Richard Hurd

“ This quaint combination of remote, unallied imagery, constitutes a species of entertainment, which, for its novelty, may amuse and divert the mind in other compositions; but is wholly inconsistent with the reserve and solemnity of the graver forms. There is too much curiosity of art, too solicitous an affectation of pleasing, in these ingenious exercises of the fancy, to suit with the simple majesty of the epos or drama; which disclaims to cast about for forced and tortured allusions, and aims only to expose, in the fairest light, such as are most obvious and natural. ”

“ The passion of LOVE is one of those affections, which bear great sway in the human nature. Its workings are violent. And its effects on the person, possessed by it, and in the train of events, to which it gives occasion, conspicuous to all observers. The power of this commanding affection hath triumphed at all times. It hath given birth to some of the greatest and most signal transactions in history; and hath furnished the most inchanting scenes of fiction. Poetry hath ever lived by it. The modern muse hath hardly any existence without it. ”

“ And if we find it generally in a writer, we may almost venture 127 to esteem him original without further scruple. For the shapes and appearances of things are apprehended, only in the gross, by dull minds. They think they see, but it is as through a mist, where if they catch but a faint glimpse of the form before them, it is well. More one is not to look for from their clouded imaginations. And what they thus imperfectly discern, it is not possible for them to delineate very distinctly. Whereas every object stands forth in bright sunshine to the view of the true poet. ”

“ I say, in the greater works of genius, which must be attended to; for the folly of taking resemblances for imitations, in this province of allusion, hath arisen from hence; that the poet is believed to have all art and nature before him, and to be at liberty to fetch his hints of similitude and correspondence from every distant and obscure corner of the universe. That is, the genius of the epic, dramatic, and universally, of the greater, poetry hath not been comprehended, nor their distinct laws and characters distinguished from those of an inferior species. ”

“ Nature may have inclined him most powerfully to one set of manners; just as one passion is, always, predominant in him. But he finds in himself the seeds of all others. This consciousness, as before, furnishes the characteristic sentiments, which constitute the manners. And it were full as strange for two poets, who had taken in hand such a character, as that of Achilles, to differ materially in their expression of it; as for two painters, drawing from the same object, to avoid a striking conformity in the design and attitude of their pictures. ”

“ If passion predominates in a picture of private life, I call it a tragedy of private story, because it produces the end which tragedy designs. If humour predominates in a 85 draught of public life, I call it a comedy of public story, because it gives the pleasure of pure comedy. Let these then be two new species of the drama, if you please, and let new names be invented for them. Yet, were I a poet, I should certainly adhere to the old practice. That is, if I wanted to produce passion, I should think myself able to raise it highest on a great subject. ”

“ In entering on this apology for professed imitators, I shall not be suspected of undervaluing the proper merits of invention, which unquestionably holds the first place in the virtutes of a poet, and is that power, which, of all others, enables him to give the highest entertainment to the reader. Much less will it be thought, that I am here pleading the cause of those base and abject spirits, who have not the courage or ability to attempt any thing of themselves, and can barely make a shift, as a great poet of our own expresses it, to creep servilely after the sense of some other. ”

“ Here then we may expect a much more original air, than in the higher designs of invention. When all nature is before the poet, and the genius of his work allows him to seize her, as the shepherd did Proteus, in every dirty form, into which she can possibly twist herself, it were, indeed, a wonder, if he should chance to coincide, in his imagery, with any other, from whom he had not expressly copied. They who are conversant in works of wit and humour, more especially of these later times, will know this to be the case, in fact. ”

“ And a comedy, which represents a pleasant action, can never admit the terrible or noble. But it is otherwise, he conceives, with the intermediate species of this scale. The singular, the pitiable, the tender, which fill up the interval betwixt the noble and ridiculous, are equally consistent 77 with tragedy and comedy. An uncommon stroke of Fortune may as well befall a peasant as a prince. And two lovers of an inferior condition may have as lively a passion for each other, and, when some unlucky event separates them, may deserve our pity as much, as those of the highest fortune. ”

“ For the external forms themselves are grateful to the fancy, and, as being expressive of design, warm and agitate the heart with passion. Hence it is, that narrative poetry, which draws mankind under every apparent consequence and effect of passion, inchants the mind. And even the dramatic, we know, is cool and lifeless, and loses half its efficacy, without action. This, too, is the province of picture, statuary, and all arts, which inform by mute signs. Nay, the mute arts may be styled, almost without a figure, in this class of imitation, the most eloquent. ”

“ For the perfection of comedy lying in the accuracy and fidelity of universal representation, and farce professedly neglecting or rather purposely transgressing the limits of common nature and just decorum, they clash entirely with each other. And comedy must so far fail of giving the pleasure, appropriate to its design, as it allies itself with farce; while farce, on the other hand, forfeits the use, it intends, of promoting popular ridicule, by restraining itself within the exact rules of Nature, which Comedy observes. ”

“ A style in writing, if not formed in express imitation of some certain model, is the pure result of the disposition of the mind, and takes its character from the predominant quality of the writer. Thus a short and compact, and a diffused and flowing expression are the proper consequences of certain corresponding characters of the human genius. One has a vigorous comprehensive conception, and therefore collects his sense into few words. ”

“ But its impressions are strongest on those, whom nature hath touched with a ray of that celestial fire, which we call true genius. Here the workings of this instinctive sense are so powerful, that, to judge from its effects, one should conclude, it perfectly intranced and bore away the mind, as in a fit of rapture. Whenever the form of natural beauty presents itself, though but casually, to the mind of the poet ”

“ Or, when the genius of the artists is equal, who can doubt of giving the preference to that representation, which, striking on the sight, grows almost into reality, and is hardly considered by the inraptured thought, as fiction? When passion is to be made known by outward act, Homer himself yields the palm to Raphael. 147
But our business is with the poets. And, in reviewing this their largest and most favoured stock of materials, can we do better than contemplate them in the very order, in which we before disposed the workings of the mind itself, the causes of these appearances? ”

“ In listening to these divine strains every one feels, from his own consciousness, how necessary such reflexions are to human nature; more particularly, when to the simple apprehension of deity, a warm fancy and strong affections join their combined powers, to push the mind forward into enthusiastic raptures. All the faculties of the soul being then upon the stretch, natural ability holds the place, and, in some sort, doth the office, of divine suggestion. ”

“ All the amazing flights of Homer’s or Shakespear’s fancy are found agreeable to nature, when contemplated by the capable reader; but who will say, that, therefore, they must have presented themselves to the generality of writers? The office of judgment is one thing, and of invention, another.”
Properly speaking, what we call invention in poetry is, in respect of the matter of it, simply, observation. And it is in the arrangement, use, and application of his materials, not in the investigation of them, that the exercise of the poet’s genius principally consists. ”

“ The piety of one hero, and the love of his country, which characterizes another, can only be shewn by the influence of the ruling principle in each, constraining them to neglect inferior considerations, and to give up all subordinate affections to it. The more prevalent the affection, the greater the sacrifice, and the more strongly is the character marked. Hence, without doubt, the Calypso of Homer. And need we look farther than the instructions of common nature for a similar contrivance in a later poet? ”

“ These lights and shades (as the poet finely calls the intermixture of many passions, which, with the leading or principal one, form the human character) must be blended together in every picture of dramatic manners; because the avowed business of the drama is to image real life. Yet the draught of the leading passion must be as general as this strife in nature permits, in order to express the intended character more perfectly. ”

“ Were it true, that poets took their descriptions and images immediately from common nature, one might expect, indeed, a general similitude in their works, but such, as could seldom or never, in all its circumstances, amount to a strict and rigorous correspondency. The properties of things are so numerous, and the lights in which they shew themselves to a mind uninfluenced by former prejudices, so different, that some grace of novelty, some tincture of original beauty, would constantly infuse itself into all their delineations. ”

“ For the poet, whose object is fame, will always adapt himself to the humour of those, who confer it. And till the public taste be reduced, by sober criticism, to a just standard, strength of genius will only enable a writer to pervert it still further, by a too successful compliance with its vicious expectations. ”

“ Of these several sources of pleasure, he forms what he calls a dramatic scale, the extremes of which he admits to be altogether inconsistent; no art being sufficient to bring together the grand, the noble, or the terrible, into the same piece with the pleasant or ridiculous. The impressions of these objects, he allows, are perfectly opposed to each other. So that a tragedy, which takes for its subject a noble, or terrible event, can by no means admit the pleasant. ”

“ In Spenser’s line we have the idea of Virtue dropt down into a world, all over darkened with vice and error. Virtue excites the light of truth to see all around her, and not only dissipate the neighbouring darkness, but to direct her course in pursuing her victory and driving her enemy out of it; the arduousness of which exploit is well expressed by—thro’ darkness for to WADE. On the contrary, Milton, in borrowing, substitutes the physical for the moral idea—by her own radiant light—and tho’ Sun and Moon were in the flat sea sunk. ”

“ Strong as the bent of the imagination may be to contemplate living forms, and to gaze with delight on this grand theatre of nature, its attention is soon taken off, and arrested, on all sides, by those infinite mirrors, and reflexions of things, which it every where meets with in the world of imitation. ”

“ Though a plot be necessary to produce humour, as well as the pathos, yet a good plot is not so essential to comedy, as tragedy. For the pathos is the result of the entire action; that is, of all the circumstances of the story taken together, and conspiring by a probable tendency, to a completion in the event. A failure in the just arrangement and disposition of the parts may, then, affect what is of the essence of this drama. On the contrary, humour, though brought out by action, is not the effect of the whole, but may be distinctly evidenced in a single scene ”

“ Tragedy succeeds best, when the subject is real; comedy, when it is feigned. What would this say, but that tragedy, turning our attention principally on the action represented, finds means to interest us more strongly on the persuasion of its being taken from actual life? While comedy, on the other hand, can neglect these scrupulous measures of probability, as intent only on exhibiting characters; for which purpose an invented story will serve much better. The reason is, real action does not ordinarily afford variety of incidents enough to shew the character fully: feigned action may. ”

“ And this is that I would say, at present, of these two requisites of universal poetry, namely, that licence of expression, which we call the style of poetry, and that licence of representation, 11 which we call fiction. The style is, as it were, the body of poetry; fiction, is its soul. Having, thus, taken the privilege of a poet to create a Muse, we have only now to give her a voice, or more properly to tune it, and then she will be in a condition, as one of her favourites speaks, to ravish all the Gods. ”

“ Those who are fond of hunting after parallels, might, I doubt not, with great ease, confront almost every sentiment, which, in the Greek tragedians, is made expressive of particular characters, with similar passages in other poets; more especially (for I must often refer to his authority) in the various living portraitures of Shakespear. Yet he, who after taking this learned pains, should chuse to urge such parallels, when found, for proofs of his imitation of the ancients, would only run the hazard of being reputed, by men of sense, as poor a critic of human nature, as of his author. ”

“ But the English, you say, or rather your fondness for your Masters leads you to suppose, are original thinkers. ’Tis true, Nature has taken a pleasure to shew us what she could do, by the production of ONE Prodigy. But the rest are what we admire them for, not indeed without Genius, perhaps with a larger share of it than has fallen to the lot of others, yet directly and chiefly by the discipline of art and the helps of imitation. ”

“ The manners of the several persons in the drama must, also, be signified, that the action, which in many cases will be determined by them, may appear to be carried on with truth and probability. Hence every thing passing before us, as we are accustomed to see it in real life, we enter more warmly into their interests, as forgetting, that we are attentive to a fictitious scene. And, besides, from knowing the personal good, or ill, qualities of the agents, we learn to anticipate their future felicity or misery, which gives increase to the passion in either case. ”