Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity.
Shelley (Hellas).
It is very true that the amazing intellectual power of the Greeks in a primitive age ensures them an immortality of fame; and this is finely expressed in the last two lines. But those two splendid lines are utterly spoilt by the two that precede them. One asks, Why “Greece and her foundations”? One does not say “a house and its foundations” are built somewhere or other. This by itself would be trivial, but next comes the question, What is the meaning of the second line? We know what Shelley intended—that the memory and influence of Greece will withstand its destruction by war—but why in that case should she not be built above, instead of submerged below the tide of war? Later on, in lines 836-7, the Emperor Palæologus, at the siege of Constantinople, is said to have cast himself “beneath the stream of war”; that is to say, he was overwhelmed and killed. The words, in fact, do not express the poet’s meaning. The third and fatal defect of the lines is the juxtaposition of “tide” and “sea” —the city is built below a tide, and also based on a sea. Not only is this combination absurd in itself, but it also destroys the beauty of the last two magnificent lines. The moving unstable water is scarcely a foundation to build upon, yet this meaning is forcibly impressed upon the word “sea” by the previous mention of a “tide.” What Shelley meant was an immense broad, deep, expanse of solid crystal—the “sea of glass like unto crystal” of Revelations (iv, 6) and the Mer de Glace (“sea of ice”), the great Alpine glacier.[34] Therefore, anyone who had exactness of thought or perception of poetry would omit the first two lines and give only the last two as a quotation.
Mrs. Shelley in her note on “Hellas” specially refers to this verse as a beautiful example of Shelley’s style, and she quotes all four lines. We may assume, therefore, that Shelley himself thought highly of the verse, and we thus have an illustration of the curious fact that a great poet is often a poor judge of his own poetry. (Almost certainly Shakespeare himself did not realize how god-like he stood above all other poets.) However, it is not only for this reason that I have included the above quotation, but because with it I propose to make a flank attack upon Mr. R. W. Livingstone, the author of The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us. I do this, of course, with a special object in view.
Mr. Livingstone’s book is important, valuable, and highly interesting—and is especially admirable because the author does not envelope his subject in the usual glamour, born of enthusiasm. He is, indeed, most exceptional in this respect, that he endeavours to look at the Greeks from an ordinary commonsense point of view. But he makes the mistake, not unusual with classical men, of supposing that he is a qualified critic of poetry; and he, therefore, gives us a special dissertation upon the comparative values of English and Greek poetry.
Apart from this dissertation, he quotes three or four passages from English poets in the course of the book. Of these the most prominent is the above verse of Shelley’s, and he quotes all four lines without comment. Thus we see an able man, in whom classical study should have induced exactness of thought, failing to analyse and understand what he is quoting. But, more than this, the question is one of poetic perception. The imagery in the last two lines is sublime—in the four lines it is ludicrous. Therefore, we begin with the fact that our literary critic was unable to see palpable and grave defects in one of the few verses he himself quotes. (I might give other illustrations, as where he admires poor verse of Dryden’s, but I must be brief.)
Mr. Livingstone’s point is that the “direct” and “truthful” character of Greek poetry is superior to the “imaginative” quality of English verse. He goes so far as to say that “Sappho and Simonides with four words make him see a nightingale and give him a greater and far saner pleasure” than Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark.” I take his quotation from Simonides, as it involves less discussion than that from Sappho.[35] It is (Fr, 73) ἀὴδονες πολυκώτιλοι χλωραύχενες εἰαριναί, “The warbling nightingales with olive necks, the birds of spring.”
As Mr. Livingstone is not discussing beauty of expression we can leave this out of consideration.[36] He is discussing the substance of poetry, comparing the “directness” and “truthfulness” of Simonides (in this case) with the imaginative element in Shelley’s poem. He would apparently discard the latter element altogether, and prefers a simple description of the nightingale—that it sings, has an olive neck, and appears in spring. The first suggestion that occurs to one is that if, say, an auctioneer’s catalogue of farm stock—without any addition whatever to its contents—could be worded prettily and made metrical, it would afford huge enjoyment to our literary critic.