Lectures on the English Poets | Page 9

bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited
wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest
composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm,
and make me wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it
would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit
down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together,
and this was still worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent
myself in words, it would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself
would abate." P. 50.
The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the Odyssey, it
is true; but the relator had the true genius of a poet. It has been made a
question whether Richardson's romances are poetry; and the answer
perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not romance. The
interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it is by an infinite
number of little things, by incessant labour and calls upon the attention,
by a repetition of blows that have no rebound in them. The sympathy
excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced
and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story
does not "give an echo to the seat where love is throned." The heart
does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does not run
on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged along
with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with which the
Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace.--Sir Charles
Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he cut, translated
into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa,
is too interesting by half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves,
her samplers, her aunts and uncles--she is interesting in all that is
uninteresting. Such things, however intensely they may be brought
home to us, are not conductors to the imagination. There is infinite
truth and feeling in Richardson; but it is extracted from a caput

mortuum of circumstances: it does not evaporate of itself. His poetical
genius is like Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and requires an artificial
process to let it out. Shakspeare says--
"Our poesy is as a gum
Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our
gentle flame
Provokes itself, and like the current flies
Each bound it
chafes." [1]
I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on four of the
principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods of
history--Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add, Ossian. In Homer,
the principle of action or life is predominant; in the Bible, the principle
of faith and the idea of Providence; Dante is a
personification of blind
will; and in Ossian we see the decay of life, and the lag end of the
world. Homer's poetry is the heroic: it is full of life and action: it is
bright as the day, strong as a river. In the vigour of his intellect, he
grapples with all the objects of nature, and enters into all the relations
of social life.
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[1] Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness
of the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural,
but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the
one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the
understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the
reason: poetry produces its effect by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing
is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad
prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not
to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry
wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic.
And some of our own poetry which has been most admired, is only
poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction.
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He saw many countries, and the manners of many men; and he has
brought them all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to
battle with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of animal
spirits: we see them before us, their number, and their order of battle,
poured out upon the plain "all plumed like estriches, like eagles newly

bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and
gorgeous as the sun at midsummer," covered with glittering armour,
with dust and blood; while the Gods quaff their nectar in golden cups,
or mingle in the fray; and the old men assembled on the walls of Troy
rise up with reverence as Helen passes by them.