Read Ebook: The Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 05 (of 12) by Hazlitt William Glover Arnold Editor Waller A R Alfred Rayney Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1150 lines and 222655 words, and 23 pages

'Thirty days hath September,' &c.

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers' ends, besides the contents of the almanac.--Pope's versification is tiresome, from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank verse is the perfection of dramatic dialogue.

All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the whole difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of the imagination or the passions.

I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have translated some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the power of poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being 'married to immortal verse.' If it is of the essence of poetry to strike and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mixture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim's Progress was never equalled in any allegory. His pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction! What deep feeling in the description of Christian's swimming across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes! The writer's genius, though not 'dipped in dews of Castalie,' was baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we say to Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the Greek hero on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place of confinement. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for ever cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him. Thus he says,

'As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate.' P. 50.

'Our poesy is as a gum Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame Provokes itself, and like the current flies Each bound it chafes.'

I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of the principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of history--Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In Homer, the principle of action or life is predominant; in the Bible, the principle of faith and the idea of Providence; Dante is a personification of blind will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life, and the lag end of the world. Homer's poetry is the heroic: it is full of life and action: it is bright as the day, strong as a river. In the vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature, and enters into all the relations of social life. He saw many countries, and the manners of many men; and he has brought them all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to battle with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal spirits: we see them before us, their number, and their order of battle, poured out upon the plain 'all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer,' covered with glittering armour, with dust and blood; while the Gods quaff their nectar in golden cups, or mingle in the fray; and the old men assembled on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer is wonderful; their splendour, their truth, their force, and variety. His poetry is, like his religion, the poetry of number and form: he describes the bodies as well as the souls of men.

Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore claim a place in this connection. His poem is the first great step from Gothic darkness and barbarism; and the struggle of thought in it to burst the thraldom in which the human mind had been so long held, is felt in every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled, on that dark shore which separates the ancient and the modern world; and saw the glories of antiquity dawning through the abyss of time, while revelation opened its passage to the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had been done before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles his poetry; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many who had gone before, or who have come after him; but there is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies like a dead weight upon the mind; a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, from the intensity of the impression; a terrible obscurity, like that which oppresses us in dreams; an identity of interest, which moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with the passions and imaginations of the human soul,--that make amends for all other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to the mind are not much in themselves, they want grandeur, beauty, and order; but they become every thing by the force of the character he impresses upon them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to the flowery and glittering; who relies most on his own power, and the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the imagination of his readers. Dante's only endeavour is to interest; and he interests by exciting our sympathy with the emotion by which he is himself possessed. He does not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been created; but he seizes on the attention, by shewing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation, which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst of the obscure and shadowy regions of the lower world, a tomb suddenly rises up with the inscription, 'I am the tomb of Pope Anastasius the Sixth': and half the personages whom he has crowded into the Inferno are his own acquaintance. All this, perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the bold intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the individual knowledge and experience of the reader. He affords few subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted.

Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first vigour and lustihed, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He lives only in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one impression which he conveys more entirely than all other poets, namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of good name, of country--he is even without God in the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed; with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his head; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale; and the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a mock-embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were indeed possible to shew that this writer was nothing, it would only be another instance of mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often complain, 'Roll on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian!'

LECTURE II ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER

Having, in the former Lecture, given some account of the nature of poetry in general, I shall proceed, in the next place, to a more particular consideration of the genius and history of English poetry. I shall take, as the subject of the present lecture, Chaucer and Spenser, two out of four of the greatest names in poetry, which this country has to boast. Both of them, however, were much indebted to the early poets of Italy, and may be considered as belonging, in a certain degree, to the same school. The freedom and copiousness with which our most original writers, in former periods, availed themselves of the productions of their predecessors, frequently transcribing whole passages, without scruple or acknowledgment, may appear contrary to the etiquette of modern literature, when the whole stock of poetical common-places has become public property, and no one is compelled to trade upon any particular author. But it is not so much a subject of wonder, at a time when to read and write was of itself an honorary distinction, when learning was almost as great a rarity as genius, and when in fact those who first transplanted the beauties of other languages into their own, might be considered as public benefactors, and the founders of a national literature.--There are poets older than Chaucer, and in the interval between him and Spenser; but their genius was not such as to place them in any point of comparison with either of these celebrated men; and an inquiry into their particular merits or defects might seem rather to belong to the province of the antiquary, than be thought generally interesting to the lovers of poetry in the present day.

It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in severe activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary, Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man of business and the world. His poetry reads like history. Every thing has a downright reality; at least in the relator's mind. A simile, or a sentiment, is as if it were given in upon evidence. Thus he describes Cressid's first avowal of her love.

'And as the new abashed nightingale, That stinteth first when she beginneth sing, When that she heareth any herde's tale, Or in the hedges any wight stirring, And after, sicker, doth her voice outring; Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent Open'd her heart, and told him her intent.'

This is so true and natural, and beautifully simple, that the two things seem identified with each other. Again, it is said in the Knight's Tale--

'Thus passeth yere by yere, and day by day, Till it felle ones in a morwe of May, That Emelie that fayrer was to sene Than is the lilie upon his stalke grene; And fresher than the May with floures newe, For with the rose-colour strof hire hewe: I n'ot which was the finer of hem two.'

This scrupulousness about the literal preference, as if some question of matter of fact was at issue, is remarkable. I might mention that other, where he compares the meeting between Palamon and Arcite to a hunter waiting for a lion in a gap;--

'That stondeth at a gap with a spere, Whan hunted is the lion or the bere, And hereth him come rushing in the greves, And breking both the boughes and the leves:'--

or that still finer one of Constance, when she is condemned to death:--

'Have ye not seen somtime a pale face of him that hath been lad Toward his deth, wheras he geteth no grace, And swiche a colour in his face hath had, Men mighten know him that was so bestad, Amonges all the faces in that route; So stant Custance, and loketh hire aboute.'

The beauty, the pathos here does not seem to be of the poet's seeking, but a part of the necessary texture of the fable. He speaks of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what has happened to himself, or has had the best information from those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that which would be interesting to the persons really concerned: yet as he never omits any material circumstance, he is prolix from the number of points on which he touches, without being diffuse on any one; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity with which he adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his story is composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, and rivetted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account of Palamon when left alone in his cell:

'Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour Resouned of his yelling and clamour: The pure fetters on his shinnes grete Were of his bitter salte teres wete.'

The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the instructions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power to leave out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace and beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked object, with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not for ornament, but use, and as like as possible to the things themselves. He does not affect to shew his power over the reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over his own. The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons he describes must have felt, than perhaps those of any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet's fancy, but founded on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no 'babbling gossip of the air,' fluent and redundant; but, like a stammerer, or a dumb person, that has just found the use of speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none of the common-places of poetic diction in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope our way; so that his descriptions have a sort of tangible character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and discrimination of character; and his interest in what he saw gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. The picturesque and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment. There is a meaning in what he sees; and it is this which catches his eye by sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims--of the Knight-the Squire--the Oxford Scholar--the Gap-toothed Wife of Bath, and the rest, speak for themselves. To take one or two of these at random:

'There was also a nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy; Hire gretest othe n'as but by seint Eloy: And she was cleped Madame Eglentine. Ful wel she sange the service divine Entuned in hire nose ful swetely; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe. At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle; She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.

? ? ? ? ?

And sikerly she was of great disport, And ful plesant, and amiable of port, And peined hire to contrefeten chere Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, And to ben holden digne of reverence. But for to speken of hire conscience, She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, Or if men smote it with a yerde smert: And all was conscience and tendre herte. Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was; Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas; Hire mouth ful smale; and therto soft and red; But sickerly she hadde a fayre forehed. It was almost a spanne brode, I trowe.

A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, An out-rider, that loved venerie: A manly man, to ben an abbot able. Ful many a deinte hors hadde he in stable: And whan he rode, men mighte his bridel here, Gingeling in a whistling wind as clere, And eke as loude, as doth the chapell belle, Ther as this lord was keper of the celle. The reule of Seint Maure and of Seint Beneit, Because that it was olde and somdele streit, This ilke monk lette olde thinges pace, And held after the newe world the trace. He yave not of the text a pulled hen, That saith, that hunters ben not holy men;-- Therfore he was a prickasoure a right: Greihoundes he hadde as swift as foul of flight: Of pricking and of hunting for the hare Was all his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.

I saw his sleves purfiled at the hond With gris, and that the finest of the lond. And for to fasten his hood under his chinne, He had of gold ywrought a curious pinne: A love-knotte in the greter end ther was. His bed was balled, and shone as any glas, And eke his face, as it hadde ben anoint. He was a lord ful fat and in good point. His eyen stepe, and rolling in his hed, That stemed as a forneis of a led. His botes souple, his hors in gret estat, Now certainly he was a fayre prelat. He was not pale as a forpined gost. A fat swan loved he best of any rost. His palfrey was as broune as is a bery.'

The Serjeant at Law is the same identical individual as Lawyer Dowling in Tom Jones, who wished to divide himself into a hundred pieces, to be in a hundred places at once.

'No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as, And yet he semed besier than he was.'

The Frankelein, in 'whose hous it snewed of mete and drinke'; the Shipman, 'who rode upon a rouncie, as he couthe'; the Doctour of Phisike, 'whose studie was but litel of the Bible'; the Wif of Bath, in

'All whose parish ther was non, That to the offring before hire shulde gon, And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, That she was out of alle charitee;'

--the poure Persone of a toun, 'whose parish was wide, and houses fer asonder'; the Miller, and the Reve, 'a slendre colerike man,' are all of the same stamp. They are every one samples of a kind; abstract definitions of a species. Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men, as Linnaeus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to this day: others that are obsolete, and may well be dispensed with, still live in his descriptions of them. Such is the Sompnoure:

'A Sompnoure was ther with us in that place, That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face, For sausefleme he was, with eyen narwe, As hote he was, and likerous as a sparwe, With scalled browes blake, and pilled berd: Of his visage children were sore aferd. Ther n'as quicksilver, litarge, ne brimston, Boras, ceruse, ne oile of tartre non, Ne oinement that wolde clense or bite, That him might helpen of his whelkes white, Ne of the knobbes sitting on his chekes. Wel loved he garlike, onions, and lekes, And for to drinke strong win as rede as blood. Than wolde he speke, and crie as he were wood. And whan that he wel dronken had the win, Than wold he speken no word but Latin. A fewe termes coude he, two or three, That he had lerned out of som decree; No wonder is, he heard it all the day.-- In danger hadde he at his owen gise The yonge girles of the diocise, And knew hir conseil, and was of hir rede. A gerlond hadde he sette upon his hede As gret as it were for an alestake: A bokeler hadde he made him of a cake. With him ther rode a gentil Pardonere-- That hadde a vois as smale as hath a gote.'

The descriptions of the equipage, and accoutrements of the two kings of Thrace and Inde, in the Knight's Tale, are as striking and grand, as the others are lively and natural:

'Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace: Blake was his berd, and manly was his face. The cercles of his eyen in his hed They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red, And like a griffon loked he about, With kemped heres on his browes stout; His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge, His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe. And as the guise was in his contree, Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he, With foure white bolles in the trais. Instede of cote-armure on his harnais, With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold, He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old. His longe here was kempt behind his bak, As any ravenes fether it shone for blake. A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight, Upon his hed sate full of stones bright, Of fine rubins and of diamants. About his char ther wenten white alauns, Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere, To hunten at the leon or the dere, And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound.-- With Arcita, in stories as men find, The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde, Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele, Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele, Came riding like the god of armes Mars. His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars, Couched with perles, white, and round and grete. His sadel was of brent gold new ybete; A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling. His crispe here like ringes was yronne, And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne. His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin, His lippes round, his colour was sanguin, A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint, Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint, And as a leon he his loking caste. Of five and twenty yere his age I caste. His berd was wel begonnen for to spring; His vois was as a trompe thondering. Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene. Upon his hond he bare for his deduit An egle tame, as any lily whit.-- About this king ther ran on every part Ful many a tame leon and leopart.'

What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description! The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we look at wild beasts in a menagerie; their claws are pared, their eyes glitter like harmless lightning; but we gaze at them with a pleasing awe, clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power.

'Which as me thought was right a pleasing sight, And eke the briddes song for to here, Would haue rejoyced any earthly wight, And I that couth not yet in no manere Heare the nightingale of all the yeare, Ful busily herkened with herte and with eare, If I her voice perceiue coud any where.

And I that all this pleasaunt sight sie, Thought sodainly I felt so sweet an aire Of the eglentere, that certainely There is no herte I deme in such dispaire, Ne with thoughts froward and contraire, So ouerlaid, but it should soone haue bote, If it had ones felt this savour sote.

And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, I was ware of the fairest medler tree That ever yet in all my life I sie As full of blossomes as it might be, Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet Here and there of buds and floures sweet.

And to the herber side was joyning This faire tree, of which I haue you told, And at the last the brid began to sing, Whan he had eaten what he eat wold, So passing sweetly, that by manifold It was more pleasaunt than I coud deuise, And whan his song was ended in this wise,

The nightingale with so merry a note Answered him, that all the wood rong So sodainly, that as it were a sote, I stood astonied, so was I with the song Thorow rauished, that till late and long, I ne wist in what place I was, ne where, And ayen me thought she song euen by mine ere.

Wherefore I waited about busily On euery side, if I her might see, And at the last I gan full well aspie Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree, On the further side euen right by me, That gaue so passing a delicious smell, According to the eglentere full well.

Whereof I had so inly great pleasure, That as me thought I surely rauished was Into Paradice, where my desire Was for to be, and no ferther passe As for that day, and on the sote grasse, I sat me downe, for as for mine entent, The birds song was more conuenient,

And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, Than meat or drinke, or any other thing, Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, The wholesome sauours eke so comforting, That as I demed, sith the beginning Of the world was neur seene or than So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.

And as I sat the birds harkening thus, Me thought that I heard voices sodainly, The most sweetest and most delicious That euer any wight I trow truly Heard in their life, for the armony And sweet accord was in so good musike, That the uoice to angels was most like.'

There is here no affected rapture, no flowery sentiment: the whole is an ebullition of natural delight 'welling out of the heart,' like water from a crystal spring. Nature is the soul of art: there is a strength as well as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on nature, that nothing else can supply. It was the same trust in nature, and reliance on his subject, which enabled Chaucer to describe the grief and patience of Griselda; the faith of Constance; and the heroic perseverance of the little child, who, going to school through the streets of Jewry,

and who after his death still triumphed in his song. Chaucer has more of this deep, internal, sustained sentiment, than any other writer, except Boccaccio. In depth of simple pathos, and intensity of conception, never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer comes near him, not even the Greek tragedians. I wish to be allowed to give one or two instances of what I mean. I will take the following from the Knight's Tale. The distress of Arcite, in consequence of his banishment from his love, is thus described:

'Whan that Arcite to Thebes comen was, Ful oft a day he swelt and said Alas, For sene his lady shall be never mo. And shortly to concluden all his wo, So mochel sorwe hadde never creature, That is or shall be, while the world may dure. His slepe, his mete, his drinke is him byraft. That lene he wex, and drie as is a shaft. His eyen holwe, and grisly to behold, His hewe salwe, and pale as ashen cold, And solitary he was, and ever alone, And wailing all the night, making his mone. And if he herde song or instrument, Than wold he wepe, he mighte not be stent. So feble were his spirites, and so low, And changed so, that no man coude know His speche ne his vois, though men it herd.'

This picture of the sinking of the heart, of the wasting away of the body and mind, of the gradual failure of all the faculties under the contagion of a rankling sorrow, cannot be surpassed. Of the same kind is his farewel to his mistress, after he has gained her hand and lost his life in the combat:

'Alas the wo! alas the peines stronge, That I for you have suffered, and so longe! Alas the deth! alas min Emilie! Alas departing of our compagnie: Alas min hertes quene! alas my wif! Min hertes ladie, ender of my lif! What is this world? what axen men to have? Now with his love, now in his colde grave Alone withouten any compagnie.'

The death of Arcite is the more affecting, as it comes after triumph and victory, after the pomp of sacrifice, the solemnities of prayer, the celebration of the gorgeous rites of chivalry. The descriptions of the three temples of Mars, of Venus, and Diana, of the ornaments and ceremonies used in each, with the reception given to the offerings of the lovers, have a beauty and grandeur, much of which is lost in Dryden's version. For instance, such lines as the following are not rendered with their true feeling.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet