Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850
TALBOYS
The first grace of the whole composition seems to me its two-fold personality – the free intimacy between the great Protector and the small Protected. It is like Horace's part of a familiar colloquy, where you may fancy, at discretion, interlocutory remark, or answer, or question of Augustus.
NORTH
True, Talboys. Verse has attracted to the Bard the rays of imperial favour. The Emperor himself is a Verse-maker. How natural and suitable that Horace in verses which vary, to the time of the moment, with inimitable facility, from a conversation-like negligence, or negligent seeming – to sweetness and beauty, to strength and dignity – should win the august ear, tired with the din of arms or of debating tongues, to an hour's chat on the interests of the Muses.
SEWARD
The praise of the Poet how loving and ingenious! how insinuatingly subdued!
NORTH
Yet the ground is chosen with a dexterous boldness. The majestic opening Address of the Poem showed Augustus, like a Jupiter, wielding with beneficent power the destinies of the Roman world. And now, confronting the dispenser of welfare to nations, he sets up another benefactor of the State, the Poet, face to face with golden-throned, and purple-vested Octavius Cæsar – poor Horatius Flaccus!
BULLER
Most awkward of Courtiers! Most crazed of versifiers!
SEWARD
Beware of rash judgments and half-informations. You familiar with Hory —
BULLER
You muttered the passage so that you murdered it.
TALBOYS
You, familiar with Hory, see at least how, by the choice of the ground, he has obliged himself to stepping cautiously and tenderly over it. He leads to it – he does not begin with it. Arrived at the comparison, he proposes it rather implicitly than explicitly – admire the Rhetorician. He will avert jealousy – he will propitiate kindness.
BULLER
Artful Dodger.
TALBOYS
He has acknowledged – you might have given us the line – a fault. Nothing seriously wrong though. As if Apollo had shot a plague with golden arrows upon the City, all are turned Versifiers – young and old – and grave and gay – wise and foolish – the skilled and the unskilled – the called and the uncalled.
BULLER
You write verses well yourself, Talboys.
TALBOYS
I am as willing as most people to bandy compliments, but here you must excuse me. Out of the small fault, rises the Eulogy. This diffusive delusion – this epidemic, yet lively, and airy, and sprightly, and harmless insanity, gives out from its bosom some good uses, and first on the madman himself. As one disease expels another, the musolept is, through the very force of his disorder, free from the taint of cupidity – of the burning desire for worldly wealth. The simple man has room in his heart but for one love. Verse is his passion – his bliss, his all-absorbing vocation. Has his banker failed with his little cash-balance in his hands? He laughs. Has one of his two slaves run away? He laughs. Has a fire at the bookseller's consumed the copies of his last work? 'Tis unlucky – but he laughs. It is not he that speculates upon, or waylays, the unguarded trust of his friend or acquaintances – not he that handles with adhesive fingers the gold of his young orphan-ward. And for his fare, it is an anchorite's – pulse and brown bread.
BULLER
Very prettily paraphrased indeed!
SEWARD
And very feelingly. Imagine these ideas sliding into one's heart in the natural verse of – Goldsmith! For it is as if Goldy here described himself – and see if the argument from the Innocence is not artfully placed, for the induction to the argument from the Benefits, that is to follow.
NORTH
My dear Boys Three, Hory is here painting himself – and not himself. It is the idea of the Poet. He brings the traits and the colours together, as they best suit each other, and his purposes. The meritorious Eremite's fare is not personal to the writer. He has reached a point which imperiously requires another fault. Frankly and humorously he takes this from Flaccus himself. The Poet is no soldier – slow to find the way to the field, and too quick to find the way from it. Nevertheless – now for the setting up. He, too, is a profitable servant of the State. And forthwith an imperatively demanded apology – for the purple-robed has smiled a little incredulously at the utilis urbi. If, says the Complete Letter-Writer, you will only admit that majestic interests may be served by adminicles of "small regard to see to."
TALBOYS
And how curiously he hides a pre-eminent power in the very smallest sphere!
NORTH
How finely! Rome was a republic of Orators. Cedant arma togæ – the Toga the war-weed of the Orator!
"Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatam."
The gowned Lords of the Nations – and, Lords of the Lords, the Orators!
BULLER
Are you sure that is the right reading?
NORTH
Let it be so. Observe now – the occultation.
BULLER
The what?
TALBOYS
The occultation.
BULLER
Mille gratias.
NORTH
The nascent and adolescent Orator is moulded to the power of the word by the greatest masters of the word, the Poets! Tell this, O Poet, in imperial ears! Then speak modestly, withdrawingly, insinuatingly. Hide the boast. It is hidden – and shown. The Poet fashions the tender and stammering mouth of the boy. The rudiments of pronunciation – The Orator nascent. No more. It is pretty and gentle that the Muse herself condescends to the care of moulding the young soft lip to the pure musical utterance of Latium's magnificent Mother-tongue.
BULLER
Now I see it all. The occultation!
NORTH
But She delays not undertaking a nobler and more momentous function. From the bodily organs She passes to the governing mind. And of the Mind at once to the nobler part, the Will. She is the young Roman's Moral Tutress. Horace is brief. What these her first lessons to the soul are, he does not say. He tells you their powerful virtue. They wrest, he says, (torquet,) the charmed hearing from dishonest, from gross and grovelling, from depraving and polluting discourse. You may, my friends, imagine Phædrus' feeling Fables, or the "Lays of Ancient Rome;" or at Athens, instead of Rome, the Iliad.
TALBOYS
It is the hint but of a line, sir. But each of us may know in himself how early the Muse really did begin to possess our spirits with thoughts, and scenes, and actions that soared away from the presences of our lives – that She did
"Lift us in aspiration from the earth."
And as the pupil grows, the discipline of the divine Instructress ripens. With precepts that are the counsels of a dear and wise friend, she moulds the susceptible compliant bosom. She softens his rough self-will – weeds out envy – and curbs anger.
BULLER
Talboys, you expound Flaccus well.
TALBOYS
Her storial informations, pictures from human existence, take now a more direct purpose. She recites deeds justly and virtuously done; She furnishes and arms —instruit– the springing generation with high transmitted examples.
NORTH
Ay, my dear Talboys, He is thinking now —
BULLER
Hitherto you have always said She—
NORTH
I have. "She" is really "He" – the Poet and not the Muse. I was rapt. He is thinking now, my dear Buller, of old strong-hearted Ennius – the heroic annalist, in soldierly rough verses, of younger heroic Rome. We may recollect, for the nonce, whatever is most English, and most Scottish, and most heroic, in those more musical "histories" of William, and of Walter.
TALBOYS
We have done with education. We come to the Charity of the Muse. She visits the poor man's home and the sick-bed. One almost starts at the thought, in the midst of the smoke, and the wealth, and the uproar of Pagan Rome. Yet there the plain words are, "She (pardon me) comforts the indigent and the sick man." Is it not sic in orig.?
NORTH
Sic.
BULLER
Of her ministrations to the splendour of Arts and the luxury of Patrician feasts – of her Theatres, that spread laughter or tears over the dense myriads of the World's Metropolis – not a syllable. The innermost heart of the Poet must have held the chord that gave out the soft low sound —inopem solatur et ægrum. No introduction and no comment. A solitary, unpretending sentence or clause.
NORTH
God bless you, my dear Buller.
TALBOYS
Amen. May the Chairman of Quarter Sessions live a thousand years! The indigent man may, I suppose, be a poor learned or a poor unlearned man. Relatively to the latter we may think, for Scotland, of Burns' Poems lying in Scottish cottages; and beginning from Scotland, of the traditional ballads and songs that sound in every hut throughout Europe: – for Italy, of what they say of the Venetian Gondoliers singing a Venetianised Gerusalemme Liberata.
NORTH
So far, my children, for the "parvis rebus." Something on a more extended scale, and of a loftier reach! We are commenting Horace. From the earliest times of civilisation, a principal office of verse was to adorn and solemnise the services of Religion. The cultivation of Verse was early in the Temples. A moment's recollection recalls to us the immense influence on the Hellenic Poetry of this ritual dedication. This theme closes the Praise of the Poet. But faithful to the strain which he has undertaken, and so far adhered to, the discreet Eulogist still, in the loftiest matter, diminishes the pomp, rejects ostentation, confines the sensible dimensions. And still faithful, he dwells on that which, of less show, is the more touching. He has to array a religious procession that drawing, as it moves along, all gaze – thrilling – as it slowly passes door after door, and winds through street after street, with solemn and sweet chaunt lifted from the sorrowing Earth to the listening Heavens – the universal heart of the Eternal Queen-City – Look! Who are they that, as the crowds divide, draw into sight? Chaste boys, and girls yet afar from the marriage-bond. The sanctity of natural innocence heightening to the heart, and rendering more gracious, the sanctity of the altar! – winning favour – alluring the worshipper to the worship!
SEWARD
The only expanded movement of the short passage – a third of it – seven verses out of the twenty-one.
NORTH
The religious topics are, generally, the propitiating of the Divinities – then the particular benefits: Rain supplicated in seasons of Drought – the visitation of Pestilential Sickness averted – National dangers repelled – Peace, the wished-for, obtained – and the perpetual desire of earth's dwellers and tillers, the fruitful Year. He has risen gradually, and has reached the summit. Unexpectedly – you know not how – the Poet, though it is not so said, is far greater than the Emperor. Yes, my friends, for the dominion of the Imperial Throne is over the Kings of the Earth; but the sway of the well-strung Lyre is over the throned Gods who inhabit above or underneath the Earth. With Song are the celestial Deities soothed and made favourable – with Song the dark dominators of Hell.
"Carmine Dî Superi placantur, carmine Manes!"
A swelling and musical close to an anthem. What shall we admire most, then? The variety of the Praise? The ethical wisdom? The genuine love in the selection of the grounds? Or the exquisite skill of the artificer? The "craft of the delicate spirit," who, veiled in humility, has gradually, and as if insensibly, scaled to a station from which he looks upon Monarchs – but from which should they aspire to strike him down, they offend, in violating his right, the majesty of the assembled Gods? In inditing the unhappy passage about the Poet's sole end being to please, I think that Dugald Stewart was beguiled by a prevalent misconception amongst those who have taught the Philosophy of the Fine Arts. The degrading influences are his own. No doubt the Poet draws his poetical being from Pleasure – the great ancestress of his tribe —gentis origo. He worships Pleasure according to the primeval fashion of ancestor-worship. But what is his impulse to compose, to sing? O hear from all the Great Poets since the world began, their answer. They sing because a Spirit is in them. They sing because the muse bids. She pours in thoughts and words; and along with thoughts and words flows in the musical Will. With them it is like the Sybil when invaded by Apollo. The real Poet sings, moved from without or from within. If from without – some fore-shaped or self-shaped subject; if from within, some passion, or some impassioned thought of his own has so deeply and strongly affected him, that he is impelled to seek relief of the burthening emotions and ideas in uttering them. This is the primary cause, and the natural origin of Song. And you may call this, if you choose, an intending of pleasure; but beware how you draw degrading inferences from this first recognition and admission of pleasure. If you weigh the psychological fact, you must look backwards to the attitude of mind which produced the work, and not forwards to the attitude which the work produces. Of the intellective, the moral, the imaginative, the pathetic powers that gave birth to the Iliad – or to the Prometheus Vinctus – to the Knight's Tale – to the Legend of Holiness – to Lear or Othello – or to the Paradise Lost! Who does not instantly feel that he has been summoned to conceive and to contemplate all that is mighty, august, affecting, or terrible in our souls? That he looks into the caverned abyss where the Spirits of Power walk? Even as when, by the side of Anchises, Æneas beholds in pre-existence the assemblage of his kingly descendants, whom their day and the upper air will call to rule the nations with sovereignty, to impose the conditions of peace, to spare the vanquished, and with war to bring down the proud. Lear! The minstrels chanted an ancient rude lay – the infant stage brought a rude drama – to Shakspeare. But long before Minstrel or Theatre – had mother, or grandam, or nurse told to the weeping or shuddering, to the burning or auguring Child, that relique of old memory, that domestic tragedy of the antique British throne – the story attracting and torturing of the Father-king who divided his heart and his realm to the two serpents, who cast out from heart and realm the Dove of his blood – till Time unveiled Truth and Love. Then and there was the seed, the slowly-springing, laid in the deep and kindly soil. From that hour dates the Lear of Shakspeare. Why repeat things that we all know, and have a thousand times said? Because they must be reasserted explicitly, as often as they are implicitly gainsayed; and is it not gainsaying them to affirm that the Poet sings to please, when indeed he sings because this Infinite of knowledges – this accumulation of experiences – this world of sensibilities and sympathies, of affections, passions, emotions, desires of his own and of other men's, inspires him, and will form itself in words? But he looks towards his hoped Auditors with a more direct selfish desire or design. He must have from them the meed of all glorious deeds – the wreath of all glorious doers – Fame. Let Grateful Mankind applaud the Benefactors of Mankind. Ay, he loves life. He would fain live beyond this world, wide as it is, of his own particular bosom – he would live in the bosoms of his contemporaries, and in the bosoms of the generations that are to follow for evermore. Proud as privileged, he asks his due – Recognition. And who that has the ability to render will choose or dare to withhold the tribute? Fame! the nectarean cup – the ambrosial fruit – that confers Immortality! The last best gift that mortals affect to bestow on their fellow-mortals. He who, at some great crisis, achieves a deed which the world shall feel, and whereof the world shall ring – dilates, in consciousness, to comprehend those whom his act shall reach, and those to whom it shall resound. Remember Lord Nelson at Trafalgar – in the moment ere the first gun fires, the word signalled to the awaiting host throughout the Fleet – "England expects." In an instant, the twenty-five millions of compatriot islanders, as if wafted by the winds from their distant homes, are there– spectators of the Fight that yet sleeps, at the next instant to wake, convulsing sea and air – spectators to every single combatant, of his individual heroism. What did that late conqueror of ancient Egypt and what did his fiery warriors understand, when going into battle he said to them – "Forty Centuries look down on you from the summit of yonder Pyramids?" These plains, for four thousand years, have belonged to History. See to it, that the page which you are about adding shall be, for your part, luminous with glory and victory, not
"Black with dishonour, and foul with retreat."
Suppose that he had said, "Forty Centuries to come gaze upon you." The Pyramids seem likely to hold their own in such a reckoning. Perhaps the stretch of time is too long for the imagination of the Gallic Soldier. But surely, so speaking, he had spoken more from his heart and less from his imagination; for he meditated the ages to come, not the ages gone by. To leave a name that shall sound, for good or for ill, loud-echoing from century to century – a name to be heard, when Cæsar, and Alexander, and Hannibal are commemorated – a name insubmergible by the waves of time – inextinguishable by the mists of oblivion —that he desired, and that has he not won? Horace has hung his name too in imagination on the structures of the Cheopses. But how different is the
"Exegi monumentum ære perennius,
Regalique situ Pyramidum altius"
of the Poet! Horace indeed was already safe in pronouncing Homer immortal, with all the heroes upon whom he had conferred the gift. A thousand years! And the portentous strain, with all its Gods and Goddesses, and Kings and Queens, and Men and Women – fresh, bright, vivid, and fragrant, warm and yet reverberating from the Harp – as if the plectrum of the sublime Bard were but that moment withdrawn from the strings – as if the breast that first poured the strain were yet throbbing with quicker emotion – stirred by the pulsating chords and by the words which itself chanted. Horace might well understand the immortality of the Poet. That he claimed it, and judiciously, for himself – he who sung so differently, the sweet, the sprightly, some loftier notes too – but afar from Homer – suggests a reflection upon the nature of durability. The works were born of Love; and by Love they live, for in them the Love lives. Spirat adhuc amor. Those Egyptian, star-contemplating, and star-contemplated Edifices, quarried from the Rock, stand; integral parts of the Planet, immovable – immutable. That is one manner of enduring. Sound is awakened. For an instant it flits through the air and ceases, extinct in silence. Add Love, and you have informed sound with duration – another manner of enduring. The mountain of piled rocks and a touch on the air are become rivals in duration, and we say they will last for ever.