Philopoemen

“ But if a Man writes an Epopéa in Prose, would it be an Epick Poem? No, I think not; for a Poem is a Discourse in Verse. But yet this would not hinder its being an Epopéa; just as a Tragedy in Prose is still a Tragedy, though it be not a Tragick Poem. They who have question'd whether the Latin Comedy were a Poem or no, never doubted but it was a Comedy. ”

“ We see then that in deviating from particular and partial, the poet more faithfully imitates universal, truth. And thus an answer occurs to that refined argument, which Plato invented and urged, with much seeming complacency, against poetry. It is, that poetical imitation is at a great distance from truth. “Poetical expression, says the Philosopher, is the copy of the poet’s own conceptions; the poet’s conception, of things, and things, of the standing archetype, as existing in the divine mind. Thus the poet’s expression, is a copy at third hand, from the primary, original truth.” ”

“ We shall find the one leading to the other, or rather identified with it, for Polyphemus was himself a shepherd, and all his imagery and associations are drawn from pastoral life. Our English, it is to be borne in mind, is not the [Pg 89] Greek. The poet must have all the benefit of that admission. But at any rate we have done our best not to spoil the original with such artificial modes of speech as destroy all pathos; and feeling has a common language everywhere, which he who is thoroughly moved by it, can never wholly misrepresent. ”

“ We demand thanks—not in our own name, for we are but atoms—but in the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and godlike figure of a distant, rosy, and happy fairyland. ”

“ Epic poetry abounds with aids to the imagination. Situations are described, characters indicated, motives explained. Although the early epics were meant to be recited and not read, the only serious demand they make upon a reader is that of continuous attention. And if it sometimes requires an effort to realise the drift of lyric poetry, yet, when the single mood of feeling which has prompted the poet is once caught, he is sure to make himself understood, even though his words are no longer sung. ”

“ How slippery is Greatness! Philo puff'd up with his Success, writes a second Play, scorns to improve it by the Corrections of better Wits, brings it upon the Stage, without securing a Party to protect it, and has the Mortification to hear it Hist to death. Pray how many Philos do we reckon in Town since the Revolution?
"The reason we have had so many ill Plays of late, is this; The extraordinary Success of the worst Performances encourages every Pretender to Poetry to Write; Whereas the indifferent Reception some excellent Pieces have met with, discourages our best Poets from Writing. ”

“ There is no mystic enthusiasm or rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some degree, to a carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in abstract ideas, we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety of indications, derived from style as well as subject, that the Philebus belongs to the later period of his life and authorship. ”

“ Poeta.—A poet is that which by the Greeks is called κατ εξοχην, ο ποιητής, a maker, or a feigner: his art, an art of imitation or feigning; expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony, according to Aristotle; from the word ποιειν, which signifies to make or feign. Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem. ”

“ Under this impression it is, that the Author has presumed to dedicate to your Ladyship, this humble tribute of his respect and esteem. If he must not be allowed to rank it with the brighter effusions of imagination; yet, being founded in truth, it is intrinsically superior to the flights of fancy, and he trusts when you consider the justness of the panegyric, and the sincerity which inspires it; you will look over the imperfection of the Performance, in regard to the goodness of the intention; and readily pardon the writers defects of genius in justice to the warmth of his feelings. ”

“ The Greek word διδακτικός signifies a teacher, from the verb διδάσκειν, and poetry of the class under discussion approaches us with the arts and graces of a schoolmaster. At no time was it found convenient to combine lyrical verse with instruction, and therefore from the beginning of literature the didactic poets have chosen a form approaching the epical. Modern criticism, which discourages the epic, and is increasingly anxious to limit the word “poetry” to lyric, is inclined to exclude the term “didactic poetry” from our nomenclature, as a phrase absurd in itself. ”

“ In the Anthology, the driving motive is an almost perverted passion for truth. Conventional epitaphs are marked by two characteristics; artistically, when in verse, they are the worst specimens of poetry known to man; even good poets seldom write good epitaphs, and among all the sins against art perpetrated by the uninspired, the most flagrant are found here; to a bad poet, for some reason or other, the temptation to write them is irresistible. In many small communities, one has to get up very early in the morning to die before the village laureate has his poem prepared. ”

“ From this wonder-working academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.
That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his scholars in religion. ”

“ Following Aristotle’s method, we may define the objects of poetry’s imitation or evocation, as everything of which the idea or image can be called up by words, that is, every force and phenomenon of nature, every operation and result of art, every fact of life and history, or every imagination of such a fact, every thought and feeling of the human spirit, for which mankind in the course of its long evolution has been able to create in speech an explicit and appropriate sign. ”

“ Every one is certainly convinced of the fact that a poem—in addition to its manifest contents—is also particularly characteristic of its author, in its form, subject-matter, and the history of its origin. Whereas the poet gave skilful expression to a fleeting mood in his song, the historian of literature sees in it and beyond it, things which the poet would never have suspected. The analysis which the literary critic makes of the subject-matter furnished by the poet may be compared with psychoanalysis in its method, even to the very errors which occur therein. ”

“ Courthope, that our traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary poetry. The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the same as those of p. xivsome literary mediæval romances. But these plots and situations, in Epic and Romance, are themselves the final literary form of märchen, myths and inventions originally popular, and still, in certain cases, extant in popular form among races which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the ampler and more polished and complex genres of literature. ”

“ It may be said, with truth, that modern philology has a method far more scientific and patient than the random practice of old etymology. Granted, but a glance at the various philological interpretations, for example, of Greek mythical names, will shew that philologists still differ on most mythical points where difference is possible. When applied to the interpretation of the past of human thought and human history, philology is a most uncertain guide. ”

“ Your 'Poems and Ballads' began to teach the Philister what might there is in the music of language, and what the marvel of lyric inspiration, far subtler and more ethereal than mere poetry, means to the mind of man. ”

“ Purely lyrical pieces are from their nature short, and fall into several divisions, which are again subdivided into psalms and songs. Passion, genius, a teeming brain, a palpitating heart, and a soul on fire, are necessary to lyrical composition. The poetry that lives among the people, must indeed be simple—but the simplest feelings are the deepest, and when adequately expressed, are immortal. The song-writer and the psalmist are equally divine; and the rich and noble melodies which they send abroad from their resounding lyres, the world claims as an inheritance. ”

“ On the contrary, with such an abstract self-subsistency we should only have left us for content the wholly contingent and particular passion, the mere caprice of concupiscence and affection, false idiosyncrasies and distorted originality would have unlimited opportunities. Genuine lyrical poetry, like all other poetry, has no doubt to express the content of the human heart in its truth. Yet none the less, regarded as the content of the Lyric, what is most a matter of fact and substantial must appear absorbed in personal feeling, vision, imagination, and thought. ”

“ Nobles and ladies, accustomed to far-fetched and ornate compositions like the Filocopo, heard the same stories which amused the common people, told in a style which the uneducated too could apprehend and enjoy, but purged of all roughness and vulgarity, and, in truth, such masterpieces of clear, forcible prose as the greatest scholars had till then been unable to produce. ”

“ And so doing, you will perhaps achieve the whole of your own destiny. I have never had much success in my essays in Philology: you have never had much success in your essays in music: and it is well that things should be so. As a musician you would have come to much the same end to which I should have come had I stuck obstinately to Philology. But Philology remains in my blood; it directs me in my work as a musician. As for you, remain a philologist, and keeping to Philology, allow yourself to be directed by music. ”

“ In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colours of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well—such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have. ”

“ This being so, the exacting demand of the prosodical rules will very readily appear as a fetter to the imagination, in virtue of which it is no longer possible for the poet to communicate his ideas in the precise form in which they float upon his phantasy. The inference is natural that although the stream of rhythm and the music of rhyme exercises upon us as an unquestionable fascination, it is nevertheless not unfrequently and too much so the demand of this very charm to our senses that the finest poetic feeling and idea should be sacrificed. ”

“ But the rhetorical expansion of the older forms into an equable and deliberate narrative was counteracted by the still stronger affection for lyrical modes of speech, for impassioned, abrupt, and heightened utterance. No epic solidity or composure could be obtained in the fiery Northern verse; the poets could not bring themselves into the frame of mind required for long recitals; they had no patience for the intervals necessary, in epic as in dramatic poetry, between the critical moments. They would have everything equally full of energy, everything must be emphatic and telling. ”

“ The folk-song appears before the true elaboration of a prosaically organized condition of actual conscious life. Lyric poetry of the truly artistic type, on the other hand, wrests itself away from the prosaic coordination which surrounds it, and creates from the poet's imagination, in its acquired independence, a new poetic world of inward observation and emotion, by means of which, for the first time, the true content and type of expression truly adequate to the human soul, as seen from within, becomes the object of vital art. ”

“ Plato, indeed, complains of all books that they lack reticence or propriety toward different classes [24] of persons, and his protest embodies the aversion of the flexible Greek mind for the precision of written literature. A poem or an oration which, crystallized into characters, speaks to all alike, and reveals itself indiscriminately to everybody, is of less value to the ancient scholar than the poem or oration which lingers in the master’s mind, and maintains a delicate reserve toward the inferior portion of the community. ”

“ The references to his wife in this poem, in the enthralling “One Word More,” and in the dedication to “The Ring [Pg 206] and the Book,” as well as those to be divined in his character drawing of “Pompilia,” are incomparable in their impressiveness and beauty, and must live so long as poetry is enshrined in life. The vital drama, the splendor of movement, the color, the impassioned exaltation of feeling, the pictorial vividness that are in these poems grouped under “Dramatic Romances” and “Dramatis Personæ,” give them claim to the first rank in the poet’s creations. ”