Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846

"Donec gratus eram tibi."

Horace.
When I was all in all to you,
Nor yet more favour'd youthful minion
His arms around your fair neck threw;
Not Persia's boasted monarch knew
More bless'd a state, more large dominion.

Lydia.
And whilst you loved but only me,
Nor then your Lydia stood the second,
And Chloe first, in love's degree;
I thought myself a queen to be,
Nor greater Roman Ilia reckon'd.

Horace.
Now Cretan Chloe rules me quite;
Skill'd in the lyre and every measure,
For whom I'd die this very night,
If but the Fates, in death's despite,
Would Chloe spare, my soul's best treasure.

Lydia.
Me Caläis, Ornytus' young heir!
(The flame is mutual we discover,)
For whom to die two deaths I'd dare,
If the stern Fates would only spare,
And he could live, my youthful lover.

Horace.
What – if our former love restore
Our bonds, too firm for aught to sever, —
I shake off Chloe; and the door
To Lydia open flies once more;
Returning Lydia, and for ever.

Lydia.
He, though a beauteous star – you light
As cork, and rough as stormy weather,
That vexes Adria's raging might,
With you to live were my delight,
And willing should we die together.

So this is the offending ode! Was the proposition to be constant not quite agreeable to the French editor? Or was he in Horace's probable condition, getting a little up in years? See you, it is a youthful rival, Juvenis, who troubles him. And Lydia takes care to throw in this ingredient, the "sweet age." He is not old Ornytus – a hint of comparison with Horace himself – but his son; indeed, he is hardly Juvenis, for she soon calls him her dear boy, as much as to say, "You are old enough to be his father!" She carries out this idea, too, seeming to say, "You may love Chloe – I dare say you do; but, does Chloe love you? Whereas our passion is mutual."

Our poet, delightful and wise as he generally is, was not wise to match his wit against that of a woman, and an offended beauty. How miserably he comes off in every encounter! He would die, forsooth! once – she would die twice over! There is a hit in his very liver! And as to the survivorship of Chloe, that she suggests, considering their ages, might be very natural – but she doubts if her youth could survive should she die; though she even came to life again, a second time to die, it would be of no use. What could the foolish poet do after that? Nothing – but make up the quarrel in the best way he might. He drops his ears, is a little sulky still – most men are so in these affairs – seldom generous in love. To pretend to be so is only to encroach on woman's sweet and noble prerogative, and to assume her great virtue. No man could keep it up long; he would naturally fall into his virile sulks. So Horace does not at once open his arms that his Lydia may fall into them – but stands hesitatingly, rather foolish, his hands behind him, and puts forward the supposition If– that graceless peace-maker. Lydia, on the contrary – all love, all generosity, is in his arms at once; for he must at the moment bring them forward, whether he will for love or no, or Lydia would fall. It is now she looks into his very eyes, and only playfully, as quizzing his jealousy, reminds him of her Caläis, her star of beauty; thus sweetly reproving and as sweetly forgiving the temper of her Horace – for he is her Horace still – and who can wonder at that? She will bear with all – will live, will die with him. I look, Eusebius, upon this ode as a real consolation to your lovers of an ambiguous and querulous age. Seeing what we are daily becoming, it is a comfort to think that, should such untoward persons make themselves disagreeable to all else of human kind, there will be, nevertheless, to each, one confiding loving creature, to put them in conceit with themselves, and make them, notwithstanding their many perversities, believe that they are unoffending male angels, and die in the bewildering fancy that they are still loveable.

I have little more to say, but that, having been lately in a versifying mood, I have set to rhyme your story of the cook and the lottery ticket; and herein I have avoided that malicious propensity of our numerous tellers of stories, whose only pleasure, as it appears to me, lies in the plunging the heroes and heroines of their tales into inextricable troubles and difficulties, and in continuing them in a state of perplexity beyond the power of human sufferance; and who slur over their unexpected, and generally ill-contrived escape, as a matter of small importance; and with an envy of human happiness, like the fiend who sat scowling on the bliss of Eden, either leave them with sinister intentions, or absolutely drive them out of the Paradise which they have so lately prepared for them.

I have lately been reading a very interesting, well conceived in many respects, and pathetic novel, which, nevertheless, errs in this; and I even think the pathos is injured by the last page, which is too painful for tenderness, which appears the object of the able author. A monumental effigy is but the mockery of all life's doings, which are thus, with their sorrows and their joys, rendered nugatory; and all that we have been reading, and are interested about, is unnecessarily presented to us as dust and ashes. Such is the tale of Mount Sorrel.

Perhaps, too, I might say of this, and of other novels of the same kind, that there is in them an unhealthy egotism; a Byronism of personal feelings; an ingenious invention of labyrinth meandering into the mazes of the mind and of the affections, in which there is always bewilderment, and the escape is rather lucky than foreseen. Such was not the mode adopted heretofore by more vigorous writers, who preferred exhibiting the passions by action, and a few simple touches, which came at once to the heart, without the necessity of unravelling the mismazes of their course. If Achilles had made a long speech in Elysium about his feelings, and attempted to describe them, when his question, if his son excelled in glory, was happily answered, we should have thought less of him for his egotism, and had much less perfect knowledge of the real man's heart and soul. Homer simply tells us, that he walked away, with great strides, greatly rejoicing. I can remember, at this moment, but one tale in which this style of descriptive searchings into the feelings is altogether justifiable – Godwin's "Caleb Williams;" for there the ever instant terror, varying by the natural activity and ingenuity of the mind, which, upon the one pressing point, feverishly hurries into new, and all possible channels of thought, requires this pervading absolutism. It is the Erynnis of a bygone creed, in a renovated form of persecuting fatalism, brought to sport with the daily incidents and characters of modern life.

I do not wish to be tempted by this course of thought into lengthened criticism; which I should not have touched upon, had I not thought it proper to tell you that I have added a conclusion to your tale. Ever wishing a continuation of the happiness of two human beings, beyond that location in the story, where most spiteful authors leave them, the Church door.

I have been reading, too, over again two of Sir Walter Scott's novels, "Guy Mannering" and "Ivanhoe." How different they are, both in design and execution! The former, in all respects perfect – the latter, in design common-place, and but little enlarged from the old ballad tales of Robin Hood, and histories of the Crusaders; very slovenly in diction, and lengthened out by tiresome repetitions; the same things being told in protracted dialogues which had been previously narrated in the historic course. Then there are very ill-timed interruptions, and wearisome disquisitions, just where they should not be. Yet are there passages of perfect excellence, that prove the master-hand of the author. The novel of "Ivanhoe" seems to resemble some of those plays which, though doubtful, are called Shakspeare's, because it is evident that the master-hand has passed over them, and left touches both of thought and character which justify the position which they enjoy. Rebecca is all in all. The other characters somewhat fail to interest. Ivanhoe himself says but little, and is in fact not much developed. We are disgusted, and unnecessarily, at every turn with Athelstane – there was no occasion for making him this degraded glutton. It seems a clumsy contrivance to break off his marriage with Rowena; and surely the boast of his eating propensities, when he shows himself to his astonished mourners escaped from the death and tomb prepared for him, is unnatural, and throws a contempt and ridicule over the whole scene. Richard and Robin Hood (or Locksley) are not characters of Sir Walter's creation – Richard is, we may suppose, truly portrayed. My friend S – , Eusebius, who, while I was suffering under influenza, read these novels out to me, was offended at a little passage towards the end, where the author steps out of the action of his dramatic piece, to tell you that King Richard did not live to fulfil the benevolent promises he had a line or two before been making; and I entirely agree with S – , and felt the unseemly and untimely intelligence as he read it. This would scarcely be justifiable in a note, but in the body of the work it shocks as a plague-spot on the complexion of health. This practice, too common in novelists, especially the "historical," becoming their own marplots, deserves censure. To borrow from another art, it is like marring a composition, by an uncomfortable line or two running out of the picture, and destroying the completeness. I know not if that fine scene, perhaps the most masterly in Ivanhoe, has ever been painted, where, after the defeat of De Bois-Guilbert, and after that Richard had broken in upon the court, the Grand Master draws off in the repose of stern submission his haughty Knights Templars. The slow procession finely contrasts with the taunting violence of Richard; and what a background is offered to the painter – the variously moved multitude, the rescued Rebecca, and the dead (though scarcely defeated) Templar!

Sir Walter, although an antiquarian, was not perhaps aware that he was somewhat out in his chronology in connecting Robin Hood and his men with Richard the First. It is made very clear in an able essay in the Westminster Review, that Robin Hood's name and fame did not commence till after the defeat of Simon de Montfort in the battle of Evesham. In fact, Robin Hood was more of a political outlaw – one of the outlawed, after that defeat, than a mere sylvan robber. Sir Walter Scott has taken advantage of the general belief, gathered from many of our old ballads, in an intercourse between Robin Hood and England's king. But according to the oldest of the ballads, (or rather poems, for it is too long for a ballad, and composed of many parts,) The Lyttel Geste of Robin Hood, this king of England was Edward the First; so that the existence of the "bold outlaw" is antedated by the author of Ivanhoe upwards of seventy years. This, however, does not affect the story, excepting to those who entertain the fond fancy, that when they read an historical novel they read history.[1 - It is a dangerous thing to touch upon chronology. It is said of the great Duke of Marlborough, that in a conversation respecting the first introduction of cannon, he quoted Shakspeare to prove that it was in the reign of John."O prudent discipline from north to south,Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth."Yes, said his adversary, but you quote Shakspeare, not history.] Do you wonder, Eusebius, at my chronological learning? You well may; it must appear to you a very unexpected commodity. The truth is, my attention has been directed to this very matter by my antiquarian friend M'Gutch of Worcester, who not only pointed out to me the essay in the Westminster, but, finding my curiosity excited, sent me many of the ballads, Robin Hood's garlands, and The Lyttel Geste, together with an able introduction of his own to a new edition of the collection he is about to produce, with which you will be delighted, and learn all that is to be known; and it is more than you would expect to meet with about this "gentle robber."

S – , to whom I read the foregoing remarks on Ivanhoe, said, I ought to do penance for the criticism. I left the penance to his choice; and, like a true friend, he imposed a pleasure; I do not say, Eusebius, that if left to myself I should have been a Franciscan. He took up Marmion, and read it from beginning to end. It is indeed a noble poem. Will not the day come, when Sir Walter's poems will be more read than his novels, good though they be?

In his poetry Scott always reminds me of Homer. There is the same energy ever working to the one simple purpose – the same spontaneity and belief in its own tale; and diversity of character for relief's sake is common to both. In reading Homer we must discard all our school notions; we began to read with difficulty; the task was a task, though it was true we warmed in it – the thread was broken a thousand times; and we too often pictured to ourselves the old bard in his gravity of beard and age – not in that vigour, that freshness of manhood, which is conspicuous in both poems, at whatever age they were composed.

I have had the curiosity, Eusebius, to enquire of very many real scholars, who have professed to keep up their Greek after leaving the universities, if they have re-read Homer in Greek, and almost all have confessed that they had not. They read him in Pope and Cowper. Let them read him offhand, and fluently, continuously, as they do Marmion, or the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and I cannot but think they will be struck with the Homeric resemblance in the poems of Sir Walter Scott. Both great poets had, too, the same relish for natural scenery, the same close observation; did we not pass over such passages lightly, we should, I am persuaded, find in both the same nice discriminations in characters of outward scenes, that we do in those of men. In both there is the same kind of secret predominance of female character the same delicacy, tenderness, (a wondrous thing in the age of Homer, or rather, perhaps, showing we know nothing about that age, not even so much as we do about those ages which we choose to call dark.) It must, however, be noted, that Sir Walter Scott has limited himself to more confined fields. There is not the same room for genius to work in – the production is, therefore, in degree less varied, and less complete; but is there not a likeness in kind? Is it too bold, is it merely fanciful, Eusebius, to say, too, that there is a something not dissimilar in the measures adopted by these ancient and modern poets. Homer possibly had no choice; but in the hexameter there is the greatest versative power. How different, for instance, are the first lines of the "Tale of Troy Divine," and the more familiar adventures of Ulysses. The ad libitum alternation of dactyl and spondee make the lively or the grave; and the whole metrical glow is all life and action, without hitch or hindrance.

Our heroic measure is at once too long and too short – for, take the cæsura as a division of the line, (and what is it if not that?) and the latter part of the line is too short for any effective power – a fault that does not exist in the Greek hexameter. Without the cæsura, or with a very slight attention to it, the line is too long, and made tiresome by the monotony which the necessary pause of the rhyme imposes. Besides, how do we know, after all, that the Greeks did not read their one hexameter like two lines, with a decided pause at the cæsura, with the additional grace of the short syllable at its end often passing the voice into the second part, or, as we may call it in the argument, the second line? Try, Eusebius; read off a dozen lines any where in Homer with this view, and tell me what you think of the possible short measure of Homer. It is true our measures are of the iambic character, which Horace says is the fittest for action – and therefore, in the Greek, the dramatic. The trimeter iambic is a foot longer than our heroic measure. But then it has the double ictus; and, as the word implies, is divisible into three parts, thus giving a quickness and shortness where wanted. Take away, however, the first cæsura, rest only on the second, (and then you have exactly one short measure, that of "Marmion,") and how superfluous the last division of the trimeter appears! as weak and ineffective as the latter part of our long measure, if we read it as wanting the additional foot of the hexameter. For example,

"ω τεχνα καδμου τω παλου" —

There is the measure of Scott – the Greek iambic, however, is lengthened by two feet – νεα τροφη; so that to the Greek the three ictuses (at least to English ears, accustomed to our short measure) are necessary. That this short measure wants not power in any respect, Marmion alone sufficiently shows. I, however, wished only to show that it had something of an Homeric character; and the facility with which you can read the hexameter of Homer as two lines, you will, perhaps, more than suspect, tends to confirm this opinion. I think, somewhere, Sir Walter Scott recommends the translating Homer into short measure – you forget, perhaps, my making the trial upon the two first books of the Odyssey which I sent to you, and you returned, condemned; although, to tell you the truth, I was not displeased with my attempt, and expected your flattering commendation, and would even now deceive myself into a belief that you were not prepared for the novelty. Admire the candour that proclaims the failure. It is enough that Eusebius admitted my other Homeric translations.

You will easily detect that this letter is written at intervals. I told you what a kind reader I have found in S – , during my indulgence in the luxurious indolence for which influenza apologizes, and a growing convalescence renders a pleasing hypocrisy. He has been repeating, from memory, some lines of his favourite Collins. I remembered them not. He could not put his hand on an edition of Collins, but referred to the "Elegant Extracts," and could not find his admired stanza. He remembered reading it in "The Speaker." The lines are in the Ode to "Evening." In the "Elegant Extracts" we have —

"Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams."

These lines are substituted for the better lines —

"Then lead, dear votress, where some sheety lake
Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile,
Or upland fallows grey
Reflect the last cool gleam."

Why should this beautiful stanza be lost? Is the substitute to be compared with it? Ask the landscape painter! He will admire the one – he will enjoy the other. Who substituted the one for the other? Did Collins write both, and was dubious which should stand; or do you discover the hand of an audacious emendator? Who would lose the sheety lake in which nothing is reflected but evening's own sky, and the "upland fallows grey," and the last cool gleam!

Odious, odious politics! While I am writing, there is an interruption, a sad interruption, to thoughts of poetry and snatches of criticism. It is like a sudden nightmare upon pleasant and shifting dreams. Here are three visitors new from reading Sir Robert Peel's speech. Two very indignant – one a timid character – apologetic. What, cries one – a statesman so egotistical and absolute in his vanity, as, at such a time as the present, to throw the many interests of this great country into peril, and some into sure difficulty, lest, as he himself confesses, he should be thought to have borrowed on Lord John Russell? What business has a statesman to think of himself at all? It is frightful, said another. There are two astounding things – one, that a minister should suddenly turn round upon the principles and the party who brought him into power upon them, confessing he had been changing his opinion three years, and yet last July he should have spoken against the measure which, at the time of speaking, in his heart he favoured, and which he now forces upon a reluctant Parliament; the other astounding thing is, that a Parliament created to oppose this very measure, should show such entire subserviency as to promise a large majority to the minister. May we not expect one who so changes may suddenly some day join O'Connell and grant Repeal? We are to be governed by a minister, not by King, Lords, and Commons. The apologetic man urges expediency, public (assumed) opinion – any thing for peace sake, and to get rid of agitation. So, to avoid agitation, Eusebius, I scrambled up my papers and this letter to you, and left the room; and now, in one more quiet, resume my pen. With a mind not a little confused between politics, poetry, and classical reminiscences, I, however, rested a while to give scope to reflection; and meditation upon this "corn question," brought to mind the practical advice of the tyrant of Syracuse to Periander, to get rid of his aristocracy, which was shown by the action of cutting off the heads of the grain that grew highest in the field. A tyranny was the result, (not in the Greek sense of the word,) and it matters little whence the tyranny comes. With this idea prevalent, I looked for a copy of a Greek MS., taken from a palimpsest discovered in the Ambrosian library, and sat down to translate it for you – you may have the Greek when you like. In the meanwhile, be content with the following version of the apologue, and be not too critical.

The Story of Periander

"When Periander had now reigned some years at Corinth, the Tyrant of Syracuse sent thither an ambassador, a man of great penetration, to enquire how the maxims of government, in which he had instructed him, had answered.

"The ambassador found Periander in the midst of his courtiers. After receiving him in such manner as it became him to receive a messenger from so excellent a friend, from whom he had obtained the best advice, and after hearing the object of his embassy: – 'See,' said Periander, 'to what degree I have prospered. These gentlemen,' pointing to his courtiers, 'have been telling me that my people, and the universal opinion of mankind, enrol me one of the seven wise men of Greece.'

"'Indeed!!!' quoth the ambassador; 'that will delight the king, my master, exceedingly; who will, without doubt, enquire if I have seen with my own eyes the happiness of a people who are so fortunate, and are possessed of so sound a judgment. As yet, I have seen none but those who immediately conducted me hither.'

"'We will take a short circuit,' said Periander, 'and these gentlemen shall accompany us, and we shall see if what they report be true,' looking a little suspiciously at his courtiers, as if to say, 'I verily think you are but flattering knaves.'