Addison concludes his series of eloquent, S, DH KHET "I have now finished my observatios in a VIS VER be a English nation. I have taken a geners, then if I me the fable, the characters, the sentiments, and the imagiare tante n spoken of the censures which our site mat neie mur met it the which I might have enlarged the row her if I had been depent 3 cas grateful a subject. I believe, bwener, then little fault in heroic poetry, which this sumber me ila me t under one of these heads, among which I have szünet ne "After having thus treated an acre of Faie L. I sufficient to have celebrated this poem in the wIDE, VANIT IS lars: I have therefore endeavoured at my jee that the e general, but to point out its particular beams, vt a mente v consist. I have endeavoured to show how I pass sublime; others by being soft; sabers by beng tak lact of them a mended by the passion; which by the meta - VIC 19 De Sammen by the expression. I have Skewise enderet a show now de poet shines by a happy invention, a distant alsın. I LÚCas had copied or improved Homer or Virgin at rases is ver Í have here cited enough to draw again the amendm of the elegant and exquisite author, whom the mice recent fame of sec ¦ chaste, and, as it seems to me, mare signal. è men's come in Eba of verbiage: he has none of that nice, delicate, mi sestre İSTEDA delights in Addison; those touches of the heart; the miret servations; those flashes of posted and expuste nume. Se on as a pedagogue, and silences by his earness or of 130 Thu 1 sure him in a "Life of Milton," whom he is an FITUS That literature as malignity of temper. And what is the virit of the True Tr has affected to counteract his scoffs and his arista disques end he mium of a predecessor, whose principles of poetry be was one of the tenor of his own judgments through the series of poesien es et composing. Examine the rules by which Audsin me zes the terms of qu in the successive books of Paradise Lost: vil de ras IF Sti on the poets whom he has criticised abode these sess! Bomen at m poetical invention, for imagery, or for sentiment : his vine in fasea what he called ratiocination in verse, the Dryden ant Pige we usmene kav sITOR. I remember how he shocked the taste and the rest of the term imaginative classes of his poetical readers, when he ↑ Lines the fashion of the day; and the attempt was TEST 31 AL 1e use were stunned by his coarseness; and the wordings aut de in their triumph. An epigrammatic point, an seservice mine a can be felt and repeated by every pert depetant in sicer: but I from a great poet, and it draws sneers or riderne ? Johnson's work did great injury to the national tame: aut ten this day. Imagination, repressed in its proper test free #TAE places: it has become fantastic and distorted, in seeing - I become unnatural. In the search for novelty we sugi taga mnen inter or improbabilities: nothing should be extravagant; wing BECOME are to imagine what may be ; but which is at the ste me gut, vau.fu pathetic. We are to take advantage of the dim hints of remote history, to fill up the details with the marvellous, the sublime, and the fair. Poetry deals more with the imaginationthan the understanding; but it must not outrage the understanding. Some contend that Johnson had imagination: if he had, it was the imagination of big and vague words: all his "Rasselas " consists of generalisations: it is little more than a series of moral observations; sometimes powerful or plaintive; too often pompous and verbose, where triteness is covered by grandiloquence. On a few occasions he may have been picturesque-especially in his "Journey to the Hebrides;" but very rarely. Sounding words are easily put together by one long practised in literary composition. He has given no proof of distinct images; of that power of selecting the leading feature, which revives the whole object, and which, above all others, Milton and Shakspeare possessed; and which distinguishas the epithets in Gray's "Elegy," and Collins's "Ode to Evening." Johnson not only could not invent such, but his mind had no mirror for them when they were presented by others; it gave him no pleasure to muse upon them. He had the faculty of powerful reason and strong memory; but the materials of thought afforded by his fancy were sterile and few: he loved therefore society and busy manners for the purposes of observation; in solitude he was miserable: he had no relief from painful recollections. It is thus, in part, that we may account for his distaste of Milton. When he praised, the praise was extorted, and borrowed under the powerful authority of a mightier critic. CHAPTER XXII, THE MERITS OF MILTON COMPARED WITH THOSE OF OTHER POETS. It is universally admitted that the primary and most essential quality of a poet is invention; but it must be invention also of a sublime or beautiful kind; and, to be perfect, it must display this excellence in fable, characters, sentiments, and language. Of all our English poets, Milton only has combined all these merits. Shakspeare wanted the first, though he was admirable in the last three. What invention of fable, or even of character, is there in Dryden or Pope? I can hardly think that strictly they have invention of sentiments; for these are by them drawn from observation. Spenser attained the marvellous in pure invention; but his fictions go beyond nature, and outrage our faith. Chaucer's tales are rarely, if ever original: they are principally borrowed from the Italians, or from old romances. Sackville's famous legend is historical. The productions of subsequent poems of the best fame,-I do not speak of the living,-are too brief for much fable, except of Lord Byron: but whatever splendours Lord Byron had, his fables are generally extravagant. In Cowley, Waller, Denham, Prior, Thomson, Collins, Gray, Young, Akenside, Shenstone, Cowper, Burns, Beattie, the Wartons, Kirke White, Shelley,* Coleridge, there was no fable. In Crabbe were short fables;-but if they did not want nature, they wanted dignity: they were colloquial and monotonous. Hayley had nothing of the force of fiction ;-all his incidents were unpoetical. Thus it is, that before the sun of Milton, all other stars are paled,-unless of Homer and Virgil;-and what is there in the fable of these two that can stand before the divine brightness of the bard of angels ? With regard to characters,-invention of such as are at once true to nature, and yet grand, or attractive, is very rare. Those of Dryden and Pope are portraits,— copied from individuals: they are admirable as portraits :-but they have not the sublimity of poetic invention; they have frail humanity for their types. They have not the magnificence of Satan and his brother rebels, still less of the good angels, nor the purity and beauty of Adam and Eve. Where there is not invention, there cannot be adequate grandeur. Experience and reality fall short of our ideal greatness. We can always imagine higher things than we observe; and give full evidence to that imagination :-but not if it exceeds probability,- -or at least possibility.-Incredulus odi.-Shakspeare, having conceived a character, always preserves it; as Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet, &c. Each electrifies by acting appropriately: but this can never be effected by drawing * Sir Walter Scott requires an examination peculiar to himself. By the jaate of the media Ten dary ideas, is not a HA DE and decoration —A ES JOCS no contexture of fate be to fade at al the want of fable, or charades. Characters and sentim S they are comparative festie. I not head and heart are operated no ir të më the absence of inventin- & nu mai ten 11 only by themselves. The absence of falle. Les & a se disqualify a candidate for a of the Lock" be pleaded in Pune ness nor nature: it is a sportine trifle, we for exquisite artifice: a laboured rem of fila The power of language must ut be warning requisites. It cannot be truly good where the tot times wanting where the thought a mood to a tuc ý vim the lence is most easily strained; and white TUS 20 Flowing language is the taste of super ult be cause they only regard the ornament, anÉ CAI TARE IL 14 If there be deep thought into the barran. Ismet Let us suppose, what I am afraid is true tu fai voluntary taste of common intellect I a apr 1 Dr to attain the advantages of a critivated edunten, sout them by labour and care his subdity, his beauty, and be only improve, but acquire taste by patient lessons. By distinctly studying the genuine purposes of poetry; by having pointed out to us in whom the chief merit lies; by learning in what it consists; by clear definitions and demonstrative explanations; by examples precisely applicable; by calm reasoning; by unexaggerated praise, we may assist and lead the popular opinion and sympathy. There will always be books of bad criticism,-books proceeding not only from a vicious judgment or mean taste, but from interested motives; and these will have the more effect, because they flatter the opinions and failings of the vulgar: but they ought not to go uncounteracted: what is repeated without contradiction is soon taken to be a truth. The true principles of poetical invention laid down by Addison are incontrovertible; but they are not such as are assumed by common critics,-who deem the improbable and the extravagant a greater proof of genius than the natural ;-who, at the same time, like a tale of familiar life better than a tale of genuine grandeur; and who consider a piquant epigram on the manners of daily occurrence a better proof of intellect and sagacity than an epic poem. I know not why vulgarity should be considered natural; but, if it be so, there is a high nature also, as well as a low nature, and poets are bound to choose the best. The characters, the sentiments, the language-all must follow the tone and colours of the fable. In choosing his fable, therefore, Milton felt conscious of his own gigantic power. Any other mind would have shrunk from the hope to sustain the other requisites at the same height. Homer or Virgil might find no difficulty in supporting the career of Achilles, Hector, or Æneas; but how different the case of the first two of human beings before the Fall; or of their seducer, the rebel angel-Satan! There is copious and diversified invention in the Fairy Queen; but it wants unity, and unbroken progression to one definite end. It is almost like a collection of episodes: the tales are concurrent rather than consecutive.-Under all the influences of chivalry, when it was not yet extinct, the mind might be brought to have a poetical belief of those tales as allegories; but that belief can scarcely be sustained now that the feudal ages have passed away. Even in Spenser's own age, he often verged on the bounds of what the mind would then deem extravagant. Our poetical belief in "Paradise Lost" is cherished by our belief in Scripture. It is miraculous that he never offends the imagination, considering our habitual awe on such subjects. Dante is often sublime as he is gloomy, and has a grand and vast imaginative invention; but he has no combination and unity of fable; and he has only sketches and outlines rather than finished characters. His sentiments are sometimes obscure, and there is a mass of crude and irrelevant intermixtures: it is something of a chaos of mighty fragments, rather than a regular building of finished Gothic architecture. Of Milton, all the parts are exactly disposed, and none left imperfect : they are all of the same date, in the same style, and in the most graceful proportions. Beautiful poetry, with an equal regard to the four essential principles, may be written on a far humbler subject than Milton's: but where is it now to be found? -and why has it not been written! One cause I would assign is this, that false criticism chills it. Technical critics require technical excellences: they like finer work, and gaudy colours, and varnish: they pay little regard to the solid ore; they look to the mechanical workmanship: there must be a flower here, and a piece of gold-leaf there; and all must be polished into one uniform model till it shines, and sparkles, and dazzles: or, on the other hand, it must be full of such wonders as were never heard or thought of before ;-raving expressions, irregular and dissonant numbers, and an affected sort of madness, which is called originality and invention! Since the bursting forth of the French Revolution in 1789, we have had a great deal of this it has begun to subside; better criticisms and wiser times are come. Nothing unnatural and monstrous has ever long kept its hold on the public taste. Addison's rules are so founded on eternal reason, that they never can be shaken. There cannot be true poetry of a high order without invention of fable, characters, and sentiments, and those having such qualities as the critic demands. A fantastic invention is the invention of a madman: it is not genius! The purpose of poetry is to convey exalted truths through the medium of feigned examples: if it gives no instruction, one requisite of prime poetry is wanting. They who only deal in decorative poetry, produce flowers without fruits; and, generally, only artificial flowers. the spiritual, the ideal. This may allow The yet it cannot be denied that there as e das in the story being singular, there was in 50 book of his Reason of Chart Setements 20 Aristotle were not always string in be sept UTE DAT D that the Book of Job might be exasHÚTHC 1 * 1 However we may rebel against the permSA I L trary, we must consider the greater pain of sai and so far not to be departed fr Traj spiritual, is indispensables poetry. For the Tide nor is the narrative of what is tranin I am fully aware what will be the ciples: it will exclude a great part of its to the height of an invested caramen verte et ne Here is no fable; here are 1 timates of poetry; because in this con person the mute ges how few have strength of wing fie te in the air: in those ethereal rae funt VLS A |