The romantic school has generated others, for every thing founded in error is subject to fluctuation, and prone to work itself into different directions. It is restless and uneasy from a sense of being fixed on a sandy foundation. The term romantic, however, may be justly applied to every school of poetry at variance with the classical school, so far as romance may be considered at variance with truth and nature. Those who cannot attain to excellence by copying truth and nature, are obliged to have recourse to other means. The object of poets who are thus put to their shifts is, like unskilful painters, to produce effect by one means or other. Some copy the stanza of Spenser, thinking by so doing they must come in for some portion of his fame, without reflecting that Spenser owes no part of his fame to the stanza in which he wrote, and that he owes it entirely to the richness of his imagination, the splendour and variety of his imagery, the unaffected simplicity of his diction, and his close adherence to nature. These would have served to immortalize him, let him have chosen what stanza he would, but the fact is, that if he had chosen any other stanza, these creatures, who live by the breath of others, would have doffed this celebrated stanza, as they call it, and have preferred any other that had the sanction of his name. But it is not the stanza of Spenser alone that is devoured by these poetic gluttons: they live upon his very words. They know they have little chance of surprizing their readers by sublimity of conception, splendour of diction, or any other quality that constitutes true excellence; and therefore they hope to surprize them by obsolete words and antiquated phrases, to which those who are only acquainted with the English language, in its modern improved state, are utter strangers. Having now endeavoured to account for the nature of the revolution which has generated poetic schools, and having shewn that they do not arise from the improved taste of the age, the next question to be considered is, whether, admitting the phraseology and diction of Spenser to be as poetic as it is represent ed, it would be proper to adopt this phraseology and diction at present. I admit, then, in limine, that certain words are more poetic than other words, and that the poet should always prefer the former to the latter; but I deny that, however happy Spenser might have been in the selection of his words, such of them as have been since antiquated should appear in our modern poetry. In admitting that certain words are more poetic than others, it is necessary to ascertain why they are so, before any inference can be drawn from it in favour of Spenser's diction. There is only one circumstance, then, that can render any term more poetic than another; and that is, that it convey a more poetic idea. The poetic charm is not in the word, but in the idea, for the most musical word in the English language is not poetic if it convey not a poetic idea, while a word composed of the harshest combination of syllables is poetic if it present a poetic image to the mind. It is true, musical words have always the preference, when the ideas for which they stand are equally poetic; but without this condition, their melody has no charm to a poetic ear, however exquisite they may be to a mu sical one. In the change which the English language has undergone since the days of Spenser, a great number of the words then in use has since become obsolete; but can the admirers of Spenser's diction point out a single antiquated term for which we have not at present a substitute. The substitute then must be as poetic as the term which it has superseded, as it stands for the same idea, for the poetry of both depends on the ideas for which they stand. If any objection can be made to the substitute, it must be, that it is not as smooth and musical a term as that which it has displaced. This, however, is an objection which never can be made, because the only reason that can possibly be assigned for substituting one term for another is, the harsh and ungrateful sound of that which is exploded. It is obvious, then, that however happy Spenser is in the choice of poetic terms, they cannot be more poetic than those which we have substituted for them, nor yet more musical. There are three reasons, then, against their adoption in modern poetry ;the first is, that they have no advantage over the terms in common use, so far as regards their poetry; the second, that they are not so musical; the third, that their meaning is not so well known to the generality of readers, who are frequently obliged to consult their dictionary to discover it. This is a very important objection to the use of them, because the beauty of a passage is lost to him who cannot understand as fast as he reads. I admit that the terms borrowed from Spenser arrest the attention of common readers more than their modern substitutes; but this does not prove them more poetical: it merely proves what requires no proof, that we are less apt to attend to things with which we are long familiar than to those which are novel to us. A person, come from any of the country parts to London, is more apt to turn round and gaze at a Turkish or Persian habit than at the most elegant English dress; but does this prove the Turkish dress more beautiful than the English? Certainly not. With all our predeliction for novelty, we pass by a Turkish habit unregarded after becoming once habituated to it, while no length of time can prevent us from admiring an English dress when elegantly adapted to the human frame. It is so with the dialect of Spenser; it arrests attention because it is not known; but if it came once into common use, we should get as sick of it as our ancestors did. The poets, therefore, who make use of it, are those who, being destitute of novelty of idea, seek to make amends for their deficiency by novelty of words. It is obvious, then, that every school of poetry at variance with the classical, is founded on a perverted taste and an erroneous view of true excellence; and that instead of enlarging, as it affects to do, the career of genius, it completely enchains it. It places poetic beauty in certain styles, measures, turns of expression, &c. while the classical school, that school which is so falsely said to restrict the imagination of the poet, gives an unlimited sanction to all styles, measures, subjects, cadences, images, modes of treatment, shade, and colouring, &c. &c. provided that we copy nature in each, and despise the low artifice of producing effect by overcharging her, by covering her with gold and jewels, and placing her on a gorgeous throne, to create admiration at the sumptuosity and splendour of her appearance. This, however, is not describing nature, but a prostitute idol which we have placed in her stead. The classical school imposes no restrictions whatever on the poet but that of following nature, which is At once the source, and end, and test of art. But is nature confined to one style? does she delight only in one measure? can she sympathize only with one class of images? is she always in a romantic mood, incapable of feeling the heart-felt joys of domestic bliss, and domestic scenes? do not our own laurels and evergreens, our own native hills and oft-frequented bowers, the shades of our own oaks, the wanderings of our own rivulets, the echoes of our own vales, impart to a virtuous mind pleasures which it would not exchange for the uncertain raptures communicated by bowers and shades which exist only in imagination, and in the very contemplation of which the heart often -distrusting asks if this be joy. Nature is not so limited in her enjoyments. Pleasure flows to her from every point of the compass. She throws her own charms over every object, and has the art of turning bitterness into sweets. Even the painful emotions of tragic scenes become a source of her highest and divinest pleasures. The cadences which please her are innumerable, and the poet who adheres to nature will produce sweeter music from inharmonious sounds, than he who disguises her in gold and jewels can from the most harmonious and musical. "Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one The live-long night;" yet every warbler has cadences of his own, and each of these cadences is musical to man. Even the scream ing of the kite is music to his ear when his soul is in harmony with nature, but where this harmony is destroyed, the notes of the nightingale are more discordant than the cawing of the rook. The poet, therefore, who places nature before us, is always musical, because when his cadences are even inharmonious, he drowns their discord in charms of a higher and superior nature, for while we are alive to these charms, even discord is music to us. Thus it is that the kite, the owl, the jay, &c. are musical when the soul is enraptured with the music of other That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh, Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns, And only there, please highly for their sake." COWPER. The poet, then, who adheres to nature, is always musical, whatever be his cadences, but if his cadences be also musical, the poetic beauty is proportionably increased; while the poet who cannot copy nature, and pursue her through all her disguises, who gives us an ornamented counterfeit instead of the naked original, is always discordant, however musical his cadences may be, because our feelings are kept continually on the rack by one violation of nature or another. The classical school of poetry, then, is the only school which gives an unlimited range to the career of genius: it acknowledges every thing to be stamped with the impress of excellence which is a true copy of nature, and the only reason why it is supposed to be the most rigid of all the other schools, is simply because, with all the latitude it allows, it gives no latitude whatever for deviating from nature. Here, however, is the great difficulty. The disciples of the romantic school are well aware that it is easier to follow a thousand rules and a thou- "First follow nature, and your judg By her just standard, which is still the same. It will be contended, however, by the advocates of the romantic school, that the classical school exercises too scrupulous a severity in point of language, severity and purity of diction, &c. but it should be recollected, that she does so merely in obedience to that fundamental law on which all her principles of excellence rest-first follow nature; for it is evident that we cannot follow nature without the severest purity of diction. The shades of nature are endlessly diversified, and we can copy her faithfully only so far as we distinguish one shade from another, for if we confound them we represent things which are perfectly dif ferent as one and the same thing. Again, if we give a false portrait of nature, though we should even distinguish the shades, unless we exshade by a word appropress every priated to itself, for if we express different shades by the same word, we either confound or throw a veil over things which are different in their nature, so that they are made to appear either as one thing, or concealed altogether from our view; and in either case we give a false transcript of nature. To attempt to describe nature, therefore, without the greatest precision in the use of words, and even in their collocation, would be as unavailing as it would be to attempt producing various lights and shades by one die and one depth of colouring. Wherever the classical school, therefore, is more precise and observant of rule than the romantic, it will always be found, that it arises from that law of following nature to which all her other laws are subservient. To this rule she admits of no exception, and therefore it must be considered not as a general, but as a universal law to which she admits of no exception whatever. It appears, then, that the admirers of Spenser ought to be divided into two classes, those who admire him as a true copier of nature, and those who admire him only because he chiefly confined himself to romantic subjects, because he wrote in a certain stanza, and all the other arbitrary et ceteras which characterize the romantic school of poetry. The former of these classes admire Spenser because he is worthy of their admiration, and because he excelled in that species of poetry which he cultivated. Hence it is that no person admired Spenser more than Pope, though considered the model or founder of the classical school in England; but the defenders of the romantic school admire him because he has happened to fall in with their particular system, because he happened to write upon subjects to which they confine all excellence, and for many other reasons founded on their own crazy system of poetical pre-eminence. Their admiration, then, should not, evidently, be attributed to the improved taste of the present day, so far as this taste coincides with the romantic school, and it must therefore have arisen from the circumstances and causes which I have already described. I now leave the romantic school of poetry, to conclude my observations on the genius of Spenser. Having shewn that he failed in the pathetic, the first quality of excellence belonging to the subject of his "Faerie Queen," that he pre-eminently excelled in that species of invention without which he could not attain to excellence in a subject of a romantic nature, I now come to inquire how far he succeeded in that happy simplicity of description which pourtrays nature as it presents itself to our view, and how far he has avoided the glitter and ornament of unskilful painting. Of this little need be said. Spenser is simplicity itself, but his simplicity is not the affected simplicity of the modern school. He is simple, not because he wishes to appear so, for it would seem that he is totally unconscious of it, but because he endeavours to describe nature as he found it; not, it is true, in its ordinary appearances, but in its most picturesque moods. What can be more picturesque, and at the same time more simple and unaffectedly natural, than the following description of a hermitage? "A little lowly hermitage it was, Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side. Far from resort of people that did pass In traveill to and froe: a little wyde There was an holy chappell edifyde, Wherein the hermite dewly wont to say His holy things each morne and eventyde; Thereby a chrystall streame did gently play, Which from a sacred fountain welled forth away." It is a common expression to say "the wide canopy of heaven," but how much more sublime, and at the same time how much more simple is the expression of Spenser, "Nought is there under heaven's wide hollownesse." In his description of the gardens of Adonis are united that simplicity in the description of external nature, and that luxuriance and richness of imagination which is the very soul of descriptive poetry, and in which Spenser perhaps has never been excelled. M. M. D. |