Another and a very different species of style is that which was
derived from, and founded on, the admiration and cultivation of
the classical writers, and which was more exclusively addressed
to the learned class in society. I have previously mentioned
Boccaccio as the original Italian introducer of this manner, and
the great models of it in English are Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and
Taylor, although it may be traced in many other authors of that
age. In all these the language is dignified but plain, genuine
English, although elevated and brightened by superiority of
intellect in the writer. Individual words themselves are always
used by them in their precise meaning, without either affectation
or slipslop. The letters and state papers of Sir Francis
Walsingham are remarkable for excellence in style of this
description. In Jeremy Taylor the sentences are often extremely
long, and yet are generally so perspicuous in consequence of
their logical structure, that they require no reperusal to be
understood; and it is for the most part the same in Milton and
Hooker.
Take the following sentence as a specimen of the sort of style to
which I have been alluding:
Concerning Faith, the principal object whereof is that eternal verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in Christ; concerning Hope, the highest object whereof is that everlasting goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead; concerning Charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible beauty which shineth in the countenance of Christ, the Son of the living God: concerning these virtues, the first of which beginning here with a weak apprehension of things not seen, endeth with the intuitive vision of God in the world to come; the second beginning here with a trembling expectation of things far removed, and as yet but only heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition of that which no tongue can express; the third beginning here with a weak inclination of heart towards him unto whom we are not able to approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery whereof is higher than the reach of the thoughts of men; concerning that Faith, Hope, and Charity, without which there can be no salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in that Law which God himself hath from Heaven revealed? There is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from the mouth of the eternal God.
Eccles. Pol. I. s. 11.
The unity in these writers is produced by the unity of the
subject, and the perpetual growth and evolution of the thoughts,
one generating, and explaining, and justifying, the place of
another, not, as it is in Seneca, where the thoughts, striking as
they are, are merely strung together like beads, without any
causation or progression. The words are selected because they are
the most appropriate, regard being had to the dignity of the
total impression, and no merely big phrases are used where plain
ones would have sufficed, even in the most learned of their
works.
There is some truth in a remark, which I believe was made by Sir
Joshua Reynolds, that the greatest man is he who forms the taste
of a nation, and that the next greatest is he who corrupts it.
The true classical style of Hooker and his fellows was easily
open to corruption; and Sir Thomas Brown it was, who, though a
writer of great genius, first effectually injured the literary
taste of the nation by his introduction of learned words, merely
because they were learned. It would be difficult to describe
Brown adequately; exuberant in conception and conceit, dignified,
hyperlatinistic, a quiet and sublime enthusiast; yet a fantast, a
humourist, a brain with a twist; egotistic like Montaigne, yet
with a feeling heart and an active curiosity, which, however, too
often degenerates into a hunting after oddities. In his
Hydriotaphia
and, indeed, almost all his works the
entireness of his mental action is very observable; he
metamorphoses every thing, be it what it may, into the subject
under consideration. But Sir Thomas Brown with all his faults had
a genuine idiom; and it is the existence of an individual idiom
in each, that makes the principal writers before the Restoration
the great patterns or integers of English style. In them the
precise intended meaning of a word can never be mistaken; whereas
in the later writers, as especially in Pope, the use of words is
for the most part purely arbitrary, so that the context will
rarely show the true specific sense, but only that something of
the sort is designed. A perusal of the authorities cited by
Johnson in his dictionary under any leading word, will give you a
lively sense of this declension in etymological truth of
expression in the writers after the Restoration, or perhaps,
strictly, after the middle of the reign of Charles II.
The general characteristic of the style of our literature down to
the period which I have just mentioned, was gravity, and in
Milton and some other writers of his day there are perceptible
traces of the sternness of republicanism. Soon after the
Restoration a material change took place, and the cause of
royalism was graced, sometimes disgraced, by every shade of
lightness of manner. A free and easy style was considered as a
test of loyalty, or at all events, as a badge of the cavalier
party; you may detect it occasionally even in Barrow, who is,
however, in general remarkable for dignity and logical sequency
of expression; but in L'Estrange, Collyer, and the writers of
that class, this easy manner was carried out to the utmost
extreme of slang and ribaldry. Yet still the works, even of these
last authors, have considerable merit in one point of view; their
language is level to the understandings of all men; it is an
actual transcript of the colloquialism of the day, and is
accordingly full of life and reality. Roger North's life of his
brother the Lord Keeper, is the most valuable specimen of this
class of our literature; it is delightful, and much beyond any
other of the writings of his contemporaries.
From the common opinion that the English style attained its
greatest perfection in and about Queen Ann's reign I altogether
dissent; not only because it is in one species alone in which it
can be pretended that the writers of that age excelled their
predecessors, but also because the specimens themselves are not
equal, upon sound principles of judgment, to much that had been
produced before. The classical structure of Hooker the
impetuous, thought-agglomerating, flood of Taylor to these
there is no pretence of a parallel; and for mere ease and grace,
is Cowley inferior to Addison, being as he is so much more
thoughtful and full of fancy? Cowley, with the omission of a
quaintness here and there, is probably the best model of style
for modern imitation in general. Taylor's periods have been
frequently attempted by his admirers; you may, perhaps, just
catch the turn of a simile or single image, but to write in the
real manner of Jeremy Taylor would require as mighty a mind as
his. Many parts of Algernon Sidney's treatises afford excellent
exemplars of a good modern practical style; and Dryden in his
prose works, is a still better model, if you add a stricter and
purer grammar. It is, indeed, worthy of remark that all our great
poets have been good prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton;
and this probably arose from their just sense of metre. For a
true poet will never confound verse and prose; whereas it is
almost characteristic of indifferent prose writers that they
should be constantly slipping into scraps of metre. Swift's style
is, in its line, perfect; the manner is a complete expression of
the matter, the terms appropriate, and the artifice concealed. It
is simplicity in the true sense of the word.
After the Revolution, the spirit of the nation became much more
commercial, than it had been before; a learned body, or clerisy,
as such, gradually disappeared, and literature in general began
to be addressed to the common miscellaneous public. That public
had become accustomed to, and required, a strong stimulus; and to
meet the requisitions of the public taste, a style was produced
which by combining triteness of thought with singularity and
excess of manner of expression, was calculated at once to soothe
ignorance and to flatter vanity. The thought was carefully kept
down to the immediate apprehension of the commonest
understanding, and the dress was as anxiously arranged for the
purpose of making the thought appear something very profound. The
essence of this style consisted in a mock antithesis, that is, an
opposition of mere sounds, in a rage for personification, the
abstract made animate, far-fetched metaphors, strange phrases,
metrical scraps, in every thing, in short, but genuine prose.
Style is, of course, nothing else but the art of conveying the
meaning appropriately and with perspicuity, whatever that meaning
may be, and one criterion of style is that it shall not be
translateable without injury to the meaning. Johnson's style has
pleased many from the very fault of being perpetually
translateable; he creates an impression of cleverness by never
saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen of this
manner is in Junius, because his antithesis is less merely verbal
than Johnson's. Gibbon's manner is the worst of all; it has every
fault of which this peculiar style is capable. Tacitus is an
example of it in Latin; in coming from Cicero you feel the
falsetto
immediately.
In order to form a good style, the primary rule and condition is,
not to attempt to express ourselves in language before we
thoroughly know our own meaning; when a man perfectly
understands himself, appropriate diction will generally be at his
command either in writing or speaking. In such cases the thoughts
and the words are associated. In the next place preciseness in
the use of terms is required, and the test is whether you can
translate the phrase adequately into simpler terms, regard being
had to the feeling of the whole passage. Try this upon
Shakspeare, or Milton, and see if you can substitute other
simpler words in any given passage without a violation of the
meaning or tone. The source of bad writing is the desire to be
something more than a man of sense, the straining to be
thought a genius; and it is just the same in speech making. If
men would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much
more eloquent they would be! Another rule is to avoid converting
mere abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely
find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive
case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent
case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of the watch.' The
possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least
to animated subjects. And I cannot conclude this Lecture without
insisting on the importance of accuracy of style as being near
akin to veracity and truthful habits of mind; he who thinks
loosely will write loosely, and, perhaps, there is some moral
inconvenience in the common forms of our grammars which give
children so many obscure terms for material distinctions. Let me
also exhort you to careful examination of what you read, if it be
worth any perusal at all; such examination will be a safeguard
from fanaticism, the universal origin of which is in the
contemplation of phenomena without investigation into their
causes.
Notes on Sir Thomas Brown's Religio Medici 1
Strong feeling and an active intellect conjoined, lead almost
necessarily, in the first stage of philosophising, to Spinosism.
Sir T. Brown was a Spinosist without knowing it.
If I have not quite all the faith that the author of the
Religio Medici possessed, I have all the inclination to
it; it gives me pleasure to believe.
The postscript at the very end of the book is well worth reading.
Sir K. Digby's observations, however, are those of a pedant in
his own system and opinion. He ought to have considered the R.
M. in a dramatic, and not in a metaphysical, view, as a sweet
exhibition of character and passion, and not as an expression, or
investigation, of positive truth. The R. M. is a fine
portrait of a handsome man in his best clothes; it is much of
what he was at all times, a good deal of what he was only in his
best moments. I have never read a book in which I felt greater
similarity to my own make of mind active in inquiry, and
yet with an appetite to believe in short an affectionate
visionary! But then I should tell a different tale of my own
heart; for I would not only endeavour to tell the truth, (which I
doubt not Sir T. B. has done), but likewise to tell the whole
truth, which most assuredly he has not done. However, it is a
most delicious book. His own character was a fine mixture of
humourist, genius, and pedant. A library was a living world to
him, and every book a man, absolute flesh and blood! and the
gravity with which he records contradictory opinions is
exquisite.
(Part 1. sect. 9.)
Now contrarily, I bless myself, and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his disciples, &c.
So say I.
(S. 15.)
I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature; which without further travel I can do in the cosmography of myself; we carry with us the wonders we seek without us. There is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.
This is the true characteristic of genius; our destiny and
instinct is to unriddle the world, and he is the man of genius
who feels this instinct fresh and strong in his nature; who
perceiving the riddle and the mystery of all things even the
commonest, needs no strange and out-of-the-way tales or images to
stimulate him into wonder and a deep interest.
(S. 16, 17.)
All this is very fine philosophy, and the best and most ingenious defence of revelation. Moreover, I do hold and believe that a toad is a comely animal; but nevertheless a toad is called ugly by almost all men, and it is the business of a philosopher to explain the reason of this.
S. 19. This is exceedingly striking. Had Sir T. B. lived
now-a-days, he would probably have been a very ingenious and bold
infidel in his real opinions, though the kindness of his nature
would have kept him aloof from vulgar prating obtrusive
infidelity.
S. 35. An excellent burlesque on parts of the Schoolmen, though I
believe an unintentional one.
S. 36. Truly sublime and in Sir T. B.'s very best
manner.
S. 39. This is a most admirable passage. Yes, the history
of a man for the nine months preceding his birth, would,
probably, be far more interesting, and contain events of greater
moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it.
(S. 48.)
This is made good by experience, which can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall it into its stalks and leaves again.
Stuff. This was, I believe, some lying boast of Paracelsus,
which the good Sir T. B. has swallowed for a fact.
(Part II. s. 2.)
I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God.
We ought not to relieve a poor man merely because our own
feelings impel us, but because these feelings are just and proper
feelings. My feelings might impel me to revenge with the same
force with which they urge me to charity. I must therefore have
some rule by which I may judge my feelings, and this rule
is God's will.
(S. 5, 6.)
I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
We cannot love a friend as a woman; but we may love a woman as a
friend. Friendship satisfies the highest parts of our nature; but
a wife, who is capable of friendship, satisfies all. The great
business of real unostentatious virtue is not to eradicate
any genuine instinct or appetite of human nature; but to
establish a concord and unity betwixt all parts of our nature, to
give a feeling and a passion to our purer intellect, and to
intellectualize our feelings and passions. This a happy marriage,
blest with children, effectuates in the highest degree, of which
our nature is capable, and is therefore chosen by St. Paul as the
symbol of the union of the church with Christ; that is, of the
souls of all good men with God. "I scarcely distinguish," said
once a good old man, "the wife of my old age from the wife of my
youth; for when we were both young, and she was beautiful, for
once that I caressed her with a meaner passion, I caressed her a
thousand times with love and these caresses still remain to
us." Besides, there is another reason why friendship is of
somewhat less value than love, which includes friendship, it is
this we may love many persons, all very dearly; but we
cannot love many persons all equally dearly. There will be
differences, there will be gradations. But our nature imperiously
asks a summit, a resting-place; it is with the affections in love
as with the reason in religion, we cannot diffuse and equalize;
we must have a supreme, a one, the highest. What is more common
than to say of a man in love, 'he idolizes her,' 'he makes a god
of her?' Now, in order that a person should continue to love
another better than all others, it seems necessary, that this
feeling should be reciprocal. For if it be not so, sympathy is
broken off in the very highest point. A. (we will say by way of
illustration) loves B. above all others, in the best and fullest
sense of the word, love, but B. loves C. above all others.
Either, therefore, A. does not sympathize with B. in this most
important feeling; and then his love must necessarily be
incomplete, and accompanied with a craving after something that
is not, and yet might be; or he does sympathize with B. in loving
C. above all others and then, of course, he loves C. better
than B. Now it is selfishness, at least it seems so to me, to
desire that your friend should love you better than all others
but not to wish that a wife should.
(S. 6.)
Another misery there is in affection, that whom we truly love like ourselves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their faces; and it is no wonder: for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own.
A thought I have often had, and once expressed it in almost the
same language. The fact is certain, but the explanation here
given is very unsatisfactory. For why do we never have an image
of our own faces an image of fancy, I mean?
(S. 7.)
I can hold there is no such thing as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury; that to hate another, is to malign himself, and that the truest way to love another is to despise ourselves.
I thank God that I can, with a full and unfeigning heart, utter
Amen to this passage.
(S. 10.)
In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by itself, which is not truly one; and such is only God.
Reciprocity is that which alone gives stability to love. It is
not mere selfishness that impels all kind natures to desire that
there should be some one human being, to whom they are most dear.
It is because they wish some one being to exist, who shall be the
resting place and summit of their love; and this in human nature
is not possible, unless the two affections coincide. The reason
is, that the object of the highest love will not otherwise be the
same in both parties.
(S. 11.)
I thank God for my happy dreams, &c.
I am quite different from Sir T. B. in this; for all, or almost
all, the painful and fearful thoughts that I know, are in my
dreams; so much so, that when I am wounded by a friend, or
receive an unpleasant letter, it throws me into a state very
nearly resembling that of a dream.
(S. 13.)
Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without any poverty, take away the object of our charity, not only not understanding the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecies of Christ.
O, for shame! for shame! Is there no fit object of charity but
abject poverty? And what sort of a charity must that be which
wishes misery in order that it may have the credit of relieving a
small part of it, pulling down the comfortable cottages of
independent industry to build alms-houses out of the ruins! This
book paints certain parts of my moral and intellectual being,
(the best parts, no doubt,) better than any other book I have
ever met with; and the style is throughout delicious.
Footnote
1
: Communicated by Mr. Wordsworth.
Ed.
Notes on Junius
1807.
Stat nominis umbra.
As he never dropped the mask, so he too often used the poisoned
dagger of an assassin.
Dedication to the English nation.
The whole of this dedication reads like a string of aphorisms
arranged in chapters, and classified by a resemblance of subject,
or a cento of points.
(Ib.)
If an honest, and I may truly affirm a laborious, zeal for the public service has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by, without a determined persevering resistance.
A longer sentence and proportionately inelegant.
(Ib.)
If you reflect that in the changes of administration which have marked and disgraced the present reign, although your warmest patriots have, in their turn, been invested with the lawful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minister) the opposition to this measure, ever since the septennial act passed, has been constant and uniform on the part of government.
Long, and as usual, inelegant. Junius cannot manage a long
sentence; it has all the
ins
and
outs
of a snappish
figure-dance.
Preface
An excellent preface, and the sentences not so snipt as in the
dedication. The paragraph near the conclusion beginning with
"some opinion may now be expected," &c. and ending with "relation
between guilt and punishment," deserves to be quoted as a
master-piece of rhetorical ratiocination in a series of questions
that permit no answer; or (as Junius says) carry their own answer
along with them. The great art of Junius is never to say too
much, and to avoid with equal anxiety a commonplace manner, and
matter that is not commonplace. If ever he deviates into any
originality of thought, he takes care that it shall be such as
excites surprise for its acuteness, rather than admiration for
its profundity. He takes care? say rather, that nature took care
for him. It is impossible to detract from the merit of these
Letters: they are suited to their purpose, and perfect in their
kind. They impel to action, not thought. Had they been profound
or subtle in thought, or majestic and sweeping in composition,
they would have been adapted for the closet of a Sidney, or for a
House of Lords such as it was in the time of Lord Bacon; but they
are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the right, and
whether right or wrong, always shrewd and epigrammatic, and
fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange, the lobby of the House
of Commons, and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When
connected, dropping the forms of connection, desultory without
abruptness or appearance of disconnection, epigrammatic and
antithetical to excess, sententious and personal, regardless of
right or wrong, yet well-skilled to act the part of an honest
warm-hearted man, and even when he is in the right, saying the
truth but never proving it, much less attempting to bottom it,
this is the character of Junius; and on this
character, and in the mould of these writings must every man cast
himself, who would wish in factious times to be the important and
long remembered agent of a faction. I believe that I could do all
that Junius has done, and surpass him by doing many things which
he has not done: for example, by an occasional induction of
startling facts, in the manner of Tom Paine, and lively
illustrations and witty applications of good stories and
appropriate anecdotes in the manner of Horne Tooke. I believe I
could do it if it were in my nature to aim at this sort of
excellence, or to be enamoured of the fame, and immediate
influence, which would be its consequence and reward. But it is
not in my nature. I not only love truth, but I have a passion for
the legitimate investigation of truth. The love of truth
conjoined with a keen delight in a strict and skillful yet
impassioned argumentation, is my master-passion, and to it are
subordinated even the love of liberty and all my public feelings
and to it whatever I labour under of vanity, ambition, and
all my inward impulses.
Letter I.
From this Letter all the faults and excellencies
of Junius may be exemplified. The moral and political aphorisms
are just and sensible, the irony in which his personal satire is
conveyed is fine, yet always intelligible; but it approaches too
nearly to the nature of a sneer; the sentences are cautiously
constructed without the forms of connection; the
he
and
it
everywhere substituted for the
who
and
which
; the sentences are short, laboriously balanced, and
the antitheses stand the test of analysis much better than
Johnson's. These are all excellencies in their kind; where
is the defect? In this; there is too much of each, and
there is a defect of many things, the presence of which would
have been not only valuable for their own sakes, but for the
relief and variety which they would have given. It is observable
too that every Letter adds to the faults of these Letters, while
it weakens the effect of their beauties.
L. III
. A capital letter, addressed to a private person,
and intended as a sharp reproof for intrusion. Its short
sentences, its witty perversions and deductions, its questions
and omissions of connectives, all in their proper places, are
dramatically good.
(L. V.)
For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public to determine whether your vindication of your friend has been as able and judicious as it was certainly well intended; and you, I think, may be satisfied with the warm acknowledgements he already owes you for making him the principal figure in a piece in which, but for your amicable assistance, he might have passed without particular notice or distinction.
A long sentence and, as usual, inelegant and cumbrous. This
Letter is a faultless composition with exception of the one long
sentence.
(L. VII.)
These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration.
The rhyme is a fault. 'Fancy' had been better; though but for
the rhyme, imagination is the fitter word.
(Ib.)
Such a question might perhaps discompose the gravity of his muscles, but I believe it would little affect the tranquillity of his conscience.
A false antithesis, a mere verbal balance; there are far, far
too many of these. However, with these few exceptions, this
Letter is a blameless composition. Junius may be safely studied
as a model for letters where he truly writes letters. Those to
the Duke of Grafton and others, are small pamphlets in the form
of letters.
(L. VIII)
To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for Mac Quick as you ought to do; and, if you had been contented to assist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly insulting the sense of the nation, you might have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honour of your sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government.
An inelegant cluster of
withouts
. Junius asks questions
incomparably well; but
ne quid nimis
.
L. IX. Perhaps the fair way of considering these Letters would be
as a kind of satirical poems; the short, and for ever balanced,
sentences constitute a true metre; and the connection is that of
satiric poetry, a witty logic, an association of thoughts by
amusing semblances of cause and effect, the sophistry of which
the reader has an interest in not stopping to detect, for it
flatters his love of mischief, and makes the sport.
L. XII. One of Junius's arts, and which gives me a high notion of
his genius, as a poet and satirist, is this: he takes for
granted the existence of a character that never did and never can
exist, and then employs his wit, and surprises and amuses his
readers with analyzing its incompatibilities.
L. XIV. Continual sneer, continual irony, all excellent, if it
were not for the ' all;' but a countenance, with a
malignant smile in statuary fixure on it, becomes at length an
object of aversion, however beautiful the face, and however
beautiful the smile. We are relieved, in some measure, from this
by frequent just and well expressed moral aphorisms; but then the
preceding and following irony gives them the appearance of
proceeding from the head, not from the heart. This objection
would be less felt, when the Letters were first published at
considerable intervals; but Junius wrote for posterity.
L. XXIII. Sneer and irony continued with such gross violation of
good sense, as to be perfectly nonsense. The man who can address
another on his most detestable vices in a strain of cold
continual irony, is himself a wretch.
(L. XXXV.)
To honour them with a determined predilection and confidence in exclusion of your English subjects, who placed your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported it upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting generosity of youth.
The words ' upon the throne', stand unfortunately for the
harmonious effect of the balance of' placed' and '
supported.'
This address to the king is almost faultless in composition, and
has been evidently tormented with the file. But it has fewer
beauties than any other long letter of Junius; and it is utterly
undramatic. There is nothing in the style, the transitions, or
the sentiments, which represents the passions of a man
emboldening himself to address his sovereign personally. Like a
Presbyterian's prayer, you may substitute almost every where the
third for the second person without injury. The newspaper, his
closet, and his own person were alone present to the author's
intention and imagination. This makes the composition vapid. It
possesses an Isocratic correctness, when it should have had the
force and drama of an oration of Demosthenes. From this, however,
the paragraph beginning with the words "As to the Scotch," and
also the last two paragraphs must be honourably excepted. They
are, perhaps, the finest passages in the whole collection.
Notes on Barclay's Argenis 1
1803.
Heaven forbid that this work should not exist in its present form
and language! Yet I cannot avoid the wish that it had, during the
reign of James I., been moulded into an heroic poem in English
octave stanza, or epic blank verse; which, however, at that
time had not been invented, and which, alas! still remains the
sole property of the inventor, as if the Muses had given him an
unevadible patent for it. Of dramatic blank verse we have many
and various specimens; for example, Shakspeare's as
compared with Massinger's, both excellent in their kind: of
lyric, and of what may be called Orphic, or philosophic, blank
verse, perfect models may be found in Wordsworth: of colloquial
blank verse there are excellent, though not perfect, examples in
Cowper; but of epic blank verse, since Milton, there is not
one.
It absolutely distresses me when I reflect that this work,
admired as it has been by great men of all ages, and lately, I
hear, by the poet Cowper, should be only not unknown to general
readers. It has been translated into English two or three times
how, I know not, wretchedly, I doubt not. It affords matter
for thought that the last translation (or rather, in all
probability, miserable and faithless abridgment of some former
one) was given under another name. What a mournful proof of the
incelebrity of this great and amazing work among both the public
and the people! For as Wordsworth, the greater of the two great
men of this age, (at least, except Davy and him, I have
known, read of, heard of, no others) for as Wordsworth did
me the honour of once observing to me, the people and the public
are two distinct classes, and, as things go, the former is likely
to retain a better taste, the less it is acted out by the latter.
Yet Telemachus is in every mouth, in every school-boy's
and school-girl's hand! It is awful to say of a work, like the
Argenis, the style and Latinity of which, judged (not
according to classical pedantry, which pronounces every sentence
right which can be found in any book prior to Boetius, however
vicious the age, or affected the author, and every sentence
wrong, however natural and beautiful, which has been of the
author's own combination, but, according to the universal
logic of thought as modified by feeling, is equal to that of
Tacitus in energy and genuine conciseness, and is as perspicuous
as that of Livy, whilst it is free from the affectations,
obscurities, and lust to surprise of the former, and seems a sort
of antithesis to the slowness and prolixity of the latter;
(this remark does not, however, impeach even the classicality of
the language, which, when the freedom and originality, the easy
motion and perfect command of the thoughts, are considered, is
truly wonderful: of such a work it is awful to say, that it
would have been well if it had been written in English or Italian
verse! Yet the event seems to justify the notion. Alas! it is now
too late. What modern work, even of the size of the Paradise
Lost much less of the Faery Queene would
be read in the present day, or even bought or be likely to be
bought, unless it were an instructive work, as the phrase is,
like Roscoe's quartos of Leo X., or entertaining like
Boswell's three of Dr. Johnson's conversations. It may be fairly
objected what work of surpassing merit has given the proof?
Certainly, none. Yet still there are ominous facts,
sufficient, I fear, to afford a certain prophecy of its
reception, if such were produced.
Footnote
1: Communicated by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge.
Ed.
return to footnote mark
Note in Casaubon's Persius
1807
There are six hundred and sixteen pages in this volume, of which
twenty-two are text; and five hundred and ninety-four commentary
and introductory matter. Yet when I recollect, that I have the
whole works of Cicero, Livy, and Quinctilian, with many others,
the whole works of each in a single volume, either thick
quarto with thin paper and small yet distinct print, or thick
octavo or duodecimo of the same character, and that they cost me
in the proportion of a shilling to a guinea for the same quantity
of worse matter in modern books, or editions, I a poor man,
yet one whom
feel the
liveliest gratitude for the age, which produced such editions,
and for the education, which by enabling me to understand and
taste the Greek and Latin writers, has thus put it in my power to
collect on my own shelves, for my actual use, almost all the best
books in spite of my small income. Somewhat too I am indebted to
the ostentation of expense among the rich, which has occasioned
these cheap editions to become so disproportionately cheap.
Notes on Chapman's Homer.
extract of a letter sent with the volume
1 1807
Chapman I have sent in order that you might read the
Odyssey; the Iliad is fine, but less equal in the
translation, as well as less interesting in itself. What is
stupidly said of Shakspeare, is really true and appropriate of
Chapman; mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties.
Excepting his quaint epithets which he affects to render
literally from the Greek, a language above all others blest in
the happy marriage of sweet words, and which in our language are
mere printer's compound epithets such as quaffed divine
joy-in-the-heart-of-man-infusing wine, (the undermarked is
to be one word, because one sweet mellifluous word expresses it
in Homer); excepting this, it has no look, no air, of a
translation. It is as truly an original poem as the Faery
Queene; it will give you small idea of Homer, though a
far truer one than Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome most
anti-Homeric Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet,
as Homer might have written had he lived in England in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem, in
spite of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and harshnesses,
which are, however, amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness
and beauty of language, all over spirit and feeling. In the main
it is an English heroic poem, the tale of which is borrowed from
the Greek. The dedication to the Iliad is a noble copy of
verses, especially those sublime lines beginning,
O!'tis wondrous much
(Though nothing prisde) that the right vertuous touch
Of a well written soule, to vertue moves.
Nor haue we soules to purpose, if their loves
Of fitting objects be not so inflam'd.
How much then, were this kingdome's maine soule maim'd,
To want this great inflamer of all powers
That move in humane soules! All realmes but yours,
Are honor'd with him; and hold blest that state
That have his workes to reade and contemplate.
In which, humanitie to her height is raisde;
Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde.
Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize;
Out sung the Muses, and did equalise
Their king Apollo; being so farre from cause
Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes
May finde stuffe to be fashiond by his lines.
Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines
And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie
Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily
Make the heroiques of your Homer sung,
To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue:
And with the princely sports of haukes you use,
Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse:
And see how like the Phöenix she renues
Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne;
Thousands of yeares attending; everie one
Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in
Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin
Subverted in them; lawes, religions, all
Offerd to change, and greedie funerall;
Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning.