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Page 21
An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony
in the language of poetical minds, together with its relation to
music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms of
harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that a poet
should accommodate his language to this traditional form, so that the
harmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed
convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such
composition as includes much action: but every great poet must
inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the
exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction
between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction
between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was
essentially a poet--the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the
melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible
to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and
lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts
divested of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any regular
plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the
varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence
of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet.
[Footnote: See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death
particularly]. His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which
satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom
of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it is a strain which
distends, and then bursts the circumference of the reader's mind,
and pours itself forth together with it into the universal element
with which it has perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions
in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors,
nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things
by images which participate in the life of truth; but as their
periods are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves
the elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are
those supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm
on account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable
of perceiving and teaching the truth of things, than those who
have omitted that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine
ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest
power.
A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.
There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story
is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connexion
than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the
creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human
nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself
the image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only
to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events
which can never again recur; the other is universal, and contains
within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions
have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, which
destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts,
stripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments that of
poetry, and for ever develops new and wonderful applications of the
eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes have been called
the moths of just history; they eat out the poetry of it. A story
of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that
which should be beautiful: poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful
that which is distorted.
The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition
as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be a considered as
a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated
portions: a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable
thought. And thus all the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch,
Livy, were poets; and although, the plan of these writers, especially
that of Livy, restrained them; from developing this faculty in
its highest degree, they made copious and ample amends for their
subjection, by filling all the interstices of their subjects with
living images.
Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us proceed
to estimate its effects upon society.
Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it
falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with
its delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves
nor their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry:
for it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above
consciousness; and it is reserved for future generations to contemplate
and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the strength and
splendour of their union. Even in modern times, no living poet ever
arrived at the fullness of his fame; the jury which sits in judgement
upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed
of his peers: it must be impanelled by Time from the selectest of
the wise of many generations. A poet is a nightingale, who sits
in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds;
his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen
musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not
whence or why. The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the
delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social
system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization
has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in
human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses
were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector,
and Ulysses the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and
persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in
these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have
been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely
impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation
they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration.
Nor let it be objected, that these characters are remote from moral
perfection, and that they can by no means be considered as edifying
patterns for general imitation. Every epoch, under names more
or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the
naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age; and Self-deceit
is the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety
lie prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries
as a temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and
which cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their
beauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to wear them
around his soul, as he may the ancient armour or the modern uniform
around his body; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress more graceful
than either. The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far
concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its
form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate
the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic
form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most
barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class
have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its
naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy
of costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary
music for mortal ears.
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