“‘The waters-fall with difference discreet.’”
Such is the anti-poetical and technical criticism! Imagine a music-master, who had never read a line of poetry, attempting to perform the “delicious music” of our poet—or a singing-master, who had never heard a “joyous bird,” tuning up some fair pupil’s “trembling voice,” and we might have expected this criticism from such “enraged musicians!” Would our critic insist on having a philharmonic concert, or a simple sonata? He who will not suffer birds to be “joyous,” nor “the shade cheerful,” which their notes make so.
| “Th’ angelical soft trembling voices made To th’ instruments divine respondence meet,” |
the “softness trembling” with the verse; had our critic forgotten Strada’s famed contest of the Nightingale with the Lyre of the poet, when, her “trembling voice” overcome in the rivalry, she fell on the strings to die? And what shall we think of the classical critic who has pronounced that “the descriptions of Spenser are coldly elaborate”—the most vivid and splendid of our poetry?
But the most curious part remains to be told. This fine stanza of Spenser is one of his free borrowings, being a translation of a stanza in Tasso,** excepting the introduction of “the silver-sounding instruments.” The Æolian harp played on by the musical winds was a happiness reserved for Thomson. The felicitous copy of Spenser attracted Fairfax, who, when he came to the passage in Tasso, kept his eye on Spenser, and has carefully retained “the joyous birds” for the “vezzosi augelli” of the original.
It is certain that, without poetic sensibility, the most learned critic will ever find that the utmost force of his logic in these matters will not lead to reason, but to unreason. Imagination only can decide on imagination.
* “The Faery Queen,” book II. canto xii. st. 71.
** “Gerusalemme Liberata,” canto xvi. st. 12.
[4] “The Faery Queen,” book III. canto x.
[5] “The Faery Queen,” B. III. canto iv, st. 65, and B. I. canto v. st. 20.