THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. ORIGINAL PAPERS. LECTURES ON POETRY, THE SUBSTANCE OF WHICH WAS DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION, LECTURE 1. I PROPOSE, in the greater portion of the following Lectures, to treat of poetry rather abstractedly than historically. But as on entering on every subject there is an obvious advantage in taking a preliminary view of its nature at large, I shall devote this first lecture to some general remarks on poetical composition. I shall first of all endeavour to discriminate it from some other pursuits of the human mind, in which the intellect and the imagination are both concerned, and shall then subjoin some thoughts on the reciprocal influence with which it affects and is affected by the moral culture of society. If I should be far from giving my observations that comprehensiveness and method which ought to belong to a full and regular treatise on poetry, I must beg allowance to be made for my object being much more limited than to compose such a work. The philosophy of the poet's art is a vast field of enquiry, over the entire extent of which I make no pretensions to expatiate. My attempt shall only be to investigate some of its prominent and most interesting points. Few sayings respecting poetry have been more frequently felt or repeated than the words of Lord Bacon--" that it accommodates the shews of things to the desires of the mind." It has not been always observed that the noble author uses this expression when considering poetry only as "imaginary history."* From his "Poetry," says Lord Bacon," is a kind of learning generally confined to the measure of words, but otherwise extremely licentious, and truly belonging to the imagination, which, being unrestrained by laws, may make what unnatural mixtures and separations it pleases. It is taken in two senses, or with respect to words and matter. The first is but a character of style, and a certain form of speech not relating to the subject; for a true narration may be delivered in verse, and a feigned one in prose ;-but the second is a capital part of learning, and no other than feigned History. And here, as in our decisions we endeavour to find and trace the true sources of learning, and this VOL. I. NO. J. B having previously said that he should take no particular notice. of Satire, Elegy, Epigram, Ode, &c. but should hand them over to philosophy and the arts of speech," I suspect that his Lordship applied his memorable words to feigned history alonebut, to my humble apprehension, they will bear an universal application to poetry. For I can suppose no instance in which an affecting poem, taken as a whole, does not accommodate the appearances of nature to our wishes. The accommodation indeed is most palpably made in fiction; it is nevertheless also effected, although more subtly, in the poetical representation of truth. Delightful as nature is to us, yet a literal and facsimile transcript of her accidental appearances will not constitute poetry. Those circumstances, even of true objects, must alone be chosen and combined, which excite the warmth and light of agreeable passions and associations. When the poet, therefore, exhibits the credibilities of existence without the aid of invented characters or of fable, he still selects and concentrates only those traits of truth which attach our sensibility, and he re frequently without giving way to custom, or the established order, we shall take no particular notice of satire, elegy, ode, &c. but turn them over to philosophy and the arts of speech, and, under the name of Poetry, treat nothing more than Imaginary History." I beg pardon if I mistake the meaning of so great an authority; but it would seem to me to be a natural inference from the proposed turning over of certain classes of composition to philosophy, that the poet in those classes is to be judged of by the same canons of criticism with the philosopher. If the transference be not for this purpose, I am at a loss to see what other end it can answer; and, to my humble apprehension, there is not in this distinction, at least thus briefly as it is worded, that irresistible clearness which so usually attends Lord Bacon's decisions. Supposing the poet and the philosopher both to endite truth, will they not treat it in a different manner, and ought they not therefore to be judged of by different laws? The philosopher exhibits all the circumstances of truth so investigated and analysed as to calm and counteract our passions: The poet selects and combines only those circumstances which excite them, and which connect emotion with intellectual perception. Poetry accommodates the shews of things to the mind's desires: Philosophy has in view to make the mind accommodate its desires to the realities of things. The classes of poetry, thus discriminated from imaginary history, and left to be turned over to philosophy and the arts of speech, are satire, elegy, epigram, ode, &c. The arts of speech is a vague expression; I shall therefore only speak of the consignment as it regards philosophy. The light host of epigrams may take their place where they please; and so may satires, though they are at best but a one-sided sort of philosophy-But the lyrical ode may be highly fanciful, and it is difficult to see any thing in its transports peculiarly fit to be tried by a jury of philosophers. Didactic poetry has the most apparent connexion with philosophy; but the connexion is always forced, and generally unfavourable. It is the most unteaching of all things, and, in reality, is not judged of by its power of instruction: otherwise, the Georgics of Virgil might be submitted to the Board of Agriculture. There is unquestionably philosophy in poetryin spirit, not in demonstrative form; but that spirit, I apprehend, is not locked up in any distinct compartment of the art, and least of all in those where the poet affects to be most philosophical. Nor can I see why classes of poetry different from imaginary history, are more to be referred to philosophy than imaginary history itself. There is surely more knowledge of man diffused over the Iliad and Odyssey, not to speak of dramatic poetry, than over all the soberest didactic verses, and shrewdest satires, and most contemplative elegies, that were ever written. jects others that would disturb the harmony of his picture, or repel our sympathy. This makes Truth herself appear more beautiful in the Muses' mirror than in her casual reality. I am far from saying, that fiction is of slight utility to poetry: I only mean, that the true circumstances of nature, when exquisitely chosen and combined, will constitute that high beauty of art which we call the ideal, without the necessary intervention of fiction. Nor do I mean that language can produce this effect, unless it also possess the power of exciting fanciful associations. The passions that give life to poetry are indissolubly connected with the liveliness of the associating faculty. No doubt, the language of real passion is not, in general, prone to remote and surprising combinations of thought. The wit of the fancy is a doubtful indication of passion. Nevertheless, when we read a strain of deep feeling, we naturally imagine it to come from a mind of rich associations, and it excites a reverie of luxuriant images in our own. But remote fancies, whether they are congenial or not with the language of passion, may have their place in the poet's survey of existence, and yet may be far from amounting to fiction, in the fair and general sense of the word. It is only in that acceptation, namely, the feigning of events and characters, that I deny fiction to be perpetually and essentially necessary to the poet. If all the imagery of language is to be so called, prose itself will be found to teem with fiction. But, however necessary fanciful associations may be to Poetry, she may pourtray the realities of Nature without absolute fiction, so as to touch the inmost recesses of our sympathy. The famous Love Ode of Sappho, for instance, affects us by the simple vehemence of its passion—and yet it is not fiction. If it were asked, how such a poem can be said "to accommodate the shews of things to the desires of the mind," I should answer, that it conveys the conception of amatory transport as completely by selecting and concentrating the traits of truth, as if the finest artist had embodied it to the eye with ideal beauty. It is all nature, but it is perfect nature-there is no part of the outline weak, though it seems as if every one could trace it. And yet, though every one feels the passion, it has been seldom so well described in the course of two thousand years. The spirited selection and concentration of truth is one means, and fiction is another, by which the poet maintains his empire. The one founds it, and the other extends it. If truth can thus be found, of itself, to constitute the soul of entire and inspired poetical effusions, fiction cannot well be denominated the soul of poetry; and I should rather be inclined to call it her highest prerogative. It is a privilege, too, of which the poet can avail himself more than any other imitative artist. For though painting and sculpture may surpass the power of verse in im mediate impression, yet from being mute and chained to the moment, they are sensibly limited in the means of explaining more of their subjects than meets the eye, and they can with difficulty embody any fiction which tradition or poetry has not in some degree prepared, and placed in their hands; whereas poetry, by her" winged words," to use the noble Homeric phrase, can widen the circuit of human thoughts undefinedly into the past and the future, and may feign what has not even been surmised by tradition. To return to the words of Lord Bacon, they apply, though I conceive not more truly, yet with easier and more extensive illustration, to imaginary history than to any other class of poetry. And his observation, that the art shews itself to be something divine, as it raises the mind by accommodating "the shews of things to its desires," bespeaks a sensibility in the sage as deep as his intellect. For poetry, in its highest sense, is scarcely any thing else than a synonyme for the religion of nature. It is true that we have a pleasure in the poet's representations of life, from our attachment to life itself. All imitations of objects have a certain value to the mind, as the resemblances and records of a perishable existence. They surprise us with traits of nature that have escaped our observation or faded from our memories, and affect us as if they restored to us a lost or absent friend, with all the tender illusion, though without the indistinctness, of a dream. But the poet does not establish his influence always merely on graphic fidelity to nature; he knows that there is a disposition within us to go beyond hope itself, and to shape reveries of things, not as they are, but as we would wish them to be. There is no imagination which has not, at some time or other, dreamt in a paradise of its own creation. It is true that this optimism of the fancy, when it vents itself in the castle-buildings of a weak mind, or is masked under the gravity of a false and Utopian philosophy, becomes pernicious and ridiculous. The love of ideal happiness, when thus drivelling and disfigured, appears a bastard species of the fancy, to which poetical feeling disdains acknowledging its resemblance or affinity. But when we look to the day-dreams of inspired fiction, and when we feel the superhuman force and excellence of its characters, it is then that we acknowledge the beatific idealism of our nature to be a feature of divine expression in the moral aspect of man. To compare the conceptions of so frail a being with his actual attainments of happiness, would be sufficient to persuade us, without a hint from revelation, that our natures are either the wreck of some superior past intelligence, or the germ and promise of a new one. The object of poetry being to delight the imagination, divides it from every other pursuit of language. But it is neces sary to recollect that this is its primary and distinguishing object; because the fancy and passions are often addressed in other provinces of animated composition, and though the poet may have more imaginative powers than other men, he is not the only composer in language who employs them. In prose itself, zeal will warm the associations, and mould them-into imagery; and metaphors, similes, and comparisons, will be found more or less scattered over every style that is not devoted to pure science and abstraction. Hence, while poetry claims her rank among intellectual studies, those other pursuits, which have truth more severely and immediately for their object, also make their occasional excursions into the field of fancy. So that, distinct as the ends of the poet and the moral reasoner may be, the one being pleasure and the other instruction, we shall find Shakspeare furnishing texts for philosophy, and the apothegms of Bacon adorned with figurative illustrations*. In pure metaphysics it is, no doubt, agreed, that fanciful analogies between mind and matter are apt to be dangerous and delusive lights to the enquirer, and that the language of philosophy should be shaded as much as possible by abstraction, like the glass that is darkened in order to enable us to look at the sun. Yet, in spite of this acknowledgment, we shall often find logicians amusing themselves very contentedly with ingenious images. Locke has given a description of the process of memory that is absolutely poetical. And if the flowers of Parnassus may thus be found starting up so far from their native soil as among the dust and thorns of metaphysics, how much more naturally may we expect to meet with them in the more genial regions of moral sentiment. In fact, there is a poetry in the human mind which partially diffuses itself over all its moral pursuits; and few men who have ever strongly influenced society, have been possessed of cold or weak imaginations. The orator must, on many occasions, appeal to the passions as well as the understanding; and the historian, even whilst adhering to facts, gives a natural prominence to spirit-stirring events and heroic characters, which lays a frequent and just hold on our enthusiasm. But still there are plain limits which divide poetry from history, philosophy, and oratory, although the poet may often I allude to the felicity of Lord Bacon's figurative expressions, and not to their frequent occurrence; for as a writer he is (as we might naturally expect) no pursuer of such ornaments. But when he does indulge in them, there is a charm indescribably striking in the contrast,—I should say in the harmony between his deep thought and elastic fancy. And his beauties of this description may be treasured in the memory with as much safety as admiration. For though he may be said to blend figures with his philosophy, he mixes them not with abstract metaphysics, but with maxims that come home to our bosoms and business. And, unlike many philosophers, he uses them as mere illustrations of argument, and not as their subject. |