I know my life's a paine and but a span,
I know my Sense is mockt with euery thing:
And to conclude, I know my selfe a MAN,
Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing. (p. 24.)
If the pathos and grandeur of Pascal be anticipated in
these lines, Pope has certainly appropriated Davies'
favourite metaphor of the 'spider.' Witness the Sense
of Feeling illustrated:—
Much like a subtill spider, which doth sit
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If ought doe touch the vtmost thred of it,
Shee feeles it instantly on euery side. (p. 70).
So in the Essay of Man:—
"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line."
Another now familiar 'metaphor' also occurs in "Nosce Teipsum":—
"Heere Sense's apprehension, end doth take;
As when a stone is into water cast,
One circle doth another circle make,
Till the last circle touch the banke at last." (p. 72.)
These two characteristics, viz., (1) deep and original thinking, (2) perfection of workmanship, or mastery of an extremely difficult stanza—embrace that in "Nosce Teipsum," regarded broadly, which I am anxious to have the Reader recognize and 'prove' for himself. Subsidiary to them is one other thing—not shared with many of our Poets and therefore demanding specific statement—viz. its condensation throughout. Hallam and Craik have called attention to this; and the student cannot fail to be struck with it. It is not simply that the stanzas are as so many rings of gold each complete in itself—much as Proverbs are—but that whether it be idea or opinion or metaphor there is no beating of it out, as though yards of gold-leaf or tin-foil were more valuable than the relatively small solid ore that has been so manipulated: or the common mistake of imagining that a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of lead. From Dean Donne until now "comparisons are odious." Nevertheless when one recalls the attenuated thought and the blatant verbiage of not a few of our Poets, this resolute sifting out of everything extraneous is not less noticeable than commendable. It assures us that the Poet was conscious of his resources—of his unused wealth of thought and imagination and fancies. He who compacts his carbon into a Koh-i-noor has infinite supplies of it. Similarly a Poet who could and did so lavishly add great thought to great thought and vivid metaphor to vivid metaphor, and still go on adding in smallest possible compass, declares his intellect to be of the highest. I take two stanzas as illustrative equally of condensed thought and condensed metaphor concerning our First Parents:—
When their reasons eye was sharpe and cleare,
And (as an eagle can behold the sunne)
Could haue approcht th' Eternall Light as neare,
As the intellectuall angels could haue done: