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Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books written by Charles W. Eliot

C >> Charles W. Eliot >> Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books




Wonder is the natural product of Ignorance; and as the soil was _in
such good condition_ at the time of the publication of the _Seasons_
the crop was doubtless abundant. Neither individuals nor nations
become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment.
Thomson was an inspired poet, but he could not work miracles; in cases
where the art of seeing had in some degree been learned, the teacher
would further the proficiency of his pupils, but he could do
little _more_; though so far does vanity assist men in acts of
self-deception, that many would often fancy they recognized a likeness
when they knew nothing of the original. Having shown that much of what
his biographer deemed genuine admiration must in fact have been
blind wonderment--how is the rest to be accounted for?--Thomson was
fortunate in the very title of his poem, which seemed to bring it
home to the prepared sympathies of every one: in the next place,
notwithstanding his high powers, he writes a vicious style; and his
false ornaments are exactly of that kind which would be most likely
to strike the undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental
commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought
forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of
the _Seasons_ the book generally opens of itself with the rhapsody on
love, or with one of the stories (perhaps 'Damon and Musidora'); these
also are prominent in our collections of Extracts, and are the parts
of his Work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first
recommending the author to general notice. Pope, repaying praises
which he had received, and wishing to extol him to the highest, only
styles him 'an elegant and philosophical Poet'; nor are we able to
collect any unquestionable proofs that the true characteristics of
Thomson's genius as an imaginative poet[10] were perceived, till
the elder Warton, almost forty years after the publication of the
_Seasons_, pointed them out by a note in his Essay on the _Life and
Writings of Pope_. In the _Castle of Indolence_ (of which Gray
speaks so coldly) these characteristics were almost as conspicuously
displayed, and in verse more harmonious and diction more pure. Yet
that fine poem was neglected on its appearance, and is at this day the
delight only of a few!

When Thomson died, Collins breathed forth his regrets in an Elegiac
Poem, in which he pronounces a poetical curse upon _him_ who should
regard with insensibility the place where the Poet's remains were
deposited. The Poems of the mourner himself have now passed through
innumerable editions, and are universally known, but if, when Collins
died, the same kind of imprecation had been pronounced by a surviving
admirer, small is the number whom it would not have comprehended. The
notice which his poems attained during his lifetime was so small, and
of course the sale so insignificant, that not long before his death
he deemed it right to repay to the bookseller the sum which he had
advanced for them and threw the edition into the fire.

Next in importance to the _Seasons_ of Thomson, though a considerable
distance from that work in order of time, come the _Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry_, collected, new-modelled, and in many
instances (if such a contradiction in terms may be used) composed by
the Editor, Dr Percy. This work did not steal silently into the world,
as is evident from the number of legendary tales, that appeared not
long after its publication, and had been modelled, as the authors
persuaded themselves, after the old Ballad. The Compilation was,
however ill suited to the then existing taste of city society, and Dr
Johnson, 'mid the little senate to which he gave laws, was not
sparing in his exertions to make it an object of contempt. The critic
triumphed, the legendary imitators were deservedly disregarded, and
as undeservedly, their ill imitated models sank in this country into
temporary neglect, while Burger and other able writers of Germany,
were translating or imitating these Reliques, and composing, with the
aid of inspiration thence derived, poems which are the delight of the
German nation. Dr Percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his
labours from the ignorance and insensibility of the persons with whom
he lived, that, though while he was writing under a mask he had
not wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true
simplicity and genuine pathos (as is evinced by the exquisite ballad
of _Sir Cauline_ and by many other pieces), yet when he appeared in
his own person and character as a poetical writer, he adopted, as in
the tale of the _Hermit of Warkworth_, a diction scarcely in any
one of its features distinguishable from the vague, the glossy, and
unfeeling language of his day. I mention this remarkable fact[11]
with regret, esteeming the genius of Dr. Percy in this kind of writing
superior to that of any other man by whom in modern times it has been
cultivated. That even Burger (to whom Klopstock gave, in my hearing,
a commendation which he denied to Goethe and Schiller, pronouncing him
to be a genuine poet, and one of the few among the Germans whose works
would last) had not the fine sensibility of Percy, might be shown
from many passages, in which he has deserted his original only to go
astray. For example,

Now daye was gone, and night was come,
And all were fast asleepe,
All save the Lady Emeline,
Who sate in her bowre to weepe:

And soone she heard her true Love's voice
Low whispering at the walle,
Awake, awake, my dear Ladye,
'Tis I thy true love call

Which is thus tricked out and dilated;

Als nun die Nacht Gebirg' und Thal
Vermummt in Rabenschatten,
Und Hochburgs Lampen uberall
Schon ausgeflimmert hatten,
Und alles tief entschlafen war;
Doch nur das Fraulein immerdar,
Voll Fieberangst, noch wachte,
Und seinen Ritter dachte:
Da horch! Ein susser Liebeston
Kam leis, empor geflogen.
'Ho, Trudchen, ho! Da bin ich schon!
Frisch auf! Dich angezogen!'

But from humble ballads we must ascend to heroics.

All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian! The Phantom was
begotten by the snug embrace of an impudent Highlander upon a cloud
of tradition--it travelled southward, where it was greeted with
acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe,
upon the breath of popular applause. The Editor of the _Reliques_
had indirectly preferred a claim to the praise of invention, by not
concealing that his supplementary labours were considerable! how
selfish his conduct, contrasted with that of the disinterested Gael,
who, like Lear, gives his kingdom away, and is content to become
a pensioner upon his own issue for a beggarly pittance!--Open this
far-famed Book!--I have done so at random, and the beginning of the
_Epic Poem Temora_, in eight Books, presents itself. 'The blue waves
of Ullin roll in light. The green hills are covered with day. Trees
shake their dusky heads in the breeze. Grey torrents pour their noisy
streams. Two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain. The
blue course of a stream is there. On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha.
His spear supports the king; the red eyes of his fear are sad. Cormac
rises on his soul with all his ghastly wounds.' Precious memorandums
from the pocket-book of the blind Ossian!

If it be unbecoming, as I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to
speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of
time a widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing
irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon
this occasion.--Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a
mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood
that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of
Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was
spurious. In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into
absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly
the reverse; everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner
defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,--yet nothing distinct. It
will always be so when words are substituted for things. To say that
the characters never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and
that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as
there depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which
Macpherson defied; when, with the steeps of Morven before his eyes, he
could talk so familiarly of his Car-borne heroes;--of Morven, which,
if one may judge from its appearance at the distance of a few miles,
contains scarcely an acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a
sledge to be trailed along its surface.--Mr. Malcolm Laing has ably
shown that the diction of this pretended translation is a motley
assemblage from all quarters; but he is so fond of making out parallel
passages as to call poor Macpherson to account for his '_ands_' and
his '_buts_!' and he has weakened his argument by conducting it as
if he thought that every striking resemblance was a _conscious_
plagiarism. It is enough that the coincidences are too remarkable
for its being probable or possible that they could arise in different
minds without communication between them. Now as the Translators of
the Bible, and Shakespeare, Milton, and Pope, could not be indebted
to Macpherson, it follows that he must have owed his fine feathers to
them; unless we are prepared gravely to assert, with Madame de Stael,
that many of the characteristic beauties of our most celebrated
English Poets are derived from the ancient Fingallian; in which case
the modern translator would have been but giving back to Ossian his
own.--It is consistent that Lucien Buonaparte, who could censure
Milton for having surrounded Satan in the infernal regions with
courtly and regal splendour, should pronounce the modern Ossian to
be the glory of Scotland;--a country that has produced a Dunbar, a
Buchanan, a Thomson, and a Burns! These opinions are of ill omen for
the Epic ambition of him who has given them to the world.

Yet, much as those pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired,
they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the
Country. No succeeding writer appears to have caught from them a ray
of inspiration; no author, in the least distinguished, has ventured
formally to imitate them--except the boy, Chatterton, on their first
appearance. He had perceived, from the successful trials which he
himself had made in literary forgery, how few critics were able to
distinguish between a real ancient medal and a counterfeit of modern
manufacture; and he set himself to the work of filling a magazine with
_Saxon Poems_,--counterparts of those of Ossian, as like his as one
of his misty stars is to another. This incapability to amalgamate with
the literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof
that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other
to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.--Contrast,
in this respect, the effect of Macpherson's publication with the
_Reliques_ of Percy, so unassuming, so modest in their pretensions!--I
have already stated how much Germany is indebted to this latter work;
and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed
by it. I do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the
present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to
the _Reliques_; I know that it is so with my friends; and, for myself,
I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own.

Dr. Johnson, more fortunate in his contempt of the labours of
Macpherson than those of his modest friend, was solicited not long
after to furnish Prefaces biographical and critical for the works
of some of the most eminent English Poets. The booksellers took upon
themselves to make the collection; they referred probably to the most
popular miscellanies, and, unquestionably, to their books of accounts;
and decided upon the claim of authors to be admitted into a body of
the most eminent, from the familiarity of their names with the readers
of that day, and by the profits, which, from the sale of his works,
each had brought and was bringing to the Trade. The Editor was allowed
a limited exercise of discretion, and the Authors whom he recommended
are scarcely to be mentioned without a smile. We open the volume of
Prefatory Lives, and to our astonishment the _first_ name we find is
that of Cowley!--What Is become of the morning-star of English Poetry?
Where is the bright Elizabethan constellation? Or, if names be more
acceptable than images, where is the ever to-be-honoured Chaucer?
where is Spenser? where Sidney? and, lastly, where he, whose rights
as a poet, contra-distinguished from those which he is universally
allowed to possess as a dramatist, we have vindicated,--where
Shakespeare?--These, and a multitude of others not unworthy to be
placed near them, their contemporaries and successors, we have _not_.
But in their stead, we have (could better be expected when precedence
was to be settled by an abstract of reputation at any given period
made, as in this case before us?) Roscommon, and Stepney,
and Phillips, and Walsh, and Smith, and Duke, and King, and
Spratt--Halifax, Granville, Sheffield, Congreve, Broome, and other
reputed Magnates--metrical writers utterly worthless and useless,
except for occasions like the present, when their productions are
referred to as evidence what a small quantity of brain is necessary to
procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the aspirant will
accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his day.

As I do not mean to bring down this retrospect to our own times, it
may with propriety be closed at the era of this distinguished event.
From the literature of other ages and countries, proofs equally cogent
might have been adduced, that the opinions announced in the former
part of this Essay are founded upon truth. It was not an agreeable
office, nor a prudent undertaking, to declare them; but their
importance seemed to render it a duty. It may still be asked,
where lies the particular relation of what has been said to these
Volumes?--The question will be easily answered by the discerning
Reader who is old enough to remember the taste that prevailed when
some of these poems were first published, seventeen years ago; who has
also observed to what degree the poetry of this Island has since
that period been coloured by them; and who is further aware of the
unremitting hostility with which, upon some principle or other, they
have each and all been opposed. A sketch of my own notion of the
constitution of Fame has been given; and, as far as concerns myself,
I have cause to be satisfied. The love, the admiration, the
indifference, the slight, the aversion, and even the contempt, with
which these Poems have been received, knowing, as I do, the source
within my own mind, from which they have proceeded, and the labour
and pains, which, when labour and pains appeared needful, have been
bestowed upon them, must all, if I think consistently, be received as
pledges and tokens, bearing the same general impression, though widely
different in value;--they are all proofs that for the present time
I have not laboured in vain; and afford assurances, more or less
authentic, that the products of my industry will endure.

If there be one conclusion more forcibly pressed upon us than another
by the review which has been given of the fortunes and fate of
poetical Works, it is this--that every author, as far as he is great
and at the same time _original_, has had the task of _creating_
the taste by which he is to be enjoyed: so has it been, so will
it continue to be. This remark was long since made to me by the
philosophical Friend for the separation of whose poems from my own I
have previously expressed my regret. The predecessors of an original
Genius of a high order will have smoothed the way for all that he has
in common with them;--and much he will have in common; but, for what
is peculiarly his own, he will be called upon to clear and often to
shape his own road:--he will be in the condition of Hannibal among the
Alps.

And where lies the real difficulty of creating that taste by which a
truly original poet is to be relished? Is it in breaking the bonds
of custom, in overcoming the prejudices of false refinement, and
displacing the aversions of inexperience? Or, if he labour for an
object which here and elsewhere I have proposed to myself, does it
consist in divesting the reader of the pride that induces him to dwell
upon those points wherein men differ from each other, to the exclusion
of those in which all men are alike, or the same; and in making him
ashamed of the vanity that renders him insensible of the appropriate
excellence which civil arrangements, less unjust than might appear,
and Nature illimitable in her bounty, had conferred on men who may
stand below him in the scale of society? Finally, does it lie in
establishing that dominion over the spirits of readers by which they
are to be humbled and humanized, in order that they may be purified
and exalted?

If these ends are to be attained by the mere communication of
_knowledge_, it does _not_ lie here.--TASTE, I would remind the
reader, like IMAGINATION, is a word which has been forced to extend
its services far beyond the point to which philosophy would have
confined them. It is a metaphor, taken from a _passive_ sense of the
human body, and transferred to things which are in their essence
_not_ passive,--to intellectual _acts_ and _operations_. The word,
Imagination, has been overstrained, from impulses honourable to
mankind, to meet the demands of the faculty which is perhaps the
noblest of our nature. In the instance of Taste, the process has been
reversed; and from the prevalence of dispositions at once injurious
and discreditable, being no other than that selfishness which is the
child of apathy,--which, as Nations decline in productive and creative
power, makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of
judging. Poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we
make of the word, Imagination; but the word, Taste, has been
stretched to the sense which it bears in modern Europe by habits of
self-conceit, inducing that inversion in the order of things whereby a
passive faculty is made paramount among the faculties conversant with
the fine arts. Proportion and congruity, the requisite knowledge
being supposed, are subjects upon which taste may be trusted; it is
competent to this office--for in its intercourse with these the
mind is _passive_, and is affected painfully or pleasurably as by an
instinct. But the profound and the exquisite in feeling, the lofty and
universal in thought and imagination; or, in ordinary language, the
pathetic and the sublime;--are neither of them, accurately speaking,
objects of a faculty which could ever without a sinking in the spirit
of Nations have been designated by the metaphor _Taste_. And why?
Because without the exertion of a co-operating _power_ in the mind
of the reader, there can be no adequate sympathy with either of these
emotions: without this auxiliary impulse, elevated or profound passion
cannot exist.

Passion, it must be observed, is derived from a word which signifies
_suffering_; but the connexion which suffering has with effort, with
exertion, and _action_, is immediate and inseparable. How strikingly
is this property of human nature exhibited by the fact that, in
popular language, to be in a passion is to be angry! But,

Anger in hasty _words_ or _blows_
Itself discharges on its foes.

To be moved, then, by a passion is to be excited, often to external,
and always to internal, effort; whether for the continuance and
strengthening of the passion, or for its suppression, accordingly
as the course which it takes may be painful or pleasurable. If the
latter, the soul must contribute to its support, or it never becomes
vivid,--and soon languishes and dies. And this brings us to the point.
If every great poet with whose writings men are familiar, in the
highest exercise of his genius, before he can be thoroughly enjoyed,
has to call forth and to communicate _power_, this service, in a still
greater degree, falls upon an original writer, at his first appearance
in the world.--Of genius the only proof is, the act of doing well what
is worthy to be done, and what was never done before: Of genius, in
the fine arts, the only infallible sign is the widening the sphere
of human sensibility, for the delight, honour, and benefit of
human nature. Genius is the introduction of a new element into
the intellectual universe: or, if that be not allowed, it is the
application of powers to objects on which they had not before been
exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce
effects hitherto unknown. What is all this but an advance, or a
conquest, made by the soul of the poet? Is it to be supposed that
the reader can make progress of this kind, like an Indian prince or
general--stretched on his palanquin, and borne by his slaves? No;
he is invigorated and inspirited by his leader, in order that he
may exert himself; for he cannot proceed in quiescence, he cannot be
carried like a dead weight. Therefore to create taste is to call forth
and bestow power, of which knowledge is the effect; and _there_ lies
the true difficulty.

As the pathetic participates of an _animal_ sensation, it might
seem--that, if the springs of this emotion were genuine, all men,
possessed of competent knowledge of the facts and circumstances, would
be instantaneously affected. And, doubtless, in the works of every
true poet will be found passages of that species of excellence which
is proved by effects immediate and universal. But there are emotions
of the pathetic that are simple and direct, and others--that are
complex and revolutionary; some--to which the heart yields with
gentleness; others--against which it struggles with pride; these
varieties are infinite as the combinations of circumstance and the
constitutions of character. Remember, also, that the medium through
which, in poetry, the heart is to be affected, is language; a thing
subject to endless fluctuations and arbitrary associations. The genius
of the poet melts these down for his purpose; but they retain their
shape and quality to him who is not capable of exerting, within his
own mind, a corresponding energy. There is also a meditative, as well
as a human, pathos; an enthusiastic, as well as an ordinary, sorrow;
a sadness that has its seat in the depths of reason, to which the mind
cannot sink gently of itself--but to which it must descend by treading
the steps of thought. And for the sublime,--if we consider what are
the cares that occupy the passing day, and how remote is the practice
and the course of life from the sources of sublimity, in the soul of
Man, can it be wondered that there is little existing preparation
for a poet charged with a new mission to extend its kingdom, and to
augment and spread its enjoyments?

Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word _popular_,
applied to new works in poetry, as if there were no test of excellence
in this first of the fine arts but that all men should run after
its productions, as if urged by an appetite, or constrained by a
spell!--The qualities of writing best fitted for eager reception are
either such as startle the world into attention by their audacity and
extravagance; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind, lying upon
the surfaces of manners; or arising out of a selection and arrangement
of incidents, by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of curiosity,
and the fancy amused without the trouble of thought. But In everything
which is to send the soul into herself, to be admonished of her
weakness, or to be made conscious of her power;--wherever life and
nature are described as operated upon by the creative or abstracting
virtue of the imagination; wherever the instinctive wisdom of
antiquity and her heroic passions uniting, in the heart of the poet,
with the meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced that accord of
sublimated humanity which is at once a history of the remote past and
a prophetic enunciation of the remotest future, _there_, the poet must
reconcile himself for a season to few and scattered hearers.--Grand
thoughts (and Shakespeare must often have sighed over this truth), as
they are most naturally and most fitly conceived in solitude, so
can they not be brought forth in the midst of plaudits without
some violation of their sanctity. Go to a silent exhibition of the
productions of the sister Art, and be convinced that the qualities
which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the
multitude, are essentially different from those by which permanent
influence is secured. Let us not shrink from following up these
principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with
observing--that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will
be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited
more zealous admiration, and been far more generally read, than good;
but this advantage attends the good, that the _individual_, as well
as the species, survives from age to age; whereas, of the depraved,
though the species be immortal, the individual quickly _perishes_; the
object of present admiration vanishes, being supplanted by some other
as easily produced; which, though no better, brings with it at least
the irritation of novelty,--with adaptation, more or less skilful, to
the changing humours of the majority of those who are most at leisure
to regard poetical works when they first solicit their attention.