FOOTNOTES:
[152] Since the correspondence already mentioned, the Gazette of January 14 and 18 had contained two long letters on the subject from "A Reviewer."
[153] The Goddess of Criticism, with Ignorance and Pride for her parents, Opinion for her sister, and for her children Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners, is described in the "Battle of the Books"—the paper which follows, and is a companion to the "Tale of a Tub."
[From "The Critic," October 27, 1860.]
COVENTRY PATMORE'S "FAITHFUL FOR EVER."
To the Editor of "The Critic."
Sir: I do not doubt, from what I have observed of the general tone of the criticisms in your columns, that, in candor and courtesy, you will allow me to enter protest, bearing such worth as private opinion may, against the estimate expressed in your last number of the merits of Mr. C. Patmore's new poem.[154] It seems to me that you have read it hastily; and that you have taken such view of it as on a first reading almost every reader of good but impatient judgment would be but too apt to concur with you in adopting—one, nevertheless, which, if you examine the poem with care, you will, I think, both for your readers' sake and Mr. Patmore's, regret having expressed so decidedly.
The poem is, to the best of my perception and belief, a singularly perfect piece of art; containing, as all good art does, many very curious shortcomings (to appearance), and places of rest, or of dead color, or of intended harshness, which, if they are seen or quoted without the parts of the piece to which they relate, are of course absurd enough, precisely as the discords in a fine piece of music would be if you played them without their resolutions. You have quoted separately Mr. Patmore's discords; you might by the same system of examination have made Mozart or Mendelssohn appear to be no musicians, as you have probably convinced your quick readers that Mr. Patmore is no poet.
I will not beg of you so much space as would be necessary to analyze the poem, but I hope you will let me—once for all—protest against the method of criticism which assumes that entire familiarity and simplicity in certain portions of a great work destroy its dignity. Simple things ought to be simply said, and truly poetical diction is nothing more nor less than right diction; the incident being itself poetical or not, according to its relations and the feelings which it is intended to manifest—not according to its own nature merely. To take a single instance out of Homer bearing on that same simple household work which you are so shocked at Mr. Patmore's taking notice of, Homer describes the business of a family washing, when it comes into his poem, in the most accurate terms he can find. "They took the clothes in their hands; and poured on the clean water; and trod them in trenches thoroughly, trying who could do it best; and when they had washed them and got off all the dirt, they spread them out on the sea-beach, where the sea had blanched the shingle cleanest."[155]
These are the terms in which the great poet explains the matter. The less poet—or, rather, man of modern wit and breeding, without superior poetical power—thus puts the affair into dignified language:
Then emulous the royal robes they lave,
And plunge the vestures in the cleansing wave,
(The vestures cleansed o'erspread the shelly sand,
Their snowy lustre whitens all the strand.)
Now, to my mind, Homer's language is by far the most poetical of the two—is, in fact, the only poetical language possible in the matter. Whether it was desirable to give any account of this, or anything else, depends wholly on the relation of the passage to the rest of the poem, and you could only show Mr. Patmore's glance into the servant's room to be ridiculous by proving the mother's mind, which it illustrates, to be ridiculous. Similarly, if you were to take one of Mr. George Richmond's perfectest modern portraits, and give a little separate engraving of a bit of the neck-tie or coat-lappet, you might easily demonstrate a very prosaic character either in the riband-end or the button-hole. But the only real question respecting them is their relation to the face, and the degree in which they help to express the character of the wearer. What the real relations of the parts are in the poem in question only a thoughtful and sensitive reader will discover. The poem is not meant for a song, or calculated for an hour's amusement; it is, as I said, to the best of my belief, a finished and tender work of very noble art. Whatever on this head may be the final judgment of the public, I am bound, for my own part, to express my obligation to Mr. Patmore, as one of my severest models and tutors in use of English, and my respect for him as one of the truest and tenderest thinkers who have ever illustrated the most important, because commonest, states of noble human life.[156]
I remain, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill.