Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

SEWARD

Simply, I venture to say, sir, to the most interior autobiography – to that confidence of audible words, which flows when the face of a friend sharpens the heart of a man – and Raphael was Adam's Friend.

NORTH

Seward, you are right. You speak well – as you always do – when you choose. Behold, then, I beseech you, the comprehending power of that little magical band —Our Accentual Iambic Pentameter.

SEWARD"Glory be with them, and eternal praise,The Poets who on earth have made us heirsOf Truth and pure Delight by heavenly lays!"NORTH

Glory to Verse, for its power is great. Man, from the garden in Eden, to the purifying by fire of the redeemed Earth – the creation of things Visible – Angels Upright and Fallen – and Higher than Angels – all the Regions of Space – Infinitude and Eternity – the Universality of Being – this is the copious matter of the Song. And herein there is place found, proper, distinct, and large, and prominent, for that whispered call to visit, in the freshness of morning, the dropping Myrrh – to study the opening beauty of the Flowers – to watch the Bee in her sweet labour – which tenderly dissipates from the lids of Eve her ominously-troubled sleep – free room for two tears, which, falling from a woman's eyes, are wiped with her hair – and for two more, which her pitying husband kisses away ere they fall. All these things Verse disposes, and composes, in One Presentment.

BULLER

Glory to Verse, for its power is great – glory to our Accentual Iambic Pentameter.

NORTH

Let us return to the Iliad. The Iliad is a history told by a mind that is arbiter, to a certain extent only, of its own facts. For Homer takes his decennial War and its Heroes, nay, the tenor of the story too, from long-descended Tradition. To his contemporary countrymen he appears as a Historian – not feigning, but commemorating and glorifying, transmitted facts.

SEWARD

Ottfried Müller, asking how far Homer is tied up in his Traditions, ventures to suspect that the names of the Heroes whom Achilles kills, in such or such a fight, are all traditionary.

NORTH

Where, then, is the Feigned History? Lord Bacon, Ottfried Müller, and Jacob Bryant, are here not in the main unagreed. "I nothing doubt," says Bacon, "but the Fables, which Homer having received, transmits, had originally a profound and excellent sense, although I greatly doubt if Homer any longer knew that sense."

BULLER

What right, may I ask, had Lord Bacon to doubt, and Ottfried Müller to suspect —

NORTH

Smoke your cigar. Ottfried Müller —

BULLER

Whew! – poo!

NORTH

Ottfried Müller imagines that there was in Greece a pre-Homeric Age, of which the principal intellectual employment was Myth-making. And Bryant, we know, shocked the opinion of his own day by referring the War of Troy to Mythology. Now, observe, Buller, how there is feigning and feigning – Poet after Poet – and the Poem that comes to us at last is the Poem of Homer; but in truth, of successive ages, ending in Homer —

SEWARD

Who was then a real living flesh and blood Individual of the human species.

NORTH

That he was —

SEWARD

And wrote the Iliad.

NORTH

That he did – but how I have hinted rather than told. In the Paradise Lost, the part of Milton is, then, infinitely bolder than Homer's in the Iliad. He is far more of a Creator.

SEWARD

Can an innermost bond of Unity, sir, be shown for the Iliad?

NORTH

Yes. The Iliad is a Tale of a Wrong Righted. Zeus, upon the secret top of Olympus, decrees this Righting with his omnipotent Nod. Upon the top of Ida he conducts it. But that is done, and the Fates resume their tenor. Hector falls, and Troy shall fall. That is again the Righting of a Wrong, done amongst men. This is the broadly-written admonition: "Discite Justitiam."

SEWARD

You are always great, sir, on Homer.

NORTH

Agamemnon, in insolence of self-will, offends Chryses and a God. He refused Chyseis – He robs Achilles. In Agamemnon the Insolence of Human Self-will is humbled, first under the hand of Apollo – then of Jupiter – say, altogether, of Heaven. He suffers and submits. And now Achilles, who has no less interest in the Courts of Heaven than Chryses – indeed higher – in overweening anger fashions out a redress for himself which the Father of Gods and Men grants. And what follows? Agamemnon again suffers and submits. For Achilles – Patroclus' bloody corse! Κειται Πατροκλος – that is the voice that rings! Now he accepts the proffered reconciliation of Agamemnon, before scornfully refused; and in the son of Thetis, too, the Insolence of Human Self-will is chastened under the hand of Heaven.

SEWARD

He suffers, but submits not till Hector lies transfixed – till Twelve noble youths of the Trojans and their Allies have bled on Patroclus' Pyre. And does he submit then? No. For twelve days ever and anon he drags the insensible corse at his horses' heels round that sepulchral earth.

BULLER

Mad, if ever a man was.

NORTH

The Gods murmur – and will that the unseemly Revenge cease. Jove sends Thetis to him – and what meeter messenger for minister of mercy than a mother to her son! God-bidden by that voice, he submits – he remits his Revenge. The Human Will, infuriated, bows under the Heavenly.

SEWARD

Touched by the prayers and the sight of that kneeling gray-haired Father, he has given him back his dead son – and from the ransom a costly pall of honour, to hide the dead son from the father's eyes – and of his own Will and Power Twelve Days' truce; and the days have expired, and the Funeral is performed – and the pyre is burned out – and the mound over the slayer of Patroclus is heaped – and the Iliad is done – and this Moral indelibly writes itself on the heart – the words of Apollo in that Council —

Τλητον γας Θυμον Μοισαι Θνητωσιε εδωχαν

The Fates have appointed to mortals a Spirit that shall submit and endure.

NORTH

Right and good. Τλητον is more than "shall suffer." It is, that shall accept suffering – that shall bear.

SEWARD

Compare this one Verse and the Twenty-four Books, and you have the poetical simplicity and the poetical multiplicity side by side.

BULLER

Right and good.

NORTH

Yes, my friends, the Teaching of the Iliad is Piety to the Gods —

SEWARD

Reverence for the Rights of Men —

NORTH

A Will humbled, conformed to the Will of Heaven —

BULLER

That the Earth is justly governed.

NORTH

Dim foreshadowings, which Milton, I doubt not, discerned and cherished. The Iliad was the natural and spiritual father of the Paradise Lost —

SEWARD

And the son is greater than the sire.

NORTH

I see in the Iliad the love of Homer to Greece and to humankind. He was a legislator to Greece before Solon and Lycurgus – greater than either – after the manner fabled of Orpheus.

SEWARD

Sprung from the bosom of heroic life, the Iliad asked heroic listeners.

NORTH

See with what large-hearted love he draws the Men – Hector, and Priam, and Sarpedon – as well as the Woman Andromache – enemies! Can he so paint humanity and not humanise? He humanises us– who have literature and refined Greece and Rome – who have Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton – who are Christendom.

SEWARD

He loves the inferior creatures, and the face of nature.

NORTH

The Iliad has been called a Song of War. I see in it – a Song of Peace. Think of all the fiery Iliad ending in – Reconciled Submission!

SEWARD

"Murder Impossibility," and believe that there might have been an Iliad or a Paradise Lost in Prose.

NORTH

It could never have been, by human power, our Paradise Lost. What would have become of the Seventh Book? This is now occupied with describing the Six Days of Creation. A few verses of the First Chapter of Genesis extended into so many hundred lines. The Book, as it stands, has full poetical reason. First, it has a sufficient motive. It founds the existence of Adam and Eve, which is otherwise not duly led to. The revolted Angels, you know, have fallen, and the Almighty will create a new race of worshippers to supply their place – Mankind.

SEWARD

For this race that is to be created, a Home is previously to be built – or this World is to be created.

NORTH

I initiated you into Milton nearly thirty years ago, my dear Seward; and I rejoice to find that you still have him by heart. Between the Fall of the Angels, and that inhabiting of Paradise by our first parents, which is largely related by Raphael, there would be in the history which the poem undertakes, an unfilled gap and blank without this book. The chain of events which is unrolled would be broken – interrupted – incomplete.

SEWARD

And, sir, when Raphael has told the Rebellion and Fall of the Angels, Adam, with a natural movement of curiosity, asks of this "Divine Interpreter" how this frame of things began?

NORTH

And Raphael answers by declaring at large the Purpose and the Manner. The Mission of Raphael is to strengthen, if it be practicable, the Human Pair in their obedience. To this end, how apt his discourse, showing how dear they are to the Universal Maker, how eminent in his Universe!

SEWARD

The causes, then, of the Archangelic Narrative abound. And the personal interest with which the Two Auditors must hear such a revelation of wonders from such a Speaker, and that so intimately concerns themselves, falls nothing short of what Poetry justly requires in relations put into the mouth of the poetical Persons.

NORTH

And can the interest – not now of Raphael's, but of Milton's "fit audience" – be sustained throughout? The answer is triumphant. The Book is, from beginning to end, a stream of the most beautiful descriptive Poetry that exists. Not however, mind you, Seward, of stationary description.

SEWARD

Sir?

NORTH

A proceeding work is described; and the Book is replete and alive with motion – with progress – with action – yes, of action – of an order unusual indeed to the Epos, but unexcelled in dignity – the Creative Action of Deity!

SEWARD

What should hinder, then, but that this same Seventh Book should have been written in Prose?

NORTH

Why this only – that without Verse it could not have been read! The Verse makes present. You listen with Adam and Eve, and you hear the Archangel. In Prose this illusion could not have been carried through such a subject-matter. The conditio sine quâ non of the Book was the ineffable charm of the Description. But what would a series of botanical and zoological descriptions, for instance, have been, in Prose? The vivida vis that is in Verse is the quickening spirit of the whole.

BULLER

But who doubts it?

NORTH

Lord Bacon said that Poetry – that is, Feigned History – might be worded in Prose. And it may be; but how inadequately is known to Us Three.

BULLER

And to all the world.

NORTH

No – nor, to the million who do know it, so well as to Us, nor the reason why. But hear me a moment longer. Wordsworth, in his famous Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, asserts that the language of Prose and the language of Verse differ but in this – that in verse there is metre – and metre he calls an adjunct. With all reverence, I say that metre is not an adjunct – but vitality and essence; and that verse, in virtue thereof, so transfigures language, that it ceases to be the language of prose as spoken, out of verse, by any of the children of men.

SEWARD

Remove the metre, and the language will not be the language of prose?

NORTH

Not – if you remove the metre only – and leave otherwise the order of the words – the collocation unchanged – and unchanged any one of the two hundred figures of speech, one and all of which are differently presented in the language of Verse from what they are in Prose.

SEWARD

It must be so.

NORTH

The fountain of Law to Composition in Prose is the Understanding. The fountain of Law to Composition in Verse is the Will.

SEWARD

?

NORTH

A discourse in prose resembles a chain. The sentences are the successive links – all holding to one another – and holding one another. All is bound.

SEWARD

Well?

NORTH

A discourse in verse resembles a billowy sea. The verses are the waves that rise and fall – to our apprehension – each by impulse, life, will of its own. All is free.

SEWARD

Ay. Now your meaning emerges.

NORTH

E profundis clamavi. In eloquent prose, the feeling fits itself into the process of the thinking. In true verse, the thinking fits itself into the process of the feeling.

SEWARD

I perpend.

NORTH

In prose, the general distribution and composition of the matter belong to the reign of Necessity. The order of the parts, and the connexion of part with part, are obliged – logically justifiable – say, then, are demonstrable. See an Oration of Demosthenes. In verse, that distribution and composition belong to the reign of Liberty. That order and connexion are arbitrary – passionately justifiable – say, then, are delectable. See an Ode of Pindar.

SEWARD

Publish – publish.

NORTH

In prose the style is last – in verse first; in prose the sense controls the sound – in verse the sound the sense; in prose you speak – in verse you sing; in prose you live in the abstract – in verse in the concrete; in prose you present notions – in verse visions; in prose you expound – in verse you enchant; in prose it is much if now and then you are held in the sphere of the fascinated senses – in verse if of the calm understanding.

BULLER

Will you have the goodness, sir, to say all that over again?

NORTH

I have forgot it. The lines in the countenance of Prose are austere. The look is shy, reserved, governed – like the fixed steady lineaments of mountains. The hues that suffuse the face of her sister Verse vary faster than those with which the western or the eastern sky momently reports the progress of the sinking, of the fallen, but not yet lost, of the coming or of the risen sun.

BULLER

I have jotted that down, sir.

NORTH

And I hope you will come to understand it. Candidly speaking, 'tis more than I do.

SEWARD

I do perfectly – and it is as true as beautiful, sir.

BULLER

Equally so.

NORTH

I venerate Wordsworth. Wordsworth's poetry stands distinct in the world. That which to other men is an occasional pleasure, or possibly delight, and to other poets an occasional transport, THE SEEING THIS VISIBLE UNIVERSE, is to him – a Life – one Individual Human Life – namely, his Own – travelling its whole Journey from the Cradle to the Grave. And that Life – for what else could he do with it? – he has versified – sung. And there is no other such Song. It is a Memorable Fact of our Civilisation – a Memorable Fact in the History of Human Kind – that one perpetual song. Perpetual but infinitely various – as a river of a thousand miles, traversing, from its birthplace in the mountains, diverse regions, wild and inhabited, to the ocean-receptacle.

BULLER

Confoundedly prosaic at times.

NORTH

He, more than any other true poet, approaches Verse to Prose – never, I believe, or hardly ever, quite blends them.

BULLER

Often – often – often, my dear sir.

NORTH

Seldom – seldom – seldom if ever, my dear sir. He tells his Life. His Poems are, of necessity, an Autobiography. The matter of them, then, is his personal reality; but Prose is, all over and properly, the language of Personal Realities. Even with him, however, so peculiarly conditioned, and, as well as I am able to understand his Proposition, against his own Theory of writing, Verse maintains, as by the laws of our insuppressible nature it always will maintain, its sacred Right and indefeasible Prerogative.

To conclude our conversation —

BULLER

Or Monologue.

NORTH

Epos is Human History in its magnitude in Verse. In Prose, National History offers itself in parallelism. The coincidence is broad and unquestioned; but on closer inspection, differences great and innumerable spring up and unfold themselves, until at last you might almost persuade yourself that the first striking resemblance deceived you, and that the two species lack analogy, so many other kinds does the Species in Verse embosom, and so escaping are the lines of agreement in the instant in which you attempt fixing them.

BULLER

Would that Lord Bacon were here!

NORTH

And thus we are led to a deeper truth. The Metrical Epos imitates History, without doubt, as Lord Bacon says – it borrows thence its mould, not rigorously, but with exceeding bold and free adaptations, as the Iliad unfolds the Ten Years' War in Seven Weeks. But for the Poet, more than another, ALL IS IN ALL.

SEWARD

Sir?

NORTH

What is the Paradise Lost, ultimately considered?

BULLER

Oh!

NORTH

It is, my friends, the arguing in verse of a question in Natural Theology. Whence are Wrong and Pain? Moral and Physical Evil, as we call them, in all their overwhelming extent of complexity sprung? How permitted in the Kingdom of an All-wise and Almighty Love? To this question, concerning the origin of Evil, Milton answers as a Christian Theologian, agreeably to his own understanding of his Religion, – so justifying the Universal Government of God, and, in particular, his Government of Man. The Poem is, therefore, Theological, Argumentative, Didactic, in Epic Form. Being in the constitution of his soul a Poet, mightiest of the mighty, the intention is hidden in the Form. The Verse has transformed the matter. Now, then, the Paradise Lost is not a history told for itself. But this One Truth, in two answering Propositions, that the Will of Man spontaneously consorting with God's Will is Man's Good, spontaneously dissenting, Man's Evil. This is created into an awful and solemn narrative of a Matter exactly adapted, and long since authoritatively told. But this Truth, springing up in the shape of narrative, will now take its own determination into Events of unsurpassed magnitude, now of the tenderest individuality and minuteness; and all is, hence, in keeping – as one power of life springs up on one spot, in oak-tree, moss, and violet, and the difference of stature, thus understood, gives a deep harmony, so deep and embracing, that none without injury to the whole could be taken away.

BULLER

What's all this! Hang that Drone – confound that Chanter. Burst, thou most unseasonable of Bagpipes! Silence that dreadful Drum. Draw in your Horns —

SEWARD

Musquetry! cannon! huzzas! The enemy are storming the Camp. The Delhis bear down on the Pavilion. The Life is in danger. Let us save the King.

NORTH

See to it, gentlemen. I await the issue in my Swing-chair. Let the Barbarians but look on me and their weapons will drop.

BULLER

All's right. A false alarm.

NORTH

There was no alarm.

BULLER

'Twas but a Salute. The Boys have come back from Kilchurn. They are standing in front beside the spoil.

NORTH

Widen the Portal. Artistically disposed! The Whole like one huge Star-fish. Salmo ferox, centre – Pike, radii – Yellow-fins, circumference – Weight I should say the tenth of a ton. Call the Manciple. Manciple, you are responsible for the preservation of that Star-fish.

BULLER

Sir, you forget yourself. The People must be fed. We are Seven. Twelve are on the Troop Roll – Nine Strangers have sent in their cards – the Gillies are growing upon us – the Camp-followers have doubled the population since morn, and the circumambient Natives are waxing strong. Hunger is in the Camp – but for this supply, Famine; Iliacos intra muros PECCATUR et extra; Dods reports that the Boiler is wroth, the Furnace at a red heat, Pots and Pans a-simmer – the Culinary Spirit impatient to be at work. In such circumstances, the tenth of a ton is no great matter; but it is better than nothing. The mind of the Manciple may lie at rest, for that Star-fish will never see to-morrow's Sun; and motionless as he looks, he is hastening to the Shades.

NORTH

Sir, you forget yourself. There is other animal matter in the world besides Fish. No penury of it in camp. I have here the Manciple's report. "One dozen plucked Earochs – one ditto ditto Ducklings – d. d. d. March Chick – one Bubblyjock – one Side of Mutton – four Necks – six Sheep-heads, and their complement of Trotters – two Sheep, just slaughtered and yet in wholes – four Lambs ditto – the late Cladich Calf – one small Stot – two lb. 40 Rounds in pickle – four Miscellaneous Pies of the First Order – six Hams – four dozen of Rein-deer Tongues – one dozen of Bears' Paws – two Barrels of – "

BULLER

Stop. Let that suffice for the meanwhile.

NORTH

The short shadow-hand on the face of Dial-Cruachan, to my instructed sense, stands at six. You young Oxonians, I know, always adorn for dinner, even when roughing it on service; and so, V. and W., do you. These two elderly gentlemen here are seen to most advantage in white neckcloths, and the Old One is never so like himself as in a suit of black velvet. To your tent and toilets. In an hour we meet in the – Deeside.

1

Words coined by Mr Caxton from πλανητικος, disposed to roaming, and εξαλλοτριοω, to export, to alienate.

2

In primitive villages in the west of England, the belief that the absent may be seen in a piece of crystal is, or was not many years ago, by no means an uncommon superstition. I have seen more than one of these magic mirrors, which Spenser, by the way, has beautifully described. They are about the size and shape of a swan's egg. It is not every one, however, who can be a crystal-seer; like second-sight, it is a special gift.

3

Dante here evidently associates Fortune with the planetary influences of judicial astrology. It is doubtful whether Schiller ever read Dante, but in one of his most thoughtful poems, he undertakes the same defence of Fortune, making the Fortunate a part of the Beautiful.

4

Histoire des Conspirations et des Executions Politiques, comprenant l'Histoire des Sociétés Secrètes depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours. Par A. Blanc. 4 Vols. Volume the Third: Russia.

5

The victim is placed upon his belly (and tied down so that he cannot change his position) to receive this terrible punishment, in severity inferior only to the knout.

6

The extent of Hungary, including Transylvania, is above 125,000 square miles; that of Great Britain and Ireland is 122,000, and that of Prussia about 116,000. The population of Hungary, according to the best authorities, is nearly fourteen millions; that of England (in 1841) was nearly fifteen millions; that of Prussia about sixteen millions.

7

Alison, History of Europe, vol. x.