Part 9
In my early days the tumid young men, rigged out in newest apparel, would go up and down Bond Street at a snail’s pace, doing no better than advertising their tailors. Like handsomely bound volumes, the contents inane, they were just as contemptible as the “sandwichers” who now take their place, bound in boards. None of these tumefied gentlemen ever walked in a hurry, confessedly because they would not have it supposed that they had anything to do. But they had; they smoked cigars in the open air, holding them in two fingers out of five, the other three spread out like a fan, the hand encased in lavender-tinted gloves guiltless of a crease. They smoked weeds which were lighter in weight than the silver they cost; they smoked them in Bond Street, they smoked them in the park; but as any lady of their acquaintance approached, they ostentatiously flung them into the road before raising the host—that is to say, the hat—a couple of inches nearer heaven.
I remember well the time when no gentleman was supposed to smoke; the habit was fit only for the vulgarian. By degree the young officer, the young squire, and the delicate-minded _parvenu_ was seduced into the allurements of tobacco.
The introduction of the cigar into society was a great trial to the womenkind. At first a smoker was no gentleman, and he only became one when no gentleman did otherwise than smoke. The Sybarites at the commencement of their new epoch smoked only out of doors or in a room set apart for the purpose; this was still a reason for the separation of the sexes, but at length some beauties of independent spirit assured the youth of their set that they liked the perfume of a cigar, and from that time the revolution set in.
The puppyism of that day was mere fashion, the exercise of the imitative faculty which the monkey is supposed to still retain. But fashion is not a very durable religion.
The novelists, clever creatures, have shown a fondness for making such inanities as I have depicted very heroic on occasions, and as coming out in quite a new character; but they have not said why. The truth is that the vanity which begets a dressy snob will ferment itself up into the leader of a forlorn hope, and be thankful for the chance of a Victoria Cross instead of the praises of the giggling sex, whose blessedness threatens to keep them single.
Some men are vain to the last; Addison was when he invited a nobleman to come and see how a Christian could die; Dr. Donne was before parting with his last breath but one or two—he was laid out by himself. Women, too, are supposed to be not free from vanity, not only up to the last, but a little after, desiring to be called “beautiful corpses;” and to this end they have directed their maids to rouge their cheeks when they are no more.
These are the true lovers of art.
As we are on the topic, one may say the least vain are those who die by their own hand, especially with the aid of a pistol. These instruments do the work of suicide with a very ill grace; the effect is that however much the relatives may have wished for a photograph to be taken after death, even that consolation is forbidden them.
It takes two or three generations for the world to forget it when a great man kills himself.
“Life is a handsome present—no man earns it; Ungracious therefore is he who returns it.”
I could never regard a suicide otherwise than as a very remarkable person, with inscrutable traits of character; in truth, as a singular anomaly. Napoleon, the most noticeable, perhaps, of men, because the worst among conspicuous ones, could not reach the courage to kill himself; bravery seems inadequate to such a purpose. Butcher as he was, there was not a sprinkling of self-destruction in him; his life was more to him than the empire of the world which he had lost, though that life was one of cancer.
I knew a man, a captain in the navy, retired, a C.B., with a private income of £1200 a year, with no expenses but those of a lodging, no wife or family, who drowned himself because he was going blind, and this being so he could no longer superintend his affairs, and felt himself liable to be cheated, which was more than he could endure—and it certainly is a trial! This man was old and infirm, cool, unimpassioned, not wanting in even spirits, and fond of a joke. He had the full use of his faculties, and had frequent conversations with a weak-minded medical man, in the club-room over which he lodged, on the nature of various poisons without his purpose being suspected. It ended in his creeping into a water-cistern under the boards of an adjoining room.
Most of us grow tired of living, but we prefer the fatigue to nothing, though we may suffer pain that is all but insupportable.
A man who takes his own life may be mad in some respects, but not in committing the act, for he always does it in the right way. If he fired at his own bust instead of at himself, if he swallowed the bottle instead of the laudanum within it, if he cut his dog’s throat instead of his own, with a view to self-destruction, it would be madness itself. But he performs the act rationally and perpetrates it in a strictly methodical way.
There must be two kinds of courage, one of which is common to most men, and one which few possess and none comprehend.
I am told that when a certain reporter attends a meeting on behalf of a journal and finds out, from the speaker’s address, that the purpose for which the assembly is convened is worthless, he retires; and on taking up his note-book, looks at the person speaking and says, “Go home and cut your throat,”—words that might have well been addressed to the Bond Street swells.
XXXVII.
A steam-engine may be called the greatest of inventions, and could the best one as yet constructed have sufficient consciousness to register its excellencies and defects, according to its own knowledge and experience, it could not be accused of boastfulness or self-depreciation. Again, if a dog could be endowed, in addition to its faculties, with the power of expression, and could define in exact terms its sense of smell and so announce it more keen than that of all other animals, it could not be accused of vanity.
The steam-engine in its revelation might reflect credit on its designer and on the man who constructed it, and these might reflect credit on their maker, but not on themselves; they had no hand in the acquisition of their faculties. So with the dog, it would simply make its statement, and in so doing communicate a phenomenon that the science of man would otherwise be slow to reach.
As it is with the dog, so it should be with men in giving expression to their natural gifts. A Shakespeare, knowing and avowing himself to be a vehicle constructed of phosphorized brain and ozonized blood, through which the higher revelations of nature are poured out on the senses of men, might describe the glorious machinery as it worked within him; might declare himself to be the most highly perfected of human beings, and that without vanity or boast, but not without a benefit to others, affording them details concerning himself absolutely unattainable by ordinary means; for no one has yet fathomed him as he did himself, and his knowledge died with him.
If Lord Bacon had taken the trouble to explain to us all about the wheels that moved his apparent delinquencies, it would have afforded a scientific lesson, and have ranked with his other essays. He would have lost nothing by it; minds of the size of his suffer nothing from opinion, and can be as indifferent to it as a cat, or a dog, or a horse, or a cow is to what we call decency. The degree of energy people display in vociferating against the anomalies of morals is the best measure one can have of their own failings. If I were to hear a man rail vehemently against a swindle, I should at once conclude that the machinery of cheating within him was in good working order, unless it had been his lot to be the party swindled.
There is no genius without humour, at least no literary genius, for that differentiating faculty is the basis of all self-criticism. Men have been challenged to define genius, and they have tried to do it without being asked. The fact is that clever people can do nothing unless it is a little difficult; they cannot see what lies directly under their noses, and one of the truths so situated is that perfect genius has never existed. Such genius as a man can possess is fragmentary, never whole. He may have literary genius, and that is enough for one. He may have scientific genius, like Goethe, Oken, Lamark, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Darwin, Helmholtz, Davy, Faraday, Hunter, Cuvier, Laenec; but many of these were poor creatures in other branches than their own. He may have genius in mathematical philosophy, like Newton; but that great man had an intellectual weakness. Real genius of the perfect kind would be more than one man could carry; the ideal whole is broken up and distributed in fragments, some immense, like that falling to Leonardo da Vinci’s share, some small and constituting mere talent.
I have somewhere a list of men of genius who were originators, beginning with Homer as the father of Poetry, and coming down to Goethe who began the transcendental philosophy of to-day in his “Metamorphoses of Plants;” and I could never get beyond sixty or seventy names.
Any one giving an estimate of his own capabilities, whether favourable or unfavourable, or both, without illustrating what he states by his own work, and by the opinions of competent critics, is an egotist. If hereafter I should enter on the subject of my mental capabilities, it will be on the principle not of self-consciousness, but of mechanical candour. Having never ceased my work up to the age of eighty-four, I may have within me an ample experience of my mental operations; but any account of these the reader has the advantage of testing with what he finds his own superior judgment.
I produced very little in my early days, though a passion for literary success then governed me, alternating with a passion for scientific. A career in the direction of either was impeded in middle life by professional practice, which had its fascinations. But the young have not really much that is worth saying to the middle-aged or old. I had been nourished on the Greek and Roman classics; under the special influence of Herodotus I composed an Egyptian drama of the time of Cambyses, and it cost me much labour and greatly improved me in the art of composing; but not having read it for more than half a century I am quite unable now to judge of it. The flight I know to have been high, but whether through clear atmosphere or fog I cannot say. Sir Sibbald Scott, son of my friend Sir David, told me that he had seen the authorship of “The Piromides” inquired for in _Notes and Queries_ at two different times. It was received by the press as a work of solemn purpose throughout.
I may mention that Lord Elgin, to whom I inscribed this play, thought it betrayed poetic taste, and he expressed his opinion in warmer terms than I cite.
It is surprising to witness how many good writers of their own language there are in this country: in reading the papers this is extensively seen; the leading articles appear equal, all marked by idiomatic clearness of expression. Then, in literary criticism, it is noticeable how much deeper the writers penetrate into the arcana, perceiving what is rendered, and what is left wanting, in a poetic composition, and that with a psychological acuteness much more general than was met with a generation or two ago. This is the more valuable, since criticism is the profoundest of studies; it demands an adequate knowledge of every science and art, as well as a competent observation of nature.
In speaking of my own intellectual mechanism, this I say once more is none of my own, but an instrument placed temporarily among visible things, to reveal what it may to the less knowing.
XXXVIII.
It is my purpose in writing these Memoirs to adhere rigidly to truth, at least in its essence. Should I succeed in this, my work will be a very remarkable one, almost unique. But, being a close observer, I have noticed that those who always tell the truth obtain immense credit, no matter how much they say that militates against themselves. The pleasure of speaking the truth at all times is immense. Lying is a very peculiar art: some use it merely as a convenience, and often have not the ability to forge a lie without including in it the contradiction. One takes pity on this class, endowed only with a pauper intellect and a pauper conscience.
Exaggerative liars are of a common class; it is somewhat difficult to reach their motive, because they neither serve themselves nor others. What they chiefly exaggerate is incomes; it must be due to a sanguine temperament.
The decidedly despicable liars are those who lie about themselves; but these have not the shrewdness to see their way safely. A man told me that he had been dining with a distinguished party at a certain club. He had not the knowledge necessary to give his lie substance; he was not aware that the rules of the club he named did not admit of a member entertaining any stranger there.
These are the three sorts of everyday liars; it is astonishing how completely every one knows them as such without their being in the least aware of the fact themselves, for we all pretend to believe liars to their face!
It is like possessing a fortune to be endowed with a love of truth for its own sake, and I doubt if any man was ever truly great without it. The mind of the truly gifted appears to me to lie parallel with nature, so that if an idea comes into being, all other ideas related to it are close at hand, and in a line with it.
The value of this view to the science of criticism is incommensurable: this I will now illustrate. The idea and its relations, which increase its intensity and beauty, may be variously expressed. Say Shakespeare knew a girl who was in love but concealed it, and so, pining, grew hectic and sallow; but bore it with patience. Such would be the prose version of the fact, and is not very emotional. But the poet would look as steadfastly at the sufferer as would a lover, then his sympathy would inflame, and in the developing of his mental vision he would see a rose that must prematurely perish through the cankering worm that gnaws at its heart. That rose is the hectic blush, its damask is reflected on the maiden cheek as she pines. But such an image cannot end here, this image of death in life; and in the next parallel appears a living monument of immortalizing sculpture beyond which the mind cannot rise.
(1) She never told her love— (2) But let concealment, like a worm in the bud, Feed on her damask cheek. (3) She pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.
Poetry is co-extensive with Nature, but cannot exceed her limits. She has her mystical number, which is three. Her suns rise; they reach their zenith; they have their setting: it is their morning, their noon, and their night. The earth has its three dimensions; the elements and all the things it consists of can assume but three forms, the solid, the liquid, the gaseous. Her productions have their three stages, and, running through these, they begin again. Man, in common with all that is organic, is born, he lives, he dies; the plant yearly has its growth, its flowering, its seed-time. This is the trinity of Nature; and poetry, which is her vocal manifestation, has its three parallels.
This truth, instances of which the reader himself may multiply at will, serves to illuminate the poetic argument which is to follow. An idea in imaginative poetry, which is the greatest and the only truly great, has three parallels as already exemplified; it cannot have more, and to be of the highest quality it cannot have less. There are as many sources of these parallels as there are objects in the three natural kingdoms, that most marvellous of the threefold series, the conjoint animal, vegetable, and mineral, in which all things subsist; in which every object is an ante-type of the poetic evolution just defined.
It is not necessary that these parallels should be separated by intervening details of any length, whence it is that short passages, or short poems like the sonnet, when woven with a due regard to their effectiveness, become poetic gems. Such are the first four lines of Shakespeare’s thirty-third sonnet; such are Coleridge’s lines on “Time Real and Imaginary,” and those on “Work without Hope.” All these I will now cite, numbering the parallels in their gradual ascent from the subject to its evolution, and thence into its transcendental expression in the ideal.
SONNET XXXIII. (SHAKESPEARE).
(1) Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye; (2) Kissing with golden face the meadows green; (3) Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY (COLERIDGE).
(1) Two lovely children ran an endless race, A sister and a brother! (2) She far outstripped the other; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy behind; (3) For he, alas! is blind.
WORK WITHOUT HOPE (COLERIDGE).
(1) All nature seems at work: (2) Slugs leave their lair; The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing, (3) And Winter, slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! (1) And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing, (2) Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. (3) Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may; For me ye bloom not. Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll; And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.
Shakespeare, in the citation “She never told her love,” gives out his subject in five words; from this he rises into the amplification of it through an exquisite metaphor and thence inters its divine ideal in imagery that can never be surpassed. Such is the working principle in imaginative verse, and it may be readily found that the principle does not pervade narrative poetry except in authors of the very highest class. It is the sure test of genius, so sure that a classification of the poets, in the order of their merit, might be based upon it.
It may be perceived that these poetic gems are as perfect in themselves as any epic of many pages. But as gems differ, so do these: the citations from Shakespeare and from Coleridge have their parallels in the line of ascent; they rise into their climax. The question whether the expression “slugs leave their lair,” should not be “stags leave their lair,” might surely be decided by reference to the first edition of “Work without Hope.” I possessed Gagliani’s reprint of Coleridge in 1832; if “slugs” in that issue stood as a printer’s error, the author was alive to protest against it. However, in an early edition of his poems, edited by Coleridge, I find it is “stags.” I feel that it was consonant with Coleridge’s mind to have begun the poem with “Slugs leave their lair;” it is not only more musical than “stags” through the triple alliteration, but more orderly, beginning with the slowest of animated creatures as typical of the condition of apathy that he was himself consigned to.
XXXIX.
There are three lofty and emotional verses in Wordsworth’s “Intimations,” which should be spoken of. The first of these is a gem, and would have been without flaw but that it begins in the climacteric, while the subject and development of it, which should come first, begin at the sixth line, thus:
“It is not now as it hath been of yore,”
down to the end.
It is almost sad to observe what splendid material Wordsworth sacrifices through his want of poetic art.
The stanza needs no verbal correction; its fault is in the misplacement of the lines. It is one of the most important verses in the language, or I would not trouble the critic about it, but I will ask him to read it thus by transposing the lines:
(1. THE SUBJECT.)
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
(2. THE DEVELOPMENT.)
Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
(3. THE GRAND CLIMAX.)
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream!
The qualifications of one who could be classed with the greatest of poets are deducible from Shakespeare alone; they are as follows:—
1. Imagination. 2. Philosophic vision. 3. A sense of the ludicrous. 4. An emotional perception of beauty. 5. Harmony. 6. Art.
All of these might be dilated on, but not here.
It is a notable truth that the poetic mind never appears fully to mature. A man often writes a whole bible of verses, of which but one per cent., or from that to ten, is worth preserving. If he produces one or two favourite poems, a mild people accepts the whole, but only feeds on the little income of its large capital. A voluminous writer may succeed in yielding a fine harvest on the whole; the wheats beyond all praise, the barleys good, the oats plentiful; but the roots indifferent and the potato crop decidedly bad.
It would be a curious sight if one could inspect the proceedings of Fame Insurance Companies, in which Shakespeare had a policy for millions all paid up, and invested in the hearts of generations unborn; in which, if Coleridge has not a tithe of the amount, he is yet rich with the well-earned increment ever increasing; and Wordsworth, who teaches moral as well as poetic divinity, is not very far behind him. There I pause, accepting contemporary poets as more or less life-annuitants.
There is, perhaps, no example of retrospective imagination (it is at once so dramatic, so poetic) like the opening words of Gloucester in the play of _Richard III_.
Before Shakespeare’s day, drama and poetry lived very much apart—one may say entirely separate in the Greek; no less so than chemical science and geology may do at the present time: Shakespeare, in much of his work, made them one.
“Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;”
in this the action is dramatic, the verbal structure metaphoric.
The same is true of—
“Nor made to court an amourous looking-glass;”
while the words,
“He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute,”
surpasses both, as not being metaphoric, yet poetic as well as dramatic.
Furthermore, the latter line—
“To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph,”
is most perfect in drama-poetic expression. It is exquisite in its contempt; it is ever visible in its movement; it is ludicrous too. Here lies the highest triumph of poetry, to do that which ordinary speech can barely effect in any single sentence—to attain to the most beautiful expression without a single metaphor; that is, by absolute simplicity of speech.
Of course, metaphor is a great resource in composition; it involves not only the fact, but its simile in one and the same epithet.
The line in Hamlet—
“Whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul,”
has as strong a simile in it, through “harrow up,” as is contained in the expression—
“Thy matted and combined locks to part … Like quills upon a fretful porcupine.”
But the last is pure poetry; the other is dramatic poetry.
Of course, pure poetry has the highest quality of all; it is so sincere, so convincing, that it requires no help to render it beautiful and effective.