Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur
Apologue.
[1] SIR PHILIP SIDNEY begins his Defence of Poesie in the following manner: - "When the right virtuous E. W. and I were at the emperor's court together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of Gio. Pietro Pugliano - one that, with great commendation, had the place of an esquire in his stable; and he, according to the fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the demonstration of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with the contemplation therein, which he thought was most precious. But with none, I remember, mine ears were at any time more loaden, than when (angered with our slow payment, or moved with our learner-like admiration) he exercised his speech in praise of [2] his faculty. He said, soldiers were the noblest of mankind, and horsemen were the noblest soldiers. He said, they were the masters of war, and the ornaments of peace; speedy goers, and strong abiders; triumphers both in camps and courts: nay, to so unbelieved a point he proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred so much wonder to a prince as to be a good horseman; skill in government was but pedanteria in comparison. Then would he add certain praises, by telling what a peerless beast the horse was; the only serviceable courtier without flattery: the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such more, that, if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to him, I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a horse. But thus much, with his no few words, he drove into me, - that self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves are parties. Wherein, if Pugliano's strong affection and weak arguments will not satisfy you, I will give you a nearer example of myself, who (I know not by what mischance, in these my not old years and idlest times,) having slipt into the title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto you, in defence of that my un-elected vocation; which if I handle with more good-will than good reasons, bear with me, since the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth in the steps of his master."
Thus far Sir Philip Sidney.
Without assuming or disclaiming any personal application of the foregoing apologue, the writer of the following strictures believes that he could not [3] more fitly have introduced them to the liberal and enlightened auditory before whom he is permitted to read them; who will thus be prepared both to expect, and, he trusts, to pardon, no small measure of extravagance in them.
The General Claims of Poetry to Pre-eminence.
Poetry is the eldest, the rarest, and the most excellent of the fine arts. It was the first fixed form of language; the earliest perpetuation of thought: it existed before prose in history, before music in melody, before painting in description, and before sculpture in imagery. Anterior to the discovery of letters, it was employed to communicate the lessons of wisdom, to celebrate the achievements of valour, and to promulgate the sanctions of law. Music was invented to accompany, and painting and sculpture to illustrate it.
I have ventured to say that poetry is the rarest of the fine arts; and in proof, I need only appeal to the literature of our own country, in which will be found the remains of more than five hundred writers of verse, renowned in their generation, of whom there are not fifty whose compositions rise to the dignity of true poetry; and of these there are scarcely ten who are familiarly known by their works at this day. The art of constructing easy, elegant, and even spirited verse, may be acquired by any mind of moderate capacity, and enriched with liberal knowledge; and those who cultivate this talent may occa[4]sionally hit upon some happy theme, and handle it with such unaccustomed delicacy or force, that for a while they outdo themselves, and produce that which adds to the public stock of permanent poetry. But habitually to frame the lay that quickens the pulse, flushes the cheek, warms the heart, and expands the soul of the hearer, - playing upon his passions as upon a lyre, and making him to feel as though he were holding converse with a spirit; this is the art of Nature herself, invariably and perpetually pleasing, by a secret and undefinable charm, which lives through all her works, and causes the very stones, as well as the stars, to cry out -
"The hand that made us is divine."
The power of being a poet in this sense, is a power from Heaven; wherein it consists, I know not; but this I do know, that there never existed a poet of the highest order, who either learned his art of one, or taught it to another. It is true that the poet communicates to the bosom of his reader the flame which burns in his own; but the bosom thus enkindled cannot communicate the fire to a third. In the breast of the bard alone, that energy of thought which gives birth to poetry is an active principle; in all others it is only a passive sentiment. That alone is true poetry, which makes the reader himself a poet for the time while he is under its excitement; which, indeed, constrains him to feel, to see, to think - almost to be what the poet felt, saw, thought, and was, while he was conceiving and composing his work. And this theory is confirmed by the fact, [5] that though original genius is wonderfully aided in its developement and display by learning and refinement, yet among the rudest people it has been found, like native gold and unwrought diamond, as pure and perfect in essence, though encrusted with baser matter, as among the most enlightened nations. With the first, however, it is seldomer seen, not being laboriously dug from the mine, purified in the furnace, or polished on the wheel, but only occasionally washed from the mountains, or accidentally discovered among the sands.
It is a remarkable coincidence, that, with the exception of ancient Rome, the noblest productions of the Muses have appeared in the middle ages, between gross barbarism and voluptuous refinement, when the human mind yet possessed strong traits of its primeval grandeur and simplicity; but divested of its former ferociousness, and chastened by courteous manners, felt itself rising in knowledge, virtue, and intellectual superiority. The poems of Homer existed long before Greece arrived at its zenith of glory, or even of highly advanced civilisation. Dante, Petrarch, and Ariosto, in Italy; Ercilla in Spain; Camoens in Portugal; as well as our own Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton; flourished in periods far inferior to the present in wealth, luxury, general intelligence, and literary taste; yet in their respective countries their great poems have not since been equalled, nor is it probable that they will hereafter be surpassed by any of their successors.
To the peculiar good fortune which, in their respective countries, and independent of their abstract [6] merits, has secured imperishable pre-eminence to a few early and great names, more particular allusion will be made in another place.
Poetry is not only the earliest and rarest, but also the most excellent of the fine arts. It transcends all other literary composition in harmony, beauty, and splendour of style, thought, and imagery, as well as in the vivacity and permanency of its impressions on the mind; for its language and sentiments are so intimately connected, that they are remembered together; they are soul and body, which cannot be separated without death, - a death, in which the dissolution of the one causes the disappearance of the other; if the spell of the words be broken, the charm of the idea is lost. Thus nothing can be less adorned than the opening of "Paradise Lost;" the cadence of the verse alone redeems the whole from being plain prose in the first six lines; but thenceforward it rises through every clause in energy and grandeur, till the reader feels himself carried away by the impetuosity of that
"adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aconian mount:"
and experiences full proof of the poet's power to accomplish his purpose, so magnificently set forth in the crowning lines of the clause: -
"That to the height of this great argument,
I may assert eternal providence,
And justify the ways of God to man."
[7] Now, let any man attempt to tell to another the subject of Milton's exordium. This he might do very correctly, and in very apt words; yet his prose interpretation would be no more to Milton's stately numbers, than the argument at the head of the first book is to the discussion of that argument in the poem itself.
Poetry and Music.
Poetry transcends music in the passion, pathos, and meaning of its movements; for its harmonies are ever united with distinct feelings and emotions of the rational soul; their associations are always clear and easily comprehensible: whereas music, when it is not allied to language, or does not appeal to memory, is simply a sensual and vague, though an innocent and highly exhilarating delight, conveying no direct improvement to the heart, and leaving little permanent impression upon the mind. When, indeed, music awakens national, military, local, or tender recollections of the distant or the dead, the loved or the lost, it then performs the highest office of poetry, - it is poetry, as Echo in the golden mythology of Greece remained a nymph, even after she had passed away into a sound. But the first music must have been vocal, and the first words sung to notes must have been metrical. "Blest pair of Syrens, Voice and Verse!" exclaims the greatest of our poets, (himself a musician, and never more a poet than when he chants the praises of the sister art, as he does in a hundred passages,) -
|8]"Blest pair of Syrens, Voice and Verse!
Wed your divine sounds," &c.
So sang Milton. Instrumental accompaniments were afterwards invented to aid the influence of both; and when all three are combined in solemn league and covenant, nothing earthly so effectually presents to our "high-raised phantasy,"
"That undisturbed song of pure consent,
Aye sung around the sapphire-colour'd throne,
To Him that sits thereon: * * * *
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud, uplifted angel-trumpets blow;
And the cherubic hosts, in thousand quires,
Touch their celestial harps of golden wires."
But there is a limit beyond which poetry and music cannot go together; and it is remarkable, that from the point where they separate, poetry assumes a higher and more commanding, as well as versatile, character; while music becomes more complex, curious, and altogether artificial, incapable (except as an accompaniment to dancing) of being understood or appreciated by any except professors and amateurs. In this department, though very imperfectly intellectual or imaginative, to compose it requires great power of intellect, and great splendour, fertility, and promptitude of imagination. Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, as inventors of imperishable strains, both vocal and instrumental, may be not unworthily ranked with the first order of poets. To be an accomplished performer, however, though it requires talent and tact of a peculiar kind, no [9] more implies the genius to compose music, than to be a consummate actor implies the ability to write tragedies. The mental exercise in each case is essentially as different as invention and imitation are. A skilful violinist may lead the oratorio of the Messiah as Handel himself could not have led it: Kemble could not have written the part of Hamlet, nor could Shakspeare have performed it as Kemble did.
It may be observed here, that the musical and the poetical ear are entirely distinct. Many musicians have disagreeably bad voices in conversation, and chatter in jig-time, or talk in staccato tones, unendurable to one who has a fine sense of the melody of speech. On the other hand, poets and declaimers have frequently had no ear at all for music. Pope had none; Garrick had none; yet in harmonious rhythmical composition, the poet to this hour is unexcelled: nor was the actor less perfect in managing the cadences and intonations of a voice "as musical as is Apollo's lute," in the delivery of the most familiar, impassioned, or heroic speeches which the whole range of the British drama imposed, from King Lear to Abel Drugger.
It is a common complaint with ordinary composers, that poets do not write verses suitable for music. Though there is some truth in the statement, as refers to poets of the same class as such composers themselves are, yet it is the express business of those who set poetry at all, to adapt their notes to the pitch of it, whereby their own melodies will be proportionately exalted; not to require that the poet's lay should be brought down to their standard of adapt[10]ation, and the nobler art be degraded by condescending to the inferior. That the most exquisite strains of English verse may be fitted to strains of music worthy of them, we have examples abundant in the present day, from the songs of Robert Burns to the melodies of Thomas Moore. Yet something must be conceded occasionally on the part of the poets, though no more than may, at the same time, improve their lines as verse, while it renders them more obedient subjects for music. Dryden, in the preface to one of his operas, gives vent to his impatience at being necessitated to make his noble but reluctant numbers submit to be drilled and disciplined to the tactics of a French composer. After enumerating some of his miserable shifts, he says, - "It is true, I have not often been put to this drudgery; but where I have, the words will sufficiently show, that I was then a slave to the composition, which I will never be again. It is my part to invent, and the musician's to humour that invention. I may be counselled, and will always follow my friend's advice where I find it reasonable, but I will never part with the power of the militia" - Introduction to Albion and Albanus.
Poetry and Painting.
Poetry is superior to painting; for poetry is progressive, painting stationary, in its capabilities of description. Poetry elevates the soul through every gradation of thought and feeling, producing its greatest effects at the last. Painting begins precisely where poetry breaks off, - with the climax of the [11] subject, - and lets down the mind from the catastrophe through the details of the story, imperceptibly soothing it from sublime astonishment into tranquil approbation. Painting is limited to a movement of time and an eye-glance of space; but it must be confessed that it can make that moment last for ages, and render that eye-glance illustrious as the sun. Poetry is restrained neither to time nor place; resembling the sun himself, it may shine successively all round the globe, and endure till "the earth and the works therein shall be burnt up."
Painting exhibits its whole purpose at one view, but with a generality of character, which requires previous acquaintance with that purpose before the spectator can judge whether it has been effected; we must know all that was intended to be done, before we can comprehend what has actually been done. Then, indeed, if the aim has been successfully accomplished, the glory of the artist is cosummated at once; and while the enthusiasm of admiration settles down into calm delight, or spreads itself in patient and interested examination of particulars, the mind goes back through all the difficulties which have been overcome in the management and conduct of the performance as a work of art, and all the circumstances which must have concurred to bring the story, if the subject be narrative, the scenery if it be landscape, or the person if it be portrait, to that special crisis, light, or aspect, which has enabled the inventor to exhibit the sum of his ideas so felicitously, as to imply the various antecedent, accompanying, and conventional incidents, [12] which are necessary to be understood before the beholder can perfectly gather from the forms and colours before his eye, the fine fancies, deep feelings, and glorious combinations of external objects, which preexisted in the artist's mind; and out of a thousand of which he has produced one, partaking of all and concentrating their excellencies, like the Venus of Apelles, to which the beauties of Greece lent their loveliness, and were abundantly repaid by having that part in her which she borrowed from them. Perhaps in portrait alone can painting claim the advantage of poetry; because there the pencil perpetuates the very features, air, and personal appearance of the individual represented; and when that individual is one of eminence, - a hero, a patriot, a poet, an orator, it is the vehicle of the highest pleasure which the art can communicate; and in this respect portrait painting (however disparaged) is the highest point of the art itself, - being at once the most real, intellectual, and imaginative.
A poem is a campaign, in which all the marches, sufferings, toils, and conflicts of the hero are successively developed, to final victory. A painting is the triumph after victory, when the conqueror, the captives, the spoils, and the trophies, are displayed in one pageant of magnificence, - implying, undoubtedly, all the means, the labour, and diversities of fortune by which the achievement was attended; but without manifesting them to the uninformed by-standers. Without previous knowledge, therefore, of the subject, the figures in the most perfect historical group are nameless; the business in which [13] they are engaged is obscure; while often the country, the age, and even the class of life, to which they belonged, can be only imperfectly guessed. Of consequence, little comparative interest will be excited. The child's question, "Is it true?" immediately occurs; and just in proportion as we ascertain the facts, the person, the whole story, we are charmed, affected, or surprised by the power of the master. Without the book the wand of the enchanter cannot work the spell.
Landscape painting is that which is most easily understood at first sight; because the objects of which it is composed are as familiar to our eyes, as the words in which they could be explained are to our ears, so that we recognise them at once, and can judge without commentary of the grouping and perspective. But the pleasure in contemplating the most exquisite productions of Claude Lorraine, Gaspar Poussin, and other great masters, is exceedingly enhanced by consideration of the skill of the artists in creating, what never, indeed, for one moment becomes an illusion, but that which enables the mind within itself to form an ideal prototype, worthy of the pictured representation. Even when we know that the scenes are from nature, admiration of the pencil that drew them is the highest ingredient of our delight in beholding them, - unless, by local, historical, or personal associations, the trees, the streams, the hills, or the buildings, remind us of things greater and dearer than themselves. This, of course, is the most exalted gratification which landscape painting can confer; yet poetry, which, in [14] distinct delineations of natural objects, is otherwise inferior, has decided pre-eminence here.
The following stanzas from, probably a hasty, but certainly a happy effusion of Thomas Campbell's, in the dew and blossom of his youthful poetry, will exemplify this fact. They refer to a morning walk, in company with a Russian lady, to a place called "the Fountain of the Thorn," on an eminence near Vienna, commanding a view of the city, the Danube, and the neighbouring country to a vast extent: * -
"Ah! how long shall I delight
In the memory of that morn,
When we climb'd the Danube's height
To the Fountain of the Thorn!
"And beheld his waves and islands,
Flashing, glittering in the sun,
From Vienna's gorgeous towers
To the mountains of the Hun.
"There was gladness in the sky,
There was verdure all around;
And, where'er it turn'd - the eye
Look'd on rich historic ground.
"Over Aspern's field of glory,
Noontide's distant haze was cast,
And the hills of Turkish story
Teem'd with visions of the past."
[15] What could a painter do with this? Assuredly he might produce a landscape as superb as ever emanated, in colours of this world, from the pencils of Titian or Rubens. All the elements are at hand. A bird's-eye prospect from a height overlooking a majestic river, studded with islands, "flashing, glittering in the sun;" the "gorgeous towers" of an imperial city; the verdure of woods on every side; over all, a brilliant sky; and far away beneath the haze of summer-noon, long lines of undulated hills, lessening, lightening, vanishing from the view. The canvass might be covered with all these, yet, though they might dazzle the eye, and enchant the imagination, like a glimpse into fairy-land, - unexplained, they would be mere abstractions, and the picture would be valued solely as a wtork of art; but let a label be attached with the word Vienna upon it, then, indeed, a new and nobler interest would be felt in the whole, and curiosity to find out every part, when we knew that a real city, stream, and landscape were depicted. This, however, would be the extent to which the painter could transport the eye and the mind of his admirer.
Here, then, begins the triumph of poetry, which, while it can adorn, more or less perfectly, all the subjects of painting drawn from visible nature, has the whole invisible world to itself, - thoughts, feelings, imaginations, affections, all that memory can preserve of things past, and all that prescience can conceive or forebode of things to come. These it can express, minutely or comprehensively, in mass or in detail, foreshortened or progressive, line by line, shade by shade, till it completely possesses the reader, [16] and puts him as completely in possession of all that is most nearly or remotely associated with the theme in discussion. In the instance before us, the poet does this with the fewest possible phrases; and yet with such brilliance and force of allusion, that the reader has only to follow, in any direction, the retrospective avenues opened on every hand.
After shedding the glory of sunshine on the "waves and islands" of the river, the green luxuriance of the champaign, and the "gorgeous towers" of the metropolis, - in three words, he lets in the daylight of past ages upon the scene. His "rich, historic ground," calls up the actions and actors of the mightiest events ever exhibited on that theatre; - the mountains of the Hun, the field of Aspern, the hills of Turkish story, are crowded with armies, flouted with banners, and shaken with the tramp of chivalry, and the march of phalanxed legions. They all "teem with visions of the past." Those who are acquainted with the circumstances of the siege of Vienna by the Turks, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and its deliverance by Sobiesky, king of Poland, will at once realise the Ottoman battle - array under the beleaguered walls; the despair within the city, where all hope but in heaven was cut off, and the churches were thronged with praying multitudes; the sudden appearance of the Poles, and their attack upon the infidels: the rage of conflict, man to man, horse to horse, swords against cimeters, cimeters against swords, one moment "flashing, glittering in the sun," the next crimsoned and reeking with blood; the shouts, the groans, the agonies, the transports of the strife; till the bar[17] barians, borne down by the irresistible impetuosity of their Christian assailants, fell heaps upon heaps, on "the field of glory," or fled "to the mountains of the Hun," while Danube, from "the Fountain of the Thorn," rolled purple to the deep, bearing along with his overcharged current the turbaned corpses of the invaders back into the bowels of their own land. That disastrous siege and triumphant rescue were celebrated by a contemporary poet (Filicaja) in three of the sublimest odes which Italy can boast; and which (with the exceptionof the Hohenlinden and the Battle of the Baltic, by our accomplished countryman whose stanzas I have been discussing), stand unrivalled by any war-songs with which I am aquainted, whether among the few fragments of antiquity, or in the whole armoury of later ages.
Poetry and Sculpture.
Sculpture is the noblest, but the most limited of the manual fine arts; it produces the fewest, but the greatest effects; it approaches nearest to nature, and yet can present little beside models of her living forms, and those principally in repose. Plausible reasons are assigned for the latter spontaneous restriction of their art, with which practitioners in general are satisfied, from the extreme difficulty, and with most of them the absolute impossibility, of expressing lively action or vehement passion, otherwise than in their beginnings and their results. This is not the place to discuss the question; yet I know not how it can be doubted, that sculpture might [18] legitimately essay, and victoriously achieve, the most daring innovations in this almost forbidden field, into which few beside Michael Angelo and Roubilliac, among the moderns, have set a foot, without trembling hesitation or ignorant presumption, either of which must have ensured miscarriage. The Laocoön and the friezes of the Parthenon are trophies of ancient prowess in this perilous department, which, instead of being the despair, ought to be the assurance of hope to adventurers in a later age and colder clime, among a people more phlegmatic than the gay Greeks or the spirited Italians. When a new Pygmalion shall arise, he will not be content to say to his statue, with the last stroke of the chisel, "Speak," but he will add "Move."
Be this as it may, - beauty, intelligence, strength, grace of attitude, symmetry of limb, harmonious grouping, simple, severe, sublime expression, the soul informing the marble, the personal character stamped upon the features, - these are the highest attempts of the highest minds, in the highest of the imitative arts. It follows, that mediocrity is less tolerable in sculpture than in painting, music, and even poetry itself. Nothing in it is truly excellent, but that which is pre-eminently so; because nothing less than the most successful strokes of the happiest chisel can powerfully effect the spectator, fix him in dumb astonishment, touch his heart-strings with tender emotion, or stir thought from its depths into ardent and earnest exercise. I appeal to all who hear me, whether, among a hundred of the monuments in our cathedrals, and the statues in our [19] public places, they ever met with more than one or two that laid hold of their imagination, so as to haunt it both in retirement and in society, - or, most unexpectedly to
flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude;
WORDSWORTH.
for even in crowds, in business, in dissipation, what has intensely appealed to our sympathy on first acquaintance, will often recur in the image-chamber of the mind. Thus, after the first hearing, will certain strains of music; thus, after the first sight, some masterpiece of painting; and frequently, far more frequently than either of these, after the first reading, will lines, and phrases, and sentiments of poetry, ring in the memory, and play with the affections: but rarely indeed in sculpture does the image presented to the eye become a statue of thought in the mind. This may be principally owing to the paucity of subjects (I mean as the art is now practised), and, to an uninitiated eye at least, the similarity of treatment by ordinary adepts, whether single figures or monumental groups. When, however, (to use a strong metaphor) at the touch of some Promethean hand, a statue steps out of this enchanted circle, and looks as though it had grown out of the marble in the course of nature, without the aid of hands; then indeed does the artist enrich the beholder with one of the rarest treasures that genius can bequeath to contemporaries or posterity; and for which the willing yet exacted homage of applause will never cease to be paid, [20] while his work endures. Such are the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de' Medici, and other inestimable relics of antiquity; such the Moses and David of Michael Angelo; and such (to give an English example worthy to be named with these; judging solely by the power which it exercises over the purest and most universal of human sympathies, - sympathies which can no more be bribed by artifice than they can help yielding to the impulse of nature) - such, I say, is the simple memorial, by our own Chantrey, in Lichfield Cathedral, of two children, that were "lovely in their lives, and in death are undivided." Of these specimens, it may be affirmed, that they have shown how the narrow bounds of vulgar precedent may be left as far behind, as a star in the heavens leaves a meteor in the air. Of the antiques alone, how innumerable has been the progeny generated from creative minds, following them less by imitation than by rivalry, and borrowing nothing from them but elemental principles; with this grand advantage, which can less strictly be said to belong to models in any other polite art, namely, that what could be done, but not surpassed, had been shown; leaving not a mere ideal excellence to be attained, but the perfect example of all that the eye could desire, the imagination conceive, or the hand execute.
Now, poetry is a school of sculpture, in which the art flourishes, not in marble or brass, but in that which outlasts both, - in letters, which the fingers of a child may write or blot, but which, once written, Time himself may not be able to obliterate; and in [21] sounds, which are but passing breath, yet being once uttered, by possibility, may never cease to be repeated. Sculpture to the eye, in palpable materials, is of necessity confined to a few forms, aspects, and attitudes. The poet's images are living, breathing, moving creatures; they stand, walk, run, fly, speak, love, fight, fall, labour, suffer, die, - in a word, they are men of like passions with ourselves, undergoing all the changes of actual existence, and presenting to the mind of the reader, solitary figures, or complicated groups, more easily retained (for words are better recollected than shapen substances), and infinitely more diversified, than the chisel could hew out of all the rocks under the sun. Nor is this a fanciful or metaphorical illustration of the pre-eminence which I claim for the art I am advocating. In proof of it, I appeal at once to the works of the eldest and greatest poets of every country. In Homer, Dante, and Chaucer, for example, it is exceedingly curious to remark with what scrupulous care and minuteness personal appearance, stature, bulk, complexion, age, and other incidents, are exhibited, for the purpose of giving life and reality to the scenes and actions in which their characters are engaged. All these are bodied forth to the eye through the mind, as sculpture addresses the mind through the eye.
In sculpture, nothing is less impressive than the allegorical personages that haunt cenotaphs, and crowd cathedral walls; for, however admirably wrought, they awaken not the slightest emotion, whether they weep, or rage, or frown, or smile. In poetry, likewise, as may be shown hereafter, ex[22]panded allegories are the least effective of all the means by which terror, wonder, pity, delight, or anger, are attempted to be excited; yet with single figures frequently, and with small groups occasionally, under the guise of metaphors and similes, poetry of every kind is peopled more splendidly, beautifully, and awfully, than was the Grecian Olympus with gods and heroes, the ocean with nymphs and nereids, and Tartarus with furies, spectres, and inexorable judges. Two or three brief specimens may decide the superiority of verse in this field of competition. How could the image of Fear, which "to and fro did fly," be realised in marble as it has been by Spenser in rhyme? Collins's odes are galleries of poetical statuary, which no art could give to the sight, though perfectly made out in the sensorium of the brain.
"Danger, whose limbs of giant mould,
What mortal eye could fix'd behold?
Who stalks his round, a hideous form,
Howling amidst the midnight storm,
Or throws him on the ridgy steep
Of some loose, hanging rock to sleep."
What sculptor's hand could arrest this monster, and place him in one attitude, which should suggest all the ideas expressed in these wonderful lines? - his "limbs of giant-mould," - his stalking, howling, casting himself prone, and falling asleep; - with the accompaniments of the "midnight storm," "the ridgy steep," "the loose, hanging rock;" and, above all (perhaps), the mortal "eye" vainly attempting to [23] fix itself upon his "hideous form?" * In the sequel of the same ode we meet with -
— "the ravening brood of Fate,
That lap the blood of Sorrow."
The artist might fearfully represent wolves or wild dogs lapping the blood of a slain victim; but it would require the commentary of the passage itself to make the spectator understand, that by the former were meant "the ravening brood of Fate," that follow in the rear of "Vengeance," - "the fiends," that, near allied to "Danger" afore-mentioned, "o'er Nature's wounds and wrecks preside;" and that their prey was the personification of "Sorrow." Yet the poet, in the context, does all this as tri[24]]umphantly as though he could give bodily sight to the mental eye, by which they are discerned through the magic medium of his verse.
Let us bring not - into gladiatorial conflict, but into honourable competition, where neither can suffer disparagement - one of the masterpieces of ancient sculpture, and two stanzas from "Childe Harold," in which that very statue is turned into verse, which seems almost to make it visible: -
THE DYING GLADIATOR.
"I see before me the Gladiator lie;
He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony;
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low;
And through his side, the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; - and now
The arena swims around him, - he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout that hail'd the wretch who won."
Now, all this, sculpture has embodied in perpetual marble, and every association touched upon in the description might spring up in a well instructed mind, while contemplating the insulated figure which personifies the expiring champion. Painting might take up the same subject, and represent the amphitheatre thronged to the height with ferocious faces, all bent upon the exulting conqueror and his prostrate antagonist - a thousand for one of them sympathising rather with the transport of the former than the agony of the latter. Here, then, sculpture and painting have reached their climax; neither of [25] them can give the actual thoughts of the personages whom they exhibit so palpably to the outward sense, that the character of those thoughts cannot be mistaken. Poetry goes farther than both; and when one of the sisters had laid down her chisel, the other her pencil, she continues her strain; wherein, having already sung what each have pictured, she thus reveals that secret of the sufferer's breaking heart, which neither of them could intimate by any visible sign. But we must return to the swoon of the dying man: -
"The arena swims around him, - he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout that hail'd the wretch who won.
"He heard it, and he heeded not, - his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize,
- But, where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother: - he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday;
All this gush'd with his blood." * * *
Myriads of eyes had gazed upon that statue; through myriads of minds all the images and ideas connected with the combat and the fall, the spectators and the scene, had passed in the presence of that unconscious marble which has given immortality to the pangs of death; but not a soul among all the beholders through eighteen centuries, - not one had ever before thought of "the rude hut," the "Dacian mother," the "young barbarians." At length came the poet of passion; and looking down upon [26] "The dying Gladiator" (less as what it was than what it represented), turned the marble into man, and endowed it with human affections; then, away over the Apennines and over the Alps, away, on the wings of irrepressible sympathy, flew his spirit to the banks of the Danube, where, "with his heart," were the "eyes" of the victim, under the night-fall of death; for "there were his young barbarians all at play, and there their Dacian mother." This is nature; this is truth. While the conflict continued, the combatant thought of himself only; he aimed at nothing but victory; when life and this were lost, his last thoughts, his sole thoughts, would turn to his wife and his little children.
In none of the foregoing remarks has the smallest slight been aimed at Music, Painting, or Sculpture, by giving the palm to Poetry; in fact it has been intended to exalt them, that, by showing the elder of the four sisters to be the intellectual superior of the younger three (illustrious and unsurpassed as each is in her own department), she herself might be crowned with the greater glory. On the subject of their generous rivalry let it be observed, that it is intellectual pre-eminence alone which is here claimed for poetry. The measure of original genius required for excelling in the one or the other, I leave undetermined.
The Comparative Rewards of Professors of the Fine Arts.
Having thus endeavoured to prove, by no invidious comparisons, that poetry is the eldest, the rarest, and the most excellent of the fine arts, I may here touch upon another peculiarity not yet alluded to, being an extrinsic one, - in which each of the others bears away from her a prize "for which they all contend," though only of secondary, not to say sordid, value. Though the gift of poetry be the most beneficial to the world, it is the least profitable to the possessor. There has scarcely been a period, or a country, in which a poet could live by the fruits of his labours. This circumstance (in no respect dishonourable to the art) has been a snare by which multitudes of its professors have been tempted to dishonour both it and themselves, by courtly servility to royal and noble patrons; - by yet viler degradation in ministering to vulgar prejudices, and pandering to gross passions; - or, with the garbage of low satire, feasting envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, - monsters of malignity, whose daily food, like that of the king of Cambay, in Hudibras, is "asp, and basilisk, and toad." But this is not the place to dwell upon the miseries and the sins of unfortunate poets; with nothing but their proverbial poverty have we to deal at present.
It is acknowledged, that great honours and emoluments have been bestowed on some of the tribe. Pindar knew the value of his talents in gold, and he exacted it. Virgil and Horace flourished within the [28] precincts of a court; others of meaner note, in modern times, might be mentioned; - but, after all, munificent patronage is yet rarer than transcendent talents. In the age of Augustus there were many poets and but one Maecenas; Augustus himself was not a second. It is well for poetry, and no worse for poets, in the main, that the age of patronage is past; that the Parnassian slave-trade is abolished; would that we were able to add, that Parnassian slavery itself was done away, - that spontaneous bondage of poets themselves to folly, and vice, and pernicious fashion, for the hire of unrighteousness! With little to expect from the great, to the public the successful poet may look for his moderate but not inglorious reward.
It has been facetiously said, that booksellers drink their wine out of the skulls of authors; and it has been declared, by one of the most illustrious of our country's writers, - himself a poet, - who had proved all the pangs of heart-sickness from hope deferred, and hope disappointed, which he has so admirably expressed in a couplet of sterling English, excelling even the celebrated original in the third satire of Juvenal: -
"Haud facile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat
Res angusta domi."
"This mournful truth is every where confess'd,
Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.
Vanity of Human Wishes.
To return, - it has been declared by Dr. Johnson, that booksellers are the best patrons. Both sayings may be equally true, though neither of them is [29] strictly so. It is as purely figurative to call a bookseller an author's patron as to say that he drinks his wine out of an author's skull. In reality nay, - it cannot in the common course of things be otherwise - just in proportion as a writer's lucubrations bring profit to his bookseller, the bookseller will be liberal in remunerating his talents, - for the strongest reason in the world, - to secure his own interest. That the market-price of the greatest works of literature, of poetry in particular, should be very incommensurate to the toil, the time, and the expense of thought required to perfect them, is a circumstance rather to be lamented than complained of, and rather to be endured with patience than lamented. The evil, if it be an evil, is irremediable; and however it may be alleviated by the multiplication of readers, and the taste for elegant and magnificent books, - though the latter factitious taste is nearly obsolete, and volumes of compendious literature are now the rage, - yet must authors be for ever excluded from the hope of reaping equal pecuniary benefit from the offspring of their minds with first-rate professors of the sister arts. The world, which loves to wonder, wonders less at Madame Catalani receiving a prince's ransom for a few pulsations of breath, - by which she can throw a whole theatre into ecstasy; or the late Benjamin West hesitating to accept ten thousand pounds for a single picture, - than that Sir Walter Scott should have been paid five hundred for the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and from one to two, from two to three, and from three to four thousand pounds for so many [30] other ballad-like romances in succession; - prices unprecedented in poetical finance, and not likely to be given again till another Sir Walter shall arise to witch the world with noble penmanship. *
I will never degrade poetry so low as to admit, even for argument's sake, that the force of genius displayed in any of the five compositions alluded to is no greater than Catalani or West were required to put forth to obtain proportionate remuneration. It would be making sounds and colours equal to thoughts and feelings to allow this. For myself, I would rather have written "the last words of Marmion" for love (as the saying is), than have pocketed all the coin that has been poured out upon shop-compters, at box-lobby doors, and in concert-rooms, for setting, singing, playing, and selling them, from Berwick-on-Tweed to Penzance. Nor is this vain boasting; for to have written those few lines, I must have been possessed of the power of him who did write them; and then I could have envied no man the profit which he might professionally acquire from my labours. It is enough to make a poor poet burst his spleen, to read the memoirs of eminent musicians and painters, and contrast them with those of his more illustrious predecessors. While the former have been courted, enriched, and ennobled by pon[31]tiffs and potentates, the latter have languished in poverty, and died in despair. Will any man deny that the poems of Milton, as productions of genius, are equal to the pictures of Rubens? Yet the artist's pencil supported him in princely splendour; - the poet's muse could not procure, what even his enemies would have furnished to him, gratuitously, in a dungeon, bread and water. Poets might be permitted to say, that music, painting, and sculpture may be appreciated in this world, and recompensed by the things of it, but poetry cannot , its price is above wealth, and its honours are those which sovereigns cannot confer. But they are generally posthumous. Like Egyptian kings, however praised while living, it is on the issue of their trials after death that the most exalted have pyramids decreed to them; and it is then that even the most admired and feared may be condemned to obloquy, and abandoned to oblivion.
Poetry compared with Eloquence, History, and Philosophy.
In reference to other species of literature, it is not my purpose to present them in any lengthened, much less any disparaging, contrast with poetry. Eloquence, history, philosophy, must consider poetry as their sister by blood (not merely by alliance, as in the case of music, painting, and sculpture,) rather than their rival, - elder, indeed, than all, yet in perpetual youth; the nurse of each, yet more beautiful than either of them in her loveliest attire. The [32] most perfect models of eloquence may be found in the writings of the epic and dramatic poets; also the most authentic facts of history, embellished not beyond truth, but agreeable to truth; and the purest morals of philosophy, set forth with lights and shadows which transform them from pretended mysteries, and pompous truisms, into clear, permanent, and influential realities. *
The first of these assertions will probably be admitted, - that eloquence has frequently been presented to as great (if not greater) advantage, in verse as in prose; ancient oratory, in comparison with ancient poetry, has exercised small influence over the minds, manners, and characters of succeeding ages. Cicero, all perfect as he is, in his own unri[33]vailed style of prose, as numerous as the richest verse, - and Demosthenes himself, - of the effects of whose speeches as "fulmined" from the living voice over the heads of audiences that could criticise every syllable, even when Philip was at the gates, we must necessarily form very imperfect ideas from reading them in a dead language, addressed only to the eye, for the sounds, whatever be our pronunciation, are little more than imaginary; - Cicero and Demosthenes have exercised no such power over posterity as Homer and Virgil have done, though the diction of these lies under yet a heavier impracticability of modern utterance, from the loss of the true use of quantity, as well as articulation, in the antique tongues.
In history, as a matter of fact, whether creditable to the eccentricity of human taste or not, it will hardly be disputed, that Xenophon and Thucydides have failed to command the attention, which (not without a cause lying deep in our very nature) has been won by Anacreon and Horace. But even on its own ground, history, in some respects, as the transmitter of knowledge concerning the past, is compelled to vail to poetry. Not that the records of actual events can be so properly conveyed in verse (though bards in all nations were the first chroniclers) as they may be, through all their remembered details, in prose; but, since all memorials must be necessarily imperfect, and more or less mixed up with error, - by the latter we may be absolutely deceived, taking the statements for pure truth; while, by the former, we must be left proportionately in ignorance of some [34] things needful to be known, to form a correct judgment of great and complicated transactions. Now the defects and errors of poets concerning subjects of history are not in themselves liable to mislead, because the details are never exhibited as literal verities, but avowedly as things which might have happened under certain circumstances, in cases where what really did happen is no longer known. This is exemplified by the narrative poems of the Siege of Troy, and the Voyages of Ulysses and Æneas, - events of which no other history exists; and though few will doubt that for much of the romance in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Æneid, there was no foundation in truth, nobody will mistake the palpable fictions for facts. In history, on the other hand, it is difficult, nay, impossible, to distinguish between facts and fictions, when both rest upon the same authority, and there happens to be nothing in the nature of things to enable us to separate the one from the other, both being in the abstract alike probable. But this would lead us into too wide a field of discussion, at present. It may, however, be safely assumed, that a large proportion of ancient history, especially that of the early periods, is as fabulous as the mythology of the gods, which usually precedes the traditions of the men that first made and then worshipped them.
Poetry, in one sense, builds up the ruins of history, fallen otherwise into irrecoverable dilapidation. From the epic, dramatic, satiric, didactic, and even from the lyric remains of the Greeks and Romans, we learn more than history, were it sevenfold more [35] perfect than it is in the records of great men and great deeds, could ever have communicated concerning the state of society in old times and in famous lands. From the former we derive almost all that we know of ancient manners, customs, arts, sciences, amusements, food, dress, and those numberless small circumstances which make up the business and leisure, the colour, form, and character of life. Poetry, in a word, shows us men, not only as kings and legislators, warriors and philosophers, tyrants and slaves, actors and sufferers upon the public stage,- but men in all their domestic relationships, - as they are in themselves, as they appear in their families, and as they influence their little neighbourhoods. Nay, even in the palace, the hall of justice, the field of battle, the academic grove, poetry exhibits man in portraiture - more like himself individually (so as his fellows in all ages may personally sympathise with him), than history can show him in any of the artificial groups amidst which he appears in his assumed character, - a mask among masks.
Take poetry and history upon the same favourite ground, - war. Homer may not have recorded the actual events at the siege of Troy, and the disasters of Greece in consequence of the anger of Achilles; but, with all his noble exaggeration of the strength, speed, prowess, and other qualities of his heroes, the splendour of their arms, and the sumptuousness of their state, he has undoubtedly delineated from the life the people of his own and the age before him; so that we learn more concerning the warriors, minstrels, sages, ladies, and all classes of human society, [36] from the Iliad and the Odyssey alone, than from the most faithful, intelligent, and least romantic of the historians of the same and succeeding periods, before the fashions of those strange times were passed away. Poetry is thus the illuminator of history, the paths of which, in early times, would have been dark indeed, without this "light from heaven."
In regard to philosophy and jurisprudence, it may be remarked, that Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, and Socrates himself, occasionally employed poetry to dictate laws, with oracular authority, and to enforce morals with the sanction of a language like that of the gods. Plato was the most poetical of writers in prose, because, it has been said, he could not excel Homer in verse, and at the head of one or the other species of literature he had determined to be; - thus acknowledging the pre-eminence of that which he did not adopt, by making that which he did approach as near to it as possible. It is true, that he would banish poets from his commonwealth; first, however, crowning them with bays. But there were immunities under his system of polity which rendered it no disgrace for the divinest of human arts to be forbidden; and in his other works he does honour to himself, by giving to it the honour due. I palliate not the abominations of pagan poetry, many of them too revolting to be named; but these were the perversions of what in itself is most excellent, and in proportion to its excellence most pernicious when perverted. But pagan poetry, with all its sins, has survived pagan philosophy with all its merits.
Permanence of Poetry.
Poetry, the most perfect form of literature, which is all that I contend for in this essay, is also the most enduring; the relics of ancient verse considerably exceed, in proportion to the bulk of the original materials, those of ancient prose, especially in ethics. Most of the philosophers are but names, and their systems traditions, at this day. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca alone have survived, in sufficient bulk, to show what they were; giants in intellect, but babes in knowledge of the best things (the pure spiritual principles that teach the love of God and the love of man), in comparison with the humblest Christian who can read his Bible, and know, from its influence upon his heart, his conscience and his life, that it is true. Had all the writings of Greek and Roman moralists been preserved, they would but have exhibited the impossibility of man by searching to find out God, without a distinct revelation from himself. They would have been, in many respects, splendid piles of error, on which eloquence, argument, all the power, penetration, and subtilty of minds of the highest order were expended in comparatively vain speculations; resembling their temples, - prodigies of human art, science, taste, elegance, sublimity, - all that could show the immortality of man even in his mortal works, but dedicated to false gods, to idols, - the wisest among them not knowing that an idol, whether ideal or material, the idol of the sage or of the clown, is nothing in the world. Now, in the systems alluded to, whatever was false and evil was laid [38] down as true and good, and being mingled with whatever was really good and true, became of more perilous malignity than the extravagances and atrocities of poetry, which too often did not even pretend to regard good manners; yet of which the greater part, preserved from the devastations of time, abounding, as it does, with faults and errors, contains lessons without number, and unequalled in form and beauty, whereby the mind may be enlarged, the noblest passions moved towards the noblest objects, and the imagination chastened by morality, clear, simple, practical, and radiantly contrasted with the complex, subtle, dark, bewildering notions of most of the philosophers.
Here I conclude this rhapsody, as some may deem it, on the pre-eminence of poetry; asking only for it that indulgence, which I should be most willing to grant, for myself, to any champion of music, painting, sculpture, eloquence, history, or philosophy, who, in this place or any other theatre where liberal sentiment may be freely expressed, should plead for the pre-eminence of his favourite art over mine.
[Die Anmerkungen stehen als Fußnoten auf den in eckigen Klammern bezeichneten Seiten]
[14] * The introductory and concluding verses, being merely complimentary, are omitted. The poem
itself first appeared in this country in the "Family Magazine of November, 1830," edited by Mr.
Shoberl, who acknowledges that he copied them from a German periodical published at Vienna. They
were probably written about the year 1802.
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[23] * Chaucer's description of "Danger" in the Romaunt of the Rose, is exceedingly spirited,
and equally characteristic with that of Collins, though very different, because the fiend
is differently exercising himself: - Collins presents natural dangers from lightning, tempest,
and earthquake, - Chaucer, the perils of war, battle, human violence, or ambush;
the last of which is finely conceived in the first couplet: -
"With that anon upstart Dangere
Out of the place where he was hidde;
His malice in his chere was kidde; (a)
Full great he was, and blacke of hewe,
Sturdy and hideous, whoso him knewe;
Like sharpe urchins his heere was grow,
His eyes red, sparcling as glow;
His nose frouncid full kirked stoode, (b)
He come criande as he were woode." (c)
(a) Was seen in his look. (b) Crooked and upturned stood.
(c) Mad.
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[30] * The circumstances respecting Mr. West and Sir Walter Scott are adopted from
common report; but, however incorrect they may be, the impression made on the public mind,
on the presumption of their truth, is sufficient for the author's argument here.
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[32] * Milton's splendid view of the intellectual glories of ancient Greece may be advantageously
quoted here: -
"There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand; and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his, who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phœbus challenged for his own:
Thence what the lofty, grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life,
High actions, and high passions best describing:
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne."
Paradise Regained, book iv. zurück
Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
James Montgomery: Lectures on Poetry and General Literature,
Delivered at the Royal Institution in 1830 and 1831.
London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne, Green, & Longman 1833, S. 1-38.
URL: https://books.google.fr/books?id=rsMxAQAAMAAJ
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007668056
URL: https://archive.org/details/lecturesonpoetr00montgoog
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
Literatur
Abrams, M. H.: Spiegel und Lampe.
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Duff, David: Romanticism and the Uses of Genre.
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Martus, Steffen u.a. (Hrsg.): Lyrik im 19. Jahrhundert.
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Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer