Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

BULLER

You admire it.

NORTH

I do.

TALBOYS

Don't believe him, Buller. Let's be off – there is no rain worth mentioning – see – there's a Fly. Oh! 'tis but a Red Professor dangling from my bonnet – a Red Professor with tinsy and a tail. Come, Seward, here's the Chess-Board. Let us make out the Main.

NORTH

The four lines about the Roar and the Fall are good —

TALBOYS

Indeed, sir.

NORTH

Mind your game, sir. Seward, you may give him a Pawn. The next four – about Hell – are bad.

TALBOYS

Indeed, sir.

NORTH

Seward, you may likewise give him a Knight. As bad as can be. For there is an incredible confusion of tormented and tormentor. They howl, and hiss, and boil in endless torture – they are suffering the Pains of Hell – they are in Hell. "But the sweat of their great agony is wrung out from this their Phlegethon." Where is this their Phlegethon? Why, this their Phlegethon is – themselves! Look down – there is no other river – but the Velino.

BULLER

Hear Virgil —

"Mœnia lata, videt, triplici circumdata muro,Quæ rapidus flammis ambit torrentibus amnisTartareus Phlegethon, torquetque sonantia saxa."

No Phlegethon with torrents of fire surrounding and shaking Byron's Hell. I do not understand it – an unaccountable blunder.

NORTH

In next stanza, what is gained by

"How profoundThe gulf! and how the giant elementFrom rock to rock leaps with delirious bound"?

Nothing. In the First Stanza, we had the "abyss," "the gulf," and the agony – all and more than we have here.

SEWARD

Check-mate.

TALBOYS

Confound the board! – no, not the board – but Hurwitz himself could not play in such an infernal clatter.

NORTH

Buller has not got to the word "infernal" yet, Phillidor – but he will by-and-by. "Crushing the Cliffs" – crushing is not the right word – it is the wrong one – for not such is the process – visible or invisible. "Downward worn" is silly. "Fierce footsteps," to my imagination, is tame and out of place – though it may not be to yours; – and I thunder in the ears of the Chess-players that the first half of the next stanza – the third – is as bad writing as is to be found in Byron.

TALBOYS

Or in North.

NORTH

Seward – you may give him likewise a Bishop —

"Look back:

Lo! where it comes like an Eternity!"

I do not say that is not sublime. If it is an image of Eternity – sublime it must be – but the Poet has chosen his time badly for inspiring us with that thought – for we look back on what he had pictured to us as falling into hell – and then flowing diffused "only thus to be parents of rivers that flow gushingly with many windings through the vale" – images of Time.

"As if to sweep down all things in its track,"

is well enough for an ordinary cataract, but not for a cataract that comes "like an Eternity."

TALBOYS

"Charming the eye with dread – a matchless cataract,

Horribly beautiful."

SEWARD

One game each.

TALBOYS

Let us go to the Swiss Giantess to play out the Main.

NORTH

In Stanza Fourth – "But on the verge," is very like nonsense —

TALBOYS

Not at all.

NORTH

The Swiss Giantess is expecting you – good-bye, my dear Talboys. Now, Buller, I wish you, seriously and calmly, to think on this image —

"An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,Like Hope upon a death-bed."

Did Hope – could Hope ever sit by such a death-bed! The infernal surge – the hell of waters – the howling – the hissing – the boiling in endless torture – the sweat of the great agony wrung out – and more of the same sort —these image the death-bed. Hope has sat beside many a sad – many a miserable death-bed – but not by such as this; and yet, here, such a death-bed is hinted at as not uncommon – in a few words – "like Hope upon a death-bed." The simile came not of itself – it was sought for – and had far better have been away. There is much bad writing here, too – "unworn" – "unshorn" – "torn" – "dyes" – "hues" – "beams" – "torture of the scene" – epithet heaped on epithet, without any clear perception, or sincere emotion – the Iris changing from Hope upon a death-bed to Love watching Madness – both of which I pronounce, before that portion of mankind assembled in this Tent, to be on the FALSETTO – and wide from the thoughts that visit the suffering souls of the children of men remembering this life's greatest calamities.

SEWARD

Yet throughout, sir, there is Power.

NORTH

Power! My dear Seward, who denies it? But great Power – true poetical Power – is self-collected – not turbulent though dealing with turbulence – in its own stately passion dominating physical nature in its utmost distraction – and in her blind forces seeing a grandeur – a sublimity that only becomes visible or audible to the senses, through the action of imagination creating its own consistent ideal world out of that turmoil – making the fury of falling waters appeal to our Moral Being, from whose depths and heights rise emotions echoing all the tones of the thundering cataract. In these stanzas of Byron, the main Power is in the Cataract – not in the Poetry – loud to the ear – to the eye flashing and foaming – full of noise and fury, signifying not much to the soul, as it stuns and confounds the senses – while its more spiritual significations are uncertain, or unintelligible, accepted with doubt, or rejected without hesitation, because felt to be false and deceitful, and but brilliant mockeries of the Truth.

TALBOYS

Spare Byron, who is a Poet – and castigate some popular Versifier.

NORTH

I will not spare Byron – and just because he is a Poet. For popular Versifiers, they may pipe at their pleasure, but aloof from our Tents – chirp anywhere but in this Encampment; and if there be a Gowdspink or Yellow-hammer among them, let us incline our ear kindly to his chattering or his yammering, "low doun in the broom," or high up on his apple-tree, in outfield or orchard, and pray that never naughty schoolboy may harry his nest.

SEWARD

Would Sir Walter's Poetry stand such critical examination?

NORTH

All – or nearly so – directly dealing with War – Fighting in all its branches. Indeed, with any kind of Action he seldom fails – in Reflection, often – and, strange to say, almost as often in description of Nature, though there in his happier hours he excels.

SEWARD

I was always expecting, during that discussion about the Clitumnus, that you would have brought in Virgil.

NORTH

Ay, Maro – in description – is superior to them all – in the Æneid as well as in the Georgics. But we have no time to speak of his Pictures now – only just let me ask you – Do you remember what Payne Knight says of Æneas?

SEWARD

No, for I never read it.

NORTH

Payne Knight, in his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste– a work of high authority in his own day, and containing many truths vigorously expounded, though characterised throughout by arrogance and presumption – speaks of that "selfish coldness with which the Æneas of Virgil treats the unfortunate princess, whose affections he had seduced," and adds, that "Every modern reader of the Æneid finds that the Episode of Dido, though in itself the most exquisite piece of composition existing, weakens extremely the subsequent interest of the Poem, it being impossible to sympathise either cordially or kindly with the fortunes or exertions of a hero who sneaks away from his high-minded and much-injured benefactress in a manner so base and unmanly. When, too, we find him soon after imitating all the atrocities, and surpassing the utmost arrogance, of the furious and vindictive Achilles, without displaying any of his generosity, pride, or energy, he becomes at once mean and odious, and only excites scorn and indignation; especially when, at the conclusion, he presents to Lavinia a hand stained with the blood of her favoured lover, whom he had stabbed while begging for quarter, and after being rendered incapable of resistance." Is not this, Seward, much too strong?

SEWARD

I think, sir, it is not only much too strong, but outrageous; and that we are bound, in justice to Virgil, to have clearly before our mind his own Idea of his Hero.

TALBOYS

To try that Æneas by the rules of poetry and of morality; and if we find his character such as neither our imagination nor our moral sense will suffer us to regard with favour – to admire either in Hero or Man – then to throw the Æneid aside.

BULLER

And take up his Georgics.

TALBOYS

To love Virgil we need not forget Homer – but to sympathise with Æneas, our imagination must not be filled with Achilles.

SEWARD

Troy is dust – the Son of Thetis dead. Let us go with the Fugitives and their Leader.

TALBOYS

Let us believe from the first that they seek a Destined Seat – under One Man, who knows his mission, and is worthy to fulfil it. Has Virgil so sustained the character of that Man – of that Hero? Or has he, from ineptitude, and unequal to so great a subject – let him sink below our nobler sympathies – nay, unconscious of failure of his purpose, as Payne Knight says, accommodated him to our contempt?

SEWARD

For seven years he has been that Man – that Hero. One Night's Tale has shown him – as he is – for I presume that Virgil – and not Payne Knight – was his Maker. If that Speech was all a lie – and the Son of Anchises, not a gallant and pious Prince, but a hypocrite and a coward – shut the Book or burn it.

TALBOYS

Much gossip – of which any honest old woman, had she uttered the half of it, would have been ashamed before she had finished her tea – has been scribbled by divers male pens – stupid or spritely – on that magnificent Recital. Æneas, it has been said, by his own account, skulked during the Town Sack – and funked during the Sea Storm. And how, it has been asked, came he to lose Creusa? Pious indeed! A truly pious man, say they, does not speak of his piety – he takes care of his household gods without talking about Lares and Penates. Many critics – some not without name – have been such – unrepentant – old women. Come we to Dido.

NORTH

Be cautious – for I fear I have been in fault myself towards Æneas for his part in that transaction.

TALBOYS

I take the account of it from Virgil. Indeed I do not know of any scandalous chronicle of Carthage or Tyre. A Trojan Prince and a Tyrian Queen – say at once a Man and a Woman – on sudden temptation and unforeseen opportunity – Sin – and they continue to sin. As pious men as Æneas – and as kingly and heroic too, have so sinned far worse than that – yet have not been excommunicated from the fellowship of saints, kings, or heroes.

SEWARD

To say that Æneas "seduces Dido," in the sense that Payne Knight uses the word, is a calumnious vulgarism.

TALBOYS

And shows a sulky resolution to shut his eyes – and keep them shut.

SEWARD

Had he said that in the Schools at Oxford, he would have been plucked at his Little-go. But I forget – there was no plucking in those days – and indeed I rather think he was not an University Man.

NORTH

Nevertheless he was a Scholar.

SEWARD

Not nevertheless, sir – notwithstanding, sir.

NORTH

I sit corrected.

SEWARD

Neither did Infelix Elissa seduce him – desperately in love as she was – 'twas not the storm of her own will that drove her into that fatal cave.

TALBOYS

Against Venus and Juno combined, alas! for poor Dido at last!

SEWARD

Æneas was in her eyes what Othello was in Desdemona's. No Desdemona she – no "gentle Lady" – nor was Virgil a Shakspeare. Yet those remonstrances – and that raving – and that suicide!

TALBOYS

Ay, Dan Virgil feared not to put the condemnation of his Hero into those lips of fire – to let her winged curses pursue the Pious Perfidious as he puts to sea. But what is truth – passion – nature from the reproachful and raving – the tender and the truculent – the repentant and the revengeful – the true and the false Dido – for she had forgot and she remembers Sychæus – when cut up into bits of bad law, and framed into an Indictment through which the Junior Jehu at the Scottish Bar might drive a Coach and Six!

SEWARD

But he forsook her! He did – and in obedience to the will of heaven. Throughout the whole of his Tale of Troy, at that fatal banquet, he tells her whither, and to what fated region, the fleet is bound – he is not sailing under scaled orders – Dido hears the Hero's destiny from the lips of Mœstissimus Hector, from the lips of Creusa's Shade. But Dido is deaf to all those solemn enunciations – none so deaf as those who will not hear; the Likeness of Ascanius lying-by her on her Royal Couch fired her vital blood – and she already is so insane as to dream of lying ere long on that God-like breast. He had forgot – and he remembers his duty – yes – his duty; according to the Creed of his country – of the whole heathen world – in deserting Dido, he obeyed the Gods.

TALBOYS

He sneaked away! says Knight. Go he must – would it have been more heroic to set fire to the Town, and embark in the General Illumination?

SEWARD

Would Payne Knight have seriously advised Virgil to marry Æneas, in good earnest, to Dido, and make him King of Carthage?

BULLER

Would they have been a happy Couple?

SEWARD

Does not our sympathy go with Æneas to the Shades? Is he unworthy to look on the Campos Lugentes? On the Elysian Fields? To be shown by Anchises the Shades of the predestined Heroes of unexisting Rome?

TALBOYS

Do we – because of Dido – despise him when first he kens, on a calm bright morning, that great Grove on the Latian shore near the mouth of the Tiber?

"Æneas, primique duces, et pulcher Iulus,Corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altæ,Instituuntque dapes."SEWARD

But he was a robber – a pirate – an invader – an usurper – so say the Payne Knights. Virgil sanctifies the Landing with the spirit of peace – and a hundred olive-crowned Envoys are sent to Laurentum with such peace-offerings as had never been laid at the feet of an Ausonian King.

TALBOYS

Nothing can exceed in simple grandeur the advent of Æneas – the reception of the Envoys by old Latinus. The right of the Prince to the region he has reached is established by grant human and divine. Surely a father, who is a king, may dispose of his daughter in marriage – and here he must; he knew, from omen and oracle, the Hour and the Man. Lavinia belonged to Æneas – not to Turnus – though we must not severely blame the fiery Rutulian because he would not give her up. Amata, in and out of her wits, was on his side; but their betrothment – if betrothed they were – was unhallowed – and might not bind in face of Fate.

BULLER

Turnus was in the wrong from beginning to end. Virgil, however, has made him a hero – and idiots have said that he eclipses Æneas – the same idiots, who, at the same time, have told us that Virgil could not paint a hero at all.

TALBOYS

That his genius has no martial fervour. Had the blockheads read the Rising – the Gathering – in the Seventh Æneid?

NORTH

Sir Walter himself had much of it by heart – and I have seen the "repeated air" kindle the aspect, and uplift the Lion-Port of the greatest War-Poet that ever blew the trumpet.

SEWARD

Æneas at the Court of Evander – that fine old Grecian! There he is a Hero to be loved – and Pallas loved him – and he loved Pallas – and all men with hearts love Virgil for their sakes.

TALBOYS

And is he not a Hero, when relanding from sea at the mouth of his own Tiber, with his Etrurian Allies – some thousands strong? And does he not then act the Hero? Virgil was no War-Poet! Second only to Homer, I hold —

SEWARD

An imitator of Homer! With fights of the Homeric age – how could he help it? But he is, in much, original on the battle-field – and is there in all the Iliad a Lausus, or a Pallas? —

BULLER

Or a Camilla?

SEWARD

Fighting is at the best a sad business – but Payne Knight is offensive on the cruelty – the ferocity of Æneas. I wish Virgil had not made him seize and sacrifice the Eight Young Men to appease the Manes of Pallas. Such sacrifice Virgil believed to be agreeable to the manners of the time – and, if usual to the most worthy, here assuredly due. In the final Great Battle,

"Away to heaven, respective Lenity,And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now."BULLER

Knight is a ninny on the Single Combat. In all the previous circumstances regarding it, Turnus behaved ill – now that he must fight, he fights well: 'tis as fair a fight as ever was fought in the field of old Epic Poetry: tutelary interposition alternates in favour of either Prince: the bare notion of either outliving defeat never entered any mind but Payne Knight's: nor did any other fingers ever fumble such a charge against the hero of an Epic as "Stabbing while begging for quarter" – but a momentary weakness in Turnus which was not without its effect on Æneas, till at sight of that Belt, he sheathed the steel.

TALBOYS

Payne works himself up, in the conclusion of the passage, into an absolute maniac.

NORTH

Good manners, Talboys – no insult – remember Mr Knight has been long dead.

TALBOYS

So has Æneas – so has Virgil.

NORTH

True. Young gentlemen, I have listened with much pleasure to your animated and judicious dialogue. Shall I now give Judgment?

BULLER

Lengthy?

NORTH

Not more than an hour.

BULLER

Then, if you please, my Lord, to-morrow.

NORTH

You must all three be somewhat fatigued by the exercise of so much critical acumen. So do you, Talboys and Seward, unbend the bow at another game of Chess; and you, Buller, reanimate the jaded Moral Sentiments by a sharp letter to Marmaduke, insinuating that if he don't return to the Tents within a week, or at least write to say that he and Hal, Volusene and Woodburn, are not going to return at all, but to join the Rajah of Sarawak, the Grand Lama, or Prester John – which I fear is but too probable from the general tone and tenor of their life and conversation for some days before their Secession from the Established Camp – there will be a general breaking of Mothers' hearts, and in his own particular case, a cutting off with a shilling, or disinheriting of the heir apparent of one of the finest Estates in Cornwall. But I forget – these Entails will be the ruin of England. What! Billy, is that you?

BILLY

Measter, here's a Fish and a Ferocious.

TALBOYS

Ha! what Whappers!

BULLER

More like Fish before the Flood than after it.

SEWARD

After it indeed! During it. What is Billy saying, Mr North? That Coomerlan' dialect's Hottentot to my Devonshire ears.

NORTH

They have been spoiled by the Doric delicacies of the "Exmoor Courtship." He tells me that Archy M'Callum, the Cornwall Clipper, and himself, each in a cow-hide, having ventured down to the River Mouth to look after and bale Gutta Percha, foregathered with an involuntary invasion of divers gigantic Fishes, who had made bad their landing on our shores, and that after a desperate resistance they succeeded in securing the Two Leaders – a Salmo Salar and a Salmo Ferox – see on snout and shoulder tokens of the Oar. Thirty – and Twenty Pounders – Billy says; I should have thought they were respectively a third more. No mean Windfall. They will tell on the Spread. I retire to my Sanctum for my Siesta.

TALBOYS

Let me invest you, my dear sir, with my Feathers.

BULLER

Do – do take my Tarpaulin.

SEWARD

Billy, your Cow-hide.

NORTH

I need none of your gimcracks – for I seek the Sanctum by a subterranean – beg your pardon – a Subter-Awning Passage.

Scene II

Scene —DeesideTime-Seven P.CNorth – Buller – Seward – TalboysNORTH

How little time or disposition for anything like serious Thinking, or Reading, out of people's own profession or trade, in this Railway World! The busy-bodies of these rattling times, even in their leisure hours, do not affect an interest in studies their fathers and their grandfathers, in the same rank of life, pursued, even systematically, on many an Evening sacred from the distraction that ceased with the day.

TALBOYS

Not all busy-bodies, my good Sir – think of —

NORTH

I have thought of them – and I know their worth – their liberality and their enlightenment. In all our cities and towns – and villages – and in all orders of the people – there is Mind – Intelligence, and Knowledge; and the more's the shame in that too general appetence for mere amusement in literature, perpetually craving for a change of diet – for something new in the light way – while anything of any substance, is, "with sputtering noise rejected" as tough to the teeth, and hard of digestion – however sweet and nutritious; would they but taste and try.

SEWARD

I hope you don't mean to allude to Charles Dickens?

NORTH

Assuredly not. Charles Dickens is a man of original and genial genius – his popularity is a proof of the goodness of the heart of the people; – and the love of him and his writings – though not so thoughtful as it might be – does honour to that strength in the English character which is indestructible by any influences, and survives in the midst of frivolity, and folly, and of mental depravations, worse than both.

SEWARD

Don't look so savage, sir.

NORTH

I am not savage – I am serene. Set the Literature of the day aside altogether – and tell me if you think our conversation since dinner would not have been thought dull by many not altogether uneducated persons, who pride themselves not a little on their intellectuality and on their full participation in the Spirit of the Age?

TALBOYS

Our conversation since dinner DULL!! No – no – no. Many poor creatures, indeed, there are among them – even among those of them who work the Press – pigmies with pap feeding a Giant who sneezes them away when sick of them into small offices in the Customs or Excise; – but not one of our privileged brethren of the Guild – with a true ticket to show – but would have been delighted with such dialogue – but would be delighted with its continuation – and thankful to know that he, "a wiser and a better man, will rise to-morrow morn."

SEWARD

Do, my dear sir – resume your discoursing about those Greeks.

NORTH

I was about to say, Seward, that those shrewd and just observers, and at the same time delicate thinkers, the ancient Greeks, did, as you well know, snatch from amongst the ordinary processes which Nature pursues, in respect of inferior animal life, a singularly beautiful Type or Emblem, expressively imaging to Fancy that bursting disclosure of Life from the bosom of Death, which is implied in the extrication of the soul from its corporeal prison, when this astonishing change is highly, ardently, and joyfully contemplated. Those old festal religionists – who carried into the solemnities of their worship the buoyant gladsomeness of their own sprightly and fervid secular life, and contrived to invest even the artful splendour and passionate human interest of their dramatic representations with the name and character of a sacred ceremony – found for that soaring and refulgent escape of a spirit from the dungeon and chains of the flesh, into its native celestial day, a fine and touching similitude in the liberation of a beautiful Insect, the gorgeously-winged, aérial Butterfly, from the living tomb in which Nature has, during a season, eased and urned its torpid and death-like repose.

SEWARD

Nor, my dear sir, was this life-conscious penetration or intuition of a keen and kindling intelligence into the dreadful, the desolate, the cloud-covered Future, the casual thought of adventuring Genius, transmitted in some happier verse only, or in some gracious and visible poesy of a fine chisel; but the Symbol and the Thing symbolised were so bound together in the understanding of the nation, that in the Greek language the name borne by the Insect and the name designating the Soul is one and the same – ΨΥΧΗ.

NORTH

Insects! They have come out, by their original egg-birth, into an active life. They have crept and eaten – and slept and eaten – creeping, and sleeping, and eating – still waxing in size, and travelling on from fitted pasture to pasture, they have in not many suns reached the utmost of the minute dimensions allotted them – the goal of their slow-footed wanderings, and the term, shall we say —of their life.

SEWARD

No! But of that first period, through which they have made some display of themselves as living agents. They have reached this term. And look at them – now.

NORTH

Ay – look at them – now. Wonder on wonder! For now a miraculous instinct guides and compels the creature – who has, as it were, completed one life – who has accomplished one stage of his existence – to entomb himself. And he accordingly builds or spins himself a tomb – or he buries himself in his grave. Shall I say, that she herself, his guardian, his directress, Great Nature, coffins him? Enclosed in a firm shell – hidden from all eyes – torpid – in a death-like sleep —not dead– he waits the appointed hour, which the days and nights bring, and which having come – his renovation, his resuscitation is come. And now the sepulture no longer holds him! Now the prisoner of the tomb has right again to converse with embalmed air and with glittering sunbeams – now, the reptile that was– unrecognisably transformed from himself – a glad, bright, mounting creature, unfurls on either side the translucent or the richly-hued pinions that shall waft him at his liking from blossom to blossom, or lift him in a rapture of aimless joyancy to disport and rock himself on the soft-flowing undulating breeze.