And Richard Grant White says: "One of them, himself a poet, Pope, passed in happy phrase one of the most penetrative judgments that has ever been uttered upon him, when he said: The poetry of Shakespeare is inspiration indeed. He is not so much an imitator as an instrument of Nature; and it is not so just to say that he speaks for her, as that she speaks through him."" This absolute fidelity to "the voice of nature," heard and focussed through the senses, is the foundation principle of the "new law" of poetry to which Gervinus refers: though, unfortunately, he is compelled to remark, that while it has taken two centuries to understand the Poet, "but very little has ever been executed in his sense." The secret of this lamentable paucity, however, is enwrapped in the irrepressible conflict still waging between the Plattonic and the Baconian spirit. Plato and Bacon! these two powerful intellects stand forth in lofty grandeur, as the self-consecrated apostles of two mighty, antagonistic forces, contending for supremacy over the world's thought and activities. In the domain of physical science, the issue has already been happily determined. But elsewhere, plainly, the conflict is still on: though even now its final glorious outcome can be clearly foreseen. We have heard from Goethe's own lips (see ante, page 349) how in early youth he caught from Bacon, through the medium of his Shakespeare, the flame of the inspiration which thereafter animated his whole life's work,—and we all know the result. This influence was received through the instinctive comprehension of Bacon's work in its essential principles, and through the touch of his vivifying spirit. And if we rightly estimate the forces and the conditions were blue.' 'How comes it that you know now and did not Because I remembered that two years He had no image in his eye, but he know before?' I asked. ago we spoke about it.' remembered the words." involved, as this intimate comprehension of his work becomes more general, the validity and the universality of his principles more widely acknowledged, and as the quickening power of his spirit is more deeply felt, and its inspiration more generally diffused, Bacon's influence, in its growing predominance over the Platonic spirit, is destined ultimately to effect a revolution, as pronounced, as felicitous, and as complete and enduring, in poetry, in literature, in art, and in all man's higher activities, as it has wrought in the past in physical science. For it concerns "not only the contemplative happiness, but the whole fortunes, and affairs, and powers, and works of men.' CHAPTER XIII.-CONtinued. AND yet, as the reader has doubtless remarked, there is much in the Shakespeare that transcends the reality. And here again, we recognize the thoroughly consistent personality of its author: for, as has been well said, “It is the characteristic of genius to comprehend all contradictories in itself." In his many-sided, broad "wholemindedness," Bacon clearly distinguished the difference between art and science; recognizing that art occupies a distinct realm, having laws and principles of its own, and with well defined lines of demarkation separating it from the domain of science. These distinctions are based upon the fundamental fact that a work of art is essentially a creation of man, bearing the impress of his formative hand. Thus, in contradistinction to science, one of its controlling principles, contributing materially to its power -because it is responsive to a deep craving of the human spirit—is intensification. (The word is used in the broadest sense; for the Greeks in their art gave intensity even to repose.)* * This intensification is aptly illustrated in Greek art, in its representation of the human form in a substantial perfection unknown in real life: "The Greek sculptor could readily form in his constructive imagination an individual figure, which, true to nature in all its parts, was still the bearer of these characteristics of typical life. Especially among the athletes of the Palæstra his eye received impressions of numberless individual forms, which became as it were his materials, with which, without an effort, he could construct new and great forms, individual works of art unmatched in real life."— Essays on the Art of Pheidias. This essential principle, exemplified upon almost every page of the Shakespeare, was fundamental with Bacon, who gave it clear exposition in his Advancement of Learning, Second Book: "Poetry is a part of learning in measure of words for the most part restrained, but in all other parts extremely licensed, and doth truly refer to the Imagination; which, being not tied to the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever that which nature hath joined, and so make unlawful matches and divorces of things: Pictoribus atque poetis, etc. (Painters and poets have always been allowed to take what liberties they would.) It is taken in two senses, in respect of words or matter. In the first sense it is but a character of style, and belongeth to arts of speech, and is not pertinent for the present.* In the latter it is (as hath * Later, in the Sixth Book of his De Augmentis, he touches upon versification, concluding in these masterful words: 66 Precepts should be added as to the kinds of verse which best suit each matter or subject. The ancients used hexameter for histories and eulogies; elegiac for complaints; iambic for invectives; lyric for odes and hymns. Nor have modern poets been wanting in this wisdom, as far as their own languages are concerned. The fault has been, that some of them, out of too much zeal for antiquity, have tried to train the modern languages into the ancient measures (hexameter, elegiac, sapphic, etc.): measures incompatible with the structure of the languages themselves, and no less offensive to the ear. In these things the judgment of the sense is to be preferred to the precepts of art,— as the poet says, Coenæ fercula nostræ ["The dinner is for eating, and my wish is That guests and not that cooks should like the dishes."] And it is not art, but abuse of art, when instead of perfecting nature, it perverts her." This original, but preeminently sound artistic principle, is the distinctive law of the Shakespearean versification; universally been said) one of the principal portions of learning, and is nothing else but Feigned History, which may be styled as well in prose as in verse. "The use of this Feigned History hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it; the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poetry feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true history propoundeth successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poetry feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence; because true hisrecognized as such by the critics. Thus, Richard Grant White says: 66 Shakespeare's freedom in the use of words was but a part of that conscious irresponsibility to critical rule which had such an important influence upon the development of his whole dramatic style." And Gervinus says: "But Shakespeare soon stepped forth from this constraint, in a manner scarcely indicated by Marlowe ; he intertwined the sense more clearly through the verses according to the degree of passion expressed; and yielding to this inward impulse, he removed the monotonousness of the older blank verse by constantly interrupting its regular course, by abbreviation into verses of one, two, or three feet, by repeated cesures and pauses, by concluding these cesures with amphibrachs, by exchanging the iambic metre with the trochaic, by alternately contracting or extending many-syllabled words, and by combining words and syllables, capable of different scanning. Especially schooled by Spenser's melodious versification, he thus blended its manner with Marlowe's power, and with exquisite tact of sound and feeling, he broke up the stiff severity of the old verse into a freedom which was foreign to his predecessors, and yet in this freedom he retained a moderation which, on the other hand, is partly lost by his successors." |