Quand je revis ce que j'ai tant aimé,
Pen s'en fallut que mon coeur rallumé
N'en fît le charme en mon âme renaître;
Et que mon cœur, autrefois son captif,
Ne ressemblât l'esclave fugitif,
À qui le sort fit recontrer son maître.
When I beheld again the once-loved form,
Again within my heart the rising storm
Had nearly cast the spell around my soul,
Which erst had bound me captive at her feet,
As some poor slave, escaped from rude control,
His master's dreaded face may haply meet.
Strokes like these please every one, and characterize the delicate spirit of an ingenious nation. The great point is to know how far this spirit is admissible. It is clear that, in great works, it should be employed with moderation, for this very reason, that it is an ornament. The great art consists in propriety.
A subtle, ingenious thought, a just and flowery comparison, is a defect when only reason or passion should speak, or when great interests are to be discussed. This is not false wit, but misplaced; and every beauty, when out of its place, is a beauty no longer.
This is a fault of which Virgil was never guilty, and with which Tasso may now and then be charged, admirable as he otherwise is. The cause of it is that the author, too full of his own ideas, wishes to show himself, when he should only show his personages.
The best way of learning the use that should be made of wit, is to read the few good works of genius which are to be found in the learned languages and in our own. False wit is not the same as misplaced wit. It is not merely a false thought, for a thought might be false without being ingenious; it is a thought at once false and elaborate.
It has already been remarked that a man of great wit, who translated, or rather abridged Homer into French verse, thought to embellish that poet, whose simplicity forms his character, by loading him with ornaments. On the subject of the reconciliation of Achilles, he says:
Tout le camp s'écria dans une joie extrême,
Que ne vaincra-t-il point? Il s'est vaincu lui-même.
Cried the whole camp, with overflowing joy—
What still resist him? He's o'ercome himself.
In the first place it does not at all follow, because one has overcome one's anger, that one shall not be beaten. Secondly, is it possible that a whole army should, by some sudden inspiration, make instantaneously the same pun?
If this fault shocks all judges of severe taste, how revolting must be all those forced witticisms, those intricate and puzzling thoughts, which abound in otherwise valuable writings! Is it to be endured, that in a work of mathematics it should be said: "If Saturn should one day be missing, his place would be taken by one of the remotest of his satellites; for great lords always keep their successors at a distance?" Is it endurable to talk of Hercules being acquainted with physics, and that it is impossible to resist a philosopher of such force? Such are the excesses into which we are led by the thirst for shining and surprising by novelty. This petty vanity has produced verbal witticisms in all languages, which is the worst species of false wit.
False taste differs from false wit, for the latter is always an affectation—an effort to do wrong; whereas the former is often a habit of doing wrong without effort, and following instinctively an established bad example.