Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429
THE SEA AND THE POETS
Of three poets, each the most original in his language, and each peculiarly susceptible of impressions from external nature—Horace, Shakspeare, and Burns—not one seems to have appreciated the beauty, the majestic sublimity, the placid loveliness, alternating with the terrific grandeur, of the 'many-sounding sea.' Judging from their incidental allusions to it, and the use they make of it in metaphor and imagery, it would seem to have presented itself to their imaginations only as a fierce, unruly, untamable, and unsightly monster, to be loathed and avoided—a blot on the fair face of creation—a necessary evil, perhaps; but still an evil, and most certainly suggestive of no ideas poetic in their character.
It is marvellous, for there is not one of these poets who does not discover a lively sense of the varied charms of universal nature, and has not painted them in glowing colours with the pencil of a master. Who has not noted with what evident love, with what a nicely-discriminative knowledge Shakspeare has pictured our English flowers, our woodland glades, the forest scenery of Old England, before the desolating axe had prostrated the pride of English woods? How vividly has not Burns translated into vigorous verse each feature of his native landscape, till
—– 'Auld Coila's plains and fells,
Her muirs, red-brown wi' heather-bells,
Her banks and braes, her dens and dells,'
live again in the magic of his song. And Horace—with what charming playfulness, with what exquisite grace, has he not figured the olive-groves of Tibur, the pendent vines ruddy with the luscious grape, the silver streams, the sparkling fountains and purple skies of fruitful Campania! Looking on nature with a poet's eye, as did these poets, one and all of them, is it not a psychological mystery that none of them should have detected the ineffable beauty of a sea-prospect?
First, as to Horace. When climbing the heights of Mount Vultur, that Lucanian hill where once, when overcome by fatigue, the youthful poet lay sleeping, and doves covered his childish and wearied limbs with leaves—Horace must have often viewed, with their wide expanse glittering in the sun, the waters of the Adriatic—often must he have hailed the grateful freshness of the sea-breeze and the invigorating perfumes of
—– 'the early sea-smell blown
Through vineyards from some inland bay.'
Yet about this sea, which should have kindled his imagination and inspired his genius, this thankless bard poetises in a vein such as a London citizen, some half-century back, might have indulged in after a long, tedious, 'squally' voyage in an overladen Margate hoy.
No such spirit possessed him as that which dictated poor Campbell's noble apostrophe to the glorious 'world of waters:'
—– 'Earth has not a plain
So boundless or so beautiful as thine;
The eagle's vision cannot take it in;
The lightning's glance, too weak to sweep its space,
Sinks half-way o'er it, like a wearied bird:
It is the mirror of the stars, where all
Their hosts within the concave firmament,
Gay marching to the music of the spheres,
Can see themselves at once.'
Horace, indeed, has sung the praises of Tarentum—that beautiful maritime city of the Calabrian Gulf, whose attractions were such as to make the delights of Tarentum a common proverbial expression. But what were these delights as celebrated by our poet?—the perfection of its honey, the excellence of its olives, the abundance of its grapes, its lengthened spring and temperate winter. For these, its merits, did Horace prefer, as he tells us, Tarentum to every other spot on the wide earth—his beloved Tibur only and ever excepted. In truth, Horace valued and visited the sea-side only in winter, and then simply because its climate was milder than that to be met with inland, and therefore more agreeable to the dilapidated constitution of a sensitive valetudinarian. His commentators suppose he produced nothing during his marine hybernations: if the inclement season froze 'the genial current of his soul,' the aspect of the sea did not thaw it.
His motive for his sea-side trips is amusingly set forth in one of the most lively and characteristic of his Epistles—the fifteenth of the first book. In this he inquires of a friend what sort of winter weather is to be found at Velia and Salernum; two cities, one on the Adriatic, the other on the Mediterranean seaboard of Italy—what manner of roads they had—whether the people there drank tank-water or spring-water—and whether hares, boars, crabs, and fish were with them abundant. He adds, he is not apprehensive about their wines—knowing these, as we may infer, to be good—although usually, when from home, he is scrupulous about his liquors; whilst, when at home, he can put up almost with anything in the way of potations. It is quite plain Horace went down to the sea just in the spirit in which a turtle-fed alderman would transfer himself to Cheltenham; or in which a fine lady, whose nerves the crush, hurry, and late hours of a London season had somewhat disturbed, would exchange the dissipations of Mayfair for the breezy hills of Malvern, or the nauseous waters of Tunbridge Wells.
This certainly explains, and perhaps excuses, the grossly uncivil terms in which alone he notices the sea. One of the worst of Ulysses' troubles was, according to him, the numerous and lengthy sea-voyages which that Ithacan gadabout had to take. Horace wishes for Mævius, who was his aversion, no worse luck than a rough passage and shipwreck at the end of it. His notion of a happy man—ille beatus—is one who has not to dread the sea. Augustus, whose success had blessed not only his own country, but the whole world, had—not the least of his blessings—given to the seamen a calmed sea—pacatum mare. Lamenting at Virgil's departure for Athens, he rebukes the impiety of the first mariner who ventured, in the audacity of his heart, to go afloat and cross the briny barrier interposed between nations. He esteems a merchant favoured specially by the gods, should he twice or thrice a year return in safety from an Atlantic cruise. He tells us he himself had known the terrors of 'the dark gulf of the Adriatic,' and had experienced 'the treachery of the western gale;' and expresses a charitable wish, that the enemies of the Roman state were exposed to the delights of both. He likens human misery to a sea 'roughened by gloomy winds;' 'to embark once more on the mighty sea,' is his figurative expression for once more engaging in the toils and troubles of the world; Rome, agitated by the dangers of civil conflict, resembles an ill-formed vessel labouring tempest-tossed in the waves; his implacable Myrtale resembles the angry Adriatic, in which also he finds a likeness to an ill-tempered lover. All through, from first to last, the gentle Horace pelts with most ungentle phrases one of the noblest objects in nature, provocative alike of our admiration and our awe, our terror and our love.
And even Shakspeare must be ranged in the same category. The most English of poets has not one laudatory phrase for
—– 'The seas
Which God hath given for fence impregnable'
to the poet's England. It is idle to say that Shakspeare was inland-bred—that he knew nothing, and could therefore have cared nothing about the matter—seeing that, insensible as he might have been to its beauties, he makes constant reference to the sea, and even in language implying that his familiarity with it was not inferior to that of any yachtsman who has ever sailed out of Cowes Harbour. He uses nautical terms frequently and appropriately. Romeo's rope-ladder is 'the high top-gallant of his joy;' King John, dying of poison, declares 'the tackle of his heart is cracked,' and 'all the shrouds wherewith his life should sail' wasted 'to a thread.' Polonius tells Laertes, 'the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail'—a technical expression, the singular propriety of which a naval critic has recently established; whilst some of the commentators on the passage in King Lear, descriptive of the prospect from Dover Cliffs, affirm that the comparison as to apparent size, of the ship to her cock-boat, and the cock-boat to a buoy, discover a perfect knowledge of the relative proportions of the objects named. In Hamlet, Othello, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure, and Pericles, sea-storms are made accessory to the development of the plot, and sometimes described with a force and truthfulness which forbid the belief that the writer had never witnessed such scenes: however, like Horace, it is in the darkest colours that Shakspeare uniformly paints 'the multitudinous seas.'
In the Winter's Tale, we read of—
—– 'the fearful usage
(Albeit ungentle) of the dreadful Neptune.'
In Henry V., of 'the furrowed sea,' 'the lofty surge,' 'the inconstant billows dancing;' in Henry VI., Queen Margaret finds in the roughness of the English waters a presage of her approaching wo; in Richard III., Clarence's dream figures to us all the horrors of 'the vasty deep;' in Henry VIII., Wolsey indeed speaks of 'a sea of glory,' but also of his shipwreck thereon; in The Tempest we read of 'the never surfeited sea,' and of the 'sea-marge sterile and rocky-hard;' in the Midsummer's Night Dream, 'the sea' is 'rude,' and from it the winds 'suck up contagious fogs;' Hamlet is as 'mad as the sea and wind;' the violence of Laertes and the insurgent Danes is paralleled to an irruption of the sea, 'overpeering of his list;' in the well-known soliloquy is the expression, 'a sea of troubles,' which, in spite of Pope's suggested and tasteless emendation, commentators have shewn to have been used proverbially by the Greeks, and more than once by Æschylus and Menander. Still, Shakspeare, again like Horace, was not insensible to the merits of sea-air in a sanitary point of view. Dionyza, meditating Marina's murder, bids her take what the Brighton doctor's call 'a constitutional' by the sea-side, adding that—
—– 'the air is quick there,
Piercing and sharpens well the stomach.'
As to Burns, his most fervent admirer can scarcely complain when we involve him in the censure to which we have already subjected Horace and Shakspeare. He, too, writes about the sea in such a fashion, that we should hardly have suspected, what is true, that he was born almost within hearing of its waves; that much of his life was passed on its shores or near them, and that at a time of life when external objects most vividly impress themselves on the senses, and exercise the largest influence on the taste.
The genius of 'Old Coila,' in sketching the poet's early life, says—
'I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;'
but few tokens of this 'delight' are to be observed in his poetry. He has, indeed, his allusions to 'tumbling billows' and 'surging foam;' to southern climes where 'wild-meeting oceans boil;' to 'life's rough ocean' and 'life's stormy main;' to 'hard-blowing gales;' to the 'raging sea,' 'raging billows,' 'boundless oceans roaring wide,' and the like; but these are the stock-metaphors of every poet, and would be familiar to him even had he never overpassed the frontiers of Bohemia.
One sea-picture, and one alone, is to be found in Burns, and this, it is freely admitted, is exquisite:
'Behold the hour, the boat arrive;
Thou goest, thou darling of my heart!
Severed from thee, can I survive?
But fate has willed, and we must part.
I'll often greet this surging swell,
Yon distant isle will often hail:
E'en here I took the last farewell;
There latest marked her vanished sail.
Along the solitary shore,
While flitting sea-fowl round me cry,
Across the rolling, dashing roar,
I'll westward turn my wistful eye:
Happy thou Indian grove, I'll say,
Where now my Nancy's path may be!
While through thy sweets she loves to stray,
Oh! tell me, does she muse on me?'
This charming lyric, the pathetic tenderness of which commends it to every feeling heart, is all that Burns has left in evidence that the sea had to him, at least, one poetic aspect.
CURIOSITIES OF CHESS
More has perhaps been written about chess-playing than any other of the games which human ingenuity has invented for recreative purposes, and it is not easy to foresee the time when dissertation or discovery on the subject shall be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. Scarcely a year passes that does not add something to our knowledge of the history of the royal game; and among the latest additions, the able paper by Mr Bland, published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, is not the least deserving of notice. It contains many curious particulars and remarks, interspersed in its dry and technical narrative, sufficient to form a page or two of pleasant reading for those—and they are not few—to whom chess is interesting.
We must premise that Mr Bland takes three but little-known Oriental manuscripts as the groundwork of his observations; one of them, in the Persian character, is said to be 'probably unique,' though, unfortunately, very imperfect. It bears no date or author's name, these being lost with the missing portions, but the treatise itself contains internal evidence of very high antiquity. The author, whoever he was, tells us that he had travelled much through Persia and the adjacent countries, from the age of fifteen until the middle period of life, during which he gained the knowledge and experience which enabled him to write his book. Besides which, he measured his strength with many masters of the art of chess-playing, adding on each occasion to his reputation as a conqueror: 'and whereas,' as he relates, 'the greater number of professors were deficient in the art of playing without looking at the board, I myself played so against four adversaries at once, and at the same time against another opponent in the usual manner, and, by divine favour, won all the games.' Here, singularly enough, we find a Persian Staunton making himself famous perhaps long before Norman William thought of invading Britain—so true it is, that in mere intellectual achievements we have scarcely surpassed bygone generations. He, the Persian, evidently entertained a comfortable idea of his own abilities; for he boasts largely of the improvements and new moves or positions which he has introduced into the game. He disputes, too, the authenticity of the belief, that chess was originally invented in India, and that it was first introduced into Persia in the sixth century of our era by a physician, whom Nushirwan had sent to seek for the work known as Pilpay's Fables. On the contrary, he contends that chess, in its original and most developed form, is purely a Persian invention, and that the modern game is but an abridgment of the ancient one. In how far this statement is borne out by the fact, we have at present no means of knowing; and until some more complete manuscript or other work shall be brought to light which may supply the want, we must rest content with the account familiar to most readers—that chess was invented by an Indian physician for the diversion of the monarch, his master, and the reward claimed in grains of corn, beginning with one grain on the first square of the board, and doubling the number in regularly increasing progression up to the last.
We may here briefly state what the ancient, or, as it is commonly called in the East, 'Timour's Game,' was. It required a board with 110 squares and 56 men—almost as many again as are used in modern chess—and the moves were extremely complicated and difficult to learn. The rectangularity of the board was interrupted by four lateral squares, which served as a fort, or special point of defence for the king, whose powers, as well as those of the other pieces, were in many respects different from those at present known. 'Timour's mind,' we are told, 'was too exalted to play at the Little Chess, and therefore he played only at the Great Chess, on a board of ten squares by eleven, with the addition of two camels, two zarafahs,' and other pieces, with Persian designations.
Next we come to a complete chapter, entitled the 'Ten Advantages of Chess,' in which the views and reasonings are eminently Oriental and characteristic. The first explains that food and exercise are good for the mind as well as for the body, and that chess is a most excellent means for quickening the intellect, and enabling it to gain knowledge. 'For the glory of man is knowledge, and chess is the nourishment of the mind, the solace of the spirit, the polisher of intelligence, the bright sun of understanding, and has been preferred by the philosopher, its inventor, to all other means by which we arrive at wisdom.' The second advantage is in the promotion and cultivation of religion; predestination and free-will are both exemplified—the player being able to move where he will, yet always in obedience to certain laws. 'Whereas,' says the writer, 'Nerd—that is, Eastern backgammon—on the contrary, is mere free-will, while in dice, again, all is compulsion.' The third and fourth advantages relate to government and war; and the fifth to astronomy, illustrating its several phenomena as shewn by the text, according to which 'the board represents the heavens, in which the squares are the celestial houses, and the pieces, stars. The superior pieces are likened to the moving stars; and the pawns, which have only one movement, to the fixed stars. The king is as the sun, and the wazir in place of the moon, and the elephants and taliah in the place of Saturn, and the rukhs and dabbabah in that of Mars, and the horses and camel in that of Jupiter, and the ferzin and zarafah in that of Venus; and all these pieces have their accidents, corresponding with the trines and quadrates, and conjunction and opposition, and ascendancy and decline—such as the heavenly bodies have; and the eclipse of the sun is figured by shah caim or stale mate;' and much more to the same purport. We question whether the astronomer-royal ever suspected he was illustrating his own science when engaged in one of his quiet games of chess with the master of trinity.
The sixth advantage is somewhat astrological in character: as there are four principal movements of chess, these answer to the four physical temperaments, Cold, Warm, Dry, and Wet, which are ruled by their respective planets; and thus each piece on the board is made to have its peculiar significance in relation with the stars. It is further shewn, that chess-playing is remedial against many of the lesser bodily ailments; 'and no illness is more grievous than hunger and thirst, yet both of these, when the mind is engaged in chess, are no longer thought of.' Next in order, the seventh advantage, is 'in obtaining repose for the soul;' as the author observes: 'The soul hath illnesses like as the body hath, and the cure of these last is known; but of the soul's illness there be also many kinds, and of these I will mention a few.' These are ignorance, disobedience, haste, cunning, avarice, tyranny, lying, pride, deceit, and envy. Deceit is said to be of two kinds: that which deceives others, and that which deceives ourselves. But of all evils, ignorance is the greatest; 'for it is the soul's death, as learning is its life; and for this disease is chess an especial cure, since there is no way by which men arrive more speedily at knowledge and wisdom; and in like manner, by its practice, all the faults which form the diseases of the soul are converted into their corresponding virtues.' It is not to be doubted that chess-playing may keep individuals out of mischief; but, whatever may have been the case in ancient times, we do not hear of its transforming vicious characters into virtuous ones in our days.
The eighth advantage is social, inasmuch as it brings men of different degrees together, and promotes their intimacy and friendship; and 'advantage the ninth, is in wisdom and knowledge, and that wise men do play chess; and to those who object that foolish men also play chess, and, though constantly engaged in it, become no wiser, it may be answered, that the distinction between wise and foolish men in playing chess, is as that of man and beast in eating of the tree—that the man chooses its ripe and sweet fruit, while the beast eats but the leaves and branches, and the unripe and bitter fruit; and so it is with players at chess—the wise man plays for those virtues and advantages which have been already mentioned, and the foolish man plays it but for mere sport and gambling, and regards not its advantages and virtues. This is the condition of the wise man and foolish man in playing chess.' From this it seems a descent to the tenth advantage, which is, that chess combines war with sport; and pleasant allegories are made subservient to the inculcation of sound truths and important principles.
Next comes an explanation of the mode in which Great Chess was played, with the nature and value of the various moves. Among the hard technicalities with which it abounds, the writer takes occasion to condemn the practice of giving a different value to the piece which may have reached the end of the board; 'for,' as he says, 'what is more natural or just than that men should occupy the station of their predecessors, and that the son of a king should become a king, and a general's son attain the rank of a general.' An instance of rigid caste-law carried into a harmless recreation.