A Defence of Poesie and Poems Part 11

"Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

(Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice," act v., sc. 1)

{26} Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning, virtuous action.

{27} Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy.

{28} It's advantage herein over History.

{29} "All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorising thy trespa.s.s with compare."

Shakespeare, "Sonnet" 35.

{30} "Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory, mistress of life, messenger of antiquity."--Cicero, "De Oratore."

{31} In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher, Historian, and all others (bating comparison with the Divine).

{32} He is beyond the Philosopher.

{33} Horace's "Ars Poetica," lines 372-3. But Horace wrote "Non homines, non Di"--"Neither men, G.o.ds, nor lettered columns have admitted mediocrity in poets."

{34} The moral common-places. Common Place, "Locus communis," was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., "Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobaeus out of Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book ent.i.tled 'Polyanthea,' provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter." Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, "a common-place,"

came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting, and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but commonly without wit in it.

{35} Thus far Aristotle. The whole pa.s.sage in the "Poetics" runs: "It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet are distinguished. The work of Herodotus might be versified; but it would still be a species of History, no less with metre than without. They are distinguished by this, that the one relates what has been, the other what might be. On this account Poetry is more philosophical, and a more excellent thing than History, for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general truth; History about particular.

In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or necessarily, this is general; and this is the object of Poetry, even while it makes use of particular names.

But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him, this is particular truth."

{36} Justinus, who lived in the second century, made an epitome of the history of the a.s.syrian, Persian, Grecian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires, from Trogus Pompeius, who lived in the time of Augustus.

{37} Dares Phrygius was supposed to have been a priest of Vulcan, who was in Troy during the siege, and the Phrygian Iliad ascribed to him as early as the time of AElian, A.D. 230, was supposed, therefore, to be older than Homer's.

{38} Quintus Curtius, a Roman historian of uncertain date, who wrote the history of Alexander the Great in ten books, of which two are lost and others defective.

{39} Not knowledge but practice.

{40} The Poet Monarch of all Human Sciences.

{41} In "Love's Labour's Lost" a resemblance has been fancied between this pa.s.sage and Rosalind's description of Biron, and the jest:-

"Which his fair tongue--conceit's expositor - Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tables, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse."

{42} Virgil's "AEneid," Book xii.:-

"And shall this ground fainthearted dastard Turnus flying view?

Is it so vile a thing to die?"

(Phaer's Translation [1573].)

{43} Instances of the power of the Poet's work.

{44} Defectuous. This word, from the French "defectueux," is used twice in the "Apologie for Poetrie."

{45} Part II. The PARTS of Poetry.

{46} Can Pastoral be condemned?

{47} The close of Virgil's seventh Eclogue--Thyrsis was vanquished, and Corydon crowned with lasting glory.

{48} Or Elegiac?

{49} Or Iambic? or Satiric?

{50} From the first Satire of Persius, line 116, in a description of Homer's satire:

"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et admissus circ.u.m praecordia ludit," &c.

Shrewd Flaccus touches each vice in his laughing friend. Dryden thus translated the whole pa.s.sage:-

"Unlike in method, with concealed design Did crafty Horace his low numbers join; And, with a sly insinuating grace Laughed at his friend, and looked him in the face: Would raise a blush where secret vice he found; And tickle, while he gently probed the wound; With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled, But made the desperate pa.s.ses while he smiled."

{51} From the end of the eleventh of Horace's epistles (Lib. 1):

"Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, Strenua nos exercet inertia; navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hic est, Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus."

They change their skies but not their mind who run across the seas; We toil in laboured idleness, and seek to live at ease With force of s.h.i.+ps and four horse teams. That which you seek is here, At Ulubrae, unless your mind fail to be calm and clear.

"At Ulubrae" was equivalent to saying in the dullest corner of the world, or anywhere. Ulubrae was a little town probably in Campania, a Roman Little Pedlington. Thomas Carlyle may have had this pa.s.sage in mind when he gave to the same thought a grander form in Sartor Resartus: "May we not say that the hour of spiritual enfranchis.e.m.e.nt is even this? When your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languis.h.i.+ng to work, becomes revealed and thrown open, and you discover with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere, is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself. Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the G.o.ds for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldest thou only see."

{52} Or Comic?

{53} In pistrinum. In the pounding-mill (usually worked by horses or a.s.ses).

{54} Or Tragic?

{55} The old song of Percy and Douglas, Chevy Chase in its first form.

{56} Or the Heroic?

{57} Epistles I. ii. 4. Better than Chrysippus and Crantor. They were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, Crantor the first commentator upon Plato.

{58} Summary of the argument thus far.

{59} Objections stated and met.

{60} Cornelius Agrippa's book, "De Incert.i.tudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium," was first published in 1532; Erasmus's "Moriae Encomium" was written in a week, in 1510, and went in a few months through seven editions.

{61} The objection to rhyme and metre.

{62} The first of these sentences is from Horace (Epistle I. xviii.

69): "Fly from the inquisitive man, for he is a babbler." The second, "While each pleases himself we are a credulous crowd," seems to be varied from Ovid (Fasti, iv. 311):-