LETTER VI.
Let it be no surprise to you that, in the close of my last Letter, I presumed to bring the Gierusalemme liberata into competition with the Iliad.
So far as the heroic and Gothic manners are the same, the pictures of each, if well taken, must be equally entertaining. But I go further, and maintain that the circumstances, in which they differ, are clearly to the advantage of the Gothic designers.
You see, my purpose is to lead you from this forgotten Chivalry to a more amusing subject; I mean, the Poetry we still read, though it was founded upon it.
Much has been said, and with great truth, of the felicity of Homer’s age, for poetical manners. But, as Homer was a citizen of the world, when he had seen in Greece, on the one hand, the manners he has described, could he, on the other hand, have seen in the West the manners of the feudal ages, I make no doubt but he would certainly have preferred the latter. And the grounds of this preference would, I suppose, have been, “the improved gallantry of the Gothic knights; and the superior solemnity of their superstitions.”
If any great poet, like Homer, had flourished in these times, and given the feudal manners from the life (for, after all, Spenser and Tasso came too late, and it was impossible for them to paint truly and perfectly what was no longer seen or believed); this preference, I persuade myself, had been very sensible. But their fortune was not so happy:
——omnes illacrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
As it is, we may take a guess of what the subject was capable of affording to real genius, from the rude sketches we have of it in the old Romancers. And it is but looking into any of them to be convinced, that the Gallantry, which inspired the feudal times, was of a nature to furnish the poet with finer scenes and subjects of description in every view, than the simple and uncontrolled barbarity of the Grecian.
The principal entertainment arising from the delineation of these consists in the exercise of the boisterous passions, which are provoked and kept alive, from one end of the Iliad to the other, by every imaginable scene of rage, revenge, and slaughter. In the other, together with these, the gentler and more humane affections are awakened in us by the most interesting displays of love and friendship; of love, elevated to its noblest heights; and of friendship, operating on the purest motives. The mere variety of these paintings is a relief to the reader, as well as writer. But their beauty, novelty, and pathos, give them a vast advantage, on the comparison.
So that, on the whole, though the spirit, passions, rapine, and violence, of the two sets of manners were equal, yet there was an elegance, a variety, a dignity in the feudal, which the other wanted.
As to RELIGIOUS MACHINERY, perhaps the popular system of each was equally remote from reason; yet the latter had something in it more amusing, as well as more awakening to the imagination.
The current popular tales of Elves and Fairies were even fitter to take the credulous mind, and charm it into a willing admiration of the specious miracles which wayward fancy delights in, than those of the old traditionary rabble of Pagan divinities. And then, for the more solemn fancies of witchcraft and incantation, the Gothic are above measure striking and terrible.
You will tell me, perhaps, that these fancies, as terrible as they were, are but of a piece with those of Pagan superstition; and that nothing can exceed what the classic writers have related or feigned of its magic and necromantic horrors.
To spare you the trouble of mustering up against me all that your extensive knowledge of antiquity would furnish, let me confess to you that many of the ancient poets have occasionally adorned this theme. If, among twenty others, I select only the names of Ovid, Seneca, and Lucan, it is, because these writers, by the character of their genius, were best qualified for the task, and have, besides, exerted their whole strength upon it. Lucan, especially, has drawn out all the pomp of his eloquence in celebrating those Thessalian Charms,
ficti quas nulla licentia monstri
Transierat, quarum, quicquid non creditur, ars est.
Yet STILL I pretend to shew you that all his prodigies, fall short of the Gothic: and you will come the less reluctantly into my sentiments, if you reflect, “That the thick and troubled stream of superstition, which flowed so plentifully in the classic ages, has been constantly deepening and darkening by the confluence of those supplies, which ignorance and corrupted religion have poured in upon it.”
First, you will call to mind that all the gloomy visions of dæmons and spirits, which sprung out of the Alexandrian or Platonic philosophy, were in the later ages of Paganism engrafted on the old stock of classic superstition. These portentous dreams, new hatched to the woful time, as Shakespear speaks, enabled Apuleius to outdo Lucan himself, in some of his magic scenes and exhibitions.
Next, you will observe that a fresh and exhaustless swarm of the direst superstitions took their birth in the frozen regions of the North, and were naturally enough conceived in the imaginations of a people involved in tenfold darkness; I mean, in the thickest shades of ignorance, as well as in the gloom of their comfortless woods and forests. I call these the direst superstitions; for though the South and East may have produced some that shew more wild and fantastic, yet those of the North have ever been of a more sombrous and horrid aspect, agreeably to the singular circumstances and situation of that savage and benighted people.
These dismal fancies, which the barbarians carried out with them in their migrations into the North-west, took the readier and the faster hold of men’s minds, from the kindred darkness into which the Western world was then fallen, and from the desolation (so apt to engender all fearful conceits and apprehensions) which every where attended the incursions of those ravagers.
Lastly, before the Romancers applied themselves to dress up these dreadful stories, Christian superstition had grown to its height, and had transferred on the magic system all its additional and supernumerary horrors.
Taking, now, the whole together, you will clearly see what we are to conclude of the Gothic system of prodigy and enchantment; which was not so properly a single system, as the aggregate,
—of all that nature breeds
Perverse; all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Which fables yet had feign’d or fear conceiv’d.
For, to the frightful forms of ancient necromancy (which easily travelled down to us, when the fairer offspring of pagan invention lost its way, or was swallowed up in the general darkness of the barbarous ages) were now joined the hideous phantasms which had terrified the Northern nations; and, to complete the horrid groupe, with these were incorporated the still more tremendous spectres of Christian superstition.
In this state of things, as I said, the Romancers went to work; and with these multiplied images of terror on their minds, you will conclude, without being at the pains to form particular comparisons, that they must manage ill indeed, not to surpass, in this walk of magical incantation, the original classic fablers.
But, if you require a comparison, I can tell you where it is to be made, with much ease, and to great advantage: I mean, in Shakespear’s Macbeth, where you will find (as his best critic observes) “the Danish or Northern, intermixed with the Greek and Roman enchantments; and all these worked up together with a sufficient quantity of our own country superstitions. So that Shakespear’s Witch-Scenes (as the same writer adds) are like the charms they prepare in one of them: where the ingredients are gathered from every thing shocking in the natural world; as here, from every thing absurd in the moral.”
Or, if you suspect this instance, as deriving somewhat of its force and plausibility from the magic hand of this critic, you may turn to another in a great poet of that time; who has been at the pains to make the comparison himself, and whose word, as he gives it in honest prose, may surely be taken.
In a work of B. Jonson, which he calls The Masque of Queens, there are some Witch-scenes; written with singular care, and in emulation, as it may seem, of Shakespear’s; but certainly with the view (for so he tells us himself) of reconciling the practice of antiquity to the neoteric, and making it familiar with our popular witchcraft.
This Masque is accompanied with notes of the learned author, who had rifled all the stores of ancient and modern Dæmonomagy, to furnish out his entertainment; and who takes care to inform us, under each head, whence he had fetched the ingredients, out of which it is compounded.
In this elaborate work of Jonson you have, then, an easy opportunity of comparing the ancient with the modern magic. And though, as he was an idolater of the ancients, you will expect him to draw freely from that source, yet from the large use he makes, too, of his other more recent authorities, you will perceive that some of the darkest shades of his picture are owing to hints and circumstances which he had catched, and could only catch, from the Gothic enchantments. Even such of these circumstances, as, taken by themselves, seem of less moment, should not be overlooked, since (as the poet well observes of them) though they be but minutes in ceremony, yet they make the act more dark and full of horror.
Thus MUCH, then, may serve for a cast of Shakespear’s and Jonson’s magic: abundantly sufficient, I must think, to convince you of the superiority of the Gothic charms and incantations, to the classic.
Though, after all, the conclusion is not to be drawn so much from particular passages, as from the general impression left on our minds, in reading the ancient and modern poets. And this is so much in favour of the latter, that Mr. Addison scruples not to say, “The ancients have not much of this poetry among them; for indeed (continues he) almost the whole substance of it owes its original to the darkness and superstition of later ages—Our forefathers looked upon nature with more reverence and horror, before the world was enlightened by learning and philosophy; and loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England, that had not a ghost in it; the church-yards were all haunted; every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it; and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with, who had not seen a spirit.”
We are upon enchanted ground, my friend; and you are to think yourself well used, that I detain you no longer in this fearful circle. The glympse, you have had of it, will help your imagination to conceive the rest. And without more words you will readily apprehend that the fancies of our modern bards are not only more gallant, but, on a change of the scene, more sublime, more terrible, more alarming, than those of the classic fablers. In a word, you will find that the manners they paint, and the superstitions they adopt, are the more poetical for being Gothic.