Did Mr. Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? I presume that he has, at least upon a sea-piece. Did any painter ever paint the sea only, without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunct? Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical object, with or without a vessel, breaking its vast fatiguing monotony? Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the poem of the "Shipwreck," is it the storm or the ship which most interests? both much undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest? It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in itself was never esteemed a high order of that art. The Parthe non or the The beautiful but barren Hymettus,-the whole coast of Attica, her hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc., etc.—are in themselves poetical, and would be so if the name of Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins, were swept from the earth. But am I to be told that the "nature" of Attica would be more poetical without the "art" of the Acropolis? of the Temple of Theseus? and of the still all Greek and glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial genius? Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical,-the Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands? The columns of Cape Colonna, or the rock on Cape itself? The rocks at the foot of it, or the recollec- which it tion that Falconer's ship was bulged upon them? There are a thousand rocks and capes far more picturesque than those of the Acropolis and Cape Sunium in themselves; what are they to a thousand scenes in the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia Minor, Switzerland, or even of Cintra in Portugal, or to many scenes of Italy, and the Sierras of Spain? But it is the "art," the columns, the temples, the wrecked vessels, which give them their antique and their modern poetry, and not the spots themselves. Let us examine a little further this "babble of green fields" and of bare nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for the poetical purposes of the fine arts. In stands? Art not inferior to nature for poetical purposes. landscape painting, the great artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents and composes one. Nature, in her natural aspect, does not furnish him with such existing scenes as he requires. Everywhere he presents you with some famous city, or celebrated scene from mountain or other nature, it must be taken from some particular point of view, and with such light, and shade, and distance, etc., as serve not only to heighten its beauties, but to shadow its deformities. The poetry of nature alone, exactly as she appears, is not sufficient to bear him out. The very sky of his painting is not the portrait of the sky of nature; it is a composition of different skies, observed at different times, and not the whole copied from any particular day. And why? Because nature is not lavish of her beauties; they are widely scattered, and occasionally displayed, to be selected with care, and gathered with difficulty. Nature, exactly, simply, barely nature, will make no great artist of any kind, and least of all a poet-the most artificial, perhaps, of all artists in his very essence. With regard to natural imagery, the poets are obliged to take some of their best illustrations from art. You say that a "fountain is as clear or clearer than glass," to express its beauty: O fons Blandusiae, splendidior vitro ! Art is not inferior to nature for poetical purposes. IMITATION THIS imitatio is dissimilis materiei similis tractatio; and Imitatio: also, similis materiei dissimilis tractatio, as Virgil followed dissimilis Homer: but the argument to the one was Ulysses, to the similis other Aeneas. ... materiei tractatio, similis dissimilis Horace followeth Pindar, but either of them his own materiei argument and person; as the one, Hiero king of Sicily, tractatio. the other, Augustus the Emperor; and yet both for like respects, that is, for their courageous stoutness in war and just government in peace. And therefore, even as Virgil and Horace deserve most worthy praise, that they, spying the imperfectness in Ennius and Plautus, by true imitation of Homer and Euripides brought poetry to the same perfectness in Latin as it was in Greek, even so those that by the same way would benefit their tongue and country deserve rather thanks than dispraise in that behalf. R. ASCHAM, Schoolmaster, 1570. Methinks we should not so soon yield up our consents captive to the authority of antiquity, unless we saw more reason; all our understandings are not to be built by the square of Greece and Italy. We are the children of nature as well as they, we are not so placed out of the way of judgment, but that the same sun of discretion shineth upon us; we have our portion of the same virtues as well as of the same vices. . . . Time and the turn of things bring about these faculties according to the present estimation; and res temporibus non tempora rebus servire oportet. We should not yield up our consents captive to the authority of antiquity. Imitatio. So that we must never rebel against use; quem penes arbitrium est, et vis et norma loquendi. It is not the observing of trochaics nor their iambics, that will make our writings aught the wiser; all their poesy, all their philosophy is nothing, unless we bring the discerning light of conceit with us to apply it to use. It is not books, but only that great book of the world, and the all over-spreading grace of Heaven that makes men truly judicial. S. DANIEL, Defence of Rhyme, 1602. The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, imitatio, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use. To make choice of one excellent man above the rest, and so to follow him till he grow very he, or so like him as the copy may be mistaken for the principal. Not as a creature that swallows what it takes in, crude, raw, or undigested; but that feeds with an appetite, and hath a stomach to concoct, divide, and turn all into nourishment. Not to imitate servilely, as Horace saith, and catch at vices for virtue, but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savour; make our Observe how imitation sweet; observe how the best writers have imitated, and follow them: how Virgil and Statius have imitated Homer; how Horace, Archilochus, how Alcaeus, and the other lyrics; and so of the rest. Not to imitate servilely. the best writers have imitated. One not to be imitated alone. Nature in clines us to imitation. B. JONSON, Discoveries, 1620-1635. One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone; for never no imitation ever grew up to his author; likeness is always on this side truth. Ib. Such limits to the progress of every thing, even of worthiness as well as defect, doth imitation give; for whilst we imitate others, we can no more excel them, than he that sails by others' maps can make a new discovery; and to imitation, nature (which is the only visible power and operation of God) perhaps doth needfully incline us to keep us from excesses. ion, s of one he xen it an And as the qualities which are termed good are bounded, Good and so are the bad, and likewise limited as well as gotten by limited as bad qualities imitation. Therefore we may conclude that nature, well as gotten by for the safety of mankind, hath as well, by dulling and imitation. Sir W. DAVENANT, Preface to Gondibert, 1650. "the kinds." [T]he first inventors of any art or science, provided they Doctrine of have brought it to perfection, are, in reason, to give laws to it; and, according to their model, all after-undertakers are to build. Thus, in epic poetry, no man ought to In epic dispute the authority of Homer, who gave the first being poetry no man ought to that masterpiece of art, and endued it with that form of to dispute the authority perfection in all its parts that nothing was wanting to its of Homer. rn excellency. Virgil, therefore, and those very few who have Virgil succeeded him, endeavoured not to introduce, or innovate, plan of the anything in a design already perfected, but imitated the inventor. plan of the inventor; and are only so far true heroic poets as they have built on the foundations of Homer. Thus Pindar, the author of those Odes which are so admirably restored by Mr. Cowley in our language, ought for ever to be the standard of them; and we are bound, according to the practice of Horace and Mr. Cowley, to copy him. ce ut J. DRYDEN, Preface to Albion and Albanius, 1685. imitated the and Fletcher, they have [T]he general answer may be given to the . . . question, Imitate how far we ought to imitate Shakespeare and Fletcher in Shakespeare their plots; namely, that we ought to follow them so far so far as only as they have copied the excellencies of those who copied the invented and brought to perfection dramatic poetry; those of those who things only excepted, which religion, custom of countries, brought to idioms of languages, etc., have altered in the superstructures, dramatic but not in the foundation of the design. J. DRYDEN, Preface to Troilus and Cressida, 1679. K excellencies perfection poetry. |