The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P Part 33

Robert Carey, who was admitted to an interview with Elizabeth in her last illness, after describing the pa.s.sionate anguish of her sighs, observes, "that in all his lifetime before, he never knew her fetch a sigh but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded." Yet this Robert Carey, the well-born mendicant of her bounty, was the first whose eager haste and joyous countenance told James that the throne of the Tudors was at last vacant.

[H] "When she (Elizabeth) was conducted through London amidst the joyful acclamations of her subjects, a boy, who personated Truth, was let down from one of the triumphal arches, and presented to her a copy of the Bible. She received the book with the most gracious deportment, placed it next her bosom,"

&c.--HUME.

[I] Robert Dudley, afterwards the Leicester of doubtful fame, attended Elizabeth in her pa.s.sage to the Tower. The streets, as she pa.s.sed along, were spread with the finest gravel; banners and pennons, hangings of silk, of velvet, of cloth of gold, were suspended from the balconies; musicians and singers were stationed amidst the populace, as she rode along in her purple robes, preceded by her heralds, &c.

[J] The customary phrase was "_Laissez aller_."

[K] "The Life of Sir Philip Sidney," as Campbell finely expresses it, "was Poetry put in action." With him died the Provencal and the Norman--the Ideal of the Middle Ages.

[L] "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too."

She rode bareheaded through the ranks, a page bearing her helmet, mounted on a war-horse, clad in steel, and wielding a general's truncheon in her hand.

[M] "s.e.xtus Quintus, the present Pope, famous for his capacity and his tyranny, had published a crusade against England, and had granted plenary indulgences to every one engaged in the present invasion."--HUME. This Pope was, nevertheless, Elizabeth's admirer as well as foe, and said, "If a son could be born from us two, he would be master of the world."

[N] [Greek: Laze, laze, laze, laze] (seize, seize, seize).--_aeschyl.

Eumen._, 125.

[O] The farm of St. Ives, where Cromwell spent three years, which he afterwards recalled with regret--though not unafflicted with dark hypochondria and sullen discontent. Here, as Mr. Forster impressively observes, "in the tenants that rented from him, in the labourers that served under him, he sought to sow the seeds of his after troop of Ironsides.... _All the famous doctrines of his later and more celebrated years were tried and tested in the little farm of St. Ives...._ Before going to their field-work in the morning, they (his servants) knelt down with their master in the touching equality of prayer; in the evening they shared with him again the comfort and exaltation of divine precepts."--FORSTER'S _Cromwell_.

[P] Prince Rupert.

[Q] Henrietta Maria was the popular battle-cry of the Cavaliers.

[R] The reader will recall the well-known story of Cromwell opening the coffin of Charles with the hilt of a private soldier's sword, and, after gazing on the body for some time, observing calmly, that it seemed made for long life,--

"Had Nature been his executioner, He would have outlived me!"--_Cromwell_, a MS. tragedy.

[S] King Alfred's crown was actually sold after the execution of Charles the First.

[T] When Cromwell came down (leaving his musketeers without the door) to dissolve the Long Parliament, Vane was in the act of urging, through the last stage, the Bill that would have saved the republic--See Forster's spirited account of this scene, _Life of Vane_, p. 152.

KING ARTHUR.

PREFACE.

In prefixing to this poem a brief explanation of its design, I feel myself involuntarily compelled to refer to the more popular distinctions of Epic Fable, though I do not thereby presume to arrogate to my work that t.i.tle of Epic which Time alone has the prerogative to confer.

Pope has, accurately and succinctly, defined the three cardinal divisions of Epic Fable to consist in the Probable, the Allegorical, and the Marvellous. For the Probable is indispensable to the vital interest of the action, the Marvellous is the obvious domain of creative invention, and the Allegorical is the most pleasing mode of insinuating some subtler truth, or clothing some profounder moral.

I accept these divisions, because they conform to the simplest principles of rational criticism; and though their combination does not form an Epic, it serves at least to amplify the region and elevate the objects of Romance.

It has been my aim so to blend these divisions, that each may harmonize with the other, and all conduce to the end proposed from the commencement. I have admitted but little episodical incident, and none that does not grow out of what Pope terms "the platform of the story."

For the marvellous agencies I have not presumed to make direct use of that Divine Machinery which the war of the Christian Principle with the form of Heathenism might have suggested to the sublime daring of Milton, had he prosecuted his original idea of founding an heroic poem upon the legendary existence of Arthur;--and, on the other hand, the Teuton Mythology, however imaginative and profound, is too unfamiliar and obscure, to permit its employment as an open and visible agency;--such reference to it as occurs, is therefore rather admitted as an appropriate colouring to the composition, than made an integral part of the materials of the canvas: and, not to ask from the ordinary reader an erudition I should have no right to expect, the reference so made is in the simplest form, and disentangled from the necessity of other information than a few brief notes will suffice to afford.

In taking my subject from chivalrous romance, I take, then, those agencies from the Marvellous which chivalrous romance naturally and familiarly affords--the Fairy, the Genius, the Enchanter: not wholly, indeed, in the precise and literal spirit with which our nursery tales receive those creations of Fancy through the medium of French Fabliaux, but in the larger significations by which, in their conceptions of the Supernatural, our fathers often implied the secrets of Nature. For the Romance from which I borrow is the Romance of the North--a Romance, like the Northern mythology, full of typical meaning and latent import. The gigantic remains of symbol-wors.h.i.+p are visible amidst the rude fables of the Scandinavians, and what little is left to us of the earlier and more indigenous literature of the Cymrians, is characterized by a mysticism profound with parable. This fondness for an interior or double meaning is the most prominent attribute in that Romance popularly called The Gothic, the feature most in common with all creations that bear the stamp of the Northern fancy: we trace it in the poems of the Anglo-Saxons; it returns to us, in our earliest poems after the Conquest; it does not _originate_ in the Oriental genius (immemorially addicted to Allegory), but it instinctively _appropriates_ all that Saraconic invention can suggest to the more sombre imagination of the North--it unites to the Serpent of the Edda the flying Griffin of Arabia, the Persian Genius to the Scandinavian Trold,--and wherever it accepts a marvel, it seeks to insinuate a type. This peculiarity, which distinguishes the spiritual essence of the modern from the sensual character of ancient poetry, especially the Roman, is visible wherever a tribe allied to the Goth, the Frank, or the Teuton, carries with it the deep mysteries of the Christian faith. Even in sunny Provence it transfuses a subtler and graver moral into the lays of the joyous troubadour,[A]--and weaves "The Dance of Death" by the joyous streams, and through the glowing orange-groves, of Spain. Onwards, this under-current of meaning flowed, through the various phases of civilization:--it pervaded alike the popular Satire and the dramatic Mystery;--and, preserving its thoughtful calm amidst all the stirring pa.s.sions that agitated mankind in the age subsequent to the Reformation, not only suffused the luxuriant fancy of the dreamy Spenser, but communicated to the practical intellect of Shakspere that subtle and recondite wisdom which seems the more inexhaustible the more it is examined, and suggests to every new inquirer some new problem in the philosophy of Human Life. Thus, in taking from Northern Romance the Marvellous, we are most faithful to the genuine character of that Romance, when we take with the Marvellous its old companion, the Typical or Allegorical. But these form only two divisions of the three which I have a.s.sumed as the components of the unity I seek to accomplish; there remains the Probable, which contains the Actual. To subject the whole poem to allegorical constructions would be erroneous, and opposed to the vital principle of a work of this kind, which needs the support of direct and human interest. The inner and the outer meaning of Fable should flow together, each acting on the other, as the thought and the action in the life of a man. It is true that in order clearly to interpret the action, we should penetrate to the thought. But if we fail of that perception, the action, though less comprehended, still impresses its reality on our senses, and make its appeal to our interest.

[A] Rien n'est plus commun dans la poesie provencale que l'allegorie; seulement elle est un jeu-d'esprit an lieu d'etre une action.... Une autre a.n.a.logie me parait plus spoutanee qu'imitee--la poesie des troubadours qu'on suppose frivole, a souvent retracee des sentiments graves et touchants,"

&c.--VILLEMAIN, _Tableau du Moyen Age_.

I have thus sought to maintain the Probable through that chain of incident in which human agencies are employed, and through those agencies the direct action of the Poem is accomplished; while the Allegorical admits into the Marvellous the introduction of that subtler form of Truth, which if less positive than the Actual, is wider in its application, and ought to be more profound in its significance.

For the rest, it may perhaps be conceded that this poem is not without originality in the conception of its plot and the general treatment of its details. I am not aware of any previous romantic poem which it resembles in its main design, or in the character of its princ.i.p.al incidents;--and, though I may have incurred certain mannerisms of my own day, I yet venture to trust that, in the pervading form or style, the mind employed has been sufficiently in earnest to leave its own peculiar effigy and stamp upon the work. For the incidents narrated, I may, indeed, thank the nature of my subject, if many of them could scarcely fail to be new. The celebrated poets of chivalrous fable--Ariosto, Ta.s.so, and Spenser, have given to their scenery the colourings of the West. The Great North from which Chivalry sprung--its polar seas, its natural wonders, its wild legends, its antediluvian remains--(wide fields for poetic description and heroic narrative)--have been, indeed, not wholly unexplored by poetry, but so little appropriated, that even after Tegner and Oehlenschlager, I dare to hope that I have found tracks in which no poet has preceded me, and over which yet breathes the native air of our National Romance.

For the Manners preserved through this poem, I naturally reject those which the rigid Antiquary would appropriate to the date of that Historical Arthur, of whom we know so little, and take those of the age in which the Arthur of Romance, whom we know so well, revived into fairer life at the breath of Minstrel and Fabliast. The anachronism of chivalrous manners and costume for the British chief and his Knighthood, is absolutely required by all our familiar a.s.sociations. On the other hand, without affecting any precise accuracy in details, I have kept the country of the brave Prince of the Silures (or South Wales) somewhat more definitely in view, than has been done by the French Romance writers; while in portraying his Saxon foes, I have endeavoured to distinguish their separate nationality, without enforcing too violent a contrast between the rudeness of the heathen Teutons and the _polished Christianity of the Cymrian Knighthood_.[B]

[B] In the more historical view of the position of Arthur, I have, however, represented it such as it really appears to have been,--not as the sovereign of all Britain, and the conquering invader of Europe (according to the groundless fable of Geoffrey of Monmouth), but as the patriot Prince of South Wales, resisting successfully the invasion of his own native soil, and accomplis.h.i.+ng the object of his career in preserving entire the nationality of his Welsh countrymen. In thus contracting his sphere of action to the bounds of rational truth, his dignity, both moral and poetic, is obviously enhanced. Represented as the champion of all Britain against the Saxons, his life would have been but a notorious and signal failure; but as the preserver of the Cymrian Nationality--of that part of the British population which took refuge in Wales, he has a claim to the epic glory of success.

It is for this latter reason that I have gone somewhat out of the strict letter of history, in the poetical licence by which the Mercians are represented as Arthur's princ.i.p.al enemies (though, properly speaking, the Mercian kingdom was not then founded): the alliance between the Mercian and the Welsh, which concludes the Poem--is at least not contrary to the spirit of History--since in very early periods such amicable bonds between the Welsh and the Mercians were contracted, and the Welsh, on the whole, were on better terms with those formidable borderers than with the other branches of the Saxon family.

May I be permitted to say a word as to the metre I have selected?--One advantage it has,--that while thoroughly English, and not uncultivated by the best of the elder masters, it has never been applied to a poem of equal length, and has not been made too trite and familiar, by the lavish employment of recent writers.[C] Shakspere has taught us its riches in the Venus and Adonis,--Spenser in The Astrophel,--Cowley has sounded its music amidst the various intonations of his irregular lyre.

But of late years, if not wholly laid aside, it has been generally neglected for the more artificial and complicated Spenserian stanza, which may seem, at the first glance, to resemble it, but which to the ear is widely different in rhythm and construction.

[C] Southey has used it in the "Lay of the Laureate" and "The Poet's Pilgrimage,"--not his best-known and most considerable poems.

The reader may perhaps remember that Dryden has spoken with emphatic praise of the "quatrain, or stanza of four in alternate rhyme." He says indeed, "that he had ever judged it more n.o.ble, and of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse in use amongst us."

That metre, in its simple integrity, is comprised in the stanza selected, ending in the vigour and terseness of the rhyming couplet, with which, for the most part, the picture should be closed or the sense clenched. And whatever the imperfection of my own treatment of this variety in poetic form, I hazard a prediction that it will be ultimately revived into more frequent use, especially in narrative, and that its peculiar melodies of rhythm and cadence, as well as the just and measured facilities it affords to expression, neither too diffuse nor too restricted, will be recognized hereafter in the hands of a more accomplished master of our language.

Here ends all that I feel called upon to say respecting a Poem which I now acknowledge as the child of my most cherished hopes, and to which I deliberately confide the task to uphold, and the chance to continue, its father's name.

To this work, conceived first in the enthusiasm of youth, I have patiently devoted the best powers of my maturer years;--if it be worthless, it is at least the worthiest contribution that my abilities enable me to offer to the literature of my country; and I am unalterably convinced, that on this foundation I rest the least perishable monument of those thoughts and those labours which have made the life of my life.

E. BULWER LYTTON.

NOTE.

Of the notes inserted in the first edition I have retained only those which appeared to me absolutely necessary in explanation of the text.

Among the notes omitted, was one appended to Book I., which defended at some length, and by numerous examples, two alleged peculiarities of style or mannerism:--I content myself here with stating briefly--

1st.--That in this work (as in my later ones generally) I have adopted what appears to me to have been the practice of Gray (judging from the editions of his Poems revised by himself), in the use of the capital initial. I prefix it--

First, to every substantive that implies a personification; thus War, Fame, &c, may in one line take the small initial as mere nouns, and in another line the capital initial, to denote that they are intended as personifications. This rule is clear--all personifications may be said to represent proper names: love, with a small l, means but a pa.s.sion or affection; with a large L, Love represents some mythological power that presides over the pa.s.sion or affection, and is as much a proper name as Venus, Eros, Camdeo, &c.

Secondly, I prefix the capital in those rare instances in which an adjective is used as a noun; as the Unknown, the Obscure,[D] &c. The capital here but answers the use of all printed inventions, in simplifying to the reader the author's meaning. If it be printed "he pa.s.sed through the obscure," the reader naturally looks for the noun that is to follow the adjective; if the capital initial be used, as "He pa.s.sed through the Obscure," the eye conveys to the mind without an effort the author's intention to use the adjective as a substantive.

[D] So Pope, "Spencer himself affects the Obsolete."

Thirdly, I prefix the capital initial where it serves to give an individual application to words that might otherwise convey only a general meaning; for instance--

"Or his who loves the madding Nymphs to lead O'er the Fork'd Hill.