NEUVIÈME ET DIXIÈME CAUSERIES

Monsieur,

The interesting lectures which you hâve lately given us hâve of course turned our thoughts strongly in the direction of Lord Byron, that man of brilliant talents, but mournfully wasted career ; and most instructive is it to follow with you the history of his early life and éducation, tracing the influence they exercised upon his subséquent writings, as well as upon his criticisms on literature. What a loss the world may hâve sustained, by the defects of that early training, can hardly, I think, be estimated, for, had Byron joined to his great genius the sentiments which animated Milton and him whom Lord Byron called " the poor maniacal Calvinist and coddled poet " Cowper, his poetry would, it seemstome, hâve ranked highest in the English language. What can be more fuU of inimitable pathos than the " Prisoner of Chillon ? " What more sublime than the Address to the Océan, or the Thunder Storm among the Alps ? —

who surpasses Byron in vivid perception and exquisite delineation of nature, in passionate enthusiasm, or in melodious versification ? Surely he need not hâve included himself in tlie censure he pronounced on the New School of Poetry, which had in his opinion deviated so shamefuUy from the " pure and perfect style " of Pope, the poet who, he said, occupied the position in relation to others of a Greek Temple to a raountain of burnt brickwork ! ! I should be very sorry to think that Lord Byron's prophecy was right, that future générations will repair the wrong donc to Pope, and look upon him as the most faultless of poets, and almost of men ; but do you not think, Monsieur, that there is great truth in Byron's criticism on those who cried down perfect versification, as if it necessarily excluded a high order of poetry — who pretended that because truths were clearly stated, a poem lacked invention — and who maintained that the absence of obscurity argued a want of genius. I hâve so often rebuked my own bad taste for not being able to enter heart and soûl into the merits of blank verse, Ihat I naturally shelter myself eagerly under the dictum of Lord Byron, that except Milton, no one ever wrote blank verse who could rhyme ! Surely if a poem possesses every other qualification, its value must be enhanced by being presented to us in a form which renders it more pleasing to the ear, and more capable of being retained by the mind.

I do not know what Byron means by qualifying the libéral and gênerons praise which he bestows on Sir Walter Scott, by remarking that his poetry, which he

calls as good as any of that day, if not better, was based on an erroneous system. What is theerror? It cannot be that Scott's poetry is not intelligible, forthe meaning is as clear as the day in every line he writes ; it cannot be a lack of harmonious versification, for few ever equalled him in the exquisite modulation of bis mélodies, the easy flowing of bis beautiful stanzas ; wbile bis plot is always ingeniously conceived, and fully sustained througbout. Perhaps some may bring against him the charge of " excess," but I do not think he can ever be called tedious, thougb I know how just was your praise of the great geniuses, who achieve brilliant results by a few bold strokes. We probably ail remember the story of the poet, who, wbile a schoolboy, was on the point of being punished for having failed to write some verses on our Lord's first miracle at Cana in Galilée, when in a moment of inspiration he penned the line, " The waters saw their Lord, and blushed."

Lettre écrite à l'occasion d'un passage de la Quatrième Causerie, (i)

Monsieur,

It seems somewhat rash to venture on debatable ground, when we are warned beforehand that we must be prepared to raeet perplexity, if not danger, and certainly the question we are invited to consider does présent the

(1) Voyez page 88 et suivantes. — Cette lettre vient un peu tard dans ce livre ; mais mieux vaut tard que jamais.

appearance of an insecure quagmire, the depth of which we dare not attempt to sound.

It is only in trusting to an unavoidable superficiality that we can try to décide the possibility of thinking well and writing ill ; and to ask ourselves whether it is possible to clothe a noble thought in such a way as to hide its beauty, or if in the opposite case of thinking ill and writing well, a meagre or deformed thought may be hidden by the richness of its dress ? Though it is hard to give an absolute answer, our first impulse is to answer negatively, for reasoning by coraparison, how can melody exist which is not founded on harmony ? The key-note of the simplest, as of the grandest strains of true poetry, must be sounded in the heart or intellect of the poet, while harsh, wild chords are sometimes struck from the heart strings, as it were, of true deep thinkers, which can bear no extraneous expression, but are complète and grand in their loneliness. To use another metaphor (one which is somehow suggested by the second volume of Modem Painters), can an erring, vague, thought which seems to rise no higher than the damp fog which sometimes hangs over the fields, be elevated by thepower ofwords to the free glory of a cloud which floats in the blue firmament ? Undoubtedly, good writing must be the resuit of good thinking, for words are the divine expression of thought ; but in our weakness and imperfection, the bright rays which illumine our spirit, are apt to be almost instantly obscured by a cloud of misty, earthborn fancies, and hard as it is to analyse the working of

our own minds, it is surely harder to discern exactiy what is misty, and what is false, in the tboughts of other men. We may not be able to penetrate to the idea itself ; but we cannot but feel tbat the words in which it is enshrouded, at least reflect the brightness which filled the author's mind.

This feeling is specially aroused by the author who bas been cited as a flagrant example of " fine writing," and it is certainly not pleasant to analyse pages, where w^e constantly meet wûth siich sentences as thèse : *' the safest spirit for immature minds is révérence, the safest place, obscurity ;" " one of the worst diseases to which the human créature is liable, is the disease of thinking ;*' (1) " the moment we reduce enjoyment to ingenuity, and volition to leverage, tbat instant ail sensé of beauty disappears." Our only encouragement lies in what may be considered Ruskin's définition of true criticism, " the spirit of right taste clasps ail tbat it loves so tight tbat it crushes it if it be hoUow."

This dislike to being misunderstood is accounted for in a man who felt very much in earnest, and whose craving (if w^e may apply bis own expression to himself) was for " sympathy, not admiration." Though this dislike may bave produced a sort of irritable nervousness, as when be writes : " Now, whatever faults there may be in my modes of expression, I

(1) Ruskin dit quelque part : " TJnle?s you are a very singular person, you cannot be said to hâve any thoughts at ail."

know tliat tlie words I use will ahvays be found in Johnson's dictionary lo bear first of ail the sensé I use them in, and that the sentences, whether awkwardly turned or not, will, by the ordinary rules of grammar bear no other interprétation than I mean them to bear ; 80 that the misunderstanding of them must resuit, ultimately,from the mère factthat their matter sometimesrequires alittle patience ;" (1) still in his earlier writings he himself combats the accusations to which his laterworks bave subjected him. Thèse two passages from the second volume of Modem Painters seem to embody the idea, the phantom of which we bave been vainly trying to grasp. First definingimagination as the " penetrating, possession-taking faculty," Ruskin writes : " there is in every word set down by the Imaginative mind, an awful under-current of meaning, and évidence, and shadow upon it, of the deep places from whence it bas come. It is often obscure, often half told, for he who wrote it in his clear seeing of the things beneath, may hâve been impatient of detailed interprétation ; but if we choose to dwell upon it and trace it, it will lead us always securely back to that metropolis of the soul's dominion, from which we may foUow out the ways and tracks to its farthest coasts." " And that virtue of originality which men so strain after is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only genuineness ; it ail dépends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the

(1) " Be suve," dit encore Euskin, " if tlie autlior is wortk anything, tliat you will not get at his meaning ail at once ; — nay, that at Lis whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise."

Spring of things, and working out from that ; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain-head, opposed to the thick, hot, unrefreshing drainage of other men's meadows."

S. De p.