that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox1 article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phænomenon 2 indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. 11. The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits it, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy, could teach Montague or Wal1 Orthodox, correct theologically; hence, correct in general. 2 Now usually spelled phenomenon ; "6 a thing appearing," something whose appearing requires explanation. 3 Mrs. Marcet wrote a text-book for children called Conversations on Political Economy. The conversation is carried on by Mrs. B., who expounds the principles of Adam Smith, Malthus, Say, and Sismondi, to Caroline, who asks the questions" which would be likely to arise in the mind of an intelligent young person." A letter of Maria Edgeworth's, written from the house of Mr. Ricardo in 1822, says: "It is now high fashion with blue ladies to talk political economy and make a great jabbering on the subject, while others who have more sense, like Mrs. Marcet, hold their tongues and listen." * Charles Montague (1661–1715), afterwards Earl of Halifax; like Cowley a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge; an intimate friend of Sir Isaac Newton. He became famous as Chancellor of the Ex pole1 many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. 12. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical. 13. This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge, but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. chequer under William III. for his extraordinary skill in finance. Under his advice and guidance the Bank of England was founded, and he took the measures also which began the national debt of England. See Macaulay, History of England, vol vii., chap. xix. 1 Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), the great finance minister of George II., who developed especially the excise duties. His policy was devoted to preserving peace abroad and establishing principles of sound finance and of economical taxation at home. 2 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), another Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge, an unrivalled genius in mathematical speculation. His most famous book was entitled Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. His great discoveries were in optics, in gravitation, and in the invention of mathematical processes. See Hawthorne's True Stories for a little biography of this famous man. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases instead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury. He may refer all human actions to self-interest like Helvetius, or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lacrymal3 glands, or the circulation of the blood, will affect the tears of his Niobe,* The third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713), an amiable and shy young man, for whom public-school life was too rough, and who therefore learned his Greek from Eliza Birch by the "natural method." His fame as a writer is chiefly due to a book on human actions entitled Characteristics. He maintains that men have a special sense which sees right and wrong as the eye sees light. He invented for this the term "moral sense," which phrase he may be said to have contributed to the English language. 2 Helvetius (1715-1771), a popular philosopher in Parisian society about a generation before the French Revolution. He was a curious person, so vain of popular applause that he appeared once as a stagedancer. His chief work, entitled De l'Esprit (On the Human Mind), maintained that self-interest was the spring of all human action, that there was no such thing as right and wrong apart from what is pleasant and painful. This, he says, is "Le secret de tout le monde." His book made a great stir, incurring even the notice of the Sorbonne and the Parliament of Paris. 3 Lacrymal, secreting tears. 4 In Greek mythology a queen whose pride in her children led her to make impious comparisons of them to Apollo and Artemis, the children of Latona. Her children were therefore slain by the arrows of these gods, while Niobe, after vainly trying to defend them, became changed into a rock, weeping forever. or the blushes of his Aurora.1 If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville 2 have created an Iago ? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man-a real, living, individual man? 14. Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean, not, of course, all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean, the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and 1 Aurora, the goddess of dawn, always rosy and blushing, according to Greek and Latin poetic fancy. 2 Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733), a satirical writer. The Fable of the Bees appeared in 1705. The moral of the fable is that it is the selfishness and extravagance, and even the vices of society, which make the market for labor. Thus luxury is the root of all civilisation, and "Private Vices, Publick Benefits." The fable narrates that certain Bees left their busy hive and went off to live a frugal life in a hollow tree, where by their injudicious temperance and virtue they all starved. 3 A principal character in Shakespeare's Othello, a famous villain. still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled: "As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which he ascribes to the poeta fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence, of all people, children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet, in spite of her knowledge, she believes; she weeps, she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds. 4 3 1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V., Sc. I. 2 Premises, a term in logic; better "premisses." It means a proposition, belief in which leads to belief in another proposition called a conclusion. 3 In current English we are apt to use "sensitiveness" instead of "sensibility," in this meaning of "capacity for acute feeling." But notice the title of Jane Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility. 'Shakespeare's well-known plays. |