegance of
Quinctilian.
MADRIGALI.
Gelido suo ruscel chiaro, e tranquillo
M’insegno Amor di state a mezzo’l giorno;
Ardean le solve, ardean le piagge, e i colli.
Ond’ io, ch’ al piu gran gielo ardo e sfavillo,
Subito corsi; ma si puro adorno
Girsene il vidi, che turbar no’l volli:
Sol mi specchiava, e’n dolce ombrosa sponda
Mi stava intento al mormorar dell’ onda.
Aure dell’ angoscioso viver mio
Refrigerio soave,
E dolce si, che piu non mi par grave
Ne’l ardor, ne’l morir, anz’ il desio;
Deh voil ghiaccio, e le nubi, e’l tempo rio
Discacciatene omai, che londa chiara,
E l’ombra non men cara
A scherzare, a cantar per suoi boschetti,
E prati festa et allegrezza alletti.
Pacifiche, ma spesso in amorosa
Guerra co’fiori, e l’erba
Alla stagione acerba
Verdi insegne del giglio e della rosa,
Movete, Aure, pian pian; che tregua o posa,
Se non pace, io ritrove;
E so ben dove:--Oh vago, a mansueto
Sguardo, oh labbra d’ambrosia, oh rider, lieto!
Hor come un scoglio stassi,
Hor come un rio se’n fugge,
Ed hor crud’ orsa rugge,
Hor canta angelo pio: ma che non fassi!
E che non fammi, O sassi,
O rivi, o belue, o Dii, questa mia vaga
Non so, se ninfa, o magna,
Non so, se donna, o Dea,
Non so, se dolce o rea?
Piangendo mi baciaste,
E ridendo il negaste:
In doglia hebbivi pin,
In festa hebbivi ria:
Nacque gioia di pianti,
Dolor di riso: O amanti
Miseri, habbiate insieme
Ognor paura e speme.
Bel Fior, tu mi rimembri
La rugiadosa guancia del bet viso;
E si vera l’assembri,
Che’n te sovente, come in lei m’affiso:
Et hor del vago riso,
Hor del serene sguardo
Io pur cieco riguardo. Ma qual fugge,
O Rosa, il mattin lieve!
E chi te, come neve,
E’l mio cor teco, e la mia vita strugge!
Anna mia, Anna dolce, oh sempre nuovo
E piu chiaro concento,
Quanta dolcezza sento
In sol Anna dicendo? Io mi pur pruovo,
Ne qui tra noi ritruovo,
Ne tra cieli armonia,
Che del bel nome suo piu dolce sia:
Altro il Cielo, altro Amore,
Altro non suona l’Ecco del mio core.
Hor che’l prato, e la selva si scoiora,
Al tuo serena ombroso
Muovine, alto Riposo,
Deh ch’io riposi una sol notte, un hora:
Han le fere, e git augelli, ognun talora
Ha qualche pace; io quando,
Lasso! non vonne errando,
E non piango, e non grido? e qual pur forte?
Ma poiche, non sent’ egli, odine, Morte.
Risi e piansi d’Amor; ne pero mai
Se non in fiamma, o’n onda, o’n vento scrissi
Spesso msrce trovai
Crudel; sempre in me morto, in altri vissi:
Hor da’ piu scuri Abissi al ciel m’aizai,
Hor ne pur caddi giuso;
Stance al fin qui son chiuso.
[Footnote 64: --
“I’ve measured it from side to side;
’Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.”]
[Footnote 65: --
“Nay, rack your brain--’tis all in vain,
I’ll tell you every thing I know;
But to the Thorn, and to the Pond
Which is a little step beyond,
I wish that you would go:
Perhaps, when you are at the place,
You something of her tale may trace.
I’ll give you the best help I can
Before you up the mountain go,
Up to the dreary mountain-top,
I’ll tell you all I know.
’Tis now some two-and-twenty years
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave, with a maiden’s true good will,
Her company to Stephen Hill;
And she was blithe and gay,
And she was happy, happy still
Whene’er she thought of Stephen Hill.
And they had fixed the wedding-day,
The morning that must wed them both
But Stephen to another maid
Had sworn another oath;
And, with this other maid, to church
Unthinking Stephen went--
Poor Martha! on that woeful day
A pang of pitiless dismay
Into her soul was sent;
A fire was kindled in her breast,
Which might not burn itself to rest.
They say, full six months after this,
While yet the summer leaves were green,
She to the mountain-top would go,
And there was often seen;
’Tis said a child was in her womb,
As now to any eye was plain;
She was with child, and she was mad;
Yet often she was sober sad
From her exceeding pain.
Oh me! ten thousand times I’d rather
That he had died, that cruel father!
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
Last Christmas when they talked of this,
Old Farmer Simpson did maintain,
That in her womb the infant wrought
About its mother’s heart, and brought
Her senses back again:
And, when at last her time drew near,
Her looks were calm, her senses clear.
No more I know, I wish I did,
And I would tell it all to you
For what became of this poor child
There’s none that ever knew
And if a child was born or no,
There’s no one that could ever tell;
And if ’twas born alive or dead,
There’s no one knows, as I have said:
But some remember well,
That Martha Ray about this time
Would up the mountain often climb.”]
[Footnote 66: It is no less an error in teachers, than a torment to the
poor children, to enforce the necessity of reading as they would talk.
In order to cure them of singing as it is called, that is, of too great
a difference, the child is made to repeat the words with his eyes from
off the book; and then, indeed, his tones resemble talking, as far as
his fears, tears and trembling will permit. But as soon as the eye is
again directed to the printed page, the spell begins anew; for an
instinctive sense tells the child’s feelings, that to utter its own
momentary thoughts, and to recite the written thoughts of another, as
of another, and a far wiser than himself, are two widely different
things; and as the two acts are accompanied with widely different
feelings, so must they justify different modes of enunciation. Joseph
Lancaster, among his other sophistications of the excellent Dr. Bell’s
invaluable system, cures this fault of singing, by hanging fetters and
chains on the child, to the music of which one of his school-fellows,
who walks before, dolefully chants out the child’s last speech and
confession, birth, parentage, and education. And this soul-benumbing
ignominy, this unholy and heart-hardening burlesque on the last fearful
infliction of outraged law, in pronouncing the sentence to which the
stern and familiarized judge not seldom bursts into tears, has been
extolled as a happy and ingenious method of remedying--what? and
how?--why, one extreme in order to introduce another, scarce less
distant from good sense, and certainly likely to have worse moral
effects, by enforcing a semblance of petulant ease and
self-sufficiency, in repression and possible after-perversion of the
natural feelings. I have to beg Dr. Bell’s pardon for this connection
of the two names, but he knows that contrast is no less powerful a
cause of association than likeness.]
[Footnote 67: Altered from the description of Night-Mair in the
REMORSE.
“Oh Heaven! ’twas frightful! Now ran down and stared at
By hideous shapes that cannot be remembered;
Now seeing nothing and imagining nothing;
But only being afraid--stifled with fear!
While every goodly or familiar form
Had a strange power of spreading terror round me!”
N.B.--Though Shakespeare has, for his own all justifying purposes,
introduced the Night-Mare with her own foals, yet Mair means a Sister,
or perhaps a Hag.]
[Footnote 68: But still more by the mechanical system of philosophy
which has needlessly infected our theological opinions, and teaching us
to consider the world in its relation to god, as of a building to its
mason, leaves the idea of omnipresence a mere abstract notion in the
stateroom of our reason.]
[Footnote 69: As the ingenious gentleman under the influence of the
Tragic Muse contrived to dislocate, “I wish you a good morning, Sir!
Thank you, Sir, and I wish you the same,” into two blank-verse
heroics:--
To you a morning good, good Sir! I wish.
You, Sir! I thank: to you the same wish I.
In those parts of Mr. Wordsworth’s works which I have thoroughly
studied, I find fewer instances in which this would be practicable than
I have met to many poems, where an approximation of prose has been
sedulously and on system guarded against. Indeed excepting the stanzas
already quoted from THE SAILOR’S MOTHER, I can recollect but one
instance: that is to say, a short passage of four or five lines in THE
BROTHERS, that model of English pastoral, which I never yet read with
unclouded eye.--“James, pointing to its summit, over which they had all
purposed to return together, informed them that he would wait for them
there. They parted, and his comrades passed that way some two hours
after, but they did not find him at the appointed place, _a
circumstance of which they took no heed:_ but one of them, going by
chance into the house, which at this time was James’s house, learnt
_there,_ that nobody had seen him all that day.” The only change which
has been made is in the position of the little word there in two
instances, the position in the original being clearly such as is not
adopted in ordinary conversation. The other words printed in italics
were so marked because, though good and genuine English, they are not