Liberty." The names and phrases may vary; the essential faith and doctrine is ever the same in all. Let us consider a few instances relating specially to poetry. First, Plato. Ion, the short dialogue between Socrates and the Homeric rhapsodist (or rhapsode, as Professor Jowett prefers) is devoted to insistence on this doctrine of the Divine madness of poetic inspiration, the "fine frenzy" of Shakespeare.* Here is the central exposition, as it were the keystone of the arch. I use Jowett's version; but Shelley also Englished it, Mrs. Shelley strangely avowing, "I do not know why Shelley selected the lon to translate." "Soc. The gift which you possess of speaking excellently about Homer is not an art, but an inspiration; there is a divinity, moving you, like that in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet, but which is commonly known as the stone of Heraclea. For that stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another, so as to form quite a long chain; and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. Now this, like the Muse, who first of all inspires man herself, and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration from them. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems, not as works of art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers, when they dance, are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right * "The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothings mind when they are composing their beautiful strains; but when falling under the power of music and metre, they are inspired and possessed-like Bacchic maidens, who draw milk and honey from the rivers, when they are under the influence of Dionysus, but not when they are in their right mind. . . . For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired, and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him; when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless, and is unable to utter his oracles. . . . Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak, not of one theme only, but of all; and, therefore, God takes away the mind of poets, and uses them as His ministers, as He also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of themselves, who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them He is conversing with us." So in the Meno :- "Soc. Then we shall also be right in calling those divine whom we were just now speaking of as diviners and prophets, including the whole tribe of poets. Yes, and Statesmen above all may be said to be divine and illumined, being inspired and possessed of God, in which condition they say many good things, not knowing what they say." Again, in the "Apology of Socrates " : "I went to the poets-tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts! Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to confess the truth, but I must say, that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. Then I know, without going further, that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are diviners or soothsayers, who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them." And, again, in the Phædrus: "Soc. But there is also a madness which is the gift of heaven, and the source of the choicest blessings among men. ... For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dadona, when out of their sense, have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life; but when in their senses, few or none. There is also a third kind of madness, of those who are possessed by the Muses; which enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers, with these adorning the myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, and comes to the door, and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art-he, I say, and his poetry, are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all, when he enters into the rivalry with madmen. I might tell of many other deeds which have sprung from inspired madness," &c. In harmony with this Platonic doctrine are the serious invocations of Divine aid by the loftiest earlier and later poets, though the appeal to the Muses became in the course of centuries SO thoroughly senseless a matter of routine with mediocre and clever versifiers, that Byron did well to prick the bubble with the frank impertinence of his "Hail, Muse! et cetera.-We left Juan sleeping." Homer, surely in devout earnestness, calls upon the heavenly Muses to sing. Lucretius, the most inspired of Latin poets, serious enough in his opening prayer to Venus Genetrix, "symbol of the all-pervading living force of nature, legendary mother of the Romans," as is made manifest by "the intense earnestness of the language, the words plain and simple in themselves, yet instinct with life and passion" (Munro's second edition, 1866; Book i, note 2, vol. i. p. 341, 342). So Dante, in the first canto of the "Purgatory," invokes the sacred Muses, and in the first of the "Paradise," Apollo; and in the second grandly declares, warning off those unworthy to accompany him, that his barque takes now to waters never sailed, that Minerva breathes the breeze, Apollo pilots, and the nine Muses are as his compass to point out the north, using indeed the antique names, with that profound and uncritical reverence for the classics which long survived the Renaissance, but evidently meaning, in all earnestness (as commentators have pointed out) by Apollo and the Muses, God and His Holy Spirit, or gifts of grace. So Spenser, when beginning his "Faerie Queene," he supplicates: "Help then, O! holy virgin, chiefe of nyne;" and in the introduction to the last book we have complete: "Ye sacred imps, that on Parnasso dwell." So Milton, opening his "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained,” and living at a time when he could shadow the old names; though in his poems the classical and Biblical mythologies are often very confused, calls upon the heavenly Muse and the Holy Spirit. Finally, let us gather a few sentences from Shelley's noble unfinished "Defence of Poetry," which is pervaded throughout with this doctrine of inspiration, and which suffers cruelly, as all high and harmonious work must in being sampled by fragments.* 66 Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may * One rejoices in the association of Sir Philip Sidney and Shelley. Their families became allied by the (second) marriage of Shelley's paternal grandfather, Sir Bysshe, to the heiress of Penshurst, their eldest son assuming the name of Shelley-Sidney, and being ancestor of the present master of Penshurst, Lord De L'Isle and Dudley. But Sidney and Shelley were much more closely allied in their supremacy of magnanimous and chivalrous character; and two centuries and a quarter before Shelley wrote the "Defence," Sidney had written "An Apologie for Poetry" (1595; reprinted by Mr. Arber, cost sixpence). be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonyme of the cause. But poetry, in a more restricted sense, expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of "A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. "In the infancy of the world, neither poets themselves or their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry; for it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness; and it is reserved for future generations, to contemplate and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the splendour and strength of their union. . . 66 Poetry, and the principle of self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world. 66 ... 'Poetry is, indeed, something divine. . . . What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship; what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave; and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar? Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, I will compose poetry! The greatest poet even cannot say it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic, either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest poet of the present day, whether it is not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour * Wilkinson's "Writing from an Influx, which is really out of your Self, or so far within your Self as to amount to the same thing." |