Homer and he confided to the hearts of men the treasures of their genius, which were, like conscience, unengraved words. A want of sedulity, at least in claiming the property of thoughts, is not among the deficiencies of our modern poets. Some traveller, a little while ago, was so witty as to call Venice Rome; not indeed the Rome of the Tiber, but the Rome of the sea. A poet, warm with keeping up the ball from gazette to gazette, runs instantly to the printers, out of breath at so glorious an opportunity of perpetuating his fame, and declares to all Europe that he had called Venice Rome the year before. We now perceive, but too late for the laurel which they merited, what prodigious poets were your Marat and Bonaparte and Robespierre, with whom England one day was Tyre, another day Carthage, and Paris the Rome of the Seine. Delille. The most absurd imitation of antiquity I can remember anywhere is in Stay's Modern Philosophy. He had found in Virgil the youths and maidens carried on their biers before the faces of their parents; and he makes those of England hang themselves before them. He was unaware that the parents might cut them down, or that the young people could think it likely. Ergo, quæ jubeant prædura incommoda, vitam Lib. III. Landor. We have wandered (and conversation would be tedious unless we did occasionally) far from the subject: but I have not forgotten our Cyclops and Caliban. The character of the Cyclops is somewhat broad and general, but worthy of Euripides, and such as the greatest of Roman poets was incapable of conceiving; that of Caliban is peculiar and stands single: it is admirably imagined and equally well sustained. Another poet would have shown him spiteful: Shakspeare has made the infringement of his idleness the origin of his malice. He has also made him grateful; but then his gratitude is the return for an indulgence granted * Praised, and perhaps read, by Coleridge. to his evil appetites. Those who by nature are grateful are often by nature vindictive: one of these properties is the sense of kindness, the other of unkindness. Religion and comfort require that the one should be cherished, and, that the other should be suppressed. The mere conception of the monster without these qualities, without the sudden impression which bring them vividly out, and the circumstances in which they are displayed, would not be to considerate minds so stupendous as it appeared to Warton, who little 'knew that there is a nil admirari as requisite to wisdom as to happiness. Delille. And yet how enthusiastic is your admiration of Shakspeare! Landor. "He lighted with his golden lamp on high The unknown regions of the human heart, Show'd its bright fountains, show'd its rueful wastes, Refulgent, where eternal breakers roll, For all to see, but no man to approach." The creation of Caliban, wonderful as it is, would excite in me less admiration than a single sentence, or a single sentiment, such as I find in fifty of his pages. No new fiction of a supernatural being exists in poetry. Hurd traces the genealogy of the Fairies, and fancied he made a discovery: the Sylphs have only another name. Witches and wizards and giants, apparently powerful agents, generally prove the imbecility of the author who has any thing to do with them. Dragons and demons awaken our childish fancies, some of which remain with us to the last. Dreams perhaps generated them, superstition presented them with names and attributes, and the poet brings them forth into action. Take your Boileau. Some morning, when we are both of us quite at leisure, I will engage (if I have not done it already) to make out a full hundred of puerilities in your grave, concise, elegant poet. At present I have nothing more to say, than that he never elevates the mind, he never warms or agitates the heart, he inspires no magnanimity, no generosity, no tenderness. What then is he worth? A smile from Louis. Delille. There are excellences, my friend, in Boileau, of which you cannot judge so correctly as a native can: for instance his versification. Landor. I would not creep into the secrets of a versification upon which even you, M. Delille, can ring no changes: a machine which must be regularly wound up at every six syllables, and the construction of which is less artificial than that of a cuckoo-clock. The greater part of the heroic verses in your language may be read with more facility as anapestic than as iambic: there is not a syllable which may not become either short or long, however it usually be pronounced in conversation. The secret of conciseness I know and will communicate to you, so that you may attain it in the samé manner and with the same facility as Boileau and Voltaire have done. Delille. Indeed it costs me infinite pains, and I almost suspect I have sometimes failed. Landor. Well then, in future you may be master of it without any pains at all. Do what they did. Throw away the little links and hinges, the little cramps and dovetails, which lay upon the tables of Homer and of Virgil, which were adjusted with equal nicety by Cicero, Plato, and Demosthenes, and were not overlooked by Bossuet and Pascal; then dock the tail of your commas, and behold a period! The French are convinced that all poetry, to be quite perfect, must be theirs or like it, and remark the obligations that Milton lay under to the Abbé Delille, and Shakspeare to Voltaire. Next in vanity is the declaration of a writer on heraldry, that Raphael, Correggio, and Leonardo were incapable of painting a fleur de lis, and that none but a Frenchman by birth and courage could arrive at this summit of glory! "J'estime qu'il est fort difficile, de bien faire et représenter une fleur de lis mignonnement troussée, qui n'est peintre excellent et Français de nation et de courage: car un Allemand, un Anglais, Espagnol, et Italien, n'en sçauront venir à son honneur, pour la bien proportionner." - Théâtre d'Honneur, par Fauyn, b. 2, c. 6, p. 185. What is called a fleur de lis is in fact a spear-head. Chifflet wrote a treatise to prove that it was a bee. Joannes Ferrandus Aniciensis composed an Epinicion pro liliis. It is wonderful that painters of such courage left any doubt whether what they had drawn so accurately were a flower, a spear-head, or a bee! Before this controversy the Florentines used the iris as the symbol of their city; it being indigenous, its root very fragrant, and used in flavoring wine. We call it orris, corruptly. The good Abbé Delille entertained a high esteem for Milton, but felt that Adam and Eve, Michael and Satan, could not be mignonnement troussés unless by the hand of a Parisian. V. MIDDLETON AND MAGLIABECHI. Magliabechi. The pleasure I have enjoyed in your conversation, sir, induces me to render you such a service as never yet was rendered by an Italian to a stranger. Middleton. You have already rendered me several such, M. Magliabechi; nor, indeed, can any man of letters converse an hour with you and not carry home with him some signal benefit. Magliabechi. Your life is in danger, Mr. Middleton. Middleton. How! impossible! I offend no one, in public or in private: I converse with you only: I avoid all others; and, above all, the busy-bodies of literature and politics. I court no lady: I never go to the palace: I enjoy no favors: I solicit no distinctions: I am neither poet nor painter. Surely then I, if any one, should be exempt from malignity and revenge. Magliabechi. To remove suspense, I must inform you that your letters are opened, and your writings read by the police. The servant whom you dismissed for robbery has denounced you. Middleton. Was it not enough for him to be permitted to plunder me with impunity? Does he expect a reward for this villany? Will his word or his oath be taken? He Magliabechi. Gently, Mr. Middleton. He expects no reward: he received it when he was allowed to rob you. came recommended to you as an honest servant, by several noble families. He robbed them all and a portion of what he stole was restored to them by the police, on condition that they should render to the Government a mutual service when called upon. Middleton. Incredible baseness! Can you smile at it, M. Magliabechi! Can you have any communication with these wretches, — these nobles, as you call them, this servant, this police! Magliabechi. My opinion was demanded by my superiors upon some remarks of yours on the religion of our country. Middleton. I protest, sir, I copied them in great measure from the Latin work of a learned German.* Magliabechi. True; I know the book: it is entitled Facetia Facetiarum. There is some wit and some truth in it; but the better wit is, the more dangerous is it; and truth, like the sun, coming down on us too directly, may give us a brainfever. In this country, Mr. Middleton, we have jalousies not only to our windows but to our breasts: we admit but little light to either, and we live the more comfortably for so doing. If we changed this custom, we must change almost every other; all the parts of our polity having been gradually drawn closer and closer, until at last they form an inseparable mass of religion, laws, and usages. For instance, we condemn as a dangerous error the doctrine of Galileo, that the earth moves about the sun; but we condemn rather the danger than the error of asserting it. Middleton. Pardon my interruption. When I see the doctors of your church insisting on a demonstrable falsehood, have I not reason to believe that they would maintain others less demonstrable, and more profitable? All questions of politics, of morals, and of religion ought to be discussed; but principally should it be examined whether our eternal happiness depends on any speculative point whatever; and secondly, whether those speculative points on which various nations insist as necessary to it are well or ill-founded. I would rather be condemned for believing that to kill an ibis is a sin, than for thinking that to kill a man is not. Yet the former opinion is ridiculed by all modern nations, while the murder of men by thousands is no crime, providing they be flourishing and happy, or will probably soon become so; for then they may cause discontent in other countries, and indeed are likely to excite the most turbulence when they sit down together the most quietly. * Perhaps he may also have cast a glance on L Conformités des Cérémonies modernes avec les Anciennes, of Jean de Croi; and, although he was less likely to acknowledge where it was less likely to be detected, he might have added that the whole idea and much of the substance of his Letter from Rome was taken from a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. All the remainder may be found in Josiah Stopford's Pagano-Papismus. |