Biographia Literaria

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But were it otherwise, what would this prove, but a truth, of which no
man ever doubted?--videlicet, that there are sentences, which would be
equally in their place both in verse and prose. Assuredly it does not
prove the point, which alone requires proof; namely, that there are
not passages, which would suit the one and not suit the other. The
first line of this sonnet is distinguished from the ordinary language
of men by the epithet to morning. For we will set aside, at present,
the consideration, that the particular word "smiling" is hackneyed,
and, as it involves a sort of personification, not quite congruous
with the common and material attribute of "shining." And, doubtless,
this adjunction of epithets for the purpose of additional description,
where no particular attention is demanded for the quality of the
thing, would be noticed as giving a poetic cast to a man's
conversation. Should the sportsman exclaim, "Come boys! the rosy
morning calls you up:" he will be supposed to have some song in his
head. But no one suspects this, when he says, "A wet morning shall not
confine us to our beds." This then is either a defect in poetry, or it
is not. Whoever should decide in the affirmative, I would request him
to re-peruse any one poem, of any confessedly great poet from Homer to
Milton, or from Aeschylus to Shakespeare; and to strike out, (in
thought I mean), every instance of this kind. If the number of these
fancied erasures did not startle him; or if he continued to deem the
work improved by their total omission; he must advance reasons of no
ordinary strength and evidence, reasons grounded in the essence of
human nature. Otherwise, I should not hesitate to consider him as a
man not so much proof against all authority, as dead to it.

The second line,

"And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire;--"

has indeed almost as many faults as words. But then it is a bad line,
not because the language is distinct from that of prose; but because
it conveys incongruous images; because it confounds the cause and the
effect; the real thing with the personified representative of the
thing; in short, because it differs from the language of good sense!
That the "Phoebus "is hackneyed, and a school-boy image, is an
accidental fault, dependent on the age in which the author wrote, and
not deduced from the nature of the thing. That it is part of an
exploded mythology, is an objection more deeply grounded. Yet when the
torch of ancient learning was re-kindled, so cheering were its beams,
that our eldest poets, cut off by Christianity from all accredited
machinery, and deprived of all acknowledged guardians and symbols of
the great objects of nature, were naturally induced to adopt, as a
poetic language, those fabulous personages, those forms of the
[68]supernatural in nature, which had given them such dear delight in
the poems of their great masters. Nay, even at this day what scholar
of genial taste will not so far sympathize with them, as to read with
pleasure in Petrarch, Chaucer, or Spenser, what he would perhaps
condemn as puerile in a modern poet?

I remember no poet, whose writings would safelier stand the test of
Mr. Wordsworth's theory, than Spenser. Yet will Mr. Wordsworth say,
that the style of the following stanza is either undistinguished from
prose, and the language of ordinary life? Or that it is vicious, and
that the stanzas are blots in THE FAERY QUEEN?

"By this the northern wagoner had set
His sevenfold teme behind the stedfast starre,
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt and sendeth light from farre
To all that in the wild deep wandering arre
And chearfull chaunticlere with his note shrill
Had warned once that Phoebus' fiery carre
In hast was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that night so long his roome did fill."

"At last the golden orientall gate
Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre,
And Phoebus fresh, as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre,
And hurl'd his glist'ring beams through gloomy ayre:
Which when the wakeful elfe perceived, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sun-bright armes and battailous array;
For with that pagan proud he combat will that day."

On the contrary to how many passages, both in hymn books and in blank
verse poems, could I, (were it not invidious), direct the reader's
attention, the style of which is most unpoetic, because, and only
because, it is the style of prose? He will not suppose me capable of
having in my mind such verses, as

"I put my hat upon my head
And walk'd into the Strand;
And there I met another man,
Whose hat was in his hand."

To such specimens it would indeed be a fair and full reply, that these
lines are not bad, because they are unpoetic; but because they are
empty of all sense and feeling; and that it were an idle attempt to
prove that "an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is
not a man." But the sense shall be good and weighty, the language
correct and dignified, the subject interesting and treated with
feeling; and yet the style shall, notwithstanding all these merits, be
justly blamable as prosaic, and solely because the words and the order
of the words would find their appropriate place in prose, but are not
suitable to metrical composition. The CIVIL WARS of Daniel is an
instructive, and even interesting work; but take the following
stanzas, (and from the hundred instances which abound I might probably
have selected others far more striking):

"And to the end we may with better ease
Discern the true discourse, vouchsafe to shew
What were the times foregoing near to these,
That these we may with better profit know.
Tell how the world fell into this disease;
And how so great distemperature did grow;
So shall we see with what degrees it came;
How things at full do soon wax out of frame."

"Ten kings had from the Norman Conqu'ror reign'd
With intermix'd and variable fate,
When England to her greatest height attain'd
Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state;
After it had with much ado sustain'd
The violence of princes, with debate
For titles and the often mutinies
Of nobles for their ancient liberties."

"For first, the Norman, conqu'ring all by might,
By might was forc'd to keep what he had got;
Mixing our customs and the form of right
With foreign constitutions, he had brought;
Mast'ring the mighty, humbling the poorer wight,
By all severest means that could be wrought;
And, making the succession doubtful, rent
His new-got state, and left it turbulent."

Will it be contended on the one side, that these lines are mean and
senseless? Or on the other, that they are not prosaic, and for that
reason unpoetic? This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the
"well-languaged Daniel;" but likewise, and by the consent of his
contemporaries no less than of all succeeding critics, "the prosaic
Daniel." Yet those, who thus designate this wise and amiable writer
from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction to his metre in the
majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and
interesting on other accounts; but willingly admit, that there are to
be found throughout his poems, and especially in his EPISTLES and in
his HYMEN'S TRIUMPH, many and exquisite specimens of that style which,
as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both. A fine
and almost faultless extract, eminent as for other beauties, so for
its perfection in this species of diction, may be seen in Lamb's
DRAMATIC SPECIMENS, a work of various interest from the nature of the
selections themselves, (all from the plays of Shakespeare's
contemporaries),--and deriving a high additional value from the notes,
which are full of just and original criticism, expressed with all the
freshness of originality.

Among the possible effects of practical adherence to a theory, that
aims to identify the style of prose and verse,--(if it does not indeed
claim for the latter a yet nearer resemblance to the average style of
men in the viva voce intercourse of real life)--we might anticipate
the following as not the least likely to occur. It will happen, as I
have indeed before observed, that the metre itself, the sole
acknowledged difference, will occasionally become metre to the eye
only. The existence of prosaisms, and that they detract from the merit
of a poem, must at length be conceded, when a number of successive
lines can be rendered, even to the most delicate ear, unrecognizable
as verse, or as having even been intended for verse, by simply
transcribing them as prose; when if the poem be in blank verse, this
can be effected without any alteration, or at most by merely restoring
one or two words to their proper places, from which they have been
transplanted [69] for no assignable cause or reason but that of the
author's convenience; but if it be in rhyme, by the mere exchange of
the final word of each line for some other of the same meaning,
equally appropriate, dignified and euphonic.

The answer or objection in the preface to the anticipated remark "that
metre paves the way to other distinctions," is contained in the
following words. "The distinction of rhyme and metre is regular and
uniform, and not, like that produced by (what is usually called)
poetic diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices, upon
which no calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader
is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction
he may choose to connect with the passion." But is this a poet, of
whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at
best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and
so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they
are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the
reader at the mercy of such men? If he continue to read their
nonsense, is it not his own fault? The ultimate end of criticism is
much more to establish the principles of writing, than to furnish
rules how to pass judgment on what has been written by others; if
indeed it were possible that the two could be separated. But if it be
asked, by what principles the poet is to regulate his own style, if he
do not adhere closely to the sort and order of words which he hears in
the market, wake, high-road, or plough-field? I reply; by principles,
the ignorance or neglect of which would convict him of being no poet,
but a silly or presumptuous usurper of the name. By the principles of
grammar, logic, psychology. In one word by such a knowledge of the
facts, material and spiritual, that most appertain to his art, as, if
it have been governed and applied by good sense, and rendered
instinctive by habit, becomes the representative and reward of our
past conscious reasonings, insights, and conclusions, and acquires the
name of Taste. By what rule that does not leave the reader at the
poet's mercy, and the poet at his own, is the latter to distinguish
between the language suitable to suppressed, and the language, which
is characteristic of indulged, anger? Or between that of rage and that
of jealousy? Is it obtained by wandering about in search of angry or
jealous people in uncultivated society, in order to copy their words?
Or not far rather by the power of imagination proceeding upon the all
in each of human nature? By meditation, rather than by observation?
And by the latter in consequence only of the former? As eyes, for
which the former has pre-determined their field of vision, and to
which, as to its organ, it communicates a microscopic power? There is
not, I firmly believe, a man now living, who has, from his own inward
experience, a clearer intuition, than Mr. Wordsworth himself, that the
last mentioned are the true sources of genial discrimination. Through
the same process and by the same creative agency will the poet
distinguish the degree and kind of the excitement produced by the very
act of poetic composition. As intuitively will he know, what
differences of style it at once inspires and justifies; what
intermixture of conscious volition is natural to that state; and in
what instances such figures and colours of speech degenerate into mere
creatures of an arbitrary purpose, cold technical artifices of
ornament or connection. For, even as truth is its own light and
evidence, discovering at once itself and falsehood, so is it the
prerogative of poetic genius to distinguish by parental instinct its
proper offspring from the changelings, which the gnomes of vanity or
the fairies of fashion may have laid in its cradle or called by its
names. Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be
poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be morphosis, not
poiaesis. The rules of the Imagination are themselves the very powers
of growth and production. The words to which they are reducible,
present only the outlines and external appearance of the fruit. A
deceptive counterfeit of the superficial form and colours may be
elaborated; but the marble peach feels cold and heavy, and children
only put it to their mouths. We find no difficulty in admitting as
excellent, and the legitimate language of poetic fervour self-
impassioned, Donne's apostrophe to the Sun in the second stanza of his
PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

"Thee, eye of heaven! this great Soul envies not;
By thy male force is all, we have, begot.
In the first East thou now beginn'st to shine,
Suck'st early balm and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein'd career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night this western world of mine:
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
Who before thee one day began to be,
And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive
thee."

Or the next stanza but one:

"Great Destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast mark'd out a path and period
For every thing! Who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends see'st at one instant: thou
Knot of all causes! Thou, whose changeless brow
Ne'er smiles nor frowns! O! vouchsafe thou to look,
And shew my story in thy eternal book," etc.

As little difficulty do we find in excluding from the honours of
unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudopoesy,
or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which
bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to
abstract terms. Such are the Odes to jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion,
and the like, in Dodsley's collection and the magazines of that day,
which seldom fail to remind me of an Oxford copy of verses on the two
SUTTONS, commencing with

"Inoculation, heavenly maid! descend!"

It is not to be denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets
of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory
deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once
read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory
period of Cowley's preface to his "Pindaric Odes," written in
imitation of the style and manner of the odes of Pindar. "If," (says
Cowley), "a man should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word,
it would be thought that one madman had translated another as may
appear, when he, that understands not the original, reads the verbal
traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more
raving." I then proceeded with his own free version of the second
Olympic, composed for the charitable purpose of rationalizing the
Theban Eagle.

"Queen of all harmonious things,
Dancing words and speaking strings,
What god, what hero, wilt thou sing?
What happy man to equal glories bring?
Begin, begin thy noble choice,
And let the hills around reflect the image of thy voice.
Pisa does to Jove belong,
Jove and Pisa claim thy song.
The fair first-fruits of war, th' Olympic games,
Alcides, offer'd up to Jove;
Alcides, too, thy strings may move,
But, oh! what man to join with these can worthy prove?
Join Theron boldly to their sacred names;
Theron the next honour claims;
Theron to no man gives place,
Is first in Pisa's and in Virtue's race;
Theron there, and he alone,
Ev'n his own swift forefathers has outgone."

One of the company exclaimed, with the full assent of the rest, that
if the original were madder than this, it must be incurably mad. I
then translated the ode from the Greek, and as nearly as possible,
word for word; and the impression was, that in the general movement of
the periods, in the form of the connections and transitions, and in
the sober majesty of lofty sense, it appeared to them to approach more
nearly, than any other poetry they had heard, to the style of our
Bible, in the prophetic books. The first strophe will suffice as a
specimen:

"Ye harp-controlling hymns! (or) ye hymns the sovereigns of harps!
What God? what Hero?
What Man shall we celebrate?
Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,
But the Olympiad (or the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,
The first-fruits of the spoils of war.
But Theron for the four-horsed car,
That bore victory to him,
It behoves us now to voice aloud:
The Just, the Hospitable,
The Bulwark of Agrigentum,
Of renowned fathers
The Flower, even him
Who preserves his native city erect and safe."

But are such rhetorical caprices condemnable only for their deviation
from the language of real life? and are they by no other means to be
precluded, but by the rejection of all distinctions between prose and
verse, save that of metre? Surely good sense, and a moderate insight
into the constitution of the human mind, would be amply sufficient to
prove, that such language and such combinations are the native product
neither of the fancy nor of the imagination; that their operation
consists in the excitement of surprise by the juxta-position and
apparent reconciliation of widely different or incompatible things. As
when, for instance, the hills are made to reflect the image of a
voice. Surely, no unusual taste is requisite to see clearly, that this
compulsory juxtaposition is not produced by the presentation of
impressive or delightful forms to the inward vision, nor by any
sympathy with the modifying powers with which the genius of the poet
had united and inspirited all the objects of his thought; that it is
therefore a species of wit, a pure work of the will, and implies a
leisure and self-possession both of thought and of feeling,
incompatible with the steady fervour of a mind possessed and filled
with the grandeur of its subject. To sum up the whole in one sentence.
When a poem, or a part of a poem, shall be adduced, which is evidently
vicious in the figures and centexture of its style, yet for the
condemnation of which no reason can be assigned, except that it
differs from the style in which men actually converse, then, and not
till then, can I hold this theory to be either plausible, or
practicable, or capable of furnishing either rule, guidance, or
precaution, that might not, more easily and more safely, as well as
more naturally, have been deduced in the author's own mind from
considerations of grammar, logic, and the truth and nature of things,
confirmed by the authority of works, whose fame is not of one country
nor of one age.

CHAPTER XIX

Continuation--Concerning the real object which, it is probable, Mr.
Wordsworth had before him in his critical preface--Elucidation and
application of this.

It might appear from some passages in the former part of Mr.
Wordsworth's preface, that he meant to confine his theory of style,
and the necessity of a close accordance with the actual language of
men, to those particular subjects from low and rustic life, which by
way of experiment he had purposed to naturalize as a new species in
our English poetry. But from the train of argument that follows; from
the reference to Milton; and from the spirit of his critique on Gray's
sonnet; those sentences appear to have been rather courtesies of
modesty, than actual limitations of his system. Yet so groundless does
this system appear on a close examination; and so strange and
overwhelming [70] in its consequences, that I cannot, and I do not,
believe that the poet did ever himself adopt it in the unqualified
sense, in which his expressions have been understood by others, and
which, indeed, according to all the common laws of interpretation they
seem to bear. What then did he mean? I apprehend, that in the clear
perception, not unaccompanied with disgust or contempt, of the gaudy
affectations of a style which passed current with too many for poetic
diction, (though in truth it had as little pretensions to poetry, as
to logic or common sense,) he narrowed his view for the time; and
feeling a justifiable preference for the language of nature and of
good sense, even in its humblest and least ornamented forms, he
suffered himself to express, in terms at once too large and too
exclusive, his predilection for a style the most remote possible from
the false and showy splendour which he wished to explode. It is
possible, that this predilection, at first merely comparative,
deviated for a time into direct partiality. But the real object which
he had in view, was, I doubt not, a species of excellence which had
been long before most happily characterized by the judicious and
amiable Garve, whose works are so justly beloved and esteemed by the
Germans, in his remarks on Gellert, from which the following is
literally translated. "The talent, that is required in order to make,
excellent verses, is perhaps greater than the philosopher is ready to
admit, or would find it in his power to acquire: the talent to seek
only the apt expression of the thought, and yet to find at the same
time with it the rhyme and the metre. Gellert possessed this happy
gift, if ever any one of our poets possessed it; and nothing perhaps
contributed more to the great and universal impression which his
fables made on their first publication, or conduces more to their
continued popularity. It was a strange and curious phaenomenon, and
such as in Germany had been previously unheard of, to read verses in
which everything was expressed just as one would wish to talk, and yet
all dignified, attractive, and interesting; and all at the same time
perfectly correct as to the measure of the syllables and the rhyme. It
is certain, that poetry when it has attained this excellence makes a
far greater impression than prose. So much so indeed, that even the
gratification which the very rhymes afford, becomes then no longer a
contemptible or trifling gratification." [71]

However novel this phaenomenon may have been in Germany at the time of
Gellert, it is by no means new, nor yet of recent existence in our
language. Spite of the licentiousness with which Spenser occasionally
compels the orthography of his words into a subservience to his
rhymes, the whole FAIRY QUEEN is an almost continued instance of this
beauty. Waller's song GO, LOVELY ROSE, is doubtless familiar to most
of my readers; but if I had happened to have had by me the Poems of
Cotton, more but far less deservedly celebrated as the author of the
VIRGIL TRAVESTIED, I should have indulged myself, and I think have
gratified many, who are not acquainted with his serious works, by
selecting some admirable specimens of this style. There are not a few
poems in that volume, replete with every excellence of thought, image,
and passion, which we expect or desire in the poetry of the milder
muse; and yet so worded, that the reader sees no one reason either in
the selection or the order of the words, why he might not have said
the very same in an appropriate conversation, and cannot conceive how
indeed he could have expressed such thoughts otherwise without loss or
injury to his meaning.

But in truth our language is, and from the first dawn of poetry ever
has been, particularly rich in compositions distinguished by this
excellence. The final e, which is now mute, in Chaucer's age was
either sounded or dropt indifferently. We ourselves still use either
"beloved" or "belov'd" according as the rhyme, or measure, or the
purpose of more or less solemnity may require. Let the reader then
only adopt the pronunciation of the poet and of the court, at which he
lived, both with respect to the final e and to the accentuation of the
last syllable; I would then venture to ask, what even in the
colloquial language of elegant and unaffected women, (who are the
peculiar mistresses of "pure English and undefiled,") what could we
hear more natural, or seemingly more unstudied, than the following
stanzas from Chaucer's TROILUS AND CRESEIDE.

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