"It ends : Absumet hæres Cæcuba dignior, Servata centum clavibus; et mero Tinget pavimentum superbo "No modern poet would, or rather could, construct verses after this fashion. "It is in representations of the triumph of our immortal nature over the ills of mortality, of the patience with which they are borne, of the power by which they are overcome-in one word, of the moral qualities which suffering alone brings into action, and in those touches that awaken our best and tenderest affections for the sufferings of others, especially the innocent and helpless, that the sources of the highest pathos are to be found. All that is morally sublime springs upward from our severer trials; and then, only when man feels the nobleness of his nature. Present the calamity nakedly to our view, and its contemplation is merely distressing; picture it in connexion with some effort of virtue, and a glory is spread over the whole. In the Fall of D'Assas by Mrs Hemans, (not one of the most remarkable of her productions,) a young officer, full of the thoughts of his home and the scenes of his earlier years, is represented as surprised and massacred by his enemies. The simple narrative of such a death naturally excites painful emotion, but this emotion is so wholly overborne, as but to give additional strength to the exaltation of feeling produced by the concluding verses: ""Silence!" in under-tones they cry,' etc. "We may compare the poem just quoted with a passage from Virgil, which refers to circumstances somewhat similar, and has been praised as very pathetic, in the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, where Nisus perceives that Euryalus has fallen into the hands of his foes, and is just about to be slain. 'Tum vero, exterritus, amens, "However conspicuous such a passage may be in an ancient poet, it would not, we believe, be regarded with great admiration in a modern. "In one of Miss Edgeworth's little stories for children, which are far better worth reading than most books for grown people, she says of the cottage of some poor woman that il was as clean as misery could make it. There is a pathos in these few words, not unusual in her writings, but such as we can find in but a scanty number of writers before our own age. It has not been well understood, that the indirect expressions of suffering are far more powerful than the direct, and that we are much more affected by suppressed, than by unrestrained emotion. In but little of the poetry of past times is there any trace of quickness or delicacy of perception in regard to the modes or expressions of human feeling and passion; for man himself had not become sufficiently refined for the exercise of such observation. Plato objects to Homer, and the tragic poets of Greece, that they degraded men's minds by representing their heroes, when suffering, as pouring forth long lamentations, singing their sorrows, and beating their breasts. So far as they did so, there was nothing pathetic in their writings. Who, indeed, in modern times, was ever able to imagine himself affected by the sorrows of Achilles for the death of Patroclus, or those of his mother, Thetis, in consequence? "From the want of sentiment and of moral associations, the descriptive language of the ancient poets is, in general, scanty and poor. It is for the most part drawn immediately from the perceptions of the senses, and has little to do with the invisible feelings and images, of which outward things become the symbols to a reflecting mind. It rarely gives them a moral being; its epithets are seldom imaginative; it paints to the eye; it calls up recollections of bodily rest and pleasure; but it does not often address the heart. "Horace begins one of his odes thus : "Vides, ut ulta stet nive candidum Soracte; nec jam sustineant onus Sylvæ laborantes, geluque Flumina constiterint acuto ?' "The epithets white mountain, deep snow, sharp frost, are are all taken without addition immediately from the perception of the senses; nor, considering the common prosaic use of laboro, in a similar sense, is the epithet labouring much more poetical; yet the passage is as striking of its kind as most that may be found in Latin poetry. The lines are thus rendered by Dryden, 'Behold yon mountain's hoary height Oppress the labouring woods below; "Dryden was not eminent for his love of nature, or power of describing its beauties; and a poet of livelier perceptions would hardly have changed the name of Soracte for the faint generalisation, 'yon mountain;' yet something of the difference which we wish to point out between ancient and modern poetry is here perceptible. Let us take from Mrs Hemans an example of the richly imaginative character of that of later times. We will give the beginning of the verses in which she describes herself as reading, in an arbour, The Talisman' of Scott. A particular interest attaches to them from the circumstance that, in the best portrait of her, she is represented in this real or imaginary situation. There were thick leaves above me and around,' etc. "Every subject becomes rich in proportion to the wealth of the mind by which it is contemplated. The intellectual light that shines upon it gives it its colours. Deficient as the ancient poets were in so many sources of thought and feeling that exist in modern times, they discover as imperfect a sensibility to most of the other pleasures of a refined taste, as to those derived from the objects of nature. There is to be found, for instance, in their works, scarcely a single passage, perhaps not one, in which the power of music, as blending in intimate union sensible and intellectual pleasures, is described with strong expression; yet what a treasury of glowing images and solemn thoughts this subject has opened to modern poets. We need not quote for illustration Mrs Hemans's Triumphant Music.' such, becomes more an object of our regard. In looking back through the obscurity of time, the depravity that would have shocked us, if forced upon our observation, is partially lost in the darkness, and the bright traits of character shine out more distinctly. The dead of past ages are regarded with something of the same tenderness that we feel toward the dead whom we have known: at least we consent for a time to sacrifice our philosophy to an illusion, and, instead of the Richard Coeur-de-Lion of history, whose only marked characteristics were bodily strength and brutal hardihood, with those few gleams of goodness which nothing but the grossest sensuality can utterly extinguish, we consent for a time to take the Richard of Scott's Ivanhoe; or, in fancying the Augustan age, are willing to forget that it took its name from 'him who murder'd Tully, That cold villain, Octavius' Conformably to the laws of our better nature, our imagination is most readily attracted by what is most excellent in man. While viewing a beautiful tract of country with which we are not familiar, we can hardly refrain from idealising its supposed inhabitants, and giving them somewhat of a poetical character, or, in other words, a character agreeable to our best feelings. So it is in casting our view over past ages. Our sympathies are excited for the hopes, and fears, and the virtues, such as they were, of those who have lost all power to injure; and we may even fashion dim images of what they now are, as existing somewhere in the creation of God, divested, perhaps, of the evil that clung to them on earth. The idea of that moral purification and development, which, we believe, is continually going on in the universe, may thus mingle with the contemplation of the past. It is in transferring us into a world in which grateful imaginations are blended with truth, and the harshness of present reality is shut out, that the poetic interest of antiquity principally consists. "Of this, modern poetry and fiction have abundantly availed themselves. But though a shadowy antiquity lay as a background to Greek and Roman civilisation, yet it was rarely resorted to by the ancient poets as a source of pleasing or solemn emotions. To them the remoter ages were little more than a desert abounding with monstrous fictions, with licentious and savage divinities, half-brutal demigods, and heroes, and chiefs hardly human, whose fabulous deeds and sufferings present nothing to recommend them to our sense of beauty. In the period following, history assumed at least an air of truth, and men appeared on the stage with human feelings, passions, and virtues. But, in looking back upon their earlier history, the ancients seem to have felt but slightly those peculiar sentiments and trains of feeling, which the contemplation of antiquity now awakens in our breasts. In no ancient poet is there a celebration of a hero of his country to be compared with Mrs Hemans' lines on the Scottish patriot, Wallace, beginning Rest with the brave, whose names belong To the high sanctity of song.' There is no appeal to the deeds of their fathers equal to her Spanish war-song 'Fling forth the proud banner of Leon again; Let the high word "Castile "go resounding through Spain. No poetic conception of antiquity is to be found resembling the introduction of her Cathedral Hymn'— 'A dim and mighty minster of old time, And above all, there is nothing so morally ennobling, adapted to raise the character of a people, as the verses by which she has conferred a great obligation on our countryher Pilgrim Fathers.' "But, beside the advantages afforded to a modern poet by the religious and moral improvement of our race, which it has been principally our object to point out, there are others at which we may glance. He may look back over many ages, and around upon all countries, and acquaint himself with man, as he has existed and exists under circumstances the most dissimilar. He may possess himself of all that knowledge of human nature, which has been gathered from long experience, and wide observation, and multiplied opportunities of comparison. He may, like Southey, construct poems, as wild and wondrous, and as morally beautiful, as 'Thalaba,' or as rich with barbaric splendour as The Curse of Kehama,' from the rude materials of Arabian fiction or Hindoo mythology. The treasures of learning and science, so poor in ancient times, have, through succeeding ages, been accumulating to furnish him with thoughts, illustrations, and images. Our conceptions are enlarged, our views raised, the physical as well as the moral universe has been continually opening to the view of man, and knowledge unfolding her ever-lengthening scroll, of which the ancients had scarcely read the first lines. It was a dream, ridiculed by Plato, of the extravagant admirers of Homer, that all human and divine learning was to be found in his writings. "In the nature of things, art is progressive; its theory and practice are gradually better understood, errors are discovered and corrected, new objects of attainment proposed, and visions of higher excellence revealed to the mind; and thus we may believe, that the character, principles, purposes, and means of poetry are now comprehended more justly than they were in former times. "But it may be said that, in perfection of language at least, the poets of Greece and Rome must remain unsurpassed. It may be doubted, however, whether we are qualified to pronounce this judgment in their favour. The harmonious flow of articulate sounds in the Greek and Latin languages, particularly in the Latin, is not to be readily attained in some of the principal languages of literary Europe. But if we speak of poetical beauty of expression and harmony of thought, we must recollect that it is necessary to be acquainted with the train of shadowy associations which follow the direct meaning of a poetical word, before we can determine that word to be well chosen. But such acquaintance implies an intimate knowledge of the use of language and of the state of mind in those addressed, which, as regards the poetry of the ancients, it is very difficult to acquire, and, in many particulars, impossible, yet without which we are liable to fall into great mistakes, and may often be left in much uncertainty. Take, for example, the line "Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.* It has been admired from the consonance of the sound with the sense. We understand the epithet putris to mean dusty, the dusty plain; but this epithet is elsewhere applied to a rich, mellow soil, easily broken up, or to a sandy plain. According to either of these uses, it is apparently an epithet unsuitable, from its associations, to be given to a field described as shaken and resounding with the trampling of a body of horse. As respects, likewise, the epithet quadrupedans, we may doubt whether any modern critic can explain why quadrupedante sonitu is more poetical in Virgil than its equiva 1" De Republica," lib. x. p. 598, seq. lent, the sound of quadrupeds,' would be in a modern poet, if used to express the sound of horses. "Let us t ke another example: 'Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus Idreis Helenam perfidus hospitam.' Why is the word traheret used, which, as employed elsewhere, would imply the taking away of Helen against her will? Does it refer to one version of the story according to which Paris did bear her away by force? Were this the case, one would naturally expect, considering the reproachful and denunciatory character of the ode, to find that idea brought out more distinctly. Is it intended to express the reluctance with which, though yielding to her love for Paris, she left her husband and her home? This conception is too refined for an ancient poet to trust to its being made apparent by so light a touch, if indeed we may suppose it to have entered his mind. Was traheret then intended, by its associations with an act of violence, to denote the rapidity and fear of the flight of Paris? or was it merely employed abusively, to use a technical term-only with reference to a part of its signification, as words are not unfrequently used in poetry, though it is always an imperfection? "Such cases are very numerous, in which no modern reader can pronounce with just confidence upon the character of the poetical language of the ancients. Instances are frequently occurring in which, if we admire at all, we must admire at second-hand, upon trust. The meaning and effect of words have undergone changes which it is often not easy, and often not possible, to ascertain with precision. Even in our own language this is the case. Shakspeare says→→→ 'Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark "Here Johnson understands him as presenting the ludicrous conception of the ministers of vengeance peeping through a blanket;' and Coleridge, as we see by his TableTalk, conjectured that instead of 'blanket,' ' blank height' was perhaps written by Shakspeare. But by ' Heaven we conceive to be meant not the ministers of vengeance, but the lights of heaven; and it is not unpoetical to speak of the moon and stars as peeping through clouds. With the word 'blanket,' our associations are trivial and low; but understand it merely as denoting a thick covering of darkness which closely enwraps the lights of heaven, and it suits well to its place. But our associations with the word are accidental: there is nothing intrinsically more mean in a blanket than a sheet, yet none would object to the expression of a sheet of light.' The fortunes of the words only have been different, and that, in all probability, since the time of Shakspeare, considering his use of this word, and the corresponding use of the word rug by Drayton.1 "If such be the character of poetical language, it is clear that, to judge with critical accuracy of that of a distant age or even a foreign land, requires uncommon knowledge and discrimination, as well as an accurate taste; while unfortunately, profound scholarship and cultivated and elegant habits of mind have very rarely been united in the study of the ancient poets. The supposition of a peculiar felicity of expression in their writings is to be judged of, in most cases, rather by extrinsic probabilities, which do not favour it, than by any direct and clear evidence of it that can be produced. We are very liable in this particular to be biassed by prepossession and authority; our imaginations often deceive us; we create the beauty which we fancy that we find. "There is perhaps no poet, in whose productions the characteristics of which we have spoken as giving a superiority to the poetry of later times over that which has preceded, appear more strikingly than in those of Mrs Hemans. When, after reading such works as she has written, we turn over the volumes of a collection of English poetry, like that of Chalmers, we cannot but perceive that the greater part of it appears more worthless and distasteful than before. Much is evidently the work of barren and unformed, vulgar and vicious minds, of individuals without any conception of poetry as the glowing expression of what is most noble in our nature, and often with no title to the name of poet, but from having put into metre thoughts too mean for prose. Such writings as those of Mrs Hemans at once afford evidence of the advance of our race, and are among the most important means of its further purification and progress. The minds, which go forth from their privacy to act with strong moral power upon thousands and ten thousands of other minds, are the real agents in advancing the character of man, and improving his condition. They are instruments of the invisible operations of the Spirit of God."-Christian Examiner, Jan. 1836. 1 See examples, in the notes to Shakspeare. Dalecarlian mine, scene in a, 357 Datura Arborea, on the, 623 Daughter of Bernard Barton, to the, 485 the welcome to, 509 of Clanronald, the, 58 of Conradin, the, 103 of the Princess Charlotte, on the, 59 • Death-day of Körner, the, 425 Delius, to, from Horace, 299 Delphi, the storm of, 241 Delta, criticisms by, 315, 630 spirit, to a, 449 Desert, the burial in the, 516 Deserted house, the, 463 Forest sanctuary, the, 316 "Fortune, why thus," from Metastasio, Freed bird, the, 521 Friend, to an aged, 620 Funeral-day of Sir Walter Scott, the, 585 hymn, 581 Greek lament, 627 parting song, 351 song of exile, 349 Green isles of ocean, the, 146 Grütli, on a flower from, 244 Hall of Cynddylan, the, 147 house, the, 511 "He never smiled again," 346 "He walk'd with God," 495 Heart of Bruce in Melrose Abbey, the, 476 Hebe of Canova, on the, 53 to the memory of, 423 Hermitage on the sea-shore, lines writ- ten in a, 54 Hero's death, the, 59 Herrera, ode from, 254 Highland chief in Waverley, dirge of the, 57 Hirlas horn, the, 146 Holy Family, repose of a, 600 Home of love, the, 503 Homes of England, the, 412 Hope, the song of, 546 Horace, translations from, 298 prayer, 377 romance, an, 427 Howel's song, 150 Huguenot's farewell, the, 626 Humboldt on the Southern cross, 332 of the Vaudois mountaineers, "I dream of all things free," 546 "I would we had not met again." 5€5 in the heart, the, 461 Impromptu to Miss F. A. L., 499 Indian, the aged, 56 with his dead child, the, 450 woman's death-song, 402 Indian's revenge, 590 Inez de Castro, coronation of, 448 |