Chapter 18

The time has been when such a task was, to say the least of it, very simple. Each successive spring, at the season when "a livelier iris glows upon the burnished dove," Parnassus sent forth its leaves, and the voices of many cuckoos were heard throughout the land. Small difficulty then, either to flush or to bag sufficient game. But, somehow or other, of late years there has been a sort of panic among the poets. The gentler sort have either been scared by the improvisatore warblings of Mr Wakley, or terrified into silence by undue and undeserved apprehensions of the Knout. Seldom now are they heard to chirrup except under cover of the leaves of a sheltering magazine; and although we do occasionally detect a thin and ricketty octavo taking flight from the counter of some publisher, it is of so meek and inoffensive a kind that we should as soon think of making prize of a thrush in a bed of strawberries. We are much afraid that the tendency of the present age towards the facetious has contributed not a little to the dearth of sonnets and the extermination of the elegiac stanza. So long as friend Michael Angelo Titmarsh has the privilege of frequenting the house of Mrs Perkins and other haunts of fashionable and literary celebrity, Poseidon Hicks will relapse into gloomy silence, and Miss Bunion refrain from chanting her Lays of the Shattered Heart-strings. It a hard thing that a poet may not protrude his gentle sorrows for our commiseration, mourn over his blighted hopes, or rejoice the bosom of some budding virgin by celebrating her, in his Tennysonian measure, as the light-tressed Ianthe or sleek-haired Claribel of his soul, without being immediately greeted by a burst of impertinent guffaws, and either wantonly parodied or profanely ridiculed to his face. So firm is our belief in the humanising influence of poetry that we would rather, by a thousand times, that all the reviews should perish, and all the satirists be consigned to Orcus, than behold the total cessation of song throughout the British Islands. And if we, upon any former occasion, have spoken irreverently of the Nincompoops, we now beg leave to tender to that injured body our heartfelt contrition for the same; and invite them to join with us in a pastoral pilgrimage to Arcadia, where they shall have the run of the meadows, with a fair allowance of pipes and all things needful--where they may rouse a satyr from every bush, scamper over the hills in pursuit of an Oread, or take a sly vizzy at a water-nymph arranging her tresses in the limpid fountains of the Alpheus. What say you, our masters and mistresses, to this proposal for a summer ramble?

Hitherto we have spoken merely of the gentler section of the bards. But there is another division of that august body by no means quite so diffident. Since our venerated Father Christopher paid, some four years ago, a merited tribute to the genius of Mr Macaulay, commenting upon the thews and sinews of his verse, and the manly vigour of his Lays of Ancient Rome--ballad poetry in all its forms and ramifications has become inconceivably rampant. The Scottish poetry also, which from time to time has appeared in MAGA, seems to have excited, in certain quarters, a spirit of larcenous admiration; and not long ago it was our good fortune to behold in the Quarterly Review a laudation of certain lines which are neither more nor less than a weak dilution of a ballad composed by one of our contributors. It would be well, however, had we nothing more to complain of than this. But the ballad fever has got to such a height that it may be necessary to make an example. Our young English poets are now emulating in absurdity those German students, who dress after the costume of the middle ages as depicted by Cornelius, and terrify the peaceful Cockney on the Rhine by apparitions of Goetz of Berlichingen. They are no longer Minnesingers, but warriors of sanguineous complexion. They are all for glory, blood, chivalry, and the deeds of their ancestors. They cut, thrust, and foin as fiercely as fifty Francalanzas, and are continually shouting on Saint George. Dim ideas of the revival of the Maltese Order seem to float before their excited imaginations; and, were there the slightest spark of genuine feeling in their enthusiasm, either Abd-el-Kader or Marshal Bugeaud would have had by this time some creditable recruits. But the fact is, that the whole system is a sham. Our young friends care about as much for Saint George as they do for Saint Thomas Aquinas; they would think twice before they permitted themselves to be poked at with an unbuttoned foil; and as for the deeds of their ancestors, a good many of them would have considerable difficulty in establishing their descent even from a creditable slop-seller--"the founder of our family"--in the reign of George the Third. It is therefore a mystery to us why they should persevere in their delusion. What--in the name of the Bend Sinister--have they to do with the earlier Harrys or Edwards, or the charge of the Templars at Ascalon, or the days of the Saxon Heptarchy? Are they called upon by some irrepressible impulse to ransack the pages of English history for a "situation," or to crib from the Chronicles of Froissart? Cannot they let the old warriors rest in peace, without summoning them, like the Cid, from their honoured graves, again to put on harness and to engage in feckless combat? For oh!--weak and most washy are the battles which our esteemed young friends describe! Their war-horses have for the most part a general resemblance to the hacks hired out at seven-and-sixpence for the Sunday exhibition in the Park. Their armour is of that kind more especially in vogue at Astley's, in the composition of which tinfoil is a principal ingredient, and pasteboard by no means awanting. Their heroes fight, after preliminary parley which would do credit to the chivalry of the Hippodrome; and their lances invariably splinter as frush as the texture of the bullrush. Their dying chiefs all imitate Bayard, as we once saw Widdecomb do it, when struck down by the infuriated Gomersal; and the poem generally concludes with a devout petition to "Our Ladye," not only to vouchsafe her grace to the defunct champion, but to grant that the living minstrel may experience the same end--a prayer which, for the sake of several respectable young members of society, we hope may be utterly disregarded.

The truth is, that instead of being the easiest, the ballad is incomparably the most difficult kind of all poetical composition. Many men, who were not poets in the highest sense of the word, because they wanted the inventive faculty, have nevertheless, by dint of perseverance, great accomplishment, and dexterous use of those materials which are ready to the hand of every artificer, gained a respectable name in the roll of British literature--but never, in any single instance, by attempting the construction of a ballad. That is the Shibboleth, by which you can at once distinguish the true minstrel from mere impostor or pretender. It is the simplest, and at the same time the sublimest form of poetry, nor can it be written except under the influence of that strong and absorbing emotion, which bears the poet away far from the present time, makes him an actor and a participator in the vivid scenes which he describes, and which is, in fact, inspiration of the very loftiest kind. The few who enjoy the glorious privilege, not often felt, nor long conferred, of surrendering themselves to the magic of that spell, cease for the time to be artists; they take no thought of ornament, or of any rhetorical artifice, but throw themselves headlong into their subject, trusting to nature for that language which is at once the shortest and the most appropriate to the occasion; spurning all far-fetched metaphors aside, and ringing out their verse as the iron rings upon the anvil! It was in this way that Homer, the great old ballad-maker of Greece, wrote--or rather chanted, for in his day pens were scarce, wire-wove unknown, and the pride of Moseley undeveloped. God had deprived the blind old man of sight; but in his heart still burned the fury of the fight of Troy; and trow ye not, that to him the silent hills of Crete many a time became resonant with the clang of arms, and the shouts of challenging heroes, when not a breath of wind was stirring, and the ibex stood motionless on its crag? What a difference between Homer and Virgil! Moeonides goes straight to work, like a marshal calling out his men. He moves through the encampment of the ships, knowing every man by headmark, and estimating his capabilities to a buffet. No metaphor or nonsense in the combats that rage around the sepulchre of Ilus--good hard fighting all of it, as befits barbarians, in whose veins the blood of the danger-seeking demigods is seething: fierce as wild beasts they meet together, smite, hew, and roll over in the dust. Jove may mourn for Sarpedon, or Andromache tear her hair above the body of her slaughtered Hector; but not one whit on that account abstain their comrades from the banquet, and on the morrow, under other leaders, they will renew the battle--for man is but as the leaves of the forest, whilst glory abideth for ever.

Virgil, on the contrary, had but little of the ballad-maker in his composition. He was always thinking of himself, and of his art, and the effect which his Æneid would produce,--nay, we are even inclined to suspect that at times he was apt to deviate into a calculation of the number of sestertia which he might reasonably reckon to receive from the bounty of the Emperor. The Æneid is upon the whole a sneaking sort of a poem. The identity of Æneas with Augustus, and the studied personification of every leading character, is too apparent to be denied. It is therefore less an epic than an allegory; and--without questioning the truth of Hazlitt's profound apothegm, that allegories do not bite--we confess that, in general, we have but small liking to that species of composition. For in the first place, the author of an allegory strips himself of the power of believing it. He can have no faith in the previous existence of heroes whom he is purposely portraying as shadows, and he must constantly be put to shifts, in order to adapt his story, during its progress, to the circumstances which he attempts to typify. And, in the second place, he commits the error, equally palpable, of disenchanting the eyes of his reader. For the very essence of that pleasure which we all derive from fiction, lies in our overcoming to a certain extent the idea of its actual falsity, and in our erecting within ourselves a sort of secondary belief, to which, accordingly, our sympathies are submitted. Every thing, therefore, which interferes with this fair and legitimate credulity is directly noxious to the effect of the poem; it puts us back one stage further from the point of absolute faith, and materially diminishes the interest which we take in the progress of the piece. Spenser's Faerie Queen is a notable example of this. Could we but think that Una was intended, though only by the poet's fancy, to be the portraiture of a mortal virgin, unfriended and alone amidst the snares and enchantments of the world, would we not tremble for her sweet sake, knowing that some as innocent and as fair as she have fallen victims to jealousy less dark than Duessa's, and wiles less skilfully prepared than those of the hoary Archimage? But Una never for one moment appears to us as a woman. From the first we feel that she is there, not exposed to temptation, but as a pure and holy spirit, in whose presence hypocrisy is unmasked, and all sin and iniquity unveiled. Nor fear we for the Red-Cross Knight, even when he seems to go astray, and turns from the side of her whom he had sworn to protect and guard; for he bears a talisman upon his shield and his bosom, expressive of his origin, and able to resist for ever the fiery darts of the wicked. Never rode knight and lady through earthly wilderness as these two journey together. For them we have no human interest--not even such tears as we might shed for the lapse of an erring angel. They have not put on mortality, nor do they meet or combat with mortal foes. Truth will do much for us, even in poetry where the mortal interest is most largely intermingled with the supernatural. Some belief we have even in the wildest flights of Ariosto. Astolfo does not cease to be one of ourselves when traversing the regions of air on his hippogriff, or conversing on the mount of terrestial Paradise with the beloved Apostle John. But which of us even in fancy can ride with the Red-Cross warrior, penetrate with Guyon into the cave of Mammon, or realise the dreary pageant that issued from the House of Pride?

Spenser's is the purer allegory--Virgil's but a secondary one. The Æneid is a hybrid poem, wherein the real and the ideal mingle. There is sufficient of the first to preserve for us some epic interest, and enough of the latter at times to stagger our belief. But apart from this, how inferior is the Æneid in interest to the masterpiece of Homer! It consists, epically speaking, of three divisions--the landing at Carthage, the Sicilian visit to Acestes, and the final campaign of Italy--and the two first of these have no bearing at all upon the third, and even that third is incomplete. Whatever homage we may be compelled to pay to the sweetness of Virgil's muse, and his marvellous power of melody, this at least is undeniable, that in inventive genius he falls immeasurably short of the Greek, and that his scenes of action are at once both tinselled and tame. One magnificent exception, it is true, we are bound to make from such a censure. The second book of the Æneid stands out in strong and vivid contrast from the rest; and few poets, whether ancient or modern, have written aught like the conflagration of Troy. Nor shall we, with the severer critics, darkly hint of works which had gone before, but of which the substance long ago has perished--of the Cyclic poem of Arctinus, said to have been of all others the nearest in point of energy to the Iliad, or of the songs of Lesches and Euphorion. Rather let us be thankful for this one episode, without which the great tale of Ilium would have been incomplete, and the lays of Demodocus in the Odyssey remained mere hints of the woful catastrophe of Priam. But if you wish to see how Homer could handle a ballad, turn up the eighth book of your Odyssey until you come to the Minstrel's son--or if haply you are somewhat rusted in your Greek, and yearn for the aid of Donnegan, listen to the noble version of Maginn, who alone of all late translators has caught the true fire and spirit of Moeonides.

"The Minstrel began as the Godhead inspired: He sang how their leaguer the Argives had fired, And over the sea in trim barks bent their course, While their chiefs with Odysseus were closed in the horse, Mid the Trojans who had that fell engine of wood Dragged on, till in Troy's inmost turret it stood; There long did they ponder in anxious debate What to do with the steed as around it they sate.

Then before them three several counsels were laid: Into pieces to hew it by the edge of the blade; Or to draw it forth thence to the brow of the rock, And downward to fling it with shivering shock; Or, shrined in the tower, let it there make abode As an offering to ward off the anger of God. The last counsel prevail'd; for the moment of doom, When the town held the horse, upon Ilium had come.

The Argives in ambush awaited the hour When slaughter and death on their foes they should shower. When it came, from their hollow retreat rushing down The sons of th' Achivi smote sorely the town. Then, scattered, on blood and on ravaging bent, Through all parts of the city chance-guided they went. And he sung how Odysseus at once made his way To where the proud towers of Deiphobus lay.

With bold Menelaus he thitherward strode, In valour in equal to War's fiery god, Then fierce was the fight--dread the deeds that were done, Till, aided by Pallas, the battle he won. So sung the rapt Minstrel the blood-stirring tale, But the check of Odysseus waxed deadly and pale; While the song warbled on of the days that were past, His eyelids were wet with the tears falling fast.[54]"

If we go on twaddling thus about the Greeks and Romans, we shall lose the thread of our discourse, and possibly be found tripping on the subject of Wolf's _Prolegomena_. Let us, therefore, get back as fast as we can to the Moderns.

Unless the poet is imbued with a deep sympathy for his subject, we would not give sixpence for his chance of producing a tolerable ballad. Nay, we go further, and aver that he ought when possible to write in the unscrupulous character of a partisan. In historical and martial ballads, there always must be two sides; and it is the business of the poet to adopt one of these with as much enthusiasm and prejudice, as if his life and fortunes depended upon the issue of the cause. For the ballad is the reflex of keen and rapid sensation, and has nothing to do with judgment or with calm deliberative justice. It should embody, from beginning to end, one fiery absorbing passion, such as men feel when their blood is up, and their souls thoroughly roused within them; and we should as soon think of moralising in a ballad as in the midst of a charge of cavalry. If you are a Cavalier, write with the zeal of a Cavalier combating for his king at Naseby, and do not disgust us with melancholy whinings about the desolate hearths of the Ironsides. Forget for a time that you are a shareholder in a Life Assurance Company, and cleave to your immediate business of emptying as many saddles as possible. If you are out--as perhaps your great-grandfather was--with Prince Charles at Prestonpans, do not, we beseech you, desert the charging column of the Camerons, to cry the coronach over poor old Colonel Gardiner, fetched down from his horse by the Lochaber axe of the grim Miller of Invernahyle. Let him have the honourable burial of a brave man when the battle is over; but--whilst the shouts of victory are ringing in our ears, and the tail of Cope's horse is still visible over the knowe which rises upon the Berwick road--leave the excellent Seceder upon the sod, and toss up your bonnet decorated with the White Rose, to the glory and triumph of the clans! If you are a Covenanter and a Whig, we need not entreat you to pepper Claverhouse and his guardsmen to the best of your ability at Drumclog. You are not likely to waste much of your time in lamentations over the slaughtered Archbishop: and if you must needs try your hand at the execution of Argyle, do not mince the matter, but make a regular martyr of him at once. In this way should all ballads be written; and such indeed is the true secret of the craft as transmitted to us by the masters of old.

We have warned you against moralising: let us now say a word or two on the subjects of description and declamation. Upon one or other of these rocks, have most of our modern ballad-writers struck and foundered. What can be in worse taste than the introduction of an elaborate landscape into the midst of a poem of action, or an elaborate account of a man's accoutrements when he is fighting for life or death? A single epithet, if it be a choice one, can indicate the scene of action as vividly and far more effectively than ten thousand stanzas; and, unless you are a tailor and proud of your handiwork, what is the use of dilating upon the complexion of a warrior's breeches, when the claymore is whistling around his ears? Nevertheless, even our best ballad-writers, when their soul was not in their task, have fallen into this palpable error. None of Sir Walter's ballads commences more finely than "The Gray Brother,"--none has been more spoiled in its progress by the introduction of minute description. We pass from the high altar of Saint Peter to the bank of the Eske, and there we are regaled with a catalogue of the modern seats and villas, utterly out of place and inconsistent with the solemn nature of the theme. But "The Gray Brother" is a mere fragment which Scott never would complete--owing, perhaps, to a secret consciousness, that he had already marred the unity of the poem by sketching in a modern landscape behind his antique figures. Give him, however, a martial subject--let his eye but once kindle, and his cheek flush at the call of the trumpet, and we defy you to find his equal. Read--O ye poetasters who are now hammering at Crecy--read the "Bonnets of Dundee," and then, if you have a spark of candour left, you will shove your foolscap into the fire. Or tell us if you really flatter yourselves that, were your lives prolonged to the perpetuity of the venerable Parr, you ever would produce ten stanzas worthy of being printed in the same volume with these:--

"The Coronach's cried on Bennachie, And down the Don and a', And Hieland and Lawland may mournfu' be, For the sair field of Harlaw.

They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds, They hae saddled a hundred black, With a chafron of steel on each horse's head, And a good knight upon his back.

They hadna ridden a mile, a mile, A mile, but barely ten, When Donald came branking down the brae, Wi' twenty thousand men.

Their tartans they were waving wide, Their glaives were glancing clear, The pibrochs rung frae side to side, Would deafen you to hear.

The great Earl in his stirrups stood, That Highland host to see; 'Now here a knight that's stout and good, May prove a jeopardie.

'What would ye do, my squire so gay, That rides beside my rein, Were ye Glenallan's Earl this day, And I were Roland Cheyne?

'To turn the rein were sin and shame, To fright were wondrous peril: What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne, Were ye Glenallan's Earl?'

'Were I Glenallan's Earl this tide, And ye were Roland Cheyne, The spear should be in my horse's side, The bridle upon his mane.

'If they hae twenty thousand blades, And we twice ten times ten, Yet they hae but their tartan plaids, And we are mail-clad men.

'My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude, As through the moorland fern, Then ne'er let gentle Norman blude Grow cauld for Hieland kerne!'"