Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE STUDY

OF

THE CLASSIC POETS..

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

In submitting this Work to the Public, I trust I may justify myself against any charge of individual presumption by alleging the apparent usefulness of the undertaking, if well executed, and also that the matter itself is principally, though not exclusively, intended for Young Persons. It is possible, indeed, that a perusal of these Introductions may not be unserviceable to many well educated readers of any age and of either sex; but I do not directly address myself to graduates of any degree. By those who are still called Boys, I hope the teaching of him, who has ceased to be one, will be as kindly received as it is affectionately given.

My wish is to enable the youthful student to form a more just and liberal judgment of the characters and merits of the Greek Poets, than he has commonly an opportunity of doing at school;

and for that purpose to habituate his mind to sound principles of literary criticism. Those principles, it must be remembered, are of universal application: it is inattention to the universality. of the principles of criticism, that makes our judgment on literary matters uncertain and inconsistent. Often may we hear or read in the same conversation or book just and ingenious comments on modern authors coupled with the most shallow and mistaken remarks on the ancients; and on the other hand, though much more rarely, we may meet with a sound exposition of the merits of a Greek or Latin Poem, mixed up with, or even illustrated by, parallel passages cited with applause from some worthless favorite of contemporary interest. It is true that various languages, different religions, and distant ages, have produced, and will perpetuate, numerous peculiarities in poems, histories, and orations; but, however these causes may induce a diversity of color and shape, we shall find that the substance of such works of the intellect is in all of them essentially the same. Excellence in all of them must depend, according to their several natures, on the presence of Imagination, Fancy, Good Sense, and Purity of Language; and all that is previously necessary to the critical examination of ancient and modern poetry upon the same principles is, to set aside for the moment those quali

ties which are the peculiarities of place and time, and then a review of those qualities which remain, and are common to every place and to all time, will be as obvious in the case of a Greek and English, as in that of an English and a French author.

There can be no doubt that this imperfection and obliquity of judgment in literary matters is chiefly occasioned by the exclusive study of the ancient and modern writers in succession only, and rarely or never together, and with light reciprocally reflected. Our youth is as usually absorbed by Greek and Latin, as the rest of our lives is by English, Italian, or French. The living languages are considered as interfering with the exercises of the school, and the study of the learned is too often abandoned or disclaimed in manhood as puerile or pedantic. Hence neither are cultivated with the manifold advantages which a judicious association of both would certainly afford. Undue admiration and undue depreciation are the ordinary consequences of this unreasonable divorce, and whilst by partial and halflearned criticism some insignificant works on either side have attracted undeserved attention, the great writers of all sides are the less honored and the less understood.

One great rule, which, both for its paramount importance, and because it refers to the general

token and condition of all other excellence, should never be forgotten, is to require in a writer an invariable purity of language. It is not too much to say, although this may exist unaccompanied by other merit, that genius itself never has been, and never can be, fully manifested, excepting in and through this its proper and necessary organ. The purity of language, of which I speak, does not consist merely or chiefly in the sedulous use of words sanctioned by what is called authority, but in a logical harmony of expressions with the thoughts, so that the exact image or conception intended by the writer may be conveyed to the mind of the reader. Words are not only the signs of all thoughts, but seem originally, though subject to several exceptions, to have been the very mental pictures of all visible things. To use words, therefore, in their primary and most simple meanings is one sure mode of preserving purity and truth of diction. Nor will such a rule of style limit the powers or weaken the splendor of the writer; for it may be truly said, that some of the most splendid poets in the world have been those through whose transparent language the face and form of external nature are visible to the mind's eye. Homer, Dante, and Chaucer, as they are the most picturesque of poets, so are they in this respect amongst the most faultless of writers. They found and used their native tongues in the

« PreviousContinue »