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a 8 an art , and is divided into two parts , ono embracing the " kinds of poetry , " the other , " the language of poesy . " 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 o * f 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 o 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 , and 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 AUghieri . Tims , 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 tolls 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 history 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 I ranee , 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 ( largelv 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 iEge an , 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 often been rated so highly as to leave an impression that it sprung mainly if not entirely from a lyrical stock ; a notion fairly met and set aside by the saying of iEschylus 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 which in the parts not wholly lyrical , that is to nay , in the parts which have a dramatic form , is truly epic in thought , word , and deed ; dealing in narrative ; delighting in the historical tenses , quite unlike the romantic drama , where if a narrative is to bo delivered it is delivered in the present tense , and often , as in the well-known cuse 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 , Launcolot Gobbo , good Launcelot , or good Gobbo , or good . Launeelol Gobbo , use your 7 <>< js , take the start , runaway . My conscience says , No : lake heed , honest Launcelot ; Lake heed , honest Gobbo : or , as aforesaid , honest Launeelol Gobbo , do not run ; scorn
runoiin . // with thy heels . Further on : — " That the Hebrew , tho highest type ; of the lyrical mind , fed upon futuritythat tlio ( Jrcck , the highest type of the epic mind , fed upon the olden time - -and that each revelled in its own ' department of thought with a / . ( Mil ami u zest otherwhere unequalled , can hardly be doubted . The Hebrew lived upon prophecy , and in everything , even in their buildings , it may lie hccu how the Orientals looked forward to after-ages . The prevailing feature of their architecture is its massive grandeur , its ntiibiTit . y ; they built for posterity : said Solomon ut the dedication ol the temple , ' 1 have built mii house of habitation for Thee , and a place for Thy dwelling for ever . ' The only exception to this rule in the Sunicenic architecture , and it is an exception that strengthens the rule ; since , if need were , it could easily
be . shown that the slcndcniess for which it is noted was u true offspring of that Moslem faith which , disregarding a future upon earth , courted such a tiptli as illicit ensure a . future in the paradise above , amid fho bowers of the ilouris . Greek architecture , on Mm other hand , neither mocked the eye , us did the Moorish palaces by a seeming frailly and contempt , of permanence , not ' , like the heavy piles of rVy ' pt , ' and the Hust , forced the idea of strength and of futurity upon ( he beholder- it sought rather , by marble IVic / . es and other sculptures embodying legends of the pant , to set t . he hoary crown of elder upon the brow of / . heir temples . Aild if for a moment any doubt can arise that the ( Jreeks have outstrip ! , every i . ronle ancient , or modem ,, in t . Iie remembrance of their forefathers and the . lays ol lore it . can only arise amongst , that , German school of critics who , like Inns oi prey , would t one fell swoop tear from the field of history and cany n |> to the
clouda- limd of fable whatever legends refer to events preceding the Dor . an conquest , oi the VIoIHmum , « , („ . ' 10-1 . ) Hero is not , the p . ace to combat ^^^^ nms , le ,. y to the great- and Letter part of Greek story , . nr .. « ... { , ' Uu * Home , , v even ho much truth , „ . nay be conlained in the stories ol < ! harlemag .. e or ol AHI , and would sink it , to the level of such tales as Pahnmn <> J " - "g l ^ d or / « ; , / , U , n , K if ««•!• ' < - »• ••<' i " <<> "' - " nMUane . s which , lor hav . ug I ...,.,, I he I of Don Quixote « l « ^ M « , d . « , wen , by the pried . »»•» '"" ^^ ' »«*»' t Z , whi o to confute a horosy which hm , never spread to tin * country , and
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 ? tho moderns have again and again been smitten with a desire to regard those legends in preference " to their own . "As the Greek thus dwelt in the past , as the Hebrew dwelt m the future , so the modern dwelt rather in the present . This is one of those facts winch 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 Saturnism 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 conceives happiness to be a present reality . Either he is blest or he is unblest ; if the former , he knows tliat be . is blest now and forever ; if the latter , he 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 sec 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 reversionary wealth , so the Jew of old looked to a man ' s future prospects , and judged him accordingly . You trace him dol ing 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
" The drift of these remarks will be learned from the following propositions , 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 . According to the epic or Grecian idea , the Muses are all daughters of Memory , and in 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 spoke of the absurdity of running one line into another as si general rule , so that the chief pause is not at the end of the line , but somewhere in the body of it . This has nothing to do with the music of the verse ; it is a question wholly of penmanship and of printing- The writing of verse 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 line to make a powerful pause . Take the following example from Kndyniion : — ' I 5 y thee will I sit 3 < Y > r ever : lei . our tale slop here ¦— a kid I on this spol , will offer : Pan will hid Us live in peace , in love and peace , among
. His forest wildernesses . " If you keep to the idea of a line , these verses ought , to be written as they are spoken , " with the rhymes in the middle of the bars : thus' By the . e will I sit ; for ever .- lei , our fate slop here —• A kid I on this spot will oiler : " I ' un will l ) i < l us live in pence , > In love and peace , among his forest wildeniesHos . This rule is as evident , as that , which forbids a comma in the plucn of a full stop ,
or a full stop in t . hat , of a comma . A poet , may change' the nature of Ins hue M often as lie pleases , hut he is not five to violate habitually the very idea of a line . Sometimes he may take that freedom , as in the following from Heiit . bie's Minstrel : ' Ami loud enlivening strains provoke the dance , They meet , they < lurl . away , they wheel nskauco : To right , lo left , I hey thri (' l the flying maze , Now hound aloft , with vigorous spring , then i / litucii .
. Hitfill iitontf ; or as in this from the j ' rinecss : ' She Ke ^ nn to address us and w <» . i moving on . In f-rnlulal ion , /•/// as lo / irii , i boat , 'l \ ichs , anil her slackened , -mil flaps , all her voien Kidlerin tf and llulteriiig in her throat , she cried ' My In-other . Kill , ( he difference between an improper and an allowable freedom of I his kind will he wen in what follows from the Faithful N // , t > hrrdess « , f Fletcher : ' More foul distempers than ere yet I he- hot-H-iin- hred through his burnings , wliilo tho dot / I ' ltrsito . i the rci / iiK / litiit . '
And surely there must he something radically wrong in the mode of printing , when , as in the rhyme of Mndymion , and in lilank verso generally , the exception heroines the rule . Johnson quotes approvingly a , saying , that hlunk verse is verse only to the eye . 11 , is not a . true cay in ; .- ; , it is only a poor cousin of t . he I ruth . Itliink verso in verso to the eye and it makes music to the ear ; hut , the verse which coincu to the ear m not thai which mentis the eye . It whould not bo written or iirintud
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January 15 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 65
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 15, 1853, page 65, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1969/page/17/
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