COWLEY AND GRAY, NO. III.
Before again recurring to Gray's partiality for the poems of Cowley, I will make a remark or two on Mr. Wakefield's edition of Gray.
In his delightful "Ode to Adversity" Gray has written:
"Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and tort'ring hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best."
Upon which Wakefield gives us this brilliant criticism:
"'Torturing hour.' There seems to be some little impropriety and incongruity in this. Consistency of figure rather required some material image, like iron scourge and adamantine chain."
Afterwards he seems to speak diffidently of his own judgment, which is rather an unusual thing in Mr. Wakefield. Well would it have been for the reputations of Bentley, Johnson, and Wakefield, that, before improving upon Milton and Gray and Collins, they had remembered the words of a truly great critic, even Horace himself:
"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus:
Nam neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens,
Poscentique gravem persæpe remittit acutum;
Nec semper feriet quodcunque minabitur arcus.
Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura."
Epist. ad Pisones, 347.
Not by any means that I am allowing in this case the existence of a "macula," or an "incuria" either. To D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature I think I am indebted for the remark, that Gray borrowed the expressions from Milton:
"When the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour
Calls us to penance."
Par. Lost, lib. ii. 90.
It is therefore with Milton, and not with Gray, that Mr. Wakefield must settle the matter. And in proof of my earnest sympathies with him during the very unequal contest, I will console him with "proprieties," "congruities," "consistencies of figure," and "material images," enough.
"The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel."
Goldsmith's Traveller, ad finem.
Or better for this purpose still:
"Swords, daggers, bodkins, bearded arrows, spears,
Nails, pincers, crosses, gibbets, hurdles, ropes,
Tallons of griffins, paws and teeth of bears,
Tigre's and lyon's mouths, not iron hoops,
Racks, wheels, and trappados, brazen cauldrons which
Boiled with oil, huge tuns which flam'd with pitch."
Beaumonts's Psyche, cant. XXII. v. 69. p. 330. Cambridge, 1702. Folio.
"Torturing hour" is used by Campbell in his Pleasures of Hope, Part I.:
"The martyr smiled beneath avenging power,
And braved the tyrant in his torturing hour."
And, indeed, "sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child," had used it before any of them:
"Is there no play, to ease the anguish of a torturing hour."
Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.
Again, Gray writes in his truly sublime ode, "The Bard:"
"On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood,
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air),
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre."
Ordinary readers would have innocently supposed the above "pictured" passage beyond all praise or criticism. "At non infelix" Wakefield:
"A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd."
Macbeth.
I must give his note as it stands, for I question whether the whole range of verbal criticism could produce anything more ludicrous:
"I wish Mr. Gray could have introduced a more poetical expression, than the inactive term stood, into this fine passage: as Shakspeare has, for instance, in his description of Dover cliff:
'Half way down
Hangs one, that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!'
King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.
"Which is the same happy picture as that of Virgil:
"'Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo.'
Ecl. I. 77."
He might, when his hand was in, have adduced other passages also from Virgil, e.g.:
"Imminet in rivi præstantis imaginis undam."
Culex, 66.
However, with all due respect for Mr. Wakefield's "happy pictures," I do not see anything left, but his eyebrows, for the luckless bard to hang by! He could not have hung by his hair, which "stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air;" nor yet by his hands, which "swept the deep sorrows of his lyre." Besides, there can scarcely be more opposite pictures than that of a man gathering samphire, or kids browsing, amongst beetling rocks; and the commanding and awe-inspiring position in which Gray ingeniously places his bard. The expressions chosen by Virgil, Shakspeare, and Gray were each peculiarly suitable to the particular objects in view. If Gray was thinking of Milton, as I intimated in a former letter, he may have still kept him in mind:
"Incens'd with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrify'd, and like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war."
Par. Lost, lib. ii. 706.
Or again:
"On th' other side, Satan, alarm'd,
Collecting all his might dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd:
His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest
Sat Horror plum'd; nor wanted in his grasp
What seem'd both spear and shield."
Par. Lost, lib. iv. 985.
It would be easy to adduce similar instances from the ancient sources, but I will only mention From Milton an illustration of the συστρεψας of Demosthenes, and of the passionate abruptness with which Gray commences "The Bard:"
"As when of old some orator renown'd
In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence
Flourish'd, since mute, to some great cause addressed
Stood in himself collected, while each part,
Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue,
Sometimes in height began, as no delay
Of preface brooking through his zeal of right."
Par. Lost, lib. ix. 670.
Wakefield's hypercritical fastidiousness would have completely defeated the intentions of Gray. His "Bard" had a mission to fulfil which could not have been fulfilled by one suspended like king Solomon, in the ancient Jewish traditions, or like Mahomet's coffin, mid-way between heaven and earth. His cry was δος που στω, and the poet heard him. And thus, from his majestic position, was not—
"Every burning word he spoke
Full of rage and full of grief?"
In the full blaze of poetic phrensy, he flashes out at once with the awfully grand and terrible exordium:
"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho' fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears."
Collins thus describes the passion of anger:
"Next Anger rush'd;—his eyes on fire,
In lightnings own'd his secret stings:
In one rude clash he struck the lyre,
And swept with flurried hand the strings."
Word-painting can go no farther. When, however, he comes to melancholy, in lines which contain more suggestive beauty, as well as more poetic inspiration, than perhaps any others of the same length in the English language, how does he sing?
"With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sate retired;
And, from her wild sequester'd seat,
In notes, by distance made more sweet,
Pour'd thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul:
And, dashing soft from rocks around,
Bubbling runnels join'd the sound;
Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,
Or o'er some haunted stream with fond delay,
Round a holy calm diffusing,
Love of peace, and lonely musing,
In hollow murmurs died away."
Ode on the Passions.
This is the concentrated essence of poetry. Surely Gray had forgotten Collins when he penned the beautiful lines:
"But not to one in this benighted age,
Is that diviner inspiration given,
That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page,
The pomp and prodigality of heaven,
As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze,
The meaner gems, that singly charm the sight,
Together dart their intermingled rays,
And dazzle with a luxury of light."
Stanzas to Mr. Bentley.
From a memorandum made by Gray himself, it is evident that he once had contemplated placing his "Bard" in a sitting posture; but I cannot but rejoice that he altered his mind, for such breath-taking words could never have been uttered in so composed and contented a posture. I give part of it from Mr. Mason's edition:
"The army of Edward I., as they marched through a deep valley, are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure, seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock; who, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation he had brought on his country, &c., &c. His song ended, he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that rolls at its foot."—Vol. i. p. 73. Lond. 1807.
The last two lines of the passage before us—
"And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre"—
remind us in some degree of Cowley:
"Sic cecinit sanctus vates, digitosque volantes
Innumeris per fila modis trepidantia movit,
Intimaque elicuit Medici miracula plectri."
Davideidos, lib. i. p. 13.
Again:
"Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes."
Gray, The Bard.
"Namque oculis plus illa suis, plus lumine cœli
Dilexit."
Davideidos, lib. i. p. 14.
And—
"The Attick warbler pours her throat."
Ode to Spring.
"Tum magnum tenui cecinerunt gutture Numen."
Davideidos, lib. i. p. 20.
Also—
"The hues of bliss more brightly glow,
Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe;
And blended form with artful strife,
The strength and harmony of life."
Gray, On the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude.
The word chastised is similarly used by Cowley:
"From Saul his growth, and manly strength he took,
Chastised by bright Ahinoam's gentler look."
Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 133.
The idea of the whole passage may be found in Pope:
"Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train;
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife,
Gives all the strength and colour of our life."
Essay on Man, Epist. II.
Again:
"Amazement in his van with Flight combin'd,
And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind."
Gray, The Bard.
"Victorious arms thro' Ammon's land it bore,
Ruin behind, and terror march'd before."
Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 135.
Wakefield mentions some parallel passages, but omits the best of all:
"A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; Yea, and nothing shall escape them."—Joel, ii. 3.
In the "Ode on the Installation" Gray says:
"Their tears, their little triumphs o'er
Their human passions now no more."
Wakefield dwells enraptured on the expression human passions. Cowley speaks of "humana quies" (Davideidos, lib. i. p. 3.). Horace says:
"—— Carminibus quæ versant atque venenis
Humanos animos."
Sat. viii. 19. lib. i.
Human passions is not, however, a creation of Gray's; for, if not anywhere else, he might have found the words very often in the writings of William Law, as vigorous a prose writer as England can boast of since the days of Dr. South. See his answer to Dr. Trapp's Not Righteous overmuch, p. 62., Lond. 1741; and his Serious Call, cap. xii. p. 137., and cap. xxi. p. 293., Lond. 1816.
To mention its use by modern writers would be endless. I selected these few passages on reading Mr. Wakefield's laudations, for otherwise I should not perhaps have remarked the words as unusual. Wakefield adduces from Pope's Eloisa to Abelard:
"One human tear shall drop, and be forgiven."
"Noble rage," Gray's Elegy. "Noble rage," Cowley's Davideidos, lib. iv. p. 137. Again, in the Elegy:
"Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The mopeing owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign."
Cowley, in describing the palace of Lucifer, has some fine sentences; and amongst them:
"Non hic gemmatis stillantia sidera guttis
Impugnant sævæ jus inviolabile noctis."
Davideidos, lib. i. p. 3.
And in English:
"No gentle stars with their fair gems of light,
Offend the tyrannous and unquestion'd night."
Davideidos, lib. i. p. 6.
Akenside constantly used the adjective human in different conjunctions.
RT.
Warmington.