Biographia Literaria

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But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem,
we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of
Plato, and Jeremy Taylor, and Burnet's Theory of the Earth, furnish
undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without
metre, and even without the contradistringuishing objects of a poem.
The first chapter of Isaiah--(indeed a very large portion of the whole
book)--is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less
irrational than strange to assert, that pleasure, and not truth was
the immediate object of the prophet. In short, whatever specific
import we attach to the word, Poetry, there will be found involved in
it, as a necessary consequence, that a poem of any length neither can
be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Yet if an harmonious whole is to be
produced, the remaining parts must be preserved in keeping with the
poetry; and this can be no otherwise effected than by such a studied
selection and artificial arrangement, as will partake of one, though
not a peculiar property of poetry. And this again can be no other than
the property of exciting a more continuous and equal attention than
the language of prose aims at, whether colloquial or written.

My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of
the word, have been in part anticipated in some of the remarks on the
Fancy and Imagination in the early part of this work. What is poetry?
--is so nearly the same question with, what is a poet?--that the answer
to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a
distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains
and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own
mind.

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man
into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other
according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and
spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each,
by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively
appropriate the name of Imagination. This power, first put in action
by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive,
though gentle and unnoticed, control, laxis effertur habenis, reveals
"itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant"
qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the
concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the
representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and
familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than
usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with
enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and
harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to
nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to
our sympathy with the poetry. Doubtless, as Sir John Davies observes
of the soul--(and his words may with slight alteration be applied, and
even more appropriately, to the poetic Imagination)--

Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.

From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things;
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings.

Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through the senses to our minds.

Finally, Good Sense is the Body of poetic genius, Fancy its Drapery,
Motion its Life, and Imagination the Soul that is everywhere, and in
each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.

CHAPTER XV

The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a critical
analysis of Shakespeare's VENUS AND ADONIS, and RAPE of LUCRECE.

In the application of these principles to purposes of practical
criticism, as employed in the appraisement of works more or less
imperfect, I have endeavoured to discover what the qualities in a poem
are, which may be deemed promises and specific symptoms of poetic
power, as distinguished from general talent determined to poetic
composition by accidental motives, by an act of the will, rather than
by the inspiration of a genial and productive nature. In this
investigation, I could not, I thought, do better, than keep before me
the earliest work of the greatest genius, that perhaps human nature
has yet produced, our myriad-minded [61] Shakespeare. I mean the VENUS
AND ADONIS, and the LUCRECE; works which give at once strong promises
of the strength, and yet obvious proofs of the immaturity, of his
genius. From these I abstracted the following marks, as
characteristics of original poetic genius in general.

1. 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. The delight in richness and sweetness
of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and
not the result of an easily imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly
favourable promise in the compositions of a young man. The man that
hath not music in his soul can indeed never be a genuine poet.
Imagery,--(even taken from nature, much more when transplanted from
books, as travels, voyages, and works of natural history),--affecting
incidents, just thoughts, interesting personal or domestic feelings,
and with these the art of their combination or intertexture in the
form of a poem,--may all by incessant effort be acquired as a trade,
by a man of talent and much reading, who, as I once before observed,
has mistaken an intense desire of poetic reputation for a natural
poetic genius; the love of the arbitrary end for a possession of the
peculiar means. But the sense of musical delight, with the power of
producing it, is a gift of imagination; and this together with the
power of reducing multitude into unity of effect, and modifying a
series of thoughts by some one predominant thought or feeling, may be
cultivated and improved, but can never be learned. It is in these that
"poeta nascitur non fit."

2. A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote
from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself. At
least I have found, that where the subject is taken immediately from
the author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a
particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a fallacious
pledge, of genuine poetic power. We may perhaps remember the tale of
the statuary, who had acquired considerable reputation for the legs of
his goddesses, though the rest of the statue accorded but
indifferently with ideal beauty; till his wife, elated by her
husband's praises, modestly acknowledged that she had been his
constant model. In the VENUS AND ADONIS this proof of poetic power
exists even to excess. It is throughout as if a superior spirit more
intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than the characters
themselves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux
and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were
placing the whole before our view; himself meanwhile unparticipating
in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement,
which had resulted from the energetic fervour of his own spirit in so
vividly exhibiting what it had so accurately and profoundly
contemplated. I think, I should have conjectured from these poems,
that even then the great instinct, which impelled the poet to the
drama, was secretly working in him, prompting him--by a series and
never broken chain of imagery, always vivid and, because unbroken,
often minute; by the highest effort of the picturesque in words, of
which words are capable, higher perhaps than was ever realized by any
other poet, even Dante not excepted; to provide a substitute for that
visual language, that constant intervention and running comment by
tone, look and gesture, which in his dramatic works he was entitled to
expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem at once the
characters themselves, and the whole representation of those
characters by the most consummate actors. You seem to be told nothing,
but to see and hear everything. Hence it is, from the perpetual
activity of attention required on the part of the reader; from the
rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts
and images; and above all from the alienation, and, if I may hazard
such an expression, the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings,
from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst; that
though the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a
delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a moral account.
Instead of doing as Ariosto, and as, still more offensively, Wieland
has done, instead of degrading and deforming passion into appetite,
the trials of love into the struggles of concupiscence; Shakespeare
has here represented the animal impulse itself, so as to preclude all
sympathy with it, by dissipating the reader's notice among the
thousand outward images, and now beautiful, now fanciful
circumstances, which form its dresses and its scenery; or by diverting
our attention from the main subject by those frequent witty or
profound reflections, which the poet's ever active mind has deduced
from, or connected with, the imagery and the incidents. The reader is
forced into too much action to sympathize with the merely passive of
our nature. As little can a mind thus roused and awakened be brooded
on by mean and indistinct emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep
upon the surface of a lake, while a strong gale is driving it onward
in waves and billows.

3. It has been before observed that images, however beautiful, though
faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words,
do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of
original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant
passion; or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion;
or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or
succession to an instant; or lastly, when a human and intellectual
life is transferred to them from the poet's own spirit,

Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air.

In the two following lines for instance, there is nothing
objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in
their proper place, part of a descriptive poem:

Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd
Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.

But with a small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be equally
in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive tour. The
same image will rise into semblance of poetry if thus conveyed:

Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,
By twilight glimpse discerned, mark! how they flee
From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
Streaming before them.

I have given this as an illustration, by no means as an instance, of
that particular excellence which I had in view, and in which
Shakespeare even in his earliest, as in his latest, works surpasses
all other poets. It is by this, that he still gives a dignity and a
passion to the objects which he presents. Unaided by any previous
excitement, they burst upon us at once in life and in power,--

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye."

"Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come--

* * * * * *
* * * * * *

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur'd,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests, and tombs of brass are spent."

As of higher worth, so doubtless still more characteristic of poetic
genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to
the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the
mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence, the reader's own
memory will refer him to the LEAR, OTHELLO, in short to which not of
the "great, ever living, dead man's" dramatic works? Inopem em copia
fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in
the instance of love in his 98th Sonnet.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April drest in all its trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them, where they grew
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were, tho' sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play!"

Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less indispensable mark

Gonimon men poiaetou------
------hostis rhaema gennaion lakoi,

will the imagery supply, when, with more than the power of the
painter, the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the
feeling of simultaneousness:--

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace
Of those fair arms, which bound him to her breast,
And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;--

* * * * * *

Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky,
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.

4. The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but
little, except as taken conjointly with the former;--yet without which
the former could scarce exist in a high degree, and (even if this were
possible) would give promises only of transitory flashes and a
meteoric power;--is depth, and energy of thought. No man was ever yet
a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.
For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge,
human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare's
poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a
war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the
extinction of the other. At length in the drama they were reconciled,
and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or
like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting within narrow and
rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other and intermix
reluctantly and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more
yielding shores blend, and dilate, and flow on in one current and with
one voice. The VENUS AND ADONIS did not perhaps allow the display of
the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour and
even demand their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakespeare's
management 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. What then shall we say? even this; that Shakespeare, no
mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of
inspiration, possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied
patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge,
become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings,
and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he stands
alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which
seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic
mountain, with Milton as his compeer not rival. While the former darts
himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and
passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts
all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All
things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of
Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining
himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England, my
country!--Truly indeed--

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue,
Which Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold,
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

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.

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