Beginning our survey with English literature, who are the first two great poets whose names occur to us? Naturally, Chaucer and Spenser. Now, Chaucer is eminently dramatic and objective in his genius; while Spenser is distinctly a lyrical and subjective poet.
Chaucer tells stories; and story-telling is objective. One of the most renowned collections of stories is the "Arabian Nights;" but who knows anything about the authors of those entertaining tales? They are merely pictures of Eastern life, reflected in the minds of some impersonal authors, whose names even are unknown.
Homer is another great story-teller; and Homer is so objective, so little of a personality, that some modern critics suppose there may have been several Homers.
Chaucer is a story-teller also; and in his stories everything belonging to his age appears, except Chaucer himself. His writings are full of pictures of life, sketches of character; in one word, he is a dramatic or objective writer. He paints things as they are,—gives us a panorama of his period. Knights, squires, yeomen, priests, friars, pass before us, as in Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott."
The mind of an objective story-teller, like Chaucer, is the faithful mirror, which impartially reflects all that passes before it, but cracks from side to side whenever he lets a personal feeling enter his mind, for then the drama suddenly disappears and a lyric of personal hope or fear, gladness or sadness, takes its place.
Spenser is eminently a lyric poet. His own genius suffuses his stories with a summer glow of warm, tender, generous sentiment. In his descriptions of nature he does not catalogue details, but suggests impressions, which is the only way of truly describing nature. There are some writers who can describe scenery, so that the reader feels as if he had seen it himself. The secret of all such description is that it does not count or measure, but suggests. It is not quantitative but qualitative analysis. It does not apply a foot rule to nature, but gives the impression made on the mind and heart by the scene. I have never been at Frascati nor in Sicily, but I can hardly persuade myself that I have not seen those places. I have distinct impressions of both, simply from reading two of George Sand's stories. I have in my mind a picture of Frascati, with deep ravines, filled with foliage; with climbing, clustering, straggling vines and trees and bushes; with overhanging crags, deep masses of shadow below, bright sunshine on the stone pines above. So I have another picture of Sicilian scenery, wide and open, with immense depths of blue sky, and long reaches of landscape; ever-present Etna, soaring snow-clad into the still air; an atmosphere of purity, filling the heart with calm content. It may be that Catania and Frascati are not like this; but I feel as if I had seen them, not as if I had heard them described.
It is thus that Spenser describes nature; by touching some chord of fancy in the soul. Notice this picture of a boat on the sea:—
"So forth they rowëd; and that Ferryman
With his stiff oars did brush the sea so strong
That the hoar waters from his frigate ran,
And the light bubbles dancëd all along
Whiles the salt brine out of the billows sprang;
At last, far off, they many islands spy,
On every side, floating the floods among."
You notice that you are in the boat yourself, and everything is told as it appears to you there; you see the bending of the "stiff oars" by your side, and the little bubbles dancing on the water, and the islands, not as they are, rock-anchored, but as they seem to you, floating on the water. This is subjective description,—putting the reader in the place, and letting him see it all from that point of view. So Spenser speaks of the "oars sweeping the watery wilderness;" and of the gusty winds "filling the sails with fear."
Perhaps the highest description ought to include both the lyric and dramatic elements. Here is a specimen of sea description, by an almost unknown American poet, Fenner, perfect in its way. The poem is called "Gulf Weed:"—