LETTER XXXIV.

"Love, it is a wrathful peace, A free acquittance, without release, And truth with falsehood all a-fret, And fear within secureness set; In heart it is despairing hope; And full of hope, it is vain hope. Wise madness and wild reasonne, And sweet danger, wherein to droune. A heavy burden, light to bear; A wicked way, away to wear. It is discordance that can accord, And accordance to discord; It is cunning without science, Wisdom without sapience, Wit without discretion, Having, without possession, And health full of malady, And charity full of envy, And restraint full of abundance, And a greedy suffisaunce. Delight right full of heaviness, And drearihood, full of gladness; Bitter sweetness, and sweet error, Right evil savoured good savour; Sin, that pardon hath within, And pardon, spotted outside with sin: A pain also it is joyous, And cruelty, right piteous; A strength weak to stand upright, And feebleness full of might; Wit unadvised, sage follie, And joy full of tormentry. A laughter it is, weeping aye; Rest, that travaileth night and day; Also a sweet Hell it is, And a sorrowful Paradise; [83] A pleasant gaol, and an easy prison, And full of froste, summer season; Prime-time, full of froste's white, And May devoid of all delight."

"Mesment de ceste amour Li plus sages n'y sceunt tour Maiz ou entent je te diray Une aût (outre) amour te descriray De celle veuil je que pour t'ame Tu aimes la tres-doulce dame. Si com dist la ste escripture Amours est fors, amours est dure, Amours soustient, amours endure, Amours revient, et tousjours dure; Amours met en amer sa cure; Amours loyal, amours seure Sert, et de servise nacure. Amours fait de propre commun, Amours fait de deux cuers un; Amours enchace, ce me semble, Amours rent cuers, amours les emble, Amours despiece, amours refait, Amours fait paix, amours fait plait, Amours fait bel, amours fait lait, Toutes heures quant il lui plaist Amours attrait, amours estrange Amours fait de prive estrange; Amours seurprent, amours emprent, Amours reprent, amours esprent, Il n'est riens qu'amours ne face; Amours tolt cuer, amours tolt grace, Amours delie, amours enlace, Amours ocist, amours efface, Amours ne craint ne pic ne mace: Amours fist Dieu venir en place, Amours lui fist ûre (notre) char prendre, Amours le fist devenir mendre, Amours le fist en la croix pendre, Amours le fist illec extendre, Amours le fist le coste fendre, Amours le fist les maulx reprendre, Amours lui fist les bons aprendre, Amours le fist a nous venir, Amours nous fait a lui tenir."

These descriptions of the two kinds of noble love are both given in the part of the Romance of the Rose which was written by Jean de Meung. [84] Chaucer translated the first, and I have partly again translated his translation into more familiar English. I leave the original French of the other for you to work at, if ever you care to learn French;--the first is all that I want you to read just now; but they should not be separated, being among the most interesting expressions extant of the sentiment of the dark ages, which Mr. Applegarth is desirous of eliminating from modern business.

The two great loves,--that of husband and wife, representing generally the family affections, and that of mankind, to which, at need, the family affection must be sacrificed,--include, rightly understood, all the noble sentiments of humanity. Modern philosophy supposes these conditions of feeling to have been always absurd, and at present, happily, nearly extinct; and that the only proper, or, in future, possible, motives of human action are the three wholly unsentimental desires,--the lust of the flesh, (hunger, thirst, and sexual passion), the lust of the eyes, (covetousness), and the pride of life, (personal vanity).

Thus, in a recent debate on the treatment of Canada, [85] Sir C. Adderley deprecates the continuance of a debate on a question "purely sentimental." I doubt if Sir C. Adderley knew in the least what was meant by a sentimental question. It is a purely "sentimental question," for instance, whether Sir C. Adderley shall, or shall not, eat his mother, instead of burying her. Similarly, it is a purely sentimental question, whether, in the siege of Samaria, the mother who boiled her son and ate him, or the mother who hid her son, was best fulfilling her duty to society. Similarly, the relations of a colony to its mother-country, in their truth and depth, are founded on purely parental and filial instincts, which may be either sentimental or bestial, but must be one or the other. Sir Charles probably did not know that the discussion of every such question must therefore be either sentimental or bestial.

Into one or other, then, of these two forms of sentiment, conjugal and family love, or compassion, all human happiness, properly so called, resolves itself; but the spurious or counter-happiness of lust, covetousness, and vanity being easily obtained, and naturally grasped at, instead, may altogether occupy the lives of men, without ever allowing them to know what happiness means.

But in the use I have just made of the word 'compassion', I mean something very different from what is usually understood by it. Compassion is the Latin form of the Greek word 'sympathy'--the English for both is 'fellow-feeling'; and the condition of delight in characters higher than our own is more truly to be understood by the word 'compassion' than the pain of pity for those inferior to our own; but in either case, the imaginative understanding of the natures of others, and the power of putting ourselves in their place, is the faculty on which the virtue depends. So that an unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind. The main use of works of fiction, and of the drama, is to supply, as far as possible, the defect of this imagination in common minds. But there is a curious difference in the nature of these works themselves, dependent on the degree of imaginative power of the writers, which I must at once explain, else I can neither answer for you my own question put in last 'Fors,' why Scott could not write a play, nor show you, which is my present object, the real nature of sentiment.

Do you know, in the first place, what a play is? or what a poem is? or what a novel is? That is to say, do you know the perpetual and necessary distinctions in literary aim which have brought these distinctive names into use? You had better first, for clearness' sake, call all the three 'poems,' for all the three are so, when they are good, whether written in verse or prose. All truly imaginative account of man is poetic; but there are three essential kinds of poetry,--one dramatic, one lyric, and one epic.

Dramatic poetry is the expression by the poet of other people's feelings, his own not being told.

Lyric poetry is the expression by the poet of his own feelings.

Epic poetry is account given by the poet of other people's external circumstances, and of events happening to them, with only such expression either of their feelings, or his own, as he thinks may be conveniently added.

The business of Dramatic poetry is therefore with the heart essentially; it despises external circumstance.

Lyric poetry may speak of anything that excites emotion in the speaker; while Epic poetry insists on external circumstances, and no more exhibits the heart-feeling than as it may be gathered from these.

For instance, the fight between the Prince of Wales and Hotspur, in Henry the Fourth, corresponds closely, in the character of the event itself, to the fight of Fitz-James with Roderick, in the Lady of the Lake. But Shakespeare's treatment of his subject is strictly dramatic; Scott's, strictly epic.

Shakespeare gives you no account whatever of any blow or wound: his stage direction is, briefly, "Hotspur is wounded, and falls." Scott gives you accurate account of every external circumstance, and the finishing touch of botanical accuracy,--

"Down came the blow; but in the heath The erring blade found bloodless sheath,"--

makes his work perfect, as epic poetry. And Scott's work is always epic, and it is contrary to his very nature to treat any subject dramatically.

That is the technical distinction, then, between the three modes of work. But the gradation of power in all three depends on the degree of imagination with which the writer can enter into the feelings of other people. Whether in expressing their's or his own, and whether in expressing their feelings only, or also the circumstances surrounding them, his power depends on his being able to feel as they do; in other words, on his being able to conceive character. And the literature which is not poetry at all, which is essentially unsentimental, or anti-poetic, is that which is produced by persons who have no imagination; and whose merit (for of course I am not speaking of bad literature) is in their wit or sense, instead of their imagination.

The most prosaic, in this sense, piece I have ever myself examined, in the literature of any nation, is the Henriade of Voltaire. You may take that as a work of a man whose head was as destitute of imaginative power as it is possible for the healthy cerebral organization of a highly developed mammalian animal to be. The description of the storm which carries Henry to Jersey, and of the hermit in Jersey "que Dieu lui fit connaitre," and who, on that occasion, "au bord d'une onde pure, offre un festin champêtre," cannot be rivalled, for stupor in conceptive power, among printed books of reputation. On the other hand, Voltaire's wit, and reasoning faculties, are nearly as strong as his imagination is weak. His natural disposition is kind; his sympathy therefore is sincere with any sorrow that he can conceive; and his indignation great against injustices of which he cannot comprehend the pathetic motives. Now notice further this, which is very curious, and to me inexplicable, but not on that account less certain as a fact.

The imaginative power always purifies; the want of it therefore as essentially defiles; and as the wit-power is apt to develope itself through absence of imagination, it seems as if wit itself had a defiling tendency. In Pindar, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Scott, the colossal powers of imagination result in absolute virginal purity of thought. The defect of imagination and the splendid rational power in Pope and Horace associate themselves--it is difficult to say in what decided measures--with foulness of thought. The Candide of Voltaire, in its gratuitous filth, its acute reasoning, and its entire vacuity of imagination, is a standard of what may perhaps be generally and fitly termed 'fimetic literature,' still capable, by its wit, and partial truth, of a certain service in its way. But lower forms of modern literature and art--Gustave Doré's paintings, for instance,--are the corruption, in national decrepitude, of this pessimist method of thought; and of these, the final condemnation is true--they are neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill.

It is one of the most curious problems respecting mental government to determine how far this fimetic taint must necessarily affect intellects in which the reasoning and imaginative powers are equally balanced, and both of them at high level,--as in Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Molière, Cervantes, and Fielding; but it always indicates the side of character which is unsympathetic, and therefore unkind; (thus Shakespeare makes Iago the foulest in thought, as cruelest in design, of all his villains,) but which, in men of noble nature, is their safeguard against weak enthusiasms and ideals. It is impossible, however, that the highest conditions of tenderness in affectionate conception can be reached except by the absolutely virginal intellect. Shakespeare and Chaucer throw off, at noble work, the lower part of their natures as they would a rough dress; and you may also notice this, that the power of conceiving personal, as opposed to general, character, depends on this purity of heart and sentiment. The men who cannot quit themselves of the impure taint, never invent character, properly so called; they only invent symbols of common humanity. Even Fielding's Allworthy is not a character, but a type of a simple English gentleman; and Squire Western is not a character, but a type of the rude English squire. But Sir Roger de Coverley is a character, as well as a type; there is no one else like him; and the masters of Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, Monkbarns, and Osbaldistone Hall, are all, whether slightly or completely drawn, portraits, not mere symbols.

The little piece which I shall to-day further translate for you from my Swiss novel is interesting chiefly in showing the power with which affectionate and sentimental imagination may attach itself even to inanimate objects, and give them personality. But the works of its writer generally show the most wholesome balance of the sentimental and rational faculty I have ever met with in literature;--the part of Gotthelf's nature which is in sympathy with Pope and Fielding enables him to touch, to just the necessary point, the lower grotesqueness of peasant nature, while his own conception of ideal virtue is as pure as Wordsworth's.

But I have only room in this 'Fors' for a very little bit more of the broom-maker. I continue the last sentence of it from page 13 of