She had dreams all yesternight Of her own betrothed knight; And shè in the midnight wood will pray She stole along, she nothing spoke, She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, The lady sprang up suddenly, Of the huge, broàd-breasted, òld oak trèe The night is chill, the forest bare; (This "bleak moaning" is a witch's) There is not wind enough in the air Hush, beating heart of Christabel ! She folded her arms beneath her cloak, There she sees a damsel bright, Her stately neck and arms were bare : I guess 'twas frightful there to see The principle of Variety in Uniformity is here worked out in a style "beyond the reach of art." Every thing is diversified according to the demand of the moment, of the sounds, the sights, the emotions; the very uniformity of the outline is gently varied; and yet we feel that the whole is one and of the same character, the single and sweet unconsciousness of the heroine making all the rest seem more conscious, and ghastly, and expectant. It is thus that versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem, and vindicates the pains that have been taken to show its importance. I know of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry; no poetry of a mean order accompanied with verse of the highest. As to Rhyme, which might be thought too insignificant to mention, it is not at all so. The universal consent of modern Europe, and of the East in all ages, has made it one of the musical beauties of verse for all poetry but epic and dramatic, and even for the former with Southern Europe,--a sustainment for the enthusiasm, and a demand to enjoy. The mastery of it consists in never writing it for its own sake, or at least never appearing to do so; in knowing how to vary it, to give it novelty, to render it more or less strong, to divide it (when not in couplets) at the proper intervals, to repeat it many times where luxury or animal spirits demand it (see an instance in Titania's speech to the Fairies), to impress an affecting or startling remark with it, and to make it, in comic poetry, a new and surprising addition to the jest. Large was his bounty and his soul sincere, He gave to misery all he had, a tear ; He gain'd from heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. The fops are proud of scandal; for they cry Gray's Elegy. Dryden's Prologue to the Pilgrim What makes all doctrines plain and clear? Compound for sins they are inclin❜d to, Stor'd with deletery meď'cines, Hudibras. Id. Sometimes it is a grace in a master like But er to force his rhyme, thus showing a laughing wilful power over the most stubborn materials: Win The women, and make them draw in Hudibras. He made an instrument to know If the moon shines at full or no; That would, as soon as e'er she shone, straight Tell what her diameter to an inch is, And prove that she's not made of green cheese. Id. Pronounce it, by all means, grinches, to make the joke more wilful. The happiest triple rhyme, perhaps, that ever was written, is in Don Juan : But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly,-haven't they hen-peck'd you all? The sweepingness of the assumption completes the flowing breadth of effect. Dryden confessed that a rhyme often gave him a thought. Probably the happy word "sprung," in the following passage from Ben Jonson, was suggested by it; but then the poet must have had the feeling in him. Let our trumpets sound, Let every lyre be strung, With touch of dainty thumbs. Boileau's trick for appearing to rhyme naturally was to com. pose the second line of his couplet first! which gives one the crowning idea of the "artificial school of poetry." Perhaps the most perfect master of rhyme, the easiest and most abundant, was the greatest writer of comedy that the world has seen,— Molière. If a young reader should ask, after all, What is the quickest way of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best, and so on? the answer is, the only and two-fold way; first, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention; and, second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry partakes a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature; and no one can be completely such, who does not love, or take an interest in, everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy, from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of the low. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realizes the greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates reference. It enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up towards the stature of its exalter. If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the highest? I should say, undoubtedly, the Epic; for it includes the drama, with narration besides; or the speaking and action of the characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose utmost address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. Whether this class has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial; for Shakspeare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claimant is Homer; though, if a judgment may be drawn from his early narratives (Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece), it is to be doubted whether even Shakspeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfœtation of thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired even in his plays ;-if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to wish it away. Next to Homer and Shakspeare come such narrators as the less universal, but still intenser Dante; Milton, with his dignified imagination; the universal, profoundly simple Chaucer; and luxuriant, remote Spenser-immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes: then the great second-rate dramatists; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am, demand a place for them before Chaucer: then the airy yet robust universality of Ariosto; the hearty, out-of-door nature of Theocritus, also a universalist; the finest lyrical poets (who only take short flights, compared with the narrators); the purely contemplative poets who have more thought than feeling; the descriptive, satirical, didactic, epigrammatic. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the first poet of an inferior class may be superior to followers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted; otherwise Pope would be superior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope. Imagination, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest poets; feeling and thought the next; fancy (by itself) the next; wit the last. Thought by itself makes no poet at all; for the mere conclusions of the understanding can at best be only so many intellectual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious thought, stands a far better poetical chance; feeling being a sort of thought without the process of thinking,-a grasper of the truth without seeing it. And what is very remarkable, feeling seldom makes the blunders that thought does. An idle distinction has been made between taste and judgment. Taste is the very maker of judgment. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, or only handle it, and you will soon perceive the difference between judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract figment called judgment. The latter does but throw you into guesses and doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us in the gravest, and even subtlest thinkers, whose taste is not proportonate to their mental perceptions; men like Donne, for instance; |