Among all nations the mixture of joy and pain, of exquisite delight and intense misery in the present state, has led the imagination to the conception of regions of unmixed bliss destined for the repose of the good after the toils of this life, and of climes where happiness prevails, the abode of beings superior to man. The imagination of the Hindoo paints his Swergas as 'profuse of bliss,' and all the joys of sense are collected into the Paradise of the Mussulman. The Persian lavished the riches of his fancy in raising the Cities of Jewels and of Amber that adorn the realms of Jinnestân; the romancer erected castles and palaces filled with knights and ladies in Avalon and in the land of Faerie; while the Hellenic bards, unused to pomp and glare, filled the Elysian Fields and the Island of the Blest with tepid gales and brilliant flowers. We shall quote without apology two beautiful passages from Homer and Pindar, that our readers may at one view satisfy themselves of the essential difference between classic and romantic imagination.
In Homer, Proteus tells Menelaus that, because he had had the honour of being the son-in-law of Zeus, he should not die in "horse-feeding Argos."
But thee the ever-living gods will send
Unto the Elysian plain and distant bounds
Of Earth, where dwelleth fair-hair'd Rhadamanthus.
There life is easiest unto men; no snow,
Or wintry storm, or rain, at any time,
Is there; but evermore the Ocean sends
Soft-breathing airs of Zephyr to refresh
The habitants.—Od. iv. 563.
This passage is finely imitated by Pindar, and connected with that noble tone of pensive morality, so akin to the Oriental spirit, and by which the 'Dircæan Swan' is distinguished from all his fellows.
They speed their way
To Kronos' palace, where around
The Island of the Blest, the airs
Of Ocean breathe, and golden flowers
Blaze; some on land
From shining trees, and other kinds
The water feeds. Of these
Garlands and bracelets round their arms they bind,
Beneath the righteous sway
Of Rhadamanthus.—Ol. ii. 126.
Lucretius has transferred these fortunate fields to the superior regions, to form the abode of his fainéans, gods; and Virgil has placed them, with additional poetic splendour, in the bosom of the earth.
Widely different from these calm and peaceful abodes of parted warriors are the Faeries of the minstrels and romancers. In their eyes, and in those of their auditors, nothing was beautiful or good divested of the pomp and pride of chivalry; and chivalry has, accordingly, entered deeply into the composition of their pictures of these ideal realms.
The Feeries of romance may be divided into three kinds: Avalon, placed in the ocean, like the Island of the Blest; those that, like the palace of Pari Banou, are within the earth; and, lastly, those that, like Oberon's domains, are situate 'in wilderness among the holtis hairy.'
Of the castle and isle of Avalon,[74] the abode of Arthur and Oberon, and Morgue la faye, the fullest description is to be seen in the romance of Ogier le Danois, from which, as we know no sure quarter but the work itself to refer to for the part connected with the present subject, we will make some extracts.[75]