Classic Poem

Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of contemporary
writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets--Comparison between the
poets before and since Pope.


It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in conversation,
and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain, whether
I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited circulation of my
writings, or the retirement and distance, in which I have lived, both
from the literary and political world. Most often it has been connected
with some charge which I could not acknowledge, or some principle which
I had never entertained. Nevertheless, had I had no other motive
or incitement, the reader would not have been troubled with this
exculpation. What my additional purposes were, will be seen in the
following pages. It will be found, that the least of what I have written
concerns myself personally. I have used the narration chiefly for the
purpose of giving a continuity to the work, in part for the sake of
the miscellaneous reflections suggested to me by particular events, but
still more as introductory to a statement of my principles in Politics,
Religion, and Philosophy, and an application of the rules, deduced from
philosophical principles, to poetry and criticism. But of the objects,
which I proposed to myself, it was not the least important to effect,
as far as possible, a settlement of the long continued controversy
concerning the true nature of poetic diction; and at the same time to
define with the utmost impartiality the real poetic character of the
poet, by whose writings this controversy was first kindled, and has been
since fuelled and fanned.

In the spring of 1796, when I had but little passed the verge of
manhood, I published a small volume of juvenile poems. They were
received with a degree of favour, which, young as I was, I well know
was bestowed on them not so much for any positive merit, as because they
were considered buds of hope, and promises of better works to come. The
critics of that day, the most flattering, equally with the severest,
concurred in objecting to them obscurity, a general turgidness of
diction, and a profusion of new coined double epithets. The first
is the fault which a writer is the least able to detect in his own
compositions: and my mind was not then sufficiently disciplined to
receive the authority of others, as a substitute for my own conviction.
Satisfied that the thoughts, such as they were, could not have been
expressed otherwise, or at least more perspicuously, I forgot to
inquire, whether the thoughts themselves did not demand a degree of
attention unsuitable to the nature and objects of poetry. This remark
however applies chiefly, though not exclusively, to the Religious
Musings. The remainder of the charge I admitted to its full extent,
and not without sincere acknowledgments both to my private and public
censors for their friendly admonitions. In the after editions, I pruned
the double epithets with no sparing hand, and used my best efforts to
tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction; though in truth,
these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into
my longer poems with such intricacy of union, that I was often obliged
to omit disentangling the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower.
From that period to the date of the present work I have published
nothing, with my name, which could by any possibility have come before
the board of anonymous criticism. Even the three or four poems, printed
with the works of a friend, as far as they were censured at all,
were charged with the same or similar defects, (though I am persuaded
not with equal justice),--with an excess of ornament, in addition to
strained and elaborate diction. I must be permitted to add, that,
even at the early period of my juvenile poems, I saw and admitted the
superiority of an austerer and more natural style, with an insight not
less clear, than I at present possess. My judgment was stronger than
were my powers of realizing its dictates; and the faults of my language,
though indeed partly owing to a wrong choice of subjects, and the desire
of giving a poetic colouring to abstract and metaphysical truths,
in which a new world then seemed to open upon me, did yet, in part
likewise, originate in unfeigned diffidence of my own comparative
talent.--During several years of my youth and early manhood, I
reverenced those who had re-introduced the manly simplicity of the
Greek, and of our own elder poets, with such enthusiasm as made the hope
seem presumptuous of writing successfully in the same style. Perhaps
a similar process has happened to others; but my earliest poems were
marked by an ease and simplicity, which I have studied, perhaps with
inferior success, to impress on my later compositions.

At school, (Christ's Hospital,) I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of
a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master, the
Reverend James Bowyer. He early moulded my taste to the preference of
Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of
Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts
as I then read,) Terence, and above all the chaster poems of Catullus,
not only with the Roman poets of the, so called, silver and brazen ages;
but with even those of the Augustan aera: and on grounds of plain sense
and universal logic to see and assert the superiority of the former in
the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the
same time that we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us read
Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons too, which
required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his
censure. I learned from him, that poetry, even that of the loftiest and,
seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe
as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more
complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly
great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for
every word, but for the position of every word; and I well remember
that, availing himself of the synonymes to the Homer of Didymus, he made
us attempt to show, with regard to each, why it would not have answered
the same purpose; and wherein consisted the peculiar fitness of the word
in the original text.

In our own English compositions, (at least for the last three years of
our school education,) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image,
unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been
conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute,
harp, and lyre, Muse, Muses, and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus, and
Hippocrene were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear
him now, exclaiming "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse,
boy, Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye!
the cloister-pump, I suppose!" Nay certain introductions, similes,
and examples, were placed by name on a list of interdiction. Among the
similes, there was, I remember, that of the manchineel fruit, as suiting
equally well with too many subjects; in which however it yielded the
palm at once to the example of Alexander and Clytus, which
was equally good and apt, whatever might be the theme. Was
it ambition? Alexander and Clytus!--Flattery? Alexander and
Clytus!--anger--drunkenness--pride--friendship--ingratitude--late
repentance? Still, still Alexander and Clytus! At length, the praises of
agriculture having been exemplified in the sagacious observation that,
had Alexander been holding the plough, he would not have run his friend
Clytus through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable old friend
was banished by public edict in saecula saeculorum. I have sometimes
ventured to think, that a list of this kind, or an index expurgatorius
of certain well-known and ever-returning phrases, both introductory,
and transitional, including a large assortment of modest egoisms, and
flattering illeisms, and the like, might be hung up in our Law-courts,
and both Houses of Parliament, with great advantage to the public, as
an important saving of national time, an incalculable relief to his
Majesty's ministers, but above all, as insuring the thanks of country
attornies, and their clients, who have private bills to carry through
the House.

Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I
cannot pass over in silence, because I think it imitable and worthy of
imitation. He would often permit our exercises, under some pretext of
want of time, to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked
over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would
ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found
as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no
satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind
were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the
exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced, in
addition to the tasks of the day. The reader will, I trust, excuse this
tribute of recollection to a man, whose severities, even now, not seldom
furnish the dreams, by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the
mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep; but neither lessen nor
dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations. He sent
us to the University excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable
Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts,
which we derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage. He is now
gone to his final reward, full of years, and full of honours, even of
those honours, which were dearest to his heart, as gratefully bestowed
by that school, and still binding him to the interests of that school,
in which he had been himself educated, and to which during his whole
life he was a dedicated thing.

From causes, which this is not the place to investigate, no models
of past times, however perfect, can have the same vivid effect on
the youthful mind, as the productions of contemporary genius. The
discipline, my mind had undergone, Ne falleretur rotundo sono et versuum
cursu, cincinnis, et floribus; sed ut inspiceret quidnam subesset, quae,
sedes, quod firmamentum, quis fundus verbis; an figures essent mera
ornatura et orationis fucus; vel sanguinis e materiae ipsius corde
effluentis rubor quidam nativus et incalescentia genuina;--removed all
obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in style without diminishing
my delight. That I was thus prepared for the perusal of Mr. Bowles's
sonnets and earlier poems, at once increased their influence, and my
enthusiasm. The great works of past ages seem to a young man things of
another race, in respect to which his faculties must remain passive
and submiss, even as to the stars and mountains. But the writings of a
contemporary, perhaps not many years older than himself, surrounded by
the same circumstances, and disciplined by the same manners, possess a
reality for him, and inspire an actual friendship as of a man for a man.
His very admiration is the wind which fans and feeds his hope. The
poems themselves assume the properties of flesh and blood. To recite, to
extol, to contend for them is but the payment of a debt due to one, who
exists to receive it.

There are indeed modes of teaching which have produced, and are
producing, youths of a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in
comparison with which we have been called on to despise our great public
schools, and universities,

in whose halls are hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old--

modes, by which children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And
prodigies with a vengeance have I known thus produced; prodigies of
self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity! Instead of
storing the memory, during the period when the memory is the predominant
faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the judgment; and instead
of awakening by the noblest models the fond and unmixed love and
admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper of early youth;
these nurslings of improved pedagogy are taught to dispute and decide;
to suspect all but their own and their lecturer's wisdom; and to
hold nothing sacred from their contempt, but their own contemptible
arrogance; boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in all the dirty
passions and impudence of anonymous criticism. To such dispositions
alone can the admonition of Pliny be requisite, Neque enim debet
operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos nunquam vidimus,
floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam imagines conquireremus,
ejusdem nunc honor prasentis, et gratia quasi satietate languescet?
At hoc pravum, malignumque est, non admirari hominem admiratione
dignissimum, quia videre, complecti, nec laudare tantum, verum etiam
amare contingit.

I had just entered on my seventeenth year, when the sonnets of Mr.
Bowles, twenty in number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet,
were first made known and presented to me, by a schoolfellow who had
quitted us for the University, and who, during the whole time that he
was in our first form (or in our school language a Grecian,) had been my
patron and protector. I refer to Dr. Middleton, the truly learned, and
every way excellent Bishop of Calcutta:

qui laudibus amplis
Ingenium celebrare meum, calamumque solebat,
Calcar agens animo validum. Non omnia terra
Obruta; vivit amor, vivit dolor; ora negatur
Dulcia conspicere; at fiere et meminisse relictum est.

It was a double pleasure to me, and still remains a tender recollection,
that I should have received from a friend so revered the first knowledge
of a poet, by whose works, year after year, I was so enthusiastically
delighted and inspired. My earliest acquaintances will not have
forgotten the undisciplined eagerness and impetuous zeal, with which I
laboured to make proselytes, not only of my companions, but of all with
whom I conversed, of whatever rank, and in whatever place. As my school
finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than
a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents
I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard. And with
almost equal delight did I receive the three or four following
publications of the same author.

Though I have seen and known enough of mankind to be well aware, that
I shall perhaps stand alone in my creed, and that it will be well, if
I subject myself to no worse charge than that of singularity; I am not
therefore deterred from avowing, that I regard, and ever have regarded
the obligations of intellect among the most sacred of the claims of
gratitude. A valuable thought, or a particular train of thoughts, gives
me additional pleasure, when I can safely refer and attribute it to the
conversation or correspondence of another. My obligations to Mr. Bowles
were indeed important, and for radical good. At a very premature age,
even before my fifteenth year, I had bewildered myself in metaphysics,
and in theological controversy. Nothing else pleased me. History, and
particular facts, lost all interest in my mind. Poetry--(though for a
school-boy of that age, I was above par in English versification, and
had already produced two or three compositions which, I may venture to
say, without reference to my age, were somewhat above mediocrity, and
which had gained me more credit than the sound, good sense of my old
master was at all pleased with,)--poetry itself, yea, novels and
romances, became insipid to me. In my friendless wanderings on our
leave-days, (for I was an orphan, and had scarcely any connections
in London,) highly was I delighted, if any passenger, especially if he
were dressed in black, would enter into conversation with me. For I soon
found the means of directing it to my favourite subjects

Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate,