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LITERARY CRITICISM 
 FOR STUDENTS 
 
 SELECTED 
 
 FROM ENGLISH ESSA YS 
 
 AND EDITED 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 edward t. Mclaughlin 
 
 w 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 IN YALE COLLEGE 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1893 
 
 
 yr^tyj 
 
5 
 
 Copyright, 1893 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT & CO. 
 
 /2-3 
 
 ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY ROBERT DRUMMOND, NEW YORK. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION iii 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 From the Defense of Poesy . . . I 
 
 BEN JONSON. 
 
 From the Explorata, or Discoveries ... 7 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 The Preface to the State of Innocence . . .17 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 From the Spectator 33 
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 From the Battle of the Books 38 
 
 From the Tale of a Tub 39 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 From the Life of Pope 43 
 
 From the Life of Cowley . . . . .74 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 From the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 2d ed. 53 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 From the Biographia Literaria, Chapter I. . .73 
 
 XIV. . 78 
 " « << .< << xv> ^ g 5 
 
 XXVIII. 93 
 v 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 From the Essay on the Fitness of Shakespeare's 
 
 Plays for Representation 112 
 
 From the Essays of Elia: on some of the Old 
 
 Actors 114 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 From the Essay on Language 118 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 From the Lecture on the Poet, in Heroes and 
 Hero Worship 122 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 From Celtic Literature 137 
 
 From Translating Homer 145 
 
 From the Essay on the Function of Criticism at 
 
 the Present Time 157 
 
 From the Essay on the Literary Influence of 
 
 Academies 165 
 
 From the Essay on Maurice Guerin . . . .171 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 From the Essay on Gray, in Last Essays . .173 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 From Modern Painters, Vol. III. Chapter XXII. 178 
 
 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. 
 
 From the Essay on Cardinal Newman, in Modern 
 Guides to English Thought in Matters of Faith 194 
 
 WALTER PATER. 
 
 From the Essay on Style, in Appreciations . . 204 
 
 Notes . . . . . . . , . . .211 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is a delicate problem to adjust the relation 
 between independence and a deference to authority. 
 In belles lettres, especially, what seems best to the 
 taste and appreciation of those who are called liter- 
 ary, often fails to please ordinary readers. Subtler 
 phases of thought, heightened style, moods lifted 
 above plain emotions, or plain emotions made great 
 by Wordsworthian simplicity, do not appeal to the 
 majority even of intelligent people. The classics of 
 our jpoetry and prose are not popular, and where 
 they are read, what to a few appears their best is 
 quite missed by most. These think carelessly, feel 
 bluntly, and are not sensitive to art and beauty. 
 Yet most of them can think and feel, and are in 
 some measure susceptible to aesthetic pleasure. 
 Their difficulty lies in not applying their faculties 
 successfully to literature, or still more, in not taking 
 the trouble to attempt it. Accordingly, they judge 
 inadequately and incorrectly. Well, how far should 
 those who believe that such judgments are partial 
 or mistaken try to impress their own views on the 
 majority — to convert them to their own tastes? 
 Especially in the case of students, is "good taste" to 
 be taught? 
 
VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 There is a certain class of refined people who say 
 that it neither can nor need be. They themselves 
 are acquainted with literature because they like it. 
 If others care for it, let them read it. If not, there 
 is no more reason why they should concern them- 
 selves with books than with bacteriology or harmony 
 or lithology, topics which everyone considers it 
 perfectly proper to leave to specialists. Assumed 
 opinions seem to them like eye-glasses and ear- 
 trumpets for the incurably blind and deaf. What 
 social adventures are so annoying as to fall in with 
 the critical ineptitudes of pinchbeck culture? Poeta 
 nascitur, non fit ; neither can his audience be manu- 
 factured. 
 
 It is to be hoped that this is not the case; at any 
 rate the laissez faire of cultivated exclusiveness is 
 not to be commended. People interested in botany 
 or numismatics, for instance, may well enough be 
 indifferent about popular enthusiasm for such sub- 
 jects, but there are the clearest reasons why it is 
 unfortunate, more than unfortunate, for intelligent 
 people not to care about belles lettres. Too much 
 profit is lost if they are missed : too much profit, 
 too much pleasure. 
 
 One of the pathetic aspects of life is that so large 
 a number never come to realize its inner meaning, 
 or their hidden selves. They would stare in per- 
 plexity at Browning's entreaty to be "unashamed of 
 soul." They move about in a world not realized, 
 spiritual somnambulists. That self-consciousness 
 by which all operations of brain and heart are vital- 
 
IN TROD UCTION: Vll 
 
 ized into a new and finer meaning, is shut away from 
 them through their want of sensibility. This is true 
 even of men with brawny intellects that produce 
 results of great practical value, and also of people 
 with a kind of heart which is full of amiable utility. 
 There is a broad difference between what the per- 
 sonal life means even to these, and the enjoyment, 
 the intelligence, the intensity of it all for such as 
 contemplate what they see, and dream out of routine 
 experiences, within and around them, mystery and 
 beauty. De Musset's career as an individual was 
 not a satisfactory one, yet it is impossible to think 
 of it as wholly unenviable when we hear his excla- 
 mation, "C'est moi qui ai vecu" — I have lived, I 
 myself. Now, the incomparable excellence of liter- 
 ature, especially in poetry, is that it penetrates 
 beneath the crust of life. Commonplaces are trans- 
 lated, and we find ourselves interested by what we 
 have scarcely noticed. Ideas and sensations are 
 presented through another medium than the matter- 
 of-fact. The appeal is made, less to mental than to 
 sympathetic responsiveness. Beauty of various 
 kinds is forced upon the attention, until sensibility 
 becomes more sensitive, and its capacity expands. 
 Not that literature creates any habitual exaltation, 
 or that curiously wrought moods hover over our 
 books. There is nothing especially tangible about 
 this developed way of looking at things, nor is it in 
 the least true that such a result is dependent upon 
 reading. Yet there are multitudes whose finer sense 
 has been quickened, who have taken a more serious 
 
vin INTRODUCTION. 
 
 view of important subjects which mean little when 
 regarded only trivially, through the aid of the great 
 writers; to say nothing of their having come to see 
 their everyday world in pensive twilight sentiment, 
 as well as in its meridian literalness. There is an 
 immense difference between the hard pragmatic and 
 the sympathetic contact with ideas. But how large 
 a part of literature gives us more than ideas, — sen- 
 sations. Through it we learn to feel, to feel through 
 the whole scale of emotion, from soul to verbal form. 
 Whatever stimulates a refined joy, — stirs the im- 
 agination and keeps it abreast with clear sound 
 sense, — vibrates to the voice of human personality, 
 instead of being formal, mechanical, and barren 
 of fruit for fresh warm life, is a part of litera- 
 ture's contribution to human progress. Even the 
 mere contact with beauty? Certainly the aesthetic 
 thrill is better than most things the world 
 gives us. 
 
 In the light of such influences, any who are not 
 anxious to develop appreciation for books, where it 
 seems wanting, are deficient either in seriousness or 
 in a sense of responsibility. But it is not easy to 
 find the way in which this cultivation can be accom- 
 plished. Anyone whose profession has brought him 
 into contact with young men by hundreds, knows to 
 how many the grace and nicer meaning of poetry 
 are locked and sealed. The first steps toward the 
 desired results must be prosaic ; people must train 
 themselves, or be trained, to see what is on the 
 surface, to grow conscious of metrical differences, 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 for instance ; not to remain quite blind to the real 
 meaning beneath a figurative turn ; even to come to 
 recognize that there is a figurative turn. But noth- 
 ing calls for more tact than how and to what extent 
 to carry on this analysis. Observation and dis- 
 crimination are indispensable, but literary drill runs 
 a danger of concentrating the attention on fact as 
 an end in itself. In most studies it may be so; in 
 literature it is not. 
 
 This scientific age was sure to come to the gates 
 of literary criticism with hands full of method and 
 systematization. Finding how difficult it is to 
 induce students to get at the heart of a poem (and, 
 it may be, sharing in the difficulty themselves), 
 many earnest and well-meaning students have 
 settled upon the close and thorough study of liter- 
 ature from the standpoint of information and 
 analysis. They teach and they make editions with 
 an eye to grammatical, rhetorical, and linguistic 
 instruction. They present clear formulated meth- 
 ods for examining style or argument. They present 
 other authors' exegeses as matter for direct acquisi- 
 tion or as models for application to similar criticism. 
 They annotate texts with elaborate explanations. 
 Their treatment may appear satisfactory : for any- 
 one can memorize, and learn how to apply formulas. 
 It is possible in this way to acquire tangible results, 
 and people are accordingly pleased to think that 
 they are learning; they even may become interested 
 in the details of the study. Especially, ambitious 
 students with little turn for originality make great 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 progress. Yet what does literature mean for them? 
 Superficial knowledge, facts — no soul. 
 
 The startling contemporary growth of this so- 
 called scientific study is natural both for teachers 
 and students. As the professional class enlarges, 
 the fascination of the very name of literature and 
 the gentility of the pursuit of it, naturally attract 
 many whose best aptitudes are for acquisition and 
 systematization. There is nothing so much to be 
 feared, by those solicitous for the growth of real 
 culture in this great country's assured destiny of 
 abundant education of some sort, as the ascendency 
 in the departments of literary direction of such 
 mechanically trained scholars. Their methods and 
 industry are hopeless substitutes for inspirations of 
 mind and heart. How inferior they are to that 
 simple-minded absorption of the spirit of our best 
 authors granted even to ordinary men who study 
 them with old-fashioned receptivity. We need to 
 pray for a generation not of minor scholars, but of 
 intimate and sympathetic readers. Let them be 
 less fluent in grammatical and rhetorical arts, and 
 more capable of a quick and happy quotation. Let 
 them be as unconscious of critical phrases and form- 
 ulas of analysis as Shakspere himself was, and 
 instead approach as closely as they may to the 
 thoughts and feelings of his plays. The so-called 
 "laboratory work" in literature may be deferred 
 until scientists introduce literary methods into the 
 laboratory. 
 
 So, too, about minute annotation of texts. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 Where they can be, allusions, dates, quotations, 
 social or personal side touches, and the like, had 
 better be looked up independently, if the reader 
 desires to know them ; and frequently — one almost 
 trembles at the temerity of saying it — he is prac- 
 tically as well off without knowing them. If, for 
 example, a line is quoted, why should the lightly 
 touched passing illustration be made to distract his 
 attention from the subject-matter by an excursus on 
 its author and location? Why should he not go 
 to one of our numerous recent dictionaries for an 
 unusual word? Why should he be taught archeo- 
 logical details or verbal parallels here, while he is 
 trying to learn how to read with his inner thought? 
 A large number of teachers and edited books aim at 
 making scholars, when they ought to try to make 
 good readers. In every calling, technical difficulties 
 become very dear to the practiced and expert work- 
 man, and the desire for thoroughness that is really 
 the instinct of a scientific and orderly temperament 
 must answer every question about allusions, origins, 
 and verbal or archeological suggestions. Indeed, 
 there is a place for this; the advanced and special 
 student ought to understand them. It is easy 
 enough to obtain a scholastic equipment when the 
 right time comes. The difficulty is not in using the 
 routine power of brain, but in getting in touch with 
 one's creative consciousness of mind and heart. If 
 the literary neophyte's attention is directed too 
 largely toward facts, he may mistake the means for 
 the end, and as a result of his training find the prin- 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cipal object that confronts him as he takes up new 
 works, nothing spiritual and aesthetic, but only the 
 task of obtaining exterior information, hunting down 
 quotations, dates, and allusions, surveying a poem 
 by the rod and line of a technical phraseology, 
 detecting parallels, and baying at the holes of con- 
 jectural originals, finally to emerge from his studies 
 learned, but not literary. 
 
 For infinite as is the value of its substance, the 
 essence of literature is beauty. No slight part of its 
 profit rests in the refining influence of its pure love- 
 liness, and in the pleasure which its sweetness and 
 art may add to our lives. To study it mechanically 
 is like grasping a butterfly. It is all there in one's 
 hand, all the "weight and size"; but alas for the one 
 who supposes that this slender, quivering body 
 which he holds is the winged color that flew. And 
 this is just where the mistake is made by those 
 proselytes from Philistia who attempt to conduct 
 educational services in the temple of culture. 
 
 The aim, then, for most readers should be to ac- 
 quire the art of sympathy. The first step toward 
 this, if it does not come naturally, is to read some 
 poem that pleases, until one is thoroughly familiar 
 with it and can call up one and another line here and 
 there, without the book. Then at odd times when 
 one is not in too strenuous a state of mind, to try (if 
 I may employ a word rather poetic for prose) to try 
 musing upon what one remembers of the poem ; not 
 disappointed, if no very tangible result shall appear. 
 By and by, when a sentiment has started, through 
 
INTRODUCTION. xni 
 
 which one begins to have some warmer feeling for 
 the passage, it is well to go over the lines thought- 
 fully, scrutinizing their meaning, and endeavoring 
 to ascertain the values of minor touches. Poetry 
 should be read aloud, or at least the ear should be 
 trained to follow a silent reading with the closest 
 attention. One of the most interesting and at the 
 same time helpful devices for close knowledge of a 
 piece of literature, is to think out certain topics, 
 such as what clews we find to a knowledge of the 
 author himself; what suggestion we can note of this 
 or that taste or opinion ; in what lines his height- 
 ened style appears at its best ; where he is most 
 happy in fancy, or in cadence. Such topics are 
 interesting and instructive for themselves, and while 
 we consider them we are growing more penetra- 
 tively, familiar with the work before us, without 
 introducing any methods that are mechanical and 
 intrinsically unimportant, if not repellent. Any- 
 thing, in short, that is sympathetic and personally 
 stimulating, contributing something of richness to 
 our knowledge and feeling of art, thought, and life, 
 is a good exercise in literary analysis. The point 
 of view should be shifting, however, and the treat- 
 ment flexible. 
 
 But although, so far as the primary value of liter- 
 ature goes, facts are nowhere of less importance, 
 there comes a time when a wider and philosophical 
 study is valuable and most interesting: such as 
 observing the forces by which a great period or a 
 great individual has been produced, or inquiring 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 into the ways whereby schools of letters or single 
 authors fall short through unfavorable antecedent 
 or contemporaneous influences; or the biographical 
 knowledge which adds personal interest to an 
 author's work, and makes it more intelligible ; or a 
 study of his development, as we follow his writings 
 chronologically. But large numbers of readers are 
 not born for such pleasures and privileges, and many 
 who might enjoy them have too little time; while 
 others who pursue them miss the central good, by 
 that old danger of mechanical and harshly intellect- 
 ualized study. The most laborious students are 
 frequently the most indolent, so far as interpreting 
 what they read in terms of their own thought, soul, 
 and sense for beauty. 
 
 Emerson says somewhere that, at a performance 
 of Hamlet to which he had looked forward with 
 great interest, he noticed nothing after the cry : 
 
 What may this mean, 
 That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel 
 Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, 
 Making night hideous, and we fools of nature 
 So horridly to shake our disposition 
 With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ? 
 
 Fancy the philosopher poet, his fine face bent 
 down from the stage and the brilliant theater, as he 
 sits possessed by the power of the lines, the magic 
 of their nature touch, the solemn infinitude of 
 human mystery which they suggest. When a pas- 
 sage becomes in this way our master, absorbing us 
 with its appeal to heart or mind or sense of art, then 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 we are getting into the reality of poetry, and the 
 key to it all is the cultivation not of brain, but of 
 sensibility. 
 
 The fact that this is so impalpable makes it 
 unteachable. Evidently, too, reading literature 
 so perfectly is unusual and fortuitous. The great 
 advantage of having poetry by heart lies just here, 
 that when we are in the mood for this or that 
 thought or sentiment, it comes to us, and is more 
 a part of ourselves than when we untie it from 
 printed words. Yet if we do not often enjoy such 
 an Emersonian ecstasy, in a lower degree we are 
 constantly susceptible to the vital interpretation of 
 literature, as we more steadily apprehend that our 
 highest study is not to acquire views or facts, but 
 sensations. To this end, we must attend shrewdly, 
 observing even minute details, since one never 
 knows whether there is a secret for him here or 
 there. We must listen for the note of personality. 
 We must relax intellectual rigidity and read sympa- 
 thetically. If a poem affords no sense of beauty, 
 we must understand that we have read it amiss. To 
 me it seems incomparably better that anyone's ac- 
 cidental moods should be haunted by a subtle or 
 noble thought, or by a line that has soul or music 
 in it, than for one to be a master of learning. 
 
 Important as it is that the interpretation should 
 come from within, outside guidance is helpful. 
 Many may receive hints from a comment upon a 
 line, or a development of an author's less obvious 
 traits, through which they will see what they have 
 
XVI IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 not seen. To such critical comments as Hudson's, 
 for instance, some of us are increasingly grateful, if 
 for nothing more than the service they did our early 
 reading, in making us feel that there was a moral 
 fascination in passages where our careless perusal 
 had seen nothing. Of all American editors, Hudson 
 (though intellectually unreliable and clumsy, and 
 anything but a great man, save for his sometimes 
 erring love and sympathy) has rendered the best 
 service by stimulating to see the beautiful, not so 
 finely on the side of art, but admirably on the eth- 
 ical side. "Sign-post criticism" is scoffed at by 
 many who do not need it ; but compasses are con- 
 stantly required, in spite of the world's Giottos. 
 
 But then, as readers develop, critics whose dis- 
 crimination and aesthetic faculty overtop such 
 writers as the one just named afford great pleasure 
 and assistance. When we are thoughtfully familiar 
 with an author we enjoy listening to another and 
 stronger student's comments upon him. Often new 
 ideas are suggested, and we occasionally are quick- 
 ened into an independent thought by the seemingly 
 accidental stir of mind, perhaps even in resisting a 
 view with which we do not accord. Some critical 
 essays also have the nature of creative literature. 
 There is the liveliest intellectual delight in coming 
 in touch with an elegant and sympathetic mind 
 giving utterance to his sense of the charm and 
 significance of an author whom we ourselves have 
 felt. Even if there is nothing new, we enjoy the 
 play of happy phrase and nimble association; we 
 
INTRO D UCTION. xvu 
 
 enjoy the sense of intelligent and refined compan- 
 ionship. But when a new lode is opened before us, 
 — meanings and graces unguessed before, — aside 
 from our absolute acquisition, how profitable is the 
 sudden discontent with our dull, creeping, inatten- 
 tion ! From interesting criticism, too, the desire 
 for first-hand knowledge may be acquired, and 
 convenient, if not at times necessary, guidance 
 in selection. 
 
 But the most profitable criticism is that broad 
 and philosophical general discussion w r hich is illus- 
 trated by such authors as Coleridge or Arnold. 
 Such passages put us on the track of what we need 
 to recognize, if we are to appreciate the higher 
 literature on both its sympathetic and intellectual 
 sides, without the disadvantage of offering to do 
 our thinking for us in specific application. They 
 call our attention to points which, after we have 
 once noticed them, we find constantly recurring in 
 our reading. Our literary life is made richer by 
 observing them. They suggest topics which it is 
 stimulating to think out. By bringing us in contact 
 with a more theoretical and aesthetic range of ideas, 
 they widen our intellectual and artistic world. 
 They lead our commonplace taste to a just view of 
 what it is right to admire. Nor is it a trifling 
 service that they set before us various phases of 
 the history of literature, one of the most fascinating 
 and profitable of all studies. Yet in reading even 
 the most admirable criticism, we need to keep con- 
 stantly in view our personal relation to literature. 
 
XV111 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 All aids are only instrumental to our close and 
 loving companionship with authors who will make 
 our lives more agreeable, more thoughtful, more 
 sympathetic. Especially in poetry, it is the aim of 
 all study to enable every reader to be his own critic, 
 and thereby ultimately to be, we may say, his own 
 poet. For the finest thoughts, most newly and 
 perfectly apprehended by a great writer's intellect 
 and emotion, and best expressed, realize their high- 
 est mission only when the reader becomes to them 
 the creative artist, and takes them up as Shakspere 
 took the crude work of his predecessors; so that by 
 a personal interpretation and heightening, a noble 
 plagiarism, the poetry of thought, feeling, and style 
 is sung by himself to himself alone, in that inner 
 language which we so rarely employ, yet which we 
 surely have employed whenever a poem has flashed 
 from book to brain and soul, and become a mood, 
 a picture, or an inspiration. Yet the levels of liter- 
 ary pleasure are more usual than the heights, and a 
 considerable part of our interest in books is more 
 reflective than emotional. But never unsympa- 
 thetic; never, if what we call literature is really so, 
 will it yield its best unless we approach it in a spirit 
 not of fact but of sensibility. It will render us 
 more of itself, as we bring to it more of ourselves. 
 Its great gift is in expanding and satisfying our 
 finer nature, and as we grow in refinement of brain 
 and delicacy of feeling, we shall appreciate how well 
 the effort pays of learning it, instead of learning 
 about it. There is a line of Matthew Arnold's, 
 
INTRODUCTION. xix 
 
 regarding life in general, in which for myself I 
 constantly sum up the true art of interpreting 
 literature : 
 
 Think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well. 
 
 For surely out of an intimacy of mind and heart 
 with those who have drawn most thought, feeling, 
 and beauty out of life, the fruit of a happier and 
 better character can hardly fail to be born. 
 
 The selections that follow are designed to serve 
 as an introduction to literary criticism. Care has 
 been taken to illustrate the characteristic expression 
 as well as thought of the authors represented. To 
 avoid the mechanical tendency of arbitrarily applied 
 opinions, as well as for the larger stimulus of philo- 
 sophical discussion, a choice has been made of 
 passages that mainly develop general principles, 
 even where they may treat directly of specific 
 authors or works. Where time allows, readers or 
 classes will find constant opportunity for following 
 out suggested topics connected with literary history, 
 and it is hoped that these excerpts may lead to a 
 more extended reading of the authors from whom 
 they are taken. For those, however, to whom such 
 an introduction to criticism is principally directed, 
 close and thoughtful acquisition of a few important 
 ideas seems more profitable than hasty wider 
 reading. 
 
 If the views that have been presented in the 
 preceding pages are correct, the first and greatest art 
 to be acquired in literary study is "How to read." 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A large majority whose tastes and training have not 
 led them to familiarity with books, find nothing 
 more difficult than learning to observe leading 
 points, and to grasp the essential outlines of a poem 
 or essay. I have met with so many genuine cases 
 of this puzzled confusion as to what should be 
 observed and remembered, that I have appended to 
 the text a few pages containing a partial list of topics 
 involved in the different selections, that may serve 
 to focus the attention for some to whom literary 
 studies are as yet vague and perplexing. Among 
 these will be found such brief explanations of the 
 text as seem necessary, and not within the reach of 
 most readers' resources ; together with a few critical 
 suggestions, and various hints of associated ideas 
 that may profitably be followed out. 
 
 It has seemed desirable to give rather more ex- 
 tended passages from two or three authors, and for 
 this fuller exposition of their thought I have selected 
 Coleridge and Arnold, as the two whose influence 
 on the literary criticism of the century has been and 
 still is perhaps most significant. I may add that in 
 the formal study of these examples of English prose, 
 attention should constantly be paid to the literary 
 manner, as well as to the ideas ; noting traits of 
 style, and the relation of these to the thought and 
 moral qualities of the writer, 
 
 For soul is form and doth the body make. 
 
ENGLISH CRITICISM FOR STUDENTS. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 i 554-1 586. 
 
 [From its historical position Sidney's Defense of Poesy is 
 an important work in the development of English criticism. 
 It is one of those inquiries into the nature of poetry that 
 have appealed to philosophical curiosity from classical times 
 down to our own, and that are interesting and suggestive, 
 even if not of the most valuable order. Sidney's work is 
 especially noteworthy as a landmark in the evolution of 
 English prose, and as an indication of the classical spirit of 
 the circle to which he belonged. For he writes more as a 
 student than as an alert contemporary of the men of 1580 ; 
 he was scholastically blind to the signs of the times. For- 
 tunately Marlowe and Shakspere did not take the essay as 
 a literary guide. Yet for a professed classicist, Sidney is 
 not narrow, as his love for English ballads indicates, and his 
 pure and ideal spirit is shown in the serious ethical concep- 
 tion of poetry that marks his entire work.] 
 
 From the Defense of Poesy. 
 
 It is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet 
 (no more than a long gown maketh an advocate, 
 who, though he pleaded in armor, should be an advo- 
 cate and no soldier) ; but it is that feigning notable 
 
2 SIP PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that de- 
 lightful teaching, which must be the right describ- 
 ing note to know a poet by. Although, indeed, the 
 senate of poets have chosen verse as their fittest 
 raiment ; meaning, as in matter they passed all in 
 all, so in manner to go beyond them ; not speaking 
 table-talk fashion, or like men in a dream, words as 
 they chanceably fall from the mouth, but piecing 
 each syllable of each word by just proportion, ac- 
 cording to the dignity of the subject. 
 
 Now, therefore, it shall not be amiss, first, to 
 weight this latter sort of poetry by his works, and 
 then by his parts ; and if in neither of these anato- 
 mies he be commendable, I hope we shall receive a 
 more favorable sentence. This purifying of wit, 
 this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, 
 and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call 
 learning, under what name soever it come forth, or 
 to what immediate end soever it be directed ; the 
 final end is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfec- 
 tion as our degenerate souls, made worse by their 
 clay lodgings, can be capable of. This, according 
 to the inclination of man, bred many formed impres- 
 sions; for some that thought this felicity principally 
 to be gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be 
 so high or heavenly as acquaintance with the stars, 
 gave themselves to astronomy ; others, persuad- 
 ing themselves to be demi-gods, if they knew the 
 causes of things, became natural and supernat- 
 ural philosophers. Some an admirable delight drew 
 to music, and some the certainty of demonstrations 
 
THE DEFENSE OF POESY. 3 
 
 to the mathematics, but all, one and other, having 
 this scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up 
 the mind from the dungeon of the body to the 
 enjoying his own divine essence. But when, by the 
 balance of experience, it was found that the astron- 
 omer, looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch ; that 
 the inquiring philosopher might be blind in himself ; 
 and the mathematician might draw forth a straight 
 line with a crooked heart ; then lo ! did proof, the 
 over-ruler of opinions, make manifest that all these 
 are but serving sciences, which, as they have a pri- 
 vate end in themselves, so yet are they all directed 
 to the highest end of the mistress knowledge, by the 
 Greeks called apxireKToviKr\, which stands, as I 
 think, in the knowledge of a man's self; in the ethic 
 and politic consideration, with the end of well doing, 
 and not of well knowing only ; even as the saddler's 
 next end is to make a good saddle, but his further 
 end to serve a nobler faculty, which is horseman- 
 ship ; so the horseman's to soldiery ; and the soldier 
 not only to have the skill, but to perform the prac- 
 tice of a soldier. So that the ending end of all 
 earthly learning being virtuous action, those skills 
 that most serve to bring forth that, have a most just 
 title to be princes over all the rest ; wherein, if we 
 can show, the poet is worthy to have it before any 
 other competitors. 
 
 1 conclude, therefore, that he excelleth his- 
 tory, not only in furnishing the mind with knowledge, 
 but in setting it forward to that which deserveth to 
 be called and accounted good : which setting forward, 
 
4 SIR PHILIP SIDNE V. 
 
 and moving to well-doing, indeed, setteth the laurel 
 crown upon the poet as victorious; not only of the 
 historian, but over the philosopher, howsoever in 
 teaching it may be questionable. For suppose it 
 be granted, that which I suppose with great reason 
 may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect 
 of his methodical proceeding, teach more perfectly 
 than the poet, yet do I think that no man is so 
 much cpiXo<piko (70005", as to compare the philoso- 
 pher in moving with the poet. And that moving is 
 of a higher degree than teaching, it may by this 
 appear, that it is well-nigh both the cause and effect 
 of teaching ; for who will be taught, if he be not 
 moved with desire to be taught ? And what so 
 much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak 
 still of moral doctrine) as that it moveth one to do 
 that which it doth teach ? For, as Aristotle saith, it 
 is not yrGQCiS but npa^iz 1 must be the fruit : and 
 how npa B,iS can not be, without being moved to prac- 
 tise, it is no hard matter to consider. The philoso- 
 pher showeth you the way, he informeth you of the 
 particularities, as well of the tediousness of the way 
 and of the pleasant lodging you shall have when 
 your journey is ended, as of the many by-turnings 
 that may divert you from your way ; but this is to 
 no man, but to him that will read him, and read him 
 with attentive, studious painfulness ; which constant 
 desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed 
 half the hardness of the way, and therefore is be- 
 
 1 Not knowledge but practice. 
 
THE DEFENSE OF POESY. 5 
 
 holden to the philosopher but for the other half. 
 Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought that 
 where once reason hath so much overmastered pas- 
 sion as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, 
 the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good 
 as a philosopher's book : since in nature we know it 
 is well to do well, and what is well and what is evil, 
 although not in the words of art which philosophers 
 bestow upon us; for out of natural conceit the 
 philosophers drew it ; but to be moved to do that 
 which we know, or to be moved with desire to know, 
 hoc obus, hie labor est. 
 
 1 Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of 
 human, and according to the human conceit), is our 
 poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the 
 way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as 
 will entice any man to enter into it ; nay, he doth, 
 as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, 
 at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that 
 full of that taste yoj may long to pass further. He 
 beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must 
 blur the margin with interpretations, and load the 
 memory with doubtfulness, but he cometh to you 
 with words set in delightful proportion, either ac- 
 companied with, or prepared for, the well-enchant- 
 ing skill of music ; and with a tale, forsooth, he 
 cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children 
 from play, and old men from the chimney-corner ; 
 and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning 
 of the mind from wickedness to virtue ; even as the~ 
 child is often brought to take most wholesome 
 
6 SIP PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 things by hiding them in such other as have a 
 pleasant taste ; which, if one should begin to tell 
 them the nature of the aloes or rhubarb they 
 should receive, would sooner take their physic at 
 their ears than at their mouth. So it is in men (most 
 of which are childish in the best things, till they be 
 cradled in their graves) ; glad they will be to hear 
 the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, ^Eneas ; and 
 hearing them, must needs hear the right description 
 of wisdom, valor, and justice; which, if they had 
 been barely (that is to say, philosophically) set out, 
 they would swear they be brought to school again. 
 
THE EXPLORATA, OR DISCOVERIES. 
 
 BEN JONSON. 
 
 [i 573-1637.] 
 
 [Milton's word for Jonson's comedies, " learned," applies 
 to his entire literary career. He stands apart from the other 
 famous Elizabethan dramatists as a representative of classi- 
 cal training and method adapted to the modern age. His 
 scholastic taste never quite approved the romantic uncon- 
 straint and, as he felt, extreme spontaneity of his contem- 
 poraries. The so-called proprieties of form and treatment 
 seemed to him literary essentials, and even in his lyrics, for 
 many readers the most engaging part of his work, we find 
 numerous traces of classical influence. More than any other 
 author of his day, literature to Jonson was an art, and he 
 devoted his active and trained mind closely to the theory as 
 well as practice of it. Even from his plays we see that he 
 was a critic. In the collection of prose observations called 
 " Discoveries," he has left many admirable discussions of 
 various topics, and the extracts which follow show that he 
 deserves to be remembered as one of our shrewdest general 
 critics as well as one of our foremost lyrical and dramatic 
 poets.] 
 
 From the Explorata, or Discoveries. 
 
 To judge of poets is only the faculty of poets ; 
 
 and not of all poets, but the best. Nemo infelicius 
 de poetis judicavit, quam qui de poetis scrip sit. But 
 some will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make 
 more faults than they mend ordinarily. See their 
 diseases and those of grammarians. It is true, many 
 
8 BEN JON SON. 
 
 bodies are the worse for the meddling with; and the 
 multitude of physicians hath destroyed many sound 
 patients with their wrong practice. But the office 
 of a true critic or censor is, not to throw by a letter 
 anywhere, or damn an innocent syllable, but lay the 
 words together, and amend them ; judge sincerely 
 of the author and his matter, which is the sign of 
 solid and perfect learning in a man. Such was 
 Horace, an author of much civility, and, if any one 
 among the heathen can be, the best master both of 
 virtue and wisdom ; an excellent and true judge 
 upon cause and reason, not because he thought so, 
 but because he knew so out of use and experience. 
 
 Language most shows a man : Speak, that I 
 
 may see thee. It springs out of the most retired 
 and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the 
 parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's 
 form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is 
 likened to a man ; and as we consider feature and 
 composition in a man, so words in language; in the 
 greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of 
 it. 
 
 1 cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed 
 
 that she can bring forth nothing worth her former 
 years. She is always the same, like herself ; and 
 when she collects her strength is abler still. Men 
 are decayed, and studies: she is not. 
 
 1 know nothing can conduce more to letters 
 
 than to examine the writings of the ancients, and 
 not to rest in their sole authority, or take all upon 
 trust from them, provided the plagues of judging 
 
THE EXPLORATA, OR DISCOVERIES. 9 
 
 and pronouncing against them be away ; such as are 
 envy, bitterness, precipitation, impudence, and scur- 
 rile scoffing. For to all the observations of the 
 ancients we have our own experience, which if we 
 will use and apply, we have better means to pro- 
 nounce. It is true they opened the gates, and made 
 the way that went before us, but as guides, not com- 
 manders: Non domini nostri, sed duces fuere. Truth 
 lies open to all ; it is no man's several. Patet omni- 
 bus Veritas ; nondum est occupata. Multum ex ilia, 
 etiam futuris relictum est, 
 
 1 could never think the study of wisdom con- 
 
 fined only to the philosopher, or of piety to the 
 divine, or of state to the politic ; but that he which 
 can feign a commonwealth (which is the poet), can 
 gown it with counsels, strengthen it with laws, cor- 
 rect it with judgments, inform it with religion and 
 morals, is all these. We do not require in him mere 
 elocution, or an excellent faculty in verse, but the 
 exact knowledge of all virtues and their contraries, 
 with ability to render the one loved, the other hated, 
 by his proper embattling them. The philosophers 
 did insolently, to challenge only to themselves that 
 which the greatest generals and gravest counsellors 
 never durst. For such had rather do than promise 
 the best things. 
 
 But the wretcheder are the obstinate contem- 
 ners of all helps and arts ; such as presuming on 
 their own naturals, 1 which, perhaps, are excellent, 
 
 1 Natural talents. 
 
IO BEN JON SON. 
 
 dare deride all diligence, and seem to mock at the 
 terms when they understand not the things; think- 
 ing that way to get off wittily with their ignorance. 
 These are imitated often by such as are their peers 
 in negligence though they cannot be in nature ; and 
 they utter all they can think with a kind of violence 
 and indisposition, unexamined, without relation 
 either to person, place, or any fitness else ; and the 
 more wilful and stubborn they are in it the more 
 learned they are esteemed of the multitude, through 
 their excellent vice of judgment, who think those 
 things the stronger that have no art ; as if to break 
 were better than to open, or to rend asunder 
 gentler than to loose. 
 
 It cannot but come to pass that these men who 
 commonly seek to do more than enough may some- 
 times happen on something that is good and great ; 
 but very seldom : and when it comes it doth not 
 recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and 
 their sentences, which they only and ambitiously 
 seek for, stick out, and are more eminent, because 
 all is sordid and vile about them ; as lights are more 
 discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. 
 Now, because they speak all they can, however un- 
 fitly, they are thought to have the greater copy; 1 
 where the learned use ever election and a mean, 
 they look back to what they intended at first, and 
 make all an even and proportioned body. The true 
 artificer will not run away from Nature as he were 
 
 1 Abundance. 
 
THE EXPLORATA, OR DISCOVERIES. II 
 
 afraid of her, or depart from life and the likeness of 
 truth, but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And 
 though his language differ from the vulgar some- 
 what, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the 
 Tamerlanes and Tamer-chams of the late age, which 
 had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and 
 furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant 
 gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry 
 it, as none but artificers perceive it. In the mean 
 time, perhaps, he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor 
 writer, or by what contumelious word can come in 
 their cheeks, by these men who, without labor, judg- 
 ment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or 
 preferred before him. He gratulates them and their 
 fortune. An other age, or juster men, will acknowl- 
 edge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in divid- 
 ing, 1 his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he 
 doth inspire his readers, with what sweetness he 
 strokes them ; in inveighing, what sharpness ; in 
 jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in 
 men's affections ; how invade and break in upon 
 them, and make their minds like the thing he writes. 
 Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper, 
 which hath ornament, which height, what is beauti- 
 fully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, 
 which strong, to show the composition manly ; and 
 how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, 
 humble, improper, or effeminate phrase ; which is 
 not only praised of the most, but commended, which 
 is worse, especially for that it is naught. 
 1 Analyzing. 
 
12 BEN JON SON. 
 l Custom is the most certain mistress of lan- 
 
 guage, as the public stamp makes the current money. 
 But we must not be too frequent with the mint, every 
 day coining, nor fetch words from the extreme and 
 utmost ages ; since the chief virtue of a style is per- 
 spicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an 
 interpreter. Words borrowed of antiquity do lend 
 a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their 
 delight sometimes ; for they have the authority 
 of years, and out of their intermission do win 
 themselves a kind of gracelike newness. But the 
 eldest of the present, and newest of the past lan- 
 guage, is the best. For what was the ancient lan- 
 guage, which some men so dote upon, but the 
 ancient custom ? Yet when I name custom, I 
 understand not the vulgar custom ; for that were 
 a precept no less dangerous to language than life, if 
 we should speak or live after the manners of the 
 vulgar : but that I call custom of speech, which is 
 the consent of the learned ; as custom of life, which 
 is the consent of the good. Virgil was most loving 
 of antiquity ; yet how rarely doth he insert aqaai and 
 pictai ! Lucretius is scabrous and rough in these ; he 
 seeks them : as some do Chaucerisms with us, which 
 were better expunged and banished. Some words 
 are to be culled out for ornament and color, as we 
 gather flowers to straw houses or make garlands ; 
 but they are better when they grow to our style as 
 
 1 Cp. Horace de Arte Poetica ad init. Also, the extract from 
 Lowell's Introduction to the Biglozv Papers (in the appendix). 
 
THE EXPIORATA, OR DISCOVERIES. 13 
 
 in a meadow, where, though the mere grass and 
 greenness delights, yet the variety of flowers doth 
 heighten and beautify. Marry, we must not play 
 or riot too much with them, as in paronomasies ; 
 nor use too swelling or ill-sounding words, qua per 
 salebras, altaque sax a cadunt. It is true, there is no 
 sound but shall find some lovers, as the bitterest 
 confections are grateful to some palates. Our com- 
 position must be more accurate in the beginning and 
 end than in the midst, and in the end more than in 
 the beginning; for through the midst the stream 
 bears us. And this is attained by custom, more 
 than care or diligence. We must express readily and 
 fully, not profusely. There is difference between 
 a liberal and prodigal hand. As it is a great point 
 of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and 
 veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is 
 of no less praise, when the argument doth ask it. 
 Either of them hath their fitness in the place. A 
 good man always profits by his endeavor, by his 
 help, yea, when he is absent ; nay, when he is dead, 
 by his example and memory : so good authors in 
 their style. A strict and succinct style is that where 
 you can take away nothing without loss, and that 
 loss to be manifest. 
 
 For a man to write well, there are required 
 
 three necessaries — to read the best authors, observe 
 the best speakers, and much exercise of his own 
 style. In style, to consider what ought to be writ- 
 ten, and after what manner, he must first think and 
 excogitate his matter, then choose his words, and 
 
14 BEN JON SON. 
 
 examine the weight of either. Then take care, in 
 placing and ranking both matter and words, that 
 the composition be comely ; and to do this with 
 diligence and often. No matter how slow the style 
 be at first, so it be labored and accurate ; seek the 
 best, andbe not glad of the forward conceits, or 
 first words, that offer themselves to us ; but judge 
 of what we invent, and order what we approve. 
 Repeat often what we have formerly written ; which 
 beside that it helps the consequence, and makes the 
 juncture better, it quickens the heat of imagination, 
 that often cools in the time of setting down, and 
 gives it new strength, as if it grew lustier by the 
 going back. As we see in the contention of leaping, 
 they jump farthest that fetch their race largest ; or, 
 as in throwing a dart or javelin, we force back our 
 arms to make our loose the stronger. Yet, if we 
 have a fair gale of wind, I forbid not the steering 
 out of our sail, so the favor of the gale deceive us 
 not. For all that we invent doth please us in the 
 conception of birth, else we would never set it down. 
 But the safest is to return to our judgment, 1 and 
 handle over again those things the easiness of which 
 might make them justly suspected. So did the 
 best writers in their beginnings ; they imposed upon 
 themselves care and industry ; they did nothing 
 rashly : they obtained first to write well, and then 
 custom made it easy and a habit. By little and little 
 their matter showed itself to them more plentifully ; 
 their words answered, their composition followed ; 
 
 1 Cp. Jonson's criticism of Shakspere, Explo?'ata, 71. 
 
THE EXPLORATA, OR DISCOVERIES. 1 5 
 
 and all, as in a well-ordered family, presented itself 
 in the place. So that the sum of all is, ready writing 
 makes not good writing, but good writing brings on 
 ready writing. Yet, when we think we have got the 
 faculty, it is even then good to resist it, as to give a 
 horse a check sometimes with a bit, which doth not 
 so much stop his course as stir his mettle. Again, 
 whither a man's genius is best able to reach, thither 
 it should more and more contend, lift and dilate 
 itself ; as men of low stature raise themselves on 
 their toes, and so ofttimes get even, if not eminent. 
 Besides, as it is fit for grown and able writers to 
 stand of themselves, and work with their own 
 strength, to trust and endeavor by their own facul- 
 ties, so it is fit for the beginner and learner to study 
 others and the best. For the mind and memory are 
 more sharply exercised in comprehending another 
 man's things than our own ; and such as accustom 
 themselves and are familiar with the best authors 
 shall ever and anon find somewhat of them in them- 
 selves, and in the expression of their minds, even 
 when they feel it not, be able to utter something 
 like theirs, which hath an authority above their own. 
 Nay, sometimes it is the reward of a man's study, 
 the praise of quoting another man fitly; and though 
 a man be more prone and able for one kind of writ- 
 ing than another, yet he must exercise all. For as 
 in an instrument, so in style, there must be a har- 
 mony and consent of parts. 
 
1 6 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 [1631-1700.] 
 
 [Dryden's dramatization of Paradise Lost appeared in 
 1674, with this introductory essay on heroic poetry and 
 poetic license. For its length it is the most varied and sug- 
 gestive of his numerous critical writings, if not so excellent 
 as some that followed it. Respect for Dryden as a critic 
 has been steadily growing during the last two centuries ; 
 what he wrote of Chaucer may with a modification be ap- 
 plied to himself — " He is a fountain of good sense." He 
 was so open-minded and progressive all through his life that 
 the study of his criticism becomes especially interesting as 
 an illustration of literary development. His mind was vig- 
 orous rather than subtle, and his sympathies were with the 
 Restoration school, at whose head he stands; yet he manifests 
 no little catholicity and sensitiveness. He is moreover one 
 of the most agreeable prose authors in our literature, writing 
 "prose such as we would all gladly use if we only knew how'' 
 — easy and clear, entirely unostentatious, with the pleasantest 
 touches of familiarity, and yet not lacking in seriousness 
 and a gentleman's dignity. The passage that follows, aside 
 from the great interest of its literary principles, contains 
 many suggestions about Dryden and his literary generation ; 
 for example, the contemporary estimate of Milton, and Dry- 
 den's defence of those lines of his own that correspond more 
 with the taste of his middle than of his later period. Dr. 
 Johnson's prepossession in favor of the classical school does 
 not mar the fairness of his judgment in saying that Dryden 
 is the father of English criticism and that he writes the 
 criticism of a poet.] 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 1 7 
 
 The Preface to the State of Innocence. 
 
 To satisfy the curiosity of those who will give 
 themselves the trouble of reading the ensuing poem, 
 I think myself obliged to render them a reason why 
 I publish an Opera which was never acted. In the 
 first place, I shall not be ashamed to own that my 
 chiefest motive was the ambition which I acknowl- 
 edged in the epistle. I was desirous to lay at the feet 
 of so beautiful and excellent a princess, 1 a work 
 which, I confess, was unworthy her; but which I 
 hope she will have the goodness to forgive. I was 
 also induced to it in my own defence, many hundred 
 copies of it being dispersed abroad, without my 
 knowledge or consent ; so that every one gathering 
 new faults, it became at length a libel against me ; 
 and I saw, with some disdain, more nonsense than 
 either I or as bad a poet could have crammed into 
 it at a month's warning; in which time, it was 
 wholly written, and not since revised. After this, I 
 cannot, without injury to the deceased author of 
 Paradise Lost, but acknowledge that this poem has 
 received its entire foundation, part of the design, 
 and many of the ornaments from him. What I have 
 borrowed, will be so easily discerned from my mean 
 productions, that I shall not need to point the 
 reader to the places : and truly, I should be sorry, 
 for my own sake, that any one should take the pains 
 to compare them together, the original being un- 
 doubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most 
 sublime poems, which either this age or nation has 
 
 1 The Duchess of York. 
 
1 8 JOHN DRY DEM. 
 
 produced. And though I could not refuse the par- 
 tiality of my friend, 1 who is pleased to commend 
 me in his verses, I hope they will rather be esteemed 
 the effect of his love to me, than of his deliberate 
 and sober judgment. His genius is able to make 
 beautiful what he pleases: yet, as he has been too 
 favorable to me, I doubt not but he will hear of his 
 kindness from many of our contemporaries : for we 
 are fallen into an age of illiterate, censorious, and 
 detracting people ; who, thus qualified, set up for 
 critics. 
 
 In the first place, I must take leave to tell them, 
 that they wholly mistake the nature of criticism, 
 who think its business is principally to find fault. 
 Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was 
 meant a standard of judging well, the chiefest part 
 of which is to observe those excellencies which 
 should delight a reasonable reader. If the design, 
 the conduct, the thoughts, and the expressions of a 
 poem, be generally, such as proceed from a true 
 genius of poetry, the critic ought to pass his judg- 
 ment in favor of the author. 'Tis malicious and 
 unmanly to snarl at the little lapses of a pen, from 
 which Virgil himself stands not exempted. Horace 
 acknowledges that honest Homer nods sometimes : 
 he is not equally awake in every line. But he leaves 
 it also as a standing measure for our judgments: 
 
 Non, ubi plura nitent in carmine, paucis 
 
 Offendi maculis, quas aut incuria fudit 
 Aut humana parum cavit natura. 
 
 1 An extravagant compliment of Lee's to Dryden's supposed im- 
 provement on Milton. 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 19 
 
 And Longinus, who was undoubtedly after Aris- 
 totle the greatest critic among the Greeks, in his 
 twenty-seventh chapter nepi vtpovs, has judiciously 
 preferred the sublime genius that sometimes errs, to 
 the middling or indifferent one which makes few 
 faults, but seldom or never rises to any excellence. 
 He compares the first to a man of large possessions, 
 who has not leisure to consider of every slight ex- 
 pense, will not debase himself to the management of 
 every trifle. Particular sums are not laid out or 
 spared to the greatest advantage in his economy, 
 but are sometimes suffered to run to waste, while he 
 is only careful of the main. On the other side, he 
 likens the mediocrity of wit to one of a mean fortune, 
 who manages his store with extreme frugality, or 
 rather parsimony; but who, with fear of running into 
 profuseness, never arrives to the magnificence of 
 living. This kind of genius writes indeed correctly. 
 A wary man he is in grammar, very nice as to sole- 
 cism or barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, 
 knows better than any man what is not to be writ- 
 ten, and never hazards himself so far as to fall ; but 
 plods on deliberately, and, as a grave man ought, is 
 sure to put his staff before him. In short, he sets his 
 heart upon it, and with wonderful care makes his 
 business sure ; that is, in plain English, neither to 
 
 be blamed nor praised. 1 could, saith my author, 
 
 find out some blemishes in Homer; and am, 
 perhaps, as naturally inclined to be disgusted at a 
 fault as another man. But after all, to speak im- 
 partially, his failings are such as are only marks of 
 
20 JOHN DRY DEN. 
 
 human frailty ; they are little mistakes, or rather 
 negligences, which have escaped his pen in the fer- 
 vor of his writing ; the sublimity of his spirit carries 
 it with me against his carelessness. And though 
 Apollonius his Argonautes, and Theocritus his 
 Eidullia, are more free from errors, there is not any 
 man of so false a judgment, who would choose 
 rather to have been Apollonius or Theocritus, than 
 Homer. 
 
 'Tis worth our consideration, a little to examine 
 how much these hypercritics of English poetry differ 
 from the opinion of the Greek and Latin judges of 
 antiquity ; from the Italians and French, who have 
 succeeded them ; and, indeed, from the general taste 
 and approbation of all ages. Heroic poetry, which 
 they contemn, has ever been esteemed, and ever will 
 be, the greatest work of human nature ; in that rank 
 has Aristotle placed it, and Longinus is so full of 
 the like expressions, that he abundantly confirms 
 the other's testimony. Horace as plainly delivers 
 his opinion, and particularly praises Homer in these 
 verses : 
 
 Trojan i belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli, 
 
 Dum tu declamas Romse, Praeneste relegi; 
 
 Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, 
 
 Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit. 
 
 And in another place, modestly excluding him- 
 self from the number of poets, because he only wrote 
 odes and satires, he tells you a poet is such an one: 
 
 Cui mens divinior atque os 
 
 Magna sonaturum. 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 21 
 
 Quotations are superfluous in an established truth, 
 otherwise I could reckon up amongst the moderns, 
 all the Italian commentators on Aristotle's book of 
 Poetry ; amongst the French, the greatest in this 
 age, Boileau and Rapin ; the latter of which is alone 
 sufficient, were all other critics lost, to teach anew 
 the rules of writing. Any man who will seriously 
 consider the nature of an epic poem, how it agrees 
 with that of poetry in general, which is to instruct 
 and to delight, what actions it describes, and what 
 persons they are chiefly whom it informs ; will find 
 it a work which indeed is full of difficulty in the at- 
 tempt, but admirable when 'tis well performed. I 
 write not this with the least intention to undervalue 
 the other parts of poetry ; for comedy is both excel- 
 lently instructive and extremely pleasant : satire 
 lashes vice into reformation, and humor represents 
 folly so as to render it ridiculous. Many of our 
 present writers are eminent in both these kinds; and 
 particularly the author of the Plain-Dealer, whom I 
 am proud to call my friend, has obliged all honest 
 and virtuous men, by one of the most bold, most 
 general, and most useful satires which has ever been 
 presented on the English theatre. I do not dispute 
 the preference of tragedy : let every man enjoy his 
 taste. But 'tis unjust that they who have not the 
 least notion of heroic writing should therefore con- 
 demn the pleasure which others receive from it, 
 because they cannot comprehend it. Let them 
 please their appetites in eating what they like ; but 
 let them not force their dish on all the table. They 
 
22 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 who would combat general authority with particular 
 opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation 
 of understanding better than other men. Are all the 
 flights of heroic poetry to be concluded bombast, 
 unnatural, and mere madness, because they are not 
 affected with their excellencies ? Tis just as reason- 
 able as to conclude there is no day, because a blind 
 man cannot distinguish of light and colors. Ought 
 they not rather in modesty to doubt of their own 
 judgments, when they think this or that expression 
 in Homer, Virgil, Tasso, or Milton's Paradise, to be 
 too far strained, than positively to conclude that 'tis 
 all fustian and mere nonsense? 'Tis true, there are 
 limits to be set betwixt the boldness and rashness of 
 a poet ; but he must understand those limits who 
 pretends to judge, as well as he who undertakes to 
 write ; and he who has no liking to the whole ought 
 in reason to be excluded from censuring of the parts. 
 He must be a lawyer before he mounts the tribunal ; 
 and the judicature of one court, too, does not qualify 
 a man to preside in another. He may be an excel- 
 lent pleader in the Chancery, who is not fit to rule 
 the Common Pleas. But I will presume for once to 
 tell them, that the boldest strokes of poetry, when 
 they are managed artfully, are those which most 
 delight the reader. 
 
 Virgil and Horace, the severest writers of the 
 severest age, have made frequent use of the hardest 
 metaphors, and of the strongest hyperboles : and in 
 this case the best authority is the best argument. 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 23 
 
 For generally to have pleased, through all ages, 
 must bear the force of universal tradition. And if 
 you would appeal from thence to right reason, you 
 will gain no more by it in effect, than, first, to set up 
 your reason against those authors ; and secondly, 
 against all those who have admired them. You 
 must prove why that ought not to have pleased, 
 which has pleased the most learned, and the most 
 judicious : and to be thought knowing, you must 
 first put the fool upon all mankind. If you can enter 
 more deeply than they have done into the causes 
 and resorts of that which moves pleasure in a reader, 
 the field is open, you may be heard. But those 
 springs of human nature are not so easily discovered 
 by every superficial judge : it requires philosophy as 
 well as poetry to sound the depth of all the passions ; 
 what they are in themselves, and how they are to 
 be provoked ; and in this science the best poets have 
 excelled. Aristotle raised the fabric of his poetry 
 from observations of those things in which Euripides, 
 Sophocles, and ^Eschylus pleased ; he considered 
 how they raised the passions, and thence has drawn 
 rules for our imitation. From hence have sprung 
 the tropes and figures, for which they wanted a 
 name, w T ho first practised them and succeeded in 
 them. Thus I grant you that the knowledge of Na- 
 ture was the original rule, and that all poets ought 
 to study her, as well as Aristotle and Horace her 
 interpreters. But then this also undeniably follows, 
 that those things which delight all ages must have 
 
24 JOHN DR YDEN. 
 
 been an imitation of Nature ; which is all I contend. 
 Therefore is rhetoric made an art ; therefore the 
 names of so many tropes and figures were invented ; 
 because it was observed they had such and such 
 an effect upon the audience. Therefore catachreses 
 and hyperboles have found their place amongst 
 them ; not that they are to be avoided, but to be 
 used judiciously, and placed in poetry, as height- 
 nings and shadows are in painting, to make the 
 figure bolder, and cause it to stand off to sight. 
 
 Nee retia cervis 
 
 Ulla dolum meditantur, 
 
 says Virgil in his Eclogues. And speaking of 
 Leander in his Georgicks : 
 
 Nocte natat caeca serus freta ; quern super ingens 
 Porta tonat cceli, et scopulis illisa reclamant 
 ^Equora : 
 
 In both of these, you see, he fears not to give voice 
 and thought to things inanimate. 
 
 Will you arraign your master Horace for his hard- 
 ness of expression, when he describes the death of 
 Cleopatra? and says she did " Asperas tractare ser- 
 pentes, ut atrum corpore combiberet venenum ? " 
 because the body in that action performs what is 
 proper to the mouth. 
 
 As for hyperboles, I will neither quote Lucan nor 
 Statius, men of an unbounded imagination, but who 
 often wanted the poise of judgment. The divine 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 25 
 
 Virgil was not liable to that exception ; and yet he 
 describes Polyphemus thus : 
 
 " Graditurque per aequor 
 
 Jam medium ; necdum fluctus latera ardua tinxit." 
 
 In imitation of this place, our admirable Cowley ' 
 thus paints Goliah : 
 
 " The valley, now, this monster seem'd to fill ; 
 And we, methought, look'd up to him from our hill." 
 
 Where the two words, seem'd and methought, 
 have mollified the figure ; and yet if they had not 
 been there, the fright of the Israelites might have 
 excused their belief of the giant's stature. 
 
 In the eighth of the ^Eneids, Virgil paints the 
 swiftness of Camilla thus : 2 
 
 Ilia vel intactae segetis per summa volaret 
 Gramina, nee teneras cursu laesisset aristas : 
 Vel mare per medium, fiuctu suspensa tumenti, 
 Ferret iter, celeris nee tingueret sequore plantas. 
 
 You are not obliged, as in history, to a literal be- 
 lief of what the poet says : but you are pleased with 
 the image, without being cozened by the fiction. 
 
 Yet even in history Longinus quotes Herodotus 
 on this occasion of hyperboles. The Lacedemo- 
 nians, says he, at the Straits of Thermopylae, de- 
 
 1 In later writings Dryden condemns this darling of his youth for 
 such extravagant expressions. 
 
 2 At the end of the seventh book. The slight mistake is interest- 
 ing, since it shows that Dryden is quoting from memory — some- 
 thing indicated also in an earlier passage. 
 
26 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 fended themselves to the last extremity ; and when 
 their arms failed them, fought it out with their nails 
 and teeth ; till at lengtrf (the Persians shooting 
 continually upon them) they lay buried under the 
 arrows of their enemies. It is not reasonable (con- 
 tinues the critic) to believe that men could defend 
 themselves with their nails and teeth from an armed 
 multitude ; nor that they lay buried under a pile of 
 darts and arrows : and yet there wants not prob- 
 ability for the figure, because the hyperbole seems 
 not to have been made for the sake of the descrip- 
 tion, but rather to have been produced from the 
 occasion. 
 
 'Tis true, the boldness of the figures are to be 
 hidden sometimes by the address of the poet, that 
 they may work their effect upon the mind, without 
 discovering the art which caused it ; and therefore 
 they are principally to be used in passion, when we 
 speak more warmly, and with more precipitation 
 than at other times. For then, " Si vis me flere, do- 
 lendum est primum ipsi tibi;" the poet must put 
 on the passion he endeavors to represent. A man 
 in such an occasion is not cool enough, either to 
 reason rightly, or to talk calmly. Aggravations are 
 then in their proper places ; interrogations, exclama- 
 tions, hyperbata, or a disordered connection of dis- 
 course, are graceful there, because they are natural. 
 The sum of all depends on what before I hinted, 
 that this boldness of expression is not to be blamed, 
 if it be managed by the coolness and discretion 
 which is necessary to a poet. 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 2J 
 
 Yet before I leave this subject I cannot but take 
 notice how disingenuous our adversaries appear : all 
 that is dull, insipid, languishing, and without sinews 
 in a poem, they call an imitation of nature ; they 
 only offend our most equitable judges, who think 
 beyond them ; and lively images and elocution are 
 never to be forgiven. 
 
 What fustian, as they call it, have I heard these 
 gentlemen find out in Mr. Cowley's Odes ? I ac- 
 knowledged myself unworthy to defend so excellent 
 an author, neither have I room to do it here : only in 
 general I will say, that nothing can appear more 
 beautiful to me than the strength of those images 
 which they condemn. 
 
 Imaging is in itself the very height and life of 
 poetry. 'Tis, as Longinus describes it, a discourse 
 which, by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary 
 emotion of the soul, makes it seem to us that we 
 behold those things which the poet paints, so as to 
 be pleased with them, and to admire them. 
 
 If poetry be imitation, that part of it must needs 
 be best which describes most lively our actions and 
 passions, our virtues and our vices, our follies and our 
 humors. For neither is comedy without its part of 
 imaging ; and they who do it best are certainly 
 the most excellent in their kind. This is too plainly 
 proved to be denied. But how are poetical fictions, 
 how are hippocentaurs and chimaeras, or how are 
 angels and immaterial substances to be imaged ; 
 which, some of them, are things quite out of nature ; 
 others, such whereof we can have no notion ? This 
 
28 JOHN DRY DEN. 
 
 is the last refuge of our adversaries, and more than 
 any of them have yet had the wit to object against 
 us. The answer is easy to the first part of it. The 
 fiction of some beings which are not in nature 
 (second notions, as the logicians call them) has been 
 founded on the conjunction of two natures which 
 have a real separate being. So Hippocentaurs were 
 imaged by joining the natures of a man and horse 
 together, as Lucretius tells us, who has used this 
 word of image oftener than any of the poets. 
 
 Nam certe ex vivo Centauri non fit imago, 
 Nulla fuit quoniam talis natura animantis : 
 Verum ubi equi atque hominis casu convenit imago, 
 Haerescit facile extemplo, etc. 
 
 The same reason may also be alleged for chimae 
 ras and the rest. And poets may be allowed the 
 like liberty, for describing things which really exist 
 not, if they are founded on popular belief. Of this 
 nature are fairies, pygmies, and the extraordinary 
 effects of magic : for 'tis still an imitation, though 
 of other men's fancies ; and thus are Shakespeare's 
 Tempest, his Midsummer Night's Dream, and 
 Ben Jonson's Mask of Witches to be defended. 
 For immaterial substances, we are authorized by 
 Scripture in their description ; and herein the text 
 accommodates itself to vulgar apprehension, in giv- 
 ing angels the likeness of beautiful young men. 
 Thus, after the pagan divinity, has Homer drawn 
 his gods with human faces ; and thus we have no- 
 tions of things above us, by describing them like 
 other beings more within our knowledge. 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 2Q 
 
 I wish I could produce any one example of excel- 
 lent imaging in all this poem : perhaps I cannot, 
 but that which comes nearest it is in these four 
 lines, which have been sufficiently canvassed by my 
 well-natured censors : 
 
 Seraph and Cherub, careless of their charge, 
 And wanton, in full ease now live at large ; 
 Unguarded leave the passes of the sky, 
 And all dissolv'd in hallelujahs lie. 
 
 I have heard (says one of them) of anchovies dis- 
 solved in sauce, but never of an angel in hallelujahs. 
 A mighty witticism ! (if you will pardon a new 
 word,) but there is some difference between a laugher 
 and a critic. He might have burlesqued Virgil too, 
 from whom I took the image : 
 
 " Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque ; sepultam." 
 
 A city's being buried is just as proper, on occasion, 
 as an angel's being dissolved in ease and songs of 
 triumph. Mr. Cowley lies as open, too, in many 
 places : 
 
 " Where their vast courts the mother waters keep, etc." 
 
 For if the mass of waters be the mothers, then 
 their daughters, the little streams, are bound in all 
 good manners to make curtsey to them, and ask them 
 blessing. How easy 'tis to turn into ridicule the 
 best descriptions, when once a man is in the humor 
 of laughing till he wheezes at his own dull jest ! 
 But an image which is strongly and beautifully set 
 before the eyes of the reader will still be poetry 
 
30 JOHN DRY DEN. 
 
 when the merry fit is over, and last when the other 
 is forgotten. 
 
 I promised to say somewhat of poetic license, but 
 have in part anticipated my discourse already. 
 Poetic license I take to be the liberty which poets 
 have assumed to themselves in all ages, of speaking 
 things in verse which are beyond the severity of 
 prose. 'Tis that particular character which distin- 
 guishes and sets the bounds betwixt Oratio soluta 1 
 and poetry. This, as to what regards the thought 
 or imagination of a poet, consists in fiction ; but 
 then those thoughts must be expressed; and here 
 arise two other branches of it : for if this license be 
 included in a single word, it admits of tropes; if in 
 a sentence or proposition, of figures ; both which 
 are of a much larger extent, and more forcibly to be 
 used in verse than prose. This is that birthright 
 which is derived to us from our great forefathers, 
 even from Homer down to Ben. And they who 
 would deny it to us have, in plain terms, the fox's 
 quarrel to the grapes — they cannot reach it. 
 
 How far these liberties are to be extended I will 
 not presume to determine here, since Horace does 
 not. But it is certain that they are to be varied ac- 
 cording to the language and age in which an author 
 writes. That which would be allowed to a Grecian 
 poet, Martial tells you, would not be suffered in a 
 Roman. And 'tis evident that the English does 
 more nearly follow the strictness of the latter than 
 
 Prose. 
 
PREFACE TO THE STATE OF INNOCENCE. 3 1 
 
 the freedoms of the former. Connection of epithets, 
 or the conjunction of two words in one, are frequent 
 and elegant in the Greek ; which yet Sir Philip Sid- 
 ney and the translator of Du Bartas, have unluckily 
 attempted in the English ; though this, I confess, is 
 not so proper an instance of poetic license as it is of 
 variety of idiom in languages. 
 
 Horace a little explains himself on the subject of 
 Licentia Poetica in these verses : 
 
 " Pictoribus atque poetis 
 
 Quidlibet audendi semper fuit sequa potestas : 
 Sed non, ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut 
 Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni." 
 
 He would have a poem of a piece ; not to begin 
 one thing and end with another ; he restrains it so 
 far that thoughts of an unlike nature ought not to 
 be joined together. That were indeed to make a 
 chaos. He taxed not Homer, nor the divine Virgil, 
 for interesting their gods in the wars of Troy and 
 Italy: neither, had he now lived, would he have 
 taxed Milton, as our false critics have presumed to 
 do, for his choice of a supernatural argument ; but 
 he would have blamed any author who was a Christ- 
 ian, had he introduced into his poems heathen 
 deities, as Tasso is condemned by Rapin on the like 
 occasion ; and as Camoens, the author of the Lu- 
 siads, ought to be censured by all his readers, when 
 he brings in Bacchus and Christ into the same ad- 
 venture of his fable. 
 
 From that which has been said, it may be collected 
 that the definition of wit (which has been so often 
 
3 2 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 attempted, and ever unsuccessfully, by many poets) 
 is only this, that it is a propriety of thoughts and 
 words ; or in other terms, thoughts and words ele- 
 gantly adapted to the subject. If our critics will 
 join issue on this definition, that we may " convenire 
 in aliquo tertio ; " if they will take it as a granted 
 principle, 'twill be easy to put an end to the dispute. 
 No man will disagree from another's judgment con- 
 cerning this dignity of style in Heroic Poetry ; but 
 all reasonable men will conclude it necessary, that 
 sublimest subjects ought to be adorned with the 
 sublimest, and (consequently often) with the most 
 figurative expressions. In the mean time I will not 
 run into their faults of imposing my opinions on 
 other men, any more than I would my writings on 
 their tastes : I have only laid down, and that super- 
 ficially enough, my present thoughts ; and shall be 
 glad to be taught better by those who pretend to 
 reform our poetry. 
 
THE SPECTATOR. 33 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 [1672-1719.J 
 
 [In his own day Addison was held in higher esteem as a 
 critic than later generations have deemed him to deserve. 
 His formal critical studies show no especial force or insight. 
 That refined taste and correctness which always marked him, 
 certainly appears in his judgments of literature, but frequently 
 his thoughts are too mild to be stimulating, and we turn 
 from the papers on Milton, as well as from the various ethical 
 reflections, to his delicate social satire, or those genial char- 
 acter-sketches which never lose their charm. Yet all his writ- 
 ing is agreeable, if for nothing more than its exqui-site ex- 
 pression — clear, quiet, unobtrusive, finished yet always easy ; 
 every essay shows, too, the thought and spirit as well as the 
 language of a cultivated gentleman. This discussion of 
 taste, from the Spectator (No. 409), presents a favorable 
 specimen of his critical studies.] 
 
 From the Spectator. 
 
 Gratian very often recommends the fine taste as 
 the utmost perfection of an accomplished man. As 
 this word arises very often in conversation, I shall 
 endeavor to give some account of it, and to lay down 
 rules how we may know whether we are possessed of 
 it, and how we may acquire that fine taste of writing 
 which is so much talked of among the polite world. 
 
 Most languages make use of this metaphor to ex- 
 press that faculty of the mind which distinguishes 
 all the most concealed faults and nicest perfections 
 
34 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 in writing. We may be sure this metaphor would 
 not have been so general in all tongues, had there 
 not been a very great conformity between that mental 
 taste which is the subject of this paper, and that 
 sensitive taste which gives us a relish for every differ- 
 ent flavor that affects the palate. Accordingly we 
 find there are many degrees of refinement in the 
 intellectual faculty, as in the sense which is marked 
 out by this common denomination. 
 
 I knew a person who possessed the one in so great 
 a perfection, that, after having tasted ten different 
 kinds of tea, he would distinguish, without seeing the 
 color of it, the particular sort which was offered him; 
 not only so, but any two sorts of them that were 
 mixed together in an equal proportion ; nay, he has 
 carried the experiment so far, as, upon tasting the 
 composition of three different sorts, to name the par- 
 cels from whence the three several ingredients were 
 taken. A man of a fine taste in writing will discern, 
 after the same manner, not only the general beauties 
 and imperfections of an author, but discover the 
 several ways of thinking and expressing himself which 
 diversify him from all other authors, with the several 
 foreign infusions of thought and language, and the 
 particular authors from whom they were borrowed. 
 
 After having thus far explained what is generally 
 meant by a fine taste in writing, and shown the pro- 
 priety of the metaphor which is used on this occa- 
 sion, I think I may define it to be that faculty of the 
 soul which discerns the beauties of an author with 
 pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike. If a 
 
THE SPECTATOR. 35 
 
 man would know whether he is possessed of this fac- 
 ulty, I would have him read over the celebrated 
 works of antiquity, which have stood the test of so 
 many different ages and countries, or those works 
 among the moderns which have the sanction of the 
 politer part of our contemporaries. If, upon the 
 perusal of such writings, he does not find himself 
 delighted in an extraordinary manner, or if, upon 
 reading the admired passages in such authors, he 
 finds a coldness and indifference in his thoughts, he 
 ought to conclude, not (as is too usual among taste- 
 less readers) that the author wants those perfections 
 which have been admired in him, but that he him- 
 self wants the faculty of discovering them. 
 
 He should, in the second place, be very careful to 
 observe whether he tastes the distinguishing perfec- 
 tions or, if I may be allowed to call them so, the 
 specific qualities of the author whom he peruses ; 
 whether he is particularly pleased with Livy for his 
 manner of telling a story ; with Sallust for his enter- 
 ing into those internal principles of action which 
 arise from the characters and manners of the persons 
 he describes ; or with Tacitus for his displaying 
 those outward motives of safety and interest which 
 give birth to the whole series of transactions which 
 he relates. 
 
 He may likewise consider how differently he is 
 affected by the same thought which presents itself 
 in a great writer, from what he is when he finds it 
 delivered by a person of an ordinary genius. For 
 there is as much difference in apprehending a 
 thought clothed in Cicero's language and that of a 
 
36 JOSEPH ADDISON: 
 
 common author, as in seeing an object by the light 
 of a taper or by the light of the sun. 
 
 It is very difficult to lay down rules for the ac- 
 quirement of such a taste as that I am here speaking 
 of. The faculty must in some degree be born with 
 us, and it very often happens that those who have 
 other qualities in perfection are wholly void of this. 
 One of the most eminent mathematicians of the age 
 has assured me that the greatest pleasure he took 
 in reading Virgil was in examining yEneas's voyage 
 by the map ; as I question not many a modern com- 
 piler of history would be delighted with little more 
 in that divine author than in the bare matters of 
 fact. 
 
 But notwithstanding this faculty must in some 
 measure be born with us, there are several methods 
 for cultivating and improving it, and without which 
 it will be very uncertain, and of very little use to 
 the person that possesses it. The most natural 
 method for this purpose is to be conversant among 
 the writings of the most polite authors. A man who 
 has any relish for fine writing either discovers new 
 beauties or receives stronger impressions from the 
 masterly strokes of a great author every time he 
 peruses him ; besides that he naturally wears him- 
 self into the same manner of speaking and thinking. 
 
 Conversation with men of a polite genius is another 
 method for improving our natural taste. It is im- 
 possible for a man of the greatest parts to consider 
 anything in its whole extent and in all its variety of 
 lights. Every man, besides those general observa- 
 tions which are to be made upon an author, forms 
 
THE SPECTATOR. IJ 
 
 several reflections that are peculiar to his own manner 
 of thinking ; so that conversation will naturally 
 furnish us with hints which we did not attend to, and 
 make us enjoy other men's parts and reflections as 
 well as our own. This is the best reason I can give 
 for the observation which several have made, that 
 men of great genius in the same way of writing 
 seldom rise up singly, but at certain periods of time 
 appear together and in a body, as they did at Rome 
 in the reign of Augustus, and in Greece about the 
 age of Socrates. I cannot think that Corneille, 
 Racine, Moliere, Boileau, la Fontaine, Bruyere, Bossu, 
 or the Daciers would have written so well as they have 
 done, had they not been friends and contemporaries. 
 It is likewise necessary for a man who would form 
 to himself a finished taste of good writing to be well 
 versed in the works of the best critics, both ancient 
 and modern. I must confess that I could wish 
 there were authors of this kind who, besides the 
 mechanical rules, which a man of very little taste 
 may discourse upon, would enter into the very spirit 
 and soul of fine writing, and show us the several 
 sources of that pleasure which rises in the mind upon 
 the perusal of a noble work. Thus, although in 
 poetry it be absolutely necessary that the unities of 
 time, place, and action, with other points of the same 
 nature, should be thoroughly explained and under- 
 stood, there is still something more essential to the 
 art, something that elevates and astonishes the fancy 
 and gives a greatness of mind to the reader, which 
 few of the critics besides Longinus have considered. 
 
38 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 1667-1745. 
 
 [The deep-seated notion that critical acuteness means the 
 power of discovering faults, that has been already touched 
 upon, is vigorously assailed in these satirical scraps from 
 Dean Swift. The close attention by which the best qualities 
 of an author are realized often involves inevitably the loss of 
 some early illusions that were to his advantage. But that 
 the study of literature means weighing our books in constant 
 balances, with inclination thrown into the counterpoise scale, 
 is one of the most unhappy notions about so-called culture. 
 Bacon's " To weigh and consider " must be coupled with Sir 
 Thomas Browne's warning to " Bring candid eyes unto the 
 perusal of men's works, and let not Zoilism or detraction blast 
 well-intended labors." There is no more unsatisfactory result 
 of literary study than to find one's increase in accuracy of 
 perception involving a fastidiousness that is either afraid or 
 unable to admire. The short extract below from the " Battle 
 of the Books," is followed by another of similar tone from the 
 " Tale of a Tub." If the student will inform himself upon the 
 occasion for Swift's contempt of critics, the contest over the 
 " Letters of Phalaris," he will see that the satirist is struck 
 by his own lash more sharply than were Bentley and his 
 supporters. They were only exposing a classical forgery. 
 But the lesson of positive instead of negative aims in literary 
 study is none the less valuable.] 
 
 From the Battle of the Books. 
 
 MEANWHILE Momus, fearing the worst, and call- 
 ing to mind an ancient prophecy which bore no 
 
THE TALE OF A TUB. 39 
 
 very good face to his children the moderns, bent his 
 flight to the region of a malignant deity called Criti- 
 cism. She dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain 
 in Nova Zembla; there Momus found her extended 
 in her den, upon the spoils of numberless volumes, 
 half devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, 
 her father and husband, blind with age ; at her left, 
 Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of 
 paper herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sis- 
 ter, light of foot, hoodwinked, and headstrong, yet 
 giddy and perpetually turning. About her played 
 her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and 
 Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners. 
 The goddess herself had claws like a cat ; her head 
 and ears and voice resembled those of an ass ; her 
 teeth fallen out before, her eyes turned inward, as 
 if she looked only upon herself. 
 
 From the Tale of a Tub. 
 
 By the word critic, at this day so frequent in all 
 conversations, there have sometimes been distin- 
 guished three very different species of mortal men, 
 according as I have read in ancient books and pam- 
 phlets. For first, by this term were understood such 
 persons as invented or drew up rules for themselves 
 and the world, by observing which a careful reader 
 might be able to pronounce upon the productions of 
 the learned, form his taste to a true relish of the 
 sublime and the admirable, and divide every beauty 
 of matter or of style from the corruption that apes 
 it : in their common perusal of books, singling out 
 
40 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 the errors and defects, the nauseous, the fulsome, 
 the dull, and the impertinent, with the caution of a 
 man that walks through Edinburgh streets in a 
 morning, who is indeed as careful as he can to watch 
 diligently and spy out the filth in his way. These 
 men seem, though very erroneously, to have under- 
 stood the appellation of critic in a literal sense; that 
 one principal part of his office was to praise and 
 acquit ; and that a critic who sets up to read only 
 for an occasion of censure and reproof is a creature 
 as barbarous as a judge who should take up a resolu- 
 tion to hang all men that came before him upon 
 trial. 
 
 Again, by the word critic have been meant the 
 restorers of ancient learning from the worms and 
 graves and dust of manuscripts. 
 
 Now the races of those two have been for some 
 ages utterly extinct ; and besides, to discourse any 
 further of them would not be at all to my purpose. 
 
 The third and noblest sort is that of the TRUE 
 CRITIC, whose original is the most ancient of all. 
 Every true critic is a hero born, descending in a 
 direct line from a celestial stem by Momus and 
 Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tygellius, who 
 begat Etcaetera the elder; who begat Bentley, who 
 begat Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Den- 
 nis ; who begat Etcaetera the younger. 
 
 And these are the critics from whom the common- 
 wealth of learning has in all ages received such im- 
 mense benefits, that the gratitude of their admirers 
 placed their origin in Heaven, among those of Her- 
 
THE TALE OF A TUB. 4 1 
 
 cules, Theseus, Perseus, and other great deservers of 
 mankind. But heroic virtue itself has not been ex- 
 empt from the obloquy of evil tongues. For it has 
 been objected that those ancient heroes, famous for 
 their combating so many giants and dragons and rob- 
 bers, were in their own persons a greater nuisance to 
 mankind than any of those monsters they subdued ; 
 and therefore, to render their obligations more com- 
 plete, when all other vermin were destroyed, should 
 in conscience have concluded with the same justice 
 upon themselves, as Hercules most generously did, 
 and upon that score procured to himself more tem- 
 ples and votaries than the best of his fellows. For 
 these reasons I suppose it is why some have conceived 
 it would be very expedient for the public good of 
 learning that every true critic, as soon as he had fin- 
 ished his task assigned, should immediately deliver 
 himself up to ratsbane or hemp, or leap from some 
 convenient altitude ; and that no man's pretensions 
 to so illustrious a character should by any means be 
 received before that operation were performed. 
 
 Now, from this heavenly descent of criticism, and 
 the close analogy it bears to heroic virtue, it is easy 
 to assign the proper employment of a true ancient 
 genuine critic, which is, to travel through this vast 
 world of writings ; to pursue and hunt these mon- 
 strous faults bred within them ; to drag out the lurk- 
 ing errors, like Cacus from his den ; to multiply them 
 like Hydra's heads ; and rake them together like 
 Augeas's dung; or else drive away a sort of danger- 
 ous fowl, who have a perverse inclination to plunder 
 
42 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 the best branches of the tree of knowledge, like 
 those stymphalian birds that eat up the fruit. 
 
 These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate 
 definition of a true critic : that he is a discoverer 
 and collector of writers' faults, which may be further 
 put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: 
 that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, 
 wherewith this ancient sect has honored the world, 
 shall immediately find, from the whole thread and 
 tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have 
 been altogether conversant and taken up with the 
 faults and blemishes and oversights and mistakes 
 of other writers : and, let the subject treated on be 
 whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely 
 possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, 
 that the very quintessence of what is bad does of 
 necessity distil into their own ; by which means the 
 whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of 
 the criticisms themselves have made. 
 
THE LIFE OF COWLEY. 43 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 1 709-1 784. 
 
 [Dr. Johnson was the great critic of his day, and much of 
 his criticism is still valuable. Macaulay's remark that he 
 was an excellent judge of compositions fashioned on his own 
 principles, but one of the poorest of critics upon other kinds 
 of poetry, is fairer than many of Macaulay's sweeping remarks. 
 Certainly, Johnson did not feel about imaginative poetry as 
 we do. His instincts were better than his prejudices, but 
 even his instincts inclined to the Restoration and Queen 
 Anne type of verse. What is most to be commended in his 
 critical essays is the sound sense that amounted to a kind of 
 genius, and the energy and clearness of his treatment. His 
 most important literary work, both for style and subject- 
 matter, was written in his later life— the Lives of the Poets. 
 The first of the following selections is from the life of Cowley 
 — Johnson's famous account of the poetical school that he 
 (not very felicitously) called the metaphysical. The second 
 is from the life of Pope, where he compares the two leaders 
 of his chosen poetry. Johnson's characteristic style is here 
 illustrated at its best. It has an old-fashioned and indivi- 
 dual strength and dignity that deserve to be called Johnson- 
 ian, instead of Macaulay's "Johnsonese "; the favorite anti- 
 thesis here is something more than the usual mannerism]. 
 
 From the Life of Cowley. 
 
 Wit, like all other things subject by their nature 
 to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, 
 and at different times takes different forms. About 
 
44 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared 
 a race of writers that may be termed the metaphys- 
 ical poets ; of whom, in a criticism on the works of 
 Cowley, it is not improper to give some account. 
 
 The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and 
 to show their learning was their whole endeavor ; 
 but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead 
 of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very 
 often such verses as stood the trial of the finger 
 better than of the ear; for the modulation was so 
 imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by 
 counting the syllables. 
 
 If the father of criticism had rightly denominated 
 poetry t£x v? ? P-i^rfriKi), an imitative art, these writers 
 will, without great wrong, lose their right to the 
 name of poets ; for they cannot be said to have imi- 
 tated anything ; they neither copied nature nor life ; 
 neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented 
 the operations of intellect. 
 
 Those, however, who deny them to be poets, 
 allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself 
 and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne 
 in wit ; but maintains that they surpass him in 
 poetry. 
 
 If wit be well described by Pope, as being " that 
 which has been often thought, but was never before 
 so well expressed," they certainly never attained, 
 nor ever sought it ; for they endeavored to be singu 
 lar in their thoughts, and were careless of their die 
 tion. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly 
 erroneous ; he depresses it below its natural dignity, 
 
THE LIFE OF COWLEY. 45 
 
 and reduces it from strength of thought to happi- 
 ness of language. 
 
 If, by a more noble and more adequate conception, 
 that be considered as wit which is at once natural 
 and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon 
 its first production, acknowledged to be just ; if it be 
 that which he that never found it, wonders how he 
 missed ; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets 
 have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, 
 but seldom natural ; they are not obvious, but 
 neither are they just ; and the reader, far from won- 
 dering that he missed them, wonders more frequently 
 by what perverseness of industry they were ever 
 found. 
 
 But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the 
 hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically 
 considered as a kind of discordia concors ; a combina- 
 tion of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult re- 
 semblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, 
 thus defined, they have more than enough. The 
 most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence 
 together ; nature and art are ransacked for illustra- 
 tions, comparisons, and allusions ; their learning 
 instructs, and their subtlety surprises ; but the 
 reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly 
 bought, and though he sometimes admires, is seldom 
 pleased. 
 
 From this account of their compositions it will be 
 readily inferred that they were not successful in 
 representing or moving the affections. As they 
 were wholly employed on something unexpected 
 
46 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity 
 of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to 
 excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: 
 they never inquired what, on any occasion, they 
 should have said or done ; but wrote rather as be- 
 holders than partakers of human nature; as beings 
 looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure ; 
 as epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions 
 of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest 
 and without emotion. Their courtship was void of 
 fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their 
 wish was only to say what they hoped had been 
 never said before. 
 
 Nor was the sublime more within their reach than 
 the pathetic ; for they never attempted that com- 
 prehension and expanse of thought which at once 
 fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is 
 sudden astonishment, and the second rational ad- 
 miration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, 
 and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are 
 always general, and consist in positions not limited 
 by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to 
 minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtlety, 
 which in its original import means exility of parti- 
 cles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety 
 of distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch 
 for novelty, could have little hope of greatness ; for 
 great things cannot have escaped former observa- 
 tion. Their attempts were always analytic ; they 
 broke every image into fragments ; and could no 
 more represent, by their slender conceits and labored 
 
THE LIFE OF COWLEY. 47 
 
 particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes 
 of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism 
 can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon. 
 
 What they wanted, however, of the sublime they 
 endeavored to supply by hyperbole ; their amplifica- 
 tions had no limits; they left not only reason but 
 fancy behind them ; and produced combinations of 
 confused magnificence, that not only could not be 
 credited, but could not be imagined. 
 
 Yet great labor, directed by great abilities, is 
 never wholly lost ; if they frequently threw away 
 their wit upon false conceits, they likewise some- 
 times struck out unexpected truth ; if their conceits 
 were far fetched, they were often worth the carriage. 
 To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to 
 read and think. No man could be born a meta- 
 physical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by 
 descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations 
 borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery 
 and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme and 
 volubility of syllables. 
 
 In perusing the works of this race of authors, the 
 mind is exercised either by recollection or inquiry ; 
 something already learned is to be retrieved, or 
 something new is to be examined. If their greatness 
 seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises ; if 
 the imagination is not always gratified, at least the 
 powers of reflection and comparison are employed ; 
 and in the mass of materials which ingenious ab- 
 surdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful 
 knowledge may be sometimes found buried perhaps 
 
4& SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 in grossness of expression, but useful to those who 
 know their value ; and such as, when they are ex- 
 panded to perspicuity and polished to elegance, may 
 give lustre to works which have more propriety 
 though less copiousness of sentiment. 
 
 This kind of writing, which was I believe, bor- 
 rowed from Marino and his followers*, had been rec- 
 ommended by the example of Donne, a man of very 
 extensive and various knowledge, and by Jonson, 
 whose manner resembled that of Donne more in the 
 ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his senti- 
 ments. 
 
 When their reputation was high, they had un- 
 doubtedly more imitators than time has left behind. 
 Their immediate successors, of whom any remem- 
 brance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, 
 Denham, Cowley, Clieveland, and Milton. Denham 
 and Waller sought another way to fame, by improv- 
 ing the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the 
 metaphysic style only in his lines upon Hobson the 
 carrier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled his prede- 
 cessors, having as much sentiment and more music. 
 Suckling neither improved versification nor 
 abounded in conceits. The fashionable style re- 
 mained chiefly with Cowley ; Suckling could not 
 reach it, and Milton disdained it. 
 
 From the Life of Pope. 
 
 INTEGRITY of understanding and nicety of discern- 
 ment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden 
 than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was 
 
The life of pope. 49 
 
 sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical 
 prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts 
 and rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired 
 to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, 
 and professed to write, merely for the people, and 
 when he pleased others, he contented himself. He 
 spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers ; 
 he never attempted to make that better which 
 was already good, nor often to mend what he 
 must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he 
 tells us, with very little consideration ; when occasion 
 or necessity called upon him, he poured out what 
 the present moment happened to supply, and, when 
 once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind ; 
 for when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no 
 further solicitude. 
 
 Pope was not content to satisfy ; he desired to 
 excel, and therefore always endeavored to do his 
 best ; he did not court the candor, but dared the 
 judgment, of his reader, and expecting no indul- 
 gence from others, he showed none to himself. He 
 examined lines and words with minute and punc- 
 tilious observation, and retouched every part with 
 indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be 
 forgiven. 
 
 For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his 
 hands, while he considered and reconsidered them. 
 The only poems which can be supposed to have been 
 written with such regard to the times as might hasten 
 their publication were the two satires of " Thirty- 
 eight " ; of which Dodsley told me that they were 
 
50 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 brought to him by the author, that they might be 
 fairly copied. " Almost every line," he said, " was 
 then written twice over ; I gave him a clean tran- 
 script, which he sent some time afterwards to me 
 for the press, with almost every line written twice 
 over a second time." 
 
 His declaration that his care for his works ceased 
 at their publication, was not strictly true. His 
 parental attention never abandoned them ; what he 
 found amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected 
 in those that followed. He appears to have revised 
 the " Iliad " and freed it from some of its imperfec- 
 tions ; and the " Essay on Criticism " received many 
 improvements after its first appearance. It will 
 seldom be found that he altered without adding 
 clearness, elegance, or vigor. Pope had perhaps the 
 judgment of Dryden ; but Dryden certainly wanted 
 the diligence of Pope. 
 
 In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be 
 allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scho- 
 lastic, and who before he became an author had been 
 allowed more time for study, with better means of 
 information. His mind has a larger range, and he 
 collects his images and illustrations from a more ex- 
 tensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more 
 of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local 
 manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by 
 comprehensive speculation ; and those of Pope by 
 minute attention. There is more dignity in the 
 knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of 
 Pope. 
 
THE LIFE OF POPE. $ I 
 
 Poetry was not the sole praise of either, for both 
 excelled likewise in prose ; but Pope did not borrow 
 his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dry- 
 den is capricious and varied ; that of Pope is cau- 
 tious and uniform. Dryden observes the motions of 
 his own mind ; Pope constrains his mind to his own 
 rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehe- 
 ment and rapid ; Pope is always smooth, uniform, 
 and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising 
 into inequalities, and diversified by the varied ex- 
 uberance of abundant vegetation ; Pope's is a velvet 
 lawn, shaven by the scythe and levelled by the roller. 
 
 Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet ; 
 that quality without which judgment is cold and 
 knowledge is inert ; that energy which collects, com- 
 bines, amplifies, and animates ; the superiority 
 must with some hesitation be allowed to Dry- 
 den. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical 
 vigor Pope had only a little, because Dryden had 
 more : for every other writer since Milton must give 
 place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, 
 that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better 
 poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, 
 either excited by some external occasion or ex- 
 torted by domestic necessity ; he composed without 
 consideration, and published without correction. 
 What his mind could supply at call or gather in one 
 excursion was all that he sought and all that he gave. 
 The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to con- 
 dense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to 
 accumulate all that study might produce, or chance 
 
$2 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 might supply. If the flights of Dryden therefore 
 are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If 
 of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the 
 heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often 
 surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. 
 Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope 
 with perpetual delight. 
 
 This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, 
 be found just ; and if the reader should suspect me, 
 as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the 
 memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn 
 me ; for meditation and inquiry may perhaps show 
 him the reasonableness of my determination. 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 53 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 1770-1850. 
 
 [The famous preface to the second edition of the Lyrical 
 Ballads, to which the following extract belongs, was written 
 while Wordsworth was at the height of his poetic enthu- 
 siasm and genius, and before he had secured any appreci- 
 able recognition for his new poetical departure. English 
 criticism presents few passages more suggestive than this, 
 viewed as the great poet's exposition of the literary theory 
 that for a long time excited so much controversy, or as an 
 illumination of his own character and work as a poet, or, 
 again, as a defence of the dignity of poetry, which with 
 noble simplicity and sincerity the author's entire life main- 
 tained. This selection is full of topics that deserve to be 
 closely pondered and illustrated. It is well to be on one's 
 guard, however, against accepting some expressions without 
 careful interpretation. In respect to one of his most em- 
 phatic assertions, in particular, it may be that Wordsworth's 
 own best practice does not bear him out. We may possibly 
 conclude that his view is closely allied with one of his defi- 
 ciencies as a poet. But it would be hard to point to an 
 equal number of pages the mastery of which would ensure 
 so sound and helpful a conception of poetry and of a nor- 
 mal poetic style. The passage is interesting, moreover, as 
 another illustration of the admirable prose diction of writers 
 who have been masters in verse, as well as being a reminder 
 of how much of our best criticism of poetry has come from 
 poets.] 
 
 From the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 The principal object proposed in these poems 
 was to choose incidents and situations from common 
 
54 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as 
 far as was possible in a selection of language really 
 used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over 
 them a certain coloring of imagination, whereby or- 
 dinary things should be presented to the mind in an 
 unusual aspect ; and, further, and above all, to make 
 these incidents and situations interesting by tracing 
 in them, truly though not ostentatiously, primary 
 laws of our nature : chiefly, as far as regards the 
 manner in which we associate ideas in a state of 
 excitement. Humble and rustic life was generally 
 chosen, because, in that condition, the essential pas- 
 sions of the heart find a better soil in which they 
 can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, 
 and speak a plainer and more emphatic language ; 
 because in that condition of life our elementary 
 feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, 
 and, consequently, may be more accurately contem- 
 plated, and more forcibly communicated ; because 
 the manners of rural life germinate from those ele- 
 mentary feelings, and, from the necessary character 
 of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, 
 and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that 
 condition the passions of men are incorporated with 
 the beautiful and permanent forms of Nature. The 
 language, too, of these men has been adopted (puri- 
 fied indeed from what appear to be its real defects, 
 from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or dis- 
 gust) because such men hourly communicate with 
 the best objects from which the best part of lan- 
 guage is originally derived ; and because, from their 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 55 
 
 rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle 
 of their intercourse, being less under the influence 
 of social vanity, they convey their feelings and 
 notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. 
 Accordingly, such a language, arising out of re- 
 peated experience and regular feelings, is a more 
 permanent, and a far more philosophical language, 
 than that which is frequently substituted for it by 
 poets, who think that they are conferring honor 
 upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they 
 separate themselves from the sympathies of men, 
 and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of ex- 
 pression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, 
 and fickle appetites, of their own creation. 1 
 
 I cannot, however, be insensible to the present 
 outcry against the triviality and meanness, both of 
 thought and language, which some of my contem- 
 poraries have occasionally introduced into their 
 metrical compositions ; and I acknowledge that this 
 defect, where it exists, is more dishonorable to the 
 writer's own character than false refinement or ar- 
 bitrary innovation, though I should contend at the 
 same time, that it is far less pernicious in the sum of 
 its consequences. From such verses the poems in 
 these volumes will be found distinguished at least 
 by one mark of difference, that each of them has a 
 worthy purpose. Not that I always began to write 
 with a distinct purpose formally conceived ; but 
 
 1 It is worth while here to observe, that the affecting parts of 
 Chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure and uni- 
 versally intelligible even to this day. 
 
56 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 habits of meditation have, I trust, so prompted and 
 regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such 
 objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be 
 found to carry along with them a purpose. If this 
 opinion be erroneous, I can have little right to the 
 name of a poet. For all good poetry is the spon- 
 taneous overflow of powerful feelings : and though 
 this be true, poems to which any value can be 
 attached were never produced on any variety of 
 subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more 
 than unusual organic sensibility, had also thought 
 long and deeply. For our continued influxes of 
 feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, 
 which are indeed the representatives of all our past 
 feelings ; and, as by contemplating the relation of 
 these general representatives to each other, we dis- 
 cover what is really important to men, so, by the 
 repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings 
 will be connected with important subjects, till at 
 length, if we be originally possessed of much sensi- 
 bility, such habits of mind will be produced, that, by 
 obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of 
 these habits, we shall describe objects, and utter 
 sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connec- 
 tion with each other, that the understanding of the 
 reader must necessarily be in some degree enlight- 
 ened, and his affections strengthened and purified. 
 
 It has been said that each of these poems has a 
 purpose. Another circumstance must be mentioned 
 which distinguishes these poems from the popular 
 poetry of the day: it is this, that the feeling therein 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. $7 
 
 developed gives importance to the action and situa- 
 tion, and not the action and situation to the feeling. 
 A sense of false modesty shall not prevent me 
 from asserting that the reader's attention is pointed 
 to this mark of distinction, far less for the sake of 
 these particular poems than from the general im- 
 portance of the subject. The subject is indeed im- 
 portant ! For the human mind is capable of being 
 excited without the application of gross and violent 
 stimulants ; and he must have a very faint percep- 
 tion of its beauty and dignity who does not know 
 this, and who does not further know, that one being 
 is elevated above another, in proportion as he pos- 
 sesses this capability. It has therefore appeared to 
 me. that to endeavor to produce or enlarge this ca- 
 pability is one of the best services in which, at any 
 period, a writer can be engaged ; but this service, 
 excellent at all times, is especially so at the present 
 day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former 
 times, are now acting with a combined force to 
 blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, 
 unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to 
 a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective 
 of these causes are the great national events which 
 are daily taking place, and the increasing accumula- 
 tion of men in cities, where the uniformity of their 
 occupations produces a craving for extraordinary 
 incident, which the rapid communication of intelli- 
 gence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and 
 manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of 
 the country have conformed themselves, The in- 
 
58 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 valuable works of our elder writers, I had almost 
 said the works of Shakspeare and Milton, are driven 
 into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid Ger- 
 man Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant 
 stories in verse. — When I think upon this degrading 
 thirst after outrageous stimulation, I am almost 
 ashamed to have spoken of the feeble endeavor 
 made in these volumes to counteract it ; and, reflect- 
 ing upon the magnitude of the general evil, I should 
 be oppressed with no dishonorable melancholy, had 
 I not a deep impression of certain inherent and in- 
 destructible qualities of the human mind, and like- 
 wise of certain powers in the great and permanent 
 objects that act upon it, which are equally inherent 
 and indestructible; and were there not added to 
 this impression a belief, that the time is approach- 
 ing when the evil will be systematically opposed, by 
 men of greater powers, and with far more distin- 
 guished success. 
 
 Having dwelt thus long on the subjects and aim 
 of these poems, I shall request the reader's per- 
 mission to apprise him of a few circumstances re- 
 lating to their style, in order, among other reasons, 
 that he may not censure me for not having per- 
 formed what I never attempted. The reader will 
 find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely 
 occur in these volumes ; and are utterly rejected, as 
 an ordinary device to elevate the style, and raise it 
 above prose. My purpose was to imitate, and, as 
 far as possible, to adopt the very language of men ; 
 and assuredly such personifications do not make 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 59 
 
 any natural or regular part of that language. They 
 are, indeed, a figure of speech occasionally prompted 
 by passion, and I have made use of them as such ; 
 but have endeavoured utterly to reject them as a 
 mechanical device of style, or as a family language 
 which writers in metre seem to lay claim to by pre- 
 scription. I have wished to keep the reader in the 
 company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so 
 doing I shall interest him. Others who pursue a 
 different track will interest him likewise ; I do not 
 interfere with their claim, but wish to prefer a claim 
 of my own. There will also be found in these 
 volumes little of what is usually called poetic dic- 
 tion ; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is 
 ordinarily taken to produce it ; this has been done 
 for the reason already alleged, to bring my language 
 near to the language of men ; and further, because 
 the pleasure which I have proposed to myself to 
 impart is of a kind very different from that which 
 is supposed by many persons to be the proper ob- 
 ject of poetry. Without being culpably particular, 
 I do not know how to give my reader a more exact 
 notion of the style in which it was my wish and in- 
 tention to write, than by informing him that I have 
 at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my sub- 
 ject ; consequently, there is I hope in these poems 
 little falsehood of description, and my ideas are ex- 
 pressed in language fitted to their respective im- 
 portance. Something must have been gained by 
 this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all 
 good poetry, namely, good sense ; but it has neces- 
 
60 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 sarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and 
 figures of speech which from father to son have long 
 been regarded as the common inheritance of Poets. 
 I have also thought it expedient to restrict myself 
 still further, having abstained from the use of many 
 expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but 
 which have been foolishly treated by bad poets, till 
 such feelings of disgust are connected with them as 
 it is scarcely possible by any art of association to 
 overpower. 
 
 If in a Poem there should be found a series of 
 lines, or even a single line, in which the language, 
 though naturally arranged, and according to the 
 strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of 
 prose, there is a numerous class of critics, who, when 
 they stumble upon these prosaisms, as they call 
 them, imagine that they have made a notable dis- 
 covery, and exult over the poet as over a man igno- 
 rant of his own profession. Now these men would 
 establish a canon of criticism which the reader will 
 conclude he must utterly reject, if he wishes to be 
 pleased with these volumes. And it would be a 
 most easy task to prove to him, that not only the 
 language of a large portion of every good poem, 
 even of the most elevated character, must neces- 
 sarily, except with reference to the metre, in no 
 respect differ from that of good prose, but likewise 
 that some of the most interesting parts of the best 
 poems will be found to be strictly the language of 
 prose, when prose is well written. The truth of this 
 assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 6 1 
 
 passages from almost all the poetical writings, even 
 of Milton himself. To illustrate the subject in a 
 general manner, I will here adduce a short composi- 
 tion of Gray, who was at the head of those who, by 
 their reasonings, have attempted to widen the space 
 of separation betwixt prose and metrical composi- 
 tion, and was more than any other man curiously 
 elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction. 
 
 In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 
 And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire : 
 The birds in vain their amorous descant join, 
 Or cheerful fields resume their green attire. 
 These ears, alas ! for other notes repine ; 
 A different object do these eyes require ; 
 My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine ; 
 And in my breast the imperfect joys expire : 
 Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, 
 And new-born pleasure brings to happier men ; 
 The fields to all their wonted tribute bear ; 
 To warm their little loves the birds complain. 
 I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, 
 And weep the more because I weep in vain. 
 
 It will easily be perceived, that the only part of 
 this sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed 
 in italics ; it is equally obvious, that, except in the 
 rhyme, and in the use of the single word ' fruitless' 
 for fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language 
 of these lines does in no respect differ from that of 
 prose. 
 
 By the foregoing quotation it has been shown that 
 the language of prose may yet be well adapted to 
 poetry ; and it was previously asserted, that a large 
 portion of the language of every good poem can in 
 
62 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 no respect differ from that of good prose. We will 
 go further. It may be safely affirmed, that there 
 neither is, nor can be, any essential difference be- 
 tween the language of prose and metrical composi- 
 tion. We are fond of tracing the resemblance 
 between poetry and painting, and, accordingly, we 
 call them sisters : but where shall we find bonds of 
 connection sufficiently strict to typify the affinity 
 betwixt metrical and prose composition? They 
 both speak by and to the same organs ; the bodies 
 in which both of them are clothed may be said to 
 be of the same substance, their affections are kin- 
 dred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing 
 even in degree ; poetry ' sheds no tears " such as 
 angels weep," but natural and human tears ; she 
 can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her 
 vital juices from those of prose ; the same human 
 blood circulates through the veins of them both. 
 
 If it be affirmed that rhyme and metrical arrange- 
 ment of themselves constitute a distinction which 
 overturns what has just been said on the strict affinity 
 of metrical language with that of prose, and paves 
 the way for other artificial distinctions which the 
 
 1 I here use the word " Poetry " (though against my own judg- 
 ment) as opposed to the word Prose, and synonymous with metri- 
 cal composition. But much confusion has been introduced into 
 criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and Prose, instead of 
 the more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of Fact, or 
 Science. The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre ; nor is this, 
 in truth, a strict antithesis, because lines and passages of metre so 
 naturally occur in writing prose, that it would be scarcely possible 
 to avoid them, even were it desirable. 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 63 
 
 mind voluntarily admits, I answer that the language 
 of such poetry as is here recommended is, as far as 
 is possible, a selection of the language really spoken 
 by men ; that this selection, wherever it is made 
 with true taste and feeling, will of itself form a dis- 
 tinction far greater than would at first be imagined, 
 and will entirely separate the composition from the 
 vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life ; and, if 
 metre be superadded thereto, I believe that a dis- 
 similitude will be produced altogether sufficient for 
 the gratification of a rational mind. What other 
 distinction would we have ? Whence is it to come ? 
 And where is it to exist ? Not, surely, where the 
 poet speaks through the mouths of his characters: 
 it cannot be necessary here, either for elevation of 
 style, or any of its supposed ornaments : for, if the 
 poet's subject be judiciously chosen, it will naturally, 
 and upon fit occasion, lead him to passions the lan- 
 guage of which, if selected truly and judiciously, 
 must necessarily be dignified and variegated, and 
 alive with metaphors and figures. I forbear to speak 
 of an incongruity which would shock the intelligent 
 reader, should the poet interweave any foreign 
 splendor of his own with that which the passion 
 naturally suggests : it is sufficient to say that such 
 addition is unnecessary. And, surely, it is more 
 probable that those passages, which with propriety 
 abound with metaphors and figures, will have their 
 due effect, if, upon other occasions where the pas- 
 sions are of a milder character, the style also be sub- 
 dued and temperate. 
 
64 William words worth. 
 
 But, as the pleasure which I hope to give by the 
 poems now presented to the reader must depend 
 entirely on just notions upon this subject, and as it 
 is in itself of high importance to our taste and moral 
 feelings, I cannot content myself with these detached 
 remarks. And if, in what I am about to say, it shall 
 appear to some that my labor is unnecessary, and 
 that I am like a man fighting a battle without ene- 
 mies, such persons may be reminded, that, whatever 
 be the language outwardly holden by men, a prac- 
 tical faith in the opinions which I am wishing to 
 establish is almost unknown. If my conclusions are 
 admitted, and carried as far as they must be carried 
 if admitted at all, our judgments concerning the 
 works of the greatest poets both ancient and modern 
 will be far different from what they are at present, 
 both when we praise and when we censure : and our 
 moral feelings influencing and influenced by these 
 judgments will, I believe, be corrected and purified. 
 
 Taking up the subject, then, upon general 
 grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word 
 poet? What is a poet? To whom does he address 
 himself? And what language is to be expected from 
 him ? He is a man speaking to men : a man, it is 
 true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more 
 enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowl- 
 edge of human nature, and a more comprehensive 
 soul, than are supposed to be common among man- 
 kind ; a man pleased with his own passions and 
 volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in 
 the spirit of life that is in him ; delighting to con- 
 
The preface to the lyrical ballads. 65 
 
 template similar volitions and passions as manifested 
 in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually 
 impelled to create them where he does not find 
 them. To these qualities he has added a disposi- 
 tion to be affected more than other men by absent 
 things as if they were present ; an ability of conjur- 
 ing up in himself passions, which are indeed far from 
 being the same as those produced by real events, yet 
 (especially in those parts of the general sympathy 
 which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly 
 resemble the passions produced by real events, than 
 anything which, from the motions of their own 
 minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in 
 themselves ; — whence, and from practice, he has 
 acquired a greater readiness and power in express- 
 ing what he thinks and feels, and especially those 
 thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or 
 from the structure of his own mind, arise in him 
 without immediate external excitement. 
 
 But whatever portion of this faculty we may sup- 
 pose even the greatest poet to possess, there cannot 
 be a doubt that the language which it will suggest 
 to him must often, in liveliness and truth, fall short 
 of that which is uttered by men in real life, under 
 the actual pressure of those passions, certain shad- 
 ows of which the poet thus produces, or feels to be 
 produced, in himself. 
 
 However exalted a notion we would wish to cher- 
 ish of the character of a poet, it is obvious that 
 while he describes and imitates passions, his employ- 
 ment is in some degree mechanical, compared with 
 
66 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 the freedom and power of real and substantial 
 action and suffering. So that it will be the wish of 
 the poet to bring his feelings near to those of the 
 persons whose feelings he describes ; nay, for short 
 spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an 
 entire delusion, and even confound and identify his 
 own feelings with theirs ; modifying only the lan- 
 guage which is thus suggested to him by a consid- 
 eration that he describes for a particular purpose, 
 that of giving pleasure. Here, then, he will apply 
 the principle of selection which has been already 
 insisted upon. He will depend upon this for re- 
 moving what would otherwise be painful or disgust- 
 ing in the passion ; he will feel that there is no 
 necessity to trick out or to elevate nature ; and the 
 more industriously he applies this principle, the 
 deeper will be his faith that no words, which his 
 fancy or imagination can suggest, will be to be com- 
 pared with those which are the emanations of reality 
 and truth. 
 
 But it may be said by those who do not object to 
 the general spirit of these remarks, that, as it is im- 
 possible for the poet to produce upon all occasions 
 language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that 
 which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper 
 that he should consider himself as in the situation 
 of a translator, who does not scruple to substitute 
 excellencies of another kind for those which are 
 unattainable by him ; and endeavors occasionally to 
 surpass his original, in order to make some amends 
 for the general inferiority to which he feels that he 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 67 
 
 must submit. But this would be to encourage idle- 
 ness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the lan- 
 guage of men who speak of what they do not under- 
 stand ; who talk of poetry as of a matter of amuse- 
 ment and idle pleasure ; who will converse with us 
 as gravely about a taste for poetry, as they express 
 it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for 
 rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry. Aristotle, I 
 have been told, has said, that poetry is the most 
 philosophic of all writing : it is so : its object is 
 truth, not individual and local, but general, and 
 operative ; not standing upon external testimony, 
 but carried alive into the heart by passion ; truth 
 which is its own testimony, which gives competence 
 and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, 
 and receives them from the same tribunal. Poetry 
 is the image of man and nature. The obstacles 
 which stand in the way of the fidelity of the 
 biographer and historian, and of their consequent 
 utility, are incalculably greater than those which are 
 to be encountered by the poet who comprehends 
 the dignity of his art. The poet writes under one 
 restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving im- 
 mediate pleasure to a human being possessed of that 
 information which may be expected from him, not 
 as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, 
 or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except 
 this one restriction, there is no object standing be- 
 tween the poet and the image of things ; between 
 this, and the biographer and historian, there are a 
 thousand. 
 
6$ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Nor let this necessity of producing immediate 
 pleasure be considered as a degradation of the poet's 
 art. It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment 
 of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment 
 the more sincere, because not formal, but indirect ; 
 it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the 
 world in the spirit of love : further, it is a homage 
 paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the 
 grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he 
 knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have 
 no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure. 
 I would not be misunderstood ; but wherever we 
 sympathize with pain, it will be found that the sym- 
 pathy is produced and carried on by subtile combina- 
 tions with pleasure. We have no knowledge, that 
 is, no general principles drawn from the contempla- 
 tion of particular facts, but what has been built up 
 by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. 
 The man of science, the chemist and mathema- 
 tician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may 
 have had to struggle with, know and feel this. 
 However painful may be the objects with which the 
 anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that 
 his knowledge is pleasure ; and where he has no 
 pleasure he has no knowledge. What then does the 
 poet ? He considers man and the objects that sur- 
 round him as acting and reacting upon each other, 
 so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and 
 pleasure ; he considers man in his own nature and 
 in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a cer- 
 tain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 6g 
 
 convictions, intuitions, and deductions, which from 
 habit acquire the quality of intuitions ; he considers 
 him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas 
 and sensations, and finding everywhere objects that 
 immediately excite in him sympathies which, from 
 the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an 
 overbalance of enjoyment. 
 
 To this knowledge which all men carry about with 
 them, and to these sympathies in which, without any 
 other discipline than that of our daily life, we are 
 fitted to take delight, the poet principally directs 
 his attention. He considers man and nature as es- 
 sentially adapted to each other, and the mind of 
 man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most 
 interesting properties of nature. And thus the 
 poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure, which 
 accompanies him through the whole course of his 
 studies, converses with general nature, with affections 
 akin to those which, through labor and length of time, 
 the man of science has raised up in himself, by con- 
 versing with those particular parts of nature which 
 are the objects of his studies. The knowledge both 
 of the poet and the man of science is pleasure ; but 
 the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary 
 part of our existence, our natural and unalienable 
 inheritance ; the other is a personal and individual 
 acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual 
 and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow- 
 beings. The man of science seeks truth as a remote 
 and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it 
 in his solitude : the poet, singing a song in which all 
 
70 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence 
 of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. 
 Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge ; 
 it is the impassioned expression which is in the 
 countenance of all science. Emphatically may it be 
 said of the poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, 
 " that he looks before and after." He is the rock 
 of defence for human nature ; an upholder and pre- 
 server, carrying everywhere with him relationship 
 and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, 
 of language and manners, of laws and customs : in 
 spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things 
 violently destroyed ; the poet binds together by 
 passion and knowledge the vast empire of human 
 society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over 
 all time. The objects of the poet's thoughts are 
 everywhere ; though the eyes and senses of man 
 are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow 
 wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation 
 in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and 
 last of all knowledge — it is as immortal as the heart 
 of man. If the labors of men of science should ever 
 create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in 
 our condition, and in the impressions which we ha- 
 bitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more 
 than at present ; he will be ready to follow the steps 
 of the man of science, not only in those general in- 
 direct effects, but he will be at his side, carrying 
 sensation into the midst of the objects of the science 
 itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, 
 the botanist, or mineralogist will be as proper ob- 
 
THE PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS. 7 1 
 
 jects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be 
 employed, if the time should ever come when these 
 things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under 
 which they are contemplated by the followers of 
 these respective sciences shall be manifestly and 
 palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering 
 beings. If the time should ever come when what is 
 now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be 
 ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, 
 the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the trans- 
 figuration, and will welcome the being thus pro- 
 duced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the house- 
 hold of man. It is not, then, to be supposed that 
 any one, who holds that sublime notion of poetry 
 which I have attempted to convey, will break in 
 upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures by trans- 
 itory and accidental ornaments, and endeavor to ex- 
 cite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of 
 which must manifestly depend upon the assumed 
 meanness of his subjeet. 
 
72 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 [1772-1834.] 
 
 [The tendency to social grouping of leaders of an epoch- 
 making literary school is illustrated in the close association 
 and friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge. They 
 were mutually appreciative and stimulating, and some of the 
 most critical months of their poetical lives were passed in 
 almost constant companionship. By virtue of his moral 
 strength and seriousness Wordsworth's accomplished work 
 easily outranks his friend's, but Coleridge's natural poetic 
 instincts were broader and more ideal. Accordingly his 
 criticism of the Wordsworthian theory of poetry is of 
 especial value, both for his sympathetic insight into its 
 greatness and beauty, and not less for his recognition of its 
 limitations. The following selections are interesting, aside 
 from their importance as a discussion of the question of 
 poetic diction, from their relation to the famous Lake 
 school chapter of poetical history. Three other extracts 
 from Coleridge's critical writings are also given, which 
 amply justify the rank that has long been assigned him at 
 the head of philosophical literary criticism. Though his 
 metrical style is perhaps the most perfect of any of our 
 modern poets, the diction of his prose is less to be com- 
 mended. Nor in prose any more than in poetry did Cole- 
 ridge ever build up to his own plans, and the Biographia 
 Liter aria, from which these passages come, is not the work 
 that he might have made it. But the literary student finds 
 mingled with its metaphysics many additional literary and 
 aesthetic discussions of great value. His lectures on Shak- 
 spere and other dramatists and poets, though fragmentary, 
 are full of thought and a great poet's appreciativeness. 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 73 
 
 Readers who are interested in comparative studies may find 
 a suggestive topic in the relation of his criticism to that of 
 German writers, especially Schlegel.] 
 
 From the Biographia Literaria. Chapter I. 
 
 At school I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of 
 a very sensible, though at the same time a very 
 severe, master. 1 He early moulded my taste to the 
 preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and 
 Theocritus to Virgil, and again Virgil to Ovid. He 
 habituated me to compare Lucretius (in such ex- 
 tracts as I then read), Terence, and, above all, the 
 chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman 
 poets of the so-called silver and brazen ages, but 
 with even those of the Augustan era ; and on 
 grounds of plain sense and universal logic, to see 
 and assert the superiority of the former, in the truth 
 and nativeness, both of their thoughts and diction. 
 At the same time that we were studying the Greek 
 tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and 
 Milton as lessons : and they were lessons, too, which 
 required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to 
 escape his censure. I learnt from him that poetry, 
 even that of the loftiest and, seemingly, that of the 
 wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as 
 that of science; and more difficult, because more 
 subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and 
 more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he 
 would say, there is a reason assignable, not only 
 for every word, but for the position of every word ; 
 
 1 The Rev. James Boyer, many years Head Master of the 
 Grammar School, Christ's Hospital. 
 
74 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 and I well remember, that, availing himself of the 
 synonymes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us, 
 attempt to show, with regard to each, why it would 
 not have answered the same purpose, and wherein 
 consisted the peculiar fitness of the word in the 
 original text. 
 
 In our own English compositions (at least for the 
 last three years of our school education) he showed 
 no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image unsup- 
 ported by a sound sense, or where the same sense 
 might have been conveyed with equal force and 
 dignity in plainer words. Lute, harp, and lyre ; 
 muse, muses, and inspirations; Pegasus, Parnassus, 
 and Hippocrene, — were all an abomination to him. 
 In fancy, I can almost hear him now, exclaiming, 
 " Harp ? Harp ? Lyre ? Pen and ink, boy, you 
 mean ! Muse, boy, Muse ? Your Nurse s daughter, 
 you mean ! Pierian spring ? Oh, ay ! the cloister- 
 pump, I suppose/" Nay, certain introductions, 
 similes, and examples were placed by name on a list 
 of interdiction. Among the similes there was, I 
 remember, that of the Manchineel fruit, as suiting 
 equally well with too many subjects; in which, how- 
 ever, it yielded the palm at once to the example of 
 Alexander and Clytus, which was equally good and 
 apt, whatever might be the theme. Was it Ambi- 
 tion? Alexander and Clytus! Flattery? Alex- 
 ander and Clytus ! Anger? Drunkenness? Pride? 
 Friendship? Ingratitude? Late repentance? Still, 
 still Alexander and Clytus ! At length, the praises 
 of agriculture having been exemplified in the 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHTA LITERARIA. 7$ 
 
 sagacious observation that, had Alexander been 
 holding the plough, he would not have run his 
 friend Clytus through with a spear, this tried and 
 serviceable old friend was banished by public edict 
 in secnla seculorum. I have sometimes ventured 
 to think that a list of this kind, or an index expur- 
 gatorius of certain well-known and ever-returning 
 phrases, both introductory and transitional, includ- 
 ing the large assortment of modest egotisms, and 
 flattering illeisms, etc., etc., might be hung up in 
 our law-courts, and both houses of parliament, with 
 great advantage to the public, as an important 
 saving of national time, an incalculable relief to his 
 Majesty's ministers, but, above all, as ensuring the 
 thanks of the country attorneys and their clients, 
 who have private bills to carry through the house. 
 
 Be this as it may, there was one custom of our 
 master which I cannot pass over in silence, because 
 I think it imitable and worthy of imitation. He 
 would often permit our theme exercises, under some 
 pretext of want of time, to accumulate, till each lad 
 had four or five to be looked over. Then placing 
 the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask 
 the writer why this or that sentence might not have 
 found as appropriate a place under this or that 
 thesis : and if no satisfying answer could be re- 
 turned, and two faults of the same kind were found 
 in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed ; 
 the exercise was torn up, and another on the same 
 subject to be produced in addition to the tasks of 
 the day. The reader will, I trust, excuse this 
 
76 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE, 
 
 tribute of recollection to a man whose severities, 
 even now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which 
 the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the 
 painful sensations of distempered sleep, but neither 
 lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and 
 intellectual obligations. He sent us to the Univer- 
 sity excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable 
 Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the 
 least of the good gifts which we derived from his 
 zealous and conscientious tutorage. He is now 
 gone to his final reward, full of years, and full of 
 honors, even of those honors which were dearest to 
 his heart, as gratefully bestowed by that school, and 
 still binding him to the interests of that school in 
 which he had been himself educated, and to which 
 during his whole life he was a dedicated thing. 1 
 
 According to the faculty, or source, from 
 
 which the pleasure given by any poem or passage 
 was derived, I estimated the merit of such poem 
 or passage. 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 we have read, but that to which we return, 
 with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine 
 
 1 Coleridge spoke elsewhere in other terms of this famous school- 
 master. Lamb and Leigh Hunt were also in "Christ's Hospital," 
 and have given their accounts of Mr. Boyer ; Lamb in " Recollec- 
 tions of Christ's Hospital," where he speaks of him favorably, and 
 in " Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," where he 
 describes him grimly enough ; as does Hunt, in his Autobiography. 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 77 
 
 power, and claims the name of essential poetry. 
 Second, that whatever lines can be translated into 
 other words of the same language without diminu- 
 tion of their significance, either in sense or associa- 
 tion, 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 clever- 
 ness. Our genuine admiration of a great poet is 
 a continuous under-current of feeling; it is every- 
 where 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 
 from the pyramids with the bare hand, than to alter 
 a word or the position of a word in Milton or 
 Shakspeare (in their most important works at least), 
 without making the author say something else, or 
 something worse than he does say. One great dis- 
 tinction 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 
 
J?8 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 passion and passionate flow of poetry to the sub- 
 tleties 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. 
 
 From the Biographia Literaria. Chapter XIV. 
 
 During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I 
 were neighbors, our conversation turned frequently 
 on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of 
 exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful ad- 
 herence to the truth of nature, and the power of giv- 
 ing the interest of novelty, by the modifying colors 
 of imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents 
 of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, dif- 
 fused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared 
 to represent the practicability of combining both. 
 These are the poetry of nature. The thought sug- 
 gested itself (to which of us I do not recollect), that 
 a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. 
 In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, in 
 part at least, supernatural ; and the excellence aimed 
 at, was to consist in the interesting of the affections 
 by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would 
 naturally accompany such situations, supposing them 
 real. And real in this sense they have been to every 
 human being who, from whatever source of delusion, 
 has at any time believed himself under supernatural 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 79 
 
 agency. For the second class, subjects were to be 
 chosen from ordinary life ; the characters and inci- 
 dents were to be such as will be found in every vil- 
 lage and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and 
 feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, 
 when they present themselves. 
 
 In this idea originated the plan of the " Lyrical 
 Ballads;" in which it was agreed that my endeavors 
 should be directed to persons and characters super- 
 natural, or at least romantic ; yet so as to transfer 
 from our inward nature a human interest, and a 
 semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these 
 shadows of imagination that willing suspension of 
 disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic 
 faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to 
 propose to himself, as his object, to give the charm 
 of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a 
 feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening 
 the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, 
 and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of 
 the world before us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but 
 for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity 
 and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears 
 that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor under- 
 stand. 
 
 With this view I wrote the " Ancient Mariner," 
 and was preparing, among other poems, the " Dark 
 Ladie," and the " Christabel," in which I should 
 have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done 
 in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's indus- 
 try had proved so much more successful, and the 
 
Bo SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 number of his poems so much greater, that my com- 
 positions, instead of forming a balance, appeared 
 rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter. 
 Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written 
 in his own character, in the impassioned, lofty, and 
 sustained diction, which is characteristic of his 
 genius. In this form the " Lyrical Ballads " were 
 published ; and were presented by him, as an experi- 
 ment whether subjects which, from their nature, 
 rejected the usual ornaments and extra-colloquial 
 style of poems in general, might not be so managed 
 in the language of ordinary life as to produce the 
 pleasurable interest which it is the peculiar business 
 of poetry to impart. To the second edition he 
 added a preface of considerable length ; in which, 
 notwithstanding some passages of apparently a con- 
 trary import, he was understood to contend for the 
 extension of this style to poetry of all kinds, and to 
 reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and 
 forms of style that were not included in what he 
 (unfortunately, I think, adopting an equivocal ex- 
 pression) called the language of real life. From 
 this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was im- 
 possible to deny the presence of original genius, 
 however mistaken its direction might be deemed, 
 arose the whole long-continued controversy. For 
 from the conjunction of perceived power with sup- 
 posed heresy I explain the inveteracy, and in some 
 instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions, 
 with which the controversy has been conducted by 
 the assailants. 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BlOGRAPHlA LITERARIA. 8 1 
 
 Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the 
 childish things, which they were for a long time de- 
 scribed as being ; had they been really distinguished 
 from the compositions of other poets merely by 
 meanness of language and inanity of thought ; had 
 they, indeed, contained nothing more than what is 
 found in the parodies, and pretended imitations of 
 them, — they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, 
 into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the 
 preface along with them. But year after year in- 
 creased the number of Mr. Wordsworth's admirers. 
 They were found, too, not in the lower classes of 
 the reading public, but chiefly among young men of 
 strong sensibility and meditative minds ; and their 
 admiration (inflamed, perhaps, in some degree by 
 opposition) was distinguished by its intensity, I 
 might almost say by its religious fervor. These 
 facts, and the intellectual energy of the author, 
 which was more or less consciously felt, where it 
 was outwardly and even boisterously denied ; meet- 
 ing with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and 
 of alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of 
 criticism which would of itself have borne up the 
 poems by the violence with which it whirled them 
 round and round. With many parts of this preface, 
 in the sense attributed to them, and which the words 
 undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred ; 
 but, on the contrary, objected to them as erroneous 
 in principle, and as contradictory (in appearance at 
 least) both to other parts of the same preface, and 
 to the author's own practice in the greater number 
 
$2 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth, in his 
 recent collection, has, I find, degraded this prefatory 
 disquisition to the end of his second volume, to be 
 read or not at the reader's choice. But he has not, 
 as far as I can discover, announced any change in 
 his poetic creed. At all events, considering it as the 
 source of a controversy in which I have been hon- 
 ored more than I deserve by the frequent conjunc- 
 tion of my name with his, I think it expedient to 
 declare, once for all, in what points I coincide with 
 his opinions, and in what points I altogether differ. 
 But in order to render myself intelligible, I must 
 previously, in as few words as possible, explain my 
 ideas, first, of a Poem ; and secondly, of POETRY 
 itself, in kind, and in essence. 
 
 The office of philosophical disquisition consists in 
 just distinction; while it is the privilege of the phi- 
 losopher to preserve himself constantly aware that 
 distinction is not division. In order to obtain ade- 
 quate notions of any truth, we must intellectually 
 separate its distinguishable parts ; and this is the 
 technical process of philosophy. But having so 
 done, we must then restore them in our conceptions 
 to the unity in which they actually coexist ; and 
 this is the result of philosophy. A poem contains 
 the same elements as a prose composition ; the 
 difference, therefore, must consist in a different 
 combination of them, in consequence of a different 
 object proposed. Acccording to the difference 
 of the object will be the difference of the com- 
 bination. It is possible that the object may be 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BlOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 83 
 
 merely to facilitate the recollection of any given 
 facts or observations, by artificial arrangement; and 
 the composition will be a poem, merely because it is 
 distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or 
 by both conjointly. In this, the lowest sense, a 
 man might attribute the name of a poem to the 
 well-known enumeration of the days in the several 
 months : 
 
 " Thirty days hath September, 
 April, June, and November," etc., 
 
 and others of the same class and purpose. And as 
 a particular pleasure is found in anticipating the re- 
 currence of sounds and quantities, all compositions 
 that have this charm superadded, whatever be their 
 contents, may be entitled poems. 
 
 So much for the superficial form. A difference of 
 objects and contents supplies an additional ground 
 of distinction. The immediate purpose may be the 
 communication of truths ; either of truth absolute 
 and demonstrable, as in works of science ; or of facts 
 experienced and recorded, as in history. Pleasure, 
 and that of the highest and most permanent kind, 
 may result from the attainment of the end ; but it is 
 not itself the immediate end. In other works the 
 communication of pleasure may be the immediate 
 purpose ; and though truth, either moral or intelleo 
 tual, ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will dis- 
 tinguish the character of the author, not the class to 
 which the work belongs. Blest, indeed, is that state 
 of society in which the immediate purpose would be 
 
&4 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate 
 end ; in which no charm of diction or imagery could 
 exempt the Bathyllus even of an Anacreon, or the 
 Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion ! 
 
 But the communication of pleasure may be the 
 immediate object of a work not metrically composed ; 
 and that object may have been in a high degree 
 attained, as in novels and romances. Would then 
 the mere superaddition of metre, with or without 
 rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The 
 answer is, that nothing can permanently please, 
 which does not contain in itself the reason why it is 
 so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all 
 other parts must be made consonant with it. They 
 must be such as to justify the perpetual and distinct 
 attention to each part, which an exact correspondent 
 recurrence of accent and sound is calculated to ex- 
 cite. The final definition, then, so deduced, may be 
 thus worded : A poem is that species of composition 
 which is opposed to works of science by proposing 
 for its immediate object pleasure, not truth ; and 
 from all other species (having this object in common 
 with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself 
 such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a 
 distinct gratification from each component part. 
 
 Finally, GOOD SENSE is the BODY of poetic genius, 
 
 FANCY its DRAPERY, MOTION its LIFE, and IMAGINA- 
 TION the SOUL, that is everywhere, and in each ; and 
 forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole. 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 8$ 
 
 From the Biographia Literaria. Chapter XV. 
 
 In the application of these principles to purposes 
 of practical criticism, as employed in the appraisal 
 of works more or less imperfect, I have endeavored 
 to discover what the qualities in a poem are, which 
 may be deemed promises and specific symptoms of 
 poetic power, as distinguished from general talent 
 determined to poetic composition by accidental mo- 
 tives, by an act of the will, rather than by the im- 
 spiration of a genial and productive nature. In this 
 investigation I could not, I thought, do better than 
 keep before me the earliest work of the greatest 
 genius that, perhaps, human nature has yet pro- 
 duced, our myriad-minded Shakspeare. I mean the 
 "Venus and Adonis," and the " Lucrece ; " works 
 which give at once strong promises of the strength, 
 and yet obvious proofs of the immaturity, of his gen- 
 ius. From these I abstracted the following marks, 
 as characteristics of original poetic genius in general : 
 
 I. In the " Venus and Adonis" the first and most 
 obvious excellence is the perfect sweetness of the 
 versification ; its adaptation to the subject; and the 
 power displayed in varying the march of the words 
 without passing into a loftier and more majestic 
 rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or 
 permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of 
 melody predominant. The delight in richness and 
 sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be 
 evidently original, and not the result of an easily 
 imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favorable 
 promise in the compositions of a young man. " The 
 
86 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLE'RIDGE. 
 
 man that hath not music in his soul " can, indeed, 
 never be a genuine poet. Imagery (even taken from 
 nature, much more when transplanted from books, as 
 travels, voyages, and works of natural history) affect- 
 ing incidents; just thoughts; interesting personal or 
 domestic feelings ; and with these the art of their 
 combination or intertexture in the form of a poem, — 
 may all, by incessant effort, be acquired as a trade, 
 by a man of talents and much reading, who, as I 
 once before observed, has mistaken an intense desire 
 of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius ; the 
 love of the arbitrary end for a possession of the pecu- 
 liar means. But the sense of musical delight, with 
 the power of producing it, is a gift of imagination ; 
 and this, together with the power of reducing multi- 
 tude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of 
 thoughts by some one predominant thought or feel- 
 ing, may be cultivated and improved, but can never 
 be learnt. It is in these that " Poeta nascitur non 
 fit." 
 
 2. A second promise of genius is the choice of 
 subjects very remote from the private interests and 
 circumstances of the writer himself. At least I have 
 found, that where the subject is taken immediately 
 from the author's personal sensations and experi- 
 ences, the excellence of a particular poem is but an 
 equivocal mark, and often a fallacious pledge, of 
 genuine poetic power. We may, perhaps, remember 
 the tale of the statuary who had acquired consider- 
 able reputation for the legs of his goddess, though 
 the rest of the statue accorded but indifferently 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. %7 
 
 with the ideal beauty, till his wife, elated with the 
 husband's praises, modestly acknowledged that she 
 herself had been his constant model. In the Venus 
 and Adonis this proof of poetic power exists even 
 to excess. It is throughout as if a superior spirit, 
 more intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than 
 the characters themselves, not only of every outward 
 look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind 
 in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were plac- 
 ing the whole before our view ; himself, meanwhile^ 
 unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only 
 by that pleasurable excitement, which had resulted 
 from the energetic fervor of his own spirit, in so 
 vividly exhibiting what it had so accurately and 
 profoundly contemplated. I think I should have 
 conjectured from these poems, that even the great 
 instinct which impelled the poet to the drama was 
 secretly working in him, prompting him by a series 
 and never-broken chain of imagery, always vivid, 
 and because unbroken, often minute ; by the high- 
 est effort of the picturesque in words, of which 
 words are capable, higher, perhaps, than was ever 
 realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted ; 
 to provide a substitute for that visual language, that 
 constant intervention and running comment, by 
 tone, look, and gesture, which in his dramatic works 
 he was entitled to expect from the players. His 
 " Venus and Adonis " seem at once the characters 
 themselves, and the whole representation of those 
 characters by the most consummate actors. You seem 
 to be told nothing, but to see and hear everything. 
 
88 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 Hence it is that from the perpetual activity of at- 
 tention required on the part of the reader ; from the 
 rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature 
 of the thoughts and images ; and, above all, from 
 the alienation, and, if I may hazard such an expres- 
 sion, the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings, 
 from those of which he is at once the painter and 
 the analyst, — that though the very subject cannot 
 but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, yet 
 never was poem less dangerous on a moral account. 
 Instead of doing as Ariosto, and as, still more offen- 
 sively, Weiland has done ; instead of degrading and 
 deforming passion into appetite, the trials of love 
 into the struggles of concupiscence, Shakspeare has 
 here represented the animal impulse itself, so as to 
 preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the 
 reader's notice among the thousand outward images, 
 and now beautiful, now fanciful, circumstances which 
 form its dresses and its scenery ; or by diverting our 
 attention from the main subject by those frequent 
 witty or profound reflections, which the poet's ever 
 active mind has deduced from, or connected with, 
 the imagery and the incidents. The reader is forced 
 into too much action to sympathize with the merely 
 passive of our nature. As little can a mind thus 
 roused and awakened be brooded on by mean and 
 indistinct emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep 
 upon the surface of a lake, while a strong gale is 
 driving it onward in waves and billows. 
 
 3. It has been before observed, that images, how- 
 ever beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA, 89 
 
 and as accurately represented in words, do not of 
 themselves characterize the poet. They become 
 proofs of original genius, only as far as they are 
 modified by a predominant passion ; or by associated 
 thoughts or images awakened by that passion ; or, 
 when they have the effect of reducing multitude to 
 unity, or succession to an instant ; or, lastly, when a 
 human and intellectual life is transferred to them 
 from the poet's own spirit, 
 
 " Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air." 
 
 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 : 
 
 4 ' 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 ano 1 
 
90 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 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." 
 
 Shakespeare s Sonnet 33. 
 
 " Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
 
 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come — 
 
 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 charac- 
 teristic of poetic genius does the imagery become 
 when it moulds and colors itself to the circumstances, 
 passion, or character present and foremost in the 
 mind. For unrivalled instances in 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 its trim, 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing ; 
 That heavy Saturn laugh 'd and leap'd with him. 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 9 1 
 
 Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
 
 Of different flowers in odor 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 lilies white, 
 
 Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ; 
 
 They were, tho' 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 will the image 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 held him to her heart, 
 And homeward through the dark lawns runs apace : 
 Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky ! 
 So glides he through the night from Venus' eye. 
 
 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, is DEPTH, and ENERGY 
 of THOUGHT. No man was ever yet a great poet 
 without being at the same time a profound philoso- 
 pher. 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 
 
92 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERLDGE. 
 
 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 
 favor, and even demand, their intensest workings. 
 And yet we find in Shakspeares 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 colors, inspirited 
 by the same impetuous vigor of thought, and diverg- 
 ing 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 knowl- 
 edge and reflection ; and, lastly, with the same per- 
 fect 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 inspira- 
 tion possessed by the spirit, not possessing it, — first 
 studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood mi- 
 nutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive, 
 wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length 
 gave birth to that stupendous power, by which he 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 93 
 
 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 Pro- 
 teus of the fire and the flood ; the other attracts all 
 forms and things to himself, in the unity of his own 
 IDEAL. All things and modes of action shape them- 
 selves anew in the being of Milton ; while Shake- 
 speare becomes all things, yet forever 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 Shakspeare spake ; the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung 
 Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold ! 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that the attempt is im- 
 practicable ; and that, were it not impracticable, it 
 would still be useless. For the very power of 
 making the selection implies the previous possession 
 of the language selected. Or where can the poet 
 have lived? And by what rules could he direct his 
 choice, which would not have enabled him to select 
 and arrange his words by the light of his own judg- 
 ment? We do not adopt the language of a class 
 by the mere adoption of such words exclusively as 
 that class would use, or at least understand ; but, 
 likewise, by following the order in which the words 
 
04 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 of such men are wont to succeed each other. Now, 
 this order, in the intercourse of uneducated men, is 
 distinguished from the diction of their superiors in 
 knowledge and power, by the greater disjunction and 
 separation in the component parts of that, whatever 
 it be, which they wish to communicate. There is a 
 want of that prospectiveness of mind, that surview, 
 which enables a man to foresee the whole of what 
 he is to convey, appertaining to any one point ; and 
 by this means so to subordinate and arrange the 
 different parts according to their relative importance, 
 as to convey it at once, and as an organized whole. 
 
 Now I will take the first stanza on which I have 
 chanced to open, in the Lyrical Ballads. It is one 
 of the most simple and least peculiar in its language. 
 
 " In distant countries I ha ,r e been, 
 And yet I have not often seen 
 A healthy man, a man full grown, 
 Weep in the public road alone. 
 But such a one, on English ground, 
 And in the broad highway, I met ; 
 Along the broad highway he came, 
 His cheeks with tears were wet. 
 Sturdy he seem'd, though he was sad, 
 And in his arms a lamb he had." 
 
 The words here are doubtless such as are current 
 in all ranks of life ; and, of course, not less so in the 
 hamlet and cottage than in the shop, manufactory, 
 college, or palace. But is this the order in which 
 the rustic would have placed the words? I am 
 grievously deceived if the following less compact 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 95 
 
 mode of commencing the same tale be not a far 
 more faithful copy. " I have been in a many parts, 
 far and near, and I don't know that I ever saw 
 before, a man crying by himself in the public road ; 
 a grown man I mean, that was neither sick nor 
 hurt," etc., etc. But when I turn to the following 
 stanza in " The Thorn : " 
 
 " At all times of the day and night, 
 This wretched woman thither goes, 
 And she is known to every star, 
 And every wind that blows : 
 And there beside the thorn she sits, 
 When the blue daylight's in the skies, 
 And when the whirlwind's on the hill, 
 Or frosty air is keen and still ; 
 And to herself she cries, 
 Oh misery ! Oh misery ! 
 Oh woe is me ! Oh misery ! " 
 
 And compare this with the language of ordinary 
 men, or with that which I can conceive at all likely 
 to proceed, in real life, from such a narrator as is 
 supposed in the note to the poem ; compare it either 
 in the succession of the images or of the sentences, 
 I am reminded of the sublime prayer and hymn of 
 praise which Milton, in opposition to an established 
 liturgy, presents as a fair specimen of common con- 
 temporary devotion, and such as we might expect 
 to hear from every self-inspired minister of a con- 
 venticle! And I reflect with delight, how little a 
 mere theory, though of his own workmanship, inter- 
 feres with the processes of genuine imagination in 
 
96 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERLDGE. 
 
 a man of true poetic genius, who possesses, as Mr. 
 Wordsworth, if ever man did, most assuredly does 
 possess, 
 
 "The Vision and the Faculty Divine." 
 
 One point, then, alone remains, but the most im- 
 portant ; its examination having been, indeed, my 
 chief inducement for the preceding inquisition, 
 " There neither is, nor can be any essential difference 
 between the language of prose and metrical composi- 
 tion." Such is Mr. Wordsworth's assertion. Now, 
 prose itself, at least, in all argumentative and con- 
 secutive works, differs, and ought to differ, from the 
 language of conversation ; even as reading ought to 
 differ from talking. Unless, therefore, the differ- 
 ence denied be that of the mere zvords, as materials 
 common to all styles of writing, and not of the style 
 itself, in the universally admitted sense of the term, 
 it might be naturally presumed that there must 
 exist a still greater between the ordonnance of 
 poetic composition, and that of prose, than is ex- 
 pected to distinguish prose from ordinary conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 There are not, indeed, examples wanting in the 
 history of literature, of apparent paradoxes that 
 have summoned the public wonder, as new and 
 startling truths, but which, on examination, have 
 shrunk into tame and harmless truisms ; as the eyes 
 of a cat, seen in the dark, have been mistaken for 
 flames of fire. But Mr. Wordsworth is among the 
 last men to whom a delusion of this kind would be 
 
EtiAPTERS OP THE BIOGRAPHIA LITER ARIA. 97 
 
 attributed by any one who had enjoyed the slightest 
 opportunity of understanding his mind and char- 
 acter. Where an objection has been anticipated by 
 such an author as natural, his answer to it must 
 needs be interpreted in some sense which either is, 
 or has been, or is capable of being, controverted. 
 My object, then, must be to discover some other 
 meaning for the term " essential difference" in this 
 place, exclusive of the indistinction and community 
 of the words themselves. For whether there ought 
 to exist a class of words in the English in any 
 degree resembling the poetic dialect of the Greek 
 and Italian, is a question of very subordinate im- 
 portance. The number of such words would be 
 small indeed in our language, and even in the 
 Italian and Greek; they consist not so much of 
 different words, as of slight differences in the forms 
 of declining and conjugating the same words ; forms, 
 doubtless, which having been, at some period more 
 or less remote, the common grammatic flexions of 
 some tribe or province, had been accidentally ap- 
 propriated to poetry by the general admiration of 
 certain master intellects, the first established lights 
 of inspiration, to whom that dialect happened to be 
 native. 
 
 Essence, in its primary signification, mean.s the 
 principle of individuation, the inmost principle of 
 the possibility of any thing, as that particular thing. 
 It is equivalent to the idea of a thing, whenever we 
 use the word idea with philosophic precision. Ex- 
 istence, on the other hand, is distinguished from 
 
9& SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 essence by the superinduction of reality. Thus we 
 speak of the essence and essential properties of a 
 circle; but we do not therefore assert that any 
 thing which really exists is mathematically circular. 
 Thus too, without any tautology, we contend for 
 the existence of the Supreme Being ; that is, for a 
 reality corresponding to the idea. There is, next, 
 a secondary use of the word essence, in which it 
 signifies the point or ground of contradistinction 
 between two modifications of the same substance or 
 subject. Thus we should be allowed to say, that 
 the style of architecture of Westminster Abbey is 
 essentially different from that of Saint Paul, even 
 though both had been built with blocks cut into the 
 same form, and from the same quarry. Only in 
 this latter sense of the term must it have been 
 denied by Mr. Wordsworth (for in this sense alone is 
 it affirmed by the general opinion) that the language 
 of poetry (i.e., the formal construction or architec- 
 ture of the words and phrases) is essentially different 
 from that of prose. Now the burthen of the proof 
 lies with the oppugner, not with the supporters of 
 the common belief. Mr. Wordsworth, in conse- 
 quence, assigns, as the proof of his position, " that 
 not only the language of a large portion of every 
 good poem, even of the most elevated character, 
 must necessarily, except with reference to the metre, 
 in no respect differ from that of good prose; but 
 likewise that some of the most interesting parts of 
 the best poems will be strictly the language of prose, 
 when prose is well written. The truth of this asser- 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BlOGRApHIA LITpRARlA. 90 
 
 tion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages 
 from almost all the poetical writings even of Milton 
 himself." He then quotes Gray's sonnet — 
 
 " In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 
 And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire ; 
 The birds in vain their amorous descant join, 
 Or cheerful fields resume their green attire; 
 These ears, alas! for other notes repine ; 
 A different object do these eyes require; 
 My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine, 
 And in my breast the imperfect joys expire ! 
 Yet morning smiles, the busy race to cheer, 
 And new-born pleasure brings to happier men: 
 The fields to all their wonted tributes bear, 
 To warm their little loves the birds complain. 
 I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, 
 And weep the more, becattse I weep in vain ;" 
 
 and adds the following remark : " It will easily be 
 perceived that the only part of this Sonnet which is 
 of any value is the lines printed in italics. It is 
 equally obvious, that except in the rhyme, and in 
 the use of the single word " fruitless " for fruitlessly, 
 which is so far a defect, the language of these lines 
 does in no respect differ from that of prose." 
 
 An idealist defending his system by the fact that 
 when asleep we often believe ourselves awake, was 
 well answered by his plain neighbor, " Ah, but when 
 awake do we ever believe ourselves asleep ?" Things 
 identical must be convertible. The preceding pas- 
 sage seems to rest on a similar sophism. For the 
 question is not, whether there may not occur in 
 prose an order of words which would be equally 
 proper in a poem ; nor whether there are not 
 
1 00 SA M UEL TA YL OR COLE RID G& t 
 
 beautiful lines and sentences of frequent occurrence 
 in good poems which would be equally becoming, as 
 well as beautiful, in good prose ; for neither the one 
 or the other has ever been either denied or doubted 
 by any one. The true question must be, whether 
 there are not modes of expression, a construction, 
 and an order of sentences which are in their fit and 
 natural place in a serious prose composition, but 
 would be disproportionate and heterogeneous in 
 metrical poetry ; and, vice versa, whether in the lan- 
 guage of a serious poem there may not be an arrange- 
 ment both of words and sentences, and a use and 
 selection of (what are called) figures of speech, both 
 as to their kind, their frequency, and their occasions, 
 which, on a subject of equal weight, would be vicious 
 and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend 
 that in both cases this unfitness of each for the 
 place of the other frequently will and ought to exist. 
 And, first, from the origin of metre. This I 
 would trace to the balance in the mind effected by 
 that spontaneous effort which strives to hold in 
 check the workings of passion. It might be easily 
 explained, likewise, in what manner this salutary 
 antagonism is assisted by the very state which it 
 counteracts, and how this balance of antagonists 
 became organized into metre (in the usual accepta- 
 tion of that term), by a supervening act of the will 
 and judgment, consciously, and for the foreseen pur- 
 pose of pleasure. Assuming these principles as the 
 data of our argument, we deduce from them two 
 legitimate conditions, which the critic is entitled to 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. IOI 
 
 expect in every metrical work. First* that as the 
 elements of metre owe their existence to a state of 
 increased excitement, so the metre itself should be 
 accompanied by the natural language of excitement. 
 Secondly, that as these elements are formed into 
 metre artificially ; by a voluntary act, with the design 
 and for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, 
 so the traces of present volition should, throughout 
 the metrical language, be proportionally discernible. 
 Now these two conditions must be reconciled and 
 co-present. There must be, not only a partnership, 
 but a union ; an interpenetration of passion and will, 
 of spontaneous impulse and of voluntary purpose. 
 Again : this union can be manifested only in a fre- 
 quency of forms and figures of speech (originally 
 the offspring of passion, but now the adopted chil- 
 dren of power), greater than would be desired or 
 endured where the emotion is not voluntarily en- 
 couraged, and kept up for the sake of that pleasure 
 which such emotion, so tempered and mastered by 
 the will, is found capable of communicating. It not 
 only dictates, but of itself tends to produce a more 
 frequent employment of picturesque and vivifying 
 language than would be natural in any other case 
 in which there did not exist, as there does in the 
 present, a previous and well understood, though 
 tacit, compact between the poet and his reader, that 
 the latter is entitled to expect, and the former 
 bound to supply, this species and degree of pleasur- 
 able excitement. We may in some measure apply 
 to this union the answer of Polixenes, in the 
 
102 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERLDGE. 
 
 Winter's Tale, to Perdita's neglect of the streaked 
 gilly-flowers, because she had heard it said, 
 
 " There is an art which in their piedness shares 
 With great creating nature. 
 
 Pol. Say there be: 
 Yet nature is made better by no mean, 
 But nature makes that mean. So ev'n that art, 
 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 
 That nature makes ! You see, sweet maid, we marry 
 A gentler scion to the zvildest stock : 
 And make conceive a bark of ruder kind 
 By bud of nobler race. This is an art, 
 Which does mend nature — change it rather ; but 
 The art itself is nature." 
 
 Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. 
 As far as metre acts in and for itself, it tends to in- 
 crease the vivacity and susceptibility both of the 
 general feelings and of the attention. This effect it 
 produces by the continued excitement of surprise, 
 and by the quick reciprocations of curiosity, still 
 gratified and still re-excited, which are too slight, 
 indeed, to be at any one moment objects of distinct 
 consciousness, yet become considerable in their 
 aggregate influence. As a medicated atmosphere, 
 or as wine, during animated conversation, they act 
 powerfully though themselves unnoticed. Where, 
 therefore, correspondent food and appropriate matter 
 are not provided for the attention and feelings, thus 
 roused, there must needs be a disappointment felt ; 
 like that of leaping in the dark from the last step of 
 a staircase, when we had prepared our muscles for 
 a leap of three or four, 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 103 
 
 The discussion on the powers of metre in the 
 preface is highly ingenious, and touches at all 
 points on truth. But I cannot find any statement 
 of its powers considered abstractly and separately. 
 On the contrary, Mr. Wordsworth seems always to 
 estimate metre by the powers which it exerts during 
 (and, as I think, in consequence of) its combination 
 with other elements of poetry. Thus the previous 
 difficulty is left unanswered, what the elements are 
 with which it must be combined in order to produce 
 its own effects to any pleasurable purpose. Double 
 and trisyllable rhymes, indeed, form a lower species 
 of wit, and attended to, exclusively for their own 
 sake, may become a source of momentary amuse- 
 ment ; as in poor Smart's distich to the Welsh 
 'Squire, who had promised him a hare : 
 
 " Tell me, thou son of great Cadwallader, 
 Hast sent the hare, or hast thou swallow'd her?" 
 
 But, for any poetic purposes, metre resembles (if 
 the aptness of the simile may excuse its meanness) 
 yeast, worthless or disagreeable by itself, but giving 
 vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is pro- 
 portionally combined 
 
 Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the atten- 
 tion, and therefore excites the question — Why is the 
 attention to be thus stimulated ? Now the question 
 cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre 
 itself; for this we have shown to be conditional, and 
 dependent on the appropriateness of the thoughts 
 and expressions, to which the metrical form is super- 
 
104 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 added. Neither can I conceive any other answer 
 that can be rationally given, short of this : I write in 
 metre, because I am about to use a language differ- 
 ent from that of prose. Besides, where the language 
 is not such, how interesting soever the reflections 
 are that are capable of being drawn by a philosophic 
 mind from the thoughts or incidents of the poem, 
 the metre itself must often become feeble. Take 
 the three last stanzas of the Sailor's Mother, for in- 
 stance. If I could for a moment abstract from the 
 effect produced on the author's feelings, as a man, 
 by the incident at the time of its real occurrence, I 
 would dare appeal to his own judgment, whether in 
 the metre itself he found a sufficient reason for their 
 being written metrically ? 
 
 " And thus continuing, she said, 
 I had a son, who many a day 
 Sailed on the seas; but he is dead; 
 In Denmark he was cast away: 
 And I have travelled far as Hull, to see 
 What clothes he might have left, or other property. 
 
 " The bird and cage, they both were his; 
 *T was my son's bird; and neat and trim 
 He kept it; many voyages 
 This singing-bird hath gone with him: 
 When last he sailed he left the bird behind; 
 As it might be, perhaps, from bodings of his mind. 
 
 " He to a fellow-lodger's care 
 
 Had left it to be watched and fed, 
 
 Till he came back again; and there 
 
 I found it when my son was dead; 
 
 And now, God help me for my little wit! 
 
 I trail it with me, sir ! he took so much delight in it," 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 10$ 
 
 If disproportioning the emphasis we read these 
 stanzas so as to make the rhymes perceptible, even 
 trisyllable rhymes could scarcely produce an equal 
 sense of oddity and strangeness, as we feel here in 
 finding rhymes at all in sentences so exclusively col- 
 loquial. I would further ask whether, but for that 
 visionary state into which the figure of the woman 
 and the susceptibility of his own genius had placed 
 the poet's imagination (a state which spreads its in- 
 fluence and coloring over all that co-exists with the 
 exciting cause, and in which 
 
 " The simplest and the most familiar things 
 
 Gain a strange power of spreading awe around them "), — 
 
 I would ask the poet whether he would not have felt 
 an abrupt downfall in these verses from the preced- 
 ing stanza ? — 
 
 " The ancient spirit is not dead; 
 Old times, thought I, are breathing there ! 
 Proud was I that my country bred 
 Such strength, a dignity so fair ! 
 She begged an alms, like one in poor estate; 
 I looked at her again, nor did my pride abate." 
 
 It must not be omitted, and is, besides, worthy of 
 notice, that those stanzas furnish the only fair in- 
 stance that I have been able to discover in all Mr. 
 Wordsworth's writings, of an actual adoption, or true 
 imitation, of the real and very language of low and 
 rustic life, freed from provincialisms. 
 
 Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes 
 elsewhere assigned, which render metre the proper 
 
106 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and defective 
 without metre. Metre, therefore, having been con- 
 nected with poetry most often and by a peculiar 
 fitness, whatever else is combined with metre must, 
 though it be not itself essentially poetic, have never- 
 theless some property in common with poetry, as an 
 intermedium of affinity, a sort (if I may dare borrow 
 a well-known phrase from technical chemistry) of 
 mor daunt between it and the superadded metre. 
 Now, poetry, Mr. Wordsworth truly affirms, does 
 always imply Passion, which word must be here 
 understood in its most general sense, as an excited 
 state of the feelings and faculties. And as every 
 passion has its proper pulse, so will it likewise have 
 its characteristic modes of expression. But where 
 there exists that degree of genius and talent which 
 entitles a writer to aim at the honors of a poet, the 
 very act of poetic composition itself is, and is allowed 
 to imply and to produce, an unusual state of excite- 
 ment, which, of course, justifies and demands a cor- 
 respondent difference of language, as truly, though 
 not perhaps in as marked a degree, as the excite- 
 ment of love, fear, rage, or jealousy. The vividness 
 of the description or declamations in Donne or 
 Dryden is as much and as often derived from the 
 force and fervor of the describer, as from the reflec- 
 tions, forms, or incidents which constitute their sub- 
 ject and materials. The wheels take fire from the 
 mere rapidity of their motion. To what extent, 
 and under what modifications, this may be admitted 
 to act, I shall attempt to define in an after remark 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA. 107 
 
 on Mr. Wordsworth's reply to this objection, or 
 rather on his objection to this reply, as already an- 
 ticipated in his preface. 
 
 Fourthly, and as intimately connected with this, 
 if not the same argument in a more general form, I 
 adduce the high spiritual instinct of the human being, 
 impelling us to seek unity by harmonious adjust- 
 ment, and thus establishing the principle, that all 
 the parts of an organized whole must be assimilated 
 to the more important and essential parts. This and 
 the preceding arguments may be strengthened by 
 the reflection, that the composition of a poem is 
 among the imitative arts, and that imitation, as op- 
 posed to copying, consists either in the interfusion 
 of the same, throughout the radically different, or 
 of the different throughout a base radically the 
 same. 
 
 Lastly, I appeal to the practice of the best poets 
 of all countries and in all ages, as authorizing the 
 opinion {deduced from all the foregoing), that in 
 every import of the word essential, which would 
 not here involve a mere truism, there may be, is, 
 and ought to be an essential difference between the 
 language of prose and of metrical composition. 
 
 In Mr. Wordsworth's criticism of Gray's Sonnet, 
 the reader's sympathy with his praise or blame of 
 the different parts is taken for granted, rather per- 
 haps too easily. He has not, at least, attempted to 
 win or compel it by argumentative analysis. In my 
 conception, at least, the lines rejected as of no value 
 do, with the exception of the two first, differ as 
 
108 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 much and as little from the language of common 
 life as those which he has printed in italics as pos- 
 sessing genuine excellence. Of the five lines thus 
 honorably distinguished, two of them differ from 
 prose even more widely than the lines which either 
 precede or follow, in the position of the words: 
 
 " A different object do these eyes require ; 
 My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine; 
 And in my breast the imperfect joys expire" 
 
 But were it otherwise, what would this prove, but 
 a truth, of which no man ever doubted ? videlicet, 
 that there are sentences which would be equally in 
 their place both in verse and prose. Assuredly, it 
 does not prove the point, which alone requires proof, 
 namely, that there are not passages which would suit 
 the one and not suit the other. The first line of 
 this sonnet is distinguished from the ordinary lan- 
 guage of men by the epithet to morning. (For we 
 will set aside, at present, the consideration that the 
 particular word " smiling " is hackneyed, and — as it 
 involves a sort of personification — not quite congru- 
 ous with the common and material attribute of sinn- 
 ing.) And, doubtless, this adjunction of epithets, 
 for the purpose of additional description, where no 
 particular attention is demanded for the quality of 
 the thing, would be noticed as giving a poetic cast 
 to a man's conversation. Should the sportsman 
 exclaim, " Come, boys ! the rosy morn calls you up" 
 he will be supposed to have some song in his head. 
 But no one suspects this when he says, " A wet 
 morning shall not confine us to our beds." This, 
 
CHAPTERS OF THE BIOGRAPHlA LITER ARIA. 1 00, 
 
 then, is either a defect in poetry, or it is not. Who- 
 ever should decide in the affirmative, I would request 
 him to re-peruse any one poem, of any confessedly 
 great poet, from Homer to Milton, or from yEschylus 
 to Shakspeare, and to strike out (in thought I 
 mean) every instance of this kind. If the number of 
 these fancied erasures did not startle him, or if he 
 continued to deem the work improved by their total 
 omission, he must advance reasons of no ordinary 
 strength and evidence — reasons grounded in the 
 essence of human nature ; otherwise I should not 
 hesitate to consider him as a man not so much proof 
 against all authority, as dead to it. The second line, 
 
 " And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire," 
 
 has indeed almost as many faults as words. But 
 then it is a bad line, not because the language is 
 distinct from that of prose, but because it conveys 
 incongruous images ; because it confounds the cause 
 and the effect, the real thing with the personified 
 representative of the thing ; in short, because it dif- 
 fers from the language of GOOD SENSE ! That the 
 " Phoebus" is hackneyed, and a school-boy image, is 
 an accidental fault, dependent on the age in which 
 the author wrote, and not deduced from the nature 
 of the thing. That it is part of an exploded my- 
 thology, is an objection more deeply grounded. 
 Yet when the torch of ancient learning was re- 
 kindled, so cheering were its beams, that our eldest 
 poets, cut off by Christianity from all accredited ma- 
 chinery, and deprived of all acknowledged guardians 
 
1 10 SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 and symbols of the great objects of nature, were 
 naturally induced to adopt, as a poetic language, 
 those fabulous personages, those forms of the super- 
 natural in nature, which had given them such dear 
 delight in the poems of their great masters. Nay, 
 even at this day, what scholar of genial taste will 
 not so far sympathize with them, as to read with 
 pleasure in Petrarch, Chaucer, or Spenser what he 
 would perhaps condemn as puerile in a modern 
 poet ? 
 
ESS A Y ON SHAKESPEARE'S PLA VS. Ill 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 1775-1834. 
 
 [The most charming of all English essayists was also a fine 
 and sensitive critic. Lamb's short comments on Elizabethan 
 poets are famous, especially those in his volume of dramatic 
 selections. Here and there also in his essays we come upon 
 scraps of criticism, the best of them too occasional and dis- 
 connected to be introduced here. His own verse is pleasant, 
 not great; but in his prose the genuine and deep poetic note 
 of the man is everywhere audible. When his mood is 
 touched by an author, he has a strange art of making us 
 feel what is there, by some phrase which interprets to our 
 sensibilities even more than to our formal intelligence. In 
 style, thought, and emotion Lamb is one of the original 
 and creative writers of the century; and to be fond of his 
 essays is one of the clearest proofs of a refined literary taste. 
 He wrote but few pieces of systematic criticism. The first 
 of the two selections that follow is from one of these, " On 
 the Tragedies of Shakspere," a characteristically whimsical 
 special pleading against seeing them on the stage, a pleading 
 in which he himself perhaps only half believed. Two or 
 three passages in the essay are written superbly, as this par- 
 garaph upon Lear. The second selection is from the delight- 
 ful essay "On Some of the Old Actors." Like much of Lamb's 
 work, his thought here is affected by a poetical caprice that 
 only partially investigates, for example, the steward's impulse 
 in tossing the ring upon the ground, — and that leaves us with 
 a one-sided impression. The sketch remains, however, one 
 of the most admirable fragments of Shaksperian criticism 
 
112 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 that we possess. The hard, matter-of-fact side we can see 
 for ourselves: what we welcome is the writing that makes 
 us sympathize. If we are forced to an alternative between 
 a cold pragmatic accuracy in the appreciation of Malvolio, 
 or any other figure in poetry, and a realization of the finer 
 essence of the character, its hidden secrets, we might do 
 well to choose the latter. But we are much less likely to 
 miss the truthful fact after we have felt the truthful soul.] 
 
 From the Essay on the Fitness of Shakespeare's Plays for 
 Representation. 
 
 So to see Lear acted — to see an old man totter- 
 ing about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out 
 of doors by his daughters in a rainy night — has 
 nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. 
 We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. 
 That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever 
 produced in me. But the Lear of Shakspere cannot 
 be acted. The contemptible machinery by which 
 they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not 
 more inadequate to represent the horrors of the 
 real elements, than any actor can be to represent 
 Lear : they might more easily propose to personate 
 the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael 
 Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is 
 not in corporal dimensions, but in intellectual : the 
 explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano: 
 they are storms turning up and disclosing to the 
 bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. 
 It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh 
 and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on ; 
 even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see 
 
ESS A Y ON SHAKESPEARE'S PLA VS. 1 1 3 
 
 nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the 
 impotence of rage ; while we read it, we see not 
 Lear, but we are Lear — we are in his mind, we 
 are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice 
 of daughters and storms ; in the aberrations of his 
 reason we discover a mighty irregular power of 
 reasoning immethodized from the ordinary pur- 
 poses of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind 
 blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions 
 and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones 
 to do with that sublime identification of his age 
 with that of the heavens themselves, when, in his re- 
 proaches to them for conniving at the injustice of 
 his children, he reminds them that " they themselves 
 are old " ? What gestures shall we appropriate to 
 this? What has the voice or the eye to do with 
 such things? But the play is beyond all art, as the 
 tamperings with it show: it is too hard and stony; 
 it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is 
 not enough that Cordelia is a daughter : she must 
 shine as a lover too. Tate has put his hook in the 
 nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick and his fol- 
 lowers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the 
 mighty beast about more easily. 
 
 A happy ending! As if the living martyrdom 
 that Lear had gone through — the flaying of his feel- 
 ings alive — did not make a fair dismissal from the 
 stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If 
 he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain 
 this world's burden after, why all this pudder and 
 preparation — why torment us with all this unneces- 
 
114 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 sary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of get- 
 ting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt 
 him to act over again his misused station — as if at 
 his years, and with his experience, anything was 
 left but to die. 
 
 From the Essays of Elia : on Some of the Old Actors. 
 
 Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He be- 
 comes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, 
 repelling ; but dignified, consistent, and, for what 
 appears, rather of an overstretched morality. 
 Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan ; and he 
 might have worn his gold chain with honor in one 
 of our old roundhead families, in the service of a 
 Lambert or a Lady Fairfax. But his morality and 
 his manners are misplaced in Illyria. He is opposed 
 to the proper levities of the piece, and falls in the 
 unequal contest. Still his pride, or his gravity (call 
 it which you will), is inherent, and native to the man, 
 not mock or affected, which latter only are the fit 
 objects to excite laughter. His quality is at the 
 best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. 
 His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, but 
 probably not much above his deserts. We see no 
 reason why he should not have been brave, honor- 
 able, accomplished. His careless committal of the 
 ring to the ground (which he was commissioned to 
 restore to Cesario) bespeaks a generosity of birth 
 and feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of 
 a gentleman and a man of education. We must 
 
ESSAYS OF ELI A. 115 
 
 not confound him with the eternal old, low steward 
 of comedy. He is master of the household to a 
 great princess, — a dignity probably conferred upon 
 him for other respects than age or length of service. 
 Olivia, at the first indication of his supposed mad- 
 ness, declares that she " would not have him mis- 
 carry for half of her dowry." Does this look as if 
 the character was meant to appear little or insignifi- 
 cant? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his face — 
 of what? — of being " sick of self-love," — but with 
 a gentleness and considerateness which could not 
 have been, if she had not thought that this particu- 
 lar infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to 
 the knight and his sottish revellers is sensible and 
 spirited ; and when we take into consideration the 
 unprotected condition of his mistress, and the strict 
 regard with which her state of real or dissembled 
 mourning would draw the eyes of the world upon 
 her house affairs, Malvolio might feel the honor of 
 the family in some sort in his keeping ; as it appears 
 not that Olivia had any more brothers or kinsmen 
 to look to it, — for Sir Toby had dropped all such 
 nice respects at the buttery-hatch. That Malvolio 
 was meant to be represented as possessing estimable 
 qualities, the expression of the Duke, in his anxiety 
 to have him reconciled, almost infers : " Pursue him, 
 and entreat him to a peace." Even in his abused 
 state of chains and darkness a sort of greatness 
 seems never to desert him. He argues highly and 
 well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophizes 
 
Il6 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 gallantly upon his straw. 1 There must have been 
 some shadow of worth about the man; he must 
 have been something more than a mere vapor — a 
 thing of straw, or Jack in office — before Fabian and 
 Maria could have ventured sending him upon a 
 courting errand to Olivia. There was some con- 
 sonancy (as he would say) in the undertaking, or the 
 jest would have been too bold even for that house 
 of misrule. 
 
 Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air 
 of Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved 
 like an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opin- 
 ionated, but his superstructure of pride seemed bot- 
 tomed upon a sense of worth. There was something 
 in it beyond the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, 
 but you could not be sure that it was hollow. You 
 might wish to see it taken down, but you felt that 
 it was upon an elevation. He was magnificent from 
 the outset ; but when the decent sobrieties of the 
 character began to give way, and the poison of self- 
 love, in his conceit of the Countess's affection, 
 gradually to work, you would have thought that 
 the hero of La Mancha in person stood before you. 
 How he went smiling to himself! with what ineffa- 
 ble carelessness would he twirl his gold chain! what 
 a dream it was ! you were infected with the illusion, 
 
 1 Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild 
 fowl ? 
 
 Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
 
 Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion? 
 
 Mai. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion. 
 
ESSA YS OF ELI A. 1 1 7 
 
 and did not wish that it should be removed ! you 
 had no room for laughter ! if an unseasonable reflec- 
 tion of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense 
 of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, that can lay 
 him open to such frenzies, — but in truth you rather 
 admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted, — you 
 felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age 
 with the eyes open. Who would not wish to live 
 but for a day in the conceit of such a lady's love as 
 Olivia? Why, the Duke would have given his prin- 
 cipality but for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or 
 waking, to have been so deluded. The man seemed 
 to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his 
 head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. O ! shake 
 not the castles of his pride, — endure yet for a sea- 
 son, bright moments of confidence, — " stand still, ye 
 watches of the element," that Malvolio may be still 
 in fancy fair Olivia's lord ! — but fate and retribution 
 say no ! — I hear the mischievous titter of Maria, — 
 the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the still more insup- 
 portable triumph of the foolish knight — the counter- 
 feit Sir Topas is unmasked — and " thus the whirligig 
 of time," as the true clown hath it, " brings in his 
 revenges." I confess that I never saw the catastro- 
 phe of this character, while Bensley played it, with- 
 out a kind of tragic interest. 
 
Il8 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 1785-1859. 
 
 [De Quincey's talent lay more in narrative and imaginative 
 writing than in literary criticism. He was too digressive 
 and sensational, too much of a rhetorician, to rank with the 
 greatest critics. His liveliness of fancy and the rapid play 
 of his remarkable information, together with his verbal bril- 
 liancy, found their most congenial field in his extraordinary 
 rambling sketches. But his knowledge of literature was so 
 wide and sympathetic, and he had such genuine philosophi- 
 cal insight, that he stands well as a writer on literary topics. 
 His best work in this field is to be found fragmentarily all 
 through those numerous volumes which he composed after 
 his late commencement as an author. The following ex- 
 tract from his short essay on Language will open up an im- 
 portant element in the enjoyment of belles-lettres to any 
 who have not realized this conception of style.] 
 
 From the Essay on Language. 
 
 I. IT is certain that style, or (to speak by the most 
 general expression) the management of language, 
 ranks amongst the fine arts, and is able therefore 
 to yield a separate intellectual pleasure quite apart 
 from the interest of the subject treated. So far it is 
 already one error to rate the value of style as if it 
 were necessarily a dependent or subordinate thing. 
 On the contrary, style has an absolute value, like the 
 product of any other exquisite art, quite distinct from 
 
ESSAY ON LANGUAGE. IIQ 
 
 the value of the subject about which it is employed, 
 and irrelatively to the subject ; precisely as the fine 
 workmanship of Scopas the Greek, or of Cellini the 
 Florentine, is equally valued by the connoisseur, 
 whether embodied in bronze or marble, in an ivory 
 or golden vase. But — 
 
 2. If we do submit to this narrow valuation of 
 style, founded on the interest of the subject to which 
 it is ministerial, still, even on that basis, we English 
 commit a capital blunder, which the French earnest- 
 ly and sincerely escape ; for, assuming that the 
 thoughts involve the primary interest, still it must 
 make all the difference in the world to the success of 
 those thoughts, whether they are treated in the way 
 best fitted to expel the doubts or darkness that may 
 have settled upon them ; and secondly, in cases 
 where the business is, not to establish new convic- 
 tions, but to carry old convictions into operative life 
 and power, whether they are treated in the way best 
 fitted to rekindle in the mind a practical sense of 
 their value. Style has two separate functions — first, 
 to brighten the intelligibility of a subject which is 
 obscure to the understanding; secondly, to regener- 
 ate the normal power and impressiveness of a subject 
 which has become dormant to the sensibilities. 
 Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes 
 from previous mistreatment, but oftener from origi- 
 nal perplexities investing its very nature. Upon the 
 style it is, if we take that word in its largest sense — 
 upon the skill and art of the developer, that these 
 perplexities greatly depend for their illumination. 
 
120 THOMAS BE QUINCE Y. 
 
 Look, again, at the other class of cases, when the 
 difficulties are not for the understanding, but for the 
 practical sensibilities as applicable to the services of 
 life. The subject, suppose, is already understood 
 sufficiently ; but it is lifeless as a motive. It is not new 
 light that is to be communicated, but old torpor that 
 is to be dispersed. The writer is not summoned to 
 convince, but to persuade. Decaying lineaments are 
 to be retraced, and faded coloring to be refreshed. 
 Now, these offices of style are really not essentially 
 original discovery of truth. He that to an old con- 
 viction, long since inoperative and dead, gives the 
 regeneration that carries it back into the heart as a 
 vital power of action ; he, again, that by new light, 
 or by light trained to flow through a new channel, 
 reconciles to the understanding a truth which hither- 
 to had seemed dark or doubtful, — both these men 
 are really, quoad us that benefit by their services, 
 the discoverers of the truth. Yet these results are 
 amongst the possible gifts of style. Light to j^the 
 road, power to advance along it — such being amongst 
 the promises and proper functions of style, it is a 
 capital error, under the idea of its ministeriality, to 
 undervalue this great organ of the advancing intel- 
 lect — an organ which is equally important considered 
 as a tool for the culture and popularization of truth, 
 and also (if it had no use at all in that way) as a 
 mode per se of the beautiful, and a fountain of in- 
 tellectual pleasure. The vice of that appreciation, 
 which we English apply to style, lies in representing 
 it as a mere ornamental accident of written compo- 
 
ESSA Y ON LANG UA GE. 121 
 
 sition — a trivial embellishment, like the mouldings of 
 furniture, the cornices of ceilings, or the arabesques 
 of tea-urns. On the contrary, it is a product of 
 art the rarest, subtlest, and most intellectual ; and 
 like other products of the fine arts, it is then finest 
 when it is most eminently disinterested, that is, most 
 conspicuously detached from gross palpable uses. 
 Yet, in very many cases, it really has the obvious 
 uses of that gross palpable order; as in the cases just 
 noticed, when it gives light to the understanding, or 
 power to the will, removing obscurities from one set 
 of truths, and into another circulating the life-blood 
 of sensibility. In these cases, meantime, the style is 
 contemplated as a thing separable from the thoughts ; 
 in fact, as the dress of the thoughts — a robe that 
 may be laid aside at pleasure. But — 
 
 3. There arises a case entirely different, where 
 style cannot be regarded as zdress or alien covering, 
 but where style becomes the incarnation of the 
 thoughts. The human body is not the dress or ap- 
 parel of the human spirit : far more mysterious is 
 the mode of their union. Call the two elements A 
 and B : then it is impossible to point out A as exist- 
 ing aloof from B, or vice versa. A exists in and 
 through B, B exists in and through A. No profound 
 observer can have failed to observe this illustrated in 
 the capacities of style. Imagery is sometimes not 
 the mere alien apparelling of a thought, and of a 
 nature to be detached from the thought, but is the 
 coefficient that, being superadded to something else, 
 absolutely makes the thought. 
 
122 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 1795-1881. 
 
 [Carlyle wrote frequently on literary topics, though more 
 from the intellectual than the aesthetic standpoint. Some of 
 his critical essays, notably that upon Burns, are among the 
 best of their class. His power of sympathy in itself makes 
 him a true critic, aside from his sharp insight and vivid ex- 
 pression. The quotations given below are from the Hero as 
 Man of Letters, one of the lectures in his popular volume 
 on Heroes and Hero-worship. This analysis of the secrets 
 and tests of success in poetry is most suggestive. The 
 sketch of Dante, while an exception to the manner of most 
 of our selections, is too characteristic of Carlyle and too 
 fine to be omitted from its context.] 
 
 From the Lecture on " The Poet " in Heroes and Hero Wor- 
 ship. 
 
 POET and prophet differ greatly in our loose mod- 
 ern notions of them. In some old languages, again, 
 the titles are synonymous ; Vates means both prophet 
 and poet : and indeed at all times, prophet and poet, 
 well understood, have much kindred of meaning. 
 Fundamentally indeed they are the same ; in this 
 most important respect especially, that they have 
 penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of 
 the universe; what Goethe calls " the open secret." 
 " Which is the great secret ?" asks one. — " The open 
 secret," — open to all, seen by almost none ! That 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. 1 23 
 
 divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all beings, 
 " the divine idea of the world, that which lies at the 
 bottom of appearance," as Fichte styles it ; of which 
 all appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of 
 the field, but especially the appearance of man and 
 his work, is but the vesture, the embodiment that 
 renders it visible. This divine mystery is in all 
 times and in all places ; veritably is. In most times 
 and places it is greatly overlooked ; and the uni- 
 verse, definable always in one or the other dialect, 
 as the realized thought of God, is considered a 
 trivial, inert, commonplace matter, — as if, says the 
 satirist, it were a dead thing, which some uphol- 
 sterer had put together. It could do no good, at 
 present, to speak much about this ; but it is a pity 
 for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in 
 the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful pity ; 
 — a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise ! 
 
 ■ But now, I say, whoever may forget this 
 
 divine mystery, the Vales, whether prophet or poet, 
 has penetrated into it ; is a man sent hither to make 
 it more impressively known to us. That always is his 
 message ; he is to reveal that to us, — that sacred mys- 
 tery which he more than others lives ever present 
 with. While others forget it, he knows it ; — I might 
 say, he has been driven to know it ; without consent 
 asked of him, he finds himself living in it, bound 
 to live in it. Once more, here is no hearsay, but a 
 direct insight and belief ; this man too could not 
 help being a sincere man ! Whosoever may live in 
 the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of 
 
124 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 nature to live in the very fact of things. A man 
 once more, in earnest with the universe, though all 
 others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first 
 of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far poet and 
 prophet, participators in the "open secret," are one. 
 With respect to their distinction again : the Vates 
 prophet, we may say, has seized that sacred mystery 
 rather on the moral side, as good and evil, duty and 
 prohibition ; the Vates poet on what the Germans 
 call the aesthetic side, as beautiful, and the like. The 
 one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the 
 other of what we are to love. But indeed these two 
 provinces run into one another, and cannot be dis- 
 joined. The prophet too has his eye on what we are 
 to love : how else shall he know what it is we are to 
 do? The highest voice ever heard on this earth 
 said withal, " Consider the lilies of the field : they 
 toil not, neither do they spin : yet Solomon in all 
 his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A 
 glance, that, into the deepest deep of beauty. 
 "The lilies of the field," — dressed finer than earthly 
 princes, springing-up there in the humble furrow- 
 field; a beautiful eye looking-out on you, from the 
 great inner sea of beauty ! How could the rude 
 earth make these, if her essence, rugged as she looks 
 and is, were not inwardly beauty? In this point of 
 view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered 
 several, may have meaning: "The beautiful," he 
 intimates, " is higher than the good ; the beautiful 
 includes in it the good." The true beautiful ; which 
 however, I have said somewhere, " differs from the 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. 12$ 
 
 false as heaven does from Vauxhall!" So much for 
 the distinction and identity of poet and prophet. — 
 In ancient and also in modern periods we find a 
 few poets who are accounted perfect ; whom it were 
 a kind of treason to find fault with. This is note- 
 worthy ; this is right : yet in strictness it is only an 
 illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no per- 
 fect poet ! A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of 
 all men ; no man is made altogether of poetry. We 
 are all poets when we read a poem well. The 
 " imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante," 
 is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as 
 Dante's own ? No one but Shakespeare can embody 
 out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of " Hamlet " 
 as Shakespeare did : but every one models some 
 kind of story out of it ; every one embodies it better 
 or worse. We need not spend time in defining. 
 Where there is no specific difference, as between 
 round and square, all definition must be more or 
 less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of 
 the poetic element developed in him as to become 
 noticeable, will be called poet by his neighbors. 
 World-poets too, those whom we are to take for 
 perfect poets, are settled by critics in the same way. 
 One who rises so far above the general level of poets 
 will, to such and such critics, seem a universal poet ; 
 as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an 
 arbitrary distinction. All poets, all men, have some 
 touches of the universal ; no man is wholly made of 
 that. Most poets are very soon forgotten : but not 
 the noblest Shakespeare or Homer of them can be 
 
126 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 remembered forever ; — a day comes when he too is 
 not! 
 
 Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a differ- 
 ence between true poetry and true speech not poeti- 
 cal: what is the difference? On this point many 
 things have been written, especially by late German 
 critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. 
 They say, for example, that the poet has an infini- 
 tude in him ; communicates an unendlichkeit, a cer- 
 tain character of " infinitude," to whatsoever he 
 delineates. This, though not very precise, yet on 
 so vague a matter is worth remembering : if well 
 meditated, some meaning will gradually be found in 
 it. For my own part, I find considerable meaning 
 in the old vulgar distinction of poetry being metrical, 
 having music in it, being a song. Truly, if pressed 
 to give a definition, one might say this as soon as 
 anything else : If your delineation be authentically 
 musical, musical not in word only, but in heart and 
 substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, 
 in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical ; 
 if not, not. — Musical : how much lies in that ! A 
 musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has 
 penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing ; de- 
 tected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody 
 that lies hidden in it ; the inward harmony of coher- 
 ence, which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a 
 right to be, here in this world. All inmost things, 
 we may say, are melodious ; naturally utter them- 
 selves in song. The meaning of song goes deep. 
 Who is there that, in logical words, can express the 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP, 12J 
 
 effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate 
 unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of 
 the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that ! 
 
 Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has 
 something of song in it : not a parish in the world 
 but has its parish accent ; — the rhythm or tune to 
 which the people there sing what they have to say ! 
 Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent 
 of their own, — though they only notice that of others. 
 Observe too how all passionate language does of 
 itself become musical, — with a finer music than the 
 mere accent ; the speech of a man even in zealous 
 anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep things are 
 song. It seems somehow the very central essence 
 of us, song ; as if all the rest were but wrappages 
 and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, and of 
 all things. The Greeks fabled of sphere-harmonies : 
 it was the feeling they had of the inner structure of 
 nature; that the soul of all her voices and utter- 
 ance were perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will 
 call musical thought. The poet is he who thinks in 
 that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of 
 intellect ; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision 
 that makes him a poet. See deep enough, and you 
 see musically ; the heart of nature being everywhere 
 music, if you can only reach it. 
 
 The Vates poet, with his melodious apocalypse of 
 nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in com- 
 parison with the Vates prophet ; his function, and 
 our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The 
 hero taken as divinity ; the hero taken as prophet ; 
 
I2S THOMAS CARLYL&. 
 
 then next the hero taken only as poet: does it not 
 look as if our estimate of the great man, epoch after 
 epoch, were continually diminishing ? We take him 
 first for a god, then for one god-inspired ; and now 
 in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word 
 gains from us only the recognition that he is a poet, 
 beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or suchlike ! — 
 It looks so ; but I persuade myself that intrinsically 
 it is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps 
 appear that in man there is the same altogether 
 peculiar admiration for the heroic gift, by what 
 name soever called, that there at any time was. 
 
 I should say, if we do not reckon a great man 
 literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the 
 supreme unattainable fountain of splendor, wisdom 
 and heroism, are ever rising higher; not altogether 
 that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested 
 in our like, is getting lower. This is worth taking 
 thought of. Skeptical dilettantism, the curse of 
 these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does 
 indeed in this the highest province of human things, 
 as in all provinces, make sad work ; and our rever- 
 ence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic 
 as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recogniza- 
 ble. Men worship the shows of great men ; the 
 most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men 
 to worship. The dreariest, fatalest faith ; believing 
 which, one would literally despair of human things. 
 Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon ! A 
 Corsican lieutenant of artillery; that is the show 
 of him : yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after his 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. 12$ 
 
 sort, as all the tiaraed and diademed of the world 
 put together could not be? High duchesses, and 
 ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, 
 Burns; — a strange feeling dwelling in each that they 
 never heard a man like this; that, on the whole, this 
 is the man ! In the secret heart of these people it 
 still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accred- 
 ited way of uttering it at present, that this rustic, 
 with his black brows and flashing sun-eyes, and 
 strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a 
 dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with 
 all others. Do not we feel it so? But now, were 
 dilettantism, skepticism, triviality, and all that sor- 
 rowful brood, cast-out of us, — as, by God's blessing, 
 they shall one day be; were faith in the shows of 
 things entirely swept-out, replaced by clear faith in 
 the things, so that a man acted on the impulse of 
 that only, and counted the other non-extant, what a 
 new livelier feeling towards this Burns were it ! 
 
 Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we 
 not two mere poets, if not deified, yet we may say 
 beautified? Shakespeare and Dante are saints of 
 poetry; really, if we will think of it, canonized, so 
 that it is impiety to meddle with them. The 
 unguided instinct of the world, working across all 
 these perverse impediments, has arrived at such 
 result. Dante and Shakespeare are a peculiar two. 
 They dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude ; none 
 equal, none second to them ; in the general feeling 
 of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as 
 of complete perfection, invests these two. They are 
 
130 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 canonized, though no pope or cardinal took hand in 
 doing it ! Such, in spite of every perverting influ- 
 ence, in the most unheroic times, is still our inde- 
 structible reverence for heroism. 
 
 Many volumes have been written by way of com- 
 mentary on Dante and his book ; yet, on the whole, 
 with no great result. His biography is, as it were, 
 irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wander- 
 ing, sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken 
 of him while he lived ; and the most of that has 
 vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It 
 is five centuries since he ceased writing and living 
 here. After all commentaries, the book itself is 
 mainly what we know of him. The book ; — and one 
 might add that portrait commonly attributed to 
 Giotto, 1 which, looking on it, you cannot help in- 
 clining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it 
 is a most touching face ; perhaps of all faces that I 
 know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on 
 vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it ; 
 the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory 
 which is also deathless ; — significant of the whole 
 history of Dante ! I think it is the mournfulest face 
 that ever was painted from reality ; an altogether 
 tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foun- 
 dation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection 
 as of a child ; but all this is as if congealed into sharp 
 
 1 [Giotto's portrait, published by the Arundel Society after Mr. 
 Kirkup's tracing from the wall of the Podesta, represents Dante as 
 young and placid.] 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. 131 
 
 contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hope- 
 less pain. A soft ethereal soul looking-out so stern, 
 implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment 
 of thick-ribbed ice ! Withal it is a silent pain too, 
 a silent scornful one : the lip is curled in a kind of 
 godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-out his 
 heart, — as if it were withal a mean insignificant 
 thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and 
 strangle were greater than it. The face of one 
 wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle, 
 against the world. Affection all converted into 
 indignation : an implacable indignation ; slow, equa- 
 ble, silent, like that of a god ! The eye too, it looks- 
 out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry, why 
 the world was of such a sort ? This is Dante : so 
 he looks, this " voice of ten silent centuries," and 
 sings us " his mystic unfathomable song." 
 
 Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much 
 that depends on it, is the prevailing character of 
 Dante's genius. Dante does not come before us as 
 a large catholic mind ; rather as a narrow, and even 
 sectarian mind ; it is partly the fruit of his age and 
 position, but partly too of his own nature. His 
 greatness has, in all senses, concentrated itself into 
 fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not 
 because he is world-wide, but because he is world- 
 deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were 
 down into the heart of being. I know nothing so 
 intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin 
 with the outermost development of his intensity, 
 
1 32 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 consider how he paints. He has a great power of 
 vision ; seizes the very type of a thing ; presents 
 that and nothing more. You remember that first 
 view he gets of the Hall of Dite : red pinnacle, red- 
 hot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity 
 of gloom ; so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and 
 forever ! It is an emblem of the whole genius of 
 Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in 
 him. Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and 
 then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, spon- 
 taneous to the man. One smiting word ; and then 
 there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is 
 more eloquent than words. It is strange with what 
 a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true likeness 
 of a matter : cuts into the matter as with a pen of 
 fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at Vir- 
 gil's rebuke ; it is " as the sails sink, the mast being 
 suddenly broken." Or that poor Brunetto Latini, 
 with the cotto aspetto, " face baked" parched, brown 
 and lean ; and the " fiery snow " that falls on them 
 there, a " fiery snow without wind," slow, deliberate, 
 never-ending ! Or the lids of those tombs ; square 
 sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning hall, each 
 with its soul in torment; the lids laid open there; 
 they are to be shut at the day of judgment, through 
 eternity. And how Farinata rises; and how Caval- 
 cante falls — at hearing of his son, and the past tense 
 "fue"/ The very movements in Dante have some- 
 thing brief ; swift, decisive, almost military. It is of 
 the inmost essence of his genius, this sort of paint- 
 ing. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. 1 33 
 
 silent, passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, 
 its silent " pale rages," speaks itself in these things. 
 For though this of painting is one of the outer- 
 most developments of a man, it comes like all else 
 from the essential faculty of him ; it is physiognomi- 
 cal of the whole man. Find a man whose words 
 paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth 
 something ; mark his manner of doing it, as very 
 characteristic of him. In the first place, he could 
 not have discerned the object at all, or seen the 
 vital type of it, unless he had, what we may call, 
 sympathized with, it, — had sympathy in him to bestow 
 on objects. He must have been sincere about it 
 too ; sincere and sympathetic : a man without worth 
 cannot give you the likeness of any object ; he 
 dwells on vague outwardness, fallacy and trivial 
 hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may we not 
 say that intellect altogether expresses itself in this 
 power of discerning what an object is ? Whatsoever 
 of faculty a man's mind may have will come out 
 here. Is it even of business, a matter to be done ? 
 The gifted man is he who sees the essential point, 
 and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage ; it is his 
 faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that he 
 discern the true likeness, not the false superficial 
 one, of the thing he has got to work in. And how 
 much of morality is in the kind of insight we get of 
 anything : " the eye seeing in all things what it 
 brought with it the faculty of seeing !" To the 
 mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the 
 jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the painters 
 
134 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 tell us, is the best of all portrait-painters withal. 
 No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of 
 any object. In the commonest human face there 
 lies more than Raphael will take-away with him. 
 
 Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, 
 and of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken 
 on the wider scale, it is every way noble, and the 
 outcome of a great soul. Francesca 1 and her lover, 
 what qualities in that ! A thing woven as out of 
 rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small 
 flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very 
 hearts of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too : 
 della bella persona, die mi fu tolta / and how, even 
 in the pit of woe, it is a solace that lie will never 
 part from her! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai? 
 And the racking winds, in that aer brwio, whirl them 
 away again, to wail forever ! — Strange to think : 
 Dante was the friend of this poor Francesca's 
 father; Francesca herself may have sat upon the 
 poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infi- 
 nite pity, yet also infinite rigor of law : it is so nature 
 is made ; it is so Dante discerned that she was 
 made. What a paltry notion is that of his " Divine 
 Comedy's " being a poor splenetic impotent terres- 
 trial libel ; putting those into hell whom he could 
 not be avenged-upon on earth ! I suppose if ever 
 pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any 
 man, it was in Dante's. But a man who does not 
 
 1 [Inferno, 5.] 
 
 2 [That human loveliness, which I have lost.] 
 
 3 [Shrill cries of woe ] 
 
HEROES AND HERO WORSHIP. 1 35 
 
 know rigor cannot pity, either. His very pity will 
 be cowardly, egoistic, — sentimentality, or little bet- 
 ter. I know not in the world an affection equal to 
 that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, long- 
 ing, pitying love : like the wail of aeolean harps, soft, 
 soft ; like a child's young heart ; — and then that 
 stern, sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his 
 towards his Beatrice ; their meeting together in the 
 Paradiso ; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, 
 her that had been purified by death so long, sepa- 
 rated from him so far : — one likens it to the song of 
 angels ; it is among the purest utterances of affec- 
 tion, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of 
 a human soul. 
 
136 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 1822-1888. 
 
 [No other English author who has written both in verse 
 and in prose has been so successful in each as Matthew Ar- 
 nold. Some of the best judgments of the time count him 
 among his country's most perfect poets, and recognize in 
 his poems a chastened elegance and charm of language and 
 a reflection of important phases of contemporaneous thought 
 which they find nowhere else. The general public, how- 
 ever, knows him best by his prose. His expression imparts 
 value even to his less interesting essays, and intimacy with 
 his work cannot fail to cultivate one's feeling for style. His 
 intellectual habit is mainly critical, and his reviews of society, 
 literature, and certain contested topics of nineteenth-century 
 belief are all marked by self-possession, urbanity, and the 
 scrutiny of a trained and variously informed mind, which is 
 restrained from hardness by the gift of poetic and sympathetic 
 feeling. Possibly his attitude is too scrupulously correct, 
 sometimes it may seem over severe and unbending in matters 
 of taste. We may occasionally chafe at a certain superiority 
 of tone which Sydney Smith remarked in his bearing while a 
 young man, and certainly he entertains opinions which many 
 cannot accept. It is not difficult to mention greater schol- 
 ars and thinkers of his own day. But Arnold is the master of 
 so rare a discrimination, such tact in selection, such certainty 
 of touch in his own best field, such earnestness and strength 
 despite his studied calm and the humor that plays over his 
 pages, that we can scarcely overrate the service he has 
 
FROM CELTIC LITERATURE. 1 37 
 
 rendered to many in search of a conscientiously thoughtful 
 intelligence, and a more refined and observant taste. As a 
 literary critic he may profitably be- compared with Sainte- 
 Beuve, whom he admired warmly.] 
 
 From Celtic Literature. 
 If I were asked where English poetry got these 
 
 three things,— its turn for style, its turn for melan- 
 choly, and its turn for natural magic, for catching 
 and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully 
 near and vivid way, — I should answer, with some 
 doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a 
 Celtic source ; with less doubt, that it got much of 
 its melancholy from a Celtic source ; with no doubt 
 at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all its 
 natural magic. 
 
 Any German with penetration and tact in matters 
 of literary criticism will own that the principal de- 
 ficiency of German poetry is in style ; that for style, 
 in the highest sense, it shows but little feeling. Take 
 the eminent masters of style, the poets who best 
 give the idea of what the peculiar power which lies 
 in style is, — Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton. An ex- 
 ample of the peculiar effect which these poets pro- 
 duce, you can hardly give from German poetry. 
 Examples enough you can give from German poetry 
 of the effect produced by genius, thought, and feel- 
 ing expressing themselves in clear language, simple 
 language, passionate language, eloquent language, 
 with harmony and melody ; but not of the peculiar 
 effect exercised by eminent power of style. Every 
 
I38 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 reader of Dante can at once call to mind what the 
 peculiar effect I mean is ; I spoke of it in my lect- 
 ures on translating Homer, and there I took an ex- 
 ample of it from Dante, who perhaps manifests it 
 more eminently than any other poet. But from 
 Milton, too, one may take examples of it abundant- 
 ly ; compare this from Milton : 
 
 nor sometimes forget 
 
 Those other two equal with me in fate, 
 So were I equall'd with them in renown, 
 Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides — 
 
 with this from Goethe : 
 
 Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt. 
 
 Nothing can be better in its way than the style in 
 which Goethe there presents his thought, but it is 
 the style of prose as much as of poetry ; it is lucid- 
 harmonious, earnest, eloquent, but it has not received 
 that peculiar kneading, heightening, and recasting 
 which is observable in the style of the passage from 
 Milton, — a style which seems to have for its cause a 
 certain pressure of emotion, and an ever-surging, yet 
 bridled, excitement in the poet, giving a special in- 
 tensity to his way of delivering himself. In poetical 
 races and epochs this turn for style is peculiarly 
 observable ; and perhaps it is only on condition of 
 having this somewhat heightened and difficult man- 
 ner, so different from the plain manner of prose, 
 that poetry gets the privilege of being loosed, at its 
 best moments, into that perfectly simple, limpid 
 
FROM CELTIC LITERATURE. 1 39 
 
 style, which is the supreme style of all, but the sim- 
 plicity of which is still not the simplicity of prose. 
 The simplicity of Menander's style is the simplicity 
 of prose, and is the same kind of simplicity as that 
 which Goethe's style, in the passage I have quoted, 
 exhibits ; but Menander does not belong to a great 
 poetical moment, he comes too late for it ; it is the 
 simple passages in poets like Pindar or Dante which 
 are perfect, being masterpieces of poetical simplicity. 
 One may say the same of the simple passages in 
 Shakespeare ; they are perfect, their simplicity being 
 a poetical simplicity. They are the golden, easeful, 
 crowning moments of a manner which is always 
 pitched in another key from that of prose, a manner 
 changed and heightened ; the Elizabethan style, 
 regnant in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, 
 is mainly the continuation of this manner of Shake- 
 speare's. It was a manner much more turbid and 
 strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, 
 Dante, or Milton ; often it was detestable ; but it 
 owed its existence to Shakespeare's instinctive im- 
 pulse towards style in poetry, to his native sense of 
 the necessity for it ; and without the basis of style 
 everywhere, faulty though it may in some places be, 
 we should not have had the beauty of expression, 
 unsurpassable for effectiveness and charm, which is 
 reached in Shakespeare's best passages. The turn 
 for style is perceptible all through English poetry, 
 proving, to my mind, the genuine poetical gift of 
 the race ; this turn imparts to our poetry a stamp of 
 high distinction, and sometimes it doubles the force 
 
140 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 of a poet not by nature of the very highest order, 
 such as Gray, and raises him to a rank beyond what 
 his natural richness and power seem to promise. 
 Goethe, with his fine critical perception, saw clearly 
 enough both the power of style in itself, and the 
 lack of style in the literature of his own country ; 
 and perhaps if we regard him solely as a German, 
 not as a European, his great work was that he 
 labored all his life to impart style into German lit- 
 erature, and firmly to establish it there. Hence the 
 immense importance to him of the world of classical 
 art, and of the productions of Greek or Latin genius, 
 where style so eminently manifests its power. Had 
 he found in the German genius and literature an 
 element of style existing by nature and ready to his 
 hand, half his work, one may say, would have been 
 saved him, and he might have done much more in 
 poetry. But as it was, he had to try and create, out 
 of his own powers, a style for German poetry, as 
 well as to provide contents for this style to carry; 
 and thus his labor as a poet was doubled. 
 
 It is to be observed that power of style, in the 
 sense in which I am here speaking of style, is some- 
 thing quite different from the power of idiomatic, 
 simple, nervous, racy expression, such as the expres- 
 sion of healthy, robust natures so often is, such as 
 Luther's was in a striking degree. Style, in my 
 sense of the word, is a peculiar recasting and height- 
 ening, under a certain condition of spiritual excite- 
 ment, of what a man has to say, in such a manner 
 as to add dignity and distinction to it ; and dignity 
 
FROM CELTIC LITERATURE. 141 
 
 and distinction are not terms which suit many acts 
 or words of Luther. Deeply touched with the Ge- 
 meinheit which is the bane of his nation, as he is 
 at the same time a grand example of the honesty 
 which is his nation's excellence, he can seldom even 
 show himself brave, resolute, and truthful, without 
 showing a strong dash of coarseness and common- 
 ness all the while ; the right definition of Luther, 
 as of our own Bunyan, is that he is a Philistine of 
 genius. So Luther's sincere idiomatic German, — 
 such language is this : " Hilf lieber Gott, wie man- 
 chen Jammer habe ich gesehen, dass der gemeine 
 Mann doch so gar nichts weiss von der christlichen 
 Lehre !" — no more proves a power of style in Ger- 
 man literature, than Cobbett's sinewy idiomatic 
 English proves it in English literature. Power of 
 style, properly so called, as manifested in masters 
 of style like Dante or Milton in poetry, Cicero, Bos- 
 suet or Bolingbroke in prose, is something quite dif- 
 ferent, and has, as I have said, for its characteristic 
 effect, this : to add dignity and distinction. 
 
 There are many ways of handling nature, and 
 
 we are here only concerned with one of them ; but a 
 rough-and-ready critic imagines that it is all the same 
 so long as nature is handled at all, and fails to draw 
 the needful distinction between modes of handling 
 her. But these modes are many ; I will mention 
 four of them now : there is the conventional way of 
 handling nature, there is the faithful way of handling 
 nature, there is the Greek way of handling nature, 
 there is the magical way of handling nature. In all 
 
142 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 these three last the eye is on the object, but with a 
 difference : in the faithful way of handling nature, 
 the eye is on the object, and that is all you can say ; 
 in the Greek, the eye is on the object, but lightness 
 and brightness are added ; in the magical, the eye is 
 on the object, but charm and magic are added. In 
 the conventional way of handling nature, the eye is 
 not on the object ; what that means we all know, 
 we have only to think of our eighteenth century 
 poetry — 
 
 " As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night" — 
 
 to call up any number of instances. Latin poetry 
 supplies plenty of instances too ; if we put this from 
 Propertius's Hylas — 
 
 . . . " manus heroum .... 
 Mollia composita litora fronde tegit " — 
 
 side by side the line of Theocritus by which it was 
 suggested — 
 
 "Xeijuoov yap orcpiv eKeiro jueyaS, crrifidSeacriv oveiap" — 
 
 we get at the same moment a good specimen both 
 of the conventional and of the Greek way of hand- 
 ling nature. But from our own poetry we may get 
 specimens of the Greek way of handling nature, as 
 well as of the conventional : for instance, Keats's 
 
 ' ' What little town, by river or seashore, 
 Or mountain-built with quiet citadel, 
 Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?" 
 
 is Greek, as Greek as a thing from Homer or Theoc- 
 ritus ; it is composed with the eye on the object, a 
 
FROM CELTIC LITERATURE. 1 43 
 
 radiancy and light clearness being added. German 
 poetry abounds in specimens of the faithful way of 
 handling nature ; an excellent example is to be found 
 in the stanzas called Zueignung, 1 prefixed to Goethe's 
 poems ; the morning walk, the mist, the dew, the 
 sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given 
 with the eye on the object, but there the merit of the 
 work, as a handling of nature, stops ; neither Greek 
 radiance nor Celtic magic is added ; the power of 
 these is not what gives the poem in question its 
 merit, but a power of quite another kind, a power of 
 moral and spiritual emotion. But the power of 
 Greek radiance Goethe could give to his handling of 
 nature, and nobly too, as any one who will read his 
 Wanderer 2 — the poem in which a wanderer falls in 
 With a peasant woman and her child by their hut, 
 built out of the ruins of a temple near Cuma — may 
 see. Only the power of natural magic Goethe does 
 not, I think, give ; whereas Keats passes at will from 
 the Greek power to that power which is, as I say, 
 Celtic ; from his 
 
 " What little town, by river or seashore," 
 
 to his 
 
 or his 
 
 " White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine, 
 Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves," — 
 
 . . . "magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn," — 
 
 1 [" Der Morgen kam ; es scheuchten seine Tritte."] 
 
 2 [" Gott segne dich, junge Frau."] 
 
144 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 in which the very same note is struck as in those 
 extracts which I quoted from Celtic romance, and 
 struck with authentic and unmistakable power. 
 
 Shakespeare, in handling nature, touches this 
 Celtic note so exquisitely, that perhaps one is in- 
 clined to be always looking for the Celtic note in 
 him, and not to recognize his Greek note when it 
 comes. But if one attends well to the difference 
 between the two notes, and bears in mind, to guide 
 one, such things as Virgil's " moss-grown springs and 
 grass softer than sleep," 
 
 " Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba;" 
 as his charming flower-gatherer, who 
 
 " Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens 
 Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi;" 
 
 as his quinces and chestnuts, 
 
 . . . ' ' cana legam tenera lanugine mala 
 Castaneasque nuces," 
 
 — then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in 
 Shakespeare's 
 
 " I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, 
 With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine," 
 
 it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, 
 again in his 
 
 " look how the floor of heaven 
 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold !" 
 
 we are at the very point of transition from the 
 Greek note to the Celtic ; there is the Greek clear- 
 
FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. 1 45 
 
 ness and brightness, with the Celtic aerialness and 
 magic coming in. Then we have the sheer, inimita- 
 ble Celtic note in passages like this 
 
 "Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, 
 By paved fountain or by rushy brook, 
 Or in the beached margent of the sea;'* 
 
 or this, the last I will quote : 
 
 " The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise, in such a night 
 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls — 
 
 "in such a night 
 
 Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew — 
 
 " in such a night 
 
 Stood Dido, with a zvillow in her hand, 
 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love 
 To co?ne again to Carthage ." 
 
 And those last lines of all are so drenched and intox- 
 icated with the fairy-dew of that natural magic which 
 is our theme, that I cannot do better than end with 
 them. 
 
 From Translating Homer. 
 -The eccentricity, too, the arbitrariness, of 
 
 which Mr. Newman's conception of Homer offers so 
 signal an example, are not a peculiar failing of Mr. 
 Newman's own ; in varying degrees they are the 
 great defect of English intellect, the great blemish 
 of English literature. Our literature of the eigh- 
 teenth century, the literature of the school of Dry- 
 den, Addison, Pope, Johnson, is a long reaction 
 
I46 MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 
 
 against this eccentricity, this arbitrariness ; that 
 reaction perished by its own faults, and its enemies 
 are left once more masters of the field. It is much 
 more likely that any new English version of Homer 
 will have Mr. Newman's fault than Pope's. Our 
 present literature, which is very far, certainly, from 
 having the spirit and power of Elizabethan genius, 
 yet has in its own way these faults, eccentricity and 
 arbitrariness, quite as much as the Elizabethan liter- 
 ature ever had. They are the cause that, while 
 upon none, perhaps, of the modern literatures has so 
 great a sum of force been expended as upon the 
 English literature, at the present hour this literature, 
 regarded not as an object of mere literary interest 
 but as a living intellectual instrument, ranks only 
 third in European effect and importance among the 
 literatures of Europe ; it ranks after the literatures 
 of France and Germany. Of these two literatures, 
 as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main 
 effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort ; 
 the endeavor, in all branches of knowledge, theol- 
 ogy, philosophy, history, art, science, — to see the 
 object as in itself it really is. But, owing to the 
 presence in English literature of this eccentric and 
 arbitrary spirit, owing to the strong tendency of 
 English writers to bring to the consideration of their 
 object some individual fancy, almost the last thing 
 for which one would come to English literature is 
 just that very thing which now Europe most de- 
 sires — criticism. It is useful to notice any signal 
 manifestation of those faults, which thus limit and 
 
FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. H7 
 
 impair the action of our literature. And therefore 
 I have pointed out how widely, in translating Homer, 
 a man even of real ability and learning may go 
 astray, unless he brings to the study of this clearest 
 of poets one quality in which our English authors, 
 with all their great gifts, are apt to be somewhat 
 wanting — simple lucidity of mind. 
 
 — I said that Homer did not rise and sink with his 
 subject, was never to be called prosaic and low. 
 This gives surprise to many persons, who object that 
 parts of the Iliad are certainly pitched lower than 
 others, and who remind me of a number of abso- 
 lutely level passages in Homer. But I never denied 
 that a subject must rise and sink, that it must have 
 its elevated and its level regions ; all I deny is, that 
 a poet can be said to rise and sink when all that he, 
 as a poet, can do, is perfectly well done ; when he is 
 perfectly sound and good, that is, perfect as a poet, 
 in the level regions of his subject as well as in its 
 elevated regions. Indeed, what distinguishes the 
 greatest masters of poetry from all others is, that 
 they are perfectly sound and poetical in these level 
 regions of their subject, — in these regions which are 
 the great difficulty of all poets but the very greatest, 
 which they never quite know what to do with. A 
 poet may sink in these regions by being falsely grand 
 as well as by being low ; he sinks, in short, whenever 
 he does not treat his matter, whatever it is, in a 
 perfectly good and poetic way. But, so long as he 
 treats it in this way, he cannot be said to sink, what- 
 
1 4& MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 
 
 ever his matter may do. A passage of the simplest 
 narrative is quoted to me from Homer : 
 
 cdrpvvev 8<= eKaarov ertoixofievoS eiteecnjiv f 
 
 MecrQXrjv re, TkavKov Te>Medovr(X re, Gepaihoxov re . . . 
 
 and I am asked whether Homer does not sink there ; 
 whether he " can have intended such lines as those 
 for poetry ?" My answer is : Those lines are very 
 good poetry indeed, poetry of the best class, in that 
 place. But when Wordsworth, having to narrate a 
 very plain matter, tries not to sink in narrating it, 
 tries, in short, to be what is falsely called poetical, 
 he does sink, although he sinks by being pompous, 
 not by being low. 
 
 " Onward we drove beneath the Castle ; caught, 
 While crossing Magdalen Bridge, a glimpse of Cam, 
 And at the Hoop alighted, famous inn." 
 
 That last line shows excellently how a poet may 
 sink with his subject by resolving not to sink with 
 it. A page or two farther on, the subject rises to 
 grandeur, and then Wordsworth is nobly worthy of 
 it: 
 
 " The antechapel, where the statue stood 
 Of Newton with his prism and silent face, 
 The marble index of a mind forever 
 Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." 
 
 But the supreme poet is he who is thoroughly sound 
 and poetical, alike when his subject is grand, and 
 when it is plain : with him the subject may sink, but 
 never the poet. But a Dutch painter does not rise 
 and sink with his subject, — Defoe, in Moll Flanders, 
 does not rise and sink with his subject, — in so far as 
 
FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. 149 
 
 an artist cannot be said to sink who is sound in his 
 treatment of his subject, however plain it is : yet 
 Defoe, yet a Dutch painter, may in one sense be said 
 to sink with their subject, because though sound in 
 their treatment of it, they are not poetical, — poetical 
 in the true, not the false sense of the word ; because, 
 in fact, they are not in the grand style. Homer can 
 in no sense be said to sink with his subject, because 
 his soundness has something more than literal natu- 
 ralness about it ; because his soundness is the sound- 
 ness of Homer, of a great epic poet ; because, in 
 fact, he is in the grand style. So he sheds over the 
 simplest matter he touches the charm of his grand 
 manner ; he makes everything noble. Nothing has 
 raised more questioning among my critics than these 
 words, — noble, the grand style. People complain 
 that I do not define these words sufficiently, that I 
 do not tell them enough about them. " The grand 
 style, — but what is the grand style ?" — they cry ; 
 some with an inclination to believe in it, but puzzled ; 
 others mockingly and with incredulity. Alas ! the 
 grand style is the last matter in the world for verbal 
 definition to deal with adequately. One may say of 
 it as is said of faith : " One must feel it in order to 
 know what it is." But, as of faith, so too one may 
 say of nobleness, of the grand style : "Woe to those 
 who know it not !" Yet this expression, though in- 
 definable, has a charm ; one is the better for consid- 
 ering it; bonum est, no s hie esse ; nay, one loves to 
 try to explain it, though one knows that one must 
 speak imperfectly. For those, then, who ask the 
 
I50 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 question, — What is the grand style ? — with sincerity, 
 I will try to make some answer, inadequate as it 
 must be. For those who ask it mockingly I have 
 no answer, except to repeat to them, with compas- 
 sionate sorrow, the Gospel words : Moriemini in 
 peccatis vestris, — Ye shall die in your sins. 
 
 But let me, at any rate, have the pleasure of again 
 giving, before I begin to try and define the grand 
 style, a specimen of what it is. 
 
 " Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, 
 More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged 
 To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, 
 On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues.". . . . 
 
 There is the grand style in perfection ; and any one 
 who has a sense for it will feel it a thousand times 
 better from repeating those lines than from hearing 
 anything I can say about it. 
 
 Let us try, however, what can be said, controlling 
 what we say by examples. I think it will be found 
 that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble 
 nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with 
 severity a serious subject. I think this definition will 
 be found to cover all instances of the grand style 
 in poetry which present themselves. I think it will 
 be found to exclude all poetry which is not in 
 the grand style. And I think it contains no terms 
 which are obscure, which themselves need denning. 
 Even those who do not understand what is meant 
 by calling poetry noble, will understand, I imagine, 
 what is meant by speaking of a noble nature in a 
 man. But the noble or powerful nature — the bedeu- 
 
FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. 151 
 
 tendes individuum of Goethe — is not enough. For in- 
 stance, Mr. Newman has zeal for learning, zeal for 
 thinking, zeal for liberty, and all these things are 
 noble, they ennoble a man ; but he has not the poet- 
 ical gift : there must be the poetical gift, the " divine 
 faculty," also. And, besides all this, the subject 
 must be a serious one (for it is only by a kind of 
 license that we can speak of the grand style in 
 comedy); and it must be treated with simplicity or 
 severity. Here is the great difficulty : the poets of 
 the world have been many ; there has been wanting 
 neither abundance of poetical gift nor abundance of 
 noble natures ; but a poetical gift so happy, in a 
 noble nature so circumstanced and trained, that the 
 result is a continuous style, perfect in simplicity or 
 perfect in severity, has been extremely rare. One 
 poet has had the gifts of nature and faculty in un- 
 equalled fulness, without the circumstances and train- 
 ing which make this sustained perfection of style 
 possible. Of other poets, some have caught this 
 perfect strain now and then, in short pieces or single 
 lines, but have not been able to maintain it through 
 considerable works ; others have composed all their 
 productions in a style which, by comparison with 
 the best, one must call secondary. 
 
 The best model of the grand style simple is Homer ; 
 perhaps the best model of the grand style severe is 
 Milton. But Dante is remarkable for affording ad- 
 mirable examples of both styles ; he has the grand 
 style which arises from simplicity, and he has the 
 grand style which arises from severity ; and from 
 
152 
 
 MA TTHE W A RNOLD. 
 
 him I will illustrate them both. In a former lecture 
 I pointed out what that severity of poetical style is, 
 which comes from saying a thing with a kind of in- 
 tense compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost 
 haughty way, as if the poet's mind were charged 
 with so many and such grave matters, that he would 
 not deign to treat any one of them explicitly. Of 
 this severity the last line of the following stanza of 
 the Purgatory is a good example. Dante has been 
 telling Forese that Virgil had guided him though 
 Hell, and he goes on : 
 
 " Indi m' han tratto su gli suoi conforti, 
 Salendo e rigirando la Montagna 
 Che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti." 
 
 "Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climb- 
 ing and circling the Mountain, which straightens you 
 whom the world made crooked." These last words, 
 " la Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti," 
 — the Mountain which straightens you whom the 
 world made crooked" — for the Mountain of Purga- 
 tory, I call an excellent specimen of the grand style 
 in severity, where the poet's mind is too full charged 
 to suffer him to speak more explicitly. But the 
 very next stanza is a beautiful specimen of the grand 
 style in simplicity, where a noble nature and a poet- 
 ical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid 
 plainness and clearness : 
 
 " Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna 
 Ch' io sard la dove fia Beatrice ; 
 Quivi convien che senza lui rimagna." 
 
FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. 1 53 
 
 "So long," Dante continues, "so long he (Virgil) 
 saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there 
 where Beatrice is ; there it behoves that without him 
 I remain." But the noble simplicity of that in the 
 Italian no words of mine can render. 
 
 Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are 
 truly grand ; the severe seems, perhaps, the grand- 
 est, so long as we attend most to the great person- 
 ality, to the noble nature, in the poet its author ; 
 the simple seems the grandest when we attend most 
 to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But 
 the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the 
 more magical : in the other there is something in- 
 tellectual, something which gives scope for a play of 
 thought which may exist where the poetical gift is 
 either wanting or present in only inferior degree : 
 the severe is much more imitable, and this a little 
 spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style 
 keeps Young going, one may say, through all the 
 nine parts of that most indifferent production, the 
 Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity 
 is inimitable. 
 
 When Mr. Spedding talks of a plainness of 
 
 thought like Homer 's, of a plainness of speech like 
 Homer 's, and says that he finds these constantly in 
 Mr. Tennyson's poetry, I answer that these I do not 
 find there at all. Mr. Tennyson is a most distin- 
 guished and charming poet ; but the very essen- 
 tial characteristic of his poetry is, it seems to me, 
 an extreme subtlety and curious elaborateness of 
 thought, an extreme subtlety and curious elaborate- 
 
1 54 MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 
 
 ness of expression. In the best and most character- 
 istic productions of his genius, these characteristics 
 are most prominent. They are marked characteris- 
 tics, as we have seen, of the Elizabethan poets ; 
 they are marked, though not the essential, charac- 
 teristics of Shakespeare himself. Under the influ- 
 ences of the nineteenth century, under wholly new 
 conditions of thought and culture, they manifest 
 themselves in Mr. Tennyson's poetry in a wholly 
 new way. But they are still there. The essential 
 bent of his poetry is towards such expressions as — 
 
 " Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars ;" 
 
 "O'er the sun's bright eye 
 
 Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud ;" 
 " When the cairned mountain was a shadow, sunned 
 
 The world to peace again ;" 
 
 " The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth, 
 The huge bush-bearded barons heaved and blew ;" 
 
 " He bared the knotted column of his throat, 
 The massive square of his heroic breast, 
 And arms on which the standing muscle sloped 
 As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, 
 Running too vehemently to break upon it." 
 
 And this way of speaking is the least plain, the 
 most mi-Homeric, which can possibly be conceived. 
 Homer presents his thought to you just as it wells 
 from the source of his mind : Mr. Tennyson care- 
 fully distils his thought before he will part with it. 
 Hence comes, in the expression of the thought, a 
 heightened and elaborate air. In Homer's poetry 
 it is all natural thoughts in natural words ; in Mr. 
 
FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. I 55 
 
 Tennyson's poetry it is all distilled thoughts in dis- 
 tilled words. Exactly this heightening and elabora- 
 tion may be observed in Mr. Spedding's 
 
 " While the steeds mouthed their corn aloof* 
 
 (an expression which might have been Mr. Tenny- 
 son's), on which I have already commented ; and to 
 one who is penetrated with a sense of the real sim- 
 plicity of Homer, this subtle sophistication of the 
 thought is, I think, very perceptible even in such 
 lines as these, — 
 
 "And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy," — 
 
 which I have seen quoted as perfectly Homeric. 
 Perfect simplicity can be obtained only by a genius 
 of which perfect simplicity is an essential character- 
 istic. 
 
 So true is this, that when a genius essentially 
 subtle, or a genius which, from whatever cause, is in 
 its essence not truly and broadly simple, determines 
 to be perfectly plain, determines not to admit a 
 shade of subtlety or curiosity into its expression, it 
 cannot ever then attain real simplicity ; it can only 
 attain a semblance of simplicity. 1 French criticism, 
 richer in its vocabulary than ours, has invented a 
 useful word to distinguish this semblance (often 
 
 1 I speak of poetic genius as employing itself upon narrative or 
 dramatic poetry, — poetry in which the poet has to go out of himself 
 and to create. In lyrical poetry, in the direct expression of per- 
 sonal feeling, the most subtle genius may, under the momentary 
 pressure of passion, express itself simply. Even here, however, 
 the native tendency will generally be discernible. 
 
15^ MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 very beautiful and valuable) from the real quality. 
 The real quality it calls simplicity the semblance 
 simplesse. The one is natural simplicity, the other 
 is artificial simplicity. What is called simplicity in 
 the productions of a genius essentially not simple, 
 is, in truth, simplesse. The two are distinguishable 
 from one another the moment they appear in com- 
 pany. For instance, let us take the opening of the 
 narrative in Wordsworth's Michael : 
 
 " Upon the forest-side in Grasmere Vale 
 
 There dwelt a shepherd, Michael was his name ; 
 An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb. 
 His bodily frame had been from youth to age 
 Of an unusual strength ; his mind was keen, 
 Intense, and frugal, apt for all affairs ; 
 And in his shepherd's calling he was prompt 
 And watchful more than ordinary men." 
 
 Now let us take the opening of the narrative in Mr. 
 Tennyson's Dora : 
 
 " With Farmer Allan at the farm abode 
 William and Dora. William was his son, 
 And she his niece. He often looked at them, 
 And often thought, ' I'll make them man and wife.'" 
 
 The simplicity of the first of these passages is simpli- 
 city ; that of the second, simplesse. Let us take the 
 end of the same two poems : first, of Michael : 
 
 " The cottage which was named the Evening Star 
 
 Is gone, — the ploughshare has been through the ground 
 
 On which it stood ; great changes have been wrought 
 
 In all the neighborhood : yet the oak is left 
 
 That grew beside their door : and the remains 
 
 Of the unfinished sheepfold may be seen 
 
 Beside the boisterous brook of Green-head Ghyll." 
 
£SSAY ON THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 1 57 
 And now, of Dora : 
 
 " So those four abode 
 Within one house together; and as years 
 Went forward, Mary took another mate : 
 But Dora lived unmarried till her death." 
 
 A heedless critic may call both of these passages 
 simple if he will. Simple, in a certain sense, they 
 both are ; but between the simplicity of the two 
 there is all the difference that there is between the 
 simplicity of Homer and the simplicity of Moschus. 
 
 When there comes in poetry what I may call 
 
 the lyrical cry, this transfigures everything, makes 
 everything grand ; the simplest form may be here 
 even an advantage, because the flame of the emo- 
 tion glows through and through it more easily. To 
 go again for an illustration to Wordsworth ; — our 
 great poet, since Milton, by his performance, as 
 Keats, I think, is our great poet by his gift and 
 promise ; — in one of his stanzas to the Cuckoo, we 
 have : — 
 
 " And I can listen to thee yet ; 
 Can lie upon the plain 
 And listen, till I do beget 
 That golden time again." 
 
 Here the lyrical cry, though taking the simple ballad- 
 form, is as grand as the lyrical cry coming in poetry 
 of an ampler form. 
 
 From the Essay on the Function of Criticism at the Present 
 Time. 
 
 The critical power is of lower rank than the ere 
 ative. True ; but in assenting to this proposition 
 
15$ MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 one or two things are to be kept in mind. It is 
 undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, 
 that a free creative activity, is the highest function 
 of man ; it is proved to be so by man's finding in it 
 his true happiness. But it is undeniable, also, that 
 men may have the sense of exercising this free 
 creative activity in other ways than in producing 
 great works of literature or art ; if it were not so, 
 all but a very few men would be shut out from the 
 true happiness of all men. They may have it in 
 well-doing, they may have it in learning, they may 
 have it even in criticising. This is one thing to be 
 kept in mind. Another is, that the exercise of the 
 creative power in the production of great works of 
 literature or art, however high this exercise of it 
 may rank, is not at all epochs and under all condi- 
 tions possible ; and that therefore labor may be 
 vainly spent in attempting it, which might with 
 more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering 
 it possible. This creative power works with ele- 
 ments, with materials ; what if it has not those 
 materials, those elements, ready for its use ? In 
 that case it must surely wait till they are ready. 
 Now, in literature — I will limit myself to literature, 
 for it is about literature that the question arises — 
 the elements with which the creative power works 
 are ideas ; the best ideas on every matter which 
 literature touches, current at the time. At any rate 
 we may lay it down as certain that in modern liter- 
 ature no manifestation of the creative power not 
 working with these can be very important or fruitful. 
 
ESSAY ON THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 1 59 
 
 And I say current at the time, not merely accessible 
 at the time ; for creative literary genius does not 
 principally show itself in discovering new ideas : 
 that is rather the business of the philosopher. The 
 grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis 
 and exposition, not of analysis and discovery ; its 
 gift lies in the faculty of being happily inspired by 
 a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a 
 certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them ; 
 of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them 
 in the most effective and attractive combinations, 
 — making beautiful works with them, in short. But 
 it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself 
 amidst the order of ideas, in order to work freely ; 
 and these it is not so easy to command. This is 
 why great creative epochs in literature are so rare, 
 this is why there is so much that is unsatisfactory 
 in the productions of many men of real genius ; 
 because, for the creation of a master-work of liter- 
 ature two powers must concur, — the power of the 
 man and the power of the moment, and the man is 
 not enough without the moment ; the creative power 
 has, for its happy exercise, appointed elements, and 
 those elements are not in its own control. 
 
 Nay, they are more within the control of the 
 critical power. It is the business of the critical 
 power, as I said in the words already quoted, " in 
 all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, 
 history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it 
 really is." Thus it tends at last to make an intel- 
 lectual situation of which the creative power can 
 
l6o MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order 
 of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by compari- 
 son with that which it displaces ; to make the best 
 ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach so- 
 ciety, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and 
 there is a stir and growth everywhere ; out of this 
 stir and growth come the creative epochs of liter- 
 ature. 
 
 Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considera- 
 tions of the general march of genius and of society, 
 — considerations which are apt to become too ab- 
 stract and impalpable, — every one can see that a 
 poet, for instance, ought to know life and the world 
 before dealing with them in poetry ; and life and 
 the world being in modern times very complex 
 things, the creation of a modern poet, to be worth 
 much, implies a great critical effort behind it ; else 
 it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short- 
 lived affair. This is why Byron's poetry had so 
 little endurance in it, and Goethe's so much : both 
 Byron and Goethe had a great productive power, 
 but Goethe's was nourished by a great critical effort 
 providing the true materials for it, and Byron's was 
 not ; Goethe knew life and the world, the poet's 
 necessary subjects, much more comprehensively and 
 thoroughly than Byron. He knew a great deal more 
 of them, and he knew them much more as they 
 really are. 
 
 It has long seemed to me that the burst of cre- 
 ative activity in our literature, through the first 
 quarter of this century, had about it in fact some- 
 
ESSAY ON THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. l6l 
 
 thing premature ; and that from this cause its pro- 
 ductions are doomed, most of them, in spite of the 
 sanguine hopes which accompanied and do still 
 accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting than 
 the productions of far less splendid epochs. And 
 this prematureness comes from its having proceeded 
 without having its proper data, without sufficient 
 materials to work with. In other words, the English 
 poetry of the first quarter of this century, with 
 plenty of creative force, plenty of energy, did not 
 know enough. This makes Byron so empty of 
 matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, 
 profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness 
 and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, 
 and disparaged Goethe. But surely the one thing 
 wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet 
 than he is, — his thought richer, and his influence 
 of wider application, — was that he should have read 
 more books, among them, no doubt, those of that 
 Goethe whom he disparaged without reading him. 
 
 But to speak of books and reading may easily 
 lead to a misunderstanding here. It was not really 
 books and reading that lacked to our poetry at this 
 epoch ; Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge 
 had immense reading. Pindar and Sophocles — as 
 we all say so glibly, and often with so little discern- 
 ment of the real import of what we are saying — had 
 not many books ; Shakespeare was no deep reader. 
 True ; but in the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, 
 in the England of Shakespeare, the poet lived in a 
 current of ideas in the highest degree animating 
 
1 62 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 and nourishing to the creative power ; society was, 
 in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, 
 intelligent and alive. And this state of things is 
 the true basis for the creative power's exercise : in 
 this it finds its data, its materials, truly ready for its 
 hand ; all the books and reading in the world are 
 only valuable as they are helps to this. Even when 
 this does not actually exist, books and reading may 
 enable a man to construct a kind of semblance of it 
 in his own mind, a world of knowledge and intelli- 
 gence in which he may live and work. This is by 
 no means an equivalent to the artist for the nation- 
 ally diffused life and thought of the epochs of 
 Sophocles or Shakespeare ; but, besides that it may 
 be a means of preparation for such epochs, it does 
 really constitute, if many share in it, a quickening 
 and sustaining atmosphere of great value. Such an 
 atmosphere the many-sided learning and the long 
 and widely combined critical effort of Germany 
 formed for Goethe when he lived and worked. 
 There was no national glow of life and thought 
 there as in the Athens of Pericles or the England of 
 Elizabeth. That was the poet's weakness. But 
 there was a sort of equivalent for it in the complete 
 culture and unfettered thinking of a large body of 
 Germans. That was his strength. In the England 
 of the first quarter of this century there was neither 
 a national glow of life and thought, such as we had 
 in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and a force 
 of learning and criticism such as were to be found 
 in Germany. Therefore the creative power of poetry 
 
ESSAY ON THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 1 63 
 
 wanted, for success in the highest sense, materials, 
 and a basis ; a thorough interpretation of the world 
 was necessarily denied to it. 
 
 But then comes another question as to the sub- 
 ject-matter which literary criticism should most seek. 
 Here, in general, its course is determined for it by 
 the idea which is the law of its being ; the idea of a 
 disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the 
 best that is known and thought in the world, and thus 
 to establish a current of fresh and true ideas. By 
 the very nature of things, as England is not all the 
 world, much of the best that is known and thought 
 in the world cannot be of English growth, must be 
 foreign ; by the nature of things, again, it is just 
 this that we are least likely to know, while English 
 thought is streaming in upon us from all sides, and 
 takes excellent care that we shall not be ignorant 
 of its existence. The English critic of literature, 
 therefore, must dwell much on foreign thought, and 
 with particular heed on any part of it, which, while 
 significant and fruitful in itself, is for any reason 
 specially likely to escape him. Again, judging is 
 often spoken of as the critic's one business, and so 
 in some sense it is ; but the judgment which almost 
 insensibly forms itself in a fair and clear mind, along 
 with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one ; and thus 
 knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be the 
 critic's great concern for himself. And it is by 
 communicating fresh knowledge, and letting his own 
 judgment pass along with it, — but insensibly, and in 
 the second place, not the first, as a sort of compan- 
 
164 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 ion and clue, not as an abstract lawgiver, — that the 
 critic will generally do most good to his readers. 
 
 " In France," says M. Saint-Beuve, " the first con- 
 sideration for us is not whether we are amused and 
 pleased by a work of art or mind, nor is it whether 
 we are touched by it. What we seek above all to 
 learn is, whether we were right in being amused 
 with it, and in applauding it, and in being moved by 
 it." 
 
 Those are very remarkable words, and they are, I 
 believe, in the main quite true. A Frenchman has, 
 to a considerable degree, what one may call a con- 
 science in intellectual matters ; he has an active 
 belief that there is a right and a wrong in them, 
 that he is bound to honor and obey the right, that 
 he is disgraced by cleaving to the wrong. All the 
 world has, or professes to have, this conscience in 
 moral matters. The word conscience has become 
 almost confined, in popular use, to the moral sphere, 
 because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, in the 
 moral sphere, so far more common than in the in- 
 tellectual sphere ; the livelier, in the moral sphere, 
 this susceptibility is, the greater becomes a man's 
 readiness to admit a high standard of action, an 
 ideal authoritatively correcting his everyday moral 
 habits ; here, such willing admission of authority is 
 due to sensitiveness of conscience. And a like 
 deference to a standard higher than one's own habit- 
 ual standard in intellectual matters, a like respectful 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 1 65 
 
 recognition of a superior ideal is caused, in the in- 
 tellectual sphere, by sensitiveness of intelligence. 
 
 From the Essay on the Literary Influence of Academies. 
 
 In a production which we have all been reading 
 lately, a production stamped throughout with a lit- 
 erary quality very rare in this country, and of which 
 I shall have a word to say presently — urbanity ; in 
 this production, the work of a man never to be 
 named by any son of Oxford without sympathy, a 
 man who alone in Oxford of his generation, alone 
 of many generations, conveyed to us in his genius 
 that same charm, that same ineffable sentiment 
 which this exquisite place itself conveys, — I mean 
 Dr. Newman, — an expression is frequently used 
 which is more common in theological than in lit- 
 erary language, but which seems to me fitted to be 
 of general service, — the note of so and so, the note of 
 catholicity, the note of antiquity, the note of sanc- 
 tity, and so on. Adopting this expressive word, I 
 say that in the bulk of the intellectual work of a 
 nation which has no centre, no intellectual me- 
 tropolis like an academy, like M. Sainte-Beuve's 
 " sovereign organ of opinion," like M. Renan's 
 " recognized authority in matters of tone and taste," 
 there is observable a note of provinciality. Now to 
 get rid of provinciality is a certain stage of culture ; 
 a stage the positive result of which we must not 
 make of too much importance, but which is, never- 
 theless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the 
 platform where alone the best and highest intellect- 
 
1 66 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 ual work can be said fairly to begin. Work done 
 after men have reached this platform is classical ; 
 and that is the only work which, in the long-run, 
 can stand. All the scorice in the work of men of 
 great genius who have not lived on this platform are 
 due to their not having lived on it. Genius raises 
 them to it by moments, and the portions of their 
 work which are immortal are done at these mo- 
 ments ; but more of it would have been immortal if 
 they had not reached this platform at moments 
 only, if they had had the culture which makes men 
 live there. 
 
 The less a literature has felt the influence of a 
 supposed centre of correct information, correct 
 judgment, correct taste, the more we shall find in it 
 this note of provinciality. I have shown the note of 
 provinciality as caused by remoteness from a centre 
 of correct information. Of course the note of pro- 
 vinciality from the want of a centre of correct taste 
 is still more visible, and it is also still more com- 
 mon. For here great — even the greatest — powers 
 of mind must fail a man. Great powers of mind 
 will make him inform himself thoroughly, great 
 powers of mind will make him think profoundly, 
 even with ignorance and platitude all round him ; 
 but not even great powers of mind will keep his 
 taste and style perfectly sound and sure, if he is left 
 too much to himself, with no " sovereign organ of 
 opinion " in these matters near him. Even men like 
 Jeremy Taylor and Burke suffer here. Take this 
 passage from Taylor's funeral sermon on Lady Car- 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 1 67 
 
 bery ; " So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, 
 passing with a still foot and a sober face, and paying 
 to thefiscus, the great exchequer of the sea, a tribute 
 large and full ; and hard by it a little brook, skipping 
 and making a noise upon its unequal and neighbor 
 bottom ; and after all its talking and bragged motion, 
 it paid to its common audit no more than the reve- 
 nues of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel : so 
 have I sometimes compared the issues of her re- 
 ligion to the solemnities and famed outsides of an- 
 other's piety." 
 
 That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, 
 the genius in it is undeniable. I should say, for my 
 part, that genius, the ruling divinity of poetry, had 
 been too busy in it, and intelligence, the ruling 
 divinity of prose, not busy enough. But can any 
 one, with the best models of style in his head, help 
 feeling the note of provinciality there, the want of 
 simplicity, the want of measure, the want of just the 
 qualities that make prose classical ? If he does not 
 feel what I mean, let him place beside the passage 
 of Taylor this passage from the Panegyric of St. 
 Paul, by Taylor's contemporary, Bossuet : 
 
 " II ira, cet ignorant dans l'art de bien dire, avec 
 cette locution rude, avec cette phrase qui sent 
 l'etranger, il ira en cette Grece polie, la mere des phi- 
 losophes et des orateurs ; et malgre la resistance du 
 monde, il y etablira plus d'Eglises que Platon n'y a 
 gagne de disciples par cette eloquence qu'on a crue 
 divine," 
 
1 68 MA TTHE W ARNOLD. 
 
 There we have prose without the note of provin- 
 ciality — classical prose, prose of the centre. 
 
 Or take Burke, our greatest English prose-writer, 
 as I think ; take expressions like this : 
 
 " I confess I never liked this continual talk of 
 resistance and revolution, or the practice of making 
 the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily 
 bread. It renders the habit of society dangerously 
 valetudinary ; it is taking periodical doses of mercury 
 sublimate, and swallowing down repeated provoca- 
 tions of cantharides to our love of liberty. . . ." 
 
 I say that is extravagant prose ; prose too much 
 suffered to indulge its caprices ; prose at too great a 
 distance from the centre of good taste ; prose, in 
 short, with the note of provinciality. People may 
 reply, it is rich and imaginative ; yes, that is just it, 
 it is Asiatic prose, as the ancient critics would have 
 said ; prose somewhat barbarously rich and over- 
 loaded. But the true prose is Attic prose. 
 
 Well, but Addison's prose is Attic prose. Where, 
 then, it may be asked, is the note of provinciality in 
 Addison ? I answer, in the commonplace of his 
 ideas. This is a matter worth remarking. Addison 
 claims to take leading rank as a moralist. To do 
 that, you must have ideas of the first order on your 
 subject — the best ideas, at any rate, attainable in, 
 your time — as well as be able to express them in a 
 perfectly sound and sure style. Else you show your 
 distance from the centre of ideas by your matter ; 
 you are provincial by your matter, though you may 
 not be provincial by your style. It is comparatively 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 1 69 
 
 a small matter to express oneself well, if one will be 
 content with not expressing much, with expressing 
 only trite ideas ; the problem is to express new and 
 profound ideas in a perfectly sound and classical 
 style. He is the true classic, in every age, who does 
 that. Now Addison has not, on his subject of 
 morals, the force of ideas of the moralists of the first 
 class — the classical moralists ; he has not the best 
 ideas attainable in or about his time, and which were, 
 so to speak, in the air then, to be seized by the finest 
 spirits ; he is not be compared for power, searching- 
 ness, or delicacy of thought to Pascal or La Bru- 
 yere or Vauvenargues ; he is rather on a level, in this 
 respect, with a man like Marmontel. Therefore, I 
 say, he has the note of provinciality as a moralist ; 
 he is provincial by his matter, though not by his 
 style. 
 
 To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addi- 
 son, writing as a moralist on fixedness in religious 
 faith, says : 
 
 " Those who delight in reading books of contro- 
 versy do very seldom arrive at a fixed and settled 
 habit of faith. The doubt which was laid revives 
 again, and shows itself in new difficulties; and that 
 generally for this reason, — because the mind, which 
 is perpetually tossed in controversies and disputes, 
 is apt to forget the reasons which had once set it to 
 rest, and to be disquieted with any former perplexity 
 when it appears in a new shape, or is started by a 
 different hand." 
 
 It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in 
 
I/O MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 lucidity, measure, and propriety. I make no objec- 
 tion ; but, in my turn, I say that the idea expressed 
 is perfectly trite and barren, and that it is a note of 
 provinciality in Addison, in a man whom a nation 
 puts forward as one of its great moralists, to have no 
 profounder and more striking idea to produce on this 
 great subject. Compare, on the same subject, these 
 words of a moralist really of the first order, really at 
 the centre by his ideas, — Joubert : — 
 
 " L'experience de beaucoup d'opinions donne a 
 l'esprit beaucoup de flexibilite et l'affermit dans 
 celles qu'il croit les meieleures." 
 
 With what a flash of light that touches the sub- 
 ject ! how it sets us thinking ! what a genuine con- 
 tribution to moral science it is ! 
 
 In short, where there is no centre like an academy, 
 if you have genius and powerful ideas, you are apt 
 not to have the best style going ; if you have pre- 
 cision of style and not genius, you are apt not to 
 have the best ideas going. 
 
 The provincial spirit, again, exaggerates the value 
 of its ideas for want of a high standard at hand by 
 which to try them. Or rather, for want of such a 
 standard, it gives one idea too much prominence at 
 the expense of others ; it orders its ideas amiss ; it 
 is hurried away by fancies ; it likes and dislikes too 
 passionately, too exclusively. Its admiration weeps 
 hysterical tears, and its disapprobation foams at the 
 mouth. So we get the eruptive and the aggressive 
 manner in literature ; the former prevails most in 
 our criticism, the latter in our newspapers. For, not 
 
ESSAY ON MAURICE GUERIN. I? I 
 
 having the lucidity of a large and centrally placed 
 intelligence, the provincial spirit has not its gracious- 
 ness ; it does not persuade, it makes war ; it has not 
 urbanity, the tone of the city, of the centre, the tone 
 which always aims at a spiritual and intellectual 
 effect, and not excluding the use of banter, never 
 disjoins banter itself from politeness, from felicity. 
 
 From the Essay on Maurice Guerin. 
 
 The grand power of poetry is in its interpretative 
 power; by which I mean, not a power of drawing 
 out in black and white an explanation of the mys- 
 tery of the universe, but the power of so dealing 
 with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, 
 new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations 
 with them. When this sense is awakened in us, as 
 to objects without us, we feel ourselves to be in 
 contact with the essential nature of these objects, to 
 be no longer bewildered and oppressed by them, but 
 to have their secret, and to be in harmony with them ; 
 and this feeling calms and satisfies us as no other 
 can. Poetry, indeed, interprets in another way be- 
 sides this ; but one of its two ways of interpreting, 
 of exercising its highest power, is by awakening 
 this sense in us. I will not now inquire whether 
 this sense is illusive, whether it does absolutely 
 make us possess the real nature of things ; all I can 
 say is, that poetry can awaken it in us, and that to 
 awaken it in us is one of the highest powers of poe- 
 try. The interpretations of science do not give us 
 this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations 
 
I7 2 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 of poetry give it ; they appeal to a limited faculty, 
 and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or 
 Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of 
 animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret 
 for us, who makes us participate in their life ; it is 
 Shakespeare, with his 
 
 " Daffodils 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ;" 
 
 it is Wordsworth, with his 
 
 ' ' Voice .... heard 
 In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides ;" 
 
 it is Keats, with his 
 
 "moving waters at their priestlike task 
 Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores ;" 
 
 it is Chateaubriand, with his, " cime inde'termine'e des 
 forets /" it is Senancour, with his mountain birch- 
 tree: " cette ccorce blanche, lisse et crevasse'e ; cette 
 tige agreste ; ces branches qui s inclinent vers la terre ; 
 la mobilite des feuilles, et tout cet abandoit, simplicite 
 de la nature, attitude des deserts." 
 
ESSAY OAT GRAY. 1 73 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 1819-1891. 
 
 [Mr. Lowell's literary essays represent the highest order 
 of criticism that has appeared in America. The two vol- 
 umes of " Among My Books " and the collection called 
 " My Study Windows'' contain strong and original thought, 
 unusual scholarship, and a poet's own power of feeling for 
 poetry. Mr. Lowell was learned, and his learning did not 
 dull him aesthetically, or blur his tact in distinguishing 
 relative literary values. In criticism, as in his whole broad 
 nature, he grew better as he grew old. Though the latter 
 part of his life was not concentrated upon literature, his 
 last essays are even superior in manner to the more elaborate 
 works of his prime, and if less copiously instructive, are 
 still more agreeable. The concluding pages of one of these, 
 the essay on Gray, are given here, by permission of Messrs. 
 Houghton, Miflin & Co.] 
 
 From the Essay on Gray, in " Last Essays." 
 
 In spite of unjust depreciation and misapplied 
 criticism, Gray holds his own and bids fair to last as 
 long as the language which he knew how to write so 
 well and of which he is one of the glories. Words- 
 worth is justified in saying that he helped himself 
 from everybody and everywhere ; and yet he made 
 such admirable use of what he stole (if theft there 
 was) that we should as soon think of finding fault 
 with a man for pillaging the dictionary. He mixed 
 
174 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 himself with whatever he took — an incalculable in- 
 crement. In the editions of his poems, the thin line 
 of text stands at the top of the page like cream, and 
 below it is the skim-milk drawn from many milky- 
 mothers of the herd out of which it is risen. But 
 the thing to be considered is that, no matter where 
 the material came from, the result is Gray's own. 
 Whether original or not, he knew how to make a 
 poem, — a vary rare knowledge among men. The 
 thought in Gray is neither uncommon nor profound, 
 and you may call it beatified commonplace if you 
 choose. I shall not contradict you. I have lived 
 long enough to know that there is a vast deal of 
 commonplace in the world of no particular use to 
 anybody, and am thankful to the man who has the 
 divine gift to idealize it for me. Nor am I offended 
 with the odor of the library that hangs about Gray, 
 for it recalls none but delightful sensations. It was 
 in the very best literature that Gray was steeped, 
 and I am glad that both he and we should profit by 
 it. If he appropriated a fine phrase wherever he 
 found it, it was by right of eminent domain, for 
 surely he w r as one of the masters of language. His 
 praise is that what he touched was idealized, and 
 kindled with some virtue that was not there before, 
 but came from him. 
 
 And he was the most conscientious of artists. 
 Some of the verses which he discards in reference 
 to this conscientiousness of form which sacrifices the 
 poet to the poem, the part to the whole, and regards 
 nothing but the effect to be produced, would have 
 
ESSAY ON GRAY. 1 75 
 
 made the fortune of another poet. Take, for exam- 
 ple, this stanza omitted from the " Elegy" (just before 
 the epitaph), because, says Mason, " he thought it 
 was too long a parenthesis in this place :" 
 
 " There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, 
 
 By hands unseen are showers of violets found ; 
 The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground." 
 
 Gray might run his pen through this, but he could 
 not obliterate it from the memory of men. Surely 
 Wordsworth himself never achieved a simplicity of 
 language so pathetic in suggestion, so musical in 
 movement as this. 
 
 Any slave of the mine may find the rough gem, 
 but it is the cutting and polishing that reveal its 
 heart of fire ; it is the setting that makes of it a 
 jewel to hang at the ear of Time. If Gray cull his 
 words and phrases here, there, and everywhere, it is 
 he who charges them with the imagination or pic- 
 turesque touch which only he could give and which 
 makes them magnetic. For example, in these two 
 verses of'" The Bard :" 
 
 " Amazement in his van with Flight combined, 
 And Sorrow's faded form and Solitude behind !" 
 
 The suggestion (we are informed by the notes) 
 came from Cowper and Oldham, and the amaze- 
 ment combined with flight sticks fast in prose. But 
 the personification of Sorrow and the fine generaliza- 
 tion of Solitude in the last verse which gives an 
 imaginative reach to the whole passage are Gray's 
 
i;6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 own. The owners of what Gray " conveyed " would 
 have found it hard to identify their property and 
 prove title to it after it had once suffered the Gray- 
 change by steeping in his mind and memory. 
 
 When the example in our Latin Grammar tells us 
 that Mors communis est omnibus, it states a truism 
 of considerable interest, indeed, to the person in 
 whose particular case it is to be illustrated, but 
 neither new nor startling. No one would think of 
 citing it, whether to produce conviction or to heigh- 
 ten discourse. Yet mankind are agreed in finding 
 something more poignant in the same reflection 
 when Horace tells us that the palace as well as the 
 hovel shudders at the indiscriminating foot of Death. 
 Here is something more than the dry statement of 
 a truism. The difference between the two is that 
 between a lower and a higher ; it is, in short, the 
 difference between prose and poetry. The oyster 
 has begun, at least, to secrete its pearl, something 
 identical with its shell in substance, but in sentiment 
 and association how unlike ! Malherbe takes the 
 same image and makes it a little more picturesque, 
 though, at the same time, I fear, a little more Pari- 
 sian, too, when he says that the sentinel pacing 
 before the gate of the Louvre cannot forbid Death 
 an entrance to the King. And how long had not 
 that comparison between the rose's life and that of 
 the maiden dying untimely been a commonplace 
 when the same Malherbe made it irreclaimably his 
 own by mere felicity of phrase ? We do not ask 
 where people got their hints, but what they made 
 
ESSAY OAT GRAY. 1?7 
 
 out of them. The commonplace is unhappily within 
 reach of us all, and unhappily, too, they are rare 
 who can give it novelty and even invest it with a 
 kind of grandeur as Gray knew how to do. If his 
 poetry be a mosaic, the design is always his own. 
 He, if any, had certainly " the last and greatest art," 
 — the art to please. Shall we deny ourselves to the 
 charm of sentiment because we prefer the electric 
 shudder that imagination gives us? Even were 
 Gray's claims to being a great poet rejected, he can 
 never be classed with the many, so great and uni- 
 form are the efficacy of his phrase and the music to 
 which he sets it. This unique distinction, at least, 
 may be claimed for him without dispute, that he is 
 the one English poet who has written less and 
 pleased more than any other. Above all, it is as a 
 teacher of the art of writing that he is to be valued. 
 If there be any well of English undefiled, it is to be 
 found in him and his master, Dryden. They are 
 still standards of what may be called classical Eng- 
 lish, neither archaic nor modern, and as far removed 
 from pedantry as from vulgarity. They were 
 
 " Tous deux disciples d'une escole 
 Ou Ton forcene doucement," 
 
 — a school in which have been enrolled the Great 
 Masters of literature. 
 
1/8 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 1819 
 
 [Ruskin's literary criticism is to be found scattered all 
 through his writings, sometimes in the most unexpected 
 connections. On specific passages he is frequently unre 
 liable, inasmuch as he is at times carried away by his sen- 
 sibility, or by that capricious quality of his genius that 
 renders him on almost all subjects a partially unbalanced 
 writer. Nothing, for instance, could be much more uncriti- 
 cal than the extent to which he pushes his interpretation of 
 the lines in Lycidas, on which he comments in a well-known 
 passage of Sesame and Lilies. In reading him it is nec- 
 essary to decline to assume the attitude that he somewhere 
 recommends readers to take — that of the docile and acquies- 
 cent pupil. But in spite of his being occasionally fanciful 
 and erratic, his unusual poetic feeling, his deep sympathies, 
 and the force and beauty of his expression give to many of his 
 literary excursions great interest and value. Nor is he 
 without a high order of intellectual insight, as is shown in 
 the following discussion of what he calls the Pathetic 
 Fallacy; though even here, at one point, he gives a singular 
 illustration of the fault he is condemning. The selection is 
 from the third volume of Modern Painters. In the pre- 
 ceding paragraphs he has been objecting, in his usual atti- 
 tude towards metaphysics, to the use of the words "objec- 
 tive" and "subjective" in criticism.] 
 
 From Modern Painters, Vol. Ill, Chapter XII. 
 
 Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd 
 words quite out of our way, we may go on at our 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 179 
 
 ease to examine the point in question, namely, the 
 difference between the ordinary, proper, and true 
 appearances of things to us ; and the extraordinary, 
 or false appearances, when we are under the influ- 
 ence of emotion, or contemplative fancy; 1 false 
 appearances, I say, as being entirely unconnected 
 with any real power or character in the object, and 
 only imputed to it by us. 
 For instance — 
 
 " The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould 
 Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold." 2 
 
 This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The 
 crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant ; its 
 yellow is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we 
 enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that 
 it is anything else than a plain crocus ? 
 
 It is an important question. For, throughout our 
 past reasonings about art, we have always found 
 that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately 
 pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is some- 
 thing pleasurable in written poetry which is never- 
 theless z/7ztrue. And what is more, if we think over 
 our favorite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind 
 of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being 
 so. 
 
 It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, 
 that this fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, 
 
 1 [" The contemplative fancy summons images of external rela- 
 tionship."] 
 
 2 Holmes. 
 
l8o JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 as in this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful 
 fancy, which involves no real expectation that it will 
 be believed ; or else it is a fallacy caused by an ex- 
 cited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, 
 more or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy 
 we shall have to speak presently ; but, in this chap- 
 ter, I want to examine the nature of the other error, 
 that which the mind admits, when affected strongly 
 by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke, — 
 
 " They rowed her in across the rolling foam — 
 The cruel, crawling foam." 
 
 The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The 
 state of mind which attributes to it these characters 
 of a living creature is one in which the reason is un- 
 hinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same 
 effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our 
 impressions of external things, which I would gen- 
 erally characterize as the " Pathetic fallacy." 
 
 Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy 
 as eminently a character of poetical description, and 
 the temper of mind in which we allow it, as one 
 eminently poetical, because passionate. But I be- 
 lieve, if we look well into the matter, that we shall 
 find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind 
 of falseness, — that it is only the second order of 
 poets who much delight in it. 1 
 
 1 I admit two orders of poets, but no third : and by these two 
 orders I mean the Creative (Shakespeare, Homer, Dante), and 
 Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But 
 both of these must be first-rate in their range, though their range 
 is different ; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. l8l 
 
 Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from 
 the bank of Acheron " as dead leaves flutter from a 
 bough," he gives the most perfect image possible of 
 their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and 
 scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an 
 instant losing his own clear perception that these 
 are souls, and those are leaves : he makes no confu- 
 sion of one with the other. But when Coleridge 
 speaks of 
 
 4 ' The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
 That dances as often as dance it can," 
 
 to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the 
 best, — much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length 
 of a life ; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to en- 
 cumber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies 
 made by young pseudo-poets, " that they believe there is some good 
 in what they have written: that they hope to do better in time," 
 etc. Some good ! If there is not all good, there is no good. If 
 they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now ? Let 
 them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the 
 better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in mo- 
 ments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and 
 afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense 
 know better than so to waste their time ; and those who sincerely 
 love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too 
 well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this : all 
 inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away 
 the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched com- 
 monalty to good thoughts ; and, in general, adds to the weight of 
 human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are 
 few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not 
 already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; 
 and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember 
 and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, where- 
 with to encumber temporarily the world. 
 
1 82 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea 
 about the leaf : he fancies a life in it, and will, which 
 there are not ; confuses its powerlessness with choice, 
 its fading death with merriment, and the wind that 
 shakes it with music. Here, however, there is some 
 beauty, even in the morbid passage ; but take an 
 instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowl- 
 edge of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, has 
 fallen from an upper chamber in the Circean palace, 
 and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader, or 
 companions, in the haste of their departure. They 
 cross the sea to the Cimmerian land ; and Ulysses 
 summons the shades from Tartarus. The first which 
 appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses, amazed, 
 and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified light- 
 ness which is seen in Hamlet, 1 addresses the spirit 
 with the simple, startled words : 
 
 "Elpenor? How earnest thou under the Shadowy dark- 
 ness ? Hast thou come faster on foot than I in my black 
 ship?" 
 
 Which Pope renders thus : 
 
 " O, say, what angry power Elpenor led 
 To glide in shades, and wander with the dead ? 
 How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, 
 Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind ?" 
 
 I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, 
 either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of 
 the wind ! And yet how is it that these conceits are 
 so painful now, when they have been pleasant to us 
 in the other instances? 
 
 1 " Well said, Old mole ! ean'st work i' the ground so fast?" 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 1 83 
 
 For a very simple reason. They are not a pathetic 
 fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the 
 wrong passion — a passion which never could possi- 
 bly have spoken them — agonized curiosity. Ulysses 
 wants to know the facts of the matter ; and the very 
 last thing his mind could do at the moment would 
 be to pause, or suggest in any wise what was not a 
 fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceit 
 in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most fright- 
 ful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative 
 power could possibly have written the passage. It 
 is worth while comparing the way a similar question 
 is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats : 
 
 " He wept, and his bright tears 
 Went trickling down the golden bow he held. 
 Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood ; 
 While from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by, 
 With solemn step, an awful goddess came. 
 And there was purport in her looks for him, 
 Which he with eager guess began to read : 
 Perplexed the while, melodiously he said, 
 ' How cam'st thou over the un footed sea ?'" 
 
 Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must 
 guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of 
 fallacy. Coleridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but 
 Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther 
 questioning, I will endeavor to state the main bear- 
 ings of this matter. 
 
 The temperament which admits the pathetic fal- 
 lacy is, as I said above, that of a mind and body in 
 some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before 
 them or upon them ; borne away, or over-clouded, 
 
1 84 JOHN RUSK IN. 
 
 or over-dazzled by emotion ; and it is a more or less 
 noble state, according to the force of the emotion 
 which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man 
 that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his percep- 
 tions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp 
 them ; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity 
 and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions 
 should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the 
 intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But 
 it is still a grander condition when the intellect also 
 rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, 
 or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions ; 
 and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, 
 perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporat- 
 ing ; even if he melts, losing none of his weight. 
 
 So, then, we have the three ranks : the man who 
 perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to 
 whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, 
 because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the 
 man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to 
 whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose : 
 a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken 
 maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who 
 perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom 
 the primrose is forever nothing else than itself — a 
 little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy 
 fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associ- 
 ations and passions may be, that crowd around it. 
 And, in general, these three classes may be rated in 
 comparative order, as the men who are not poets at 
 all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 1 85 
 
 of the first ; only however great a man may be, there 
 are always some subjects which ought to throw him 
 off his balance ; some, by which his poor human 
 capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought 
 into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so 
 that the language of the highest inspiration becomes 
 broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling 
 that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker 
 things. 
 
 And thus, in full, there are four classes : the men 
 who feel nothing, and therefore see truly ; the men 
 who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly 
 (second order of poets) ; the men who feel strongly, 
 think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets) ; 
 and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, 
 are yet submitted to influences stronger than they 
 and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is 
 inconceivably above them. This last is the usual 
 condition of prophetic inspiration. 
 
 I separate these classes, in order that their charac- 
 ter may be clearly understood ; but of course they 
 are united each to the other by imperceptible tran- 
 sitions, and the same mind, according to the influ- 
 ences to which it is subjected, passes at different 
 times into the various states. Still, the difference 
 between the great and less man is, on the whole, 
 chiefly in this point of alterability. That is to say, 
 the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too 
 much of the past and future, and of all things beside 
 and around that which immediately affects him, to 
 be in any wise shaken by it. His mind is made up ; 
 
1 86 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 his thoughts have an accustomed current ; his ways 
 are steadfast ; it is not this or that new sight which 
 will at once unbalance him. He is tender to impres- 
 sion at the surface, like a rock with deep moss upon 
 it ; but there is too much mass of him to be moved. 
 The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, 
 is at once carried off his feet ; he wants to do some- 
 thing he did not want to do before ; he views all the 
 universe in a new light through his tears ; he is gay 
 or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things 
 come and go to him. Therefore the high creative 
 poet might even be thought, to a great extent, im- 
 passive (as shallow people think Dante stern), receiv- 
 ing indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great 
 centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands 
 serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from far 
 off. 
 
 Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire com- 
 mand of himself, and can look around calmly, at all 
 moments, for the image or the word that will best 
 tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But 
 Keats and Tennyson, and the poets of the second 
 order, are generally themselves subdued by the feel- 
 ings under which they write, or, at least, write as 
 choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain ex- 
 pressions and modes of thought which are in some 
 sort diseased or false. 
 
 Now so long as we see that the feeling is true, we 
 pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy 
 of sight which it induces : we are pleased, for instance, 
 with those lines of Kingsley's, above quoted, not 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 1 87 
 
 because they fallaciously describe foam, but because 
 they faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment 
 the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment 
 every such expression becomes untrue, as being for- 
 ever untrue in the external facts. And there is no 
 greater baseness in literature than the habit of using 
 these metaphorical expressions in cold blood. An 
 inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may 
 speak wisely and truly of " raging waves of the sea, 
 foaming out their own shame ;" but it is only the 
 basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without 
 talking of " raging waves," " remorseless floods," 
 " ravenous billows," etc.; and it is one of the signs 
 of the highest power in a writer to check all such 
 habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly 
 on the pure fact, out of which if any feeling comes 
 to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true 
 one. 
 
 To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who rep- 
 resents a man in despair, desiring that his body may 
 be cast into the sea, 
 
 " Whose changing mound and foam that passed away, 
 Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay." 
 
 Observe, there is not a single false, or even over- 
 charged, expression. " Mound " of the sea wave is 
 perfectly simple and true ; " changing" is as familiar 
 as may be ; " foam that passed away," strictly literal ; 
 and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a 
 degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, 
 in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For 
 most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsi- 
 
1 88 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 ness and massiveness of a large wave. The word 
 "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, 
 and bendings in light drapery or grass : it does not 
 by itself convey a perfect image. But the word 
 " mound " is heavy, large, dark, definite ; there is no 
 mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the 
 sight of it. Then the term " changing " has a pecu- 
 liar force also. Most people think of waves as rising 
 and falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, 
 they will perceive that the waves do not rise and 
 fall. They change. Change both place and form, 
 but they do not fall ; one wave goes on, and on, and 
 still on ; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane 
 like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, 
 now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, 
 till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, 
 one knows not how, — becomes another wave. 
 
 The close of the line insists on this image, and 
 paints it still more perfectly, — " foam that passed 
 away." Not merely melting, disappearing, but pass- 
 ing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave. 
 Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he 
 may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about 
 it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite 
 fact, — the image of the green mounds that do not 
 change, and the white and written stones that do not 
 pass away ; and thence to follow out also the asso- 
 ciated images of the calm life with the quiet grave, 
 and the despairing life with the fading foam : — 
 
 " Let no man move his bones." 
 " As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water." 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 1 89 
 
 But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, 
 and the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly se- 
 vere and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly 
 governed emotion of the writer. Even the word 
 " mock " is hardly an exception, as it may stand 
 merely for " deceive " or " defeat," without implying 
 any impersonation of the waves. 
 
 It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more 
 instances to show the peculiar dignity possessed by 
 all passages which thus limit their expression to the 
 pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather what he can 
 from it. Here is a notable one from the Iliad. 
 Helen, looking from the Scaean gate of Troy over 
 the Grecian host, and telling Priam the names of its 
 captains, says at last : 
 
 " I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks ; but two I cannot 
 see, — Castor and Pollux, — whom one mother bore with me. 
 Have they not followed from fair Lacedaemon, or have they 
 indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not 
 enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn 
 that is in me?" 
 
 Then Homer : 
 
 " So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth 
 possessed, there in Lacedaemon, in the dear fatherland." 
 
 Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the 
 extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in 
 sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or 
 change his thoughts of it. No ; though Castor and 
 Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, 
 fruitful, life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. 
 
190 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 I see nothing else than these. Make what you will 
 of them. 1 
 
 Now in this there is the exact type of the 
 
 consummate poetical temperament. For, be it 
 clearly and constantly remembered, that the great- 
 ness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acute- 
 ness of feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, 
 first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and 
 then, that strength being granted, in proportion to 
 his government of it ; there being, however, always 
 a point beyond which it would be inhuman and 
 monstrous if he pushed this government, and, there- 
 fore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy be- 
 comes just and true. Thus the destruction of the 
 kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly 
 by a prophet of Israel. The fact is too great, too 
 wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a 
 confused element of dreams. All the world is, to his 
 stunned thought, full of strange voices. " Yea, the 
 fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, 
 saying, ' Since thou art gone down to the grave, no 
 feller has come up against us.' ' So, still more, the 
 thought of the presence of Deity cannot be borne 
 without this great astonishment. " The mountains 
 
 1 [This paragraph is criticised by Matthew Arnold {On Translating 
 Homer, p. 14S): " This is a just specimen of that sort of application 
 of modern sentiment to the ancients against which a student who 
 wishes to feel the ancients truly cannot too resolutely defend him- 
 self. . . It is not true, as a matter of general criticism, that this kind 
 of sentimentality, eminently modern, inspires Homer at all."] 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. 191 
 
 and the hills shall break forth before you into sing- 
 ing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their 
 hands." 
 
 But by how much this feeling is noble when it is 
 justified by the strength of its cause, by so much it 
 is ignoble when there is not cause enough for it ; and 
 beyond all other ignobleness is the mere affectation 
 of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may 
 almost always, as above noticed, be known by its 
 adoption of these fanciful metaphorical expressions, 
 as a sort of current coin ; yet there is even a worse, 
 at least a more harmful, condition of writing than 
 this, in which such expressions are not ignorantly 
 and feelinglessly caught up, but, by some master, 
 skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately wrought 
 out with chill and studied fancy ; as if we should try 
 to make an old lava stream look red-hot again by 
 covering it with dead leaves, or white-hot, with hoar- 
 frost. 
 
 When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on 
 the character of a truly good and holy man, he per- 
 mits himself for a moment to be overborne by the 
 feeling so far as to exclaim — 
 
 " Where shall I find him ? angels, tell me where. 
 You know him ; he is near you ; point him out. 
 Shall I see glories beaming from his brow, 
 Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers ? " 
 
 This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true 
 and right. But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say 
 to a shepherd girl — 
 
192 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 " Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade ! 
 Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade ; 
 Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, 
 And winds shall waft it to the powers above. 
 But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, 
 The wondering forests soon should dance again; 
 The moving mountain hear the powerful call, 
 And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall." 
 
 This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken 
 for, the language of passion. It is simple falsehood, 
 uttered by hypocrisy ; definite absurdity, rooted in 
 affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth of nature 
 and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving 
 itself ; but it must be a strong passion, not the simple 
 wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Com- 
 pare a very closely parallel passage in Wordsworth, 
 in which the lover has lost his mistress : 
 
 " Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid, 
 When thus his moan he made: 
 ' Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, 
 
 Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, 
 That in some other way yon smoke 
 May mount into the sky. 
 
 " If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, 
 Headlong, the water-fall must come, 
 Oh, let it, then, be dumb — 
 Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.' " 
 
 Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, 
 and a water-fall to be silent, if it is not to hang lis- 
 tening ; but with what different relation to the mind 
 that contemplates them ! Here, in the extremity of 
 its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at 
 
MODERN PAINTERS. I93 
 
 the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, 
 but partly believes possible, in a vague impression 
 that a miracle might be wrought to give relief even 
 to a less sore distress, — that nature is kind, and God 
 is kind, and that grief is strong ; it knows not well 
 what is possible to such grief. To silence a stream, 
 to move a cottage wall, — one might think it could 
 do as much as that ! 
 
194 RICHARD HOLT BUTTON, 
 
 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. 
 
 1826- 
 
 [Mr. Hutton is the author of some of the most thoughtful 
 and appreciative literary essays of the generation. He writes 
 with fine artistic as well as intellectual judgment, and is es- 
 pecially marked by his sympathetic interpretation of the 
 ethical and spiritual values of literature. The passage that 
 follows is from the essay on Cardinal Newman, in his " Mod- 
 ern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith." This 
 volume, and that entitled " Literary Essays," contain his 
 more important critical studies.] 
 
 From the Essay on Cardinal Newman, in " Modern Guides to 
 English Thought in Matters of Faith." 
 
 MOST of us know, by bust, photograph, or picture, 
 the wonderful face of the great Cardinal ; ? — that 
 wide forehead, ploughed deep with parallel horizon- 
 tal furrows which seem to express his careworn 
 grasp of the double aspect of human nature, its as- 
 pect in the intellectual and its aspect in the spiritual 
 world, — the pale cheek down which 
 
 "long lines of shadow slope 
 Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give," 
 
 — the pathetic eye, which speaks compassion from 
 afar, and yet gazes wonderingly into the impassable 
 gulf which separates man from man, — and the strange 
 
 \} John Henry, Cardinal Newman.] 
 
ESSAY ON CARDINAL NEWMAN. 195 
 
 mixture of asceticism and tenderness in all the lines 
 of that mobile and reticent mouth, where humor, 
 playfulness, and sympathy are intricately blended 
 with those severer moods that " refuse and restrain." 
 On the whole, it is a face full, in the first place, of spir- 
 itual passion of the highest order, and in the next, of 
 that subtle and intimate knowledge of details of 
 human limitation and weakness which makes all 
 spiritual passion look utterly ambitious and hopeless 
 unless indeed it be guided amongst the stakes and 
 dikes and pitfalls of the human battlefield by the 
 direct providence of God. 
 
 And not a little of what I say of Cardinal New- 
 man's countenance may be said also of his style. A 
 great French critic has declared that " style is the 
 man." But surely that cannot be asserted without 
 qualification. There are some styles which are much 
 better than the man, through failing to reflect the 
 least admirable parts of him ; and many that are 
 much worse — for example, styles affected by the arti- 
 ficial influence of conventional ideas like those which 
 prevailed in the last century. Again, there are styles 
 which are thoroughly characteristic of the man in 
 one sense, and yet are characteristic in part because 
 they show his delight in viewing both himself and 
 the universe through colored media, which, while 
 they brilliantly represent some aspects of it, greatly 
 misrepresent or completely disguise all others. Such 
 a style was Carlyle's, who may be said to have seen 
 the universe with wonderful vividness as it was when 
 in earthquake and hurricane, but not to have appre- 
 
ig6 RICHARD HOLT HUTTOX. 
 
 hended at all that solid crust of earth symbolizing 
 the conventional phlegmatic nature which most of 
 us know only too well. Gibbon, again, sees every- 
 thing — even himself — as if it were a striking pageant. 
 How characteristically he describes his father's disap- 
 probation of his youthful passion for Mademoiselle 
 Curchod (afterwards Madame Necker): "I sighed 
 as a lover, I obeyed as a son ! " It was evidently the 
 moral pageant of that very mild ardor, and that 
 not too reluctant submission, of which he was think- 
 ing, not of the emotion itself. And Macaulay, again, 
 has a style like a coat of mail with the visor down. 
 It is burnished, brilliant, imposing ; but it presents 
 the world and human life in pictorial antitheses far 
 more vivid and brilliant than real. It is a style which 
 effectually conceals all the more homely domestic 
 aspects of Macaulay's own nature, and represents 
 mainly his hunger for incisive contrast. But if ever 
 it were true that the style is the man, it is true, 
 I think, of Newman — nay, of both Newman and 
 Matthew Arnold. And therefore I may venture 
 without impropriety to dwell somewhat longer on 
 the style of both, and especially of the former, than 
 would be ordinarily justifiable. Both styles are lu- 
 minous, both are marked by that curious " distinc- 
 tion " which only genius, and in general only poetic 
 genius, can command. Both show a great delight in 
 irony, and use it with great effect. Both writers can, 
 when they choose, indulge even in extravagance, and 
 give the rein to ridicule without rousing that dis- 
 pleasure which any such excess in men of high intel- 
 
ESSAY ON CARDINAL NEWMAN. l$7 
 
 lectual power is apt to excite. Both styles are 
 styles of white light rather than of lurid, or glow- 
 ing, or even rainbow order. Both, in poetry at 
 least, and Newman's in both poetry and prose, are 
 capable of expressing the truest kind of pathos. 
 Both have something in them of the older Oxford 
 suavity, though in very different forms. I have 
 heard it said that the characteristic Oxford manner 
 is " ostentatiously sweet," as the characteristic Cam- 
 bridge manner is ostentatiously clumsy. But neither 
 Cardinal Newman nor Matthew Arnold have the 
 slightest trace of this excess of suavity, of the eau 
 sucree attributed to the university. Newman's sweet- 
 ness is the sweetness of religious humility and ardor, 
 Arnold's is the sweetness of easy condescension. 
 Newman's sweetness is wistful, Arnold is didactic ; 
 the one yearns to move your heart, the other kindly 
 enlightens your intellect. Even Newman's prose 
 style is spiritual in its basis, Arnold's intellectual. 
 Even when treating spiritual topics, even when say- 
 ing the best things Arnold has ever said as to " the 
 secret of Jesus," his manner, though gracious, is gen- 
 tly dictatorial. Again, when Newman gives the rein 
 to his irony, it is always with a certain earnestness 
 or even indignation against the self-deceptions he is 
 ridiculing. When Arnold does so, it is in pleasurable 
 scorn of the folly he is exposing. 
 
 Both are luminous, but Arnold's prose is lumi- 
 
 nous like a steel mirror, Newman's like a clear at- 
 
I98 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. 
 
 mosphere or lake. Arnold's prose style is crystal, 
 Newman's liquid. 
 
 And with this indication of the characteristic 
 difference I will now turn to my immediate subject, 
 Cardinal Newman's style only. It is a style, as I 
 have said, that more nearly represents a clear at- 
 mosphere than any other which I know in English 
 literature. It flows round you, it presses gently on 
 every side of you, and yet like a steady current car- 
 ries you in one direction too. On every facet of 
 your mind and heart you feel the light touch of his 
 purpose, and yet you cannot escape the general 
 drift of his movement more than the ship can escape 
 the drift of the tide. He never said anything more 
 characteristic than when he expressed his conviction 
 that, though there are a hundred difficulties in faith, 
 into all of which he could enter, the hundred diffi- 
 culties are not equivalent to a single doubt. That 
 saying is most characteristic even of his style, which 
 seems to be sensitive in the highest degree to a 
 multitude of hostile influences which are at once 
 appreciated and resisted, while one predominant 
 and over-ruling power moves steadily on. 
 
 I will try and illustrate my meaning briefly. Take 
 the following passage concerning the lower animals : 
 
 " Can anything be more marvellous or startling, 
 unless we were used to it, than that we should have 
 a race of beings about us whom we do see, and as 
 little know their state, or can describe their interests 
 or their destiny, as we can tell of the inhabitants of 
 the sun and moon ? It is, indeed, a very over- 
 
ESSAY ON CARDINAL NEWMAN. 1 99 
 
 powering thought, when we get to fix our minds on 
 it, that we periodically use — I may say hold inter- 
 course with — creatures who are as much strangers 
 to us, as mysterious, as if they were fabulous un- 
 earthly beings, more powerful than man, and yet 
 his slaves, which Eastern superstitions have in- 
 vented. We have more real knowledge about the 
 angels than about brutes ; they have apparently pas 
 sions, habits, and a certain accountableness, but all 
 is mystery about them. We do not know whether 
 they can sin or not, whether they are under punish- 
 ment, whether they are to live after this life ; we inflict 
 very great sufferings on a portion of them, and they, 
 in turn, every now and then, retaliate upon us, as if 
 by a wonderful law. . . . Cast your thoughts abroad 
 on the whole number of them, large and small, in 
 vast forests, or in the water, or in the air, and then 
 say whether the presence of such countless multi- 
 tudes, so various in their natures, so strange and 
 wild in their shapes, living on the earth without 
 ascertainable object, is not as mysterious as any- 
 thing Scripture says about the angels." 
 
 Now, does not the style of that passage perfectly 
 represent the character of mind which conceived it, 
 as well as the special meaning it conveys ? Inferior 
 styles express the purpose but conceal the man ; 
 Newman's expresses the purpose by revealing the 
 man. This passage — and I could find scores which 
 would suit my purpose as well, and some, though not 
 so short and detachable, that would suit it better — 
 is as luminous as the day; but that is not its special 
 
200 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. 
 
 characteristic, for luminousness belongs to the ether, 
 which is the same whether the atmosphere be pres- 
 ent or absent, and Newman's style touches you with 
 a visible thrill, just as the atmosphere transmits 
 every vibration of sound. You are conscious of the 
 thrill of the writer's spirit as he contemplates this 
 strange world of countless animated beings with 
 whom our spiritual bond is so slight ; the sufferings 
 we inflict, and the retaliations permitted in return ; 
 the blindness to spiritual marvels with which custom 
 strikes us ; the close analogy between the genii of 
 Eastern superstition and the domestic animals who 
 serve us so industriously with physical powers so 
 much greater than our own ; the strangeness and 
 wildness of the innumerable forms which hover 
 round us in forest, field, and flood ; and yet with all 
 those undercurrents of feeling, observe how large is 
 the imaginative reach of the whole ; how firmly the 
 drift — to make it easier to believe in angelic hosts — 
 is sustained ; how steady is the subordination of the 
 whole to the object of attenuating the difficulty of 
 the spiritual mystery in which he desires men to 
 believe. Once more, how tender is the style in the 
 only sense in which we can properly attribute ten- 
 derness to style, its avoidance of every harsh or 
 violent word, its shrinking aside from anything like 
 overstatement ! The lower animals have, he says, 
 u apparently passions, habits, and a certain account- 
 ableness." Evidently Dr. Newman could not have 
 suggested, as Descartes did, that they are machines 
 aping feelings without having them ; he never 
 
ESSAY ON CARDINAL NEWMAN. 201 
 
 doubts their sufferings ; he could not, even by a 
 shade, exaggerate the mystery he is delineating. 
 Every touch shows that he wishes to delineate it as 
 it is, and not to overcolor it by a single tint. Then 
 how piercing to our dulness is that phrase, " It is 
 indeed a very overpowering thought, when we get to 
 fix our minds on it." We are not overpowered, he 
 would say, dhly because we cannot or do not fix our 
 minds on this wonderful intercourse of ours with 
 intimates after a kind, of whose inner being we are 
 yet entirely ignorant. And how reticent is the in- 
 ference, how strictly it limits itself to its real object, 
 to impress upon us how little we know even of the 
 objects of sense, and how little reason there is in 
 using our ignorance as the standard by which to 
 measure the supersensual ! 
 
 And now to bring to a close what I have to say 
 
 of Dr. Newman's style — though the subject grows 
 upon one — let me quote one or two of the passages 
 in which his style vibrates to the finest notes, and 
 yet exhibits most powerfully the drift and undercur- 
 rent by which his mind is swayed. Perhaps he never 
 expresses anything so powerfully as he expresses 
 the deep pining for the rest of spiritual simplicity, for 
 the peace which passes understanding, that under- 
 lies his nature. Take this from one of his Roman 
 Catholic sermons : " Oh, long sought after, tardily 
 found, the desire of the eyes, the joy of the heart, 
 the truth after many shadows, the fulness after many 
 foretastes, the home after many storms ; come to 
 
202 RICHARD HOLT HUT TON. 
 
 her, poor children, for she it is, and she alone, who 
 can unfold to you the secret of your being, and the 
 meaning of your destiny." Again, in the exquisite 
 tale of martyrdom from which I have already quoted 
 the account of the locusts, the destined martyr, 
 whose thirst for God has been awakened by her 
 intercourse with Christians, thus repels the Greek 
 rhetorician who is trying to feed her on the husks 
 of philosophic abstractions, as she expresses the 
 yearnings of a heart weary of its desolation : '• Oh 
 that I could find Him !" Callista exclaimed passion- 
 ately. " On the right hand and on the left I grope, 
 but touch Him not. Why dost thou fight against 
 me, why dost thou scare and perplex me, O First 
 and only fair ?" 
 
 In another of these poems Dr. Newman has 
 
 referred to the sea described in the book of Reve- 
 lation : 
 
 " A sea before 
 The throne is spread ; its pure still glass 
 Pictures all earth-scenes as they pass. 
 We on its shore 
 Share in the bosom of our rest, 
 God's knowledge, and are blest." 
 
 It has always seemed to me that Newman's style 
 succeeds, so far as a human form of expression can, 
 in picturing the feelings of earth in a medium as 
 clear, as liquid, and as tranquil, as sensitive alike to 
 the minutest ripples and the most potent tidal waves 
 of providential impulse, as the sea spread before the 
 throne itself. 
 
ESSAY ON STYLE. 203 
 
 WALTER PATER. 
 
 1839- 
 
 [This extract from Mr. Pater's essay on Style, contained in 
 his volume of literary studies entitled "Appreciations," puts 
 in a noteworthy way the importance of perfect language for 
 art's sake. A passage of similar import has already been 
 given, but the subject is treated here with more detail, and 
 the sense for expression is so essential to intelligent literary 
 enjoyment that a second presentation of it is not superfluous. 
 The faculty for recognizing and feeling the values of words 
 on both the intellectual and artistic sides — nice discrimina- 
 tion in meaning, and aesthetic tact in verbal tone and sen- 
 tence rhythm, is one of the later and more acquired literary 
 refinements, and more than repays attention and study. 
 The only danger in this connection is the possibility both 
 for writers and for readers of a cold and cramping fastidious- 
 ness. When too much stress is thrown on exquisite verbal 
 effect, there is danger of a cautiously critical, if not self-con- 
 scious tone. Perhaps Mr. Pater's own writings have occa- 
 sionally a studied look, as if they had been polished with 
 one file too many. The accidents of genius are often felici- 
 tous beyond studious correctness. The unexpected word, 
 which formal theory might not always indorse, is sometimes 
 the poetry of verbal selection that study can never attain. 
 But the ordinary danger is in neglecting such admonitions as 
 these upon the importance of finish and precision, whether 
 in what we compose, or in attending to the work of others. 
 Not a little of the cultivated reader's gratification in reading, 
 is his perception of the beauties of artistic workmanship.] 
 
204 WALTER PATER. 
 
 From the Essay on Style, in "Appreciations." 
 -Just in proportion as the writer's aim, con- 
 
 sciously or unconsciously, comes to be the transcrib- 
 ing, not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his 
 sense of it, he becomes an artist, his work fine art ; 
 and good art in proportion to the truth of his pre- 
 sentment of that sense ; as in those humbler or plain- 
 er functions of literature also, truth — truth to bare 
 'fact, there — is the essence of such artistic quality as 
 they may have. Truth ! there can be no merit, no 
 craft at all, without that. And further, all beauty is 
 in the long run only fineness of truth, or what we call 
 expression, the finer accommodation of speech to 
 that vision within. 
 
 The transcript of his sense of fact, rather than the 
 fact, as being preferable, pleasanter, more beautiful 
 to the writer himself. In literature as in every other 
 product of human skill, in the moulding of a bell or a 
 platter, for instance, wherever this sense asserts it- 
 self, wherever the producer so modifies his work as, 
 over and above its primary use or intention, to make 
 it pleasing (to himself, of course, in the first instance), 
 there " fine" as opposed to merely serviceable art 
 exists. Literary art, that is, like all art which is in 
 any way imitative or reproductive of fact — form, 
 or color, or incident — is the representation of such 
 fact as connected with soul, of a specific personality, 
 in its preferences, its volition and power. 
 
 The literary artist is of necessity a scholar, 
 
 and in what he professes to do will have in mind, 
 
ESSAY ON STYLE. 205 
 
 first of all, the scholar and the scholarly conscience 
 — the male conscience in this matter, as we must think 
 it, under a system of education which still to so large 
 an extent limits real scholarship to men. In his self- 
 criticism he supposes always that sort of reader who 
 will go (full of eyes) warily, considerately, though with- 
 out consideration for him, over the ground which the 
 female conscience traverses so lightly, so amiably. 
 For the material in which he works is no more a crea- 
 tion of his own than the sculptor's marble. Product of 
 a myriad various minds and contending tongues, com- 
 pact of obscure and minute association, a language 
 has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in 
 the habitual and summary recognition of which 
 scholarship consists. A writer full of a matter he is 
 before all things anxious to express, may think of 
 those laws, the limitations of vocabulary, structure, 
 and the like, as a restriction, but if a real artist will 
 find in them an opportunity. His punctilious observ- 
 ance of the proprieties of his medium will diffuse 
 through all he writes a general air of sensibility, of 
 refined usage. Exclusiones debitce natures — the ex- 
 clusions, or rejections, which nature demands — we 
 know how large a part these play, according to 
 Bacon, in the science of nature. In a somewhat 
 changed sense, we might say that the art of the 
 scholar is summed up in the observance of those re- 
 jections demanded by the nature of his medium, 
 the material he must use. Alive to the value of an 
 atmosphere in which every term finds its utmost de- 
 gree of expression, and with all the jealousy of a 
 
206 WALTER PATER. 
 
 lover of words, he will resist a constant tendency on 
 the part of the majority of those who use them to 
 efface the distinction of language, the facility of 
 writers often reinforcing in this respect the work 
 of the vulgar. He will feel the obligation not of the 
 laws only, but of those affinities, avoidances, those 
 mere preferences of his language, which through the 
 associations of literary history have become a part 
 'of its nature, prescribing the rejection of many a 
 neology, many a license, many a gypsy phrase which 
 might present itself as actually expressive. His ap- 
 peal, again, is to the scholar, who has great experi- 
 ence in literature, and will show no favor to short 
 cuts, or hackneyed illustration, or an affectation of 
 learning designed for the unlearned. Hence a con- 
 tention, a sense of self-restraint and renunciation, 
 having for the susceptible reader the effect of a chal- 
 lenge for minute consideration ; the attention of the 
 writer, in every minutest detail, being a pledge that 
 it is worth the reader's while to be attentive too, that 
 the writer is dealing scrupulously with his instru- 
 ment, and therefore, indirectly, with the reader him- 
 self also, that he has the science of the instrument 
 he plays on, perhaps, after all, with a freedom which 
 in such case will be the freedom of the master. 
 
 If all high things have their martyrs, Gustave 
 
 Flaubert might perhaps rank as the martyr of liter- 
 ary style. In his printed correspondence a curious 
 series of letters, written in his twenty-fifth year, re- 
 cords what seems to have been his one other passion 
 
ESSAY ON STYLE. 20J 
 
 — a series of letters which, with its fine casuistries, 
 its firmly repressed anguish, its tone of harmonious 
 grey, and the sense of disillusion in which the whole 
 matter ends, might have been, a few slight changes 
 supposed, one of his own fictions. 
 
 " I must scold you," he writes, " for one thing, which shocks, 
 scandalizes me — the small concern, namely, you show for art 
 just now. As regards glory be it so : there, I approve. But 
 for art ! — the one thing in life that is good and real — can you 
 compare with it an earthly love? prefer the adoration of a 
 relative beauty to the cultus of the true beauty ? Well ! I tell 
 you the truth. That is the one thing good in me : the one 
 thing I have, to me estimable. For yourself, you blend with 
 the beautiful a heap of alien things, the useful, the agreeable, 
 what not ? — 
 
 "The only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up 
 in art, and count everything else as nothing. Pride takes 
 the place of all beside when it is established on a large basis. 
 Work ! God wills it. That, it seems to me, is clear. — 
 
 "I am reading over again the ^Eneid, certain verses of 
 which I repeat to myself to satiety. There are phrases there 
 which stay in one's head, by which I find myself beset, as 
 with those musical airs which are forever returning and cause 
 you pain, you love them so much. I observe that I no 
 longer laugh much and am no longer depressed. I am ripe. 
 You talk of my serenity and envy me. It may well surprise 
 you. Sick, irritated, the prey a thousand times a day of 
 cruel pain, I continue my labor like a true working-man, 
 who, with sleeves turned up, in the sweat of his brow, 
 beats away at his anvil, never troubling himself whether it 
 rains or blows, for hail or thunder. I was not like that 
 formerly. The change has taken place naturally, though 
 my will has counted for something in the matter. — 
 
 " Those who write in good style are sometimes accused of 
 a neglect of ideas, and of the moral end, as if the end of the 
 
208 WALTER PATER. 
 
 physician were something else than healing, of the painter 
 than painting — as if the end of art were not, before all else, 
 the beautiful." 
 
 What, then, did Flaubert understand by beauty, 
 in the art he pursued with so much fervor, with so 
 much self-command? Let us hear a sympathetic 
 commentator : — ■ 
 
 " Possessed of an absolute belief that there exists but one 
 way of expressing one thing, one word to call it by, one ad- 
 jective to qualify, one verb to animate it, he gave himself 
 to superhuman labor for the discovery, in every phrase, of 
 that word, that verb, that epithet. In this way, he believed 
 in some mysterious harmony of expression, and when a 
 true word seemed to him to lack euphony still went on seek- 
 ing another, with invincible patience, certain that he had not 
 yet got hold of the unique word. ... A thousand preoccu- 
 pations would beset him at the same moment, always with 
 this desperate certitude fixed in his spirit: Among all the 
 expressions in the world, all forms and turns of expression, 
 there is but one — one form, one mode — to express what I 
 want to say." 
 
 The one word for the one thing, the one thought, 
 amid the multitude of words, terms, that might just 
 do : the problem of style was there ! — the unique 
 word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, or song, 
 absolutely proper to the single mental presentation 
 or vision within. In that perfect justice, over and 
 above the many contingent and removable beauties 
 with which beautiful style may charm us, but which 
 it can exist without, independent of them yet dex- 
 terously availing itself of them, omnipresent in good 
 work, in function at every point, from single epithets 
 
ESSAY ON STYLE. 200. 
 
 to the rhythm of a whole book, lay the specific, in- 
 dispensable, very intellectual, beauty of literature, 
 the possibility of which constitutes it a fine art. 
 
 One seems to detect the influence of a philosophic 
 idea there — the idea of a natural economy, of some 
 pre-existent adaptation, between a relative, some- 
 where in the world of thought and its correlative, 
 somewhere in the world of language — both alike, 
 rather, somewhere in the mind of the artist, deside- 
 rative, expectant, inventive — meeting each other with 
 the readiness of " soul and body reunited " in Blake's 
 rapturous design ; and, in fact, Flaubert was fond of 
 giving his theory philosophical expression. 
 
 " There are no beautiful thoughts," he would say, "with- 
 out beautiful forms, and conversely. As it is impossible to 
 extract from a physical body the qualities which really con- 
 stitute it — color, extension, and the like — without reducing 
 it to a hollow abstraction, in a word, without destroying it; 
 just so it is impossible to detach the form from the idea, for 
 the idea only exists by virtue of the form," 
 
 All the recognized flowers, the removable orna- 
 ments of literature (including harmony and ease in 
 reading aloud, very carefully considered by him), 
 counted, certainly ; for these too are part of the 
 actual value of what one says. But still, after all, 
 with Flaubert, the search, the unwearied research, was 
 not for the smooth, or winsome, or forcible word, as 
 such, as with false Ciceronians, but quite simply and 
 honestly, for the word's adjustment to its meaning. 
 The first condition of this must be, of course, to 
 know yourself, to have ascertained your own sense 
 
210 WALTER PATER. 
 
 exactly. Then, if we suppose an artist, he says to 
 the reader, — I want you to see precisely what I see. 
 Into the mind sensitive to " form" a flood of random 
 sounds, colors, incidents, is ever penetrating from 
 the world without, to become, by sympathetic selec- 
 tion, a part of its very structure, and, in turn, the 
 visible vesture and expression of that other world it 
 sees so steadily within, nay, already with a partial 
 conformity thereto, to be refined, enlarged, cor- 
 rected, at a hundred points ; and it is just there, 
 just at those doubtful points, that the function of 
 style as tact or taste, intervenes. 
 
 In this way, according to the well-known say- 
 
 ing, " The style is the man," complex or simple, in 
 his individuality, his plenary sense of what he really 
 has to say, his sense of the world ; all cautions re- 
 garding style arising out of so many natural scruples 
 as to the medium through which alone he can ex- 
 pose that inward sense of things, the purity of this 
 medium, its laws or tricks of refraction : nothing is 
 to be left there which might give conveyance to any 
 matter save that. Style in all its varieties, reserved 
 or opulent, terse, abundant, musical, stimulant, aca- 
 demic, so long as each is really characteristic or 
 expressive, finds thus its justification, the sumptuous 
 good taste of Cicero being as truly the man himself, 
 and not another, justified, yet insured inalienably to 
 him, thereby, as would have been his portrait by 
 Raffaelle, in full consular splendor, on his ivory 
 chair. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 These topical analyses and suggestions are designed for the use 
 of students — not of teachers. The editor has learned by experience 
 that many read passages assigned for study without seeming able 
 to derive distinct impressions of the leading ideas, and also without 
 developing the full meaning of many brief or allusive expressions, 
 or following out principles and views to their consequences, and 
 making them distinct by definite illustration. The pages that 
 follow will perhaps aid in focusing the attention and stimulating 
 the thought of those to whom much aesthetic criticism is difficult. 
 They are by no means intended to be exhaustive, either as topics of 
 the text or as hints for reflection. The few points in the text 
 that appear to require explanation will be noticed in connection 
 with these other suggestions. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 
 
 The elements in Sidney's conception of poetry. 
 
 Expressions that illustrate his ideal spirit ; — his poetic 
 feeling. 
 
 His contrast between poetry and philosophy. 
 
 The instructive element in poetry. [Is this synonymous 
 with didactic?] 
 
 Sidney's figures and illustrations, — homely ; poetical ; their 
 ease, and aptness. 
 
 The contrast between the diction of prose and poetry. 
 
212 NOTES. 
 
 Sidney's idea of the secondary and the final aims of learn- 
 ing. 
 
 His style — the secret of its charm. Its defect, from a 
 modern standpoint. 
 
 Personal traits suggested ; marks of humor ; his literary 
 studies. 
 
 BEN JONSON. 
 
 The relation of diction to character. Comparison of Sid- 
 ney and Jonson by this test. [Cp. Spenser's Platonic line, 
 at the end of the Introduction.] Modifications of the view. 
 Illustrations from such authors as Wordsworth, Carlyle, and 
 Arnold. [Cp. p. 195.] 
 
 Jonson's deference to classical literature; its conserva- 
 tism ; reasonableness. 
 
 Touch of the aristocrat of genius in his remarks on critics. 
 
 The aim of criticism. 
 
 Parallel between Jonson and the extract from Sidney. 
 
 The ethical in Jonson's notion of poetry. [Cp. Prologue 
 to the Alchemist, e.g., or the Dedication of Volpone : " The 
 end of poesie is to inform men in the best reason of living."] 
 
 Jonson's conception of the literary artist. 
 
 His estimate of the excellence of untrained spontaneity. 
 
 The artist's ambition respecting passages, and his work 
 as a whole. His sacrifices and reward. 
 
 Constituents of literary success. Is this standard of taste 
 strictly English ? [Jonson's sensitiveness to his reputation 
 of requiring time and effort for writing well, disposed him 
 to a severe judgment of his more careless contemporaries. 
 The implied estimate of Marlowe in the reference to " Tam- 
 erlane" is no more fair than gracious to the great early 
 dramatist. Jonson was so much more of a realist than Mar- 
 lowe that he loses sight of the latter's superb passages, in 
 view of their epic rather than dramatic genius, and the 
 over-heroic unreality of most of his characterization. It is 
 unjust to take as a type of the strutting and vociferation of 
 
NOTES. 213 
 
 the pre-Shakespearean stage a play which contains such 
 
 lines as, 
 
 Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend 
 The wondrous architecture of the world, 
 And measure every wandering planet's course, 
 Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
 And always moving as the restless spheres ; 
 
 or the simile beginning, 
 
 As when the seaman sees the Hyades 
 Gather an army of Cimmerian clouds.] 
 
 The aim of style. 
 
 Jonson's different propositions about the use of words. 
 His scholarly exclusiveness. 
 
 Reiteration of earlier warning. Precise force of his most 
 poetical illustration. 
 
 Honorable assistance from other authors. What should 
 determine choice of style? Practical suggestions for com- 
 position. 
 
 Examples of Jonson's sententious expression. Advantage 
 of old words. Basis for the remark on the parts of compo- 
 sition to be most regarded. In what does the difficulty (if 
 any) in Jonson's manner consist? 
 
 With the passage on uses of words, it is profitable to com- 
 pare Horace, Ars Poetica (near the beginning), and Lowell's 
 Introduction to the Biglow Papers, from which a few sen- 
 tences may be extracted : " It had long seemed to me that 
 the great vice of American writing and speaking was a stud- 
 ied want of simplicity, that we were in danger of coming to 
 look on our mother-tongue as a dead language, to be sought 
 in the grammar and dictionary rather than in the heart. . . . 
 It is only from its roots in the living generations of men 
 that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its 
 needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows ever 
 more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last 
 as unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. 
 
214 NOTES. 
 
 That we should all be made to talk like books is the danger 
 with which we are threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster. 
 . . . No language after it has faded into diction, none that 
 cannot suck up the feeding juices secreted for it in the rich 
 mother-earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound and 
 lusty book. . . . 
 
 " But while the schoolmaster has been busy starching our 
 language and smoothing it flat with the mangle of a sup- 
 posed classical authority, the newspaper reporter has been 
 doing even more harm by stretching and swelling it to suit 
 his occasions. (E.g., 'was hanged' is replaced by 'was 
 launched into eternity ' ; ' when the halter was put round his 
 neck' = ' when the fatal noose was adjusted about the neck 
 of the unfortunate victim of his own unbridled passions;' 
 'a great crowd came to see' = 'a vast concourse was as- 
 sembled to witness,' etc.) ... I would not be supposed 
 to condemn truly imaginative prose. There is a simplicity 
 of splendor, no less than of plainness, and prose would be 
 poor indeed if it could not find a tongue for that meaning 
 of the mind which is behind the meaning of the words. It 
 has sometimes seemed to me that in England there was a 
 growing tendency to curtail language into a mere conven- 
 ience, and to defecate it of all emotion as thoroughly as al- 
 gebraic signs." The entire passage is a strong criticism on 
 style, aside from the point suggested by the ideas in the 
 text. 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN. 
 
 Suggestion as to Dryden's being a careful workman. [Cp. 
 Dr. Johnson's remarks on p. 44.] 
 
 Dryden's opinion of Milton. [Inquire into Milton's repu- 
 tation at the time.] 
 
 Dryden's art in compliment : [ — something for which he 
 was famous, and which he sometimes carried to great ex- 
 cesses of flattery.] 
 
 His conception of criticism. Compare the correctness of 
 
NOTES. 215 
 
 a punctilious, with a more general, standard of excellence. 
 Dryden's own literary method [suggested by his remarks]. 
 
 Contrast Dryden and Jonson, as to " correctness" of writ- 
 ing, compared with more careless spontaneity. 
 
 Examples of Dryden's easy animation of manner. 
 
 Apply Dryden's paraphrase from Longinus to the rhetori- 
 cally inexact figures of speech in Macbeth ; e.g., such as those 
 in Act I, scene 7. [What later paragraph applies to such 
 a scene ?] Compare Shakespeare there, with Jonson. Com- 
 pare Dryden himself, as in Annus Mirabilis. 
 
 Dryden's standards of taste among authors. 
 
 His view of the aim of poetry in general. 
 
 Opinions in which Dryden proves himself above the 
 poetical tendencies of his age. 
 
 Discuss the statement that a critic of any given form of 
 literature should sympathize with it. 
 
 The degree of force in Dryden's deference to the authority 
 of the past in matters of taste. 
 
 A requisite beyond poetry for the best poets. 
 
 "Shakespeare knew nothing about 'tropes' and 'me- 
 tonymies' and 'hyperboles': then why should his readers? " 
 — Dryden's criticism of the principle involved. 
 
 The rules of criticism are the practice of the best writers. 
 Defend and illustrate. 
 
 Dryden's least defensible examples of strong imagery. 
 
 How far is sympathetic feeling for poetry open to imagi- 
 native illusion ? Illustrate from any poem. 
 
 Generalize the defence by Longinus of the hyperbole 
 quoted from Herodotus. 
 
 Generalize the principle of Horace's " Si vis me flere," etc. 
 
 What requisite for the successful dramatic imitation of 
 the confused language of excitement ? 
 
 Dryden's coinage of a word. 
 
 Enlarge on the definition of poetic license, and illustrate. 
 The effect on many prose writers of a strict application of 
 this principle. 
 
2l6 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 What implied criticism of Paradise Lost ? Remark on the 
 motive of its indirectness. 
 
 Fault in Tasso and Camoens. [Observe the deeper tenden- 
 cies that this illustrates in the Revival of Learning.] 
 
 Unity of treatment. 
 
 Definition of wit. [Distinguish from humor: trace ety- 
 mological suggestions for each word.] 
 
 Basis in nature for figurative writing in passages of strong 
 feeling. 
 
 Suggestions about Dryden personally, from his prose 
 style. 
 
 Remark upon his vocabulary, illustrations, and sentences. 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 Addison's tests for discovering whether one possesses taste. 
 
 How far and in what manner taste may be cultivated. 
 
 Implied criticism of usual habits of reading. 
 
 Addison's conservatism. Personal and original taste — 
 how far recognized. How far should it be ? 
 
 Contrast Dryclen's views on imaginative writing with the 
 tone of Addison here. 
 
 Definition of taste, and illustrations. 
 
 Recognition of style, essential to literary excellence. 
 
 Summarize the most suggestive remarks. 
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT. 
 
 Momus, a Greek personification of unfavorable judgment, 
 is meant by Swift to express the " patron of the moderns" in 
 their conflict with the classics. 
 
 Comment on the allegory. [Hybris, personification of in- 
 solent violence ; Zoilus, a Greek scholar, who from his criti- 
 cism on Homer became a type of censoriousness ; Tygellius, 
 a literary fault-finder commemorated by Horace. Stymphalus 
 
NOTES. 21 J 
 
 was an Arcadian district whose troublesome birds were de- 
 stroyed by Hercules.] 
 
 Swift's application of the etymological force of the word 
 " critic." 
 
 Remark upon " Critics invented rules." Cp. with Dry- 
 den's account of the origin of critical precepts. 
 
 Swift's ironical explanation of the badness of the writings 
 of his third class of critics. 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 FROM THE LIFE OF POPE. 
 
 Definition of genius. 
 
 Contrast between Pope and Dryden as to age in beginning 
 literary work. (Annus Mirabilis, 1667; Pastorals, 1709; 
 Essay on Criticism, 171 1.) 
 
 Points where Dryden is Pope's superior. Points where 
 Pope excels. [Write out a list of these and select illustra- 
 tions from the authors' works. 
 
 Johnson's rhetorical power in this passage ; its character. 
 Where most striking? 
 
 To which (Dryden or Pope) does he seem to try more 
 carefully to be fair? 
 
 What inference respecting Dr. Johnson's own mental 
 characteristics is justified by these two literary estimates ? 
 
 FROM THE LIFE OF COWLEY. 
 
 Distinction between verse and poetry. 
 
 Compare with Dryden's definition of wit, Pope's and 
 Johnson's. 
 
 Summary of the main traits of Cowley's school of poets. 
 
 The essential error in their conception of poetry. 
 
 Meaning of "uniformity of sentiment:" its service to the 
 writer. 
 
 Compare with Johnson's remarks this sonnet of Sidney's : 
 
218 NOTES. 
 
 Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, 
 
 That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain, — 
 Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, 
 
 Knowledge might pity win and pity grace obtain, — 
 I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe; 
 
 Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, 
 Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow 
 
 Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burn'd brain. 
 But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; 
 
 Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows; 
 And others' feet still seem'd but strangers in my way. 
 
 Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, 
 Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite, — 
 Fool, said my Muse to me, look in thy heart, and write. 
 
 Johnson's account of the sublime (note the adjective for 
 his second effect), and the methods of attaining it. 
 
 His enumeration of literary faults, outside of these of the 
 "metaphysical poets." 
 
 Dr. Johnson does some injustice to the real poetic feeling 
 of such poets as Donne or Jonson. His sense of "the har- 
 mony of our numbers " is after the modulation of Denham 
 and Waller, which consists largely in smoothness and tech- 
 nical form. Milton's early poem on Shakespeare and the 
 Nativity ode also have a trace of the style of " conceits." 
 
 Dr. Johnson made a large collection of instances of this 
 " metaphysical style," which he prefaces with the observation 
 that "critical remarks are not easily understood without 
 examples." The following will serve to illustrate : 
 
 By every wind that comes this way, 
 
 Send me at least a sigh or two, 
 Such and so many I'll repay, 
 
 As shall themselves make winds to get to you. 
 
 Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come, 
 And take my tears, which are love's wine, 
 
 And try your mistress' tears at home; 
 
 For all are false that taste not just like mine. 
 
NOTES. 219 
 
 Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come 
 
 Into the self-same room; 
 'Twill tear and blow up all within, 
 
 Like a grenado shot within a magazine. 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Aim of Wordsworth's poetry as to the " essential passions 
 and elementary feelings." Meaning of the expression. 
 
 The work to be done by the imagination, in his conception 
 of the Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 Advantages to a poet in the choice of rustic and common 
 life. 
 
 Wordsworth's contrast between " literary " language and 
 that of humble life. 
 
 What modification would Wordsworth make of the latter? 
 
 The two main requirements in a poet. 
 
 Literary influence of triviality and meanness compared 
 with false refinement. Illustrate these qualities. 
 
 Why habits of deep thought involve at least an uncon- 
 scious purpose in every poem. 
 
 "The feeling gives importance to the action and situa- 
 tion." Enlarge and illustrate. 
 
 The modern tendency to strong sensations. Enlarge on 
 this, and its results. 
 
 The mind's capability of pleasure in quiet ways. 
 
 Personification of abstract ideas. (Remark upon the 
 basis of the impulse, and the essentials to its success.) 
 
 The meaning and consequences of an author's " looking 
 steadily at his subject." 
 
 Why a poet should omit words and images in themselves 
 good. 
 
 Enlarge on Wordsworth's remark about good sense. 
 
 Point out the conventional marks in Gray's sonnet (cp. the 
 close of the extract from Coleridge.) 
 
 [On the contrasts between poetry and painting, read Les- 
 sing's Laocoon.] 
 
220 NOTES. 
 
 In what the distinction consists between prose and poetry. 
 
 The poet's various characteristics. [What, if any, poetical 
 endowments are omitted here ? What sort of personal tem- 
 perament is suggested by this analysis ?] 
 
 The false beauty in eighteenth-century literature : its 
 imagery. 
 
 Illustrate " a continuous undercurrent of feeling," compared 
 with separate excitements, in our admiration of an author. 
 Generalize the two kinds of literary effect. 
 
 [Wordsworth and Coleridge were neighbors at Alfoxden 
 and Nether Stcwey, in 1797-8.] 
 
 Two cardinal points of poetry. Illustration of their pos- 
 sible combination. 
 
 What impression of truth in poems with supernatural 
 agency? 
 
 The relation of poetry to the reader's pleasure. 
 
 Poetry as general truth. How is it carried into the heart ? 
 Explain and illustrate. 
 
 Why is the difficulty in the way of the poet's work less than 
 the historian's or biographer's ? [On the part of writer, or 
 reader, — or both? Advantages to be noted on the other 
 side.] 
 
 The world conceived as beautiful. Explain how sympathy 
 with pain is related to pleasure. 
 
 Distinctions between poets and other men. 
 
 Poet's occasional submission to delusion, and the motive. 
 
 Objection to saying "a taste for poetry." 
 
 Relation of man to nature. Resulting connection and 
 contrast between the poet and the man of science. 
 
 Wordsworth's definitions of poetry (p. 70). 
 
 His conception of the future of poetry. 
 
 Why he could not introduce pretty trivialities and orna- 
 ments into his poems. 
 
 Meaning to be derived from an expression (beyond the 
 present selection) that " poetry takes its origin from emotion 
 recollected in tranquillity." 
 
NOTES. 221 
 
 General suggestions of Wordsworth's character, from the 
 style and the thought of this selection. 
 
 Select from such poems as Peter Bell, The Idiot Boy, and 
 Simon Lee, illustrations of points developed in this extract. 
 Also make an application of them to poems like " We are 
 Seven," the series on Lucy, The Solitary Reaper, or The 
 Highland Girl; also to Tintern Abbey. 
 
 In reading the three poems first named, and others resem- 
 bling them, reflect on the reasons for the peculiar impression 
 that they produce. Avoid dwelling only on the side that 
 seems open to a sense of surprise or absurdity. Observe the 
 occasional passages that would give pleasure apart from their 
 context. Try to perceive the real, though sometimes peculiar, 
 beauty of thought or sentiment in the conception, and in 
 each poem as a whole. 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 
 [In the passages that treat of Wordsworth's theory of 
 poetic diction, it is well to read such a criticism as Professor 
 Minto's in his article on Wordsworth in the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, which points out that Coleridge pushes Words- 
 worth rather farther than he intended to go, in reference to 
 the order of words and the universal application of some of 
 his propositions.] 
 
 The logic of poetry. Explain and illustrate. 
 
 Test of faulty figures of speech. 
 
 Implied principle of style in the notion of an " index ex- 
 purgatorius." 
 
 The two critical aphorisms. 
 
 Effect on writing, of an author's " desire of exciting won- 
 derment at his powers." 
 
 Illustrate the separate aims of Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 in the Lyrical Ballads ; (the familiar human interest within ro- 
 mance, and the romantic interest within familiar human life.) 
 
 Illustrations of Coleridge's dilatory habit. How far char- 
 acteristic? 
 
222 NOTES. 
 
 The class of readers to whom Wordsworth's early poems 
 appealed. 
 
 Cause of the " Wordsworth ian Controversy." 
 
 Remark on Wordsworth's " intellectual energy." 
 
 Distinguish between distinction and division. 
 
 Relation of truth to poetry. 
 
 Contrast between novels and poems. 
 
 Meaning of "other parts of a work being made consonant 
 with metre " ? [E.g., closer brevity, other things being equal: 
 higher order of interest, etc.] 
 
 Enlarge on the metaphorical analysis of " poetic genius " 
 (p. 85). 
 
 [p. 85. "Myriad-minded." In a note, Coleridge explains 
 that he coins the word from avi]p LivpiovovS, an expression 
 used by a Greek monk.] 
 
 Meaning of " the sense of musical delight. " Its origin and 
 promise. Poetic faculties that may be acquired. What be- 
 side melody cannot be learned ? Illustrate. 
 
 Enlarge on the " second promise of genius." 
 
 Proof of genius in imagery. 
 
 Contrast the two descriptions of the " row of pines." 
 
 Meaning of Dignity and of Passion in poetry. 
 
 Point out poetic effects in the quotations under (3). 
 
 What expression under (4) resembles one in the selection 
 from Wordsworth ? 
 
 Shakespeare's intellectual qualities ; his language. 
 
 Coleridge's estimate of Shakespeare's self-schooling. What 
 other view is often advanced ? 
 
 Coleridge's conception of intellectual sentence-structure. 
 
 What difference should exist between the style of prose 
 and of conversation ? 
 
 Select examples of a distinct poetic vocabulary ; its origin. 
 
 [It is well to read The Last of the Flock and The Thorn, 
 from which the quotations come. Develop a comparison of 
 the two passages.] 
 
 Milton : cp. Paradise Lost, v. 152. 
 
NOTES. 223 
 
 Distinguish between "essence" and "existence." Philo- 
 sophical meaning of "idea." Force in which Wordsworth 
 uses " essentially." 
 
 Coleridge's argument "from the origin of metre ; " (styles 
 both impassioned and restrained.) Effect on figurative lan- 
 guage. 
 
 The effects of metre, and reasons therefor. 
 
 Effects of double rhyming. (Select illustrations ; e.g., from 
 Don Juan.) Reasons. 
 
 Consequences from the view that "metre is simply a 
 stimulant of the attention." 
 
 Wordsworth's consistency with his own theory. 
 
 Vocabulary a means of union between poetry and metre. 
 
 Inference from the impulse toward harmonious unity. 
 Difference between imitation and copying. Illustrate. 
 
 Remarks on Gray's sonnet. 
 
 Argument from the practice of poets. What further de- 
 fence may be advanced for the use of classical mythology ? 
 Compare Shakespeare's employment of it. 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 In these extracts what traits of the author's diction may 
 be observed ? What personal qualities ? 
 
 Where is his style most energetic? most sympathetic? 
 Touches of his humor. 
 
 What sentences take most hold on the memory ? — on ac- 
 count of thought or expression ? 
 
 What may be said on the other side, regarding Lear on the 
 stage ? 
 
 Cite illustrations from Twelfth Night of the points made 
 by Lamb, and locate those which he presents. 
 
 .What supplementary view may be taken of Malvolio ? 
 
 Why, apart from details, are these worthy to be called great 
 critical passages ? 
 
 [Observe the quotation " Stand still, ye watches of the ele- 
 
224 NOTES. 
 
 ment," from Dr. Faustus' final speech in Marlowe's play. A 
 sense of its passionate context renders the quotation more 
 effective, adding to what is "a kind of tragic interest," yet 
 not meant as unmixedly so.] 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Meaning of "style ; " of " fine arts." 
 Style's absolute value for itself. 
 In reference to the subject, its two functions. 
 De Quincey's brief figurative summary of the abstract 
 thought. 
 
 When is style finest? Discuss and illustrate. 
 Style, the incarnation of thought : give examples. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 The poet's and the prophet's conception of the world, their 
 subject. 
 
 Carlyle's idea of poetry. Is it too deep and serious? 
 
 "Esthetic" had been recently introduced into English 
 when this passage was written [1840]. What would be the 
 correct use of the word by etymology ? 
 
 Special functions of poet and prophet — how far separated ? 
 
 Explain and comment on Goethe's remark about beauty. 
 
 (p. 125.) It is not to be supposed that Shakespeare went 
 back beyond the modern " History " or the old play for the 
 plot of Hamlet. 
 
 Enlarge on the meaning of " touches of the universal ; " on 
 poetry's ' 5 infinitude." 
 
 In what sense is every man a poet ? 
 
 Carlyle's meaning for "musical." His conception of an 
 intellectual basis of poetry. 
 
 Place of rhythm in language and life. 
 
 Meaning of "sceptical dilettanteism "; its effects. 
 
 (p, 130.) The Death-mask is the basis for the portrait of 
 
NOTES. 225 
 
 Dante in the writer's mind. Giotto's fresco was not recov- 
 ered from beneath the whitewash with which it had been 
 concealed, until the year after these lectures were delivered. 
 
 Enlarge on the thought that Dante is "the voice of ten 
 silent centuries." 
 
 Characteristics, under the head of Intensity. (Select other 
 illustrations, from any translation of the Divine Comedy.) 
 
 The results of Sincerity in a poet's contemplation of his 
 subject. (Notice carefully how far below the surface Car- 
 lyle's meaning for Sincerity lies : a training to genuineness 
 and depth in every thought and feeling, which will recog- 
 nize absence of the like.) 
 
 Relation of Sympathy to Insight. 
 
 Illustrate Carlyle's own sympathy, intensity, and sincerity, 
 from these pages. 
 
 The style of the passage : compare with one of his earliest 
 essays, and with his more eccentric contemporary or later 
 expression. 
 
 The sentences or expressions that represent his poetic 
 gift. 
 
 (p. 134.) Guido da Polenta was the name of both Fran- 
 cesca's father and her nephew. It was the latter who was 
 Dante's friend. 
 
 The best expression of the thought at the top of p. 134 is 
 in these great lines from Marlowe (Tamburlaine, Part I. 
 v. 1): 
 
 If all the pens that ever poets held 
 
 Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, 
 
 And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, 
 
 Their minds, and muses on admired themes; 
 
 If all the heavenly quintessence they still 
 
 From their immortal flowers of poesy, 
 
 Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive 
 
 The highest reaches of a human wit; 
 
 If these had made one poem's period, 
 
 And all combined in beauty's worthiness, 
 
226 NOTES. 
 
 Yet should there hover in their restless heads 
 One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, 
 Which into words no virtue can digest. 
 
 MATHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 Thoughout, observe the peculiar marks of Arnold's literary 
 manner : his aim and methods. 
 
 (p. 138.) Goethe's " Es bildet," etc. (Talent is developed 
 in repose, a character in the current of the world.) Would 
 it be fairer to place by Milton's lines a passage of personal 
 emotion from Goethe, instead of this ethically didactic one? 
 
 Difference between " Style," and excellences attainable in 
 prose : the apparent cause of style in the poet. 
 
 Difficult manner in poetry; "at its best moments" asso- 
 ciated with what ? [On difficulties in poetic expression, cp. 
 Ruskin, in Kings' Treasuries, who notes "the hidden way," 
 and " that cruel reticence" of great writers' occasional expres- 
 sion. Point out reasons for the fact.] 
 
 Manner of writing in Shakespeare to which exception is 
 taken. What illustrations may be selected ? 
 
 In what respects is Gray " by nature" below the high order 
 of his style? 
 
 Reasons for Goethe's chosen school of style. 
 
 In the definition of style, expand the idea in the words " re- 
 casting," "heightening," "spiritual excitement," "dignity," 
 and " distinction ; " and select illustrations. 
 
 (p. 141.) Gemeinheit = commonplace. Hilf lieber Gott = 
 Alas, dear Lord, what sorrows have I felt, from the ordi- 
 nary man's knowing nothing at all of the Christian teaching ! 
 
 "A Philistine of genius." Arnold introduced the term to 
 English currency in his essay on Heine : "Philistinism ! — we 
 have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not 
 the word because we have so much of the thing. At Soli, I 
 imagine, they did not talk of solecisms. . . . Philistine must 
 have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented 
 the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent 
 
NOTES. 227 
 
 of the chosen people, of the children of the light. The party 
 of change, the would-be remodellers of the old traditional 
 European order, the invokers of reason against custom, the 
 representatives of the modern spirit in every sphere where it 
 is applicable, regarded themselves, with the robust self-confi- 
 dence natural to reformers, as a chosen people, as children 
 of the light. They regarded their adversaries as humdrum 
 people, slaves to routine, enemies to light; stupid and op- 
 pressive, but at the same time very strong." The term has 
 been introduced from Germany, where it is supposed to have 
 originated in a " town and gown " riot at Jena in 1693. One 
 of the students was killed, and a preacher discussed the oc- 
 currence on the following Sabbath, with the exclamation from 
 the book of Judges,, " The Philistines be upon thee, Samson ! " 
 The application was caught up by the university men. I 
 may call attention to an English use of the word in literary 
 disparagement by Thomas Nashe in 1596 (Works, iii. 132.) 
 
 Various ways of describing nature. (Paraphrase the 
 clauses at the top of p. 142.) 
 
 (p. 142.) Propertius : The heroes' hand covers the pleasant 
 shores with piles of leaves. Theocritus : For before them 
 lay a great meadow, full of leaves for their rest. 
 
 (p. 144.) Virgil : She picks pale violets and the tallest 
 poppies, and arranges together daffodils and the fragrant 
 anise blossoms. ... I will gather quinces with their soft 
 white down, and chestnuts. 
 
 Select from any poets similar illustrations of the different 
 manners of describing nature. 
 
 FROM TRANSLATING HOMER. 
 
 Meaning of eccentricity and arbitrariness of style. What 
 preventive is suggested ? Essence of a " critical effort." 
 
 Poetic treatment of a subject's " level regions." 
 
 (p. 148.) Homer : He approached them each with stirring 
 words — Mesthles, and Glaucus, and Medon, and Thersilochus. 
 
 Explain the criticism on Wordsworth. 
 
228 NOTES. 
 
 Remark on the comparison between Homer and a Dutch 
 painter. 
 
 (p. 149.) Bonimi est, etc. — it is good for us to be here. 
 Force of the quotation at top of p. 150 ? 
 
 Apply the definition of style (p. 140) to the quotation from 
 Milton (p. 150). 
 
 Select from any poems, illustrations of each element in the 
 definition of the "grand style." 
 
 Severity of style — its character and apparent cause. 
 
 Choice between the simple and the severe in the "grand 
 style." 
 
 Arnold's estimate of Tennyson. (Compare Arnold's own 
 poems; e.g., the Switzerland group, Urania, Self-depend- 
 ence, Saint Brandan, etc., with Tennyson's poems, in refer- 
 ence to qualities of manner.) 
 
 Put in the plainest possible expression the quotations on 
 p. 154. Then try to substitute a slight heightening for the 
 bald paraphrase, while retaining its simplicity. 
 
 Point out the excellence and charm, on its own side, of 
 this " sophisticated " or " distilled " thought. 
 
 Develop the contrast in the quotations on p. 156. From 
 lyric and also narrative poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
 select similar contrasts. 
 
 [In recognizing literary distinctions between authors, 
 when each has a high order of excellence, both in his sub- 
 stance and in his manner of expression, it is well to avoid — 
 if we may put it so— liking one of them less, because we find 
 ourselves preferring the other.] 
 
 Enlarge on the estimate of Keats. 
 
 Select other illustrations of the "lyrical cry," and remark 
 on the force of the expression. 
 
 FROM ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 Various ways of employing the creative activity. Expand 
 the thought. 
 
 Requirements for "great creative epochs in literature." 
 
NOTES. 229 
 
 Remark upon this statement: " Great poets are usually in 
 advance of their age." Apply Arnold's view to Milton, 
 Dryden, and Tennyson. 
 
 The relation of the critical movement to the creative. 
 
 So far as information permits, develop the comparison be- 
 tween Byron and Goethe. 
 
 Deficiencies of the great writers at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century ; reasons, and consequences. 
 
 The proper influence of books and reading: at its best is it 
 an immediate or a secondary preparation for creative writing ? 
 
 Enlarge on the remark that Shakespeare "lived in a cur- 
 rent of ideas," illustrating just what some of that Elizabethan 
 activity of thought consisted in. 
 
 With this view of "the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles,'' 
 cp. Macaulay, in his essay on Boswell's Johnson : — An " Athe- 
 nian citizen might possess very few volumes, and the largest 
 library to which he had access might be much less valuable 
 than Johnson's bookcase in Bolt Court. But the Athenian 
 might pass every morning in conversation with Socrates, and 
 might hear Pericles speak four or five times every month. 
 He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes ; he walked 
 amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings of Xeuxis; 
 he knew by heart the choruses of ^Eschylus ; he heard the 
 rhapsodist at the corner of the street reciting the Snield of 
 Achilles or the Death of Argus ; he was a legislator, conver- 
 sant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war; he 
 was a soldier, trained under a liberal and generous discipline ; 
 he was a judge compelled every day to weigh the effect of 
 opposite arguments. These things were in themselves an 
 education, an education eminently fitted, not, indeed, to 
 form exact profound thinkers, but to give quickness to the 
 perceptions, delicacy to the taste, fluency to the expression, 
 and politeness to the manners." 
 
 Contrast between England in 1800-1825, and Goethe's 
 Germany, or the Elizabethan era. 
 
 Dangers in provincialism. (Arnold constantly kept calling 
 
23O NOTES. 
 
 attention to the evil of insularity, the notion that what we 
 are familiar with at home is necessarily excellent, and is 
 probably the best of its kind. The man of few books, few 
 acquaintances, little knowledge of the world's variety, is sure 
 to be narrow ; although his narrowness has a bluff genuine- 
 ness about it that is less displeasing than the shoddy culture 
 which believes something not our own to be preferable only 
 because it is foreign. Addison long ago touched upon this 
 same subject in his pleasantly satirical way, as when he rep- 
 resented his country gentleman's comprehensive faith in 
 Sir Richard Baker's History, and his patriotic conviction 
 that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of 
 the seven wonders of the world, that the Thames was the 
 noblest river in Europe, and that one Englishman could beat 
 three Frenchmen. Macaulay, too, just after the passage 
 quoted above, has an excellent remark on the necessity of 
 travel and study " to preserve men from the contraction of 
 mind which those can hardly escape whose whole com- 
 munion is with one generation and one neighborhood.") 
 
 The true office of the critic. 
 
 The intellectual and artistic conscience. 
 
 In the preface to this collection of essays there is an ex- 
 quisite apostrophe to Oxford, one of the most poetic pas- 
 sages in Arnold's prose, yet restrained within the limits of 
 prose diction, and characteristic by the touch of irony in its 
 reference to Oxford's inactivity and the allusion to Tubingen, 
 as well as by its seriousness and faith in the supreme worth 
 of disinterested culture : " Beautiful city ! so venerable, so 
 lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our 
 century, so serene! 
 
 There are our young barbarians, all at play. 
 
 And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gar- 
 dens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the 
 last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Ox- 
 ford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the 
 
NOTES. 23I 
 
 true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in 
 a word, which is only truth seen from another side, nearer, per- 
 haps, than all the science of Tubingen. Adorable dreamer, 
 whose heart has been so romantic ! who hast given thyself so 
 prodigally, given thyself to sides and heroes not mine, only 
 never to the Philistines ! home of lost causes, and forsaken 
 beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties ! what 
 examples could ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistine 
 in ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that 
 bondage to which we are all prone, that bondage which 
 Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of Schiller, 
 makes it his friend's highest praise (and nobly did Schiller 
 deserve the praise) to have left miles out of sight behind him, 
 — the bondage of was wis alle bcindzgt, DAS GEMEINE. 
 Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the 
 Philistines, compared with the warfare which this queen of 
 romance has been waging against them for centuries, and 
 will wage after we are gone ? " 
 
 The limitation on great powers of mind when remote from 
 centres of information. 
 
 Meaning of the expression " classical " in criticism. 
 
 Discuss fully the merits and faults of the passages quoted 
 (pp. 167-170). 
 
 (p. 167.) Bossuet : This man, unaccomplished in the art of 
 fine language, with his rude speech, with his foreign accent, 
 will go to Greece, the land of polish, the mother of philoso- 
 phers and orators ; and in spite of society's resistance, he 
 will establish more churches there than Plato has gained 
 disciples by that eloquence which has been counted divine. 
 
 Remark on the expressions "Asiatic prose " and " Attic 
 prose." 
 
 The highest test of the true classic. 
 
 (p. 170.) Joubert: Acquaintance with a large number of 
 opinions gives the mind a large degree of flexibility, and 
 confirms it in those which it regards as best. 
 
232 NOTES. 
 
 Select or compose illustrations of the traits condemned in 
 the paragraph beginning "The provincial spirit" (p. 170), or 
 at least paraphrase the ideas to make sure that none are only 
 vaguely understood. 
 
 Poetry's interpretative power. What is its other highest 
 exercise ? 
 
 Contrast this power of the poet with the scientist's. 
 
 (p. 172.) Chateaubriand: The forest's unbounded stretch 
 of tree-tops.. Senancour : That white bark, smooth and 
 lined ; that rustic bole ; those branches bending to the earth ; 
 the leaves' quick quiver, and all that fearless freedom, 
 nature's simplicity, attitude of the wilds. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 Contrast between effect of imagination and of sentiment. 
 
 Illustrate bare commonplace and " idealized commonplace" 
 — the latter from the " Elegy." 
 
 Characteristics of Gray's poetry suggested. 
 
 Lowell's manner of direct and of only implied illustrations ; 
 examples of his freshness of expression, combined with ease. 
 
 [Read Arnold's essay on Gray (in Essays in Criticism, 
 Second Series ; or in Ward's English Poets, vol. iii) and Swin- 
 burne's contrast between Gray and Collins ; and compare 
 with Lowell's entire essay.] 
 
 Select examples from the Elegy of Gray's improvement 
 on earlier poetic expression of familiar thoughts. [Read 
 Tennyson's letter in Mr. Dawson's edition of The Princess, 
 for the danger of pushing the detection of imitation too far.] 
 
 Lowell's saturation with poetry is constantly illustrated by 
 his allusiveness ; cp. his playing here with Ariel's song in 
 The Tempest: 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade, 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange. 
 
NOTES. 233 
 
 (p. 176.) Horace, Odes I, 4, 13. 
 
 Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas 
 Regumque turres. 
 
 The reference to Malherbe is in his " Consolation a M. du 
 Perier, sur la mort de sa fille." The development of Horace 
 comes at the close of the poem : 
 
 Le pauvre en sa cabane, ou le chaume le couvre, 
 
 Est sujet a ses lois; 
 Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre 
 
 N'en defend point nos rois. 
 
 (The poor man in his thatched cabin is subject to Death's 
 laws ; and the guard that keeps watch at the gates of the 
 Louvre defends not our kings.) 
 The second passage occurs in the same poem : 
 
 Mais elle etoit du monde, ou les plus belles choses 
 
 Ont le pire destin; 
 Et, rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, 
 
 L'espace d'un matin. 
 
 (To the world she belonged, where the fairest objects have 
 the worst destiny ; and, a rose, she has lived the rose's life, a 
 morning long.) 
 
 Compare various other poems on the rose as a type of mai- 
 denhood's short duration, though more frequently through 
 losing the attractiveness of youth than from "dying un- 
 timely"; especially, Waller's " Go, lovely rose " ; Herrick's 
 " Gather ye rosebuds while ye may " ; Ronsard's " Mignonne 
 allons voir si la rose"; and Baif's "O nature, nous nous 
 pleignons." 
 
 (p. 177.) Tons deux, etc. : Both disciples of one school, 
 where the frenzy is gentle. 
 
234 NOTES. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Select parallels to the quotation from Holmes, and explain 
 the kind of pleasure produced, and the reasons for it 
 (pp. 180-4). 
 
 Ruskin's classification of poets. (Has he proved consist- 
 ent with the principles of his note on p. 181 ?) 
 
 Comment on the contrasted quotations of pp. 181-2. 
 
 The three classes of perception. 
 
 (p. 184.) Cp. Peter Bell, the dull brutal peddler: 
 
 A primrose by a river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him, 
 And it was nothing more. 
 
 Reason for the occasional " fallacy " in the greatest poets. 
 
 Discussion of the element of " alterability." 
 
 When the " fallacy of sight " ceases to please ? 
 
 Ruskin's analysis of the quotation on p. 187. 
 
 (p. 189.) This passage from the Iliad has been translated 
 by Dr. Hawtrey in hexameters universally admired : Swin- 
 burne declares them faultless, English, hexametric, the only 
 true hexameters in the language, — (Swinburne is certainly a 
 judge of rhythm.) Arnold calls them the best Homeric 
 translation that he knows, though " suffused with a pensive 
 grace which is, perhaps, rather more Virgilian than Homeric :" 
 
 Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia; 
 Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember. 
 Two, two only remain, whom I see not among the commanders, 
 Castor fleet in the car, Polydeukes brave with the cestus, — 
 Own dear brethren of mine, — one parent loved us as infants. 
 Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lace- 
 daemon, 
 Or, though they came with the rest in ships that bound through 
 
 the waters, 
 Dare they not enter the fight or stand in the council of heroes, 
 All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened ? 
 
NOTES. 235 
 
 So said she; — they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, 
 There, in their own dear land, their Fatherland, Lacedsemon. 
 
 Test of a poet's greatness. Is this passage open to ques- 
 tion ? At the most unfavorable judgment of it, what sound 
 principle must remain ? 
 
 Comment on the quotations, pp. 191-2. 
 
 RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. 
 
 The estimate of style and character in Carlyle, Gibbon, 
 and Macaulay. 
 
 Traits common to Newman and Arnold. 
 
 Contrasts between the two. 
 
 Summarize the merits of Newman's manner (pp. 198-202). 
 
 Moral traits involved in such a diction. 
 
 WALTER PATER. 
 
 Test of the artist. (Cp. painting and photography.) Illus- 
 trate "serviceable art" and " fine art," in any literary descrip- 
 tion. 
 
 The audience for whom the literary artist writes. 
 
 His verbal obligations. 
 
 A summary of the quotation from Flaubert (p. 207). 
 
 Remark on the principle presented on p. 208. 
 
 (p. 209.) This design of Blake's is in his illustrations of 
 Blair's " Grave." 
 
 " False Ciceronians" : Those formal stylists who aim at the 
 various forms of rhetorical effect, as such ; just as the main 
 thought of the Renaissance Latinists was less for what they 
 said than for a pure Ciceronian phraseology. 
 
 The conception of style (p. 210). Its wide range, condi- 
 tioned only upon what ? 
 
 Traits of Mr. Pater's own manner. 
 
 The enthusiasm for art as a mere perfection of form is 
 of an entirely lower order than that for truth — when 
 
236 NOTES. 
 
 the two are separated. Yet the thought that, at its high- 
 est, art is the most beautiful expression of truth, and 
 because the most beautiful, therefore the perfect expression, 
 as has been implied more than once in the preceding pages, 
 is full of meaning. Certainly so far as literature goes, " style," 
 as Mr. Lowell said, " is the great antiseptic:" it is only the 
 finest manner that compels later generations to read what 
 otherwise would remain forgotten. When we train our aes- 
 thetic taste to a serious, and even an austere, judgment of art, 
 rejecting every touch that does not en durethe scrutiny of 
 clear and earnest reason ; and when also we refine our minds 
 and hearts until they are discontented with thoughts and feel- 
 ings destitute of dignity, or nobleness, or tenderness, or grace, 
 or the various other qualities which true art is both willing 
 and able to interpret, then an application to literature of the 
 lines of Keats on the identity of truth and beauty will no 
 longer appear a pretty fancy, without meaning to practical 
 good sense. Nothing among all the pleasures offered in 
 the broad range of human resources affords such gracious 
 and beneficent satisfaction as the enjoyment of the artistic, 
 or is so full of promise for a permanent source of happiness 
 and help. 
 
 Les lilas au printemps seront toujours en fleurs, 
 Et les arts immortels rajeuniront sans cesse. 
 
 (The lilacs in spring will be always in bloom, 
 
 And the arts, the immortals, grow young evermore.) 
 
 At the opening of the century Caroline Schlegel wrote in 
 one of her letters : " O my friend, say to yourself again, and 
 again, and forever, how short life is, and that nothing has 
 such a real existence as a work of art. Criticism vanishes, 
 whole races are blotted out, systems change ; but when one 
 day the world is burned up like a scrap of paper, then works 
 of art will be the last of the living sparks that go into God's 
 house, — only after that can darkness come." 
 
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