which the writer was surrounded, in a country district, had entered deeply into his mind, and were reproduced in the poetical form. The bird "tangled in a net "-the "di-dapper peering through a wave"-the "blue-veined violets"-the "Red morn, that ever yet betoken'd Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field " the fisher that forbears the "ungrown fry"—the sheep "gone to fold”—the caterpillars feeding on "the tender leaves "-and, not to weary with examples, that exquisite image, "Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky, So glides he in the night from Venus' eye " all these bespeak a poet who had formed himself upon nature, and not upon books. To understand the value as well as the rarity of this quality in Shakspere, we should open any contemporary poem. Take Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander' for example. We read line after line, beautiful, gorgeous, running over with a satiating luxuriousness; but we look in vain for a single familiar image. Shakspere describes what he has seen, throwing over the real the delicious tint of his own imagination. Marlowe looks at Nature herself very rarely; but he knows all the conventional images by which the real is supposed to be clevated into the poetical. His most beautiful things are thus but copies of copies. The mode in which each poet describes the morning will illustrate our meaning We feel that this is true "Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty; Who doth the world so gloriously behold, The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold." We are taught that this is classical. Coleridge has observed that, "in the Venus and Adonis, the first and most obvious excellence is the perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of melody predominant." * This self-controlling power of "varying the march of the words without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm" is perhaps one of the most signal instances of Shakspere's consummate mastery of his art, even as a very young man. He who, at the proper season, knew how to strike the grandest music within the compass of our own powerful and sonorous language, in his early productions breathes out his thoughts "To the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorder." The sustained sweetness of the versification is never cloying; and yet there are no violent contrasts, no sudden elevations: all is equable in its infinite variety. The early comedies are full of the same rare beauty. In Love's Labour's Lost-The Comedy of Errors--A Midsummer Night's Dream-we have verses of alternate rhymes formed upon the same model as those of the Venus and Adonis, and producing the same feeling of placid delight by their exquisite harmony. The same principles on which he built the versification of the Venus and Adonis exhibited to him the grace which these elegiac harmonies would impart to the scenes of repose in the progress of a dramatic action. We proceed to the Lucrece. Of that poem the date of the composition is fixed as accurately as In the dedication to the Venus and Adonis the poet says-"If your honour seem we can desire. but pleased I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours till I have honoured you with some graver labour." In 1594, a year after the Venus and Adonis, Lucrece was published, and was dedicated to Lord Southampton. This, then, was undoubtedly the "graver labour;" this was the produce of the "idle hours" of 1593. Shakspere was then nearly thirty years of age-the period at which it is held by some he first began to produce anything original for the stage. The poet unquestionably intended the "graver labour" for a higher effort than had produced the "first heir" of his invention. He describes the Venus and Adonis as "unpolished lines"-lines thrown off with youthful luxuriousness and rapidity. The verses of the Lucrece are "untutored lines"-lines formed upon no established model. There is to our mind the difference of eight or even ten years in the aspect of these poems-a difference as manifest as that which exists between Love's Labour's Lost and Romeo and Juliet. Coleridge has marked the great distinction between the one poem and the other : "The Venus and Adonis did not perhaps allow the display of the deeper passious. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand, their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakespeare's inanagement of the tale neither pathos nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection: and, lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domination, over the whole world of language.”* It is in this paragraph that Coleridge has marked the difference-which a critic of the very high. est order could alone have pointed out-between the power which Shakspere's mind possessed of going out of itself in a narrative poem, and the dramatic power. The same mighty, and to most unattainable, power, of utterly subduing the self-conscious to the universal, was essential to the highest excellence of both species of composition, the poem and the draina. But the exercise of that power was essentially different in each. Coleridge, in another place, says, "in his very first production he projected his mind out of his own particular being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way connected with himself except by force of contemplation, and that sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes that on which it meditates." But this "sublime faculty" went greatly farther when it became dramatic. In the narrative poems of an ordinary man we perpetually see the narrator. Coleridge, in a passage previouly quoted, has shown the essential superiority of Shakspere's narrative poems, where the whole is placed before our view, the poet unparticipating in the passions. There is a remarkable example of how strictly Shakspere adhered to this principle in his beautiful poem of A Lover's Complaint. There the poet is actually present to the scene: "From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded A plaintful story from a sistering vale, My spirits to attend this double voice accorded, But not one word of comment does he offer upon the revelations of the "fickle maid full pale." The dramatic power, however, as we have said, is many steps beyond this. It dispenses with narrative altogether. It renders a complicated story, or stories, one in the action. It makes the characters reveal themselves, sometimes by a word. It trusts for everything to the capacity of an audience to appreciate the greatest subtleties, and the nicest shades of passion, through the action. It is the very reverse of the oratorical power, which repeats and explains. And how is it able to effect this prodigious mastery over the senses and the understanding? By raising the mind of the spectator, or reader, into such a state of poetical excitement as corresponds in some degree to the excitement of the poet, and thus clears away the mists of our ordinary vision, and irradiates the whole complex moral world in which we for a time live, and move, and have our being, with the brightness of his own intellectual sunlight. Now, it appears to us that, although the Venus and Adonis, and the Lucrece, do not pretend to be the creations of this wonderful power-their forms did not demand its complete exercise-they could not have been produced by a man who did not possess the power, Biographia Literaria,' vol. ii., p. 21. TRAGEDIES, &c.-VOL. II. Literary Remains,' vol. ii., p. 54. 513 an 1 had assiduously cultivated it in its own proper field. In the second poem, more especially, do we think the power has reached a higher development, indicating itself in “a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection." Malone says, "I have observed that Painter has inserted the story of Lucrece in the first volume of his Palace of Pleasure,' 1567, on which I make no doubt our author formed his poem." Be it so. The story of Lucrece in Painter's novel occupies four pages. The first page describes the circumstances that preceded the unholy visit of Tarquin to Lucrece; nearly the whole of the last two pages detail the events that followed the death of Lucrece. A page and a half at most is given to the tragedy.. This is proper enough in a narrative, whose business it is to make all the circumstances intelligible. But the narrative poet, who was also thoroughly master of the dramatic power, concentrates all the interest upon the main circumstances of the story. He places the scene of those circumstances before our eyes at the very opening : From the besieged Ardea all in post, Borne by the trustless wings of false desire, The preceding circumstances which impel this journey are then rapidly told. Again, after the crowning action of the tragedy, the poet has done. He tells the consequences of it with a brevity and simplicity indicating the most consummate art: "When they had sworn to this advised doom, They did conclude to bear dead Lucrece thence; He has thus cleared away all the encumbrances to the progress of the main action. He would have done the same had he made Lucrece the subject of a drama. But he has to tell his painful story and to tell it all: not to exhibit a portion of it, as he would have done had he chosen the subject for a tragedy. The consummate delicacy with which he has accomplished this is beyond all praise, perhaps above all imitation. He puts forth his strength on the accessaries of the main incident. He delights to make the chief actors analyse their own thoughts,—reflect, explain, expostulate. All this is essentially undramatic, and he meant it to be so. But then, what pictures does he paint of the progress of the action, which none but a great dramatic poet, who had visions of future Macbeths and Othellos before him, could have painted! Look, for example, at that magnificent scene, when 'No comfortable star did lend his light," of Tarquin leaping from his bed, and, softly smiting his falchion on a flint, lighting a torch "Which must be lode-star to his lustful eye." Look, again, at the exquisite domestic incident which tells of the quiet and gentle occupation of his devoted victim : "By the light he spies Lucretia's glove, wherein her needle sticks; The hand to which that glove belongs is described in the very perfection of poetry : "Without the bed her other fair hand was, On the green coverlet; whose perfect white In the chamber of innocence Tarquin is painted with terrific grandeur, which is overpowering by the force of contrast: "This said he shakes aloft his Roman blade, Which, like a falcon towering in the skies, The complaint of Lucrece after Tarquin has departed was meant to be undramatic. The action advances not. The character develops not itself in the action. But the poet makes his heroine bewail her fate in every variety of lament that his boundless command of imagery could furnish. The letter to Collatine is written;-a letter of the most touching simplicity :-- "Thou worthy lord Of that unworthy wife that greeteth thee, So I commend me from our house in grief; My woes are tedious, though my words are brief." Again the action languishes, and again Lucrece surrenders herself to her grief. The "Skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy " is one of the most elaborate passages of the poem, essentially cast in an undramatic mould. But this is but a prelude to the catastrophe, where, if we mistake not, a strength of passion is put forth which is worthy him who drew the terrible agonies of Lear : "Here with a sigh, as if her heart would break, She throws forth Tarquin's name: 'He, he,' she says, Untimely breathings, sick and short assays, She utters this: He, he, fair lords, 't is he, That guides this hand to give this wound to me." Malone, in his concluding remarks upon the Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, says, "We should do Shakspeare injustice were we to try them by a comparison with more modern and polished productions, or with our present idea of poetical excellence." This was written in the year 1780-the period which rejoiced in the "polished productions" of Hayley and Miss Seward, and founded its "idea of poetical excellence" on some standard which, secure in its conventional forms, might depart as far as possible from simplicity and nature, to give us words without thought, arranged in verses without music. It would be injustice indeed to Shakspere to try the Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, by such a standard of "poetical excellence." But we have outlived that period. By way of apology for Shakspere, Malone adds, "that few authors rise much above the age in which they live." He further says, "the poems of Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, whatever opinion may be now entertained of them, were certainly much admired in Shakspeare's lifetime." This is consolatory. In Shakspere's lifetime there were a few men that the world has since thought somewhat qualified to establish an "idea of poetical excellence"-Spenser, Drayton, Jonson, Fletcher, Chapman, for example. These were not much valued in Malone's golden age of "more modern and polished productions; "--but let that pass. We are coming back to the opinions of this obsolete school; and we venture to think the majority of readers now will not require us to make an apology for Shakspere's poems. 66 If Malone thought it necessary to solicit indulgence for the Venus and Adonis, and Lucrece, he drew even a more timid breath when he ventured to speak of the Sonnets. I do not feel any great propensity to stand forth as the champion of these compositions. However, as it appears to me that they have been somewhat underrated, I think it incumbent on me to do them that justice to which they seem entitled." No wonder he speaks timidly. The great poetical lawgiver of his time—the greater than Shakspere, for he undertook to mend him, and refine him, and make him fit to be tolerated by the super-elegant intellects of the days of George III.-had pronounced that the Sonnets were too bad even for his genius to make tolerable. He, Steevens, who would take up a play of Shakspere's in the condescending spirit with which a clever tutor takes up a smart boy's verses-altering a word here, piecing out a line there, commending this thought, shaking his head at this false prosody, and acknowledging upon the whole that the thing is pretty well, seeing how much the lad has yet to learn-he sent forth his decree that nothing less than an act of parliament could compel the reading of Shakspere's Sonnets. For a long time mankind bowed before the oracle; and the Sonnets were not read. Wordsworth has told us something about this : "There is extant a small volume of miscellaneous poems in which Shakspeare expresses his feelings in his own person. It is not difficult to conceive that the editor, George Steevens, should have been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that volume, the Sonnets; though there is not a part of the writings of this poet where is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed. But, from regard to the critic's own credit, he would not have ventured to talk of an act of parliament not being strong enough to compel the perusal of these, or any production of Shakspeare, if he had not known that the people of England were ignorant of the treasures contained in those little pieces." That ignorance has been removed; and no one has contributed more to its removal, by creating a school of poetry founded upon Truth and Nature, then Wordsworth himself. The critics of the last century have passed away : "Peor and Baälim Forsake their temples dim." By the operation of what great sustaining principle is it that we have come back to the just appreciation of "the treasures contained in those little pieces?" The poet-critic will answer :— "There never has been a period, and perhaps never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited more zealous admiration, and been far more generally read, than good; but this advantage attends the good, that the individual, as well as the species, survives from age to age; whereas, of the depraved, though the species be immortal, the individual quickly perishes; the object of present admiration vanishes, being supplanted by some other as easily produced, which, though no better, brings with it at least the irritation of novelty,-with adaptation, more or less skilful, to the changing humours of the majority of those who are most at leisure to regard poetical works when they first solicit their attention. Is it the result of the whole, that, in the opinion of the writer, the judgment of the people is not to be respected? The thought is most injurious; and, could the charge be brought against him, he would repel it with indiguation. The people have already been justified, and their eulogium pronounced by implication, when it is said, above—that, of good poetry, the individual, as well as the species, survives. And how does it survive but through the people? what preserves it but their intellect and their wisdom? Past and future are the wings On whose support, harmoniously conjoin'd, The voice that issues from this spirit is that vox populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry-transitory though it be for years, local though from a nation! Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever governed by factitious influence, which under the name of the PUBLIC, passes itself, upon the unthink. ing, for the PEOPLE." + It is this perpetual mistake of the public for the people that has led to the belief that there was a period when Shakspere was neglected. He was always in the heart of the people. There, in that deep, rich soil, have the Sonnets rested during two centuries; and here and there in remote places have the seeds put forth leaves and flowers. All young imaginative minds now rejoice in their hues and their fragrance. But this preference of the fresh and beautiful of poetical life to the pot. pourri of the last age must be a regulated love. Those who, seeing the admiration which now prevails for these outpourings of "exquisite feelings felicitously expressed," talk of the Sonnets as equal, if not superior, to the greatest of the poet's mighty dramas, compare things that admit of no comparison. Who would speak in the same breath of the gem of Cupid and Psyche, and the Parthenon? In the Sonnets, exquisite as they are, the poet goes not out of himself (at least in the form of the composition), and he walks, therefore, in a narrow circle of art. In the Venus and Adonis, and the Lucrece, the circle widens. But in the Dramas, the centre is the Human Soul, the circumference the Universe. |
