Lectures on the English Poets | Page 4

clings to the last traces
of departed happiness--when he exclaims,
------"Oh now, for ever
Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content;

Farewel the plumed troops and the big war,
That make ambition
virtue! Oh farewel!
Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and
all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war:
And O
you mortal engines, whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread
clamours counterfeit,
Farewel! Othello's occupation's gone!"
How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide in its
sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed of his
returning love, he says,

"Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and
compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the
Propontic and the Hellespont:
Even so my bloody thoughts, with
violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till
that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up."--
The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona is at that
line [sic],
"But there where I had garner'd up my heart,
To be discarded
thence!"--
One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our
sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it
sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it strengthens the
desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by
making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of passion
lays bare and shews us the rich depths of the human soul: the whole of
our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, of that which
we desire and that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast; the
action and re-action are equal; the keenness of immediate suffering
only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more intimate
participation with the antagonist world of good; makes us drink deeper
of the cup of human life; tugs at the heart-strings; loosens the pressure
about them; and calls the springs of thought and feeling into play with
tenfold force.
Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part
of our nature, as well as of the sensitive--of the desire to know, the will
to act, and the power to feel; and ought to appeal to these different parts
of our constitution, in order to be perfect. The domestic or prose
tragedy, which is thought to be the most natural, is in this sense the
least so, because it appeals almost exclusively to one of these faculties,
our sensibility. The tragedies of Moore and Lillo, for this reason,
however affecting at the time, oppress and lie like a dead weight upon
the mind, a load of misery which it is unable to throw off: the tragedy
of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs our inmost affections;

abstracts evil from itself by combining it with all the forms of
imagination, and with the deepest workings of the heart, and rouses the
whole man within us.
The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry, is not any thing
peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful thing. It is not an
anomaly of the imagination. It has its source and ground-work in the
common love of strong excitement. As Mr. Burke observes, people
flock to see a tragedy; but if there were a public execution in the next
street, the theatre would very soon be empty. It is not then the
difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty.
Children are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain
prose: nor do the hawkers of full, true, and particular accounts of
murders and executions about the streets, find it necessary to have them
turned into penny ballads, before they can dispose of these interesting
and authentic documents. The grave politician drives a thriving trade of
abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom he makes his
enemies for no other end than that he may live by them. The popular
preacher makes less frequent mention of heaven than of hell. Oaths and
nicknames are only a more vulgar sort of poetry or rhetoric. We are as
fond of indulging our violent passions as of reading a description of
those of others. We are as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to
luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked, Why we do so? the best
answer will be, Because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as
strong a principle in the mind as the love of pleasure. Objects of terror
and pity exercise the same despotic control over it as those of love or
beauty. It is as natural to hate as to love, to despise as to admire, to
express our hatred or contempt, as our love or admiration.
"Masterless passion sways us to the mood
Of what it likes