By the by, has it never occurred to you, when perusing works of the kind last referred to, what a glowing picture the pious Dean of St. Patrick’s, the saintly Swift, has bequeathed to us of their producers, when he places the great authors, the historical Gullivers of our race, in all their majesty of form, astride the public thoroughfare of a Liliputian age, and marches the inhabitants, in solid battalions, through between their legs? you recollect what he says?
Nor yet are you to expect a treat of that most delightful of all compounds, the table talk and conversation—or, to use a homely phrase, the literary dishwater retailed by the author’s scullion. To expect such, or the like, would be to expect too little.
On the other hand, to expect that I shall send you an expression, in the terms of the understanding, of a work of the creative imagination, as a totality, and submit the result to the canons of art, is to expect too much. For while I am ready, and while I intend to comply with the first part of this proposition, I am unable to fulfil the requirement of the latter part—that is, I am not able to submit the result to the canons of art. The reason for this inability it is not necessary to develop in this connection any further than merely to mention that I find it extremely inconvenient to lay my hand upon the aforementioned canons just at this time.
I must, therefore, content myself with the endeavor to summon before you the Idea which creates the poem—each act, scene and verse—so that we may see the part in its relation to the whole, and the whole in its concrete, organic articulation. If we succeed in this, then we may say that we comprehend the work—a condition precedent alike to the beneficial enjoyment and the rational judgment of the same.
II.
In my first letter, dear friend, I endeavored to guard you against misapprehension as to what you might expect from me. Its substance, if memory serves me, was that I did not intend to write on Anthropology or Psychology, nor yet on street, parlor or court gossip, but simply about a work of art.
I deemed these remarks pertinent in view of the customs of the time, lest that, in my not conforming to them, you should judge me harshly without profit to yourself. With the same desire of keeping up a fair understanding with you, I must call your attention to some terms and distinctions which we shall have occasion to use, and which, unless explained, might prove shadows instead of lights along the path of our intercourse.
I confess to you that I share the (I might say) abhorrence so generally entertained by the reading public, of the use of any general terms whatsoever, and would avoid them altogether if I could only see how. But in reading the poem that we are to consider, I come upon such passages as these:
(Choir of invisible Spirits.)
“Woe! Woe!