On The Art of Reading Part 18

It may sound a genuine note, now and then:

Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun!

Oh, it was pitiful!

Near a whole city full, Home she had none!

But not often: and, I think, never but in lyric.

III

So much, then, for rhyme. We will approach the question of metre, helped or unhelped by rhyme, in another way; and a way yet more practical.

When Milton (determined to write a grand epic) was casting about for his subject, he had a mind for some while to attempt the story of "Job." You may find evidence for this in a MS preserved here in Trinity College Library.

You will find printed evidence in a pa.s.sage of his "Reason of Church Government":

'Time serves not now,' he writes, 'and perhaps I might seem too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the s.p.a.cious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Ta.s.so, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model ...'

Again, we know "Job" to have been one of the three stories meditated by Sh.e.l.ley as themes for great lyrical dramas, the other two being the madness of Ta.s.so and "Prometheus Unbound."

Sh.e.l.ley never abandoned this idea of a lyrical drama on Job; and if Milton abandoned the idea of an epic, there are pa.s.sages in "Paradise Lost" as there are pa.s.sages in "Prometheus Unbound"

that might well have been written for this other story. Take the lines

Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet Mortality my sentence, and be earth Insensible! how glad would lay me down As in my mother's lap! There I should rest And sleep secure;...

What is this, as Lord Latymer asks, but an echo of Job's words?--

For now should I have lien down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest: With kings and counsellers of the earth, Which built desolate places for themselves ...

There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary be at rest.

There is no need for me to point out how exactly, though from two nearly opposite angles, the story of Job would hit the philosophy of Milton and the philosophy of Sh.e.l.ley to the very heart. What is the story of the afflicted patriarch but a direct challenge to a protestant like Milton (I use the word in its strict sense) to justify the ways of G.o.d to man? It is the very purpose, in sum, of the "Book of Job," as it is the very purpose, in sum, of "Paradise Lost": and since both poems can only work out the justification by long argumentative speeches, both poems lamentably fail as real solutions of the difficulty. To this I shall recur, and here merely observe that _qui s' excuse s'

accuse_: a G.o.d who can only explain himself by the help of long-winded scolding, or of long-winded advocacy, though he employ an archangel for advocate, has given away the half of his case by the implicit admission that there are two sides to the question.

And when we have put aside the poetical inept.i.tude of a Creator driven to apology, it remains that to Sh.e.l.ley the Jehovah who, for a sort of wager, allowed Satan to torture Job merely for the game of testing him, would be no better than any other tyrant; would be a miscreant Creator, abominable as the Zeus of the "Prometheus Unbound."

Now you may urge that Milton and Sh.e.l.ley dropped Job for hero because both felt him to be a merely static figure: and that the one chose Satan, the rebel angel, the other chose Prometheus the rebel t.i.tan, because both are active rebels, and as epic and drama require action, each of these heroes makes the thing move; that Satan and Prometheus are not pa.s.sive sufferers like Job but souls as quick and fiery as Byron's Lucifer:

Souls who dare use their immortality-- Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in His everlasting face, and tell him that His evil is not good.

Very well, urge this: urge it with all your might. All the while you will be doing just what I desire you to do, using "Job"

alongside "Prometheus Unbound" and "Paradise Lost" as a comparative work of literature.

But, if you ask me for my own opinion why Milton and Sh.e.l.ley dropped their intention to make poems on the "Book of Job," it is that they no sooner tackled it than they found it to be a magnificent poem already, and a poem on which, with all their genius, they found themselves unable to improve.

I want you to realise a thing most simple, demonstrable by five minutes of practice, yet so confused by conventional notions of what poetry is that I dare say it to be equally demonstrable that Milton and Sh.e.l.ley discovered it only by experiment. Does this appear to you a bold thing to say of so tremendous an artist as Milton? Well, of course it would be cruel to quote in proof his paraphrases of Psalms cxiv and cx.x.xvi: to set against the Authorised Version's

When Israel went out of Egypt, The house of Jacob from a people of strange language

such pomposity as

When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son After long toil their liberty had won--

or against

O give thanks....

To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: for his mercy endureth for ever.

To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever

such stuff as

Who did the solid earth ordain To rise above the watery plain; _For his mercies aye endure,_ _Ever faithful, ever sure._ Who, by his all-commanding might, Did fill the new-made world with light; _For his mercies aye endure,_ _Ever faithful, ever sure._

verses yet further weakened by the late Sir William Baker for "Hymns Ancient and Modern."

It were cruel, I say, to condemn these attempts as little above those of Sternhold and Hopkins, or even of those of Tate and Brady: for Milton made them at fifteen years old, and he who afterwards consecrated his youth to poetry soon learned to know better. And yet, bearing in mind the pa.s.sages in "Paradise Lost"

and "Paradise Regained" which paraphrase the Scriptural narrative, I cannot forbear the suspicion that, though as an artist he had the instinct to feel it, he never quite won to _knowing_ the simple fact that the thing had already been done and surpa.s.singly well done: he, who did so much to liberate poetry from rhyme--he--even he who in the grand choruses of "Samson Agonistes" did so much to liberate it from strict metre never quite realised, being hag-ridden by the fetish that rides between two panniers, the sacred and the profane, that this translation of "Job" already belongs to the category of poetry, _is_ poetry, already above metre, and in rhythm far on its way to the insurpa.s.sable. If rhyme be allowed to that greatest of arts, if metre, is not rhythm above both for her service? Hear in a sentence how this poem uplifts the rhythm of the Vulgate:

_Ecce, Deus magnus vincens scientiam nostram; numerus annorum_ _ejus inestimabilis!_

But hear, in a longer pa.s.sage, how our English rhythm swings and sways to the Hebrew parallels:

Surely there is a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine.

Iron is taken out of the earth, And bra.s.s is molten out of the stone.

_Man_ setteth an end to darkness, And searcheth out to the furthest bound The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death.

He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; They are forgotten of the foot _that pa.s.seth by_; They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro.

As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire.

The atones thereof are the place of sapphires, And it hath dust of gold.

That path no bird of prey knoweth, Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it: The proud beasts have not trodden it, Nor hath the fierce lion pa.s.sed thereby.

He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturneth the mountains by the roots.

He cutteth out channels among the rocks; And his eye seeth every precious thing.

He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light.

But where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living.

The deep saith, It is not in me: And the sea saith, It is not with me.

It cannot be gotten for gold, Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, With the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

Gold and gla.s.s cannot equal it: Neither shall the exchange thereof be jewels of fine gold.

No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal: Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, Neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

Whence then cometh wisdom?

And where is the place of understanding?

Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, And kept close from the fowls of the air.

Destruction and Death say, We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears.

G.o.d understandeth the way thereof, And he knoweth the place thereof.

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, And seeth under the whole heaven; To make a weight for the wind; Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure.

When he made a decree for the rain, And a way for the lightning of the thunder: Then did he see it, and declare it; He established it, yea, and searched it out.

And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, _that_ is wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding.

Is that poetry? Surely it is poetry. Can you improve it with the embellishments of rhyme and strict scansion? Well, sundry bold men have tried, and I will choose, for your judgment, the rendering of a part of the above pa.s.sage by one who is by no means the worst of them--a hardy anonymous Scotsman. His version was published at Falkirk in 1869:

His hand on the rock the adventurer puts, And mountains entire overturns by the roots; New rivers in rocks are enchased by his might, And everything precious revealed to his sight; The floods from o'er-flowing he bindeth at will, And the thing that is hid bringeth forth by his skill.