Alas! that is very true. Much as Mr Newman was mistaken when he talked of my rancour, he is entirely right when he talks of my ignorance. And yet, perverse as it seems to say so, I sometimes find myself wishing, when dealing with these matters of poetical criticism, that my ignorance were even greater than it is. To handle these matters properly there is needed a poise so perfect that the least overweight in any direction tends to destroy the balance. Temper destroys it, a crotchet destroys it, even erudition may destroy it. To press to the sense of the thing itself with which one is dealing, not to go off on some collateral issue about the thing, is the hardest matter in the world. The ‘thing itself’ with which one is here dealing, the critical perception of poetic truth, is of all things the most volatile, elusive, and evanescent; by even pressing too impetuously after it, one runs the risk of losing it. The critic of poetry should have the finest tact, the nicest moderation, the most free, flexible, and elastic spirit imaginable; he should be indeed the ‘ondoyant et divers’, the undulating and diverse being of Montaigne. The less he can deal with his object simply and freely, the more things he has to take into account in dealing with it, the more, in short, he has to encumber himself, so much the greater force of spirit he needs to retain his elasticity. But one cannot exactly have this greater force by wishing for it; so, for the force of spirit one has, the load put upon it is often heavier than it will well bear. The late Duke of Wellington said of a certain peer that ‘it was a great pity his education had been so far too much for his abilities’. In like manner, one often sees erudition out of all proportion to its owner’s critical faculty. Little as I know, therefore, I am always apprehensive, in dealing with poetry, lest even that little should prove ‘too much for my abilities’.
With this consciousness of my own lack of learning, nay, with this sort of acquiescence in it, with this belief that for the labourer in the field of poetical criticism learning has its disadvantages, I am not likely to dispute with Mr Newman about matters of erudition. All that he says on these matters in his Reply I read with great interest; in general I agree with him; but only, I am sorry to say, up to a certain point. Like all learned men, accustomed to desire definite rules, he draws his conclusions too absolutely; he wants to include too much under his rules; he does not quite perceive that in poetical criticism the shade, the fine distinction, is everything; and that, when he has once missed this, in all he says he is in truth but beating the air. For instance: because I think Homer noble, he imagines I must think him elegant; and in fact he says in plain words that I do think him so, that to me Homer seems ‘pervadingly elegant’. But he does not. Virgil is elegant, ‘pervadingly elegant’, even in passages of the highest emotion:
O, ubi campi,
Spercheosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacænis
Taygeta[[57]]!
Even there Virgil, though of a divine elegance, is still elegant, but Homer is not elegant; the word is quite a wrong one to apply to him, and Mr Newman is quite right in blaming anyone he finds so applying it. Again; arguing against my assertion that Homer is not quaint, he says: ‘It is quaint to call waves wet, milk white, blood dusky, horses single-hoofed, words winged, Vulcan Lobfoot (Κυλλοποδίων), a spear longshadowy‘, and so on. I find I know not how many distinctions to draw here. I do not think it quaint to call waves wet, or milk white, or words winged; but I do think it quaint to call horses single-hoofed, or Vulcan Lobfoot, or a spear longshadowy. As to calling blood dusky, I do not feel quite sure; I will tell Mr Newman my opinion when I see the passage in which he calls it so. But then, again, because it is quaint to call Vulcan Lobfoot, I cannot admit that it was quaint to call him Κυλλοποδίων; nor that, because it is quaint to call a spear longshadowy, it was quaint to call it δολιχόσκιον. Here Mr Newman’s erudition misleads him: he knows the literal value of the Greek so well, that he thinks his literal rendering identical with the Greek, and that the Greek must stand or fall along with his rendering. But the real question is, not whether he has given us, so to speak, full change for the Greek, but how he gives us our change: we want it in gold, and he gives it us in copper. Again: ‘It is quaint’, says Mr Newman, ‘to address a young friend as “O Pippin”! it is quaint to compare Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring’. Here, too, Mr Newman goes much too fast, and his category of quaintness is too comprehensive. To address a young friend as ‘O Pippin’! is, I cordially agree with him, very quaint; although I do not think it was quaint in Sarpedon to address Glaucus as ὦ πέπον: but in comparing, whether in Greek or in English, Ajax to an ass whom boys are belabouring, I do not see that there is of necessity anything quaint at all. Again; because I said that eld, lief, in sooth, and other words, are, as Mr Newman uses them in certain places, bad words, he imagines that I must mean to stamp these words with an absolute reprobation; and because I said that ‘my Bibliolatry is excessive’, he imagines that I brand all words as ignoble which are not in the Bible. Nothing of the kind: there are no such absolute rules to be laid down in these matters. The Bible vocabulary is to be used as an assistance, not as an authority. Of the words which, placed where Mr Newman places them, I have called bad words, everyone may be excellent in some other place. Take eld, for instance: when Shakspeare, reproaching man with the dependence in which his youth is passed, says:
all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld, ...
it seems to me that eld comes in excellently there, in a passage of curious meditation; but when Mr Newman renders ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε by ‘from Eld and Death exempted’, it seems to me he infuses a tinge of quaintness into the transparent simplicity of Homer’s expression, and so I call eld a bad word in that place.