Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

NORTH

It is – but does it hold good? And if it does – with what limitations?

SEWARD

With what limitations, sir?

NORTH

I wish Lord Bacon were here, that I might ask him to explain. Take Homer and Thucydides – the Iliad and the History of the Peloponnesian War. We thus sever, at the widest, the Telling of Calliope from the Telling of Clio, holding each at the height of honour.

BULLER

At the widest?

NORTH

Yes; for how far from Thucydides is, at once, the Book of the Games! Look through the Iliad, and see how much and minute depicturing of a World with which the Historian had nothing to do! Shall the Historian, in Prose, of the Ten Years' War, stop to describe the Funeral Games of a Patroclus? Yes; if he stop to describe the Burying of every Hero who falls. But the Historian in Prose assumes that a People know their own Manners, and therefore he omits painting their manners to themselves. The Historian in Verse assumes the same thing, and, therefore, strange to say, he paints the manners! See, then, in the Iliad, how much memorising of a whole departed scheme of human existence, with which the Prose Historian had nothing to do, the Historian in regulated Metre has had the inspiration and the skill to inweave in the narrative of his ever-advancing Action.

BULLER

Would his lordship were with us!

NORTH

Give all this to – the Hexameter. Remember always, my dear Seward, the shield of Achilles – itself a world in miniature – a compendium of the world.

SEWARD

Of the universe.

NORTH

Even so; for Sun, and Moon, and Stars are there, Astronomy and all the learned sisterhood!

SEWARD

Then to what species of narrative in prose – to one removed at what interval from the history of the Peloponnesian War, belongs that scene of Helen on the Walls of Troy? That scene at the Scæan gate? In the tent of Achilles, where Achilles sits, and Priam kneels?

NORTH

Good. The general difference is obviously this – Publicity almost solely stamps the Thucydidean story – Privacy, more than in equal part, interfused with Publicity, the Homeric. You must allow Publicity and Privacy to signify, besides that which is done in public and in private, that which proceeds of the Public and of the Private will.

SEWARD

In other words, if I apprehend you aright, the Theme given being some affair of Public moment, Prose tends to gather up the acts of the individual agents, under general aspects, into masses.

NORTH

Just so. Verse, whenever it dare, resolves the mass of action into the individual acts, puts aside the collective doer – the Public, and puts forward individual persons. Glory, I say again, to the Hexameter!

BULLER

Glory to the Hexameter! The Hexameter, like the Queen, has done it all.

NORTH

Or let us return to the Paradise Lost? If the mustering of the Fallen Legions in the First Book – if the Infernal Council held in the Second – if the Angelic Rebellion and Warfare in the Fifth and Sixth – resemble Public History, civil and military, as we commonly speak – if the Seventh Book, relating the Creation by describing the kinds created, be the assumption into Heroic Poetry of Natural History – to what kind of History, I earnestly ask you both, does that scene belong, of Eve's relation of her dream, in the Fifth Book, and Adam's consolation of her uneasiness under its involuntary sin? To what, in the Fourth Book, her own innocent relation of her first impressions upon awaking into Life and Consciousness?

BULLER

Ay! – to what kind of History? More easily asked than answered.

NORTH

And Adam's relation to the Affable Archangel of his own suddenly-dawned morning from the night of non-existence, aptly and happily crowned upon the relation made to him by Raphael in the Seventh Book of his own forming under the Omnipotent Hand?

SEWARD

Simply, I venture to say, sir, to the most interior autobiography – to that confidence of audible words, which flows when the face of a friend sharpens the heart of a man – and Raphael was Adam's Friend.

NORTH

Seward, you are right. You speak well – as you always do – when you choose. Behold, then, I beseech you, the comprehending power of that little magical band —Our Accentual Iambic Pentameter.

SEWARD

"Glory be with them, and eternal praise,
The Poets who on earth have made us heirs
Of Truth and pure Delight by heavenly lays!"

NORTH

Glory to Verse, for its power is great. Man, from the garden in Eden, to the purifying by fire of the redeemed Earth – the creation of things Visible – Angels Upright and Fallen – and Higher than Angels – all the Regions of Space – Infinitude and Eternity – the Universality of Being – this is the copious matter of the Song. And herein there is place found, proper, distinct, and large, and prominent, for that whispered call to visit, in the freshness of morning, the dropping Myrrh – to study the opening beauty of the Flowers – to watch the Bee in her sweet labour – which tenderly dissipates from the lids of Eve her ominously-troubled sleep – free room for two tears, which, falling from a woman's eyes, are wiped with her hair – and for two more, which her pitying husband kisses away ere they fall. All these things Verse disposes, and composes, in One Presentment.

BULLER

Glory to Verse, for its power is great – glory to our Accentual Iambic Pentameter.

NORTH

Let us return to the Iliad. The Iliad is a history told by a mind that is arbiter, to a certain extent only, of its own facts. For Homer takes his decennial War and its Heroes, nay, the tenor of the story too, from long-descended Tradition. To his contemporary countrymen he appears as a Historian – not feigning, but commemorating and glorifying, transmitted facts.

SEWARD

Ottfried Müller, asking how far Homer is tied up in his Traditions, ventures to suspect that the names of the Heroes whom Achilles kills, in such or such a fight, are all traditionary.

NORTH