Compared with the Greek poem, this Hero and Leander of Marlowe is like some radiant double-rose placed side by side with the wild-brier whence it sprang by cultivation. The petals have been multiplied, the perfume deepened and intensified, the colors varied in their modulations of a single tint. At the same time something in point of simple form has been sacrificed. The first thing, then, that strikes us in turning from Musæus to Marlowe is that what the Greek poet considered all-important in the presentation of his subject has been dropped or negligently handled by the English, while the English poet has been prodigal in places where the Greek displayed his parsimony. On looking further, we discover that the modern poet, in all these differences, aims at effects not realized by ancient art. The life and play and actual pulsations of emotion have to be revealed, both as they exist in the subject of the poem and as the poet finds them in his own soul. Everything that will contribute to this main achievement is welcomed by the poet, and the rest rejected. All the motives which had an external statuesque significance for the Greek must palpitate with passion for the English. Those that cannot clothe themselves with spirit as with a garment are abandoned. He wants to make his readers feel, not see: if they see at all, they must see through their emotion; whereas the emotion of the Greek was stirred in him through sight. We do not get very far into the matter, but we gain something, perhaps, by adding that as sculpture is to painting and music, so is the poetry of Musæus to that of Marlowe. In the former, feeling is subordinate, or, at most, but adequate, to form; in the latter, Gefühl ist alles.
What has just been advanced is stated broadly, and is therefore only accurate in a general sense. For while the Greek Leander contains exquisite touches of pure sentiment, so the English Leander offers fully perfected pictures of Titianesque beauty. Still, this does not impair the strength of the position: what is really instructive in the comparative study of the two tales of Hero and Leander will always be that the elder poem, in spite of its autumnal quality, is classical; the younger, in spite of its most utter paganism, is romantic. To enter into minute criticism of Marlowe's poem would be out of place here; and, were it included in my programme, I should shrink from this task as a kind of profanation. Those who have the true sense of ideal beauty, and who can rise by sympathy above the commonplaces of every-day life into the free atmosphere of art, which is nature permeated with emotion, will never forget the prolonged, recurring, complex cadences of that divinest dithyramb poured forth from a young man's soul. Every form and kind of beauty is included in his adoration, and the whole is spiritualized with imagination, ardent and passionate beyond all words.
FOOTNOTES:
[253] "What of the youth, whose marrow the fierceness of Love has turned to flame? Late in the dark night he swims o'er seas boiling with bursting storms; and over his head the huge gates of the sky thunder; and the seas, dashing on the rocks, call to him to return: nor can the thought of his parents' agony entice him back, nor of the maiden doomed to a cruel death upon his corpse."—Virg. Georg. iii. 258. Translated by an Oxford graduate.
[254] It is not only in Musæus that we trace a fascination comparable to that of autumn tints in trees. The description by Ausonius of Love caught and crucified in the garden of Proserpine, which contains the two following lines,
Inter arundineasque comas gravidumque papaver
Et tacitos sine labe lacus sine murmure rivos,
might be quoted as an instance of the charm. Indeed, it pervades the best Latin poetry of the silver age, the epistles of Philostratus, many of the later Greek epigrams, and all the Greek romances, with Daphnis and Chloe at their head.
[255] Tell, goddess, of the lamp, the confidant of secret love, and of the youth who swam by night to find his bridal-bed beyond the sea, and of the darkened marriage on which immortal morning never shone, and of Sestos and Abydos, where was the midnight wedding of Hero.
[256] Love's ornament, which Zeus in heaven, after the midnight contest, should have brought into the company of stars and called it the bride-adorning star of love.
[257] By setting on fire a youth and a maiden, of whom the names were love-inspiring Leander and virgin Hero.