Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry [79]
lengthened into four. Spenser is my example for both these privileges of English verses; and Chapman has followed him in his translation of Homer. Mr. Cowley has given in to them after both; and all succeeding writers after him. I regard them now as the Magna Charta of heroic poetry; and am too much an Englishman to lose what my ancestors have gained for me. Let the French and Italians value themselves on their regularity; strength and elevation are our standard. I said before, and I repeat it, that the affected purity of the French has unsinewed their heroic verse. The language of an epic poem is almost wholly figurative; yet they are so fearful of a metaphor that no example of Virgil can encourage them to be bold with safety. Sure, they might warm themselves by that sprightly blaze, without approaching it so close as to singe their wings; they may come as near it as their master. Not that I would discourage that purity of diction in which he excels all other poets; but he knows how far to extend his franchises, and advances to the verge without venturing a foot beyond it. On the other side, without being injurious to the memory of our English Pindar, I will presume to say that his metaphors are sometimes too violent, and his language is not always pure. But at the same time I must excuse him, for through the iniquity of the times he was forced to travel at an age when, instead of learning foreign languages, he should have studied the beauties of his mother tongue, which, like all other speeches, is to be cultivated early, or we shall never write it with any kind of elegance. Thus by gaining abroad he lost at home, like the painter in the "Arcadia," who, going to see a skirmish, had his arms lopped off, and returned, says Sir Philip Sidney, well instructed how to draw a battle, but without a hand to perform his work.
There is another thing in which I have presumed to deviate from him and Spenser. They both make hemistichs, or half-verses, breaking off in the middle of a line. I confess there are not many such in the "Faerie Queen," and even those few might be occasioned by his unhappy choice of so long a stanza. Mr. Cowley had found out that no kind of staff is proper for an heroic poem, as being all too lyrical; yet though he wrote in couplets, where rhyme is freer from constraint, he frequently affects half-verses, of which we find not one in Homer, and I think not in any of the Greek poets or the Latin, excepting only Virgil: and there is no question but he thought he had Virgil's authority for that licence. But I am confident our poet never meant to leave him or any other such a precedent; and I ground my opinion on these two reasons: first, we find no example of a hemistich in any of his Pastorals or Georgics, for he had given the last finishing strokes to both these poems; but his "AEneis" he left so incorrect, at least so short of that perfection at which he aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he passed upon it. And, in the second place, I reasonably presume that he intended to have filled up all these hemistichs, because in one of them we find the sense imperfect:-
"Quem tibi jam Troja . . . " ("AEn." iii. 340.)
which some foolish grammarian has ended for him with a half-line of nonsense:-
"Peperit fumante Creusa."
For Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of that city, which I need not prove. On the other side we find also that he himself filled up one line in the sixth AEneid, the enthusiasm seizing him while he was reading to Augustus:-
"Misenum AEolidem, quo non praestantior alter AEre ciere viros, . . . "
to which he added in that transport, Martemque accendare cantu, and never was any line more nobly finished, for the reasons which I have given in the "Book of Painting."
On these considerations I have shunned hemistichs, not being willing to imitate Virgil to a fault, like Alexander's courtiers, who affected to hold their necks awry because he could not help it. I am confident your lordship is by this time of my opinion, and that
There is another thing in which I have presumed to deviate from him and Spenser. They both make hemistichs, or half-verses, breaking off in the middle of a line. I confess there are not many such in the "Faerie Queen," and even those few might be occasioned by his unhappy choice of so long a stanza. Mr. Cowley had found out that no kind of staff is proper for an heroic poem, as being all too lyrical; yet though he wrote in couplets, where rhyme is freer from constraint, he frequently affects half-verses, of which we find not one in Homer, and I think not in any of the Greek poets or the Latin, excepting only Virgil: and there is no question but he thought he had Virgil's authority for that licence. But I am confident our poet never meant to leave him or any other such a precedent; and I ground my opinion on these two reasons: first, we find no example of a hemistich in any of his Pastorals or Georgics, for he had given the last finishing strokes to both these poems; but his "AEneis" he left so incorrect, at least so short of that perfection at which he aimed, that we know how hard a sentence he passed upon it. And, in the second place, I reasonably presume that he intended to have filled up all these hemistichs, because in one of them we find the sense imperfect:-
"Quem tibi jam Troja . . . " ("AEn." iii. 340.)
which some foolish grammarian has ended for him with a half-line of nonsense:-
"Peperit fumante Creusa."
For Ascanius must have been born some years before the burning of that city, which I need not prove. On the other side we find also that he himself filled up one line in the sixth AEneid, the enthusiasm seizing him while he was reading to Augustus:-
"Misenum AEolidem, quo non praestantior alter AEre ciere viros, . . . "
to which he added in that transport, Martemque accendare cantu, and never was any line more nobly finished, for the reasons which I have given in the "Book of Painting."
On these considerations I have shunned hemistichs, not being willing to imitate Virgil to a fault, like Alexander's courtiers, who affected to hold their necks awry because he could not help it. I am confident your lordship is by this time of my opinion, and that