GRAY’S LETTERS.[[13]]
We do not intend upon the present occasion, however legitimate the opportunity, to trespass long upon the patience of our readers, in discussing the merits or demerits of Gray’s poetical style. Some few remarks we are tempted to make, chiefly of a conciliatory character; but we shall very rapidly pass on to his Life and Letters, which are the more immediate subject of the book before us. In critical debates upon English poetry, the name of Gray has been often a rallying point for the disputants: he has been held up as a bright example by one party, and by another, as a salutary warning to all youthful aspirants. “Of all English poets,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “he was the most finished artist. He attained the highest degree of splendour of which poetical style seems to be capable.” We all know what Wordsworth thought of the splendour of this poetical style, and how severely he and others have dealt with it.
Poetry is a very difficult subject to reason about; and the more refined, and the more bold, and the more complex the associations of thought in which it deals, the more difficult does it become to prove, by any process of argument, that it is good or bad. As little can you teach a man to enjoy poetry, to discover it when it lies before him, by any rules, or process of reasoning, analytic or synthetic, as you could teach a man by the same methods to write poetry. For there is always in the more subtle kinds of poetry an element of unreason; plain truth is somewhere set at defiance; and who can possibly draw the line, or say precisely to what extent imagination, under the sway of feeling or sentiment, shall be allowed to transgress on the palpable verities of our senses, or our better judgment? How can reason decide exactly, where reason herself shall be set aside in favour of emotion? Emotion, after all, must have her voice in the matter; and the final result must be some uncertain compromise between them.
We will draw an illustration of our meaning from no vulgar critic. The refined taste of Mr Landor will be at once admitted; nor will he lie open to the objection often brought against our northern critics, that they are too metaphysical or analytic in their strictures upon metaphorical language. We extract the two following annotations, from his conversation between himself and Southey, on two several passages in Milton’s Paradise Lost. They will aptly illustrate the difficulty which every one will encounter who has to reason upon the right and wrong of a poet’s imagination.
“What a beautiful expression is there in verse 546, which I do not remember that any critic has noticed—
‘Obtain the brow of some high-climbing hill.’
Here the hill itself is instinct with life and activity.”
Agreed: it is a beautiful expression; and if any one insists that a hill does not climb, but is a thing to be climbed upon, we pronounce him a blockhead for his pains. Nevertheless the blockhead has palpable truth upon his side. The hill does not climb in fact, and there is no process we know of by which it can be made to climb in his imagination. Now for our second comment—
“‘Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear