Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

=

[ocr errors]

To nine readers out of ten, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, this, we are confident, will appear a good sentence, and we are perfectly aware, that to stem the torrent of such writing, criticism is even now in danger of interposing too late : yet, whoever will turn to a page of Swift or Addison, will be at no loss to determine what they would have thought of it-nor, if he have a spark of true taste, fail to perceive that the great change in style, which has taken place since their days, is depravation, not improvement. The history of the Picts is only accompanied by such glimpses of the moon, as shew it to be little more than a tissue of domestic strife and foreign war.' Warburton said of one of his antagonists, that he saw his object only by owl-light. The torch lighted his march to the Tay;' p. 210. meaning the flames of burning houses, a phrase so dear to Mr. Chalmers, that he repeats it about twenty times. The first stratum of names on the map of North Britain is Cambro-British; the second stratum superinducted upon the former, &c.' p. 229. His precursor had already done so much to annihilate the Picts, that it did not require much effort in our historical introductor, who affects to look on antiquity through the medium of the ancients, to adjudge the Picts to death and hell by doom severe.' p. 230. The historiographer royal, whose history of Scotland would not now be received,' Mr. Chalmers, did not tagg his prose with vile ends of poetry. Egfred marched against the Picts in opposition to the remonstrances of his Eoldermen, and the foreboding of his bishops. The torch (again) enlightened his rout; he plunged into the defiles of Pictavia; in his rage he burnt Tula, Amon, and Dunolla, p. 255. One specimen more, and we have done. Those factitious personages were surreptitiously abstracted from the genuine catalogue of the Pictish kings, and from this obscure and scandalous parentage, and from the feigned and odious filiation of the bard, did O'Flaharty &c. adopt this spurious progeny of poetic fiction, instead of the real issue of chronicled veracity.'—xλrov σɛaulov.

In the next place we may be allowed to inquire to what dialect, either of the Celtic or Teutonic stock, the word 'mismaze,' which seems to mean perplexity and confusion, may perchance belong?-After the use which Mr. Chalmers has made of the Saxon for etymological purposes, we were struck by the following instance of unskilfulness in that language. Scotta leode-Scotish lads, and scipflotan, shipmen; for leode is people, and flotan fleets. But this is Teutonic!

Seriously, we pity the case of the 'Lady Gruock, who married for her first husband Gileomgain, the Maormor of Moray, a person of the first consequence.' Injuries prompted the Lady Gruock's vengeful thoughts, and filled her, from the crown to the toe, full of the direst cruelty.' (No allusion can justify, for no ear can

[ocr errors]

tolerate such intermixtures with the style of history.) Once more. 'Macbeth wanted no spur to prick the sides of his intent.' This intent was carried into effect by the insidiousness of assassination, rather than the magnanimity of conflict.' p. 405. In the days of plain English, instead of this bombast, we should have been told, that the man was not slain in battle, but murdered in cold blood. "When the dogmatist shall hereafter cry out in the face of moral demonstration, that there is not the shadow of proof that the Gaelic tongue was ever spoken in the Lowlands, his out-cry must be heeded as the wail of childishness, or the bawl of idiotcy.' Would that Mr. Chalmers, who always thinks as a man, had not perversely chosen to speak as a child-an ill-taught child! But, Ohe jam satis est. now dismiss the first volume of the Caledonia with a mixture of delight and disgust very rarely excited by the same work. Duplici in diversum scindimur hamo.' industry, well directed, and learning, happily applied, together with a sound and clear understanding, singularly adapted to the investigation of historical evidence, even without elegance, and by the help of an unadorned and simple style, would have placed this great work on a level with the Britannia. In its present garb, obscured by pedantry, and disguised by affectation, it will never be received among real judges as a legitimate composition, or even as a readable book. It will, however, be popular with the many who mistake inflation for sublimity, and hydropic tumor for muscular strength; and it will be endured by the few who, resolutely pursuing truth and knowledge wherever they can be found, will be contented to flounder by the way through all the impurities of a style which is luto ipso lutulentior.

In one word, Mr. Chalmers has reared to the honour of his country, a monument resembling a Celtic temple, of which the foundations are strong, the dimensions ample, and the form majestic. But having achieved this mighty work with a degree of labour and perseverance peculiar to himself, instead of leaving it a monument, to the latest posterity, of simplicity as well as grandeur, he has by a luckless effort of perverted ingenuity, carved it all over, like a Scandinavian obelisk, with barbarous forms of men, birds, quadrupeds, and plants, uncouth in their porportions, and misplaced in their situation. But the mischief is not quite irreparable; and appendages of the temple, which are yet behind, we hope to see finished with more simplicity; and though sculptors love not to efface their own work, and often pride themselves most on the worst part of their performances, yet, if Mr. Chalmers be not irrecoverably given up to his own reprobate taste, we do not despair of seeing him, in a second edition, of which we seriously wish him the credit and the advantage, set the chissel to work on the surface of his past labours, and strip the whole building of those rude and misplaced ornaments with which he has deformed it.

ART. V. The Conquest of the Miao-tsé; an Imperial Poem, by Kien-Lung, entitled, A Choral Song of Harmony for the first Part of the Spring. By Stephen Weston, F. R. S. S. A. From the Chinese. 8vo. pp. 58. Baldwins. 1810.

LITTLE did we imagine, when, on a recent occasion,* we were enumerating the many, and almost unsurmountable difficulties, which opposed themselves to the student of the Chinese language, that our attention would so speedily be recalled to the subject, by the appearance of the translation of another Chinese work; small, indeed, in point of bulk, and trifling in comparative importance, but more difficult, in as much as poetry, in proportion as it becomes more concise and condensed, is more intricate and obscure, than plain prose. Such, however, is the fact; Mr. Weston, a gentleman not altogether unskilled in Asiatic lore, nor wholly untried, it seems, in Chinese literature,† has boldly soared into the metaphorical regions of oriental poetry, and visited the unfrequented abode of the Chinese muses. Nay more; with a hardihood which evinces a consciousness of his own powers, he has even ventured to leap at once into the poetical saddle of the great Kien-Lung, Tawhang-tee, Tien-sha; the Son of Heaven, and the invincible ruler of all that is great and valuable under heaven.

He who mounts a tiger,' says a Chinese proverb, will find it no easy matter to alight.' But what is a tiger when compared with the animal which Mr. Weston has ventured to bestride! 'a scaly dragon of cerulean hue,' (p. 51.) a monster with five claws, and a fiery tail, more dreadful to behold than that celestial scorpion which so fatally alarmed the adventurous son of Merops. Our au hor has luckily, however, dismounted in safety from his dragon; but, after having thus excited our fears, he must pardon us, if we caution him strongly against relying too much on his good fortune, and trusting himself again to the doubtful docility of a creature, to whose motions and paces he has not been accustomed, and with whose spirit and temper he cannot possibly be acquainted.-Nate, cave!

To be serious; we do not think that Mr. Weston has exercised much judgment in the choice of a subject for the employment of his talents; or that the result of his labours will prove eminently use ful to the general cause of literature. At the same time, we rejoice

No. VI. Art. I.

Mr. Weston informs us in his preface, that in 1809, he published the translation of a poem of 133 characters, called Ley-tang, by Kien-Lung.

The dragon with five claws is the symbol of Imperial sway. Those painted on silks and pottery must have only four claws.

[blocks in formation]

that so extraordinary but apparently repulsive, a language has attracted the notice of this ingenious and persevering scholar; though we cannot recommend him in the very outset of his studies, to engage with Chinese poetry, still less with poetry which bears the credit of being the production of an imperial brain. Great monarchs may expected to take great liberties, and not always readily to submit to those fixed and ordinary rules by which the mass of mankind is governed as well in literary as in political communities.

In our review of the Leu-Lee,' we entered pretty fully into the singular nature and construction of the written character of the Chinese language, and took occasion, at the same time, to give a slight sketch of Chinese literature. Mr. Weston's poem affords us the opportunity of saying a few words on that particular species of arrangement and choice of characters which, by analogy, may be denominated Chinese poetry. We say, by analogy, because strictly speaking, according to our received notions of poetry, the Chinese language can scarcely be said to admit of any. The compositions to which Europeans have attached the name of poetry, are distinguished by the Chinese under the character shee, a compound of yen, a word, and shee a temple-the words of the temple; by which they probably intend to signify, that these kinds of composition are of divine origin, or designed for sacred uses; or, as yen is also to speak, the character may allude, perhaps, to the mode of speaking in temples; poetry having originally constituted no inconsiderable portion of public instruction, as well as religious worship, among eastern nations. In China, the little that is still practised of the latter, by the priests of Fo, consists wholly of poetry aided by music: of short sentences chaunted with an accompaniment of bells, drums, and sonorous stones.

There are two kinds of composition in the Chinese language which may be brought under the head of poetry; the one written, the other oral; the former addressed solely to the eye, without regard to sound, measure or rhyme; the latter to the eye, or to the ear, or to both. The chief excellence of painted or eye poetry consists in the selection of such characters, as are either capable of conveying to the mind some agreeable allusion to ancient events, some figurative or metaphorical signification, or, such as, from their component parts, may easily be traced in the history of the idea which they are employed to represent. Such characters, indeed, to a person deprived of sight, are so many dead letters; but on the other hand they are capable of conveying as much pleasure to the deaf and dumb, as to others in the full possession of all their faculties. Although the excellence of eye poetry, whatever it may be, depends not in any degree either on the measure of syllables, or the consonance of sounds, yet it may possess both measure and rhyme;

ג

neither of them, however, is essential to it. To reach the sublime in composition, it is required, that every character should be an allegory, including some complete and perfect idea. Thus, instead of the plain and common character for the eyes, a poet would employ another signifying living pearls, or perhaps would call them the stars of the forehead; for the head he would probably say, the sanctuary of reason, &c. Other allusions are employed of more obscure signification; thus the peaceful solitude of the sage is represented by a single character composed of a spring of water and a peach tree, in allusion to some Chinese worthy, who, flying from the persecution of his enemies, subsisted for some time on peaches and water. Thus, also, from a story recorded of some beautiful widow having disfigured her nose to avoid a second marriage, a gay widow is designated poetically, as a lady who will not cut off her nose; and sometimes, as a lady who will not scruple to cut off her dead husband's nose. It is not impossible that Voltaire, being strongly infected with the Chinese mania, and well acquainted with the communications of the Jesuit missionaries, may have engrafted this figure upon the well-known story of the Ephesian matron, when he sends Azora to her husband's tomb-' pour couper le nez à Zadig.' But having, in a former number, entered fully into the nature of compound Chinese characters, we deem it unnecessary to extend our observations now on this part of the subject.

The second kind of Chinese poetry, that which is meant to be sung or said,' has not only a regulated measure, but the verses sometimes rhyme to each other, though this may be considered rather as a circumstance of accident that the result of any settled rule. Indeed an oral language, consisting entirely, as that of China does, of meagre, paronymous monosyllables, (from which many letters of our alphabet are excluded,) whose terminations are limited either to the vowels, the liquid 1, the n, or ng, can afford but little variety of sounds, and must sometimes unavoidably run into a jingle of rhyme; while, on the other hand, it would scarcely be possible to adjust the harmonical consonance of its syllables by any settled rules. The Chinese, however, say, and probably with truth, that, in ancient times, their verses were short and frequently in rhyme ; they are so, in fact, among all nations in the dawn of civilization: with them, metre and rhyme, or both, afford the easiest and best means of fixing events in the memory. To give more interest to verses of this kind, they were recited in a tone different from that of common conversation. Even at this day, poetry and recitative are with the Chinese inseparable. The verses of the Shee-king, collected by Confucius more than 400 years before the Christian era, are repeated in musical cadences, and, in many of the editions, the tone or note is affixed to each character, in order to shew in

« AnteriorContinuar »