341 ON THE EPIC POETRY OF THE OUR age, among its manifold changes, has witnessed the subversion of an old, and the establishment of a new system of criticism. It is true that the progress of this revolution has been various in various countries. While in one the new principles, after a long struggle with prevailing prejudice, and a long conflict of intellect, have obtained a final and decided predominance, are embodied in elaborate codes, and recognised in general practice; while in another the contest is still only beginning, and carried on with the vigor and eagerness of reformers on the one hand, and alarmed defenders of established notions on the other; the stage of opinion at which our own country has arrived, appears to be an intermediate one between the two. Our reverence for the "rules" has indeed been grievously shaken, partly by the splendid success of a few great poets,-success obtained by adherence to a very different system; and partly by a few scattered but masterly pieces of critical writing, which, though productive of little immediate effect, have gradually, in their results, leavened the whole mass of modern criticism. On the other hand, our hereditary prejudices are far from wholly worn away; there has been no formal abolition of the ancient regime: we have no recognised authority to refer to; no man of genius, by devoting himself exclusively to this subject, has developed the laws of art in a full and perfect form. Even in the best of our reviews on these subjects, there is generally a want of preciseness, a vague aiming at truth, the expression of a certain blind feeling rather than the statement of clear principles; and as to the worse part, the writers for pay or for temporary reputation; those who wish rather to shine and to be read than to instruct and to be remembered;-all that can be said of them is, that amidst much florish, much empiricism, and much mock-learning, there is in their writings a certain tinge, a coloring mixture, of good purpose and correct perception. It is not without a consciousness of our own extreme deficiencies that we speak thus of others: we own that if a few grains of truth can be extracted from the dross of various kinds with which we fear our own attempts in this way are overcharged, it is more than can reasonably be expected; nor shall we complain, if our betterjudging readers should think fit to consign us to the same limbo to which we have adjudged the great body of our contemporaries. But a sense of our own faults should not prevent us from expressing, as it cannot prevent us from perceiving, how far astray our fellow-explorers have gone from the point which we all ought to have in view, and of which most of us have a more or less distant prospect. That a great change has, however, taken place, can now be no longer questioned. The public mind is still, indeed, in a state of much confusion and fluctuation; the elements are still tossing and blending, like those of a partially subsiding chaos; but they are no longer what they were, and it is quite evident that they cannot be brought back to what they were. The new state of feeling and belief thus produced, has developed itself in various directions. Its most striking and prominent effect is the change which it has produced in our estimation of the great modern writers. The noblest achievements of genius are no longer regarded, as under the former system they almost invariably were, as exceptions -as matter of pardon rather than of praise, like victories gained contrary to orders. We no longer talk of " snatching a grace beyond the reach of art;" there is, if not a distinct acknowlegement, yet a perception, that there can be no grace, no beauty, without the limits of art, none in truth which is not created by art; and that enactments, of which the breach may be more meritorious than the observance, are not true laws, but mere mechanical rules. The love, the admiration, which our unsophisticated perceptions call up in us at the sight of excellence, are no longer chilled and constrained by a secret misgiving of their impropriety. Dante and Ariosto, Chaucer and Shakspeare, Rabelais and Cervantes, are no longer regarded as illustrious outlaws, but honored as legitimate fellow-citizens of the great ancients, and duly-elected leaders in the republic of literature. : Not merely, however, are the comparative merits of the ancients and the moderns otherwise estimated now than at a former period we have likewise altered the relative position of the ancients among themselves. We might instance the different view which is now taken by the best critics, of what were formerly considered the absurdities and extravagances of Aristophanes; extravagances which only appear so to us, because our imaginations have been tamed down and made barren by a wrong training. But the most remarkable alteration of sentiment regards the Roman writers, and more especially the poets. There was a time when Grecian and Roman poetry were classed together as products of the same genus; when Virgil and Horace, and their contemporaries, were considered as members of the same family with their Grecian predecessors; as inferior, indeed, in vigor and richness of imagination, but as almost compensating for the defect by superior refinement and greater perfection of art. This is now no longer the We have been converted from words to things, from forms to substance, from sound to sense. With a few illustrious exceptions, who appear to have imbibed the spirit of Greece, these celebrated writers are now treated not as inferior in degree, but as differing in kind, from those with whom they were habitually associated. Their stateliness, their brilliancy of diction, and many case. collateral merits, are cheerfully acknowleged; but their claim to the true poetic laurel is resolutely denied. The Roman epic, the Roman ode, and the Roman tragedy, are regarded as spurious classes of composition, formed by an elaborate imitation of the mere outward phenomena of those truly so called: artificial flowers, resembling the true one in shape, and possessing all the merits of outward symmetry and neatness, but unctionless, and without any inward principle of life. It may be said that in this, as in all that we have said above, there is much exaggeration; that we are describing a change which is as yet only in progress; that our statement, in short, however applicable to German, is not true of English opinion. There is much justice in this. It is true that Eton and Westminster are still strong in us; that our hereditary worship of the Roman muse, our regard for even the modes and accidents of Latin poetry, and our reverence for its leading names, still counteract in a great measure the dictates of matured reason, and the lights of a truer criticism. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, without annihilating that power of early association, in which, genial as it is to our nature and beneficial in its general effects, so many errors find accidental support, where they would otherwise fall away through their own weakness? Nevertheless, here also, as in other matters, the work has begun; although, as usual in such cases, what in some is to be attributed to an intuitive sense of the truth, in others implies only a dim recognition of it, and in not a few is the result of mere imitation. Even now there are those and persons vested with authority too-who not only deny the legitimate descent of Virgil from Homer, and of Horace from Pindar, but who, even among the Romans themselves, place Catullus far above Horace, and regard Lucretius, not Virgil, as the true "princeps poëtarum Romanorum." We may therefore hope that if our speculations on the nature and value of Latin epic poetry, crude and hasty as we confess them to be, should be fortunate enough to find readers, they will be treated by some at least of those readers, not as literary heresies, but as imperfect representations of the truth. What is an epic poem? The question is easily answered, if we take popular opinion and modern practice for our guides; if we search into the truth of things, not so easily. It appears to us that there are two kinds of epic poems, one genuine, the other illegitimate; one the natural result of a certain state of cultivation, and happy predisposing circumstances; the other an afterbirth, the product of an over-refined state, originating from the endeavors of learned men in an unpoetical age to emulate the glory of their predecessors, by reconstructing, in a more elaborate and ornate manner, the outward form and circumstance of the old epic, long after the peculiar spirit, which had created and given significance to those externals, was gone. In early ages in ages of established, but still imperfect, civilisation—the current of the national intellect drives strongly towards poetry, from the absence of other channels which might divide and dissipate its newly-awakened energies. And it is no less in the course of things, that in such ages, the poetry chiefly, we may almost say exclusively cultivated, should be narrative poetry. Mankind are then quickly susceptible of impressions, but not reflective. They are not yet arrived at that state which a modern philosophical writer describes as the natural origin of the drama: "Unadorned narratives of facts, or simple lyrical effusions of feeling, can nó longer appease the hunger of a more craving intellect. Man is no longer satisfied either with things as they are, or with himself as he is; he requires that there should be presented to him a picture of the double war, which he has now discovered to be perpetually carrying on; that between the human will and external nature and fate, and that between the good and evil principles within the human will itself." As in the youth of individuals, so in that of nations, vivid pictures of human events and of external nature suffice to delight the imagination. The history, too, of such times, supplies abundance of the subjects best fitted for minstrelsy; it is simple, striking, full of rapid changes and pathetic events, calling forth the characters of individuals into undisguised display, and strongly awakening the passions of human nature. Hence the fancy of the bard pours itself forth on the subjects most interesting to his audience; the achievements of adventurous warriors in search of plunder, of a mistress, of a settlement, or of simple glory; the praises of a Hercules or a Theseus, a hero or a knight-errant, braving dangers and sufferings for the sake of public good; and other similar subjects, intermingled indeed with much supernatural fiction, but such as the opinions of the times render credible, and which is in fact little more than a translation into the language of poetry of the crude and half-unconscious philosophy of a simple age. These strains gradually become more complex in diction and rhythm; and a greater variety of adventures is embraced within the compass of a single lay. But of the further step -how the various songs relating to different parts of one and the same great story come to form themselves into an heroic poem, properly so called,-of this we shall say nothing; for our speculations on these subjects, and our acquaintance with early literary tradition, are both so scanty, as to preclude us from entering into such an investigation. Suffice it that such an operation does take place, and that some of the results of it still remain. Whether, under similar circumstances, all nations are not equally poetical, may admit of a question; but that the actual growth of poetry has not been equally successful in all countries, will be universally allowed. Whatever may be attributed to the happy climate of a country, to the lively temperament of its inhabitants, to the circumstances of its original colonisation, or to other causes, the fact is as remarkable as it is certain. No country, ancient or modern, has produced a second Iliad or Odyssey. But although these works remain, and perhaps will always remain, unrivalled in their class, they do not stand alone in that class. The Spanish Cid, the Teutonic Niebelungen, the Anglo-Saxon romance of Becwulf analysed in Mr. Conybeare's posthumous work, appear to have been formed more or less in the same manner. In our own times the Fingal and Temora of the Pseudo-Ossian, which once fascinated all Europe, and which even now have not wholly lost their popularity, were ingenious attempts at deluding the public, by getting up a mock-piece of antiquity of the same kind. It is to Greece, however, that the above observations are exclusively directed, as it was on Grecian models that the Roman poets formed themselves. Epic poetry, thus originating, rose to early perfection, and continued to florish through many ages; although of its productions, with the exception of the Homeric poems, nothing but a very few fragments remains. At length a new era ensued: the mind of man slowly, but surely, took its wonted course; arts, and sciences, and philosophy arose; the daily employments of individuals, their public relations, their habitual subjects of thought, became different; that which instructed and delighted them of old was no longer sufficient for instruction or delight. The constituent elements of heroic poetry (those of them we mean which are essential to the poetic mind, and not circum→ stantial or temporary) dispersed themselves, and entered into new forms. In the history of Herodotus, and even of Thucydides, in the drama of Eschylus, and still more of Sophocles, nay even in the lyrics of Pindar, we may trace much of what, in a former age, would have entered into the formation of a Homer. Thus the rhapsodes, like the minstrels of modern Europe, gradually lost their importance and their good repute, and at length finally died away; and of the ancient poems which had been preserved in writing, a great part would seem, even at this time, to have perished. Still, however, a few magnificent monuments reared their heads above the flood of change, preserved by their own transcendent excellence. The power of imagination and of language displayed in them, combined with the nationality of their subjects, and the great though not unmixed truths of morality and religion which they contained, gave a permanent interest to such parts of their contents as might otherwise have passed away into oblivion with other things accidental and evanescent. That they should retain the exclusive hold which they originally possessed, on the now ripened mind of Greece, was not to be expected or wished; but that they should wholly lose it, was not imaginable. Their influence indeed, and the estimation in which they were held, are evident in all the records of this period. |