Court poet

“ The word ‘Court’ and its derivations are frequently used by medieval and early modern writers with a special reference to poetry. The courts of kings and great nobles were naturally associated with the ideas of polite education; those men ‘that has used court and dwelled therein can Frankis and Latin’, says Richard Rolle of Hampole in the fourteenth century; the ‘courtly maker’ is an Elizabethan name for the accomplished poet, and similar terms are used in other languages to express the same meaning. This ‘courtly’ ideal was not properly realized in England till the time of Chaucer and Gower ”

“ The poet is not to affect too much the language of the court, since it is often very bad, being the language of ladies and of young gentlemen who make a profession of fighting well rather than of-231- speaking well. ”

“ The progress of epigraphic research during the last quarter of a century has begun to shed considerable light on the history of court poetry during the dark age embracing the first five centuries of our era. ”

“ It is, therefore, betraying very narrow ideas on tragic art, or rather on poetry in general, to drag the tragic poet before the tribunal of history, and to require instruction of the man who by his very title is only bound to move and charm you. Even supposing the poet, by a scrupulous submission to historic truth, had stripped himself of his privilege of artist, and that he had tacitly acknowledged in history a jurisdiction over his work, art retains all her rights to summon him before its bar ”

“ We have obeyed the law, yes, and I will come to your court and swear—I will swear falsely, Judge, to all you ask. I must, mustn’t I? I can’t go on this way loving a man who doesn’t love me. And I can’t keep two lovers apart, can I? When love is so beautiful, so right, so good. Don’t I know? And it must be pure.
“So I will do my duty, just as my lawyer does his, and as you do yours. Oh, I know; I know how conscientious you all are, and especially you, Judge. My lawyer has told me, again and again, that you know it’s all perjury. ”

“ Wit and literature were on the side of the court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think his due, from “evil tongues” in “evil days,” was that reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired.
The sale, if it be considered, will justify the public. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. ”

“ Stones of Stennis and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy; and so the little jury-court probabilities have been sacrificed without scruple, and that higher truth of character, and that exquisite portraiture of external nature, which give such reality to fiction, and make it sink into the mind more deeply than historic fact, have been substituted instead. But such,—considerably to the annoyance of the lesser critics,—has been ever the practice of the greater poets. The lesser critics are all critics of the jury-court cast ”

“ There are many reasons why this should be the case; the courts of law are free, and a sight that can be seen for nothing is of itself attractive, since we are, at all events, not losing our time and money too. Again, the most popular drama, the most popular novel, are those to which the dénouements can not easily be guessed; and in the court-house we see drama and novel realized with the verdict of the jury and the sentence of the judge—a matter of anxious speculation to the very last. ”

“ This is the evil and the loss that I have got
from the cowardice and covetousness that I showed there.
This is the token of untruth that I am taken in,
and I must needs wear it while I may last;
for none may hide his shame without mishap,
for where it once is incurred, depart it will never."
The king and all the court comfort the knight.
They laugh loud at his tale, and lovingly agree
that the lords and the ladies that belong to the Table,
each knight of the brotherhood, should have a baldric,
an oblique band about him of a bright green,
and wear that for the sake of the hero. ”

“ However, should literary imposture be rendered cognisable to a criminal court of judicature, I fear many of our commentators would tremble for their own necks, and particularly if the law, as no doubt it would, should have regard to the offence of distorting the meaning of an author, or imposing on the world the fanciful suppositions of the commentator for the original language of the writer. ”

“ That's what it's made for, but to [Pg 194] judge a Whistler or the ability or the immorality of an artist is to ask the court to do what it is wholly unfit to do. There is not a judge on the bench whose opinion on such a matter is worth a moment's consideration, and the jury are a thousand years behind the judge. ”

“ Poetry inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an abject reverence for the Court, gave additional effect to the licentious example of the Court. We look in vain for those qualities which lend a charm to the errors of high and ardent natures, for the generosity, the tenderness, the chivalrous delicacy, which ennoble appetites into passions, and impart to vice itself a portion of the majesty of virtue. ”

“ But the notice is itself a mere fiction.p The United States had no persona standi in that Court; and if they had, it would have been impossible to assert it, as the libel, condemnation, sale, and arrival of the prize in this country, were nearly cotemporaneous. It is the nature of fictions to work justice, not palpable injustice: this Court, therefore, will not suffer itself to be ousted of its rights by a forced application of such a fiction. ”

“ Yet no readily ascertainable general principle exists for stopping short of that result were we to affirm the judgment below. For, while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric. ”

“ Not one of us criminalists has ever seen a form{306} as described in a poem—least of all a woman. Obviously, in our serious and dry work, we may be able to interpret many an observation and assertion of the poet as a golden truth, but only when we have tested its correctness for the daily life. ”

“ You, in fact, never cease from abusing and inveighing against poets, and I, whom you reproach with neglect of my professional duties, every day undertake to plead against you in defence of poetry. So I am all the more delighted at the presence of a judge who will either forbid me for the future to write verses, or who will compel me by his additional authority to do what I have long desired, to give up the petty subleties of legal causes, at which I have toiled enough, and more than enough, and to cultivate a more sacred and more stately eloquence. ”

“ As affairs now stand, any one who chances to possess a pen, a windsor tie and a wide-awake hat can pass himself off for a poet and can claim indulgence for his bad verse, bad manners and bad morals upon the plea of poetic temperament. Therefore, to insure the public against such imposture, I suggest that every poet be compelled, like every chauffeur, to wear his license in a conspicuous place, and that if he fail to comply with this requirement, he be immediately impounded. ”

“ As to the first, you have somewhere said, in one of your letters, that the final judgment on your merits as a poet is in the hands of posterity, and that you fear the verdict will be “Guilty,” and the sentence “Death.” Such apprehensions cannot have been fixed or frequent in the mind of one whose genius burned always with a clearer and steadier flame to the last. The jury of which you spoke has met: a mixed jury and a merciful. The verdict is “Well done,” and the sentence Immortality of Fame. There have been, there are, dissenters ”

“ In other words, a large proportion of the pleasure we derive from poetry is in the recognition of law. The more obvious and formulated is the law,—nay, the more arbitrary and Draconian,—the more pleasure it gives to the uncultivated ear. This is why uneducated people may delight in rhyme, and yet have no ear at all for blank verse; this is why the savage, who has not even an ear for rhyme, takes pleasure in such unmistakable rhythm as that of his tom-tom. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the beautiful descriptions of wild nature were in the French poem; and very likely the arming of the hero and the hunting were less elaborated there. It seems probable, too, that our author has changed the motivation and ending of the story; for in his original it would be natural to suppose from the analogues that the Green Knight enticed Gawain to his castle in order that this greatest of heroes might rid him of his strange hue and giant form, and that, after Gawain had succeeded, the disenchanted knight accompanied him to Arthur's Court. ”

“ The learned Judge addressing the Prisoner, said.—You have been found guilty by a most fair and impartial jury of the very serious offence of having written an exceedingly poor play. Several of the witnesses have testified to certain literary merits which are to be found in your work, but sitting here as your judge, it is my duty to tell you that literary merit is only one of many elements—and by no means an indispensable one—that go to make a successful stage-play. ”

“ I was alluding to my two callings, of man of the law and poet. Please to tell me, has a lawyer more similitude to a raven, than a poet to a whale? How many a one doth a single lawyer divest of his flesh, to swell out his own craw; and with what indifference does he extract the blood, and leave a man half alive! And as for the poet, where is the fish which is able to swallow like him? ”

“ The clamping of the inevitable strait-jacket, rhymed verse, upon the shrinking form of poetry has been the pastime of centuries. Those who would free poetry from the outworn metal bands and let her stretch her cramped limbs are labeled decadent, slothful, and futile. How easy it is to paste disagreeable labels upon the things one happens to dislike.
I admit that poetry freed from the bonds she has so long worn may become vulgar and over-demonstrative. A convict who has just been released from a penitentiary is perhaps inclined to caper down the road, and split the air with good red shouts. ”

“ It begins to grow interesting and I believe it will bear watching. Make me, then, as your lawyer, the custodian of all pertinent and impertinent papers. They can go into the locker where I keep your immortal but impecunious Will. Some day I might have to appear in court, I with my shovel and five senses and no imagination, to plead une cause célèbre (a little more of my scant intimate French) .
The explanation I give of this gratuitously insulting letter is that at last you have run into a hostile human imagination in the person of an old literary polecat, an aged book-skunk. ”

“ Take those who are worn out by the distressing detail of the legal profession, for example: they often seek sanctuary in the tranquillity of poetry, as a more sheltered haven, believing themselves able more easily to compose a poem than a rebuttal charged with scintillating epigrams! But a more highly cultivated mind loves not this conceited affectation, nor can it either conceive or bring forth, unless it has been steeped in the vast flood of literature. Every word that is what I would call ‘low,’ ought to be avoided, and phrases far removed from plebeian usage should be chosen. ”

“ All this company of the court came nearer to the king,
to counsel the knight, with care at their hearts.
There was much deep grief felt in the hall
that so worthy a one as Gawain should go on that errand,
to endure a sorry dint and deal none himself with
his brand.
⁠But the knight ever made good cheer,
⁠and said, "Why should I swerve
⁠from stern and strange destiny?
⁠What can a man do but try?"
He lingered there all that day, and on the morn made ready.⁠ [ original ]
Early he asked for his arms, and they were all brought. ”

“ To the critical student of the philosophy and history of poetic invention it is not uninstructive to observe how completely the novelist has appropriated and brought within the compass of one fiction, in defiance of all those lower probabilities which the lawyer who pleaded before a jury court would be compelled to respect, almost every interesting scene and object in both the Shetland and Orkney islands. ”

“ For it is not till Art has told the unthinking that nothing (rightly treated) is too low for its breath to vivify and its wings to raise, that the Herd awaken from their chronic lethargy of contempt, and the Lawgiver is compelled to redress what the Poet has lifted into esteem. ”

“ But 'tis an evil counsel, for justice must consist
In showing deeds of mercy, in knowledge of the truth,
And executing judgment it executes with ruth.
Pedro Lopez de Ayala.
THE POET AND THE ADVOCATE
Glory and gain thus mixed distract the thought,
We owe to honour all, to fortune nought;
The poet, like the soldier, scorns for pay
Peruvian gold, but seeks the wreath of bay. [95]
How is the advocate the poet's peer?
The poet's glory is complete and clear;
He far outlives the advocate's renown,
Patru is e'en by Scarron's name weighed down. ”

“ Terms of art, in the absence of parol testimony, must be understood in their primary sense, unless the context evidently shows that they were used in the particular case in some other and peculiar sense, in which case the testimony of persons skilled in the art or science may be admitted to aid the court in ascertaining the true intent and meaning of that part of the instrument, but the words of the instrument which have reference to the usual transactions of life must be interpreted according to their plain, ordinary, and popular meaning ”