by some unknown hand upon the hill; the one an ancient possession of a noble house; the other destined for the hand of any, to whom it might chance to fall. The one extended by a monarch over many isles, and the whole of Argos; the other borne by one from the midst of the Greeks, to whom, with many others, the guardianship of the law had been entrusted. This was the real difference, which existed between Agamemnon and Achilles: and which Achilles, in spite of all his blind rage, could not avoid admitting. But it is not only where he combines such further aims with his descriptions, that Homer disperses the picture of the object over a kind of history of it; he follows the same course, where the picture itself is the only end in view, in order that its parts, which, naturally, are seen beside each other, may, by following upon one another, be seen as naturally in his description, and, as it were, keep pace with the progress of the narrative; e. g. he wishes to paint us the bow of Pandarus; a bow of horn, of such and such a length, well polished, and tipped with gold at either end. What does he? Enumerate all these dry details one after the other? giving a minute description of such a bow, but could never be called painting it. He begins with the chace of the wild goat, out of whose horns the bow was made. Pandarus himself had laid in wait for and killed it among the rocks; its horns were of an Not at all: that might be extraordinary size, and, for that reason, were destined to be turned into a bow. Then comes their manufacture ; the artist joins them, polishes them, and tips them. And thus, as I said before, in the poet we see the origin and formation of that, which we only see as a completed object in painting. τόξον ἐύξοον ἐξάλου ἀιγὸς e ἀγρίου, ὅν ῥά ποτ ̓ ἀυτὸς ὑπὸ στέρνοιο τυχήσας, I should become intolerable, if I were to transcribe all the examples of this kind. They will occur, without number, to every one who is familiar with Homer. CHAPTER XVII. BUT, it will be answered, the signs, which the poet used, viz. language, not only render his description necessarily progressive, but are also arbitrary; and, as arbitrary signs, are certainly capable of representing bodies, as they exist in space. are cited from Homer himself; Examples of this whose shield of Achilles, say they, furnishes us with the most decisive instance, how circumstantially, and yet poetically, a single object may be described by its parts, placed near one another. I will reply to this two-fold objection. I call it two-fold; because a justly drawn conclusion must stand even without an example; and, on the other hand, an example of Homer would be of great weight with me, even if I did not know any argument by which to justify it. It is true that, since language is arbitrary, it is quite possible, that by it the parts of a body may be made to follow upon one another just as easily and perfectly, as they stand near one another in Nature. But this is a peculiarity of language and its signs generally, and not in so far forth, as they are most adapted to the aim of Poetry. The poet does not merely wish to be intelligible; the prose writer indeed is contented with simply rendering his descriptions clear and distinct, but the poet has a higher aim. He must awaken in us conceptions so lively, that, from the rapidity with which they arise, the same impression should be made upon our senses, which the sight of the material objects, that these conceptions represent, would produce. In this moment of illusion, we should cease to be conscious of the instruments, by which this effect is obtained,-I mean words. This is the substance of the above explanation of poetical description or painting. But a poet should always produce a picture; and we will now proceed to enquire how far bodies, according to their parts near one another, are adapted for this painting. How do we attain to a distinct conception of an object in space? First, we look at its parts singly; then at their combination; and, lastly, at the whole. The different operations are performed by our senses with such astonishing rapidity, that they appear but one; and this rapidity is indispensable, if we are to form an idea of the whole, which is nothing more than the result of the parts and their combination. Supposing, therefore, that the poet could lead us, in the most beautiful order, from one part of the object to another; supposing that he knew how to make the combination of these parts ever so clear to us; still much time would be spent in the process. The eye takes in at a glance, what he enumerates slowly and by degrees; and it often happens that we have already forgotten the first traits, before we come to the last ; yet from these traits we are to form our idea of the whole. To the eye the parts once seen are continually present; it can run over them time after time, at its will; while the ear, on the contrary, entirely loses those parts it has heard, if they are not retained in the thought. And even if they are thus retained, what trouble and effort it costs us, to renew their whole impression in the same order, and with the same liveliness, as we at first received it; or to pass them at one time under review with but moderate rapidity, in order to attain anything that can be called an idea of the whole ! I will illustrate this position by an example, which is deservedly thought a masterpiece of its kind." "There towers the noble gentian's lofty head, The lower herd of vulgar herbs above, A whole flower people 'neath its standard serves, Gleams with the watery diamond's varied light. And body fair a fairer soul contain! I a Haller's Alps. |