James Baldwin

“ I think it possible to trace not only a pre-poetic period in his art, but to date the period at which the soul was 'infused' into his poetry, and the brilliant external figures became the dwelling-places of germinating poetic thoughts creating their own music. Curiously enough, the first poem where there is any trace of those musings of the Round Table to which he has directed so much of his maturest genius, is also a confession that the poet was sick of the magic mirror of fancy and its picture-shadows, and was turning away from them to the poetry of human life. ”

“ They do not excite themselves to express moral or philosophical ideas. They wish to enjoy through the imagination, through the eyes, like those Italian nobles, who, at the same time, were so captivated by fine colors and forms, that they covered with paintings not only their rooms and their churches, but the lids of their chests and the saddles of their horses. . . . Think what poetry was likely to spring from them, how superior to common events, how free from literal imitation, how smitten with ideal beauty, how capable of creating a world beyond our sad world."—Taine. ”

“ Hear how Timotheus'20 vary'd lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove21
[144] Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound!
The power of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.
Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleas'd too little or too much. ”

“ Gray's production was scanty, and scanty it could not but be. Even what he produced was not always pure in diction, true in evolution. Still, with whatever drawbacks, he is alone or almost alone in his age. Gray said himself that the style he aimed at was 'extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical.' Compared, not with the work of the great masters of the golden ages of poetry, but with the poetry of his own contemporaries in general, Gray may be said to have reached, in his style, the excellence at which he aimed. ”

“ With but little of Shakespeare's imagination or inventive power, he had the same life of mind; within the narrow circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents, the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and vigorously. He had an eye to see, a heart to feel,—no more. His pictures of good fellowship, of social life, of quaint humor, are equal to anything; they come up to nature, and they cannot go beyond it."—Hazlitt. ”

“ The people of the seventeenth century were weary of liberty, weary of the unmitigated rage of the dramatists, cloyed with the roses and the spices and the kisses of the lyrists, tired of being carried over the universe and up and down the avenues of history at the freak of every irresponsible rhymester. Literature had been set open to all the breezes of heaven by the blustering and glittering Elizabethans, and in the hands of their less gifted successors it was fast declining into a mere Cave of the Winds. ”

“ Finally, we should learn that, at the very time when great revolutions in politics and philosophy were being inaugurated, a new spirit thus began to manifest itself in our literature,—a spirit of revolt against artificial restrictions and traditional methods,—which produced a glorious revival in English poetic composition and ushered in a third great school of poetry, distinguished for its breadth and freedom, as that which it superseded had been known for its elegance and precision. ”

“ He was not an author, but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, but an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he might not improbably, have given to the world some great work of the very highest rank in design and execution."
Leigh Hunt says: "Assuredly, had he lived, he would have been the greatest dramatic writer since the days of Elizabeth. In general, if Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at once the most [82] ethereal and most gorgeous—the one who has clothed his thoughts in draperies of the most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery. ”

“ Such is the unfinished and unfinishable tale of Christabel—a poem which, despite its broken notes and over-brevity, has raised its author to the highest rank of poets, and which in itself is at once one of the sweetest, loftiest, most spiritual utterances that has ever been framed in English words. We know of no existing poem in any language to which we can compare it. ”

“ The study of authors should never be substituted for the study of their works, and is usually profitable only so far as it helps the student to understand the peculiarities which distinguish those works and which are the result of certain personal characteristics. And yet it is no uncommon thing to find students acquainted with the minutest particulars in the lives of the great writers, while of the masterpieces of thought and expression, which are the glory of our literature, they betray a deplorable ignorance. ”

“ See Milton's "Ode on the Nativity," stanza i.
"It was no reason then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour."
Milton makes the sun the paramour of the earth; Shelley, the earth the paramour of the sky.
A LAMENT.
Swifter far than summer's flight,
Swifter far than youth's delight,
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone:
As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left alone, alone. ”

“ Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem8 become a sod.
VII.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! ”

“ They proposed to adapt to poetry the ordinary language of conversation, such as is spoken in the middle and lower classes, and to replace studied phrases and a lofty vocabulary by natural tones and plebeian words. In place of the classic mould, they tried stanzas, sonnets, ballads, blank verse, with the roughness and subdivisions of the primitive poets. . . . Some had culled gigantic legends, piled up dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, the Middle Ages, and overloaded the human imagination with hues and fancies from every clime. ”

“ That fillest England with thy triumphs fame,
Ioy have thou of thy noble victorie,
And endlesse happinesse of thine owne name
That promiseth the same;
That through thy prowesse, and victorious armes,
Thy country may be freed from forraine harmes,
And great Elisaes glorious name may ring
Through all the world, fill'd with thy wide alarmes,
Which some brave muse may sing
To ages following,
Upon the brydale day which is not long:
Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song. ”

“ Tennyson," says a writer in the North British Review, "deserves an especial study, not only as a poet, but as a leader and a landmark of popular thought and feeling. As a poet, he belongs to the highest category of English writers; for poetry is the strongest and most vigorous branch of English literature. In this literature his works are evidently destined to secure a permanent place; for they express in language refined and artistic, but not unfamiliar, a large segment of the popular thought of the period over which they range. ”

“ The influence of the poetry of the past lasted; new elements were added to poetry, and new forms of it took shape. The study of the Greek and Latin classics revived, and with it a more artistic poetry. Not only correct form, for which Pope sought, but beautiful form was sought after. Men like Thomas Gray and William Collins strove to pour into their work that simplicity of beauty which the Greek poets and Italians like Petrarca had reached as the last result of genius restrained by art. ”

“ Then we should learn that while the ink from good Langland's pen was yet scarcely dry after his third revision of "Piers Ploughman," Geoffrey Chaucer came forward with his sweet imaginings bodied in immortal verse, his tuneful numbers, his "well of English undefiled,"—and English poetry, which now for more than five centuries has been the chief glory of our literature, had its true beginning. ”

“ If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense superiority of Chaucer's poetry over the [earlier] romance-poetry, why it is that in passing from this to Chaucer we suddenly feel ourselves to be in another world, we shall find that his superiority is both in the substance of his poetry and in the style of his poetry. His superiority in substance is given by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life. ”

“ And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm!
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit,
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. ”

“ His power of expression is beyond praise. There is always a singular fitness in his language: he uses always the right word. He is one of our greatest masters of metre: metre was, in fact, no restraint to him, but rather it seems to have given him freedom. It has been observed that he argues better in verse than in prose; verse was the natural costume of his thoughts."
Professor Masson says: "Not only is Dryden the largest figure in one era of our literature: he is a very considerable figure also in our literature as a whole. ”

“ Shelley was never in his soul an atheist: it was simply impossible with his nature that he should be; what he did deny and defy was a deity whose worship seemed, as he saw the world, consistent with the reign of selfishness and bigotry."
Lord Macaulay says: "We doubt whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree some of the highest qualities of the great ancient masters. The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and affected when applied to other modern writers, have a perfect propriety when applied to him. ”

“ It is well to remember, while pursuing this course, that a taste for poetry is not acquired or fostered by an analysis of grammatical forms or by any study of words merely as such. To analyze a puzzling sentence or to trace the derivation of an interesting word to its roots sometimes helps one to understand a difficult expression or to perceive in it a meaning hitherto unsuspected; but to make the study of any selection consist largely of exercises of this kind is to substitute grammar or philology for literature. ”

“ He devoted his attention only sparingly to poetry—and that chiefly during his youth. Later in life he was occupied with political, social, and religious questions. "He was a living Hamlet, full of the most splendid thoughts and the noblest purposes, but a most incompetent doer." "His mind," wrote Southey, "is a perpetual St. Vitus's dance—eternal activity without action."
"Of Coleridge's best verses," says Swinburne, "I venture to affirm that the world has nothing like them, and can never have; that they are of the highest kind, and of their own. ”

“ By the time we have read and extracted all the sweets from three or four of these, we shall be prepared to go a step farther and undertake the study of Wordsworth's immortal productions,—productions but little more difficult and but little less poetic. Thus, step by step, we may review the six centuries of English poetry which lie behind, and when at last we reach the time of Chaucer we shall be able to take hold of his works with understanding and with the zest which is begotten of true sympathy and appreciation. ”

“ We have only to call to mind the Prologue to 'The Canterbury Tales.' The right comment upon it is Dryden's: 'It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.' And again: 'He is a perpetual fountain of good sense.' It is by a large, free, sound representation of things, that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; and Chaucer's poetry has truth of substance. If we think of Chaucer's divine liquidness of diction, his divine fluidity of movement, it is difficult to speak temperately. ”

“ And he avowed that the purpose of his poetry was "to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous." ”

“ Chaucer is the father of our splendid English poetry, he is our 'well of English undefiled,' because by the lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch and founds a tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, the fluid movement, of Chaucer; at one time it is his liquid diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, and at another it is his fluid movement. ”

“ By taking them all together, we feel rather than see that Wordsworth intended to say that the child, having lately come from a perfect existence, in which he saw truth directly, and was at home with God, retains, unknown to us, that vision;—and, because he does, is the best philosopher, since he sees at once that which we through philosophy are endeavoring to reach; is the mighty prophet, because in his actions and speech he tells unconsciously the truths he sees, but the sight of which we have lost ”

“ Waller may be regarded as the founder of the classical school of English poetry, in which Dryden and Pope excelled, and which remained in the ascendency for more than a century after his death. "The excellence and dignity of rhyme," says Dryden, "were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it; he first made writing easily an art, first showed us to conclude the sense, most commonly, in distichs, which in the verse of those before him runs on for so many lines together, that the reader is out of breath to overtake it." ”

“ Such a study, altogether interesting and eminently profitable though it be, should not be undertaken by any student until he has acquired an extensive [7] personal acquaintance with poetry itself. We may enjoy the beautiful creations of Tennyson, of Shelley, of Burns, even of Chaucer, without knowing one word of the history of poetry, without so much as knowing the names of the writers or the circumstances under which they wrote. ”

“ Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards the world of his mind? Having to wield some of its elements when I was impelled to write this poem on the 'Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient foundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my purpose the best use of it I could as a poet. ”

“ Compare these last four lines with those at the close of Pope's Ode.
Dr. Warton says of "Alexander's Feast": "If Dryden had never written anything but this ode, his name would have been immortal, as would that of Gray, if he had never written anything but his 'Bard.' It is difficult to find new terms to express our admiration of the variety, richness, and melody of its numbers; the force, beauty, and distinctness of its images; the succession of so many different passions and feelings; and the matchless perspicuity of its diction. ”

“ To accomplish this object rationally and successfully, it is best to begin with those productions which are nearest to us in point of time and which are more in harmony with our own thoughts, and therefore easiest to understand and enjoy. An attempt to pursue these studies in chronological order, beginning with the works of Chaucer and the older poets, would oblige the student to encounter at the outset so many purely mechanical difficulties that he would fail to discern the spiritual qualities of truth, beauty, and goodness, which are the very essence of all genuine poetry. ”

“ In our day, with the wider spread of historical study, with the numerous helps to Old English that the care of scholars has produced for us, with the purification that Chaucer's text has undergone, this saying of Dryden's ought not to be true. It ought to be not only possible, but easy, for an educated reader to learn the few essentials of Chaucerian grammar, and for an ear at all trained to poetry to tune itself to the unfamiliar harmonies. For those who make the attempt the reward is certain. ”