Chapter 34

The impression made on these "clumps" by the sight of the Princess, is thus "musically" described:

There's not in all that croud one _gallant_ being, Whom, if his heart were whole, and _rank agreeing_, It would not _fire to twice of what he is_,--p. 10.

"Dignity and strength"--

First came the trumpeters-- And as they _sit along_ their easy way, Stately and _heaving_ to the croud below.--p. 12.

This word is deservedly a great favourite with the poet; he _heaves_ it in upon all occasions.

The deep talk _heaves_.--p. 5. With _heav'd_ out tapestry the windows glow.--p. 6. Then _heave_ the croud.--_id_. And after a rude _heave_ from side to side.--p. 7. The marble bridge comes _heaving_ forth below.--p. 28.

"Fine understanding"--

The youth smiles _up_, and with a _lowly_ grace, _Bending_ his _lifted_ eyes--p. 22.

This is very neat:

No peevishness there was-- But a _mute_ gush of _hiding_ tears from one, Clasped to the _core_ of him who yet shed none.--p. 83.

The heroine is suspected of wishing to have some share in the choice of her own husband, which is thus elegantly expressed:

She had stout notions on the marrying _score_.--p. 27.

This noble use of the word _score_ is afterwards carefully repeated in speaking of the Prince, her husband--

--no suspicion could have touched him more, Than that of _wanting_ on the generous _score_.--p. 48.

But though thus punctilious on the _generous score_, his Highness had but a bad temper,

And kept no reckoning with his _sweets and sours_.--p. 47.

This, indeed, is somewhat qualified by a previous observation, that--

_The worst of Prince Giovanni_, as his bride Too quickly found, was an ill-tempered pride.

How nobly does Mr. Hunt celebrate the combined charms of the fair sex, and the country!

_The two divinest things this world_ HAS GOT, A lovely woman in a rural spot!--p. 58.

A rural spot, indeed, seems to inspire Mr. Hunt with peculiar elegance and sweetness: for he says, soon after, of Prince Paulo--

For welcome grace, there rode not such another, Nor yet for strength, except his lordly brother. Was there a court day, or a sparkling feast, Or better still--_to my ideas, at least!_-- A summer party in the green wood shade.--p. 50.

So much for this new invented _strength_ and _dignity_: we shall add a specimen of his syntax:

But fears like these he never entertain'd, And had they crossed him, would have been disdain'd.--p. 50.

* * * * *

After these extracts, we have but one word more to say of Mr. Hunt's poetry; which is, that amidst all his vanity, vulgarity, ignorance, and coarseness, there are here and there some well-executed descriptions, and occasionally a line of which the sense and the expression are good-- The interest of the story itself is so great that we do not think it wholly lost even in Mr. Hunt's hands. He has, at least, the merit of telling it with decency; and, bating the qualities of versification, expression, and dignity, on which he peculiarly piques himself, and in which he has utterly failed, the poem is one which, in our opinion at least, may be read with satisfaction after GALT'S Tragedies.

Mr. Hunt prefixes to his work a dedication to Lord Byron, in which he assumes a high tone, and talks big of his "_fellow-dignity_" and independence: what fellow-dignity may mean, we know not; perhaps the _dignity_ of a _fellow_; but this we will say, that Mr. Hunt is not more unlucky in his pompous pretension to versification and good language, than he is in that which he makes, in this dedication, to _proper spirit_, as he calls it, and _fellow-dignity_; for we never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the _stout-heartedness_ of being familiar with a LORD.

OF SHAKESPEARE

[From _The Quarterly Review_, October, 1816]

_Shakespeare's Himself Again! or the Language of the Poet asserted; being a full and dispassionate Examen of the Readings and Interpretations of the several Editors. Comprised in a Series of Notes, Sixteen Hundred in Number, illustrative of the most difficult Passages in his Plays_--_to the various editions of which the present Volumes form a complete and necessary Supplement_. By ANDREW BECKET. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 730. 1816.

If the dead could be supposed to take any interest in the integrity of their literary reputation, with what complacency might we not imagine our great poet to contemplate the labours of the present writer! Two centuries have passed away since his death--the mind almost sinks under the reflection that he has been all that while exhibited to us so "transmographied" by the joint ignorance and malice of printers, critics, etc., as to be wholly unlike himself. But--_post nubila, Phoebus!_ Mr. Andrew Becket has at length risen upon the world, and Shakespeare is about to shine forth in genuine and unclouded glory!

What we have at present is a mere scantling of the great work _in procinctu_--[Greek: _pidakos ex ieraes oligaelizas_]--sixteen hundred "restorations," and no more! But if these shall be favourably received, a complete edition of the poet will speedily follow. Mr. Becket has taken him to develop; and it is truly surprizing to behold how beautiful he comes forth as the editor proceeds in unrolling those unseemly and unnatural rags in which he has hitherto been so disgracefully wrapped:

Tandem aperit vultum, et tectoria prima reponit,-- Incipit agnosci!--

Mr. Becket has favoured us, in the Preface, with a comparative estimate of the merits of his predecessors. He does not, as may easily be conjectured, rate any of them very highly; but he places Warburton at the top of the scale, and Steevens at the bottom: this, indeed, was to be expected. "Warburton," he says, "is the _best_, and Steevens the _worst_ of Shakespeare's commentators"; (p. xvii) and he ascribes it solely to his forbearance that the latter is not absolutely crushed: it not being in his nature, as he magnanimously insinuates, "to break a butterfly upon a wheel!" Dr. Johnson is shoved aside with very little ceremony; Mr. Malone fares somewhat better; and the rest are dismissed with the gentle valediction of Pandarus to the Trojans--"asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran! porridge after meat!" With respect to our author himself, it is but simple justice to declare, that he comes to the great work of "restoring Shakespeare"--not only with more negative advantages than the unfortunate tribe of critics so cavalierly dismissed, but than all who have aspired to illumine the page of a defunct writer since the days of Aristarchus. As far as we are enabled to judge, Mr. Becket never examined an old play in his life:--he does not seem to have the slightest knowledge of any writer, or any subject, or any language that ever occupied the attention of his contemporaries; and he possesses a mind as innocent of all requisite information as if he had dropped, with the last thunderstone, from the moon.

"Addison has well observed, that 'in works of criticism it is absolutely necessary to have a _clear and logical head_.'" (p.v.) In this position, Mr. Becket cheerfully agrees with him; and, indeed, it is sufficiently manifest, that without the internal conviction of enjoying that indispensable advantage, he would not have favoured the public with those matchless "restorations"; a few specimens of which we now proceed to lay before them. Where all are alike admirable, there is no call for selection; we shall therefore open the volumes at random, and trust to fortune.

"_Hamlet_. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?"

This reading, Mr. Becket says, he cannot admit; and he says well: since it appears that Shakespeare wrote--

"For who would bear the _scores_ of _weapon'd_ time?"

using _scores_ in the sense of stripes. Formerly, _i.e.,_ when Becket was _in his sallad days_, he augured, he says, that the true reading was--

--"the scores of _whip-hand_ time."

Time having always the _whip-hand,_ the advantage; but he now reverts to the other emendation; though, as he modestly hints, the epithet _whip-hand_ (which he still regards with parental fondness) will perhaps be thought to have much of the manner of Shakespeare.--Vol. i, p. 43.

"_Horatio_.--While they, distill'd Almost to jelly with the act of fear, Stand dumb, and speak not to him!"

We had been accustomed to find no great difficulty here: the words seemed, to us, at least, to express the usual effect of inordinate terror--but we gladly acknowledge our mistake. "The passage is not to be understood." How should it, when both the pointing and the language are corrupt? Read, as Shakespeare gave it--

--"While they _bestill'd_ Almost to _gelèe_ with the act. Of fear Stand dumb," &c.--that is, petrified (or rather icefied) p. 13.

"_Lear_. And my poor fool is hang'd!"

With these homely words, which burst from the poor old king on reverting to the fate of his loved Cordelia, whom he then holds in his arms, we have been always deeply affected, and therefore set them down as one of the thousand proofs of the poet's intimate knowledge of the human heart. But Mr. Becket has made us ashamed of our simplicity and our tears. Shakespeare had no such "lenten" language in his thoughts; he wrote, as Mr. Becket tells us,

"And my _pure soot_ is hang'd!"

Poor, he adds, might be easily mistaken for _pure_; while the _s_ in _soot_ (sweet) was scarcely discernible from the _f_, or the _t_ from the _l_.--p. 176.

We are happy to find that so much can be offered in favour of the old printers. And yet--were it not that the genuine text is always to be preferred--we could almost wish that the critic had left their blunder as it stood.

"_Wolsey_.--that his bones May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them."

A tomb of tears is ridiculous. I read--a _coomb_ of tears--a _coomb_ is a liquid measure containing forty gallons. Thus the expression, which was before absurd, becomes forcible and just.--vol. ii, p. 134.

It does indeed!

"_Sir Andrew_. I sent thee six-pence for thy leman (mistress): had'st it?" Read as Shakespeare wrote: "I sent thee sixpence for thy _lemma_"--_lemma_ is properly an _argument_, or _proposition assumed_, and is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a story.--p. 335.

"_Viola_. She pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy."--Correct it thus:

"She pined in thought And with _agrein_ and _hollow_ melancholy."--p. 339.

"_Iago_. I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense, And he grows angry"--

that is, or rather _was_, according to our homely apprehension, I have rubb'd this pimple (Roderigo) almost to bleeding:--but, no; Mr. Becket has furnished us not only with the genuine words, but the meaning of Shakespeare--

I have _fubb'd_ this young _quat_--_Quat_, or cat, appears to be a contraction of cater-cousin--and this reading will be greatly strengthened when it is remembered that Roderigo was really the intimate of Iago.--p. 204.

In a subsequent passage, "I am as melancholy as a gibb'd cat"--we are told that _cat_ is not the domestic animal of that name, but a contraction of _catin_, a woman of the town. But, indeed, Mr. Becket possesses a most wonderful faculty for detecting these latent contractions and filling them up. Thus,

"_Parolles_. Sir, he will steal an egg out of a cloister." Read (as Shakespeare wrote), "Sir, he will steal an _Ag_ (i.e., an _Agnes_) out of a cloister." _Agnes_ is the name of a woman, and may easily stand for chastity.--p. 325.

No doubt.

"_Carter_. Prithee, Tom, put a few flocks in Cut's saddle; the poor beast is wrung in the withers out of all cess."

Out of all cess, we used to think meant, in vulgar phraseology, out of all measure, very much, &c.--but see how foolishly!

_Cess_ is a mere contraction of _cessibility_, which signifies the _quality of receding_, and may very well stand for _yielding_, as spoken of a tumour.--p. 5.

"_Hamlet_. A cry of players."

This we once thought merely a sportive expression for a _company of_ players, but Mr. Becket has undeceived us--"_Cry_ (he tells us) is contracted from _cryptic_, and cryptic is precisely of the same import as mystery."--p. 53. How delightful it is when learning and judgment walk thus hand in hand! But enough--

--"the sweetest honey Is loathsome in its own deliciousness"--

and we would not willingly cloy our readers. Sufficient has been produced to encourage them--not perhaps to contend for the possession of the present volumes, though Mr. Becket conscientiously affirms, in his title-page, that "they form a complete and _necessary_ supplement to every former edition"--but, with us, to look anxiously forward to the great work in preparation.

Meanwhile we have gathered some little consolation from what is already in our hands. Very often, on comparing the dramas of the present day (not even excepting Mr. Tobin's) with those of Elizabeth's age, we have been tempted to think that we were born too late, and to exclaim with the poet--

"Infelix ego, non illo qui tempore natus, Quo facilis natura fuit; sors O mea laeva Nascendi, miserumque genus!" &c.

but we now see that unless Mr. Andrew Becket had also been produced at that early period, we should have derived no extraordinary degree of satisfaction from witnessing the first appearance of Shakespeare's plays, since it is quite clear that we could not have understood them.

One difficulty yet remains. We scarcely think that the managers will have the confidence, in future, to play Shakespeare as they have been accustomed to do; and yet, to present him, as now so happily "restored," would, for some time at least, render him _caviare to the general_. We know that Livius Andronicus, when grown hoarse with repeated declamation, was allowed a second rate actor, who stood at his back and spoke while he gesticulated, or gesticulated while he spoke. A hint may be borrowed from this fact. We therefore propose that Mr. Andrew Becket be forthwith taken into the pay of the two theatres, and divided between them. He may then be instructed to follow the _dramatis personae_ of our great poet's plays on the stage, and after each of them has made his speech in the present corrupt reading, to pronounce aloud the words as "restored" by himself. This may have an awkward effect at first; but a season or two will reconcile the town to it; Shakespeare may then be presented in his genuine language, or, as our author better expresses it, be HIMSELF AGAIN.

ON MOXON'S SONNETS

[From _The Quarterly Review_, July, 1837]

_Sonnets by_ EDWARD MOXON. Second Edition. London, 1837.

This is quite a _dandy_ of a book. Some seventy pages of drawing-paper-- fifty-five of which are impressed each with a single sonnet in all the luxury of type, while the rest are decked out with vignettes of nymphs in clouds and bowers, and Cupids in rose-bushes and cockle-shells. And all these coxcombries are the appendages of, as it seems to us, as little intellect as the rings and brooches of the Exquisite in a modern novel. We shall see presently, by what good fortune so moderate a poet has found so liberal a publisher.

We are no great admirers of the sonnet at its best--concurring in Dr. Johnson's opinion that it does not suit the genius of our language, and that the great examples of Shakespeare and Milton have failed to domesticate it with us. It seems to be, even in master hands, that species of composition which is at once the most artificial and the least effective, which bears the appearance of the greatest labour and produces the least pleasure. Its peculiar and unvaried construction must inevitably inflict upon it something of pedantry and monotony, and although some powerful minds have used it as a form for condensing and elaborating a particular train of thought--_an Iliad in a nutshell_--yet the vast majority of sonneteers employ it as an economical expedient, by which one idea can be expanded into fourteen lines--fourteen lines into one page--and, as we see, fifty-four pages into a costly volume.

The complex construction, which at first sight seems a difficulty, is, in fact, like all mechanism, a great saving of labour to the operator. A sonnet almost makes itself, as a musical snuff-box plays a tune, or rather as a cotton _Jenny_ spins twist. When a would-be poet has collected in his memory a few of what may have struck him as poetical ideas, he puts them into his machine, and after fourteen turns, out comes a sonnet, or--if it be his pleasure to spin out his reminiscences very fine--a dozen sonnets.

Mr. Moxon inscribes as a motto on his title-page four lines of Mr. Wordsworth's vindication of his own use of the sonnet-form--

In truth, the prison, into which we doom Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to _me_, In sundry moods 'twas pastime to be bound Within the _sonnet's_ scanty plot of ground.

Yes, Mr. Moxon, to _him_ perhaps, but not to every one--the "plot of ground" which is "_scanty_" to an elephant is a wilderness to a mouse; and the garment in which Wordsworth might feel straitened hangs flabby about a puny imitator. There seems no great modesty in the estimate which Mr. Moxon thus exhibits of his own superior powers, but we fear there is, at least, as much modesty as truth--for really, so far from being "_bound_" within the narrow limit of the sonnet, it seems to us to be

--a world too wide For his shrunk shank.

Ordinary sonneteers, as we have said, will spin a single thought through the fourteen lines. Mr., Moxon will draw you out a single thought into fourteen sonnets:--and these are his best--for most of the others appear to us mere soap bubbles, very gay and gaudy, but which burst at the fourteenth line and leave not the trace of an idea behind. Of two or three Mr. Moxon has kindly told us the meaning, which, without that notice, we confess we should never have guessed.

* * * * *

Another of the same genus--though, he had just told us

My love I can _compare_ with _nought_ on earth--

is like _nought on earth_ we ever read but Dean Swift's song of similes. I _will prove_, he says, that

A swan-- A fawn-- An artless lamb-- A hawthorn tree-- A willow-- A laburnum-- A dream-- A rainbow-- Diana-- Aurora-- A dove that _singeth_-- A lily,--and finally, Venus herself! --I in truth will prove These are not _half_ so _fair_ as she I love.

_Sonnet_ iii, p. 43.

Such heterogeneous compliments remind us of Shacabac's gallantry to _Beda_ in _Blue Beard:_ "Ah, you little rogue, you have a prettier mouth _than an elephant_, and you know it!"--A _fawn-coloured_ countenance rivalling in _fairness a laburnum_ blossom, seems to us a more dubious type of female beauty than even an elephant's mouth.

_Love_, it may be said, has carried away better poets and graver men than Mr. Moxon seems to be, into such namby-pamby nonsense; but Mr. Moxon is just as absurd in his _grief_ or his _musings_, as in his _love_.

When he hears a nightingale--"sad Philomel!"--he concludes that the bird was originally created for no other purpose than to prophesy in Paradise _the fall of man_, or, as he chooses to collocate the words,

_Prophetic_ to have mourned of _man_ the _fall_,--p. 9.

but he does not tell us what she has been doing ever since.

When he sees two Cumberland streams--the Brathay and Rothay--flowing down, first to a confluence, and afterwards to the sea, he fancies "a _soul-knit_ pair," man and wife, mingling their waters and gliding to their final haven--

in kindred love, The haven Contemplation sees _above_!

_Below_, he would--following his allegory--have said; but rhyme forbade-- and _allegories_ are not _so headstrong_ on the banks of the Brathay as on those of the _Nile_.

A sonnet on Thomson's grave is a fine specimen of empty sounds and solid nonsense:--

Whene'er I linger, Thomson, near thy tomb, Where _Thamis_--

"_Classic Cam_" will be somewhat amazed to hear his learned brother called _Thamis_--

Where Thamis urges his majestic way, And the Muse loves at twilight hour to stray, I think how in thy theme ALL _seasons_ BLOOM;--

What, all four?--_autumn_, nay, _winter_--blooming?

What _heart_ so cold that of thy fame has _heard_, And _pauses_ not to _gaze_ upon each scene.

We are inclined to be very indulgent to what is called a confusion of metaphors, when it arises from a rush of ideas--but when it is produced by an author's having no idea at all, we can hardly forgive him for equipping the _Heart_ with eyes, ears, and legs:--he might just as well have said that on entering Twickenham church to visit the tomb, every _Heart_ would take off _its hat_, and on going out again would put _its hand_ in _its pockets_ to fee the sexton.

And pauses not to gaze upon each scene That was familiar to thy raptured view, Those walks beloved by thee while I pursue, Musing upon the years that intervene--

Why this line _intervenes_ or what it means we do not see--it seems inserted just to make up the number--

Methinks, as eve descends, a hymn of praise To thee, their bard, the _sister Seasons_ raise!

That is, as we understand it, ALL the _Seasons meet together_ on one or more evenings of the year, to sing a hymn to the memory of Thompson. This _simultaneous entree_ of the Four Seasons would be a much more appropriate fancy for the opera stage than for Twickenham meadows.

Such are the tame extravagances--the vapid affectations--the unmeaning mosaic which Mr. Moxon has laboriously tesselated into fifty and four sonnets. If he had been--as all this childishness at first led us to believe--a very young man--we should have discussed the matter with him in a more conciliatory and persuasive tone; but we find that he is, what we must call, an old offender. We have before us two little volumes of what he entitles poetry--one dated 1826, and the other 1829--which, though more laughable, are not in substance more absurd than his new production. From the first of these we shall extract two or three stanzas of the introductory poem, not only on account of their intrinsic merit, but because they state, pretty roundly, Mr. Moxon's principles of poetry. He modestly disclaims all rivalry with Pope, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Scott, Rogers, Goldsmith, Dryden, Gray, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare; but he, at the same time, intimates that he follows, what he thinks, a truer line of poetry than the before-named illustrious, but, in this point, _mistaken_ individuals.

'Tis not a poem with learning fraught, To that I ne'er pretended; Nor yet with Pope's fine touches wrought, _From that my time prevented_.

We skip four intermediate stanzas; then comes

Milton divine and great Shakespeare With reverence I mention; My name with theirs shall ne'er appear, _'Tis far from my intention!_ If poetry, as one _pretends, Be all imagination!_ Why then, at once, _my bardship ends-- 'Mong prose I take my station._

_Moxon's Poems, p. 81, Ed. 1826._

But as _"common sense"_ must see, says Mr. Moxon, that _imagination_ can have nothing to do with _poetry_, he engages to pursue his tuneful vocation, subject to _one_ condition--

You'll hear no more from me, If _critics prove unkind;_ My next _in simple prose_ must be, _Unless I favour find!_