OLD ENGLISH POETRY (*)
IT should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection withwhich we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be-attributed towhat is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry-we mean to the simplelove of the antique-and that, again, a third of even the proper _poeticsentiment _inspired_ _by their writings should be ascribed to a factwhich, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, andwith the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon asa merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devoutadmirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; onbeing required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure,he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in generalhandling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct toideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of theauthor's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words andtheir rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vividdelight, and which delight, in many instances, may be traced to the onesource, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction, avery commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poemsnow-we mean it only as against the poets _thew. _There is a growingdesire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless,sincere, and although very learned, still learned without art. Nogeneral error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than theerror of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense whereinWordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were theend-with the two latter the means. The poet of the Creation wished,by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moraltruth-the poet of the Ancient Mariner to infuse the Poetic Sentimentthrough channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by completefailure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, bya path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumphwhich is not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes ofthe multitude. But in this view even the metaphysical verse of Cowleyis but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. Andhe was in this but a type of his school-for we may as well designatein this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up inthe volume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a veryperceptible general character. They used little art in composition.Their writings sprang immediately from the soul-and partook intensely ofthat soul's nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of this_abandon-to elevate _immeasurably all the energies of mind-but, again,so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all goodthings, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility, as torender it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind insuch a school will be found inferior to those results in one _(ceteris_paribus) more artificial.
We can not bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the Bookof Gems are such as will impart to a poetical reader the clearestpossible idea of the beauty of the school-but if the intention hadbeen merely to show the school's character, the attempt might have beenconsidered successful in the highest degree. There are long passages nowbefore us of the most despicable trash, with no merit whateverbeyond that of their antiquity.. The criticisms of the editor do notparticularly please us. His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid notto be false. His opinion, for example, of Sir Henry Wotton's Verses onthe Queen of Bohemia-that there are few finer things in our language,is untenable and absurd.
In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes ofPoesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout alltime. Here every thing is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. Noprepossession for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine noother prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name ofpoetry, a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments,stitched, apparently, together, without fancy, without plausibility, andwithout even an attempt at adaptation.
In common with all the world, we have been much delighted with TheShepherd's Hunting by Withers--a poem partaking, in a remarkabledegree, of the peculiarities of Il Penseroso. Speaking of Poesy theauthor says:
By the murmur of a spring, Or the least boughs rustleling, By a daisy whose leaves spread, Shut when Titan goes to bed, Or a shady bush or tree, She could more infuse in me Than all Nature's beauties can In some other wiser man. By her help I also now Make this churlish place allow Something that may sweeten gladness In the very gall of sadness-- The dull loneness, the black shade, That these hanging vaults have made The strange music of the waves Beating on these hollow caves, This black den which rocks emboss, Overgrown with eldest moss, The rude portals that give light More to terror than delight, This my chamber of neglect
Walled about with disrespect; From all these and this dull air A fit object for despair, She hath taught me by her might To draw comfort and delight.
But these lines, however good, do not bear with them much of the generalcharacter of the English antique. Something more of this will be foundin Corbet's Farewell to the Fairies! We copy a portion of Marvell'sMaiden lamenting for her Fawn, which we prefer-not only as a specimenof the elder poets, but in itself as a beautiful poem, abounding inpathos, exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness-to anything ofits species:
It is a wondrous thing how fleet 'Twas on those little silver feet, With what a pretty skipping grace It oft would challenge me the race, And when't had left me far away 'Twould stay, and run again, and stay; For it was nimbler much than hinds, And trod as if on the four winds. I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown, And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness; And all the spring-time of the year It only loved to be there. Among the beds of lilies I Have sought it oft where it should lie, Yet could not, till itself would rise, Find it, although before mine eyes. For in the flaxen lilies' shade It like a bank of lilies laid; Upon the roses it would feed Until its lips even seemed to bleed, And then to me 'twould boldly trip, And print those roses on my lip, But all its chief delight was still With roses thus itself to fill, And its pure virgin limbs to fold In whitest sheets of lilies cold. Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within.
How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable!It pervades all.. It comes over the sweet melody of the words-over thegentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself-evenover the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on thebeauties and good qualities of her favorite-like the cool shadow of asummer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, and all sweet flowers.The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line isan idea conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or theartlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or hergrief, or the fragrance and warmth and _appropriateness _of the littlenest-like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay uponthem, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happylittle damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile onher face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thoughtin the few lines we have quoted the _wonder _of the little maiden at thefleetness of her favorite-the little silver feet--the fawn challenginghis mistress to a race with a pretty skipping grace, running onbefore, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her approach only tofly from it again-can we not distinctly perceive all these things? Howexceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,
And trod as if on the four winds!
A vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character ofthe speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Thenconsider the garden of my own, so overgrown, entangled with roses andlilies, as to be a little wilderness--the fawn loving to be there,and there only--the maiden seeking it where it _should _lie--andnot being able to distinguish it from the flowers until itself wouldrise--the lying among the lilies like a bank of lilies--the loving tofill itself with roses,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold In whitest sheets of lilies cold,
and these things being its chief delights-and then the pre-eminentbeauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperboleonly renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence,the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and morepassionate admiration of the bereaved child--
Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without, roses within.
* Book of Gems, Edited by S. C. Hall