Lectures on the English Poets | Page 8

sharps of prose, that poetry
was invented. It is to common language, what springs are to a carriage,
or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by
the modulations of the voice: in poetry the same thing is done
systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well
observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a
subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The
merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way "sounding always
the increase of his winning." Every prose-writer has more or less of
rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived of the regular
mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left in
their writings.
An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It is but fair
that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of
the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables,
that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It
is allowed that rhyme assists the memory; and a man of wit and
shrewdness has been heard to say, that the only four good lines of
poetry are the well known ones which tell the number of days in the
months of the year.
"Thirty days hath September," &c.
But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken
the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers' ends,
besides the contents of the almanac.--Pope's versification is tiresome,
from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakspeare's blank verse
is the perfection of dramatic dialogue.
All is not poetry that passes for such: nor does verse make the whole

difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does not cease to be
poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very
properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from
poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and
irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the
imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the
understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements
either of the imagination or the passions.
I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as possible
without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson
Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer and Dryden have
translated some of the last into English rhyme, but the essence and the
power of poetry was there before. That which lifts the spirit above the
earth, which draws the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is
poetry in kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being
"married to immortal verse." If it is of the essence of poetry to strike
and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye of
childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought of
afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe may be
permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mixture of fancy and
reality in the Pilgrim's Progress was never equalled in any allegory. His
pilgrims walk above the earth, and yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty,
what truth of fiction! What deep feeling in the description of Christian's
swimming across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining
Ones within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their
heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes! The writer's genius,
though not "dipped in dews of Castalie," was baptised with the Holy
Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of it. If the
confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject for
the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we say to
Robinson Crusoe in his? Take the speech of the Greek hero on leaving
his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the reflections of the
English adventurer in his solitary place of confinement. The thoughts
of home, and of all from which he is for ever cut off, swell and press
against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls its ceaseless tide against
the rocky shore, and the very beatings of his heart become audible in

the eternal silence that surrounds him. Thus he says,
"As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country,
the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a
sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods,
the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up
with the eternal bars and