The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey Volume I Part 2

But pleasures in this world fortunately are without end. And every man, after all, has many pleasures peculiar to himself--pleasures which no man shares with him, even as he is shut out from many of other men. To renounce one in particular, is no subject for sorrow, so long as many remain in that very cla.s.s equal or superior. Elwood the Quaker had a luxury which none of us will ever have, in hearing the very voice and utterance of a poet quite as blind as Homer, and by many a thousand times more sublime. And yet Elwood was not perhaps much happier for _that_. For now, to proceed, reader--abstract from his _sublime_ antiquity, and his being the very earliest of authors, allowance made for one or two Hebrew writers (who, being inspired, are scarcely to be viewed as human compet.i.tors), how much is there in Homer, _intrinsically_ in Homer, stripped of his fine draperies of time and circ.u.mstance, in the naked Homer, disapparelled of the pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of glorious antiquity, to remunerate a man for his labour in acquiring Greek? Men think very differently about what _will_ remunerate any given labour. A fool (professional _fool_) in Shakspeare ascertains, by a natural process of logic, that a 'remuneration' means a _testern_, which is just sixpence; and two remunerations, therefore, a testoon, or one s.h.i.+lling. But many men will consider the same service ill paid by a thousand pounds. So, of the reimburs.e.m.e.nt for learning a language. Lord Camden is said to have learned Spanish, merely to enjoy Don Quixote more racily. Cato, the elder Cato, after abusing Greek throughout his life, sat down in extreme old age to study it: and wherefore? Mr. Coleridge mentions an author, in whom, upon opening his pages with other expectations, he stumbled upon the following fragrant pa.s.sage--'But from this frivolous digression upon philosophy and the fine arts, let us return to a subject too little understood or appreciated in these sceptical days--the subject of _dung_.' Now, _that_ was precisely the course of thought with this old censorious Cato: So long as Greek offered, or seemed to offer, nothing but philosophy or poetry, he was clamorous against Greek; but he began to thaw and melt a little upon the charms of Greek--he 'owned the soft impeachment,' when he heard of some Grecian treatises upon _beans_ and _turnips_; and, finally, he sank under its voluptuous seductions, when he heard of others upon DUNG.

There are, therefore, as different notions about a 'remuneration' in this case, as the poor fool had met with it in _his_ case. We, however, unappalled by the bad names of 'Goth,' 'Vandal,' and so forth, shall honestly lay before the reader _our_ notions.

When Dryden wrote his famous, indeed matchless, epigram upon the three great masters (or reputed masters) of the Epopee, he found himself at no loss to characterize the last of the triad--no matter what qualities he imputed to the first and the second, he knew himself safe in imputing them all to the third. The mighty modern had everything that his predecessors were ever _thought_ to have, as well as something beside.[5] So he expressed the surpa.s.sing grandeur of Milton, by saying that in him nature had embodied, by concentration as in one focus, whatever excellencies she had scattered separately amongst her earlier favourites. But, in strict regard to the facts, this is far from being a faithful statement of the relations between Milton and his elder brothers of the _Epos_: in sublimity, if that is what Dryden meant by 'loftiness of thought,' it is not so fair to cla.s.s Milton with the greatest of poets, as to cla.s.s him apart, retired from all others, sequestered, 'sole-sitting by the sh.o.r.es of old romance.' In other poets, in Dante for example, there may be rays, gleams, sudden coruscations, casual scintillations, of the sublime; but for any continuous and sustained blaze of the sublime, it is in vain to look for it, _except_ in Milton, making allowances (as before) for the inspired sublimities of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and of the great Evangelist's Revelations. As to Homer, no critic who writes from personal and _direct_ knowledge on the one hand, or who understands the value of words on the other, ever contended in any critical sense for sublimity, as a quality to which he had the slightest pretensions.

What! not Longinus? If he did, it would have been of little consequence; for he had no field of comparison, as we, knowing no literature but one--whereas we have a range of seven or eight. But he did not: [Greek: To hypselon],[6] or the elevated, in the Longinian sense, expressed all, no matter of what origin, of what tendency, which gives a character of life and animation to composition--whatever raises it above the dead level of flat prosaic style. Emphasis, or what in an artist's sense gives _relief_ to a pa.s.sage, causing it to stand forward, and in advance of what surrounds it--that is the predominating idea in the 'sublime' of Longinus. And this explains what otherwise has perplexed his modern interpreters--viz. that amongst the elements of his sublime, he ranks even the pathetic, _i. e._ (say they) what by connecting itself with the depressing pa.s.sion of grief is the very counter-agent to the elevating affection of the sublime. True, most sapient sirs, my very worthy and approved good masters: but that very consideration should have taught you to look back, and reconsider your translation of the capital word [Greek: hypsos]. It was rather too late in the day, when you had waded half-seas over in your translation, to find out either that you yourselves were ignoramuses, or that your princ.i.p.al was an a.s.s.

'Returning were as tedious as go o'er.' And any man might guess how you would settle such a dilemma. It is, according to you, a little oversight of your princ.i.p.al: '_humanum aliquid pa.s.sus est._' We, on the other hand, affirm that, if an error at all on the part of Longinus, it is too monstrous for any man to have 'overlooked.' As long as he could see a pike-staff, he must have seen that. And, therefore, we revert to _our_ view of the case--viz. that it is yourselves who have committed the blunder, in translating by the Latin word _sublimis_[7] at all, but still more after it had received new determinations under modern usage.

[Footnote 5: The beauty of this famous epigram lies in the _form_ of the conception. The first had A; the second had B; and when nature, to furnish out a third, should have given him C, she found that A and B had already exhausted her cycle; and that she could distinguish her third great favourite only by giving him both A and B in combination.

But the filling up of this outline is imperfect: for the A (_loftiness_) and the B (_majesty_) are one and the same quality, under different names.]

[Footnote 6: Because the Latin word _sublimis_ is applied to objects soaring upwards, or floating aloft, or at an aerial alt.i.tude, and because the word does _sometimes_ correspond to our idea of the sublime (in which the notion of height is united with the notion of moral grandeur), and because, in the excessive vagueness and lawless lat.i.tudinarianism of our common Greek Lexicons, the word [Greek: hypsos] is translated, _inter alia_, by [Greek: to] _sublime_, _sublimitas_, &c. Hence it has happened that the t.i.tle of the little essay ascribed to Longinus, [Greek: Peri hypsous], is usually rendered into English, _Concerning the sublime_. But the idea of the Sublime, as defined, circ.u.mscribed, and circ.u.mstantiated, in English literature--an idea altogether of English growth--the _sublime byway of polar ant.i.thesis to the Beautiful_, had no existence amongst ancient critics; consequently it could have no expression. It is a great thought, a true thought, a demonstrable thought, that the Sublime, as thus ascertained, and in contraposition to the Beautiful, grew up on the basis of _s.e.xual_ distinctions, the Sublime corresponding to the male, the Beautiful, its anti-pole, corresponding to the female. Behold! we show you a mystery.]

[Footnote 7: No word has ever given so much trouble to modern critics as this very word (now under discussion) of the _sublime_. To those who have little Greek and _no_ Latin, it is necessary in the first place that we should state what are the most obvious elements of the word. According to the n.o.ble army of etymologists, they are these two Latin words--_sub_, under, and _limus_, mud. Oh! gemini! who would have thought of groping for the sublime in such a situation as that?--unless, indeed, it were that writer cited by Mr. Coleridge, and just now referred to by ourselves, who complains of frivolous modern readers, as not being able to raise and sequester their thoughts to the abstract consideration of dung. Hence it has followed, that most people have quarrelled with the etymology. "Whereupon the late Dr.

Parr, of pedantic memory, wrote a huge letter to Mr. Dugald Stewart, but the marrow of which lies in a nutsh.e.l.l, especially being rather hollow within. The learned doctor, in the first folio, grapples with the word _sub_, which, says he, comes from the Greek--so much is clear--but from what Greek, Bezonian? The thoughtless world, says he, trace it to [Greek: hypo] (hypo), sub, _i. e._ under; but I, Ego, Samuel Parr, the Birmingham doctor, trace it to [Greek: hyper]

(hyper), super, _i. e._ above; between which the difference is not less than between a chestnut horse and a horse-chestnut. To this learned Parrian dissertation on mud, there cannot be much reasonably to object, except its length in the first place; and, secondly, that we ourselves exceedingly doubt the common interpretation of _limus_.

Most unquestionably, if the sublime is to be brought into any relation at all to mud, we shall all be of one mind--that it must be found _above_. But to us it appears--that when the true modern idea of mud was in view, _limus_ was not the word used. Cicero, for instance, when he wishes to call Piso 'filth, mud,' &c. calls him _Caenum_: and, in general, _limus_ seems to have involved the notion of something adhesive, and rather to express _plaister_, or artificially prepared cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly, our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition; and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having room to defend it, for the present we forbear to state it.]

Now, therefore, after this explanation, recurring to the Longinian critiques upon Homer, it will avail any idolator of Homer but little, it will affect us not much, to mention that Longinus makes frequent reference to the _Iliad_, as the great source of the sublime--

'A quo, ceu fonte perenni, Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis';

for, as respected Grecian poets, and as respected _his_ sense of the word, it cannot be denied that Homer was such. He was the great well-head of inspiration to the Pagan poets of after times, who, however (_as a body_), moved in the narrowest circle that has ever yet confined the natural freedom of the poetic mind. But, in conceding this, let it not be forgotten how much we concede--we concede as much as Longinus demanded; that is, that Homer furnished an ideal or model of fluent narration, picturesque description, and the first outlines of what could be called characteristic delineations of persons.

Accordingly, uninventive Greece--for we maintain loudly that Greece, in her poets, _was_ uninventive and sterile beyond the example of other nations--received, as a traditional inheritance, the characters of the Paladins of the Troad.[8] Achilles is always the all-accomplished and supreme amongst these Paladins, the Orlando of ancient romance; Agamemnon, for ever the Charlemagne; Ajax, for ever the sullen, imperturbable, columnar champion, the Mandricardo, the _Bergen-op-Zoom_ of his faction, and corresponding to our modern 'Chicken' in the pugilistic ring, who was so called (as the books of the Fancy say) because he was a 'glutton'; and a 'glutton' in this sense--that he would take any amount of cramming (_i. e._ any possible quantum of 'milling,' or 'punishment'). Ulysses, again, is uniformly, no matter whether in the solemnities of the tragic scene, or the festivities of the Ovidian romance, the same shy c.o.c.k, but also sly c.o.c.k, with the least thought of a white feather in his plumage; Diomed is the same unmeaning double of every other hero, just as Rinaldo is with respect to his greater cousin, Orlando; and so of Teucer, Meriones, Idomeneus, and the other less-marked characters. The Greek drama took up these traditional characters, and sometimes deepened, saddened, exalted the features--as Sophocles, for instance, does with his 'Ajax Flagellifer'--Ajax the knouter of sheep--where, by the way, the remorse and penitential grief of Ajax for his own self-degradation, and the depth of his affliction for the triumph which he had afforded to his enemies--taken in connection with the tender fears of his wife, Tecmessa, for the fate to which his gloomy despair was too manifestly driving him; her own conscious desolation, and the orphan weakness of her son, in the event which she too fearfully antic.i.p.ates--the final suicide of Ajax; the brotherly affection of Teucer to the widow and the young son of the hero, together with the unlooked-for sympathy of Ulysses, who, instead of exulting in the ruin of his antagonist, mourns over it with generous tears--compose a situation, and a succession of situations, not equalled in the Greek tragedy; and, in that instance, we see an effort, rare in Grecian poetry, of conquest achieved by idealisation over a mean incident--viz. the hallucination of brain in Ajax, by which he mistakes the sheep for his Grecian enemies, ties them up for flagellation, and scourges them as periodically as if he were a critical reviewer. But really, in one extremity of this madness, where he fixes upon an old ram for Agamemnon, as the leader of the flock, the [Greek: anax andron Agamemnon], there is an extravagance of the ludicrous against which, though not exhibited scenically, but simply narrated, no solemnity of pathos could avail; even in narration, the violation of tragical dignity is insufferable, and is as much worse than the hyper-tragic horrors of _t.i.tus Andronicus_ (a play which is usually printed, without reason, amongst those of Shakspeare) as absolute farce or contradiction of all pathos must inevitably be a worse indecorum than physical horrors which simply outrage it by excess. Let us not, therefore, hear of the judgment displayed upon the Grecian stage, when even Sophocles, the chief master of dramatic economy and scenical propriety, could thus err by an aberration so far transcending the most memorable violation of stage decorum which has ever been charged upon the English drama.

[Footnote 8: There is a difficulty in a.s.signing any term as comprehensive enough to describe the Grecian heroes and their antagonists, who fought at Troy. The seven chieftains against Thebes are described sufficiently as Theban captains; but, to say _Trojan_ chieftains, would express only the heroes of one side; _Grecian_, again, would be liable to that fault equally, and to another far greater, of being under no limitation as to time. This difficulty must explain and (if it can) justify our collective phrase of the Paladins of the Troad.]

From Homer, therefore, were left, as a bequest to all future poets, the romantic adventures which grow, as so many collateral dependencies,

'From the tale of Troy divine';

and from Homer was derived also the discrimination of the leading characters, which, after all, were but coa.r.s.ely and rudely discriminated; at least, for the majority. In one instance only we acknowledge an exception. We have heard a great modern poet dwelling with real and not counterfeit enthusiasm upon the character (or rather upon the general picture, as made up both of character and position), which the course of the _Iliad_ a.s.signs gradually to Achilles. The view which he took of this impersonation of human grandeur, combining all gifts of intellect and of body, matchless speed, strength, inevitable eye, courage, and the immortal beauty of a G.o.d, being also, by his birth-right, half-divine, and consecrated to the imagination by his fatal interweaving with the destinies of Troy, and to the heart by the early death which to _his own knowledge_[9] impended over his magnificent career, and so abruptly shut up its vista--the view, we say, which our friend took of the presiding character throughout the _Iliad_, who is introduced to us in the very first line, and who is only eclipsed for seventeen books, to emerge upon us with more awful l.u.s.tre;--the view which he took was--that Achilles, and Achilles only, in the Grecian poetry, was a great idea--an idealised creation; and we remember that in this respect he compared the Homeric Achilles with the Angelica of Ariosto. Her only he regarded as an idealisation in the _Orlando Furioso_. And certainly in the luxury and excess of her all-conquering beauty, which drew after her from 'ultimate Cathay' to the camps of the baptised in France, and back again, from the palace of Charlemagne, drew half the Paladins, and 'half Spain militant,' to the portals of the rising sun; that sovereign beauty which (to say nothing of kings and princes withered by her frowns) ruined for a time the most princely of all the Paladins, the supreme Orlando, crazed him with scorn,

'And robbed him of his n.o.ble wits outright'--

in all this, we must acknowledge a glorification of power not unlike that of Achilles:--

'Irresistible Pelides, whom, unarm'd, No strength of man or wild beast could withstand; Who tore the lion as the lion tears the kid; Ran on embattl'd armies clad in iron; And, weaponless himself, Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery Of brazen s.h.i.+eld and spear, the hammer'd cuira.s.s, Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail, Adamantean proof; But safest he who stood aloof, When insupportably his foot advanced Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Priamides Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turn'd Their plated backs under his heel, Or, groveling, soil'd their crested helmets in the dust.'

These are the words of Milton in describing that 'heroic Nazarete,'

'G.o.d's champion'--

'Promis'd by heavenly message twice descending';

heralded, like Pelides,

'By an angel of his birth, Who from his father's field Rode up in flames after his message told';

these are the celestial words which describe the celestial prowess of the Hebrew monomachist, the irresistible Sampson; and are hardly less applicable to the 'champion paramount' of Greece confederate.

[Footnote 9: 'To his own knowledge'--see, for proof of this, the gloomy serenity of his answer to his dying victim, when, predicting his approaching end:--

'Enough; I know my fate: to die--to see no more My much-lov'd parents, and my native sh.o.r.e,' &c. &c.]

This, therefore, this unique conception, with what power they might, later Greek poets adopted; and the other Homeric characters they transplanted somewhat monotonously, but at times, we are willing to admit, and have already admitted, improving and solemnizing the original epic portraits when brought upon the stage. But all this extent of obligation amongst later poets of Greece to Homer serves less to argue his opulence than their penury. And if, quitting the one great blazing jewel, the Urim and Thummim of the _Iliad_, you descend to individual pa.s.sages of poetic effect; and if amongst these a fancy should seize you of asking for a specimen of the _Sublime_ in particular, what is it that you are offered by the critics? Nothing that we remember beyond one single pa.s.sage, in which the G.o.d Neptune is described in a steeple chase, and 'making play' at a terrific pace. And certainly enough is exhibited of the old boy's hoofs, and their spanking qualities, to warrant our backing him against a railroad for a rump and dozen; but, after all, there is nothing to grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the steam of a blue-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting, in which, like the conceited snipe[10] upon the Liverpool railroad, he thinks himself to run a match with Sampson; and, whilst affecting to admire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he admires his own flourish of admiration; and, in the very agony of his frosty raptures, is quite at leisure to look out for a little private traffic of rapture on his own account. But it won't do; this old critical posture-master (whom, if Aurelian hanged, surely he knew what he was about) may as well put up his rapture pipes, and (as Lear says) 'not squiny' at us; for let us ask Master Longinus, in what earthly respect do these great strides of Neptune exceed Jack with his seven-league boots? Let him answer that, if he can. We hold that Jack has the advantage. Or, again look at the Koran: does any man but a foolish Oriental think that pa.s.sage sublime where Mahomet describes the divine pen? It is, says he, made of mother-of-pearl; so much for the 'raw material,' as the economists say. But now for the size: it can hardly be called a 'portable' pen at all events, for we are told that it is so tall of its age, that an Arabian 'thoroughbred horse would require 500 years for galloping down the slit to the nib. Now this Arabic sublime is _in this instance_ quite a kin brother to the Homeric.

[Footnote 10: On the memorable inaugural day of the Liverpool railroad, when Mr. Huskisson met with so sad a fate, a snipe or a plover tried a race with Sampson, one of the engines. The race continued neck and neck for about six miles, after which, the snipe finding itself likely to come off second best, found it convenient to wheel off, at a turn of the road, into the solitudes of Chat Moss.]

However, it is likely that we shall here be reminded of our own challenge to the Longinian word [Greek: hypselon] as not at all corresponding, or even alluding to the modern word sublime. But in this instance, the distinction will not much avail that critic--for no matter by what particular _word_ he may convey his sense of its quality, clear it is, by his way of ill.u.s.trating its peculiar merit, that, in his opinion, these huge strides of Neptune's have something supernaturally grand about them. But, waiving this solitary instance in Homer of the sublime, according to his idolatrous critics--of the pseudo sublime according to ourselves--in all other cases where Longinus, or any other Greek writer has cited Homer as the great exemplary model of [Greek: hypsos] in composition, we are to understand him according to the Grecian sense of that word. He must then be supposed to praise Homer, not so much for any ideal grandeur either of thought, image, or situation, as in a general sense for his animated style of narration, for the variety and spirited effect with which he relieves the direct formal narration in his own person by dialogue between the subjects of his narration, thus ventriloquising and throwing his own voice as often as he can into the surrounding objects--or again for the similes and allusive pictures by which he points emphasis to a situation or interest to a person.

Now then we have it: when you describe Homer, or when you hear him described as a lively picturesque old boy [by the way, why does everybody speak of Homer as old?], full of life, and animation, and movement, then you say (or you hear say) what is true, and not much more than what is true. Only about that word picturesque we demur a little: as a chirurgeon, he certainly _is_ picturesque; for Hows.h.i.+p upon gunshot wounds is a joke to him when he lectures upon _traumacy_, if we may presume to coin that word, or upon traumatic philosophy (as Mr. M'Culloch says so grandly, Economic Science). But, apart from this, we cannot allow that simply to say [Greek: Zakunthos nemoessa], woody Zacynthus, is any better argument of picturesqueness than Stony Stratford, or Harrow on the Hill. Be a.s.sured, reader, that the Homeric age was not ripe for the picturesque. _Price on the Picturesque_, or, _Gilpin on Forest Scenery_, would both have been sent post-haste to Bedlam in those days; or perhaps Homer himself would have tied a millstone about their necks, and have sunk them as public nuisances by woody Zante. Besides, it puts almost an extinguisher on any little twinkling of the picturesque that might have flared up at times from this or that suggestion, when each individual had his own regular epithet stereotyped to his name like a bra.s.s plate upon a door: Hector, the tamer of horses; Achilles, the swift of foot; the ox-eyed, respectable Juno. Some of the 'big uns,' it is true, had a dress and an undress suit of epithets: as for instance, Hector was also [Greek: korythaiolos], Hector with the tossing or the variegated plumes.

Achilles again was [Greek: dios] or divine. But still the range was small, and the monotony was dire.

And now, if you come in good earnest to picturesqueness, let us mention a poet in sober truth worth five hundred of Homer, and that is Chaucer. Show us a piece of Homer's handywork that comes within a hundred leagues of that divine prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_, or of 'The Knight's Tale,' of the 'Man of Law's Tale,' or of the 'Tale of the Patient Griseldis,' or, for intense life of narration and festive wit, to the 'Wife of Bath's Tale.' Or, pa.s.sing out of the _Canterbury Tales_ for the picturesque in human manner and gesture, and play of countenance, never equalled as yet by Pagan or Christian, go to the _Troilus and Cresseid_, and, for instance, to the conversation between Troilus and Pandarus, or, again, between Pandarus and Cresseid.

Rightly did a critic of the 17th century p.r.o.nounce Chaucer a miracle of natural genius, as having 'taken into the compa.s.s of his _Canterbury Tales_, the various manners and humours of the whole English nation in his age; not a single character has escaped him.'

And this critic then proceeds thus--'The matter and manner of these tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and calling, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different. But there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is G.o.d's plenty.' And soon after he goes on to a.s.sert (though Heaven knows in terms far below the whole truth), the superiority of Chaucer to Boccaccio. And, in the meantime, who was this eulogist of Chaucer? Why, the man who himself was never equalled upon this earth, unless by Chaucer, in the art of fine narration: it is John Dryden whom we have been quoting.

Between Chaucer and Homer--as to the main art of narration, as to the picturesque life of the manners, and as to the exquisite delineation of character--the interval is as wide as between Shakespeare, in dramatic power, and Nic. Rowe.

And we might wind up this main chapter, of the comparison between Grecian and English literature--viz. the chapter on Homer, by this tight dilemma. You do or you do not use the Longinian word [Greek: hypsos] in the modern sense of the sublime. If you do not, then of course you translate it in the Grecian sense, as explained above; and in that sense, we engage to produce many scores of pa.s.sages from Chaucer, not exceeding 50 to 80 lines, which contain more of picturesque simplicity, more tenderness, more fidelity to nature, more felicity of sentiment, more animation of narrative, and more truth of character, than can be matched in all the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_. On the other hand, if by [Greek: hypsos] you choose absurdly to mean sublimity in the modern sense, then it will suffice for us that we challenge _you_ to the production of one instance which truly and incontestably embodies that quality.[11] The burthen of proof rests upon you who affirm, not upon us who deny. Meantime, as a kind of choke-pear, we leave with the Homeric adorer this one brace of portraits, or hints for such a brace, which we commend to his comparison, as Hamlet did the portraits of the two brothers to his besotted mother. We are talking of the sublime: that is our thesis.

Now observe: there is a catalogue in the _Iliad_--there is a catalogue in the _Paradise Lost_. And, like a river of Macedon and of Monmouth, the two catalogues agree in that one fact--viz. that they _are_ such.

But as to the rest, we are willing to abide by the issue of that one comparison, left to the very dullest sensibility, for the decision of the total question at issue. And what is that? Not, Heaven preserve us! as to the comparative claims of Milton and Homer in this point of sublimity--for surely it would be absurd to compare him who has most with him whom we affirm to have none at all--but whether Homer has the very smallest pretensions in that point. The result, as we state it, is this:--The catalogue of the ruined angels in Milton, is, in itself taken separately, a perfect poem, with the beauty, and the felicity, and the glory of a dream. The Homeric catalogue of s.h.i.+ps is exactly on a level with the muster-roll of a regiment, the register of a tax-gatherer, the catalogue of an auctioneer. Nay, some catalogues are far more interesting, and more alive with meaning. 'But him followed fifty black s.h.i.+ps!'--'But him follow seventy black s.h.i.+ps!' Faugh! We could make a more readable poem out of an Insolvent's Balance Sheet.

[Footnote 11: The description of Apollo in wrath as [Greek: nukti eoiko], like night, is a doubtful case. With respect to the s.h.i.+eld of Achilles, it cannot be denied that the general conception has, in common with all abstractions (as _e. g._ the abstractions of dreams, of prophetic visions, such as that in the 6th aeneid, that to Macbeth, that shown by the angel Michael to Adam), something fine and, in its own nature, let the execution be what it may, sublime. But this part of the _Iliad_, we firmly believe to be an interpolation of times long posterior to that of Homer.]

One other little suggestion we could wish to offer. Those who would contend against the vast superiority of Chaucer (and him we mention chiefly because he really has in excess those very qualities of life, motion, and picturesque simplicity, to which the Homeric characteristics chiefly tend), ought to bear in mind one startling fact evidently at war with the _degree_ of what is claimed for Homer.

It is this: Chaucer is carried naturally by the very course of his tales into the heart of domestic life, and of the scenery most favourable to the movements of human sensibility. Homer, on the other hand, is kept out of that sphere, and is imprisoned in the monotonies of a camp or a battle-field, equally by the necessities of his story, and by the proprieties of Grecian life (which in fact are pretty nearly those of Turkish life at this day). Men and women meet only under rare, hurried, and exclusive circ.u.mstances. Hence it is, that throughout the entire _Iliad_, we have but one scene in which the finest affections of the human heart can find an opening for display; of course, everybody knows at once that we are speaking of the scene between Hector, Andromache, and the young Astyanax. No need for question here; it is Hobson's choice in Greek literature, when you are seeking for the poetry of human sensibilities. One such scene there is, and no more; which, of itself, is some reason for suspecting its authenticity. And, by the way, at this point, it is worth while remarking, that a late excellent critic always p.r.o.nounced the words applied to Andromache [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa] (_tearfully smiling_, or, _smiling through_ _her tears_), a mere Alexandrian interpolation.

And why? Now mark the reason. Was it because the circ.u.mstance is in itself vicious, or out of nature? Not at all: nothing more probable or more interesting under the general situation of peril combined with the little incident of the infant's alarm at the plumed helmet. But any just taste feels it to be out of the Homeric key; the barbarism of the age, not mitigated (as in Chaucer's far less barbarous age) by the tenderness of Christian sentiment, turned a deaf ear and a repulsive aspect to such beautiful traits of domestic feeling; to Homer himself the whole circ.u.mstance would have been one of pure effeminacy. Now, we recommend it to the reader's reflection--and let him weigh well the condition under which that poetry moves that cannot indulge a tender sentiment without being justly suspected of adulterous commerce with some after age. This remark, however, is by the by; having grown out of the [Greek: dakryoen gelasasa], itself a digression. But, returning from that to our previous theme, we desire every candid reader to ask himself what must be the character, what the circ.u.mscription, of that poetry which is limited, by its very subject,[12] to a scene of such intense uniformity as a battle or a camp; and by the prevailing spirit of manners to the exclusive society of men. To make bricks without straw, was the excess even of Egyptian bondage; Homer could not fight up against the necessities of his age, and the defects of its manners. And the very apologies which will be urged for him, drawn as they must be from the spirit of manners prevalent in his era, are reciprocally but so many reasons for not seeking in him the kind of poetry which has been ascribed to him by ignorance, or by defective sensibility, or by the mere self-interest of pedantry.

[Footnote 12: But the _Odyssey_, at least, it will be said, is not thus limited: no, not by its subject; because it carries us amongst cities and princes in a state of peace; but it is equally limited by the spirit of manners; we are never admitted amongst women, except by accident (Nausicaa)--by necessity (Penelope)--or by romance (Circe).]

From Homer, the route stretches thus:--The Grecian drama lies about six hundred years nearer to the Christian era, and Pindar lies in the interval. These--_i. e._ the Dramatic and Lyric--are the important chapters of the Greek poetry; for as to Pastoral poetry, having only Theocritus surviving, and a very little of Bion and Moschus, and of these one only being of the least separate importance--we cannot hold that department ent.i.tled to any notice in so cursory a review of the literature, else we have much to say on this also. Besides that, Theocritus was not a natural poet, indigenous to Sicily, but an artificial blue-stocking; as was Callimachus in a different cla.s.s.

The drama we may place loosely in the generation next before that of Alexander the Great. And his era may be best remembered by noting it as 333 years B. C. Add thirty years to this era--that will be the era of the Drama. Add a little more than a century, and that will be the era of Pindar. Him, therefore, we will notice first.

Now, the chief thing to say as to Pindar is--to show cause, good and reasonable, why no man of sense should trouble his head about him.

There was in the seventeenth century a notion prevalent about Pindar, the very contradiction to the truth. It was imagined that he 'had a demon'; that he was under a burthen of prophetic inspiration; that he was possessed, like a Hebrew prophet or a Delphic priestess, with divine fury. Why was this thought?--simply because no mortal read him.

Laughable it is to mention, that Pope, when a very young man, and writing his _Temple of Fame_ (partly on the model of Chaucer's), when he came to the great columns and their bas-reliefs in that temple, each of which is sacred to one honoured name, having but room in all for six, chose Pindar for one[13] of the six. And the first bas-relief on Pindar's column is so pretty, that we shall quote it; especially as it suggested Gray's car for Dryden's 'less presumptuous flight!'

'Four swans sustain a car of silver bright, With heads advanc'd, and pinions stretch'd for flight: Here, _like some furious prophet_, Pindar rode, And seem'd to _labour with th' inspiring G.o.d_.'

[Footnote 13: The other five were Homer, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle, Cicero.]

Then follow eight lines describing other bas-reliefs, containing 'the figured games of Greece' (Olympic, Nemean, &c.). But what we spoke of as laughable in the whole affair is, that Master Pope neither had then read one line of Pindar, nor ever read one line of Pindar: and reason good; for at that time he could not read the simple Homeric Greek; while the Greek of Pindar exceeds all other Greek in difficulty, excepting, perhaps, a few amongst the tragic choruses, which are difficult for the very same reason--lyric abruptness, lyric involution, and lyric obscurity of transition. Not having read Homer, no wonder that Pope should place, amongst the bas-reliefs ill.u.s.trating the _Iliad_, an incident which does not exist in the _Iliad_.[14] Not having read Pindar, no wonder that Pope should ascribe to Pindar qualities which are not only imaginary, but in absolute contradiction to his true ones. A more sober old gentleman does not exist: his demoniac possession is a mere fable. But there are two sufficient arguments for not reading him, so long as innumerable books of greater interest remain unread. First, he writes upon subjects that, to us, are mean and extinct--race-horses that have been defunct for twenty-five centuries, chariots that were crazy in his own day, and contests with which it is impossible for us to sympathise. Then his digressions about old genealogies are no whit better than his main theme, nor more amusing than a Welshman's pedigree. The best translator of any age, Mr. Carey, who translated Dante, has done what human skill could effect to make the old Theban readable; but, after all, the man is yet to come who _has_ read Pindar, _will_ read Pindar, or _can_ read Pindar, except, indeed, a translator in the way of duty.

And the son of Philip himself, though he bade 'spare the house of Pindarus,' we vehemently suspect, never read the works of Pindarus; that labour he left to some future Hercules. So much for his subjects: but a second objection is--his metre: The hexameter, or heroic metre of the ancient Greeks, is delightful to our modern ears; so is the Iambic metre fortunately of the stage: but the Lyric metres generally, and those of Pindar without one exception, are as utterly without meaning to us, as merely chaotic labyrinths of sound, as Chinese music or Dutch concertos. Need we say more?

[Footnote 14: Viz. the supposed dragging of Hector three times round Troy by Achilles--a mere post-Homeric fable. But it is ludicrous to add, that, in after years--nay, when nearly at the end of his translation of the _Iliad_, in 1718--Pope took part in a discussion upon Homer's reasons for ascribing such conduct to his hero, seriously arguing the _pro_ and _con_ upon a pure fiction.]

Next comes the drama. But this is too weighty a theme to be discussed slightly; and the more so because here only we willingly concede a strong motive for learning Greek; here, only, we hold the want of a ready introduction to be a serious misfortune. Our general argument, therefore, which had for its drift to depreciate Greek, dispenses, in this case, with our saying anything; since every word we _could_ say would be hostile to our own purpose. However, we shall, even upon this field of the Greek literature, deliver one oracular sentence, tending neither to praise nor dispraise it, but simply to state its relations to the modern, or, at least, the English drama. In the ancient drama, to represent it justly, the unlearned reader must imagine grand situations, impressive groups; in the modern tumultuous movement, a grand stream of action. In the Greek drama, he must conceive the presiding power to be _Death_; in the English, _Life_. What Death?--What Life? That sort of death or of life locked up and frozen into everlasting slumber, which we see in sculpture; that sort of life, of tumult, of agitation, of tendency to something beyond, which we see in painting. The picturesque, in short, domineers over English tragedy; the sculpturesque, or the statuesque, over the Grecian.

The moralists, such as Theogins, the miscellaneous or didactic poets, such as Hesiod, are all alike below any notice in a sketch like this.