"I should like to know," quoth William, "what the overseers said to that chap, when he applied to the parish for support ? " "They sent him to Bedlam, I suppose," said the mother; "it was the fit place for him, poor creature!" "And when Aristippus set out upon a journey he bade his servants throw away all their money, that they might travel the better. Why, they must have begged their way, and it cannot be right to beg if people are not brought to it by misfortune. And there were some who thought there was no God. I am sure they were fools; for the Bible says so."1 "Well, Daniel," said Guy, "thou hast studied the end of the Dictionary to some purpose." "And the Bible, too, Master Guy," said Dinah, her countenance brightening with joy at her son's concluding remark. "It's the best part of the book," said the boy, replying to his schoolmaster;" there are more entertaining and surprising things there than I ever read in any other place, except my father's book about Pantagruel (i.e. Rabelais)." SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE." 1. THE TEST OF TRUE POETRY.3 As the result of all my reading and meditation, I abstracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them to comprise the conditions and criteria of poetic style: first, that not the poem which (1) The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."-Psalm xiv. i. (2) The critics are divided on the question of Coleridge's style; but the majority refrain from praising it. It is pregnant, fraught with intelligence, but withal often obscure, generally laboured, and abounding in technical phraseology. Parentheses too-sometimes not single, but locked into one another-beset the path, and entangle the reader. Coleridge, to some extent, illustrates the remark-rather hastily made -that a poet usually writes prose with his left hand. Dryden, however, as well as Pope, Gray, Cowper, Byron, Campbell, and Southey, are beautiful prose writers. Coleridge, like Milton, only becomes thoroughly articulate when he puts his " "singing robes " on. (3) There is much matter for thought in this passage. The subject itself is difficult, and Coleridge's style, as just remarked, is not exactly helping; but his thoughts are eminently suggestive of others' thoughts, and it is quite worth while, by we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry; secondly, that whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language, without diminution of their significance, either in sense or association, or in any worthy feeling, are so far vicious in their diction. Be it however observed, that I excluded from the list of worthy feelings, the pleasure derived from mere novelty in the reader, and the desire of exciting wonderment at his powers in the author. Oftentimes since then, in perusing French tragedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the author's own admiration at his own cleverness. Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a continuous under-current of feeling; it is everywhere present, but seldom anywhere as a separate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm, that it would be scarcely more difficult to push a stone out from the pyramids with the bare hand, than to alter a word, or the position of a word, in Milton or Shakespeare (in their most important works at least), without making the poet say something else, or something worse, than he does say. One great distinction, I appeared to myself to see plainly between even the characteristic faults of our elder poets, and the false beauty of the moderns. In the former, from Donne to Cowley, we find the most fantastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but in the most pure and genuine mother English; in the latter the most obvious thoughts, in language the most fantastic and arbitrary. Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect, and to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other, both heart and head to point and drapery. perusing and re-perusing the above remarks, to arrive at a thorough comprehension of them, and then to apply them in reading everything that pretends to be poetry. In another passage Coleridge says, "The definition of good prose is, proper words in their proper places (see p. 261); of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places," i.e. briefly, poetry is the highest species of composition. 2. FANCY AND IMAGINATION.' (FROM "COLERIDGE'S TABLE TALK," PUBLISHED IN 1885.) YOU may conceive the difference in kind between the fancy and the imagination in this way: that if the check of the senses and the reason were withdrawn, the first would become delirium, and the last mania.2 The fancy brings together images which have no connection, natural or moral, but are yoked together by the poet by means of some accidental coincidence; as in the well-known passage in “Hudibras ”:— "The sun had long since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap, And like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn." The imagination modifies images, and gives unity to variety; it sees all things in one, il più nell' uno. There is the epic imagination, the perfection of which is in Milton; and the dramatic, of which Shakespeare is the absolute master. The first gives unity by throwing back into the distance; as after the magnificent approach of the Messiah to battle, the poet, by one touch from himself makes the whole one image. And so at the conclusion of the description of the appearance of the entranced angels, in which every sort of image from all the regions of earth and air is introduced to diversify and illustrate, the reader is brought back to the single image by "He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep Of hell resounded." The dramatic imagination does not throw back, but brings close; it stamps all nature with one, and that its own, meaning, as in "Lear" throughout. (1) See note 2, p. 241. (2) This is a subtle and apparently just distinction-very full of fine suggestion. Delirium is a temporary, and mania the permanent, alienation and derangement of the mind. SIR WALTER SCOTT.' 1. A MORNING IN THE HIGHLANDS. (FROM "ROB ROY," PUBLISHED IN 1818.) I SHALL never forget the delightful sensation with which I exchanged the dark, smoky, smothering atmosphere of the Highland hut, in which we had passed the night so uncomfortably, for the refreshing fragrance of the morning air, and the glorious beams of the rising sun, which, from a tabernacle of purple and golden clouds, were darted full in such a scene of natural romance and beauty as had never before greeted my eyes. To the left lay the valley, down which the Forth wandered on its easterly course, surrounding the beautiful detached hill with all its garland of woods. On the right, amid a profusion of thickets, knolls, and crags, lay the bed of a broad mountain lake, lightly curled into tiny waves by the breath of the morning breeze, each glittering in its course under the influence of the sunbeams. High hills, rocks, and banks, waving with natural forests of birch and oak, formed the borders of this enchanting sheet of water: and as their leaves rustled to the wind and twinkled in the sun, gave to the depth of solitude a sort of life and vivacity. Man alone seemed to be placed in a state of inferiority, in a scene where all the ordinary features of nature were raised and exalted. 2. THE REVENGE OF MACGREGOR'S WIFE." (FROM THE SAME WORK.) Ir was under the burning influence of revenge that the wife of MacGregor commanded that the hostage, exchanged for her husband's safety, should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch out of her (1) Scott's power as a prose writer, and especially of fiction, lies so specially in the tout ensemble of the plot and the relation of the various characters to it, that we scarcely notice, or, at least, are unwilling to notice, the numerous faults of the composition itself. He is often incorrect in the use of single words, and slovenly in weaving them into a tissue; and hence, indeed, loses capital opportunities of consummating the effect produced by the artistic skill with which he tells his story. It must be allowed, however, that he compensates us by frequent displays of amazing energy and beauty for occasional instances of feebleness. (2) Rob Roy Macgregor, the celebrated Highland chieftain, had been taken prisoner, and Morris sent as a hostage for his safety. This pledge had been broken, sight for fear of the consequences; but if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward at her summons a wretch, already half dead with terror, in whose agonized features, I recognised, to my horror and astonishment, my old acquaintance Morris. He fell prostrate before the female chief with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution, so that all he could do in token of the extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss the hem of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstasy of fear was such, that, instead of paralysing his tongue, as on ordinary occasions, it even rendered him eloquent, and, with cheeks as pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes that seemed to be taking their last look of all mortal objects, he protested, with the deepest oaths, his total ignorance of any design on the life of Rob Roy, whom he swore he loved and honoured as his own soul. In the inconsistency of his terror he said he was but the agent of others, and he muttered the name of Rashleigh. He prayed but for life-for life he would give all he had in the world;-it was but life he asked-life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations; he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of the hills. It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of MacGregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence. "I could have bid you live," she said, "had life been to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to me that it is to every noble and generous mind. But you-wretch! you would creep through the world unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow. You could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble-minded are betrayed,-while nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and long-descended,you could enjoy yourself, like a butcher's dog in the shambles, battening on garbage, while the slaughter of the brave went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live to partake of; you shall die, base dog, and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun." She gave a brief command, in Gaelic, to her attendants, and the revenge taken by Macgregor's wife is described in the passage-8 passage well worthy of the powers of the writer. Separated as it is here from its proper connection with the story, it forms nevertheless a picture which, once received by the reader's mind, can never be forgotten. |