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Page 40
'The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;--
The conscious stone to beauty grew.'
EMERSON.
By the power of the combining imagination various ideas are chosen from
an infinite mass, ideas which are separately imperfect, but which shall
together be perfect, and of whose unity therefore the idea must be
formed at the very moment they are seized, as it is only in that unity
that their appropriateness consists, and therefore only the conception
of that unity can prompt the preference. Therefore he alone can conceive
and compose who sees the _whole_ at once before him.
Shakspeare is the great example of this marvellous power. Not only is
every word which falls from the lips of his various characters true to
his first conception of them, so true that we always know how they will
act under any given circumstances, and we could substitute no other
words than the words used by them without contradicting our first
impression of them; but every character with which they come in contact
is not only ever true to itself, but is precisely of the nature best
fitted to develop the traits, vices, or virtues of the main figure. So
perfect and complete is this lifelike unity, that we can scarcely think
of one of his leading characters without recalling all those with whom
it is associated. If we name Juliet, for instance, not only is her idea
inseparable from that of Romeo, but the whole train of Montagues and
Capulets, Mercutio, Tybalt, the garrulous nurse, the lean apothecary,
the lonely friar, sweep by. What an exquisite trait of the poetic
temperament, tenderness, and human sympathies of this same lonely friar
is given us in his exclamation:
'Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.'
It also explains to us that it was the good friar's unconscious
affection for Juliet, the pure sympathies of a lonely but loving heart,
which so imprudently induced him to unite the unfortunate young lovers.
The men and women of Shakspeare live and love, and we cannot think of
them without at the same time thinking of those with whom they lived and
whom they loved. Indeed, when we can wrest any character in a drama from
those which surround it, and study it apart, the unity of the _whole_ is
but apparent, never vital. Simplicity, harmony, life, power, truth, and
love, are all to be found in any high work of the _associative_
imagination.
We now proceed to characterize the _penetrative_ imagination, 'which
analyzes and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.' Of this
faculty Shakspeare is also master. Ruskin, from whom we continue to
quote, says: It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any
kind, but ploughing them all aside, plunges at once into the very
central fiery heart; its function and gift are the getting at the root;
its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always _by the
heart_. Take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy
no longer; it looks not into the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it
describes not by outward features; all that it affirms, judges, or
describes, it affirms from _within_. There is _no reasoning_ in it; it
works not by algebra nor by integral calculus; it is a piercing
Pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very
rock-heart; no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or
spirit, all is alike divided asunder, joint and marrow; whatever utmost
truth, life, principle it has laid bare, and that which has no truth,
life, nor principle, is dissipated into its original smoke at a touch.
The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. Vials that have
lain sealed in the sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of
them genii.
Every great conception of Art is held and treated by this faculty. Every
character touched by men like �schylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare, is
by them held by the _heart_; and every circumstance or sentence of their
being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by a process from _within_, and
is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost
for a moment; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from
the heart, opens a way down to the heart, and leads us to the very
centre of life. Hence there is in every word set down by the Imagination
an awful undercurrent of meaning--an evidence and shadow upon it of the
deep places out of which it has come.
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