The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry

“ Greek poetry, we say, is very direct, very simple, very free from irrelevant ornament. And yet when we translate it into English and look at our translation, our main feeling, I think, is that somehow the glory has gone: a thing that was high and lordly has become poor and mean. Any decent Greek scholar when he opens one of his ancient poets feels at once the presence of something lofty and rare—something like the atmosphere of Paradise Lost. But the language of Paradise Lost is elaborately twisted and embellished into loftiness and rarity; the language of the Greek poem is simple and direct. ”

“ Another fortunate circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he passed the years of youth in what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in their waters. ”

“ If a poem cast in the mould of classic or feudal times, of Greek drama or mediaeval romance, be lifeless and worthless, it is not because the subject or the form was ancient, but because the poet was inadequate. . . . For neither epic nor romance of chivalrous quest or classic war is obsolete yet, or ever can be; there is nothing in the past extinct . . . [Life] is omnipresent and eternal, and forsakes neither Athens nor Jerusalem, Camelot nor Troy, Argonaut nor Crusader, to dwell, as she does with equal good will, among modern appliances in London and New York. ”

“ At first, it has been conjectured, when manners were rude, and the language still in its infancy, singing, like dancing, required no great art, and was little more than those wild bursts of melody still common among the improvisatori of Arabia and other Eastern countries, but that from these humble beginnings lyrical poetry took its rise, preserving still the freedom of its original state, and rising, unshackled by the rigid laws of metre, to heights of sublimity and grandeur beyond which no human composition ever soared. ”

“ I doubt that the most thorough explorer of contemporary letters could discover such an anachronism. Poets still write poetry, but the ancient art is no longer their chief excuse for existence. They come before the public in other and more commonplace guises. ”

“ THE "aesthetic" poetry is neither a mere reproduction of Greek or medieval poetry, nor only an idealisation of modern life and sentiment. The atmosphere on which its effect depends belongs to no simple form of poetry, no actual form of life. Greek poetry, medieval or modern poetry, projects, above the realities of its time, a world in which the forms of things are transfigured. ”

“ In treating of the beautiful mythologies of Greece and Rome, so much of which entered into the warp and woof of ancient poetry, he grants their poetical quality, but doubts whether, on the whole, the art gained more than it lost by them, because, having a god for every operation of nature, they left nothing in obscurity ”

“ The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excell the odes; and some of the exercises on Gun-powder Treason might have been spared.
The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost, have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence ”

“ Especially characteristic is the fine understanding of Greek art and culture, and the enthusiasm for Latin poetry, which expresses itself partly by means of a peculiar skill in versification and brilliancy of colouring, partly in bitter mockery of the affectations of contemporary poets and their dull, spiritless, and senseless exaggerations. The poet always preserves elegance and purity of language; when he goes out of his way to attain it, his good taste preserves him from errors, and that same taste also disclosed to him the cause and effect of the decline of rhetoric. ”

“ There is a great and powerful nature living through these poems. They are pictures of men and women of godlike beauty and endowments, and full of the vigor of simple but impetuous natures. Though fragmentary, they stand in all the essentials of poetry far beyond the German Lied, and, in the tragic force of passion which they portray, they are superior to any remains of ancient poetry except that of Greece. Their greatness lies less in their language than their spirit, which is sublime and colossal. Passion, tenderness, and sorrow are here depicted with the most vivid power ”

“ In the Celtic languages, moreover, rime is the indispensable mark of the poetic form, even in the oldest extant specimens. The Latin poetry just referred to gives interesting evidence that rime is a characteristic sign of popular poetry. While the quantitative system became dominant, with the artistic verse-forms of the Greeks, in the Golden Age of Roman literature, the early Saturnian verses, written in free rhythms, already showed the popular taste for similarity of sound in the form of alliteration ”

“ And it yet fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once ”

“ As the English poets of the sixteenth century were emancipated by the study of Greek and Latin and by the removal of the trammels of the mediæval church, is there not hope that from the mass of noble poetry, lyrical, narrative, descriptive, which England offers to them and which they read with avidity and delight may come some inspiration to experiment in form and language and thought unknown to those who are still in the bonds of our decadent Mediævalism? And prose, written for an artistic or a popular scientific purpose can learn much from foreign models ”

“ Why should the minute, but not fruitless criticism of texts be reserved for the ancient classic writers? The great poet of the Middle Ages deserves this work at our hands far more than any of the Latin poets, not excluding even his own master and guide. ”

“ Great as is the force of native, unadorned eloquence, vigorous common sense, honest truthfulness, and indignant passion, nature would give way to art as taste became more cultivated. Nor could the Romans long have the finished models of Greek eloquence before their eyes, without transferring to the forum or the senate-house somewhat of their simple grandeur and majestic beauty.
The first efforts of the Roman historians were devoted to the transfer of the records of poetry into prose, as their more appropriate and popular vehicle. ”

“ Better had it been, abandoning the notion that every one should learn Greek, to dwell upon the boundless pleasure which minds of imagination and literary taste derive from carrying in memory the gems of ancient wisdom which are more easily remembered because they are not in our own language, and the finest passages of ancient poetry. There are plenty of things—indeed there are far more things—in modern literature as noble and as beautiful as the best of the ancients can give us. ”

“ These personages are engaged in important transactions, such as make up the actual history of early nations,—wars, alliances, intermarriages, and the like. Even the supernatural element in the poem produces the illusion, if not of conformity with the belief of men in the age in which the poem was written, yet of conformity with that stage in the whole growth and decomposition of ancient beliefs which, through the works of art and poetry, has made the deepest impression on the world. ”

“ But in epic poetry, in the same way that all streams flow into and commingle in the ocean, all contrasts are softened off and dissolved, and, in a true and genuine epic poem, the ancient mythology must not impress us as heathen—or, at least, this character must not there be so decidedly apparent as it is in Grecian tragedy. ”

“ Nor are we to fansie that Nature alone, and the Advantages of a happy Genius, can make us capable of passing a Judgment upon the Ancient Poets; unless Art and Study acquaint us with the Tast and the Manners of their Auditors, and of the times they liv'd in.
The Relish which all Antiquity, both Sacred and Profane, Greek and Barbarian, had for Fables, Parables, and Allegories (which are one and the same in this place) gave the Ancient Poets a great deal more Liberty than the Moderns have; and make things in Homer pass for Beauties, which would look but ill in a Piece of Modern Poetry. ”

“ The sentiment, the pathos, the eloquence of medieval French poetry is derived from Virgil and Ovid. The Latin poets are the originals of medieval romance, far beyond what can be reckoned by any comparison of plots and incidents. And the medieval poets in their turn are the ancestors of the Renaissance and show the way to modern poetry. ”

“ The ancient art and poetry rigorously separate things which are dissimilar; the romantic delights in indissoluble mixtures; all contrarieties—nature and art, poetry and prose, seriousness and mirth, recollection and anticipation, spirituality and sensuality, terrestrial and celestial, life and death, are by it blended in the most intimate combination. ”

“ As there is a risk of reading modern sentiment into ancient work, and even of fixing on the startling modernisms that occur in Greek poetry, [11] and dwelling on them till they assume an exaggerated importance, so there is a risk perhaps as great of slurring over the inmost quality, the poetry of the poetry, where it has that touch of romance or magic that sets it beyond all our generalisations. The magical charm is just what cannot be brought under any rules; it is the result less of art than of instinct, and is almost independent of time and place. ”

“ Ornamental epithets, metaphorical phrases, and the substitution of abstract for concrete words, occur much more frequently. Latin poetry creates for itself an artificial diction by assimilating, to a much greater extent than in any earlier work of genius, the long-accumulated wealth of Greek poetry. ”

“ These fragments, which are mere indications of the rich stores of religious literature possessed by our ancestors, must not be lost sight of when studying the subject of popular education. Were we to credit the majority of writers on ancient manners, the poetry of the Middle Ages was exclusively furnished by the profane and licentious jongleurs, whose productions have been very diligently sought out and republished for the edification of the curious, whilst the very existence of a vast body of popular religious poetry is systematically ignored. ”

“ Searching after beauty, no longer under the stern school-mistress ‘tradition’, but led by that will-o’-the-wisp ‘literary instinct’, the poets and authors under the influence of the Renaissance gradually turned from the use of Latin and Greek to that more natural medium of expression, their own language. ”

“ XIII. The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, IV. 453. 256Roman poetry was more generally understood and more diligently studied in the most polished days of English literature, than the yet scarcely discovered stores of Greek learning. Want of originality was not considered a blemish in an age the taste of which, notwithstanding all its merits, was very artificial; whilst the exquisite polish and elegance which constitute the charm of Latin poetry, recommended it both for admiration and imitation. ”

“ In him, however, poetry is less an instinct than an art. His intellect, lofty, powerful, penetrating, ranged through the most untrodden paths of nature and philosophy, grasped at all learning, at all experience, enriched itself with prodigious stores of reflections, observations, imagery, over which it possessed the most perfect mastery, to render them subservient to the purposes of the drama. Other poets learned in effects, may exhibit action with no less truth and skill ”

“ The truth is, you cannot render any passage in a Greek or Latin poem religiously into English—preserving the precise form, attitude, expression and size—if you attempt the absurdity, you present to the eyes of your readers, not a living body, but a lifeless corpse. All, that can be done with works written among nations at so wide a remove from our own in age, character, customs, and religion, is to breathe the spirit and manner of the original into English as elegant, yet close and strong as possible. ”

“ Further, in the fervour and dignity of their moral feeling, the Roman poets are true exponents of the genius of Rome. Their spirit is more authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry. They speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom that has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful representation of the tragic situations in human life; Roman poetry appeals directly to the manlier instincts and more magnanimous impulses of our nature. ”

“ Such were among the great elegiac poets of Rome, generally devoted to the delineation of the passion of love. The older English poets resembled them in this respect, but none of them have soared to such lofty heights as the later ones, like Wordsworth and Tennyson. It is in lyric poetry that the moderns have chiefly excelled the ancients, in variety, in elevation of sentiment, and in imagination. The grandeur and originality of the ancients were displayed rather in epic and dramatic poetry. ”