wooded dells and sunny terraces and gleaming waterfalls of some great mountain side, it has been to such adjectives as πολύπτυχος, εινοσίφυλλος, and πολυπῖδαξ, that he has recurred for a faithful expression of its marvellous beauty; or that, raising his eyes to the calm, cold, silent grandeur of the snowy ridge above, where it runs sharp and clear along the luminous sky, he has been reminded of the scene which Homer imagined, when like a silvery vapour floating up from the blue Ægean Thetis glided to the knees of Jove, to win him to her maternal purpose by her blandishments and her beauty, as he sat apart from the gods in colossal and moody majesty ἀκροτάτῃ κορυφῇ πολυδείραδος Οὐλύμποιο. The modern poet whom Mr. Ruskin most commends for his thorough objective love of the inanimate picturesque is Scott. Now the great charm of Scott, considered as a priest of nature, rests not so much upon a few elaborate descriptions of particular scenes, as upon the graphic epithets and masterly touches with which he is perpetually colouring the places which the course of his narrative leads him to mention. Here is a good illustration of what I mean: Nor faster through thy heathery braes, It is "old Melros," 66 fair Tweed," the "wild and willowed shore" of Teviot, "Dryden's groves of oak," "caverned Hawthornden," "sweet Bowhill," "Cheviot's mountains lone," Glenartney's hazel shade," "lovely Loch Achray," "Loch Vennachar in silver flowed," "the Trossach's shaggy glen," "Benharrow's shingly side," gray Stirling," "the storm-swept Orcades; and from these and innumerable other epithets of the kind, at least as much as from his finished delineations of scenery, proceeds our idea of Scott's feeling for the picturesque. Now it is in this respect, more perhaps than in any other, that Scott most resembles Homer. Take the following as one among a multitude of instances : Καρδαμύλην, Ενόπην τε, καὶ Ἴρην ποιήεσσαν, In the catalogue of the ships, as indeed throughout Homer, a place is scarcely ever mentioned without some admirably chosen epithet which, as if by magic, gives us the peculiar character of its scenery. Thus we have "Αργος ἐς Ιππόβατον, ἀμπελόεντ' Επίδαυρον, Πύρρασον ἀνθεμόεντα, Πήλιον εινοσίφυλλον, πολυπίδακος "Ιδης, „oduτρýρwvá te Méσony (" abounding in doves" is the only rendering of this exquisite adjective possible for our clumsy language), Υποπλάκῳ ὑληέσσῃ, πολυστάφυλον "Αρνην, ȧpywvóevra Aúkaσrov (compare Byron's "whose far white ἀργινόεντα Λύκαστον walls along them shine "), Ορχόμενον πολύμηλον, ἠνεμόεσσαι Ενίσπην, Μαντινέη ἐρατείνη. But of all inanimate things that Homer loved, a river was to him the dearest. He cannot name one but he must apply to it some term of tenderness or admiration. It is iueprós, it is dios, it is ἐϋρρεῖος, it is καλλίρροος—he loves it in every phase of its winding course, and every humour of its changeful waters; and this too is a peculiarity in which he resembles and surpasses Scott. 66 As to Homer's feeling for the sea, Mr. Ruskin para-dogmatises in a manner still more outrageous. Homer," he says, "cuts off from the material object the sense of something living, and fashions it into a great abstract image of a sea-power." Mr. Gladstone first partially assents to this wonderful statement, and then proceeds completely to demolish it. The instances which he gives are to the point; but they are not required by the most ordinarily attentive reader of Homer. For myself, I will cite only this one ἀμφί δὲ κῦμα Στείρῃπορφύρεον μέγαλ' αχε, νῆος ἰούσης. And I challenge Mr. Ruskin to produce anything from any modern poet at all approaching it in truth and beauty. If Mr. Ruskin would carefully read Homer, he would not only retract this monstrous paradox of his, but would greatly improve his own taste, and so add to the large debt of public gratitude which is his due. Though we are a practical we are not an unpoetical generation; and yet in my judgment we have but one living poet. Gods, men, and columns forbid us to claim more. We have verse-writers innumerable, and in the writings of a few of them 280 THOUGHTS ON MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE. gems of real poetry may be discerned by the practised eye; indeed we have more than one who, to my thinking, may well bear comparison with the ladies darling, hexametrical Longfellow. But as one swallow does not make a summer nor one day, so likewise one or two or even several instances of poetic writing do not make a poet; and succeeding the bright constellation of bards who presided over the birth of the century, Alfred Tennyson reigns alone in our English sky. Thoughts about books are prolific thoughts; the reproductive principle is strong within them. Writing, for instance, about poetry reminds me of Shakspeare, and Shakspeare reminds me that I have said nothing of plays, and of the mysterious fact that, with the exception of "screaming" farces and gorgeous spectacles, few care to write or to see them now. If Shakspeare had lived in these days he would, I suppose, have written novels, probably not in monthly parts. Upon this subject, as upon many others, I would willingly have said something; but time and space, which, philosophically speaking, have, I am aware, no existence at all, but practically speaking, are very real and embarrassing entities, interpose insuperable objections. POINTS OF VIEW.* QUANT à l'origine des noms de Whig et de Tory," says De la Motraye,† writing of England in the year 1698, "le premier signifie dans la bouche d'un violent Tory un homme faux, double, hypocrite, et ennemi juré de la monarchie et de la hierarchie; et dans celle d'un Whig, un ami du bien public, un zélé deffenseur de la liberté temporelle et spirituelle, sur tout de la religion réformée. Le second, etant appliqué par un Whig des moins modérez á son adversaire, veut dire un cruel et implacable persecuteur de quinconque n'agit pas selon ses principes, qui ne sert pas Dieu et le Roi en la même manière que lui; un ennemi de cette double liberté dans tout autre qu'en soi-même et dans le monarque qui l'y maintient, et auquel il veut que tout autre obeïsse aveuglement et sans murmure, quelque persecuté qu'il en soit. Cet odieux nom etant au contraire donné par un Tory à son partisan, désigne un sujet fidèle et soumis à Dieu, au Roi, et à la patrie, et un deffenseur des privilèges et des libertez du peuple." * Published in Fraser's Magazine for February, 1860. + "Voyages du Sr. A. De la Motraye, en Europe, Asie et Afrique, 1727." |