English Literary Criticism by Charles Edwyn Vaughan (smart ebook reader TXT) 📕

In the two following lines, for instance, there is nothing objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their proper place, part of a descriptive poem:

  Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd
  Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.

But with the small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be equally in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive tour. The same image will rise into a semblance of poetry if thus conveyed:

  Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,
  By twilight-glimpse discerned, mark! how they flee
  From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
  Streaming before them.

I have given this as an illustration, by no means as an instance, of that particular excellence which I had in view, and in which Shakespeare, even in his earliest as in his latest works, surpasses all other poets. It is by this that he still gives a dignity and a passion to the objects which he presents. Unaided by any previous excitement, they burst upon us at once in life and in power.

  Full many a glorious morning have I seen
  Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye.
                     —Sonnet 33.

  Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
  Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
  Can yet the lease of my true love control,
  Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
  The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
  And the sad augurs mock their own presage:
  Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
  And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
  Now with the drops of this most balmy time
  My love looks fresh: and Death to me subscribes,
  Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
  While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.
    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
    When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
                     —Sonnet 107.

As of higher worth, so doubtless still more characteristic of poetic genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself to the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost in the mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence the reader's own memory will refer him to the Lear, Othello, in short, to which not of the 'great, ever living, dead man's' dramatic works? Inopem me copia fecit. How true it is to nature, he has himself finely expressed in the instance of love in

Sonnet 98:

  From you have I been absent in the spring,
  When proud-pied April drest in all his trim
  Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
  That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
  Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
  Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
  Could make me any summer's story tell,
  Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew
  Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
  Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
  They were, but sweet, but figures of delight,
  Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
    Yet seem'd it winter still and, you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play!

Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less indispensable mark

[Greek text, transliterated]

Gonzmou men Poihtou————— —————ostis rhma gennaion lakoi,

will the imagery supply when, with more than the power of the painter, the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the feeling of simultaneousness!

  With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace
  Of those fair arms, that bound him to her breast,
  And homeward through the dark laund runs apace:
  Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky!
  So glides he in the night from Venus' eye.
                     —Venus and Adonis, 1. 811.

4. The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed but little, except as taken conjointly with the former; yet without which the former could scarce exist in a high degree, and (even if this were possible) would give promises only of transitory flashes and a meteoric power;—its depth and energy of thought. No man was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare's Poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams that, at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tumult, but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. The Venus and Adonis did not perhaps allow the display of the deeper passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even demand, their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shakespeare's management of the tale neither pathos nor any other dramatic quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying faculties; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of knowledge and reflection; and lastly, with the same perfect dominion, often domination, over the whole world of language. What, then, shall we say? even this, that Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class; to that power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself. O what great men hast thou not produced, England, my country! Truly, indeed,

  Must we be free or die, who speak the tongue,
  Which Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold,
  Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung
  Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

(1778-1830.)

This was the first of a series of lectures on English poets, delivered in 1818, and published in the same year. It has been reprinted in the collected edition of Hazlitt's works (Bohn). It is a striking sample of Hazlitt's brilliance as a writer; and it is free from the faults of temper, and consequent errors of judgment, which, especially when he is dealing with modern authors, must be held in some degree to mar his greatness as a critic. It has been chosen partly for these reasons; partly also for those assigned in the Introduction. There is perhaps no other passage in the long roll of his writings that so clearly marks his place in the development of English criticism.

The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and producing, by sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds, expressing it. In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter of it, next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, and afterwards of its connection with harmony of sound. Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human mind. It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men; for nothing but what so comes home to them in the most general and intelligible shape can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment (as some persons have been led to imagine), the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours: it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables with like endings: but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of a flower that "spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedicates its beauty to the sun",—there is poetry, in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver: its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century: but there is no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind of man, which he would be eager to communicate to others, or which they would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of authorship: it is "the stuff of which our life is made". The rest is "mere oblivion", a dead letter: for all that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us, that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole being: without it "man's life is poor as beast's". Man is a poetical animal: and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry, act upon them all our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who had always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet, in fact, when he first plays at Hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers; the countryman, when he stops to look at the rainbow; the city apprentice, when he gazes after the Lord Mayor's show; the miser, when he hugs his gold; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile; the savage, who paints his idol with blood; the slave, who worships a tyrant; or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god; the vain, the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live in a world of their own making; and the poet does no more than describe what all the others think and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and madness at second hand. "There is warrant for it." Poets alone have not "such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cooler reason" can.

  The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
  Are of imagination all compact.
  One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
  That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
  Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
  The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
  Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n;
  And, as imagination bodies forth
  The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
  Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
  A local habitation and a name.
  Such tricks hath strong imagination.

If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. If it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and fancy that they are, because we wish them so, there is no other nor better reality. Ariosto has described the loves of Angelica and Medoro: but was not Medoro, who carved the name of his mistress on the barks of trees, as much enamoured of her charms as he? Homer has celebrated the anger of Achilles: but was not the hero as mad as the poet? Plato banished the poets from his Commonwealth, lest their descriptions of the natural man should spoil his mathematical man, who was to be without passions and affections—who was neither to laugh