The Crown of Wild Olive
at its word. But Death is not _His_ Begotten Son, for all that; nor is
the death of the innocent in battle carnage His 'instrument for working
out a pure intent' as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for
working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology
perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;--neither is the
Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad 'Thunderer'
utter thunders of God--which facts, if you had had the grace or sense to
learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been
better at this day for _you_, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine
shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.
It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines
that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own
character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of
war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George
Fox--its folly shown practically by Penn. But the _compassion_ of the
pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its
stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither
Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of
men that
'The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.'[188]
Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the
Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle
song too, when it is _his_ cue to fight. If you look at the introduction
to the _Isles of Greece_, namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd
canto of _Don Juan_,--you will find--what will you _not_ find, if only
you understand them! 'He' in the first line, remember, means the typical
modern poet.
'Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,
He gave the different nations something national.
'Twas all the same to him--"God save the King"
Or "Ca ira" according to the fashion all;
His muse made increment of anything
From the high lyric down to the low rational:
If Pindar sang horse races, what should hinder
Himself from being as pliable as Pindar?
'In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;
In England a six-canto quarto tale;
In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance on
The last war--much the same in Portugal;
In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance on
Would be old Goethe's--(see what says de Stael)
In Italy he'd ape the 'Trecentisti;'
In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t' ye.
Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling
power. The 'God Save the Queen' in England, fallen hollow now, as the
'Ca ira' in France--not a man in France knowing where either France or
'that' (whatever 'that' may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England
daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing
he doesn't like;--nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any
more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society:
then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an
instant, 'high lyric to low rational.' Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's
height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of
France--resumed in a word--Beranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely
deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in
these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then Romance in Spain on--the
_last_ war, (_present_ war not being to Spanish poetical taste), then,
Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the
Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that
also being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in
Rossetti's 'blessed damozels' or Burne Jones's 'days of creation.'
Lastly comes the mock at himself--the modern English Greek--(followed up
by the 'degenerate into hands like mine' in the song itself); and
then--to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles voice. We have had
one line of him in his clearness--five of him in his depth--sixteen of
him in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:--
'What,--silent yet? and silent _all_?
Ah no, the voices of the dead
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, "Let _one_ living head,
But one, arise--we come--we come:"
--'Tis but the living who are dumb.'
Resurrection, this, you see like Buerger's; but not of death unto death.
'Sound like a distant torrent's fall.' I said the _whole_ heart of Byron
was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the
third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world
in which the three--unholy--children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to
each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland
more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock
Hills,--for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron,
Loch-na-Gar _with Ida_, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee
and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.
Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:--
'And silence aids--though the steep hills
Send to the lake a thousand rills;
In summer tide, so soft they weep,
The sound but lulls the ear asleep;
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,
So stilly is the solitude.
Naught living meets the eye or ear,
But well I ween the dead are near;
For though, in feudal strife, a foe
Hath laid our Lady's Chapel low,
Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,
The peasant rests him from his toil,
And, dying, bids his bones be laid
Where erst his simple fathers prayed.'
And last take the same note of sorrow--with Burns's finger on the fall
of it:
'Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,
Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,
Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glens
Wi' toddlin' din,
Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stens
Frae lin to lin.'
As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great
masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their
passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that
of 'Parching summer hath no warrant'? Is it more profane, think you--or
more tender--nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?
For instance, when we are told that
'Wharfe, as he moved along,
To matins joined a mournful voice,'
is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite
logically accounted for by the previous statement (itself by no means
rhythmically dulcet,) that
'The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,
And strangled by a merciless force'?
Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,
'How sweet were leisure, could it yield no more
Then 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,
From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!'
--is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at
leisure, and in a reclining attitude--as compared with the meditations
of otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of
us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and
Humanity,--poetical extraction, and moral position?
On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words
more of the school of Belial?
Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some
very wicked people--mutineers, in fact--have retired, misanthropically,
into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves
safe, indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to
drink:
'A little stream came tumbling from the height
And straggling into ocean as it might.
Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray
And gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,
Close on the wild wide ocean,--yet as pure
And fresh as Innocence; and more secure.
Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deep
As the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,
While, far below, the vast and sullen swell
Of ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell.'[189]
Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning
his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not
unfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that here _is_ entirely
first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the
thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpassably good, the
closing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by
the race of the sea-kings.
But Lucifer himself _could_ not have written it; neither any servant of
Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my
saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's 'style' depended in
any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so
all-important a thing as 'style' should depend in the least upon so
ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching
her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so
ridiculous a thing to guide,--or check,--his poetical passion, may alike
seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the
existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who
writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, _know_ good 'style' when
you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out
of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or
bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or
bad?
I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation,
yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains,
I can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of
pages.
I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, _i.
e._ kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger,
the second of love.
(1) 'We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,
His present, and your pains, we thank you for.
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God's grace, play a set,
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.'
(2) 'My gracious Silence, hail!
Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home
That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,
And mothers that lack sons.'
Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both
these passages, so opposite in temper.
A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the
first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, 'We
are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto _whose grace_ our passion is
as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons'); and with this
self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to
be uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact
place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a
word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the 'style'
in an instant.
B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the
compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words
being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way;
allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without
obscurity; thus, 'his present, and your pains, we thank you for' is
better than 'we thank you for his present and your pains,' because the
Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but