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Essays on the Poets, and Other English Writers

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Essays on the Poets, and Other English Writers ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS THOMAS DE QUINCEY ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS Table of Contents ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS......................................................................1 THOMAS DE QUINCEY.............................................................................................................................1 ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY................................................................................................................1 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY......................................................................................................................13 JOHN KEATS.............................................................................................................................................24 OLIVER GOLDSMITH..............................................................................................................................31 ALEXANDER POPE..................................................................................................................................44 WILLIAM GODWIN..................................................................................................................................63 JOHN FOSTER............................................................................................................................................67 WILLIAM HAZLITT..................................................................................................................................69 NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.............................................................................................75 i ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS THOMAS DE QUINCEY This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online. http://www.blackmask.com • ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. • PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. • JOHN KEATS. • OLIVER GOLDSMITH. • ALEXANDER POPE. • WILLIAM GODWIN. • JOHN FOSTER. • WILLIAM HAZLITT. • NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. Proofed by JP MOURLON, Paris, France ON WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. HERETOFORE, upon one impulse or another, I have retraced fugitive memorials of several persons celebrated in our own times; but I have never undertaken an examination of any man's writings. The one labor is, comparatively, without an effort; the other is both difficult, and, with regard to contemporaries, is invidious. In genial moments the characteristic remembrances of men expand as fluently as buds travel into blossoms; but criticism, if it is to be conscientious and profound, and if it is applied to an object so unlimited as poetry, must be almost as unattainable by any hasty effort as fine poetry itself. 'Thou hast convinced me,' says Rasselas to Imlac, 'that it is impossible to be a poet;' so vast had appeared to be the array of qualifications. But, with the same ease, Imlac might have convinced the prince that it was impossible to be a critic. And hence it is, that, in the sense of absolute and philosophic criticism, we have little or none; for, before that can exist, we must have a good psychology; whereas, at present, we have none at all. If, however, it is more difficult to write critical sketches than sketches of personal recollections, often it is much less connected with painful scruples. Of books, resting only on grounds which, in sincerity, you believe to be true, and speaking without anger or scorn, you can hardly say the thing which ought to be taken amiss. But of men and women you dare not, and must not, tell all that chance may have revealed to you. Sometimes you are summoned to silence by pity for that general human infirmity, which you also, the writer, share. Sometimes you are checked by the consideration, that perhaps your knowledge of the case was originally gained under opportunities allowed by confidence or by unsuspecting carelessness. Sometimes the disclosure would cause quarrels between parties now at peace. Sometimes it would carry pain, such as you could not feel justified in carrying, into the mind of him who was its object. Sometimes, again, if right to be told, it might be difficult to prove. Thus, for one cause or another, some things are sacred, and some things are perilous, amongst any personal revelations that else you ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS 1 ESSAYS ON THE POETS, AND OTHER ENGLISH WRITERS might have it in your power to make. And seldom, indeed, is your own silent retrospect of such connections altogether happy. 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of princes,'this has been the warning, this has been the farewell moral, winding up and pointing the experience of dying statesmen. Not less truly it might be said ‘Put not your trust in the intellectual princes of your age: form no connections too close with any who live only in the atmosphere of admiration and praise. The love or the friendship of such people rarely contracts itself into the narrow circle of individuals. You, if you are brilliant like themselves, they will hate; you, if you are dull, they will despise. Gaze, therefore, on the splendor of such idols as a passing stranger. Look for a moment as one sharing in the idolatry; but pass on before the splendor has been sullied by human frailty, or before your own generous homage has been confounded with offerings of weeds.’ Safer, then, it is to scrutinize the works of eminent poets, than long to connect yourself with themselves, or to revive your remembrances of them in any personal record. Now, amongst all works that have illustrated our own age, none can more deserve an earnest notice than those of the Laureate; and on some grounds, peculiar to themselves, none so much. Their merit in fact is not only supreme but unique; not only supreme in their general class, but unique as in a class of their own. And there is a challenge of a separate nature to the curiosity of the readers, in the remarkable contrast between the first stage of Wordsworth's acceptation with the public and that which he enjoys at present. One original obstacle to the favorable impression of the Wordsworthian poetry, and an obstacle purely self−created, was his theory of poetic diction. The diction itself, without the theory, was of less consequence; for the mass of readers would have been too blind or too careless to notice it. But the preface to the second edition of his Poems, (2 vols. 1799−1800,) compelled them to notice it. Nothing more injudicious was ever done by man. An unpopular truth would, at any rate, have been a bad inauguration, for what, on other accounts, the author had announced as 'an experiment.' His poetry was already an experiment as regarded the quality of the subjects selected, and as regarded the mode of treating them. That was surely trial enough for the reader's untrained sensibilities, without the unpopular truth besides, as to the diction. But, in the mean time, this truth, besides being unpopular, was also, in part, false: it was true, and it was not true. And it was not true in a double way. Stating broadly, and allowing it to be taken for his meaning, that the diction of ordinary life, in his own words, 'the very language of man,' was the proper diction for poetry, the writer meant no such thing; for only a part of this diction, according to his own subsequent restriction, was available for such a use. And, secondly, as his own subsequent practice showed, even this part was available only for peculiar classes of poetry. In his own exquisite 'Laodamia,' in his 'Sonnets,' in his 'Excursion,' few are his obligations to the idiomatic language of life, as distinguished from that of books, or of prescriptive usage. Coleridge remarked, justly, that 'The Excursion' bristles beyond most poems with what are called 'dictionary' words; that is, polysyllabic words of Latin or Greek origin. And so it must ever be, in meditative poetry upon solemn, philosophic themes. The gamut of ideas needs a corresponding gamut of expressions; the scale of the thinking, which ranges through every key, exacts, for the artist, an unlimited command over the entire scale of the instrument which he employs. Never, in fact, was there a more erroneous direction than that given by a modern rector of the Glasgow University to the students, viz. that they should cultivate the Saxon part of our language, at the cost of the Latin part. Nonsense. Both are indispensable; and, speaking generally, without stopping to distinguish as to subjects, both are equally indispensable. Pathos, in situations which are homely, or at all connected with domestic affections, naturally moves by Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of every kind, which, (to merit the name of lyrical,) must be in the state of flux and reflux, or, generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon element of our language. And why? Because the Saxon is the aboriginal element; the basis, and not the superstructure: consequently it comprehends all the ideas which are natural to the heart of man and to the elementary situations of life. And, although the Latin often furnishes us with duplicates of these ideas, yet the Saxon, or monosyllabic part, has the advantage of precedency in our use and knowledge; for it is the language of the nursery, whether for rich or poor, in which great philological academy no toleration is given to words in 'osity' or 'ation.' There is, therefore, a great advantage, as regards the consecration to our feelings, settled, by usage and custom, upon the Saxon strands, in the mixed yarn of our native tongue. And, universally, this may be remarked that, wherever the passion of a
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