Biographia Literaria

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But to understand the true character of the ROBBERS, and of the
countless imitations which were its spawn, I must inform you, or at
least call to your recollection, that, about that time, and for some
years before it, three of the most popular books in the German
language were, the translations Of YOUNG'S NIGHT THOUGHTS, HERVEY'S
MEDITATIONS, and RICHARDSON'S CLARISSA HARLOW. Now we have only to
combine the bloated style and peculiar rhythm of Hervey, which is
poetic only on account of its utter unfitness for prose, and might as
appropriately be called prosaic, from its utter unfitness for poetry;
we have only, I repeat, to combine these Herveyisms with the strained
thoughts, the figurative metaphysics and solemn epigrams of Young on
the one hand; and with the loaded sensibility, the minute detail, the
morbid consciousness of every thought and feeling in the whole flux
and reflux of the mind, in short the self-involution and dreamlike
continuity of Richardson on the other hand; and then to add the
horrific incidents, and mysterious villains, (geniuses of supernatural
intellect, if you will take the authors' words for it, but on a level
with the meanest ruffians of the condemned cells, if we are to judge
by their actions and contrivances)--to add the ruined castles, the
dungeons, the trap-doors, the skeletons, the flesh-and-blood ghosts,
and the perpetual moonshine of a modern author, (themselves the
literary brood of the CASTLE OF OTRANTO, the translations of which,
with the imitations and improvements aforesaid, were about that time
beginning to make as much noise in Germany as their originals were
making in England),--and as the compound of these ingredients duly
mixed, you will recognize the so-called German drama. The olla podrida
thus cooked up, was denounced, by the best critics in Germany, as the
mere cramps of weakness, and orgasms of a sickly imagination on the
part of the author, and the lowest provocation of torpid feeling on
that of the readers. The old blunder, however, concerning the
irregularity and wildness of Shakespeare, in which the German did but
echo the French, who again were but the echoes of our own critics, was
still in vogue, and Shakespeare was quoted as authority for the most
anti-Shakespearean drama. We have indeed two poets who wrote as one,
near the age of Shakespeare, to whom, (as the worst characteristic of
their writings), the Coryphaeus of the present drama may challenge the
honour of being a poor relation, or impoverished descendant. For if we
would charitably consent to forget the comic humour, the wit, the
felicities of style, in other words, all the poetry, and nine-tenths
of all the genius of Beaumont and Fletcher, that which would remain
becomes a Kotzebue.

The so-called German drama, therefore, is English in its origin,
English in its materials, and English by re-adoption; and till we can
prove that Kotzebue, or any of the whole breed of Kotzebues, whether
dramatists or romantic writers, or writers of romantic dramas, were
ever admitted to any other shelf in the libraries of well-educated
Germans than were occupied by their originals, and apes' apes in their
mother country, we should submit to carry our own brat on our own
shoulders; or rather consider it as a lack-grace returned from
transportation with such improvements only in growth and manners as
young transported convicts usually come home with.

I know nothing that contributes more to a clearer insight into the
true nature of any literary phaenomenon, than the comparison of it
with some elder production, the likeness of which is striking, yet
only apparent, while the difference is real. In the present case this
opportunity is furnished us, by the old Spanish play, entitled
Atheista Fulminato, formerly, and perhaps still, acted in the churches
and monasteries of Spain, and which, under various names (Don Juan,
the Libertine, etc.) has had its day of favour in every country
throughout Europe. A popularity so extensive, and of a work so
grotesque and extravagant, claims and merits philosophical attention
and investigation. The first point to be noticed is, that the play is
throughout imaginative. Nothing of it belongs to the real world, but
the names of the places and persons. The comic parts, equally with the
tragic; the living, equally with the defunct characters, are creatures
of the brain; as little amenable to the rules of ordinary probability,
as the Satan Of PARADISE LOST, or the Caliban of THE TEMPEST, and
therefore to be understood and judged of as impersonated abstractions.
Rank, fortune, wit, talent, acquired knowledge, and liberal
accomplishments, with beauty of person, vigorous health, and
constitutional hardihood,--all these advantages, elevated by the
habits and sympathies of noble birth and national character, are
supposed to have combined in Don Juan, so as to give him the means of
carrying into all its practical consequences the doctrine of a godless
nature, as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things,
events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations,
impulses and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue: the
gratification of the passions and appetites her only dictate: each
individual's self-will the sole organ through which nature utters her
commands, and

"Self-contradiction is the only wrong!
For, by the laws of spirit, in the right
Is every individual character
That acts in strict consistence with itself."

That speculative opinions, however impious and daring they may be, are
not always followed by correspondent conduct, is most true, as well as
that they can scarcely in any instance be systematically realized, on
account of their unsuitableness to human nature and to the
institutions of society. It can be hell, only where it is all hell:
and a separate world of devils is necessary for the existence of any
one complete devil. But on the other hand it is no less clear, nor,
with the biography of Carrier and his fellow atheists before us, can
it be denied without wilful blindness, that the (so called) system of
nature (that is, materialism, with the utter rejection of moral
responsibility, of a present Providence, and of both present and
future retribution) may influence the characters and actions of
individuals, and even of communities, to a degree that almost does
away the distinction between men and devils, and will make the page of
the future historian resemble the narration of a madman's dreams. It
is not the wickedness of Don Juan, therefore, which constitutes the
character an abstraction, and removes it from the rules of
probability; but the rapid succession of the correspondent acts and
incidents, his intellectual superiority, and the splendid accumulation
of his gifts and desirable qualities, as co-existent with entire
wickedness in one and the same person. But this likewise is the very
circumstance which gives to this strange play its charm and universal
interest. Don Juan is, from beginning to end, an intelligible
character: as much so as the Satan of Milton. The poet asks only of
the reader, what, as a poet, he is privileged to ask: namely, that
sort of negative faith in the existence of such a being, which we
willingly give to productions professedly ideal, and a disposition to
the same state of feeling, as that with which we contemplate the
idealized figures of the Apollo Belvidere, and the Farnese Hercules.
What the Hercules is to the eye in corporeal strength, Don Juan is to
the mind in strength of character. The ideal consists in the happy
balance of the generic with the individual. The former makes the
character representative and symbolical, therefore instructive;
because, mutatis mutandis, it is applicable to whole classes of men.
The latter gives it living interest; for nothing lives or is real, but
as definite and individual. To understand this completely, the reader
need only recollect the specific state of his feelings, when in
looking at a picture of the historic (more properly of the poetic or
heroic) class, he objects to a particular figure as being too much of
a portrait; and this interruption of his complacency he feels without
the least reference to, or the least acquaintance with, any person in
real life whom he might recognise in this figure. It is enough that
such a figure is not ideal: and therefore not ideal, because one of
the two factors or elements of the ideal is in excess. A similar and
more powerful objection he would feel towards a set of figures which
were mere abstractions, like those of Cipriani, and what have been
called Greek forms and faces, that is, outlines drawn according to a
recipe. These again are not ideal; because in these the other element
is in excess. "Forma formans per formam formatam translucens," [80] is
the definition and perfection of ideal art.

This excellence is so happily achieved in the Don Juan, that it is
capable of interesting without poetry, nay, even without words, as in
our pantomime of that name. We see clearly how the character is
formed; and the very extravagance of the incidents, and the super-
human entireness of Don Juan's agency, prevents the wickedness from
shocking our minds to any painful degree. We do not believe it enough
for this effect; no, not even with that kind of temporary and negative
belief or acquiescence which I have described above. Meantime the
qualities of his character are too desirable, too flattering to our
pride and our wishes, not to make up on this side as much additional
faith as was lost on the other. There is no danger (thinks the
spectator or reader) of my becoming such a monster of iniquity as Don
Juan! I never shall be an atheist! I shall never disallow all
distinction between right and wrong! I have not the least inclination
to be so outrageous a drawcansir in my love affairs! But to possess
such a power of captivating and enchanting the affections of the other
sex!--to be capable of inspiring in a charming and even a virtuous
woman, a love so deep, and so entirely personal to me!--that even my
worst vices, (if I were vicious), even my cruelty and perfidy, (if I
were cruel and perfidious), could not eradicate the passion!--to be so
loved for my own self, that even with a distinct knowledge of my
character, she yet died to save me!--this, sir, takes hold of two
sides of our nature, the better and the worse. For the heroic
disinterestedness, to which love can transport a woman, can not be
contemplated without an honourable emotion of reverence towards
womanhood: and, on the other hand, it is among the miseries, and
abides in the dark ground-work of our nature, to crave an outward
confirmation of that something within us, which is our very self, that
something, not made up of our qualities and relations, but itself the
supporter and substantial basis of all these. Love me, and not my
qualities, may be a vicious and an insane wish, but it is not a wish
wholly without a meaning.

Without power, virtue would be insufficient and incapable of revealing
its being. It would resemble the magic transformation of Tasso's
heroine into a tree, in which she could only groan and bleed. Hence
power is necessarily an object of our desire and of our admiration.
But of all power, that of the mind is, on every account, the grand
desideratum of human ambition. We shall be as Gods in knowledge, was
and must have been the first temptation: and the coexistence of great
intellectual lordship with guilt has never been adequately represented
without exciting the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in
this bad and heterogeneous co-ordination we can contemplate the
intellect of man more exclusively as a separate self-subsistence, than
in its proper state of subordination to his own conscience, or to the
will of an infinitely superior being.

This is the sacred charm of Shakespeare's male characters in general.
They are all cast in the mould of Shakespeare's own gigantic
intellect; and this is the open attraction of his Richard, Iago,
Edmund, and others in particular. But again; of all intellectual
power, that of superiority to the fear of the invisible world is the
most dazzling. Its influence is abundantly proved by the one
circumstance, that it can bribe us into a voluntary submission of our
better knowledge, into suspension of all our judgment derived from
constant experience, and enable us to peruse with the liveliest
interest the wildest tales of ghosts, wizards, genii, and secret
talismans. On this propensity, so deeply rooted in our nature, a
specific dramatic probability may be raised by a true poet, if the
whole of his work be in harmony: a dramatic probability, sufficient
for dramatic pleasure, even when the component characters and
incidents border on impossibility. The poet does not require us to be
awake and believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves to a dream;
and this too with our eyes open, and with our judgment perdue behind
the curtain, ready to awaken us at the first motion of our will: and
meantime, only, not to disbelieve. And in such a state of mind, who
but must be impressed with the cool intrepidity of Don john on the
appearance of his father's ghost:

"GHOST.--Monster! behold these wounds!

"D. JOHN.--I do! They were well meant and well performed, I see.

"GHOST.------Repent, repent of all thy villanies.
My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries,
Heaven will pour out his judgments on you all.
Hell gapes for you, for you each fiend doth call,
And hourly waits your unrepenting fall.
You with eternal horrors they'll torment,
Except of all your crimes you suddenly repent. (Ghost sinks.)

"D. JOHN.--Farewell, thou art a foolish ghost. Repent, quoth he!
what could this mean? Our senses are all in a mist sure.

"D. ANTONIO.--(one of D. Juan's reprobate companions.) They are not!
'Twas a ghost.

"D. LOPEZ.--(another reprobate.) I ne'er believed those foolish tales
before.

"D. JOHN.--Come! 'Tis no matter. Let it be what it will, it must be
natural.

"D. ANT.--And nature is unalterable in us too.

"D. JOHN.--'Tis true! The nature of a ghost can not change our's."

Who also can deny a portion of sublimity to the tremendous consistency
with which he stands out the last fearful trial, like a second
Prometheus?

"Chorus of Devils.
"STATUE-GHOST.--Will you not relent and feel remorse?

"D. JOHN.--Could'st thou bestow another heart on me I might. But
with this heart I have, I can not.

"D. LOPEZ.--These things are prodigious.

"D. ANTON.--I have a sort of grudging to relent, but something holds
me back.

"D. LOP.--If we could, 'tis now too late. I will not.

"D. ANT.--We defy thee!

"GHOST.--Perish ye impious wretches, go and find the punishments laid
up in store for you!

(Thunder and lightning. D. Lop. and D. Ant. are swallowed up.)

"GHOST To D. JOHN.--Behold their dreadful fates, and know that thy
last moment's come!

"D. JOHN.--Think not to fright me, foolish ghost; I'll break your
marble body in pieces and pull down your horse.
(Thunder and lightning--chorus of devils, etc.)

"D. JOHN.--These things I see with wonder, but no fear.
Were all the elements to be confounded,
And shuffled all into their former chaos;
Were seas of sulphur flaming round about me,
And all mankind roaring within those fires,
I could not fear, or feel the least remorse.
To the last instant I would dare thy power.
Here I stand firm, and all thy threats contemn.
Thy murderer (to the ghost of one whom he had murdered)
Stands here! Now do thy worst!"
(He is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.)

In fine the character of Don John consists in the union of every thing
desirable to human nature, as means, and which therefore by the well
known law of association becomes at length desirable on their own
account. On their own account, and, in their own dignity, they are
here displayed, as being employed to ends so unhuman, that in the
effect, they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients
too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve
each other--more especially in that constant interpoise of wit,
gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in
his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far
at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine
suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and
feelings, of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus
having invited the statue-ghost of the governor, whom he had murdered,
to supper, which invitation the marble ghost accepted by a nod of the
head, Don John has prepared a banquet.

"D. JOHN.--Some wine, sirrah! Here's to Don Pedro's ghost--he should
have been welcome.

"D. LOP.--The rascal is afraid of you after death.
(One knocks hard at the door.)

"D. JOHN.--(to the servant)--Rise and do your duty.

"SERV.--Oh the devil, the devil! (Marble ghost enters.)

"D. JOHN.--Ha! 'tis the ghost! Let's rise and receive him! Come,
Governour, you are welcome, sit there; if we had thought you would
have come, we would have staid for you.

* * * * * *

Here, Governour, your health! Friends, put it about! Here's
excellent meat, taste of this ragout. Come, I'll help you, come
eat, and let old quarrels be forgotten. (The ghost threatens him
with vengeance.)

"D. JOHN.--We are too much confirmed--curse on this dry discourse.
Come, here's to your mistress, you had one when you were living:
not forgetting your sweet sister. (devils enter.)

"D. JOHN.--Are these some of your retinue? Devils, say you? I'm
sorry I have no burnt brandy to treat 'em with, that's drink fit
for devils," etc.

Nor is the scene from which we quote interesting, in dramatic
probability alone; it is susceptible likewise of a sound moral; of a
moral that has more than common claims on the notice of a too numerous
class, who are ready to receive the qualities of gentlemanly courage,
and scrupulous honour, (in all the recognised laws of honour,) as the
substitutes of virtue, instead of its ornaments. This, indeed, is the
moral value of the play at large, and that which places it at a
world's distance from the spirit of modern jacobinism. The latter
introduces to us clumsy copies of these showy instrumental qualities,
in order to reconcile us to vice and want of principle; while the
Atheista Fulminato presents an exquisite portraiture of the same
qualities, in all their gloss and glow, but presents them for the sole
purpose of displaying their hollowness, and in order to put us on our
guard by demonstrating their utter indifference to vice and virtue,
whenever these and the like accomplishments are contemplated for
themselves alone.

Eighteen years ago I observed, that the whole secret of the modern
jacobinical drama, (which, and not the German, is its appropriate
designation,) and of all its popularity, consists in the confusion and
subversion of the natural order of things in their causes and effects:
namely, in the excitement of surprise by representing the qualities of
liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour (those things
rather which pass amongst us for such) in persons and in classes where
experience teaches us least to expect them; and by rewarding with all
the sympathies which are the due of virtue, those criminals whom law,
reason, and religion have excommunicated from our esteem.

This of itself would lead me back to BERTRAM, or the CASTLE OF ST.
ALDOBRAND; but, in my own mind, this tragedy was brought into
connection with THE LIBERTINE, (Shadwell's adaptation of the Atheista
Fulminato to the English stage in the reign of Charles the Second,) by
the fact, that our modern drama is taken, in the substance of it, from
the first scene of the third act of THE LIBERTINE. But with what
palpable superiority of judgment in the original! Earth and hell, men
and spirits are up in arms against Don John; the two former acts of
the play have not only prepared us for the supernatural, but
accustomed us to the prodigious. It is, therefore, neither more nor
less than we anticipate when the Captain exclaims: "In all the dangers
I have been, such horrors I never knew. I am quite unmanned:" and when
the Hermit says, that he had "beheld the ocean in wildest rage, yet
ne'er before saw a storm so dreadful, such horrid flashes of
lightning, and such claps of thunder, were never in my remembrance."
And Don John's burst of startling impiety is equally intelligible in
its motive, as dramatic in its effect.

But what is there to account for the prodigy of the tempest at
Bertram's shipwreck? It is a mere supernatural effect, without even a
hint of any supernatural agency; a prodigy, without any circumstance
mentioned that is prodigious; and a miracle introduced without a
ground, and ending without a result. Every event and every scene of
the play might have taken place as well if Bertram and his vessel had
been driven in by a common hard gale, or from want of provisions. The
first act would have indeed lost its greatest and most sonorous
picture; a scene for the sake of a scene, without a word spoken; as
such, therefore, (a rarity without a precedent), we must take it, and
be thankful! In the opinion of not a few, it was, in every sense of
the word, the best scene in the play. I am quite certain it was the
most innocent: and the steady, quiet uprightness of the flame of the
wax-candles, which the monks held over the roaring billows amid the
storm of wind and rain, was really miraculous.

The Sicilian sea coast: a convent of monks: night: a most portentous,
unearthly storm: a vessel is wrecked contrary to all human
expectation, one man saves himself by his prodigious powers as a
swimmer, aided by the peculiarity of his destination--

"PRIOR.------All, all did perish

FIRST MONK.--Change, change those drenched weeds--

PRIOR.--I wist not of them--every soul did perish--
Enter third Monk hastily.

"THIRD MONK.--No, there was one did battle with the storm
With careless desperate force; full many times
His life was won and lost, as tho' he recked not--
No hand did aid him, and he aided none--
Alone he breasted the broad wave, alone
That man was saved."

Well! This man is led in by the monks, supposed dripping wet, and to
very natural inquiries he either remains silent, or gives most brief
and surly answers, and after three or four of these half-line
courtesies, "dashing off the monks" who had saved him, he exclaims in
the true sublimity of our modern misanthropic heroism--

"Off! ye are men--there's poison in your touch.
But I must yield, for this" (what?) "hath left me strengthless."

So end the three first scenes. In the next (the Castle of St.
Aldobrand,) we find the servants there equally frightened with this
unearthly storm, though wherein it differed from other violent storms
we are not told, except that Hugo informs us, page 9--

"PIET.--Hugo, well met. Does e'en thy age bear
Memory of so terrible a storm?

HUGO.--They have been frequent lately.

PIET.--They are ever so in Sicily.

HUGO.--So it is said. But storms when I was young
Would still pass o'er like Nature's fitful fevers,
And rendered all more wholesome. Now their rage,
Sent thus unseasonable and profitless,
Speaks like the threats of heaven."

A most perplexing theory of Sicilian storms is this of old Hugo! and
what is very remarkable, not apparently founded on any great
familiarity of his own with this troublesome article. For when Pietro
asserts the "ever more frequency" of tempests in Sicily, the old man
professes to know nothing more of the fact, but by hearsay. "So it is
said."--But why he assumed this storm to be unseasonable, and on what
he grounded his prophecy, (for the storm is still in full fury), that
it would be profitless, and without the physical powers common to all
other violent sea-winds in purifying the atmosphere, we are left in
the dark; as well concerning the particular points in which he knew
it, during its continuance, to differ from those that he had been
acquainted with in his youth. We are at length introduced to the Lady
Imogine, who, we learn, had not rested "through" the night; not on
account of the tempest, for

"Long ere the storm arose, her restless gestures
Forbade all hope to see her blest with sleep."

Sitting at a table, and looking at a portrait, she informs us--First,
that portrait-painters may make a portrait from memory,

"The limner's art may trace the absent feature."

For surely these words could never mean, that a painter may have a
person sit to him who afterwards may leave the room or perhaps the
country? Secondly, that a portrait-painter can enable a mourning lady
to possess a good likeness of her absent lover, but that the portrait-
painter cannot, and who shall--

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