A HOMER and a RICHARDSON,[A] like nature, open a volume large as life itself—embracing a circuit of human existence! This state of the mind has even a reality in it for the generality of persons. In a romance or a drama, tears are often seen in the eyes of the reader or the spectator, who, before they have time to recollect that the whole is fictitious, have been surprised for a moment by a strong conception of a present and existing scene.
[Footnote A: Richardson assembles a family about him, writing down what they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often and as long as he wills—with such a personal unity, that an ingenious lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any court of law than a circumstantial scene in Richardson.]
Can we doubt of the reality of this faculty, when the visible and outward frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the ninth scene of the second act of his Olympiad, found himself suddenly moved—shedding tears. The imagined sorrows had inspired real tears; and they afterwards proved contagious. Had our poet not perpetuated his surprise by an interesting sonnet, the circumstance had passed away with the emotion, as many such have. Pope could never read Priam's speech for the loss of his son without tears, and frequently has been observed to weep over tender and melancholy passages. ALFIERI, the most energetic poet of modern times, having composed, without a pause, the whole of an act, noted in the margin—"Written under a paroxysm of enthusiasm, and while shedding a flood of tears." The impressions which the frame experiences in this state, leave deeper traces behind them than those of reverie. A circumstance accidentally preserved has informed us of the tremors of DRYDEN after having written that ode,[A] which, as he confessed, he had pursued without the power of quitting it; but these tremors were not unusual with him—for in the preface to his "Tales," he tells us, that "in translating Homer he found greater pleasure than in Virgil; but it was not a pleasure without pain; the continual agitation of the spirits must needs be a weakener to any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats."
[Footnote A: This famous and unparalleled ode was probably afterwards retouched; but Joseph Warton discovered in it the rapidity of the thoughts, and the glow and the expressiveness of the images; which are the certain marks of the first sketch of a master.]
We find Metastasio, like others of the brotherhood, susceptible of this state, complaining of his sufferings during the poetical æstus. "When I apply with attention, the nerves of my sensorium are put into a violent tumult; I grow as red as a drunkard, and am obliged to quit my work." When BUFFON was absorbed on a subject which presented great objections to his opinions, he felt his head burn, and saw his countenance flushed; and this was a warning for him to suspend his attention. GRAY could never compose voluntarily: his genius resembled the armed apparition in Shakspeare's master-tragedy. "He would not be commanded." When he wished to compose the Installation Ode, for a considerable time he felt himself without the power to begin it: a friend calling on him, GRAY flung open his door hastily, and in a hurried voice and tone, exclaiming in the first verse of that ode—
Hence, avaunt! 'tis holy ground!—
his friend started at the disordered appearance of the bard, whose orgasm had disturbed his very air and countenance.
Listen to one labouring with all the magic of the spell. Madame ROLAND has thus powerfully described the ideal presence in her first readings of Telemachus and Tassot:—"My respiration rose, I felt a rapid fire colouring my face, and my voice changing had betrayed my agitation. I was Eucharis for Telemachus, and Erminia for Tancred. However, during this perfect transformation, I did not yet think that I myself was anything, for any one: the whole had no connexion with myself. I sought for nothing around me; I was they; I saw only the objects which existed for them; it was a dream, without being awakened."
The description which so calm and exquisite an investigator of taste and philosophy as our sweet and polished REYNOLDS has given of himself at one of these moments, is too rare not to be recorded in his own words. Alluding to the famous "Transfiguration," our own RAFFAELLE says—"When I have stood looking at that picture from figure to figure, the eagerness, the spirit, the close unaffected attention of each figure to the principal action, my thoughts have carried me away, that I have forgot myself; and for that time might be looked upon as an enthusiastic madman; for I could really fancy the whole action was passing before my eyes."
The effect which the study of Plutarch's Illustrious Men produced on the mighty mind of ALFIERI, during a whole winter, while he lived as it were among the heroes of antiquity, he has himself described. Alfieri wept and raved with grief and indignation that he was born under a government which favoured no Roman heroes and sages. As often as he was struck with the great deeds of these great men, in his extreme agitation he rose from his seat as one possessed. The feeling of genius in Alfieri was suppressed for more than twenty years, by the discouragement of his uncle: but as the natural temperament cannot be crushed out of the soul of genius, he was a poet without writing a single verse; and as a great poet, the ideal presence at times became ungovernable, verging to madness. In traversing the wilds of Arragon, his emotions would certainly have given birth to poetry, could he have expressed himself in verse. It was a complete state of the imaginative existence, or this ideal presence; for he proceeded along the wilds of Arragon in a reverie, weeping and laughing by turns. He considered this as a folly, because it ended in nothing but in laughter and tears. He was not aware that he was then yielding to a demonstration, could he have judged of himself, that he possessed those dispositions of mind and that energy of passion which form the poetical character.