Imaginary Conversations and Poems Part 16

_Porson._ You are more liberal in your largesses to the fair Greeks than a friend of mine was, who resided in Athens to acquire the language. He a.s.sured me that beauty there was in bud at thirteen, in full blossom at fifteen, losing a leaf or two every day at seventeen, trembling on the thorn at nineteen, and under the tree at twenty.

_Southey._ Mr. Porson, it does not appear to me that anything more is necessary, in the first instance, than to interrogate our hearts in what manner they have been affected. If the ear is satisfied; if at one moment a tumult is aroused in the breast, and tranquillized at another, with a perfect consciousness of equal power exerted in both cases; if we rise up from the perusal of the work with a strong excitement to thought, to imagination, to sensibility; above all, if we sat down with some propensities toward evil, and walk away with much stronger toward good, in the midst of a world which we never had entered and of which we never had dreamed before--shall we perversely put on again the _old man_ of criticism, and dissemble that we have been conducted by a most beneficent and most potent genius? Nothing proves to me so manifestly in what a pestiferous condition are its lazarettos, as when I observe how little hath been objected against those who have subst.i.tuted words for things, and how much against those who have reinstated things for words.

Let Wordsworth prove to the world that there may be animation without blood and broken bones, and tenderness remote from the stews. Some will doubt it; for even things the most evident are often but little perceived and strangely estimated. Swift ridiculed the music of Handel and the generals.h.i.+p of Marlborough; Pope the perspicacity and the scholars.h.i.+p of Bentley; Gray the abilities of Shaftesbury and the eloquence of Rousseau. Shakespeare hardly found those who would collect his tragedies; Milton was read from G.o.dliness; Virgil was antiquated and rustic; Cicero, Asiatic. What a rabble has persecuted my friend! An elephant is born to be consumed by ants in the midst of his unapproachable solitudes: Wordsworth is the prey of Jeffrey. Why repine? Let us rather amuse ourselves with allegories, and recollect that G.o.d in the creation left His n.o.blest creature at the mercy of a serpent.

_Porson._ Wordsworth goes out of his way to be attacked; he picks up a piece of dirt, throws it on the carpet in the midst of the company, and cries, _This is a better man than any of you!_ He does indeed mould the base material into what form he chooses; but why not rather invite us to contemplate it than challenge us to condemn it? Here surely is false taste.

_Southey._ The princ.i.p.al and the most general accusation against him is, that the vehicle of his thoughts is unequal to them. Now did ever the judges at the Olympic games say: 'We would have awarded to you the meed of victory, if your chariot had been equal to your horses: it is true they have won; but the people are displeased at a car neither new nor richly gilt, and without a gryphon or sphinx engraved on the axle'? You admire simplicity in Euripides; you censure it in Wordsworth: believe me, sir, it arises in neither from penury of thought--which seldom has produced it--but from the strength of temperance, and at the suggestion of principle.

Take up a poem of Wordsworth's and read it--I would rather say, read them all; and, knowing that a mind like yours must grasp closely what comes within it, I will then appeal to you whether any poet of our country, since Milton, hath exerted greater powers with less of strain and less of ostentation. I would, however, by his permission, lay before you for this purpose a poem which is yet unpublished and incomplete.

_Porson._ Pity, with such abilities, he does not imitate the ancients somewhat more.

_Southey._ Whom did they imitate? If his genius is equal to theirs he has no need of a guide. He also will be an ancient; and the very counterparts of those who now decry him will extol him a thousand years hence in malignity to the moderns.

THE ABBe DELILLE AND WALTER LANDOR

The Abbe Delille was the happiest of creatures, when he could weep over the charms of innocence and the country in some crowded and fas.h.i.+onable circle at Paris. We embraced most pathetically on our first meeting there, as if the one were condemned to quit the earth, the other to live upon it.

_Delille._ You are reported to have said that descriptive poetry has all the merits of a handkerchief that smells of roses?

_Landor._ This, if I said it, is among the things which are neither false enough nor true enough to be displeasing. But the Abbe Delille has merits of his own. To translate Milton well is more laudable than originality in trifling matters; just as to transport an obelisk from Egypt, and to erect it in one of the squares, must be considered a greater labour than to build a new chandler's shop.

_Delille._ Milton is indeed extremely difficult to translate; for, however n.o.ble and majestic, he is sometimes heavy, and often rough and unequal.

_Landor._ Dear Abbe, porphyry is heavy, gold is heavier; Ossa and Olympus are rough and unequal; the steppes of Tartary, though high, are of uniform elevation: there is not a rock, nor a birch, nor a cytisus, nor an arbutus upon them great enough to shelter a new-dropped lamb. Level the Alps one with another, and where is their sublimity? Raise up the vale of Tempe to the downs above, and where are those sylvan creeks and harbours in which the imagination watches while the soul reposes; those recesses in which the G.o.ds partook the weaknesses of mortals, and mortals the enjoyments of the G.o.ds?

You have treated our poet with courtesy and distinction; in your trimmed and measured dress, he might be taken for a Frenchman. Do not think me flattering. You have conducted Eve from Paradise to Paris, and she really looks prettier and smarter than before she tripped.

With what elegance she rises from a most awful dream! You represent her (I repeat your expression) as springing up _en sursaut_, as if you had caught her asleep and tickled the young creature on that sofa.

Homer and Virgil have been excelled in sublimity by Shakespeare and Milton, as the Caucasus and Atlas of the old world by the Andes and Teneriffe of the new; but you would embellish them all.

_Delille._ I owe to Voltaire my first sentiment of admiration for Milton and Shakespeare.

_Landor._ He stuck to them as a woodp.e.c.k.e.r to an old forest-tree, only for the purpose of picking out what was rotten: he has made the holes deeper than he found them, and, after all his cries and chatter, has brought home but scanty sustenance to his starveling nest.

_Delille._ You must acknowledge that there are fine verses in his tragedies.

_Landor._ Whenever such is the first observation, be a.s.sured, M.

l'Abbe, that the poem, if heroic or dramatic, is bad. Should a work of this kind be excellent, we say, 'How admirably the characters are sustained! What delicacy of discrimination! There is nothing to be taken away or altered without an injury to the part or to the whole.'

We may afterward descend on the versification. In poetry, there is a greater difference between the good and the excellent than there is between the bad and the good. Poetry has no golden mean; mediocrity here is of another metal, which Voltaire, however, had skill enough to encrust and polish. In the least wretched of his tragedies, whatever is tolerable is Shakespeare's; but, gracious Heaven! how deteriorated!

When he pretends to extol a poet he chooses some defective part, and renders it more so whenever he translates it. I will repeat a few verses from Metastasio in support of my a.s.sertion. Metastasio was both a better critic and a better poet, although of the second order in each quality; his tyrants are less philosophical, and his chambermaids less dogmatic. Voltaire was, however, a man of abilities, and author of many pa.s.sable epigrams, beside those which are contained in his tragedies and heroics; yet it must be confessed that, like your Parisian lackeys, they are usually the smartest when out of place.

_Delille._ What you call epigram gives life and spirit to grave works, and seems princ.i.p.ally wanted to relieve a long poem. I do not see why what pleases us in a star should not please us in a constellation.

DIOGENES AND PLATO

_Diogenes._ Stop! stop! come hither! Why lookest thou so scornfully and askance upon me?

_Plato._ Let me go! loose me! I am resolved to pa.s.s.

_Diogenes._ Nay, then, by Jupiter and this tub! thou leavest three good ells of Milesian cloth behind thee. Whither wouldst thou amble?

_Plato._ I am not obliged in courtesy to tell you.

_Diogenes._ Upon whose errand? Answer me directly.

_Plato._ Upon my own.

_Diogenes._ Oh, then, I will hold thee yet awhile. If it were upon another's, it might be a hards.h.i.+p to a good citizen, though not to a good philosopher.

_Plato._ That can be no impediment to my release: you do not think me one.

_Diogenes._ No, by my Father Jove!

_Plato._ Your father!

_Diogenes._ Why not? Thou shouldst be the last man to doubt it. Hast not thou declared it irrational to refuse our belief to those who a.s.sert that they are begotten by the G.o.ds, though the a.s.sertion (these are thy words) be unfounded on reason or probability? In me there is a chance of it: whereas in the generation of such people as thou art fondest of frequenting, who claim it loudly, there are always too many compet.i.tors to leave it probable.

_Plato._ Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.

_Diogenes._ Thou hast a glimpse of the truth in this place, but as thou hast already shown thy ignorance in attempting to prove to me what a _man_ is, ill can I expect to learn from thee what is a _great man_.

_Plato._ No doubt your experience and intercourse will afford me the information.

_Diogenes._ Attend, and take it. The great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws, and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of deceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him.

_Plato._ Excuse my interruption. In the beginning of your definition I fancied that you were designating your own person, as most people do in describing what is admirable; now I find that you have some other in contemplation.

_Diogenes._ I thank thee for allowing me what perhaps I _do_ possess, but what I was not then thinking of; as is often the case with rich possessors: in fact, the latter part of the description suits me as well as any portion of the former.

_Plato._ You may call together the best company, by using your hands in the call, as you did with me; otherwise I am not sure that you would succeed in it.

_Diogenes._ My thoughts are my company; I can bring them together, select them, detain them, dismiss them. Imbecile and vicious men cannot do any of these things. Their thoughts are scattered, vague, uncertain, c.u.mbersome: and the worst stick to them the longest; many indeed by choice, the greater part by necessity, and accompanied, some by weak wishes, others by vain remorse.

_Plato._ Is there nothing of greatness, O Diogenes! in exhibiting how cities and communities may be governed best, how morals may be kept the purest, and power become the most stable?

_Diogenes._ _Something_ of greatness does not const.i.tute the great man. Let me, however, see him who hath done what thou sayest: he must be the most universal and the most indefatigable traveller, he must also be the oldest creature, upon earth.