Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845

The clamorous outbreak that follows, first of the private, and, supervening upon that, of the public grief, if not altogether couched in Homeric phraseology or numbers, has an air, however, of the Homeric painting. But, indeed, neither is the language deficient in fanciful significancy, nor the measure in good old melody.

DrydenNo language can express the smallest partOf what I feel, and suffer in my heart,For you, whom best I love and value most:But to your service I bequeath my ghost;Which, from this mortal body when untied,Unseen, unheard, shall hover at your side;Nor fright you waking, nor your sleep offend,But wait officious, and your steps attend.How I have loved—excuse my faltering tongue!My spirit's feeble and my pains are strong:This I may say I only grieve to die,Because I lose my charming Emily.To die when heaven had put you in my power!Fate could not choose a more malicious hour.What greater curse could envious fortune give,Than just to die when I began to live?Vain men, how vanishing a bliss we crave,Now warm in love, now withering in the grave!Never, O never more to see the sun!Still dark, in a damp vault, and still alone!This fate is common; but I lose my breathNear bliss, and yet not bless'd, before my death.Farewell! but take me dying in your arms,'Tis all I can enjoy of all your charms:This hand I cannot but in death resign;Ah, could I live! but while I live 'tis mine.I feel my end approach, and thus embraced,Am pleased to die; but hear me speak my last.Ah, my sweet foe! for you, and you alone,I broke my faith with injured Palamon:But love the sense of right and wrong confounds;Strong love and proud ambition have no bounds.And much I doubt, should Heaven my life prolong,I should return to justify my wrong;For, while my former flames remain within,Repentance is but want of power to sin.With mortal hatred I pursued his life,Nor he, nor you, were guilty of the strife;Nor I, but as I loved; yet all combined,Your beauty, and my impotence of mind;And his concurrent flame that blew my fire;For still our kindred souls had one desire.He had a moment's right, in point of time;Had I seen first, then his had been the crime.Fate made it mine, and justified his right;Nor holds this earth a more deserving knight,For virtue, valour, and for noble blood,Truth, honour, all that is comprised in good;So help me Heaven, in all the world is noneSo worthy to be loved as Palamon.He loves you, too, with such a holy fire,As will not, cannot, but with life expire;Our vow'd affections both have often tried,Nor any love but yours could ours divide.Then, by my love's inviolable band,By my long-suffering, and my short command,If e'er you plight your vows when I am gone,Have pity on the faithful Palamon.This was his last; for Death came on amain,And exercised below his iron reign.Then upward to the seat of life he goes;Sense fled before him, what he touch'd he froze:Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw,Though less and less of Emily he saw;So, speechless for a little space he lay;Then grasp'd the hand he held, and sigh'd his soul away.But whither went his soul, let such relateWho search the secrets of the future state:Divines can say but what themselves believe;Strong proofs they have, but not demonstrative;For, were all plain, then all sides must agree,And faith itself be lost in certainty.To live uprightly, then, is sure the best;To save ourselves, and not to damn the rest.The soul of Arcite went where heathens go,Who better live than we, though less they know.In Palamon a manly grief appears;Silent he wept, ashamed to show his tears.Emilia shriek'd but once; and then, oppress'dWith sorrow, sunk upon her lover's breast:Till Theseus in his arms convey'd, with care,Far from so sad a sight the swooning fair.'Twere loss of time her sorrow to relate;Ill bears the sex a youthful lover's fate,When just approaching to the nuptial state:But, like a low-hung cloud, it rains so fast,That all at once it falls, and cannot last.The face of things is changed, and Athens now,That laugh'd so late, becomes the scene of woe:Matrons and maids, both sexes, every state,With tears lament the knight's untimely fate.Nor greater grief in falling Troy was seenFor Hector's death, but Hector was not then.Old men with dust deform'd their hoary hair;The women beat their breasts, their cheeks they tear:Why wouldst thou go, (with one consent they cry,)When thou hadst gold enough, and Emily?

Dryden, you observe, exhibits various changes. Are they for the better or the worse? In the first place, he introduces a new motive into the conduct of Arcite—remorse of conscience. When fate has declared against him, and he finds that he cannot enjoy the possession of the prize which he has wrongfully won, his eyes open upon his own injustice, and he acknowledges the prior right of Palamon, who first had seen Emilie.

Does this innovation make good an ethical want in the rough and unschooled original? Or does it perplex the old heroic simplicity with a modern and needless refinement? By right of arms, by gift of the king, with her own gentle consent, Emelie was Arcite's. Death unsinews the hand that held her against the world. Let a few winged moments fleet, and she is his no more. He bows, conquered by all-conquering, alone unconquerable necessity. His love, which had victoriously expelled his cousin's from the field of debate, he carries with him to the melancholy Plutonic kingdom, and leaves the field of debate still—Palamon victor, and Emelie free. Really there seems to be something not only simpler in art, but more pathetic, and even morally greater, in the humble submission of the fierce and giant-like spirit to inevitable decree—in the spontaneous return of the pristine fraternal appreciation when death withdraws the disturbing force of rivalry—and in his voluntarily appointing, so far as he ventures to appoint, his brother in arms and his bride to each other's happiness—than in the inventive display of a compunction for which, as the world goes, there appears to be positively no use, and hardly clear room. Loftily viewing the case, a wrong has been intended by Arcite to Palamon, but no wrong done. He has been twice hacked and hewed a little—that is all; and it cannot be said that he has been robbed of her who would not have been his. Indeed, the current of destiny has so run, that the quarrel of the two noble kinsmen has brought, as apparently it alone could bring, the survivor to wedlock with his beloved. We suspect, then, that the attribution of the motive is equally modern with the style of the not ill-contrived witticism which accompanies the first mention of it—

"Conscience, that of all physick works the last,Caused him to send for Emily in haste."

But that which, upon the general comparison of the two speeches, principally strikes us, is the great expansion, by the multiplying of the thoughts to which expression is given, by Dryden. With old Geoffrey, the weight of death seems actually to lie upon the tongue that speaks in few interrupted accents. Dryden's Moribund runs on, quite at his ease, in eloquent disquisition. Another unsatisfactory difference is the disappearing of that distinct, commanding purpose or plan, and the due proportion observed upon in the original. That mere cleaving desire to Emelie, felt through the first half in word after word gushing up from a heart in which life, but not love, ebbs, gets bewildered in the modern version among explications of the befallen unhappiness, and lost in a sort of argumentative lamentation. And do but just look how that "in his coldè grave," the only word, one may say, in the whole allocution which does not expressly appertain to Emelie, and yet half belongs to her by contrast—is extended, in Dryden, as if upon recollection of Claudio's complaint in "Measure for Measure," until, like that complaint, it becomes selfish.

But there is small pleasure in picking out the poetical misses of John Dryden. It was to be foreseen that he would be worsted in this place of the competition; for the pathetic was not his forte, and was Chaucer's. So, too, instead of the summary and concise commendation of his happier cousin to the future regard of the bereaved bride, so touching in Chaucer, there comes in, provoked by that unlucky repentance, an expatiating and arguing review of the now extinct quarrel, showing a liberty and vigour of thought that agree ill with the threatening cloud of dissolution, and somewhat overlay and encumber the proper business to which the dying man has now turned himself—made imperative by the occasion—the formal and energetic eulogy on Palamon. The praise, however, is bestowed at last, and handsomely.

Have we, think ye, gentle lovers of Chaucer, rightly understood the possibly somewhat obscure intention of the two verses at the beginning of our extract—

"But I bequethe the service of my gostTo you?"

We have accepted "service" in the sense which, agreeably to our erudition, it eminently holds the old love-vocabulary—homage, devotion, Love; the pure and entire dedication by the lover of his whole being to his lady. In this meaning, the heart continually serves, if there should be no opportunity of rendering any useful offices. You will see that Dryden has taken the word in what strikes us as an inferior sense—namely, available service; but then his verses are exquisite. And why, gentle lovers of Chaucer, why think ye does the expiring Arcite, at that particular juncture of his address, crave of his heart's queen softly to take him in her arms? Is it not that he is then about pouring out into her ear his dying design for her happiness? Received so, the movement has great originality and an infinite beauty. His heart yearns the more towards her as he is on the point of giving utterance to his generous proposal. He will, by that act of love upon her part, and that mutual attitude of love, deepen the solemnity, truth, power, impression of his unexpected request. Will he perchance, too, approach her ear to his voice, that grows weaker and weaker?

The two verses appear by their wording to intimate something like all this.

"And softè take me in your armès twey,For love of God, and herkeneth what I sey."

If Chaucer had any such meaning, it vanishes wholly in Dryden's version.

On re-surveying the matter at last, we feel the more that the passing over of Emelie from the dead Arcite to the living Palamon, in Chaucer, is by much more poetical when viewed as the voluntary concession and gift of the now fully heroic Arcite, than as, in Dryden, the recovered right of the fortunate survivor. However, the speech, as Dryden has it, is vigorous, numerous, spirited, eloquent, touched with poetry, and might please you very well, did you not compare it with the singular truth, feeling, fitness of Chaucer's—that unparalleled picture of a manly, sorely-wrung, lovingly-provident spirit upon its bed of untimely death.

The process of dying has been considerately delineated by Chaucer. Death creeps from the feet upwards to the breast—it creeps up and possesses the arms. But the intellect which dwelled in the heart 'gan fail only when the very heart felt death. Then dimness fell upon the eyes, and the breath faltered. One more look—one more word—and the spirit has forsaken its tenement. Dryden generalizes all this particularity—and therein greatly errs. But the last four flowing verses of the death-scene are in his more inspired manner, and must be held good for redeeming a multitude of peccadilloes and some graver transgressions. Read them over again—

"Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw,Though less and less of Emily he saw;So, speechless for a little space he lay;Then grasp'd the hand he held, and sigh'd his soul away."

When years rolling have in a manner exhausted the tears due to the remembrance of the heroic Arcite, a parliament, held upon matters of public interest, gives occasion to Theseus of requiring the attendance of Palamon from Thebes to Athens. The benign monarch, however, is revolving affairs of nearer and more private concern. The national council is assembled; Palamon is in his place, and Emelie has been called into presence. His majesty puts on a very serious countenance, fixes his eyes, heaves a sigh, and begins unburthening his bosom of its concealed purposes. He "begins from the beginning" in this fashion:—

"When the First Mover established the great chain of love, in which he bound the four elements, the mighty ordering proceeded of high wisdom. The same author, himself inaccessible to alteration, has appointed to all natural things the law of transiency and succession. The kinds endure; the individuals pass away. Nature examples us with decay. Trees, rivers, mighty towns, wax and wane—much more we. All must die—the great and the small: and the wish to live is an impiety. Better it is to fall in the pride of strength and in the splendour of renown, than to droop through long years into the grave; and the friend who survives should rejoice in his friend's happy and honourable departure. Wherefore, then, shall we longer mourn for Arcite?" This is the copious preamble. The conclusion is more briefly dispatched. Emelie must accept the hand of her faithful servant Palamon. He wants no persuasion; and the knot of matrimony happily ties up at last their destinies, wishes, and expectations, which the Tale in its progress has spun.

The royal harangue is long; and marked, doubtless, with a sort of artificial solemnity. However, it has a deliberative stateliness and a certain monarchal tone. We do not now, in the Speeches from the Throne, begin regularly from the Creation—but that is a refinement. There has been eloquence of which Chaucer's deep display of philosophy and high deduction of argument is no ill-conceived representation. There is a grandeur in the earthly king's grounding his counsels in those of the heavenly King; and in his blending his own particular act of exerted kingly sway into the general system of things in the universe. The turn from the somewhat magniloquent dissertation to the parties immediately interested—the gentle disposing, between injunction and persuasion, of Emelie's will, and the frank call upon Palamon to come forward and take possession of his happiness, are natural, princely, and full of dramatic grace. Thus,—

ChaucerLo the oke that hath so long a norishingFro the time that it ginneth first to spring,And hath so long a lif, as ye may see,Yet at the lastè wasted is the tree.Considereth eke, how that the hardè stoneUnder our feet, on which we trede and gon,It wasteth as it lieth by the way;The brodè river some time waxeth dry;The gretè tounès see we wane and wende;Then may ye see that all things hath an end.Of man and woman see we wel also,That nedès in on of the termès two,That is to sayn, in youth or ellès age,He mote be ded, the king as shall a page;Som on his bed, some on the depè see,Som in the largè field, as ye may see;Ther helpeth nought, all goth that ilkè wey;Than may I say that allè things mote dey.What maketh this but Jupiter the king?The which is prince, and cause of allè thing,Converting allè unto his propre will,From which it is derived, soth to telle.And herè againes no creature on liveOf no degree availeth for to strive.Then is it wisdom, as it thinketh me,To maken virtue of necessite,And take it wel, that we may not eschewe,And namèly that to us all is dewe.And who so grutcheth ought, he doth folie,And rebel is to him that all may gie.And certainly a man hath most honourTo dien in his excellence and flour,Whan he is siker of his goodè name.Than hath he don his friend, ne him, no shame;And glader ought his friend been of his dethWhan with honour is yelden up his breath,Than whan his name appalled is for age;For all foryetten is his vassalagèThan is it best, as for a worthy fame,To dien when a man is best of name.The contrary of all this is wilfulnesse.Why grutchen we? Why have we heavinesse,That good Arcite, of chivalry the flour,Departed is, with dutee and honour,Out of this foulè prison of this lif?Why grutchen here his cosin and his wifOf his welfare, that loven him so wel?Can he hem thank? Nay, God wot, never a del,That both his soulè, and eke himself offend,And yet they mow hir lustres not amend.What may I conclude of this longè serie,But after sorwe I rede us to be merie,And thanken Jupiter of all his grace,And er that we departen from this place,I redè that we make of sorwes twoO parfit joyè lasting evermo;And loketh now wher most sorwe is herein,Ther wol I firste amenden and begin.Sister (quod he) this is my full assent,With all the avis here of my parlement,That gentil Palamon, your owen knight,That serveth you with will, and herte and might,And ever hath done, sin ye first him knew,That ye shall of your grace upon him vew,And taken him for husbond and for lord:Lene me your hand, for this is oure accord.Let see now of your womanly pitee.He is a kingè's brother's sone pardee,And though he were a pourè bachelere,Sin he hath served you so many a yere,And had for you so gret adversitie,It mostè ben considered, leveth me.For gentil mercy oweth to passen right.Then sayd he thus to Palamon the knight:I trow ther nedeth little sermoningTo maken you assenten to this thing.Cometh ner, and take your lady by the hond.Betwixen hem was maked anon the bond,That highte matrimoine or mariage,By all the conseil of the baronage.And thus with allè blisse and melodieHath Palamon ywedded Emilie.And God, that all this widè world hath wrought,Send him his love, that hath it dere ybought.For now is Palamon in allè wele,Living in blisse, in richisse, and in hele,And Emelie him loveth so tendrely,And he hire serveth all so gentilly,That never was ther no word hem betweneOf jalousie, ne of non other tene.Thus endeth Palamon and EmilieAnd God save all this fayrè compagnie.

The whole oration is rendered by Dryden with zealous diligence in bringing out the sense into further effect, and with a magnificent sweep of composition. If there is in the fine original any thing felt as a little too stiffly formal, this impression is wholly obliterated or lost in the streaming poetry of the translator. Dryden may not, on his own score, have been much of a philosopher; but he handles a philosophical thought in verse with a dexterity that is entirely his own. The sharpness and swiftness of intellectual power concurring in him, join so much ease with so much brevity, that the poetical vein flows on unhindered, even when involved with metaphysical notions and with scholastic recollections. The comparison of the following noble strain with the original now quoted, decisively and successfully shows the character of an embellishing transformation, which we have all along attributed to Dryden's treatment of Chaucer. The full thought of the original is often but as the seed of thought to the version, or at least the ungrown plant of the one throws out the luxuriance and majesty of leaves, blossoms, and branches in the other. The growth and decay of the oak in the two, and still more of the human being, are marked instances. Dryden does not himself acknowledge the bold license which he has used in regenerating; he does himself less than justice. The worth of his work is not the giving to modern England her ancient poet, without the trouble of acquiring his language, or of learning to sympathize with his manner. It would almost seem as if that were an enterprise which there is no accomplishing. Rightly to speak, it was not Dryden's. He really undertook, from a great old poem lying before him, to write a great modern poem, which he has done; and in the new Knight's Tale, we see Dryden, the great poet—we do not see Chaucer, the greater poet. But we see in it presumptive proof that the old poem worked from was great and interesting; and we must be lazy and unprofitable students if we do not, from the proud and splendid modernization, derive a yearning and a craving towards the unknown simple antique. Unknown to us, in our first studies, as we read upward from our own day into the past glories of our vernacular literature; but which, when, with gradually mounting courage, endeavour, and acquirement, we have made our way up so far, we find

"Worthy to have not remain'd so long unknown."

So, Dryden has done honour and rendered service to his mighty predecessor—truer honour and better service—not by superseding, but by guiding and impelling towards the knowledge of the old Knight's Tale.

DrydenThe monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;Three centuries he grows, and three he stays,Supreme in state, and in three more decays:So wears the paving pebble in the street,And towns and towers their fatal periods meet:So rivers, rapid once, now naked lie,Forsaken of their springs and leave their channels dry:So man, at first a drop, dilates with heat;Then form'd the little heart begins to beat;Secret he feeds, unknowing in the cell;At length, for hatching ripe, he breaks the shell,And struggles into breath, and cries for aid;Then helpless in his mother's lap is laid.He creeps, he walks, and, issuing into man,Grudges their life, from whence his own began;Retchless of laws, affects to rule alone,Anxious to reign, and restless on the throne;First vegetive, then feels, and reasons last;Rich of three souls, and lives all three to waste.Some thus, but thousands more, in flower of age,For few arrive to run the latter stage.Sunk in the first, in battle some are slain,And others whelm'd beneath the stormy main.What makes all this but Jupiter the king,At whose command we perish, and we spring?Then 'tis our best, since thus ordain'd to die,To make a virtue of necessity;Take what he gives, since to rebel is vain;The bad grows better, which we well sustain;And could we choose the time, and choose aright,'Tis best to die, our honour at the height.When we have done our ancestors no shame,But served our friends, and well secured our fame,Then should we wish our happy life to close,And leave no more for fortune to dispose.So should we make our death a glad reliefFrom future shame, from sickness, and from grief;Enjoying, while we live, the present hour,And dying in our excellence and flower.Then round our death-bed every friend should run,And joyous of our conquest early won;While the malicious world, with envious tears,Should grudge our happy end, and wish it theirs.Since then our Arcite is with honour dead,Why should we mourn that he so soon is freed,Or call untimely what the gods decreed?With grief as just, a friend may be deplored,From a foul prison to free air restored,Ought he to thank his kinsman or his wife,Could tears recal him into wretched life?Their sorrow hurts themselves; on him is lost;And worse than both, offends his happy ghost.What then remains, but after past annoy,To take the good vicissitude of joy;To thank the gracious gods for what they give,Possess our souls, and while we live, to live?Ordain we then two sorrows to combine,And in one point the extremes of grief to join;That thence resulting joy may be renew'd,As jarring notes in harmony conclude.Then I propose, that Palamon shall beIn marriage join'd with beauteous Emily;For which already I have gain'd the assentOf my free people in full parliament.Long love to her has borne the faithful knight,And well deserved, had fortune done him right;'Tis time to mend her fault, since Emily,By Arcite's death, from former vows is free.—If you, fair sister, ratify the accord,And take him for your husband and your lord,'Tis no dishonour to confer your graceOn one descended from a royal race;And were he less, yet years of service past,From grateful souls, exact reward at last.Pity is heaven's and your's; nor can she findA throne so soft as in a woman's mind—He said: she blush'd; and, as o'erawed by might,Seem'd to give Theseus what she gave the knight.Then, turning to the Theban, thus he said:—Small arguments are needful to persuadeYour temper to comply with my command:And, speaking thus, he gave Emilia's hand.Smiled Venus to behold her own true knightObtain the conquest, though he lost the fight;And bless'd, with nuptial bliss, the sweet laborious night.Eros and Anteros, on either side,One fired the bridegroom, and one warm'd the bride;And long-attending Hymen, from above,Shower'd on the bed the whole Idalian grove.All of a tenor was their after-life,No day discolour'd with domestic strife;No jealousy, but mutual truth believedSecure repose, and kindness undeceived.Thus Heaven, beyond the compass of his thought,Sent him the blessing he so dearly bought.So may the Queen of Love long duty bless,And all true lovers find the same success.

The time is come in which a curious and instructive chapter in English criticism—a long one too, possibly—might be written on the Versification of Chaucer, and upon the history of opinions respecting it. Tyrwhitt laid the basis, in his edition of the Canterbury Tales—the only work of the ancestral poet that can yet fairly be said to have found an editor—by a text, of which the admirable diligence, fidelity, skill, and sound discretion, wrung energetic and unqualified praise from the illaudatory pen of Ritson. But the Grammar of Chaucer has yet to be fully drawn out. The profound labours of the continental scholars, late or living, on the language that was immediate mother to our own, the Anglo-Saxon, makes that which was in Tyrwhitt's day a thing impossible to be done, now almost an easy adventure. Accomplished, it would at once considerably rectify even Tyrwhitt's text. The Rules of the Verse, which are many, and evince a systematic and cautious framing, no less than a sensitive musical ear in the patriarch, would follow of themselves. In the mean time, a few observations, for which the materials lie at hand, are called for in this place, by the collision of the two great names, Chaucer and Dryden. Dryden says—