The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches-2 [18]
on a real paroxysm; and, like them, he got nothing but his distortions for his pains. Horace very happily compares those who, in his time, imitated Pindar to the youth who attempted to fly to heaven on waxen wings, and who experienced so fatal and ignominious a fall. His own admirable good sense preserved him from this error, and taught him to cultivate a style in which excellence was within his reach. Dryden had not the same self-knowledge. He saw that the greatest poets were never so successful as when they rushed beyond the ordinary bounds, and that some inexplicable good fortune preserved them from tripping even when they staggered on the brink of nonsense. He did not perceive that they were guided and sustained by a power denied to himself. They wrote from the dictation of the imagination; and they found a response in the imaginations of others. He, on the contrary, sat down to work himself, by reflection and argument, into a deliberate wildness, a rational frenzy. In looking over the admirable designs which accompany the Faust, we have always been much struck by one which represents the wizard and the tempter riding at full speed. The demon sits on his furious horse as heedlessly as if he were reposing on a chair. That he should keep his saddle in such a posture, would seem impossible to any who did not know that he was secure in the privileges of a superhuman nature. The attitude of Faust, on the contrary, is the perfection of horsemanship. Poets of the first order might safely write as desperately as Mephistopheles rode. But Dryden, though admitted to communion with higher spirits, though armed with a portion of their power, and intrusted with some of their secrets, was of another race. What they might securely venture to do, it was madness in him to attempt. It was necessary that taste and critical science should supply his deficiencies. We will give a few examples. Nothing can be finer than the description of Hector at the Grecian wall:-- o d ar esthore phaidimos Ektor, Nukti thoe atalantos upopia lampe de chalko Smerdaleo, ton eesto peri chroi doia de chersi Dour echen ouk an tis min erukakoi antibolesas, Nosphi theun, ot esalto pulas puri d osse dedeei.-- Autika d oi men teichos uperbasan, oi de kat autas Poietas esechunto pulas Danaioi d ephobethen Neas ana glaphuras omados d aliastos etuchthe. What daring expressions! Yet how significant! How picturesque! Hector seems to rise up in his strength and fury. The gloom of night in his frown,--the fire burning in his eyes,--the javelins and the blazing armour,--the mighty rush through the gates and down the battlements,--the trampling and the infinite roar of the multitude,--everything is with us; everything is real. Dryden has described a very similar event in Maximin, and has done his best to be sublime, as follows:-- "There with a forest of their darts he strove, And stood like Capaneus defying Jove; With his broad sword the boldest beating down, Till Fate grew pale, lest he should win the town, And turn'd the iron leaves of its dark book To make new dooms, or mend what it mistook." How exquisite is the imagery of the fairy-songs in the Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream; Ariel riding through the twilight on the bat, or sucking in the bells of flowers with the bee; or the little bower-women of Titania, driving the spiders from the couch of the Queen! Dryden truly said, that "Shakspeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he." It would have been well if he had not himself dared to step within the enchanted line, and drawn on himself a fate similar to that which, according to the old superstition, punished such presumptuous interference. The following lines are parts of the song of his fairies:-- "Merry, merry, merry, we sail from the East, Half-tippled at a rainbow feast. In the bright moonshine, while winds whistle loud, Tivy, tivy, tivy, we mount and we fly, All racking along in a downy white cloud; And lest our leap from the sky prove too far, We slide on the back of a new falling star, And drop from above