Here also is a fairy bed, very delicate, from the same poet's Muse's Elysium. Of leaves of roses, white and red, With azure hare-bells shall be hung. With down stuft of the butterfly. Of fancy, so full of gusto as to border on imagination, Sir John Suckling, in his "Ballad on a Wedding," has given some of the most playful and charming specimens in the language. They glance like twinkles in the eye, or cherries bedewed⚫ Her feet beneath her petticoat, As if they fear'd the light; It is very daring, and has a sort of playful grandeur, to compare a lady's dancing with the sun. But as the sun has it all to himself in the heavens, so she, in the blaze of her beauty, on earth. This is imagination fairly displacing fancy. The following has enchanted everybody: Her lips were red, and one was thin, Every reader has stolen a kiss at that lip, gay or grave. With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by which verse ought to be modulated, and one-ness of impression diversely produced, it has been contended by some, that Poetry need not be written in verse at all; that prose is as good a me dium, provided poetry be conveyed through it; and that to think otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or form with essence. But the opinion is a prosaical mistake. Fitness and unfitness for song, or metrical excitement, just make all the difference between a poetical and prosaical subject; and the reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry, is, that the perfection of poetical spirit demands it; that the circle of enthusiasm, beauty, and power, is incomplete without it. I do not mean to say that a poet can never show himself a poet in prose; but that, being one, his desire and necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he were unable to do so, he would not, and could not, deserve his title. Verse to the true poet is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and a difficulty. It is a help. It springs from the same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is necessary to their satisfaction and effect. Verse is no more a clog than the condition of rushing upward is a clog to fire, or than the roundness and order of the globe we live on is a clog to the freedom and variety that abound within its sphere. Verse is no dominator over the poet, except inasmuch as the bond is reciprocal, and the poet dominates over the verse. They are lovers play. fully challenging each other's rule, and delighted equally to rule and to obey. Verse is the final proof to the poet that his mastery over his art is complete. It is the shutting up of his powers in "measureful content;" the answer of form to his spirit; of strength and ease to his guidance. It is the willing action, the proud and fiery happiness, of the winged steed on whose back he has vaulted, To witch the world with wondrous horsemanship. Verse, in short, is that finishing, and rounding, and "tuneful planetting" of the poet's creations, which is produced of necessity by the smooth tendencies of their energy or inward working, and the harmonious dance into which they are attracted round the orb of the beautiful. Poetry, in its complete sympathy with beauty, must, of necessity, leave no sense of the beautiful, and no power over its forms, unmanifested; and verse flows as inevitably from this condition of its integrity, as other laws of proportion do from any other kind of embodiment of beauty (say that of the human figure), however free and various the movements may be that play within their limits. What great poet ever wrote his poems in prose? or where is a good prose poem, of any length, to be found? The poetry of the Bible is under stood to be in verse, in the original. Mr. Hazlitt has said a good word for those prose enlargements of some fine old song, which are known by the name of Ossian; and in passages they deserve what he said; but he judiciously abstained from saying anything about the form. Is Gesner's Death of Abel a poem? or Hervey's Meditations? The Pilgrim's Progress has been called one; and, undoubtedly, Bunyan had a genius which tended to make him a poet, and one of no mean order; and yet it was of as ungenerous and low a sort as was compatible with so lofty an affinity; and this is the reason why it stopped where it did. He had a craving after the beautiful, but not enough of it in himself to echo to its music. On the other hand, the possession of the beautiful will not be sufficient without force to utter it. The author of Telemachus had a soul full of beauty and tenderness. He was not a man who, if he had had a wife and children, would have run away from them, as Bunyan's hero did, to get a place by himself in heaven. He was "a little lower than the angels," like our own Bishop Jewells and Berkeleys; and yet he was no poet. He was too delicately, not to say feebly, absorbed in his devotions, to join in the energies of the seraphic choir. Every poet, then, is a versifier; every fine poet an excellent one; and he is the best whose verse exhibits the greatest amount of strength, sweetness, straightforwardness, unsuperfluousness, variety, and one-ness; one-ness, that is to say, consistency, in the general impression, metrical and moral; and variety, or every pertinent diversity of tone and rhythm, in the process. Strength is the muscle of verse, and shows itself in the number and force of the marked syllables; as, Sonorous metal blòwing màrtial sounds. Paradise Lost. Behemoth, biggest born of eàrth, ùphèav'd Id. Blow winds and crack your chèeks? ràge! blòw! Till you have drènch'd our steeples, dròwn'd the còcks! You sulphurous and thought-èxecuting fìres, Sínge my white hèad! and thòu, àll-shaking thùnder, Lear. Unexpected locations of the accent double this force, and render it characteristic of passion and abruptness. And here comes into play the reader's corresponding fineness of ear, and his retardations and accelerations in accordance with those of the poet : Of unusual passionate accent, there is an exquisite specimen in the Fairy Queen, where Una is lamenting her desertion by the Red-Cross Knight : But he, my lion, and my noble lord, How does he find in cruel heart to hate As the god of my life? Why hath he me abhorr'd? See the whole stanza, with a note upon it, in the present volume. The abuse of strength is harshness and heaviness; the reverse of it is weakness. There is a noble sentiment,—it appears both in Daniel's and Sir John Beaumont's works, but is most probably the latter's, which is a perfect outrage of strength in the sound of the words : Only the firmest and the constant st hearts Stout'st and constant'st for "stoutest' bras; He that hangs or beats out's brains, The devil's in him if he feigns. Beats out's brains, for "beats out his brains." Of heaviness, Davenant's "Gondibert" is a formidable specimen, almost throughout: With silence (òrder's help, and mark of càre) They chìde that nòise which hèedless youth affèct; Who was, though nàked, sàfe, till prìde màde strife, And so he goes digging and lumbering on, like a heavy preacher thumping the pulpit in italics, and spoiling many ingenious reflections. 1 Weakness in versification is want of accent and emphasis. It generally accompanies prosaicalness, and is the consequence of weak thoughts, and of the affectation of a certain well-bred enthusiasm. The writings of the late Mr. Hayley were remarkable for it; and it abounds among the lyrical imitators of Cowley, and the whole of what is called our French school of poetry, when it aspired above its wit and " sense. It sometimes breaks down in a horrible, hopeless manner, as if giving way at the first step. The following ludicrous passage in Congreve, intended to be particularly fine, contains an instance :— And lo! Silence himself is here; Behold the reverend shade. |