POEMS AND SONNETS.
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OUR idolatry of Shakespear (not to say our admiration)
ceases with his plays. In his other
productions, he was a mere author, though not
a common author. It was only by representing
others, that he became himself. He could go out
of himself, and express the soul of Cleopatra;
but in his own person, he appeared to be always
waiting for the prompter's cue. In expressing
the thoughts of others, he seemed inspired;
in expressing his own, he was a mechanic. The
licence of an assumed character was necessary
to restore his genius to the privileges of nature,
and to give him courage to break through the
tyranny of fashion, the trammels of custom. In
his plays, he was "as broad and casing as the
general air:" in his poems, on the contrary, he
appears to be "cooped, and cabined in" by all
the technicalities of art, by all the petty intricacies
of thought and language, which poetry had
learned from the controversial jargon of the
schools, where words had been made a substitute
for things. There was, if we mistake
not, something of modesty, and a painful sense
of personal propriety at the bottom of this.
Shakespear's imagination, by identifying itself
with the strongest characters in the most trying
circumstances, grappled at once with nature,
and trampled the littleness of art under his feet:
the rapid changes of situation, the wide range
of the universe, gave him life and spirit, and
afforded full scope to his genius; but returned
into his closet again, and having assumed
the badge of his profession, he could only labour
in his vocation, and conform himself to existing
models. The thoughts, the passions, the words
which the poet's pen, "glancing from heaven to
earth, from earth to heaven," lent to others,
shook off the fetters of pedantry and affectation;
while his own thoughts and feelings,
standing by themselves, were siezed upon as
lawful prey, and tortured to death according to
the established rules and practice of the day. In
a word, we do not like Shakespear's poems, because
we like his plays: the one, in all their
excellencies, are just the reverse of the other.
It has been the fashion of late to cry up our
author's poems, as equal to his plays: this is
the desperate cant of modern criticism. We
would ask, was there the slightest comparison
between Shakespear, and either Chaucer or
Spenser, as mere poets? Not any.--The two
poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and
Lucrece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses.
They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold.
The author seems all the time to be thinking of
his verses, and not of his subject,--not of what
his characters would feel, but of what he shall
say; and as it must happen in all such cases,
he always puts into their mouths those things
which they would be the last to think of, and
which it shews the greatest ingenuity in him to
find out. The whole is laboured, up-hill work.
The poet is perpetually singling out the difficulties
of the art to make an exhibition of his
strength and skill in wrestling with them. He is
making perpetual trials of them as if his mastery
over them were doubted. The images,
which are often striking, are generally applied to
things which they are the least like: so that they
do not blend with the poems but seem stuck upon
it, like splendid patch-work, or remain quite
distinct from it, like detached substances, painted
and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure
to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. The
speakers are like persons who have both leisure
and inclination to make riddles on their own situation,
and to twist and turn every object or
incident into acrostics and anagrams. Every
thing is spun out into allegory; and a digression
is always preferred to the main story. Sentiment
is built up upon plays of words; the hero
or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion,
but from the force of dialectics. There is besides
a strange attempt to substitute the language of
painting for that of poetry, to make us see their
feelings in the faces of the persons; and again,
consistently with this, in the description of the
picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those circumstances
are chiefly insisted on, which it would be
impossible to convey except by words. The invocation
to Opportunity in the Tarquin and Lucrece
is full of thoughts and images, but at the
same time it is over-loaded by them. The concluding
stanza expresses all our objections to
this kind of poetry:--
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"Oh! idle words, servants to shadow fools;
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators;
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;
Debate when leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be their mediators:
For me I force not argument a straw,
Since that my case is past all help of law."
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The description of the horse in Venus and
Adonis has been particularly admired, and not
without reason:--
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"Round hoof'd, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eyes, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide,
Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back."
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Now this inventory of perfections shews great
knowledge of the horse; and is good matter-of-fact
poetry. Let the reader but compare it with
a speech in the Midsummer Night's Dream where
Theseus describes his hounds--
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"And their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew"--
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and he will perceive at once what we mean by
the difference between Shakespear's own poetry,
and that of his plays. We prefer the Passionate
Pilgrim very much to the I,over's Complaint.
It has been doubted whether the latter poem is
Shakespear's.
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Of the sonnets we do not well know what to
say. The subject of them seems to be somewhat
equivocal; but many of them are highly beautiful
in themselves, and interesting as they relate
to the state of the personal feelings of the
author. The following are some of the most
striking:--
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CONSTANCY.
"Let those who are in favour with their stars,
Of public honour and proud titles boast,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.
Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,
But as the marigold in the sun's eye;
And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famous'd for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd,
Where I may not remove, nor be remov'd."
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LOVE'S CONSOLATION.
"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my out-cast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
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NOVELTY.
"My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandis'd, whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays:
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:
Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."
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LIFE'S DECAY.
"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."
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In all these, as well as in many others, there
is a mild tone of sentiment, deep, mellow, and
sustained, very different from the crudeness of
his earlier poems.
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THE END.
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LONDON: PRINTED BY C. H. REYNELL,
21, PICCADILLY.--1817.
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