CHAPTER XVI

Striking points of difference between the Poets of the present age and

those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--Wish expressed for the

union of the characteristic merits of both.

Christendom, from its first settlement on feudal rights, has been so

far one great body, however imperfectly organized, that a similar spirit

will be found in each period to have been acting in all its members.

The study of Shakespeare’s poems--(I do not include his dramatic works,

eminently as they too deserve that title)--led me to a more careful

examination of the contemporary poets both in England and in other

countries. But my attention was especially fixed on those of Italy, from

the birth to the death of Shakespeare; that being the country in which

the fine arts had been most sedulously, and hitherto most successfully

cultivated. Abstracted from the degrees and peculiarities of individual

genius, the properties common to the good writers of each period seem

to establish one striking point of difference between the poetry of

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that of the present age. The

remark may perhaps be extended to the sister art of painting. At least

the latter will serve to illustrate the former. In the present age the

poet--(I would wish to be understood as speaking generally, and without

allusion to individual names)--seems to propose to himself as his main

object, and as that which is the most characteristic of his art, new and

striking images; with incidents that interest the affections or excite

the curiosity. Both his characters and his descriptions he renders,

as much as possible, specific and individual, even to a degree of

portraiture. In his diction and metre, on the other hand, he is

comparatively careless. The measure is either constructed on no previous

system, and acknowledges no justifying principle but that of the

writer’s convenience; or else some mechanical movement is adopted, of

which one couplet or stanza is so far an adequate specimen, as that the

occasional differences appear evidently to arise from accident, or the

qualities of the language itself, not from meditation and an intelligent

purpose. And the language from Pope’s translation of Homer, to Darwin’s

Temple of Nature [62], may, notwithstanding some illustrious exceptions,

be too faithfully characterized, as claiming to be poetical for no

better reason, than that it would be intolerable in conversation or in

prose. Though alas! even our prose writings, nay even the style of our

more set discourses, strive to be in the fashion, and trick themselves

out in the soiled and over-worn finery of the meretricious muse. It is

true that of late a great improvement in this respect is observable in

our most popular writers. But it is equally true, that this recurrence

to plain sense and genuine mother English is far from being general; and

that the composition of our novels, magazines, public harangues, and the

like is commonly as trivial in thought, and yet enigmatic in expression,

as if Echo and Sphinx had laid their heads together to construct it.

Nay, even of those who have most rescued themselves from this contagion,

I should plead inwardly guilty to the charge of duplicity or cowardice,

if I withheld my conviction, that few have guarded the purity of their

native tongue with that jealous care, which the sublime Dante in his

tract De la volgare Eloquenza, declares to be the first duty of a poet.

For language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains

the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests.

Animadverte, says Hobbes, quam sit ab improprietate verborum pronum

hominihus prolabi in errores circa ipsas res! Sat [vero], says

Sennertus, in hac vitae brevitate et naturae obscuritate, rerum est,

quibus cognoscendis tempus impendatur, ut [confusis et multivotis]

sermonibus intelligendis illud consumere opus non sit. [Eheu! quantas

strages paravere verba nubila, quae tot dicunt ut nihil dicunt;--nubes

potius, e quibus et in rebus politicis et in ecclesia turbines et

tonitrua erumpunt!] Et proinde recte dictum putamus a Platone in Gorgia:

os an ta onomata eidei, eisetai kai ta pragmata: et ab Epicteto,

archae paideuseos hae ton onomaton episkepsis: et prudentissime Galenus

scribit, hae ton onomaton chraesis tarachtheisa kai taen ton pragmaton

epitarattei gnosin.

Egregie vero J. C. Scaliger, in Lib. I. de Plantis: Est primum, inquit,

sapientis officium, bene sentire, ut sibi vivat: proximum, bene loqui,

ut patriae vivat.

Something analogous to the materials and structure of modern poetry I

seem to have noticed--(but here I beg to be understood as speaking

with the utmost diffidence)--in our common landscape painters. Their

foregrounds and intermediate distances are comparatively unattractive:

while the main interest of the landscape is thrown into the background,

where mountains and torrents and castles forbid the eye to proceed, and

nothing tempts it to trace its way back again. But in the works of the

great Italian and Flemish masters, the front and middle objects of the

landscape are the most obvious and determinate, the interest gradually

dies away in the background, and the charm and peculiar worth of the

picture consists, not so much in the specific objects which it conveys

to the understanding in a visual language formed by the substitution of

figures for words, as in the beauty and harmony of the colours, lines,

and expression, with which the objects are represented. Hence novelty of

subject was rather avoided than sought for. Superior excellence in

the manner of treating the same subjects was the trial and test of the

artist’s merit.

Not otherwise is it with the more polished poets of the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries, especially those of Italy. The imagery is almost

always general: sun, moon, flowers, breezes, murmuring streams, warbling

songsters, delicious shades, lovely damsels cruel as fair, nymphs,

naiads, and goddesses, are the materials which are common to all, and

which each shaped and arranged according to his judgment or fancy,

little solicitous to add or to particularize. If we make an honourable

exception in favour of some English poets, the thoughts too are as

little novel as the images; and the fable of their narrative poems,

for the most part drawn from mythology, or sources of equal notoriety,

derive their chief attractions from the manner of treating them; from

impassioned flow, or picturesque arrangement. In opposition to the

present age, and perhaps in as faulty an extreme, they placed the

essence of poetry in the art. The excellence, at which they aimed,

consisted in the exquisite polish of the diction, combined with perfect

simplicity. This their prime object they attained by the avoidance of

every word, which a gentleman would not use in dignified conversation,

and of every word and phrase, which none but a learned man would use;

by the studied position of words and phrases, so that not only each

part should be melodious in itself, but contribute to the harmony of

the whole, each note referring and conducting to the melody of all the

foregoing and following words of the same period or stanza; and lastly

with equal labour, the greater because unbetrayed, by the variation and

various harmonies of their metrical movement. Their measures, however,

were not indebted for their variety to the introduction of new metres,

such as have been attempted of late in the Alonzo and Imogen, and others

borrowed from the German, having in their very mechanism a specific

overpowering tune, to which the generous reader humours his voice and

emphasis, with more indulgence to the author than attention to the

meaning or quantity of the words; but which, to an ear familiar with the

numerous sounds of the Greek and Roman poets, has an effect not unlike

that of galloping over a paved road in a German stage-waggon without

springs. On the contrary, the elder bards both of Italy and England

produced a far greater as well as more charming variety by countless

modifications, and subtle balances of sound in the common metres of

their country. A lasting and enviable reputation awaits that man of

genius, who should attempt and realize a union;--who should recall the

high finish, the appropriateness, the facility, the delicate proportion,

and above all, the perfusive and omnipresent grace, which have

preserved, as in a shrine of precious amber, the Sparrow of Catullus,

the Swallow, the Grasshopper, and all the other little loves of

Anacreon; and which, with bright, though diminished glories, revisited

the youth and early manhood of Christian Europe, in the vales of [63]

Arno, and the groves of Isis and of Cam; and who with these should

combine the keener interest, deeper pathos, manlier reflection, and the

fresher and more various imagery, which give a value and a name that

will not pass away to the poets who have done honour to our own times,

and to those of our immediate predecessors.