網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版
[ocr errors]

ter it, states negotiated for his ashes, and disputed present state of poetry in England, and having had for the sites of the composition of the Divina Com-it long, as my friends and others well knowmedia. Petrarch was crowned in the Capitol. possessing, or having possessed too, as a wriAriosto was permitted to pass free by the public ter, the ear of the public for the time being-I robber who had read the Orlando Furioso. I have not adopted a different plan in my own would not recommend Mr. Wordsworth to try the compositions, and endeavoured to correct rasame experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, not-ther than encourage the taste of the day. To this withstanding the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would I would answer, that it is easier to perceive the have been crowned in the Capitol, but for his wrong than to pursue the right, and that I have death. never contemplated the prospect of filling (with It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of Peter Bell,(4) see its Preface) permanently a station the chief poets of the only modern nation in Eu- in the literature of the country." Those who know rope that has a poetical language, the Italian. In me best know this; and that I have been consiour own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, derably astonished at the temporary success of my Dryden, Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thom- works, having flattered no person and no party, son, Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, were all as popular and expressed opinions which are not those of the in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy pleased in- general reader. Could I have anticipated the destantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet gree of attention which has been accorded me, asdo they, please like his Elegy. Milton's politics suredly I would have studied more to deserve it. kept him down. But the Epigram of Dryden,(1) · But I have lived in far countries abroad, or in the and the very sale of his work, in proportion to the agitating world at home, which was not favourable less reading time of its publication, prove him to to study or reflection; so that almost all I have have been honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after its publication, than that of The Excursion in the same number, with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of time, and of thou-, sands in point of general readers. Notwithstanding Mr. Wordsworth's having pressed Milton into his service as one of those not presently popular, to favour his own purpose of proving that our grandchildren will read him (the said William Wordsworth). I would recommend him to begin first with our grandmothers. But he need not be alarmed; he may yet live to see all the envies pass away, as Darwin and Seward, and Hoole, and Hole, (2) and Hoyle,(3) have passed away; but their declension will not be his ascension: he is essentially a bad writer, and all the failures of others can never strengthen him. He may have a sect, but he will never have a public; and his "audience" will always be " few," without being "fit,"-except for Bedlam.

It

written has been mere passion,-passion, it is true, of different kinds, but always passion for in me (if it be not an Irishism to say so) my indifference was a kind of passion, the result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry: there are women who have had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there are millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on; encouraged no doubt by the success of the moment, yet by no means anticipating its duration, and, I will venture to say, scarcely even wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity.

I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day the opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it as 1 told Moore not very long ago," we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell." (5) With

may be asked, why, having this opinion of the out being old in years, I am old in days, and do

(4) The well-known lines under Milton's picture,

[ocr errors]

"Three poets, in three distant ages born," etc.-E. (2) The Rev Richard Hole. He published, in early life, a versification of Kingal, and, in 1789, Arthur, a Poetical Romance. He died in 1803.-E.

(3) Charles Hoyle, of Trinity College, Cambridge, author of Exodus, an epic in thirteen books.-E.

(4) Peter Bell first saw the light in 1798. During this long interval, pains have been taken at different times to make the production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the literature of my country." Wordsworth, 1819.-E.

(5) certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my noble friend, no less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar

walk of the art in which he himself so grandly trod, than in the
inconsistency of which I thought him guilty, in condemning all
those who stood up for particular schools' of poetry, and yet,
at the same time, maintaining so exclusive a theory of the art
himself. How little, however, he attended to either the grounds
or degrees of my dissent from him will appear by the following
wholesale report of my opinion in Detached Thoughts:- One
of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, is, that
the present is not a high age of English poetry. There are
more poets soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportion-i
nally less poetry. This thesis I have maintained for some years,
but, strange to say, it meeteth not with favour from my brethren
of the shell. Even Moore shakes his head, and firmly believes
that it is the grand age of British poesy."" Moore.

1

886

not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt has no genius. We are sneeringly told that he is a work which should show what I think right in the "Poet of Reason," as if this was a reason for his poetry, and must content myself with having being no poet. Taking passage for passage, I will denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, undertake to cite more lines teeming with imaginyounger spirits rising up in England, who, es- ation from Pope than from any two living poets, caping the contagion which has swept away poe-be they who they may. To take an instance at try, from our literature, will recall it to their country, such as it once was and may still be.

In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance, and new and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden.

:

random from a species of composition not very favourable to imagination-Satire set down the character of Sporus,(2) with all the wonderful play of fancy which is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same variety-where will you find them?

I merely mention one instance of many, in reply to the injustice done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The attorney's clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to distort themselves to the new models, than to toil after the symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of literary treason.

Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever wrote who could rhyme, became -or else such rhyme as looked the order of the day,still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that

There will be found as comfortable metaphysics, and ten times more poetry, in the Essay on Man, than in the Excursion. If you search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Ar- | cite? Do you wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character ? seek them in the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode for Saint Cecilia's Day, and Absolom and Architophel: you will discover, in these two poets only, all for which you must ransack innumerable metres, and God only knows how many writers of the day, without finding a tittle of the same qualities, with the addition, too, of wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family,(1) nor Whistlecraft; but that is not wit-it is humour. I will say nothing of the harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a living | he could not "prevail upon himself to wish that poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Milton had been a rhymer." The opinions of that Crabbe), who can write an heroic couplet. The truly great man, whom it is also the present fashion fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their versifi- to decry, will ever be received by me with that decation has withdrawn the public attention from ference which time will restore to him from all; their other excellences, as the vulgar eye will rest but, with all humility, I am not persuaded that the more upon the splendour of the uniform than the Paradise Lost would not have been more nobly quality of the troops. It is this very harmony, par- conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couticularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and plets, although even they could sustain the subject atrocious cant against him:-because his versifi- | if well balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser or cation is perfect, it is assumed that it is his only of Tasso, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the perfection; because his truths are so clear, it is as-powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our serted that he has no invention; and because he is language. The Seasons of Thomson would have always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he been better in rhyme, although still inferior to his

(1) In 1812, Mr. Moore published The Twopenny Postbag by Thomas Brown the Younger; and, in 1818, The Fudge Family in Paris.-E.

(2) "P. Let Sporus tremble.--A. What! that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel!
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and sings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys;
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;

[ocr errors]

Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

Half froth, half venom, spit himself abroad,

In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies,
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have express'd,

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest:
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust."

Prol. to Sat.-E.

Castle of Indolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Are no worse, although it might have taken up six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's Odes by the side of Dryden's on "Saint Cecilia," but let him be sure to read first those of Mr. Southey.

To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day much of this will appear paradox: it will appear so even to the higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago, and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge about them to think themselves honoured by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their earliest English poetica! pleasures were drawn from the "little nightingale" of Twickenham. The first is from the notes to the

Poem of the Friends: (1)—

it affects our poetical numbers alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present reflection."

The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him : (2)—

"But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of-were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school (3)
Of dolls to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of poesy. Ill-fated impious race,
That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,
And did not know it; no, they went about
Holding a poor decrepit standard out
Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of one Boileau!"

A little before, the manner of Pope is termed,
"A scism, (4)

Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,
Made great Apollo blush for this his land."(5)
I thought "foppery” was a consequence of re-
finement; but n'importe.

The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new performers on the English

"It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequence of this want of due esteemlyre of him who made it most tuneable, and the for a writer, whom the good sense of our prede- great improvements of their own "variazioni." cessors had raised to his proper station, have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as

(1) Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis Hodgson.-E.

(2) In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated Nov. 12, 1821, Lord Byron says,-" Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a blood-vessel on reading the article on his Endymion in the Quarterly Review. I have read the article before and since; and, although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation of Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genius, which, malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Eschylus. He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and was re-forming his style upon the more classical models of the language.-E.

(3) It was at least a grammar “school."

(4) So spelt by the author.

(5) As a balance to these lines, and to the sense and sentiment of the new school, I will put down a passage or two from Pope's earliest poems, taken at random :

'Envy her own snakes shall feel,

And Persecution mourn her broken wheel,
There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain,
And gasping Furies thirst for blood in vain."

"Ah! what avails his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet-circled eyes;
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold.
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold!"
"Round broken columns clasping ivy twined,
O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind,

The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such lines and such

The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires."
"Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T'admire superior sense, and doubt their own!"
"Amphion there the loud creating lyre

Strikes, and behold a sudden Thebes aspire!
Citharon's echoes answer to his call.
And half the mountain rolls into a wall."
"So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost,
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast;
Pale suns, unfelt, at distance roll away,
And on th' impassive ice the lightnings play;
Eternal snow the growing mass supply,

Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky,
As Atlas fix'd, each hoary pile appears,
The gather'd winter of a thousand years."
"Thus, when we view some well proportion'd dome,
The world's just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!
No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to the admiring eyes,
No monstrous height, or length, appear;
The whole at once is bold and regular."

A thousand similar passages crowd upon me, all composed by Pope before his two-and-twentieth year; and yet it is contended that he is no poet, and we are told so in such lines as I beg the reader to compare with these youthful verses of the "no poet.' Must we repeat the question of Johnson, "If Pope is not a poet where is poetry to be found?" Even in descriptive poetry, the

[ocr errors]

sentiments as the above. He says easy was the task" of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume. I recommend him to try, before he is so positive on the subject; and then compare what he will have then written and what he has now written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope, produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. Keats when he invented his new Essay on Criticism, entitled Sleep and Poetry (an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.

Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard works; and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the ease of not imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides, "because he was tired of always hearing him called the Just,” have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of Literature. But the term of his ostracism will expire, and the sooner the better, not for him, but for those who banished him, and for the coming generation, who

"Will blush to find their fathers were his foes."

I will now return to the writer of the article which has drawn forth these remarks, whom I honestly take to be John Wilson, a man of great powers and acquirements, well known to the public as the author of the City of the Plague, Isle of Palms, and other productions. I take the liberty of naming him, by the same species of courtesy which has induced him to designate me as the author of Don Juan. Upon the score of the Lake Poets, he may

Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars. The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell, Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, (1) Hayley, and the author of the Paradise of Coquettes; (2) to whom may be added Richards, Heber, Wrangham, Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full fame, because "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," and because there is a fortune in fame as in all other things. Now, of all the new schools-I say all, for, "like Legion, they are many" has there appeared a single scholar who has not made his master ashamed of him?-perhaps recall to mind that I merely express an unless it be Sotheby, who has imitated every body, opinion long ago entertained and specified in a and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott letter to Mr. James Hogg, (6) which he the said found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair James Hogg, somewhat contrary to the law of pens. sex there was Miss Holford, (3) and Miss Mit-showed to Mr. John Wilson, in the year 1814, as ford,(4) and Miss Francis ; (5) but, with the greatest he himself informed me in his answer, telling met respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did by way of apology, that " he 'd be d――d if he could) much honour to the original, except Hogg, the Et-help it;" and I am not conscious of any thing like trick Shepherd, until the appearance of The Bridal | "envy" or "exacerbation" at this moment which of Triermain, and Harold the Dauntless, which in the opinion of some equalled, if not surpassed him; and lo! after three or four years, they turned out to be the Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or t'other fellow, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till he set up for himself in the City of the Plague. Has Moore, or any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or rather disciple? Now, it is remarkable, that almost all the followers of

lowest department of the art, he will be found, on a fair examination, to surpass any living writer.

(1) Thomas James Matthias, Esq, the well-known author of the Pursuits of Literature, Imperial Epistle to Kien Long, etc. In 1814, Mr. M. edited an edition of Gray's Works, which the University of Cambridge published at its own expense.-E. (2) Dr. Thomas Brown, professor of moral philosophy, in the University of Edinburgh, who died in 1820.-E.

(3) Author of Wallace, or the Fight of Falkirk, Margaret of Anjou, and other poems.-E,

(4) Miss Mary Russell Mitford, author of Christina, or the Maid of the South Seas, Wallington Hall, Our Village, etc. etc.-E.

(5) Miss Eliza Francis published, in 1815, Sir Wilibert de Waverley; or the Bridal Eve.-E.

(6) "Oh! I have bad the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick minstrel and shepherd. He wants me to recommend him to Murray; and, speaking of his present bookseller, whose

induces me to think better or worse of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as poets than I do now. although I do know one or two things more which have added to my contempt for them as individuals. (7) And, in return for Mr. Wilson's invective, I shall content myself with asking one question:-Did he never compose, recite, or sing, any ¦ parody or parodies upon the Psalms (of what nature this deponent saith not), in certain jovial¦ meetings of the youth of Edinburgh? (8) It is not

'bills' are never 'lifted,' he adds, totidem verbis. 'God d—n,
him, and them both.' I laughed, and so would you too, at the
way in which this execration is introduced. The said Blogg is
a strange being, but of great, though uncouth, powers. I think ¦
very highly of him as a poet; but he and half of these Scotch
and Lake troubadours are spoilt by living in little circles and
petty societies."-B. Letters.-E.

(7) The reader will find, on reference to Moore's Life of Byron, that his Lordship was not less mistaken in attributing the "Remarks on Don Juan" in the Edinburgh Magazine to Professor Wilson, than in supposing Dr. Chalmers to have been the Presbyter anglicanus" who criticised his Beppo in the

same journal.-E

(8) The allusion here is to some now forgotten calumnies which had been circulated by the radical press, at the time when Mr Wilson was a candidate for the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh—E.

that I think any great harm if he did; because it I will now conclude this long answer to a short seems to me that all depends upon the intention of article, repenting of having said so much in my such a parody. If it be meant to throw ridicule own defence, and so little on the “crying lefton the sacred original, it is a sin: if it be intended hand fallings-off and national defections" of the to burlesque the profane subject, or to inculcate a poetry of the present day. Having said this, I can moral truth, it is none. If it were, the Unbeliever's hardly be expected to defend Don Juan, or any Creed, the many political parodies of various parts other “living” poetry, and shall not make the atof the Scriptures and liturgy, particularly a cele- tempt. And although I do not think that Mr. John brated one of the Lord's Prayer, and the beautiful Wilson has in this instance treated me with canmoral parable in favour of toleration by Franklin, dour or consideration, I trust that the tone I have which has often been taken for a real extract from used in speaking of him personally will prove that Genesis, would all be sins of a damning nature. I bear him as little malice as I really believe, at the But I wish to know if Mr. Wilson ever has done bottom of his heart, he bears towards me; but this, and if he has, why he should be so very angry the duties of an editor, like those of a tax-gatherer, with similar portions of Don Juan?-Did no are paramount and peremptory. I have done. "parody profane" appear in any of the earlier numbers of Blackwood's Magazine?

BYRON.

THE ADIEU.

Miscellaneous Poems.

WRITTEN UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT THE
AUTHOR WOULD SOON DIE.

ADIEU, thou Hill! (4) where early joy
Spread roses o'er my brow; ·
Where Science seeks each loitering boy
With knowledge to endow.
Adieu, my youthful friends or woes,
Partners of former bliss or foes,

No more through Ida's paths we stray;
Soon must I share the gloomy cell,
Whose ever-slumbering inmates dwell
Unconscious of the day.

Adieu, ye hoary regal fanes,

Ye spires of Granta's vale,

Were Learning, robed in sable, reigns,
And Melancholy pale.

Ye comrades of the jovial hour,
Ye tenants of the classic bower,

On Cama's verdant margin placed,
Adieu! while memory still is mine,
For, offerings on Oblivion's shrine,
These scenes must be effaced.
Adieu, ye mountains of the clime
Where grew my youthful years,
Where Loch-na-Garr in snows sublime
His giant summit rears.

Why did my childhood wander forth
From you, ye regions of the North,

(4) Harrow.-E.

(9) The river Grete, at Southwell -E.

With sons of pride to roam?
Why did I quit my Highland cave,
Marr's dusky heath, and Dee's clear wave,
To seek a Southeron home?

Hall of my Sires! a long farewell-
Yet why to thee adieu ?

Thy vaults will echo back my knell,
Thy towers my tomb will view:
The faltering tongue which sung thy fall,
And former glories of thy Hall,

Forgets its wonted simple note-
But yet the lyre retains the strings,
And sometimes, on Æolian wings,
In dying strains may float.

Fields, which surround yon rustic cot,
While yet I linger here,

Adieu! you are not now forgot,

To retrospection dear.

Streamlet! (2) along whose rippling surge,
My youthful limbs were wont to urge,

At noontide heat, their pliant course;
Plunging with ardour from the shore,
Thy springs will lave these limbs no more,
Deprived of active force.

And shall I here forget the scene,

Still nearest to my breast?
Rocks rise, and rivers roll between

The spot which passion blest;
Yet, Mary, (3) all thy beauties seem
Fresh as in Love's bewitching dream,

3) Mary Duff.-E.

« 上一頁繼續 »