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January IS, 1853.] THE LEADER. 6S
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The Philosophy Op Poetry. Poetics: An Ju...
as an Art , and is divided into two parts , one embracing the " kinds of poetry , " the other , " the language of poeay . " The kinds are three , according to our system-loving author , and under the three he ranges all varieties . " The three kinds of poesy pair with the three laws of poetry dramatic with the law of imagination , epic with that of harmony , and lyric with that of unconsciousness . " Mr . Dallas is fanciful enough in this section , but he is also extremely entertaining and suggestive . We will give a specimen : — " There can of course be no doubt as to the lyrical tone of Eastern or primitive poesy ; it may only be doubted whether the prevailing tone of modern poesy be dramatic , and the prevailing tone of the antique be epic . Let us look then to the
epics of the former and to the dramas of the latter . Milton and Dante are the two greatest narrative poets of romantic times . Yet Milton roughcast his poem as a drama , arid when giving it another , its present shape , expressed , with an instinct which lesser men dare not gainsay , a fear lest he might be living in an age too late for epic poesy ; and his modern compeer , with a like albeit less-informed instinct , borrowing from the drama , entitled his work The Comedy of Dante Alighieri . Thus , on the one hand , the modern epic bewrays itself , and proves that it is the child of a dramatic age . On the other hand , the antique drama tells the tale of its epic parentage . Who in these modern times are the great sticklers for a classical taste , and for a classical taste in the drama ? They are the heirs of that
language remarkable above all the Romanesque languages for the store of tales which it has hoarded up—these chiefly the unconscious labours of its infancy . The old French of Languedoui has but few lyrics : romances and fabliaux form the bulk of its literature . The genius of the Trouvere was all for narrative ; and his mantle so remained with those who in aftertimes turned to the theatre , that their drama is really a narrative delivered by many mouths ; in other words , their classic drama is an epic drama . And here let it be observed , that while the iiistory of the drama is the same in every country where it is allowed to run its course unfettered , there is a most marked resemblance between its rise in France and its rise in Greece . For France had not only , in the north , poets of an epic turn , Trouveres , speaking the Languedoui , but had also , in the south , poets of a lyrical turn , Troubadors , who employed the Languedoc . We find that the former
flourished chiefly not at the French court , but under the sceptre of the English sovereigns in England and in Normandy ; and although the latter , the Provencal , poets after the Albigensian war could no longer be said to flourish , yet their influence never died away , but passing into the sister dialects of Italy and of Castile , there lived , as it also in a manner continued to survive in the south of France . And it was the union of those two streams , the lyricism of Southern France , of Italy , and of Spain acting upon the epic genius of the true French , that gave birth to their drama such as it is . If instead of the Languedoui and the Languedoc we place the Ionic and Doric dialects ( largely understood ) , the former employed by the epic and other cyclic poets , and chiefly , be it marked , among the colonies on the further side of the Mgean , while the latter , the speech of an -elder race ,- was the very tartan of the lyric , do you not see that among the Greeks as among the French the same elements were at work , and working , too , under circumstances
very nearly the same ? What the Greek drama owed to the dithyrambic and other choral odes connected with the worship of Dionysus , the wine god , has oftert been rated so highly as to leave an impression that it sprung mainly if not entirely from a lyrical stock ; a noffoh fairly met and set aside by the saying of ^ schylus himself , that his tragedies were but scraps from the great feast supplied by Homer . Here is a receipt in full of a large epic debt , and coming from the most lyrical of the Greek dramatists it is entitled to the greatest weight . This meeting of lyrical with epic tendencies gave rise upon an entirely new stage , at Athens as at Paris , to the classical drama , a drama wliich in the parts not wholly lyrical , that is to gayin the parts which have a dramatic form , is truly epic in thought , word , and
, deed ; dealing in narrative ; delig hting in the historical tenses , quite unlike the romantic drama , where if a narrative is to be delivered it is delivered in the present tense , and often , as in the well-known case of good Launcelot Gobbo , one of a thousand , the very circumstances arc acted by the speaker . ' The fiend is at mine elbow , and tempts me , saying to me , Gobbo , Launcelot Gobbo , good Launcelot , or good Gobbo , or good Launcelot Gobbo , use your legs , take the start , run away . My conscience says , No : take heed , honest Launcelot ; take heed , honest Gobbo : or , as aforesaid , honest Launcelot Gobbo , do not run ; scorn
running with thy heels . ' " Further on : — " That tho Hebrew , the highest typo of the lyricnl mind , fed upon futuritythat the Greek , tho highest type of tho epic mind , fed upon tho olden time—and that each revelled in its own department of thought with a zeal and a zest otherwhere unequalled , can hardly be doubted . The Hebrew lived upon prophecy , and in everything , even in their buildings , it may bo seen how tho Orientals looked forward to after-ageH . The prevailing feature of their architecture w itH massive grandeur , itH stability ; they built for posterity : Htiid Solomon at the dedication of the temple « I have ' built an house of habitation for Thee , and a place for lhy dwelling for ever . ' Tho only exception to this rule m the Saracenic architecture , ami it is an exception that Htrongthena the rule ; nince , if need were it could easily bo shown that tho nlcndorneBS for which it is noted woh a true offspring of that Moslem faith wliichdismnirdini ? a future upon earth , courted such a death as
, might oiiHure a future in the paradise above , ninid the bowers of the Hourw . Greek architecture , on the other hand , neither mocked the eye , a « did tho Moorish palaces , by a noeming frailty mid contempt of permanence , nor , like the heavy piIcH of % ypt " mid tho Mast , forced the idea of strength and of futurity upon the beholder ; it sought rather , by marble frieze * and other sculptures embodying WemlH of the past , to net the hoary erown ( . folder upon the brow of their temples . And if for a moment any doubt can arise that the ( Jreoks liavo ouintnpt every iMHmlo , ancient or modern ,. in the remembrance of their forefather * . an < T the days of of critics wholiko birds of
yore it can only arise amongst that German school , prey , would at 0110 ( ell swoop tear from the field of hwtory and carry up to the cloudland of fUblo whatever legends refer to events preceding the Dorian conquest ol the Peloponnesus , ( h . « . 1 KM , ) Here is not the place to combat a theory which would thus deny to the greater and hotter part of Greek story , including tho Homeric lay , oven ho much truth «» may be contained in tho stories of XJl . urloinaBijo or of Arthur and would sink it to tho level of such tales > ih Palmenn of hngland or Jmadisde Oaid % \[ ' notloWer Rtill to those romances which , for having turned the brain of Don Quixote < le la Munch .., wer « by the priest and Um . barber moHt righteously irivon to tho flames ; nor , although proper to point oub its existence , can it b « worth wlxilo to confute u Wy which but wvor » l > m « iUw couutr ^ " ^
which the instinct of a child would hold false against any and every comer . At any rate , it cannot be denied , that whatever amount of fable may cleave to their legendary lore , the Greeks themselves firmly believed in its truth ; and in this lore there was amassed for them a heritage that no other nation can boast of , and that no other nation so highly valued . They valued it so highly that , although the query might often be renewed , What ' s Hecuba to us or we to Hecuba ? the moderns have again and again been smitten with a desire to regard those , legends iu preference to their own . "As the Greek thus dwelt in the past , as the Hebrew dwelt in the future , so the modern dwelt rather in the present . This is one of those facts which are so manifest that it would scarcely be more difficult to prove them than to prove a mathematical axiom . You see a token of it in the daily newspapers ; you will find a token of it in your watch-pocket . In the preface to his work on Corneille , M . Guizot , describes the French mind as ever fluctuating between the past and the
future . The same is to be said of the modern European generally : his is the present life . The Hebrew looked to a golden age before him , a Messianic reign ; the Greek looked to a golden age behind him , a Saturnian reign ; to the Christian the kingdom of heaven is already come . Looking both before and after , sometimes he forgets and sometimes he remembers the past ; sometimes he takes thought and sometimes he takes no thought of the morrow ; but he has cast his sheetanchor in the present hour . He ' conceive ! happiness to be a present reality . Either he is blest or he is unblest ; if the former , he . knows that he is blest now and for ever ; if the latter , lie knows that he has but himself to blame , and that the bliss which he hopes to enjoy here after he may have now for the asking . In our English , to have is to enjoy . On the other hand , the Grecian idea of happiness may be learned from what Aristotle says in the first book of the Nichomachean Ethics , and from what is better known the stories of
Tellus and of Cleobis and Biton which Solon told to Croesus , showing that no man could be called happy until we have seen the end of him . Poor soul , he must die , and his friends must see him decently buried before they can offer their gratulations They can say He was happy , not He is happy . The Jew said neither : he could not accept the Pagan idea , and the Christian idea was foreign not only to his nature , but also to his language—the Hebrew verb having no present tense As the Jew of Hounsditch counts upon a man ' s reve rsionary wealth , so the Jew of old looked to a man ' s future prospects , and judged him accordingly . You trace him doeeine after this idea throughout almost every psalm ; talking lightly of past , hugging present misery , if only by the help of God he will hereafter be revenged upon fortune , his enemy . _ " The drift of these remarks will be learned from the following propositions , the
bare statement of which will , I flatter myself , win assent . The Hebrew and lyrical idea of a poet is that of a prophet , votes ; he divines , he foretells . Accordin ^ to th epic or Gre cian idea , the Muses are all daughters of Memory , and m narrative everything is related as bygoue . According to our modern or dramatic idea , the poet is the type and spokesman of his age , and by means of his art he represents everything as present . In other words , the drama is a crystallization of the present , the epic of the past , and the lyric of the future As it has been shown that the Western mind inhabits the present , that the Greek dwelt in the past , and that the Oriental peers into the future , we have herein evidence that the art of romantic times is dramatic , that the art of the classical era is epic , and that the primitive or Eastern development of art is
lyrical . " , We should like to quote many other passages , but must reserve them for occasional use . The following we cannot resist : — " I apoke of the absurdity of running one line into another as a general rule , so that thochief pause is not at t he end of the line , but somewhere in the body of it . This has nothing to do with the music of the verse ; it m a question wholly of penmanship and of printing . The writing of veree in lines is altogether meaningless and there is no reason why words , however timed , should not be written as common prose , unless it is meant at the end of each lino to make a powerful pause . Take the following example from Endymion : — ' By theo will I sit For ever : let our fate stop here—a kid I on this spot will offer : Pan will bid Us livo in peace , in love and peace , among His foroat wildernesses . ' " If you keep to the idea of a lino , these verses ought to be written as they aro spoken , with the rhymes in the middle of the bars : thus' liy theo will I sit /" or over : let our fato stop hero—A kid I on this spot will oftor : Pan will bid us livo in peace , y In love and peace , among his forest wildornossos . This rule is as evident as that which forbids a comma in the place of a full stop , or a full stop in that of a comma . A poet may change the nature of Ins line m of ten a . ho pleases , but he is not free to violate habitually the very idea of a hue . Sometimes he may take that freedom , as in the following from JJeattie « Minstrel : 'And loud enlivening strains provoke tho danco , They meet , they dart away , thoy whool askance : To right , to loft , they tliiid the flying mitzo , Now bound aloft with vigorous spring , tltvii glance Rapid along ;' or as in this from the Princess : ' oho Uogan to address us and wan moving on In gralulation , till as when <( hmtt Turks , and hor slackened sail fhu . s , all h « r vo . co Faltering mid fluttering in her throat , she mod ' My brother . ,,.,.,., .. ¦ ..., ! on . illnwiiblo freedom of tins kind will Hut tho difference between an improper and an allowable i be »* m in what follows from the Faithful Shepherds of HekJior .-• Mom foul disfornporfl Hum or * y « t the hot Hun bred through hi * burnings , while the dog I ' umutitt tho rtujing Hon . ' And surely there must be something radically wrong " » tho mode of printing , S U . « rhyme of Kndymion , and in blank verso *««™ % . U « e «« ptWtn hm ^ ' hs lie rule . JolrtiHon quotes approving » «« yJ » K . t »« t blank vom , « , verjo mlTtrtircyo . U is not a true saving , it is only a poor cmiim « t flu , truth . "" •' , ' „„ , f / fn , « ovo and it makes mume . to the ear j but tho vnrso U which SSJS L'nilSj ^ i" — " - " *»• lUhouldnot l » , writUn 1 -1 , h . t . d
January Is, 1853.] The Leader. 6s
January IS , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 6 S
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 15, 1853, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_15011853/page/17/
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