The Crown of Wild Olive
'when to these balls our rackets we have matched' would have spoiled the
style in a moment, because--I was going to have said, ball and racket
are of equal rank, and therefore only the natural order proper; but also
here the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to have
precedence of the French ball. In the fourth line the 'in France' comes
first, as announcing the most important resolution of action; the 'by
God's grace' next, as the only condition rendering resolution possible;
the detail of issue follows with the strictest limit in the final word.
The King does not say 'danger,' far less 'dishonour,' but 'hazard' only;
of _that_ he is, humanly speaking, sure.
C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen words; slowly
in the degree of their importance, with omission however of every word
not absolutely required; and natural use of the familiar contractions of
final dissyllable. Thus, 'play a set shall strike' is better than 'play
a set _that_ shall strike,' and 'match'd' is kingly short--no necessity
could have excused 'matched' instead. On the contrary, the three first
words, 'We are glad,' would have been spoken by the king more slowly and
fully than any other syllables in the whole passage, first pronouncing
the kingly 'we' at its proudest, and then the 'are' as a continuous
state, and then the 'glad,' as the exact contrary of what the
ambassadors expected him to be.[190]
D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily as the
heart beats. The king _cannot_ speak otherwise than he does--nor the
hero. The words not merely come to them, but are compelled to them. Even
lisping numbers 'come,' but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired.
E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion fitted to it
exactly and the utmost of which the language is capable--the melody in
prose being Eolian and variable--in verse, nobler by submitting itself
to stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point presently.
F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each carries not only
its instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher or darker
meaning according to the passion--nearly always indicated by metaphor:
'play a set'--sometimes by abstraction--(thus in the second passage
'silence' for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct
epithet ('coffined' for dead) but always indicative of there being more
in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can say, full though
his saying be. On the quantity of this attendant fulness depends the
majesty of style; that is to say, virtually, on the quantity of
contained thought in briefest words, such thought being primarily loving
and true: and this the sum of all--that nothing can be well said, but
with truth, nor beautifully, but by love.
These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and verse
alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially rymed
verse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more; of music,
that is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline; a construction or
architecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of time
and harmony.
When Byron says 'rhyme is of the rude,'[191] he means that Burns needs
it,--while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah--yet in this
need of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious: and thus
the loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme--the best of
Dante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney.
I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship;
(nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first edge of its
waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore
refuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the
confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner's
_Anglo-Saxons_. I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of
work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments
known of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing;
but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in
King Canute's impromptu
'Gaily (or is it sweetly?--I forget which, and it's no matter)
sang the monks of Ely,
As Knut the king came sailing by;'
much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their
Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does
not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss,
chiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain;
while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into
the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven.
So, Gibbon can write in _his_ manner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, in
_his_ manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in _his_ manner,
bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as
befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.
'Master of Masters--sweet source, and springing well,
Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell;
* * * *
Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,
With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,
With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue
Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,
Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?
Na, na--not so; but kneel when I them hear.
But farther more--and lower to descend
Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend
Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme
Since _thou_ wast but ane mortal man sometime.'
'Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come for you on that
law after reading these nobly pious words? And note you _whose_
humility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively
into his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of--Archibald
Bell-the-Cat!
And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in _Marmion_
between his father and King James.
'His hand the monarch sudden took--
Now, by the Bruce's soul,
Angus, my hasty speech forgive,
For sure as doth his spirit live
As he said of the Douglas old
I well may say of you,--
That never king did subject hold,
In speech more free, in war more bold,
More tender and more true:
And while the king his hand did strain
The old man's tears fell down like rain.'
I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but
perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of
expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they
express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars,
will recognise further in them that the simplicity of the educated is
lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's
teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its
mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.
'Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,
Hye you there apace;
Let none come there but that virgins been
To adorn her grace:
And when you come, whereas she in place,
See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;
Bind your fillets fast,
And gird in your waste,
For more fineness, with a taudry lace.'
'Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbine
With gylliflowers;
Bring coronations, and sops in wine,
Worn of paramours;
Strow me the ground with daffadowndillies
And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;
The pretty paunce
And the chevisaunce
Shall match with the fair flowre-delice.'[192]
Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test
all by.
(2) 'No more, no more, since thou art dead,
Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,
No more, at yearly festivals,
We cowslip balls
Or chains of columbines shall make,
For this or that occasion's sake.
No, no! our maiden pleasures be
Wrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee.'[193]
(3) 'Death is now the phoenix rest,
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest.
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:
Truth and beauty buried be.'[194]
If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to
Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means
of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognise these following
kinds of mischief in him. First, if any one offends him--as for instance
Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin--'his manners have not that repose that marks
the caste,' &c. _This_ defect in his Lordship's style, being myself
scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative
language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.[195]
Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is
yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint;
and indefinable--evening flavour of Covent Garden, as it were;--not to
say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims
itself--London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll,
things would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come
to town--modern town--like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice)
are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.
Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest
sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full
of hope, and all pain of balsam.
Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line,
prophetic of all things since and now. 'Where _he_ gazed, a gloom
pervaded space.'[196]
So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being
an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge,
remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the
morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment
which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from
the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious
rapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame
demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance,
and sees what the mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still
lying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,
'The sordor of civilisation, mixed
With all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed.'[197]
Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined a
sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower
animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, colour-depth, and
morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it,--with
other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be
analysed by extreme care,--is found, to the full, only in five men that
I know of in modern times; namely Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and
myself,--differing totally and throughout the entire group of us, from
the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti; and
separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for 'Rokkes blak'
and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans,
which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and
Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to
climb, or cross;--all this love of impending mountains, coiled
thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky,
almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulphs of