On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)

"Just now behaved as in the Holy Land." How did Carnage behave in the Holy Land then? You have all been greatly questioning, of late, whether the sun, which you find to be now going out, ever stood still. Did you in any lagging minute, on those scientific occasions, chance to reflect what he was bid stand still for? or if not—will you please look—and what also, going forth again as a strong man to run his course, he saw, rejoicing?

"Then Joshua passed from Makkedah unto Libnah—and fought against Libnah. And the Lord delivered it and the king thereof into the hand of Israel, and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein." And from Lachish to Eglon, and from Eglon to Kirjath-Arba, and Sarah's grave in the Amorites' land, "and Joshua smote all the country of the hills and of the south—and of the vale and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed—as the Lord God of Israel commanded."

58. Thus, "it is written": though you perhaps do not so often hear these texts preached from, as certain others about taking away the sins of the world. I wonder how the world would like to part with them! hitherto it has always preferred parting first with its life—and God has taken it at its word. But Death is not His Begotten Son, for all that; nor is the death of the innocent in battle carnage His "instrument for working out a pure intent" as Mr. Wordsworth puts it; but Man's instrument for working out an impure one, as Byron would have you to know. Theology perhaps less orthodox, but certainly more reverent;—neither is the Woolwich Infant a Child of God; neither does the iron-clad "Thunderer" utter thunders of God—which facts if you had had the grace or sense to learn from Byron, instead of accusing him of blasphemy, it had been better at this day for you, and for many a savage soul also, by Euxine shore, and in Zulu and Afghan lands.

59. It was neither, however, for the theology, nor the use, of these lines that I quoted them; but to note this main point of Byron's own character. He was the first great Englishman who felt the cruelty of war, and, in its cruelty, the shame. Its guilt had been known to George Fox—its folly shown practically by Penn. But the compassion of the pious world had still for the most part been shown only in keeping its stock of Barabbases unhanged if possible: and, till Byron came, neither Kunersdorf, Eylau, nor Waterloo, had taught the pity and the pride of men that

"The drying up a single tear has moreOf honest fame than shedding seas of gore."78

Such pacific verse would not indeed have been acceptable to the Edinburgh volunteers on Portobello sands. But Byron can write a battle song too, when it is his cue to fight. If you look at the introduction to the "Isles of Greece," namely the 85th and 86th stanzas of the 3rd canto of "Don Juan,"—you will find—what will you not find, if only you understand them! "He" in the first line, remember, means the typical modern poet.

"Thus usually, when he was asked to sing,He gave the different nations something national.'Twas all the same to him—'God save the King'Or 'Ca ira' according to the fashion all;His muse made increment of anythingFrom the high lyric down to the low rational:If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinderHimself from being as pliable as Pindar?In France, for instance, he would write a chanson;In England a six-canto quarto tale;In Spain, he'd make a ballad or romance onThe last war—much the same in Portugal;In Germany, the Pegasus he'd prance onWould be old Goethe's—(see what says de Staël)In Italy, he'd ape the 'Trecentisti';In Greece, he'd sing some sort of hymn like this t'ye."

60. Note first here, as we did in Scott, the concentrating and foretelling power. The "God Save the Queen" in England, fallen hollow now, as the "Ca ira" in France—not a man in France knowing where either France or "that" (whatever "that" may be) is going to; nor the Queen of England daring, for her life, to ask the tiniest Englishman to do a single thing he doesn't like;—nor any salvation, either of Queen or Realm, being any more possible to God, unless under the direction of the Royal Society: then, note the estimate of height and depth in poetry, swept in an instant, "high lyric to low rational." Pindar to Pope (knowing Pope's height, too, all the while, no man better); then, the poetic power of France—resumed in a word—Béranger; then the cut at Marmion, entirely deserved, as we shall see, yet kindly given, for everything he names in these two stanzas is the best of its kind; then 'Romance in Spain on—the last war, (present war not being to Spanish poetical taste,) then, Goethe the real heart of all Germany, and last, the aping of the Trecentisti which has since consummated itself in Pre-Raphaelitism! that also being the best thing Italy has done through England, whether in Rossetti's "blessed damozels" or Burne Jones's "days of creation." Lastly comes the mock at himself—the modern English Greek—(followed up by the "degenerate into hands like mine" in the song itself); and then—to amazement, forth he thunders in his Achilles-voice. We have had one line of him in his clearness—five of him in his depth—sixteen of him in his play. Hear now but these, out of his whole heart:—

"What,—silent yet? and silent all?Ah no, the voices of the deadSound like a distant torrent's fall,And answer, 'Let one living head,But one, arise—we come—we come:'—'Tis but the living who are dumb."

Resurrection, this, you see like Bürger's; but not of death unto death.

61. "Sound like a distant torrent's fall." I said the whole heart of Byron was in this passage. First its compassion, then its indignation, and the third element, not yet examined, that love of the beauty of this world in which the three—unholy—children, of its Fiery Furnace were like to each other; but Byron the widest-hearted. Scott and Burns love Scotland more than Nature itself: for Burns the moon must rise over Cumnock Hills,—for Scott, the Rymer's glen divide the Eildons; but, for Byron, Loch-na-Gar with Ida, looks o'er Troy, and the soft murmurs of the Dee and the Bruar change into voices of the dead on distant Marathon.

Yet take the parallel from Scott, by a field of homelier rest:—

"And silence aids—though the steep hillsSend to the lake a thousand rills;In summer tide, so soft they weep,The sound but lulls the ear asleep;Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude,So stilly is the solitude.Nought living meets the eye or ear,But well I ween the dead are near;For though, in feudal strife, a foeHath laid our Lady's Chapel low,Yet still beneath the hallowed soil,The peasant rests him from his toil,And, dying, bids his bones be laidWhere erst his simple fathers prayed."

And last take the same note of sorrow—with Burns's finger on the fall of it:

"Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens,Ye hazly shaws and briery dens,Ye burnies, wimplin' down your glensWi' toddlin' din,Or foamin' strang wi' hasty stensFrae lin to lin."

62. As you read, one after another, these fragments of chant by the great masters, does not a sense come upon you of some element in their passion, no less than in their sound, different, specifically, from that of "Parching summer hath no warrant"? Is it more profane, think you—or more tender—nay, perhaps, in the core of it, more true?

For instance, when we are told that

"Wharfe, as he moved along,To matins joined a mournful voice,"

is this disposition of the river's mind to pensive psalmody quite logically accounted for by the previous statement, (itself by no means rythmically dulcet,) that

"The boy is in the arms of Wharfe,And strangled by a merciless force"?

Or, when we are led into the improving reflection,

"How sweet were leisure, could it yield no moreThan 'mid this wave-washed churchyard to recline,From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine!"

—is the divinity of the extract assured to us by its being made at leisure, and in a reclining attitude—as compared with the meditations of otherwise active men, in an erect one? Or are we perchance, many of us, still erring somewhat in our notions alike of Divinity and Humanity,—poetical extraction, and moral position?

63. On the chance of its being so, might I ask hearing for just a few words more of the school of Belial?

Their occasion, it must be confessed, is a quite unjustifiable one. Some very wicked people—mutineers, in fact—have retired, misanthropically, into an unfrequented part of the country, and there find themselves safe indeed, but extremely thirsty. Whereupon Byron thus gives them to drink:

"A little stream came tumbling from the heightAnd straggling into ocean as it might.Its bounding crystal frolicked in the rayAnd gushed from cliff to crag with saltless spray,Close on the wild wide ocean,—yet as pureAnd fresh as Innocence; and more secure.Its silver torrent glittered o'er the deepAs the shy chamois' eye o'erlooks the steep,While, far below, the vast and sullen swellOf ocean's Alpine azure rose and fell."79

Now, I beg, with such authority as an old workman may take concerning his trade, having also looked at a waterfall or two in my time, and not unfrequently at a wave, to assure the reader that here is entirely first-rate literary work. Though Lucifer himself had written it, the thing is itself good, and not only so, but unsurpassedly good, the closing line being probably the best concerning the sea yet written by the race of the sea-kings.

64. But Lucifer himself could not have written it; neither any servant of Lucifer. I do not doubt but that most readers were surprised at my saying, in the close of my first paper, that Byron's "style" depended in any wise on his views respecting the Ten Commandments. That so all-important a thing as "style" should depend in the least upon so ridiculous a thing as moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes or speaks aside, do you, good reader, know good "style" when you get it? Can you say, of half a dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are good, or bad?

65. I imagine that in most cases, the reply would be given with hesitation, yet if you will give me a little patience, and take some accurate pains, I can show you the main tests of style in the space of a couple of pages.

I take two examples of absolutely perfect, and in manner highest, i. e., kingly, and heroic, style: the first example in expression of anger, the second of love.

(1)"We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us,His present, and your pains, we thank you for.When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,We will in France, by God's grace, play a setShall strike his father's crown into the hazard."(2)"My gracious Silence, hail!Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd homeThat weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,Such eyes the widows in Corioli wearAnd mothers that lack sons."

66. Let us note, point by point, the conditions of greatness common to both these passages, so opposite in temper.

A. Absolute command over all passion, however intense; this the first-of-first conditions, (see the King's own sentence just before, "We are no tyrant, but a Christian King, Unto whose grace our passion is as subject As are our wretches fettered in our prisons"); and with this self-command, the supremely surveying grasp of every thought that is to be uttered, before its utterance; so that each may come in its exact place, time, and connection. The slightest hurry, the misplacing of a word, or the unnecessary accent on a syllable, would destroy the "style" in an instant.

B. Choice of the fewest and simplest words that can be found in the compass of the language, to express the thing meant: these few words being also arranged in the most straightforward and intelligible way; allowing inversion only when the subject can be made primary without obscurity: (thus, "his present, and your pains, we thank you for" is better than "we thank you for his present and your pains," because the Dauphin's gift is by courtesy put before the Ambassador's pains; but "when to these balls our rackets we have matched" would have spoiled the style in a moment, because—I was going to have said, ball and racket are of equal rank, and therefore only the natural order proper; but also here the natural order is the desired one, the English racket to have precedence of the French ball). In the fourth line the "in France" comes first, as announcing the most important resolution of action; the "by God's grace" next, as the only condition rendering resolution possible; the detail of issue follows with the strictest limit in the final word. The King does not say "danger," far less "dishonor," but "hazard" only; of that he is, humanly speaking, sure.

67. C. Perfectly emphatic and clear utterance of the chosen words; slowly in the degree of their importance, with omission however of every word not absolutely required; and natural use of the familiar contractions of final dissyllable. Thus "play a set shall strike" is better than "play a set that shall strike," and "match'd" is kingly short—no necessity of meter could have excused "matched" instead. On the contrary, the three first words, "We are glad," would have been spoken by the king more slowly and fully than any other syllables in the whole passage, first pronouncing the kingly "we" at its proudest, and then the "are" as a continuous state, and then the "glad," as the exact contrary of what the ambassadors expected him to be.80

D. Absolute spontaneity in doing all this, easily and necessarily as the heart beats. The king cannot speak otherwise than he does—nor the hero. The words not merely come to them, but are compelled to them. Even lisping numbers "come," but mighty numbers are ordained, and inspired.

E. Melody in the words, changeable with their passion, fitted to it exactly, and the utmost of which the language is capable—the melody in prose being Eolian and variable—in verse, nobler by submitting itself to stricter law. I will enlarge upon this point presently.

F. Utmost spiritual contents in the words; so that each carries not only its instant meaning, but a cloudy companionship of higher or darker meaning according to the passion—nearly always indicated by metaphor: "play a set"—sometimes by abstraction—(thus in the second passage "silence" for silent one) sometimes by description instead of direct epithet ("coffined" for dead) but always indicative of there being more in the speaker's mind than he has said, or than he can say, full though his saying be. On the quantity of this attendant fullness depends the majesty of style; that is to say, virtually, on the quantity of contained thought in briefest words, such thought being primarily loving and true: and this the sum of all—that nothing can be well said, but with truth, nor beautifully, but by love.

68. These are the essential conditions of noble speech in prose and verse alike, but the adoption of the form of verse, and especially rymed verse, means the addition to all these qualities of one more; of music, that is to say, not Eolian merely, but Apolline; a construction or architecture of words fitted and befitting, under external laws of time and harmony.

When Byron says "rhyme is of the rude,"81 he means that Burns needs it,—while Henry the Fifth does not, nor Plato, nor Isaiah—yet in this need of it by the simple, it becomes all the more religious: and thus the loveliest pieces of Christian language are all in ryme—the best of Dante, Chaucer, Douglas, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Sidney.

69. I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore refuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner's "Anglo-Saxons." I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments known of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing; but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in King Canute's impromptu

"Gaily" (or is it sweetly?—I forget which, and it's no matter)"sang the monks of Ely,As Knut the king came sailing by;"

much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss, chiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain; while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven. So, Gibbon can write in his manner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, in his manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in his manner, bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.

"Master of Masters—sweet source, and springing well,Wide where over all rings thy heavenly bell;
Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tonguePresume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?Na, na—not so; but kneel when I them hear.But farther more—and lower to descendForgive me, Virgil, if I thee offendPardon thy scolar, suffer him to rymeSince thou wast but ane mortal man sometime."

"Before honor is humility." Does not clearer light come for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words? And note you whose humility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively into his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of—Archibald Bell-the-Cat!

70. And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in "Marmion" between his father and King James.

"His hand the monarch sudden took—'Now, by the Bruce's soul,Angus, my hasty speech forgive,For sure as doth his spirit liveAs he said of the Douglas oldI well may say of you,—That never king did subject hold,In speech more free, in war more bold,More tender and more true:'And while the king his hand did strainThe old man's tears fell down like rain."

I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars, will recognize further in them that the simplicity of the educated is lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.

"Ye shepherds' daughters that dwell on the green,Hye you there apace;Let none come there but that virgins beenTo adorn her grace:And when you come, whereas she in place,See that your rudeness do not you disgrace;Bind your fillets fast,And gird in your waste,For more fineness, with a taudry lace.Bring hither the pink and purple cullumbineWith gylliflowers;Bring coronatiöns, and sops in wine,Worn of paramours;Strow me the ground with daffadowndilliesAnd cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies;The pretty paunceAnd the chevisaunceShall match with the fair flowre-delice."82

71. Two short pieces more only of master song, and we have enough to test all by.

(1)"No more, no more, since thou art dead,Shall we e'er bring coy brides to bed,No more, at yearly festivals,We cowslip ballsOr chains of columbines shall make,For this or that occasion's sake.No, no! our maiden pleasures beWrapt in thy winding-sheet with thee."83(2)"Death is now the phoenix nest,And the turtle's loyal breastTo eternity doth rest.Truth may seem, but cannot be;Beauty brag, but 'tis not she:Truth and beauty buried be."84

72. If now, with the echo of these perfect verses in your mind, you turn to Byron, and glance over, or recall to memory, enough of him to give means of exact comparison, you will, or should, recognize these following kinds of mischief in him. First, if anyone offends him—as for instance Mr. Southey, or Lord Elgin—"his manners have not that repose that marks the caste," etc. This defect in his Lordship's style, being myself scrupulously and even painfully reserved in the use of vituperative language, I need not say how deeply I deplore.85

Secondly. In the best and most violet-bedded bits of his work there is yet, as compared with Elizabethan and earlier verse, a strange taint; an indefinable—evening flavor of Covent Garden, as it were;—not to say, escape of gas in the Strand. That is simply what it proclaims itself—London air. If he had lived all his life in Green-head Ghyll, things would of course have been different. But it was his fate to come to town—modern town—like Michael's son; and modern London (and Venice) are answerable for the state of their drains, not Byron.

Thirdly. His melancholy is without any relief whatsoever; his jest sadder than his earnest; while, in Elizabethan work, all lament is full of hope, and all pain of balsam.

Of this evil he has himself told you the cause in a single line prophetic of all things since and now. "Where he gazed, a gloom pervaded space."86

So that, for instance, while Mr. Wordsworth, on a visit to town, being an exemplary early riser, could walk, felicitous, on Westminster Bridge, remarking how the city now did like a garment wear the beauty of the morning; Byron, rising somewhat later, contemplated only the garment which the beauty of the morning had by that time received for wear from the city: and again, while Mr. Wordsworth, in irrepressible religious rapture, calls God to witness that the houses seem asleep, Byron, lame demon as he was, flying smoke-drifted, unroofs the houses at a glance, and sees what the mighty cockney heart of them contains in the still lying of it, and will stir up to purpose in the waking business of it,

"The sordor of civilization, mixedWith all the passions which Man's fall hath fixed."87

73. Fourthly, with this steadiness of bitter melancholy, there is joined a sense of the material beauty, both of inanimate nature, the lower animals, and human beings, which in the iridescence, color-depth, and morbid (I use the word deliberately) mystery and softness of it,—with other qualities indescribable by any single words, and only to be analyzed by extreme care,—is found, to the full, only in five men that I know of in modern times; namely, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and myself,—differing totally and throughout the entire group of us, from the delight in clear-struck beauty of Angelico and the Trecentisti; and separated, much more singularly, from the cheerful joys of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Scott, by its unaccountable affection for "Rokkes blak" and other forms of terror and power, such as those of the ice-oceans, which to Shakespeare were only Alpine rheum; and the Via Malas and Diabolic Bridges which Dante would have condemned none but lost souls to climb, or cross;—all this love of impending mountains, coiled thunder-clouds, and dangerous sea, being joined in us with a sulky, almost ferine, love of retreat in valleys of Charmettes, gulfs of Spezzia, ravines of Olympus, low lodgings in Chelsea, and close brushwood at Coniston.

74. And, lastly, also in the whole group of us, glows volcanic instinct of Astræan justice returning not to, but up out of, the earth, which will not at all suffer us to rest any more in Pope's serene "whatever is, is right"; but holds, on the contrary, profound conviction that about ninety-nine hundredths of whatever at present is, is wrong: conviction making four of us, according to our several manners, leaders of revolution for the poor, and declarers of political doctrine monstrous to the ears of mercenary mankind; and driving the fifth, less sanguine, into mere painted-melody of lament over the fallacy of Hope and the implacableness of Fate.

In Byron the indignation, the sorrow, and the effort are joined to the death: and they are the parts of his nature (as of mine also in its feebler terms), which the selfishly comfortable public have, literally, no conception of whatever; and from which the piously sentimental public, offering up daily the pure oblation of divine tranquillity, shrink with anathema not unembittered by alarm.