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1 BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA.
2 CHAPTER I.
3 The motives of the present work -- Reception of
4 the Author's first publication -- The discipline
5 of his taste at school -- The effect of contem-
6 porary writers on youthful minds -- Bowles's
7 sonnets -- Comparison between the Poets before
8 and since |Mr.| Pope.
¶1
9 IT has been my lot to have had my
10 name introduced both in conversation, and in
11 print, more frequently than I find it easy to
12 explain, whether I consider the fewness, unim-
13 portance, and limited circulation of my writings,
14 or the retirement and distance, in which I have
15 lived, both from the literary and political world.
16 Most often it has been connected with some
17 charge, which I could not acknowledge, or
18 some principle which I had never entertained.
19 Nevertheless, had I had no other motive, or
20 incitement, the reader would not have been
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21 troubled with this exculpation. What my ad-
22 ditional purposes were, will be seen in the fol-
23 lowing pages. It will be found, that the least
24 of what I have written concerns myself per-
25 sonally. I have used the narration chiefly for
26 the purpose of giving a continuity to the work,
27 in part for the sake of the miscellaneous reflec-
28 tions suggested to me by particular events, but
29 still more as introductory to the statement of
30 my principles in Politics, Religion, and Phi-
31 losophy, and the application of the rules, dedu-
32 ced from philosophical principles, to poetry and
33 criticism. But of the objects, which I proposed
34 to myself, it was not the least important to
35 effect, as far as possible, a settlement of the
36 long continued controversy concerning the true
37 nature of poetic diction: and at the same time
38 to define with the utmost impartiality the real
39 poetic character of the poet, by whose writings
40 this controversy was first kindled, and has been
41 since fuelled and fanned.
¶2
42 In 1794, when I had barely passed the verge
43 of manhood, I published a small volume of
44 juvenile poems. They were received with a
45 degree of favor, which, young as I was, I well
46 knew, was bestowed on them not so much for
47 any positive merit, as because they were consi-
48 dered buds of hope, and promises of better
49 works to come. The critics of that day, the
50 most flattering, equally with the severest, [[con-]]
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51 ||con||curred in objecting to them, obscurity, a general
52 turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new
53 coined double epithets.* The first is the fault
54 which a writer is the least able to detect in
55 his own compositions: and my mind was not
56 then sufficiently disciplined to receive the au-
57 thority of others, as a substitute for my own
58 conviction. Satisfied that the thoughts, such as
59 they were, could not have been expressed other-
60 wise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot
61 to enquire, whether the thoughts themselves
* The authority of Milton and Shakspeare may be use-
fully pointed out to young authors. In the Comus, and earlier
Poems of Milton there is a superfluity of double epithets;
while in the Paradise Lost we find very few, in the Paradise
Regained scarce any. The same remark holds almost equally
true, of the Love's Labour Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Venus
and Adonis, and Lucrece compared with the Lear, Macbeth,
Othello, and Hamlet of our great Dramatist. The rule for
the admission of double epithets seems to be this: either
that they should be already denizens of our Language, such
as blood-stained, terror-stricken, self-applauding: or when
a new epithet, or one found in books only, is hazarded, that
it, at least, be one word, not two words made one by mere
virtue of the printer's hyphen. A language which, like the
English, is almost without cases, is indeed in its very genius
unfitted for compounds. If a writer, every time a com-
pounded word suggests itself to him, would seek for some
other mode of expressing the same sense, the chances are
always greatly in favor of his finding a better word. "Tan-
quam scopulum sic vites insolens verbum," is the wise advice
of Cæsar to the Roman Orators, and the precept applies
with double force to the writers in our own language. But
it must not be forgotten, that the same Cæesar wrote a gram-
matical treatise for the purpose of reforming the ordinary
language by bringing it to a greater accordance with the
principles of Logic or universal Grammar.
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62 did not demand a degree of attention unsuitable
63 to the nature and objects of poetry. This re-
64 mark however applies chiefly, though not ex-
65 clusively to the Religious Musings. The re-
66 mainder of the charge I admitted to its full
67 extent, and not without sincere acknowledg-
68 ments to both my private and public censors
69 for their friendly admonitions. In the after
70 editions, I pruned the double epithets with no
71 sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame
72 the swell and glitter both of thought and dic-
73 tion; though in truth, these parasite plants of
74 youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into
75 my longer poems with such intricacy of union,
76 that I was often obliged to omit disentangling
77 the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower.
78 From that period to the date of the present
79 work I have published nothing, with my name,
80 which could by any possibility have come be-
81 fore the board of anonymous criticism. Even
82 the three or four poems, printed with the works
83 of a friend, as far as they were censured at all,
84 were charged with the same or similar defects,
85 though I am persuaded not with equal justice:
86 with an EXCESS OF ORNAMENT, in addition to
87 STRAINED AND ELABORATE DICTION. (Vide the
88 criticisms on the "Ancient Mariner," in the
89 Monthly and Critical Reviews of the first volume
90 of the Lyrical Ballads.) May I be permitted
91 to add, that, even at the early period of my [[ju-]]
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92 ||ju||venile poems, I saw and admitted the superior-
93 ity of an austerer, and more natural style, with
94 an insight not less clear, than I at present pos-
95 sess. My judgment was stronger, than were
96 my powers of realizing its dictates; and the
97 faults of my language, though indeed partly
98 owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the
99 desire of giving a poetic colouring to abstract
100 and metaphysical truths in which a new world
101 then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part
102 likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my
103 own comparative talent.--During several years
104 of my youth and early manhood, I reverenced
105 those, who had re-introduced the manly sim-
106 plicity of the Grecian, and of our own elder
107 poets, with such enthusiasm, as made the hope
108 seem presumptuous of writing successfully in
109 the same style. Perhaps a similar process has
110 happened to others; but my earliest poems
111 were marked by an ease and simplicity, which
112 I have studied, perhaps with inferior success,
113 to impress on my later compositions.
¶3
114 At school I enjoyed the inestimable advan-
115 tage of a very sensible, though at the same
116 time, a very severe master. He* early moulded
117 my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to
118 Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil,
*The Rev. James Bowyer, many years Head Master of
the Grammar-School, Christ Hospital.
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119 and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated
120 me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as
121 I then read) Terence, and above all the chaster
122 poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman
123 poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages;
124 but with even those of the Augustan era: and
125 on grounds of plain sense and universal logic
126 to see and assert the superiority of the former, in
127 the truth and nativeness, both of their thoughts
128 and diction. At the same time that we were
129 studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us
130 read Shakspeare and Milton as lessons: and
131 they were the lessons too, which required most
132 time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape
133 his censure. I learnt from him, that Poetry,
134 even that of the loftiest, and, seemingly, that of
135 the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as
136 severe as that of science; and more difficult,
137 because more subtle, more complex, and de-
138 pendent on more, and more fugitive causes.
139 In the truly great poets, he would say, there is
140 a reason assignable, not only for every word,
141 but for the position of every word; and I well
142 remember, that availing himself of the syno-
143 nimes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us
144 attempt to show, with regard to each, why it
145 would not have answered the same purpose;
146 and wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of
147 the word in the original text.
¶4
148 In our own English compositions (at least for
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149 the last three years of our school education)
150 he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or
151 image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where
152 the same sense might have been conveyed with
153 equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute,
154 harp, and lyre, muse, muses, and inspirations,
155 Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hipocrene, were all
156 an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost
157 hear him now, exclaiming" Harp? Harp? Lyre?
158 Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse?
159 your Nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring?
160 Oh 'aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" Nay
161 certain introductions, similies, and examples,
162 were placed by name on a list of interdiction.
163 Among the similies, there was, I remember,
164 that of the Manchineel fruit, as suiting equally
165 well with too many subjects; in which how-
166 ever it yielded the palm at once to the example
167 of Alexander and Clytus, which was equally
168 good and apt, whatever might be the theme.
169 Was it ambition? Alexander and Clytus!--
170 Flattery? Alexander and Clytus!--Anger ?
171 Drunkenness? Pride? Friendship? Ingratitude?
172 Late repentance? Still, still Alexander and
173 Clytus! At length, the praises of agriculture
174 having been exemplified in the sagacious obser-
175 vation, that had Alexander been holding the
176 plough, he would not have run his friend Clytus
177 through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable
178 old friend was banished by public edict in [[se-]]
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179 ||se||cula seculorum. I have sometimes ventured to
180 think, that a list of this kind, or an index expur-
181 gatorius of certain well known and ever return-
182 ing phrases, both introductory, and transitional,
183 including the large assortment of modest ego-
184 tisms, and flattering illeisms, |&c.| |&c.| might be
185 hung up in our law-courts, and both houses of
186 parliament, with great advantage to the public,
187 as an important saving of national time, an in-
188 calculable relief to his Majesty's ministers, but
189 above all, as insuring the thanks of country
190 attornies, and their clients, who have private
191 bills to carry through the house.
¶5
192 Be this as it may, there was one custom of
193 our master's, which I cannot pass over in si-
194 lence, because I think it imitable and worthy
195 of imitation. He would often permit our theme
196 exercises, under some pretext of want of time,
197 to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to
198 be looked over. Then placing the whole num-
199 ber abreast on his desk, he would ask the
200 writer, why this or that sentence might not
201 have found as appropriate a place under this or
202 that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer
203 could be returned, and two faults of the same
204 kind were found in one exercise, the irrevocable
205 verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and
206 another on the same subject to be produced,
207 in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader
208 will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection
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209 to a man, whose severities, even now, not sel-
210 dom furnish the dreams, by which the blind
211 fancy would fain interpret to the mind the pain-
212 ful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither
213 lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and
214 intellectual obligations. He sent us to the Uni-
215 versity excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and
216 tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical know-
217 ledge was the least of the good gifts, which we
218 derived from his zealous and conscientious
219 tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward,
220 full of years, and full of honors, even of those
221 honors, which were dearest to his heart, as
222 gratefully bestowed by that school, and still
223 binding him to the interests of that school, in
224 which he had been himself educated, and to
225 which during his whole life he was a dedicated
226 thing.
¶6
227 From causes, which this is not the place to
228 investigate, no models of past times, however
229 perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the
230 youthful mind, as the productions of contem-
231 porary genius. The Discipline, my mind had
232 undergone, "Ne falleretur rotundo sono et ver-
233 suum cursu, cincinnis et floribus; sed ut inspi-
234 ceret quidnam subesset, quæ sedes, quod firma-
235 mentum, quis fundus verbis; an figuræ essent
236 mera ornatura et orationis fucus: vel sanguinis
237 e materiæ ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam
238 nativus et incalescentia genuina;" removed all
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239 obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in
240 style without diminishing my delight. That
241 I was thus prepared for the perusal of |Mr.|
242 Bowles's sonnets and earlier poems, at once
243 increased their influence, and my enthusiasm.
244 The great works of past ages seem to a young
245 man things of another race, in respect to which
246 his faculties must remain passive and submiss,
247 even as to the stars and mountains. But the
248 writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many
249 years elder than himself, surrounded by the
250 same circumstances, and disciplined by the
251 same manners, possess a reality for him, and
252 inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a
253 man. His very admiration is the wind which
254 fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves
255 assume the properties of flesh and blood. To
256 recite, to extol, to contend for them is but the
257 payment of a debt due to one, who exists to
258 receive it.
¶7
259 There are indeed modes of teaching which
260 have produced, and are producing, youths of
261 a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in
262 comparison with which we have been called
263 on to despise our great public schools, and
264 universities
265 "In whose halls are hung
266 Armoury of the invincible knights of old"--
267 modes, by which children are to be metamor-
268 phosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a
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269 vengeance have I known thus produced! Pro-
270 digies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance,
271 and infidelity! Instead of storing the memory,
272 during the period when the memory is the
273 predominant faculty, with facts for the after
274 exercise of the judgement; and instead of
275 awakening by the noblest models the fond and
276 unmixed LOVE and ADMIRATION, which is the
277 natural and graceful temper of early youth;
278 these nurselings of improved pedagogy are taught
279 to dispute and decide; to suspect all, but their
280 own and their lecturer's wisdom; and to hold
281 nothing sacred from their contempt, but their
282 own contemptible arrogance: boy-graduates in
283 all the technicals, and in all the dirty passions
284 and impudence, of anonymous criticism. To
285 such dispositions alone can the admonition of
286 Pliny be requisite, "Neque enim debet operi-
287 "bus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos,
288 "quos nunquam vidimus, floruisset, non solum
289 "libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquire-
290 "remus, ejusdem nunc honor præsentis, et gratia
291 "quasi satietate languescet? At hoc pravum,
292 "malignumque est, non admirari hominem admi-
293 "ratione dignissimum, quia videre, complecti,
294 "nec laudare tantum, verum etiam amare con-
295 "tingit." Plin. Epist. Lib. I.
¶8
296 I had just entered on my seventeenth year
297 when the sonnets of |Mr.| Bowles, twenty in
298 number, and just then published in a quarto
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299 pamphlet, were first made known and pre-
300 sented to me by a school-fellow who had
301 quitted us for the University, and who, during
302 the whole time that he was in our first form
303 (or in our school language a GRECIAN) had
304 been my patron and protector. I refer to |Dr.|
305 Middleton, the truly learned, and every way
306 excellent Bishop of Calcutta:
307 "Qui laudibus amplis
308 "Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
309 "Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terræ
310 "Obruta! Vivit amor, vivit dolor! Ora negatur
311 "Dulcia conspicere; at flere et meminisse* relictum est."
312 Petr. Ep. Lib. I. Ep. I.
¶9
313 It was a double pleasure to me, and still
314 remains a tender recollection, that I should
315 have received from a friend so revered the first
316 knowledge of a poet, by whose works, year
317 after year, I was so enthusiastically delighted
318 and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will
319 not have forgotten the undisciplined eagerness
320 and impetuous zeal, with which I laboured to
321 make proselytes, not only of my companions,
322 but of all with whom I conversed, of whatever
323 rank, and in whatever place. As my school
* I am most happy to have the necessity of informing the
reader, that since this passage was written, the report of
Middleton's death on his voyage to India has been proved
erroneous. He lives and long may he live; for I dare pro-
phecy, that with his life only will his exertions for the tem-
poral and spiritual welfare of his fellow men be limited.
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324 finances did not permit me to purchase copies,
325 I made, within less than a year, and an half,
326 more than forty transcriptions, as the best pre-
327 sents I could offer to those, who had in any
328 way won my regard. And with almost equal
329 delight did I receive the three or four following
330 publications of the same author.
¶10
331 Though I have seen and known enough of
332 mankind to be well aware, that I shall perhaps
333 stand alone in my creed, and that it will be
334 well, if I subject myself to no worse charge
335 than that of singularity; I am not therefore
336 deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever
337 have regarded the obligations of intellect among
338 the most sacred of the claims of gratitude.
339 A valuable thought, or a particular train of
340 thoughts, gives me additional pleasure, when
341 I can safely refer and attribute it to the con-
342 versation or correspondence of another. My
343 obligations to |Mr.| Bowles were indeed import-
344 ant, and for radical good. At a very premature
345 age, even before my fifteenth year, I had be-
346 wildered myself in metaphysicks, and in theolo-
347 gical controversy. Nothing else pleased me.
348 History, and particular facts, lost all interest
349 in my mind. Poetry (though for a school-boy
350 of that age, I was above par in English versi-
351 fication, and had already produced two or three
352 compositions which, I may venture to say, with-
353 out reference to my age, were somewhat above
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354 mediocrity, and which had gained me more
355 credit, than the sound, good sense of my old
356 master was at all pleased with) poetry itself,
357 yea novels and romances, became insipid to
358 me. In my friendless wanderings on our leave-*
359 days, (for I was an orphan, and had scarce
360 any connections in London) highly was I de-
361 lighted, if any passenger, especially if he were
362 drest in black, would enter into conversation
363 with me. For I soon found the means of di-
364 recting it to my favorite subjects
365 Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,
366 Fix'd fate, free will, fore-knowledge absolute,
367 And found no end in wandering mazes lost.
368 This preposterous pursuit was, beyond doubt,
369 injurious, both to my natural powers, and to
370 the progress of my education. It would per-
371 haps have been destructive, had it been con-
372 tinued; but from this I was auspiciously with-
373 drawn, partly indeed by an accidental intro-
374 duction to an amiable family, chiefly however,
375 by the genial influence of a style of poetry, so
376 tender, and yet so manly, so natural and real,
377 and yet so dignified, and harmonious, as the
378 sonnets, |&c.| of |Mr.| Bowles! Well were it for
379 me perhaps, had I never relapsed into the same
* The Christ Hospital phrase, not for holidays altogether,
but for those on which the boys are permitted to go beyond
the precincts of the school.
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380 mental disease; if I had continued to pluck
381 the flower and reap the harvest from the cul-
382 tivated surface, instead of delving in the un-
383 wholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic
384 depths. But if in after time I have sought a
385 refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sen-
386 sibility in abstruse researches, which exercised
387 the strength and subtlety of the understanding
388 without awakening the feelings of the heart;
389 still there was a long and blessed interval, dur-
390 ing which my natural faculties were allowed
391 to expand, and my original tendencies to deve-
392 lope themselves: my fancy, and the love of
393 nature, and the sense of beauty in forms and
394 sounds.
¶11
395 The second advantage, which I owe to my
396 early perusal, and admiration of these poems
397 (to which let me add, though known to me
398 at a somewhat later period, the Lewsdon Hill
399 of |Mr.| CROW) bears more immediately on my
400 present subject. Among those with whom I
401 conversed, there were, of course, very many
402 who had formed their taste, and their notions
403 of poetry, from the writings of |Mr.| Pope and
404 his followers: or to speak more generally, in
405 that school of French poetry, condensed and
406 invigorated by English understanding, which
407 had predominated from the last century. I
408 was not blind to the merits of this school, yet
409 as from inexperience of the world, and [[conse-]]
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410 ||conse||quent want of sympathy with the general sub-
411 jects of these poems, they gave me little plea-
412 sure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and
413 with the presumption of youth withheld from
414 its masters the legitimate name of poets. I
415 saw, that the excellence of this kind consisted
416 in just and acute observations on men and man-
417 ners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and
418 substance: and in the logic of wit, con-
419 veyed in smooth and strong epigramatic cou-
420 plets, as its form. Even when the subject was
421 addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in
422 the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man;
423 nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in
424 that astonishing product of matchless talent
425 and ingenuity, Pope's Translation of the Iliad;
426 still a point was looked for at the end of each
427 second line, and the whole was as it were a
428 sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a
429 grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunc-
430 tive, of epigrams. Meantime the matter and
431 diction seemed to me characterized not so much
432 by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated
433 into the language of poetry. On this last point,
434 I had occasion to render my own thoughts
435 gradually more and more plain to myself, by
436 frequent amicable disputes concerning Darwin's
437 BOTANIC GARDEN, which, for some years, was
438 greatly extolled, not only by the reading public
439 in general, but even by those, whose genius
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440 and natural robustness of understanding ena-
441 bled them afterwards to act foremost in dis-
442 sipating these "painted mists" that occasionally
443 rise from the marshes at the foot of Parnassus.
444 During my first Cambridge vacation, I assisted
445 a friend in a contribution for a literary society
446 in Devonshire: and in this I remember to have
447 compared Darwin's work to the Russian pa-
448 lace of ice, glittering, cold and transitory. In
449 the same essay too, I assigned sundry reasons,
450 chiefly drawn from a comparison of passages in
451 the Latin poets with the original Greek, from
452 which they were borrowed, for the preference
453 of Collins's odes to those of Gray; and of the
454 simile in Shakspeare
455 " How like a younker or a prodigal,
456 "The skarfed bark puts from her native bay
457 "Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet wind!
458 "How like a prodigal doth she return,
459 "With over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails,
460 "Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind!"
461 to the imitation in the bard;
462 "Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows
463 "While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
464 "In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
465 "YOUTH at the prow and PLEASURE at the helm,
466 "Regardless of the sweeping whirlwinds sway,
467 "That hush'd in grim repose, expects it's evening prey."
468 (In which, by the bye, the words "realm" and
469 " sway" are rhymes dearly purchased.) I pre-
470 ferred the original on the ground, that in the
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471 imitation it depended wholly in the composi-
472 tor's putting, or not putting a small Capital,
473 both in this, and in many other passages of the
474 same poet, whether the words should be person-
475 ifications, or mere abstracts. I mention this,
476 because in referring various lines in Gray to
477 their original in Shakspeare and Milton; and in
478 the clear perception how completely all the
479 propriety was lost in the transfer; I was, at
480 that early period, led to a conjecture, which,
481 many years afterwards was recalled to me from
482 the same thought having been started in con-
483 versation, but far more ably, and developed
484 more fully, by |Mr.| WORDSWORTH; namely, that
485 this style of poetry, which I have characterised
486 above, as translations of prose thoughts into
487 poetic language, had been kept up by, if it did
488 not wholly arise from, the custom of writing
489 Latin verses, and the great importance at-
490 tached to these exercises, in our public schools.
491 Whatever might have been the case in the fif-
492 teenth century, when the use of the Latin
493 tongue was so general among learned men, that
494 Erasmus is said to have forgotten his native
495 language; yet in the present day it is not to be
496 supposed, that a youth can think in Latin, or
497 that he can have any other reliance on the force
498 or fitness of his phrases, but the authority of
499 the author from whence he has adopted them.
500 Consequently he must first prepare his thoughts,
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501 and then pick out, from Virgil, Horace, Ovid, or
502 perhaps more compendiously from his* Gradus,
503 halves and quarters of lines, in which to embody
504 them.
¶12
505 I never object to a certain degree of disputa-
506 tiousness in a young man from the age of seven-
507 teen to that of four or five and twenty, provided
508 I find him always arguing on one side of the
509 question. The controversies, occasioned by my
510 unfeigned zeal for the honor of a favorite con-
511 temporary, then known to me only by his works,
512 were of great advantage in the formation and
513 establishment of my taste and critical opinions.
514 In my defence of the lines running into each
515 other, instead of closing at each couplet; and
516 of natural language, neither bookish, nor vulgar,
517 neither redolent of the lamp, or of the kennel,
518 such as I will remember thee; instead of the
519 same thought tricked up in the rag-fair finery of,
520 ----Thy image on her wing
521 Before my FANCY'S eye shall MEMORY bring,
522 I had continually to adduce the metre and
* In the Nutricia of Politian there occurs this line:
" Pura coloratos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Casting my eye on a University prize-poem, I met this line,
" Lactea purpureos interstrepit unda lapillos."
Now look out in the Gradus for Purus, and you find as
the first synonime, lacteus; for coloratus and the first sy-
nonime is purpureus. I mention this by way of elucidating
one of the most ordinary processes in the ferrumination of
these centos.
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523 diction of the Greek Poets from Homer to
524 Theocritus inclusive; and still more of our
525 elder English poets from Chaucer to Milton.
526 Nor was this all. But as it was my constant
527 reply to authorities brought against me from
528 later poets of great name, that no authority
529 could avail in opposition to TRUTH, NATURE,
530 LOGIC, and the LAWS of UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR;
531 actuated too by my former passion for meta-
532 physical investigations; I labored at a solid
533 foundation, on which permanently to ground
534 my opinions, in the component faculties of the
535 human mind itself, and their comparative dig-
536 nity and importance. According to the faculty
537 or source, from which the pleasure given by
538 any poem or passage was derived, I estimated
539 the merit of such poem or passage. As the
540 result of all my reading and meditation, I ab-
541 stracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them
542 to comprize the conditions and criteria of poetic
543 style; first, that not the poem which we have
544 read, but that to which we return, with the
545 greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power,
546 and claims the name of essential poetry. Second,
547 that whatever lines can be translated into other
548 words of the same language, without dimi-
549 nution of their significance, either in sense,
550 or association, or in any worthy feeling, are
551 so far vicious in their diction. Be it however
552 observed, that I excluded from the list of [[wor-]]
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553 ||wor||thy feelings, the pleasure derived from mere
554 novelty, in the reader, and the desire of ex-
555 citing wonderment at his powers in the author.
556 Oftentimes since then, in perusing French tra-
557 gedies, I have fancied two marks of admiration
558 at the end of each line, as hieroglyphics of the
559 author's own admiration at his own cleverness.
560 Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a
561 continuous under-current of feeling; it is every
562 where present, but seldom any where as a se-
563 parate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm,
564 that it would be scarcely more difficult to push
565 a stone out from the pyramids with the bare
566 hand, than to alter a word, or the position of a
567 word, in Milton or Shakspeare, (in their most
568 important works at least) without making the
569 author say something else, or something worse,
570 than he does say. One great distinction, I
571 appeared to myself to see plainly, between, even
572 the characteristic faults of our elder poets, and
573 the false beauty of the moderns. In the former, from
574 DONNE to COWLEY, we find the most fan-
575 tastic out-of-the-way thoughts, but in the most
576 pure and genuine mother English; in the latter,
577 the most obvious thoughts, in language the
578 most fantastic and arbitrary. Our faulty elder
579 poets sacrificed the passion, and passionate
580 flow of poetry, to the subtleties of intellect, and
581 to the starts of wit; the moderns to the glare
582 and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and [[hete-]]
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583 ||hete||rogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious
584 something, made up, half of image, and half of
585 abstract* meaning. The one sacrificed the heart
586 to the head; the other both heart and head to
587 point and drapery.
¶13
588 The reader must make himself acquainted
589 with the general style of composition that was
590 at that time deemed poetry, in order to under-
591 stand and account for the effect produced on
592 me by the SONNETS, the MONODY at MATLOCK,
593 and the HOPE, of |Mr.| Bowles; for it is pecu-
594 liar to original genius to become less and less
595 striking, in proportion to its success in improv-
596 ing the taste and judgement of its contempora-
597 ries. The poems of WEST indeed had the
598 merit of chaste and manly diction, but they
599 were cold, and, if I may so express it, only
600 dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton's
601 there is a stiffness, which too often gives them
602 the appearance of imitations from the Greek.
603 Whatever relation therefore of cause or impulse
604 Percy's collection of Ballads may bear to the
605 most popular poems of the present day; yet in
606 the more sustained and elevated style, of the
* I remember a ludicrous instance in the poem of a young
tradesman:
" No more will I endure love's pleasing pain,
Or round my heart's leg tie his galling chain."
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607 then living poets Bowles and Cowper* were, to
608 the best of my knowledge, the first who com-
609 bined natural thoughts with natural diction;
610 the first who reconciled the heart with the head.
¶14
611 It is true, as I have before mentioned, that
612 from diffidence in my own powers, I for a short
613 time adopted a laborious and florid diction,
614 which I myself deemed, if not absolutely vici-
615 ous, yet of very inferior worth. Gradually,
616 however, my practice conformed to my better
617 judgement; and the compositions of my twenty-
618 fourth and twenty-fifth year (ex. gr. the shorter
619 blank verse poems, the lines which are now
620 adopted in the introductory part of the VISION
621 in the present collection in |Mr.| Southey's Joan
622 of Arc, 2nd book, 1st edition, and the Tragedy
623 of REMORSE) are not more below my present
624 ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style,
625 than those of the latest date. Their faults were
* Cowper's task was published some time before the son-
nets of |Mr.| Bowles; but I was not familiar with it till many
years afterwards. The vein of Satire which runs through
that excellent poem, together with the sombre hue of its re-
ligious opinions, would probably, at that time, have pre-
vented its laying any strong hold on my affections. The
love of nature seems to have led Thompson to a chearful re-
ligion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love
of nature. The one would carry his fellow-men along with
him into nature; the other flies to nature from his fellow-
men. In chastity of diction however, and the harmony of
blank verse, Cowper leaves Thompson unmeasureably below
him; yet still I feel the latter to have been the born poet.
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626 at least a remnant of the former leaven, and
627 among the many who have done me the honor
628 of putting my poems in the same class with
629 those of my betters, the one or two, who have
630 pretended to bring examples of affected sim-
631 plicity from my volume, have been able to ad-
632 duce but one instance, and that out of a copy
633 of verses half ludicrous, half splenetic, which
634 I intended, and had myself characterized, as
635 sermoni propriora.
¶15
636 Every reform, however necessary, will by
637 weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself
638 will need reforming. The reader will excuse
639 me for noticing, that I myself was the {fi}rst to
640 expose risu honesto the three sins of poetry, one
641 or the other of which is the most likely to beset
642 a young writer. So long ago as the publica-
643 tion of the second number of the monthly ma-
644 gazine, under the name of NEHEMIAH HIGGEN-
645 BOTTOM I contributed three sonnets, the first of
646 which had for its object to excite a good-natur-
647 ed laugh at the spirit of doleful egotism, and at
648 the recurrence of favorite phrases, with the
649 double defect of being at once trite, and licen-
650 tious. The second, on low, creeping language
651 and thoughts, under the pretence of simplicity.
652 And the third, the phrases of which were bor-
653 rowed entirely from my own poems, on the
654 indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling
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655 language and imagery. The reader will find
656 them in the note* below, and will I trust regard
657 them as reprinted for biographical purposes,
658 and not for their poetic merits. So general at
SONNET 1.
* PENSIVE at eve, on the hard world I mused,
And my poor heart was sad; so at the MOON
I gazed, and sighed, and sighed; for ah how soon
Eve saddens into night! mine eyes perused
With tearful vacancy the dampy grass
That wept and glitter'd in the paly ray:
And I did pause me, on my lonely way
And mused me, on the wretched ones that pass
O'er the bleak heath of sorrow. But alas!
Most of myself I thought! when it befel,
That the soothe spirit of the breezy wood
Breath'd in mine ear: "All this is very well
But much of ONE thing, is for NO thing good."
Oh my poor heart's INEXPLICABLE SWELL!
SONNET II.
OH I do love thee, meek SIMPLICITY!
For of thy lays the lulling simpleness
Goes to my heart, and soothes each small distress,
Distress tho' small, yet haply great to me,
'Tis true on Lady Fortune's gentlest pad
I amble on; and yet I know not why
So sad I am! but should a friend and I
Frown, pout and part, then I am very sad.
And then with sonnets and with sympathy
My dreamy bosom's mystic woes I pall;
Now of my false friend plaining plaintively,
Now raving at mankind in general;
But whether sad or fierce, 'tis simple all,
All very simple, meek SIMPLICITY!
SONNET III.
AND this reft house is that, the which he built,
Lamented Jack! and here his malt he pil'd,
Cautious in vain! these rats, that squeak so wild,
Squeak not unconscious of their father's guilt.
Did he not see her gleaming thro' the glade!
Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.
What tho' she milk no cow with crumpled horn,
Yet, aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd:*
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659 that time, and so decided was the opinion con-
660 cerning the characteristic vices of my style, that
661 a celebrated physician (now, alas! no more)
662 speaking of me in other respects with his usual
663 kindness to a gentleman, who was about to
664 meet me at a dinner party, could not however
665 resist giving him a hint not to mention the
666 " House that Jack built" in my presence, for
667 " that I was as sore as a boil about that sonnet ;"
668 he not knowing, that I was myself the author
669 of it.
*
And aye, beside her stalks her amarous knight!
Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,
And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,
His hindward charms glean an unearthly white.
Ah! thus thro' broken clouds at night's high Noon
Peeps in fair fragments forth the full-orb'd harvest-moon!
The following anecdote will not be wholly out of place
here, and may perhaps amuse the reader. An amateur per-
former in verse expressed to a common friend, a strong de-
sire to be introduced to me, but hesitated in accepting my
friend's immediate offer, on the score that "he was, he must
acknowledge the author of a confounded severe epigram on
my ancient mariner, which had given me great pain. I as-
sured my friend that if the epigram was a good one, it would
only increase my desire to become acquainted with the au-
thor, and begg'd to hear it recited: when, to my no less
surprise than amusement, it proved to be one which I had
myself some time before written and inserted in the Morning
Post.
To the author of the Ancient Mariner.
Your poem must eternal be,
Dear-sir! it cannot fail,
For 'tis incomprehensible
And without head or tail.