Biographia Literaria
the phraseology of common conversation either in the word put in
apposition, or in the connection by the genitive pronoun. Men in
general would have said, “but that was a circumstance they paid no
attention to, or took no notice of;” and the language is, on the theory
of the preface, justified only by the narrator’s being the Vicar. Yet
if any ear could suspect, that these sentences were ever printed as
metre, on those very words alone could the suspicion have been
grounded.]
[Footnote 70: I had in my mind the striking but untranslatable epithet,
which the celebrated Mendelssohn applied to the great founder of the
Critical Philosophy “Der alleszermalmende KANT,” that is, the
all-becrushing, or rather the all-to-nothing-crushing Kant. In the
facility and force of compound epithets, the German from the number of
its cases and inflections approaches to the Greek, that language so
“Bless’d in the happy marriage of sweet words.”
It is in the woful harshness of its sounds alone that the German need
shrink from the comparison.]
[Footnote 71: Sammlung einiger Abhandlungen von Christian Garve.]
[Footnote 72: Sonnet IX.]
[Footnote 73: Mr. Wordsworth’s having judiciously adopted “concourse
wild” in this passage for “a wild scene” as it stood to the former
edition, encourages me to hazard a remark, which I certainly should not
have made in the works of a poet less austerely accurate in the use of
words, than he is, to his own great honour. It respects the propriety
of the word, “scene,” even in the sentence in which it is retained.
Dryden, and he only in his more careless verses, was the first, as far
as my researches have discovered, who for the convenience of rhyme used
this word in the vague sense, which has been since too current even in
our best writers, and which (unfortunately, I think) is given as its
first explanation in Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary and therefore would be
taken by an incautious reader as its proper sense. In Shakespeare and
Milton the word is never used without some clear reference, proper or
metaphorical, to the theatre. Thus Milton:
“Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view.”
I object to any extension of its meaning, because the word is already
more equivocal than might be wished; inasmuch as to the limited use,
which I recommend, it may still signify two different things; namely,
the scenery, and the characters and actions presented on the stage
during the presence of particular scenes. It can therefore be preserved
from obscurity only by keeping the original signification full in the
mind. Thus Milton again,
------“Prepare thee for another scene.”]
[Footnote 74: --
Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,
Upon her verge that stands, the neighbouring vallies fill;
Helvillon from his height, it through the mountains threw,
From whom as soon again, the sound Dunbalrase drew,
From whose stone-trophied head, it on the Windross went,
Which tow’rds the sea again, resounded it to Dent.
That Brodwater, therewith within her banks astound,
In sailing to the sea, told it to Egremound,
Whose buildings, walks, and streets, with echoes loud and long,
Did mightily commend old Copland for her song.
Drayton’s POLYOLBION: Song XXX.]
[Footnote 75: Translation. It behoves me to side with my friends, but only
as far as the gods.]
[Footnote 76: “Slender. I bruised my shin with playing with sword and
dagger for a dish of stewed prunes, and by my troth I cannot abide the
smell of hot meat since.”--So again, Evans. “I will make an end of my
dinner: there’s pippins and cheese to come.”]
[Footnote 77: This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German
gentleman at Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock’s school and bed-fellow.
Among other boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a
particular value on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always
slept with it under his pillow.]
[Footnote 78: Klopstock’s observation was partly true and partly
erroneous. In the literal sense of his words, and, if we confine the
comparison to the average of space required for the expression of the
same thought in the two languages, it is erroneous. I have translated
some German hexameters into English hexameter; and find, that on the
average three English lines will express four lines German. The reason
is evident: our language abounds in monosyllables and dissyllables. The
German, not less than the Greek, is a polysyllable language. But in
another point of view the remark was not without foundation. For the
German possessing the same unlimited privilege of forming compounds,
both with prepositions and with epithets, as the Greek, it can express
the richest single Greek word in a single German one, and is thus freed
from the necessity of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content
myself with one at present, viz. the use of the prefixed participles
ver, zer, ent, and weg: thus reissen to rend, verreissen to rend away,
zerreissen to rend to pieces, entreissen to rend off or out of a thing,
in the active sense: or schmelzen to melt--ver, zer, ent,
schmelzen--and in like manner through all the verbs neuter and active.
If you consider only how much we should feel the loss of the prefix be,
as in bedropt, besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language,
and then think that this same mode of composition is carved through all
their simple and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and
that with most of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have
of dividing them from the verb and placing them at the end of the
sentence; you will have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and
the cause of this superior power in the German of condensing meaning,
in which its great poet exulted. It is impossible to read half a dozen
pages of Wieland without perceiving that in this respect the German has
no rival but the Greek. And yet I feel, that concentration or
condensation is not the happiest mode of expressing this excellence,
which seems to consist not so much in the less time required for
conveying an impression, as in the unity and simultaneousness with
which the impression is conveyed. It tends to make their language more
picturesque: it depictures images better. We have obtained this power
in part by our compound verbs derived from the Latin: and the sense of
its great effect no doubt induced our Milton both to the use and the
abuse of Latin derivatives. But still these prefixed particles,
conveying no separate or separable meaning to the mere English reader,
cannot possibly act on the mind with the force or liveliness of an
original and homogeneous language such as the German is, and besides
are confined to certain words.]
[Footnote 79: Praecludere calumniam, in the original.]
[Footnote 80: Better thus: Forma specifica per formam individualem
translucens: or better yet--Species individualisata, sive Individuum
cuilibet Speciei determinatae in omni parte correspondens et quasi
versione quadam eam interpretans et repetens.]
[Footnote 81: --
------“The big round tears
Cours’d one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase,”
says Shakespeare of a wounded stag hanging its head over a stream:
naturally, from the position of the head, and most beautifully, from
the association of the preceding image, of the chase, in which “the
poor sequester’d stag from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt.” In the
supposed position of Bertram, the metaphor, if not false, loses all the
propriety of the original.]
[Footnote 82: Among a number of other instances of words chosen without
reason, Imogine in the first act declares, that thunder-storms were not
able to intercept her prayers for “the desperate man, in desperate ways
who dealt”----
“Yea, when the launched bolt did sear her sense,
Her soul’s deep orisons were breathed for him;”
that is, when a red-hot bolt, launched at her from a thunder-cloud, had
cauterized her sense, to plain English, burnt her eyes out of her head,
she kept still praying on.
“Was not this love? Yea, thus doth woman love!”]
[Footnote 83: This sort of repetition is one of this writers
peculiarities, and there is scarce a page which does not furnish one or
more instances--Ex. gr. in the first page or two. Act I, line 7th, “and
deemed that I might sleep.”--Line 10, “Did rock and quiver in the
bickering glare.”--Lines 14, 15, 16, “But by the momently gleams of
sheeted blue, Did the pale marbles dare so sternly on me, I almost
deemed they lived.”--Line 37, “The glare of Hell.”--Line 35, “O holy
Prior, this is no earthly storm.”--Line 38, “This is no earthly
storm.”--Line 42, “Dealing with us.”--Line 43, “Deal thus
sternly:”--Line 44, “Speak! thou hast something seen?”--“A fearful
sight!”--Line 45, “What hast thou seen! A piteous, fearful
sight.”--Line 48, “quivering gleams.”--Line 50, “In the hollow pauses
of the storm.”--Line 61, “The pauses of the storm, etc.”]
[Footnote 84: The child is an important personage, for I see not by
what possible means the author could have ended the second and third
acts but for its timely appearance. How ungrateful then not further to
notice its fate!]
[Footnote 85: Classically too, as far as consists with the allegorizing
fancy of the modern, that still striving to project the inward,
contradistinguishes itself from the seeming ease with which the poetry
of the ancients reflects the world without. Casimir affords, perhaps,
the most striking instance of this characteristic difference.--For his
style and diction are really classical: while Cowley, who resembles
Casimir in many respects, completely barbarizes his Latinity, and even
his metre, by the heterogeneous nature of his thoughts. That Dr.
Johnson should have passed a contrary judgment, and have even preferred
Cowley’s Latin Poems to Milton’s, is a caprice that has, if I mistake
not, excited the surprise of all scholars. I was much amused last
summer with the laughable affright, with which an Italian poet perused
a page of Cowley’s Davideis, contrasted with the enthusiasm with which
he first ran through, and then read aloud, Milton’s Mansus and Ad
Patrem.]
[Footnote 86: Flectit, or if the metre had allowed, premit would have
supported the metaphor better.]
[Footnote 87: Poor unlucky Metaphysicks! and what are they? A single
sentence expresses the object and thereby the contents of this science.
Gnothi seauton:
Nosce te ipsum,
Tuque Deum, quantum licet, inque Deo omnia noscas.]
Know thyself: and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to
a creature, and in God all things.--Surely, there is a strange--nay,
rather too natural--aversion to many to know themselves.]