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POETS THE INTEKPRETEES OF THEIB AGE,
POETS THE INTERPBETERS
OF THEIK AGE.
ANNA SWANWICK,
TRANSLATOR OF "vESCHYLUS," "FAUST," ETC.
LONDON :
GEORGE BELL & SONS, YOEK ST., COYENT GARDEN,
AND NEW YORK.
1892.
IOAN STACK
CHISW1CK PRESS : C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
TO
THE EEV. JAMES MAKTINEAU, LL.D., D.D., D.C.L.,
fc Irrtnrate tfjr follototng toorfe,
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF THE ENCOURAGEMENT WHICH
HE HAS GIVEN ME DURING ITS PREPARATION FOR
THE PRESS, AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE
UNBROKEN FRIENDSHIP WITH WHICH
HE HAS HONOURED ME FOR
A PERIOD OF FULL
SIXTY YEARS.
428
PREFACE.
THE following work had its origin in an address upon
poets and poetry, which I gave to a private society,
without any thought of publication.
Complying with the wish expressed by some of my
hearers, that my address should be amplified and pub-
lished, I now bring it, with great diffidence, before the
public, in its expanded form.
To the learned I have nothing to offer, but am in
hopes that to students my work, as presenting a brief
historical survey of an important department of litera-
ture, may not prove altogether unacceptable.
With the bay- wreathed company of the world's great
poets, I would fain have associated those of the United
States of America, among whom there are several who
are loved and appreciated on this side of the Atlantic, and
who have been taken to the heart of England together
with her native bards. In corroboration of this state-
ment, I have only, among the departed, to recall the
honoured names of William Cullen Bryant, Kalph Waldo
Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell
Lowell, and Walt Whitman, and among the living, to
name the two venerable patriarchs of song, John Green-
leaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
These poets require, for their full appreciation, to be
studied in connection with Transatlantic life, during the
greater part of the century, when, for a considerable
time, the burning evil of slavery formed a prolific source
of inspiration to the American Muse ; then came its
deathblow, in the momentous struggle, rich in tragical
and pathetic episodes, and in heroic deeds ; these, with
viii PREFACE.
various phases of speculative thought, together with
aspirations, prompted by the enthusiasm of humanity,
have impressed a distinctive character upon many
utterances of American genius, entitling their authors
to be regarded emphatically as the interpreters of their
age.
From the above considerations, it will appear that to
endeavour to compress within the narrow limits suited to
my work the wide range of American poetry, would be a
difficult and an ungracious task ; I must therefore con-
tent myself with giving expression to my sense of its high
and noble qualities, and to my grateful recognition of the
delight and edification which I, together with multitudes
on either side of the Atlantic, have thence derived.
It would also be beyond the scope of my work, to dwell
upon the galaxy of living English poets, who, to the
gratification of all lovers of the Muse, have exercised
their high functions during the later decades of the
century.
The only exception which I have made is Lord Tenny-
son, who, from his venerable age, belongs to the past as
well as to the present, and without whose honoured name
no historical survey of poetry would be complete.
Among the numerous writers to whom I am under
obligation I desire to include Mrs. Oliphant, to whose
" Makers of Venice " I am indebted for the extracts from
Petrarch's Letters, quoted in my Essay on that poet.
REGENT'S PAEK.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
THE ARYAS 7
HELLAS. Homer .15
HELLAS. ^Eschylus ; Sophocles ; Euripides ; Aristophanes ;
Plato 34
EOME. Plautus ; Q. Ennius ; Lucilius ; Lucretius ; Virgil ;
Horace ; Lucan ; Persius 64
BABYLONIA 80
PALESTINE. The Psalter 89
The Prophets 100
MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY 115
ITALY. Dante 119
Petrarch 141
ENGLAND. Geoffrey Chaucer ; William Langl and .... 147
ITALY. Ludovico Ariosto 160
Torquato Tasso 162
ENGLAND. Edmund Spenser 171
William Shakespeare 183
SPAIN. Lope de Vega 202
Pedro Calderon de la Barca 207
ENGLAND. John Milton 219
FRANCE. The French Dramatists of the Seventeenth Cen-
tury : Corneille ; Racine ; Moliere 232
ENGLAND. Origin of the Classical School of English Poetry :
John Dryden 240
Alexander Pope 247
The Successors of Pope : James Thompson ; William
.Collins ; Thomas Gray ; Oliver Goldsmith . . 250
William Cowper ; . 255
b
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Eobert Burns 262
William Wordsworth 268
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 281
Lord Byron 289
Percy Bysshe Shelley 300
Sir Walter Scott. . . .312
John Keats 317
GERMANY. Johann Wolfgang Goethe 326
Friedrich Schiller 341
ENGLAND. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 347
FEANCE. Victor Hugo 356
ENGLAND. Arthur Hugh Clough 367
Matthew Arnold 375
CONCLUSION. Lord Tennyson 380
Kobert Browning 387
POETS,
THE INTERPRETERS OF THEIR AGE.
INTRODUCTION.
THE desire to penetrate to the origin of things would
seem, from its nnivp.rsalitv. to hp. a.n inst.in^t.ivp
ERRATUM.
Page 266, line 19, for " Hey, tullie, tullie/' read
"Hey, tuttie, taitie."
j.o nub quesuoti, uowever, we neea not at present
address ourselves; history is concerned not with the
origin, but with the progress of humanity a process
which, depending as it does upon man's observance of
God's immutable laws, supreme in the domain of matter
B
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Kobert Burns 262
William Wordsworth 268
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 281
Lord Byron 289
Percy Bysshe Shelley 300
Sir Walter Scott. . . .312
John Keats 317
GERMANY. Johann Wolfgang Goethe 326
Friedrich Schiller 341
ENGLAND. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 347
FRANCE. Victor Hugo 356
ENGLAND. Arthur Hugh Clough 367
Matthew Arnold 375
CONCLUSION. Lord Tennyson 380
Eobert Browning ... 387
POETS,
THE INTERPRETERS OF THEIR AGE.
INTRODUCTION.
THE desire to penetrate to the origin of things would
seem, from its universality, to be an instinctive feeling
of the human mind. Hence the insatiable desire which
prevailed, alike in ancient and in modern times, to
penetrate the mystery which shrouded the fountains of
the Nile.
Thus we would fain trace to its source the great river
of humanity, which had its rise in " the dark backward
and abysm of time."
Futile, however, is our wish! An impenetrable veil
shrouds the origin of man, and conceals from our gaze
the progenitors of the human race.
Science, it is true, promises to gratify our curiosity ;
she invites us to gaze upon the primordial germ from
which, in accordance with her theory, have sprung the
various tribes of living things, culminating with the
appearance of man upon the globe. Should this theory
prove correct, our sense of the mysterious grandeur of
the universe, and of the preordaining wisdom of the all-
pervading mind, would, in my judgment, be enhanced.
To this question, however, we need not at present
address ourselves; history is concerned not with the
origin, but with the progress of humanity a process
which, depending as it does upon man's observance of
God's immutable laws, supreme in the domain of matter
B
INTRODUCTION.
and of mind, is necessarily arrested or retarded alike by
his ignorance of those laws, and by his wilful violation
of them ; human progress, nevertheless, notwithstanding
periods of apparent retrogression, continues, as our poet
tells us, from age to age, its onward march :
" Since time means amelioration, tardily enough displayed,
Yet a mainly onward moving, never wholly retrograde ; "
a truth confirmed by the words of a still greater poet :
" There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will ; "
a Divinity whose controlling and superintending power
is slowly, but surely, guiding humanity to its destined
goal,
" To that far-off divine event,
Toward which the whole creation moves."
Profound interest attaches to the study of history when
viewed as the record of man's progressive development ;
grand, however, as are her teachings, as she unrolls
" the bloody chronicles of ages past," I cannot but
regard the teachings of poetry, in this particular, as
grander still ; during bygone ages the attitude of nation
towards nation has been almost invariably one of hos-
tility; hence, in perusing the records of the past, we are
introduced, for the most part, to national rivalries and
antipathies, culminating too often in oppression and
war. The darker aspects of national character, together
with the utter disregard of morality displayed in inter-
national relations, being thus brought into prominent
relief, it is not always easy, amid the tumult of conflict-
ing interests, to trace the progress of humanity.
It has occurred to me that in wending our way through
the tangled labyrinth of human affairs, we shall find a
surer guide in Poetry, which, like a golden thread
traversing the ages, bears witness to the continuity of
culture, and binds together the present and the past.
Nor must it be forgotten that, when authentic history
fails us, it is to poetry that we are indebted for revealing
INTRODUCTION.
to us the progenitors of our race, in far-off times, laying
the foundations of our modern civilization. Hence the
supreme interest which attaches to the poetic literature
of the ancient Egyptians ; also to the epic and lyrical
poetry contained in the Sacred Books of Babylonia, and
to the Vedic Hymns, the earliest record of Aryan thought
which has come down to us.
Still deeper is the interest awakened by the Homeric
poems, in which the prehistoric Hellenes are brought
vividly before us ; nor must it be forgotten that the key
to the Homeric mythology is to be found in the poetry of
Babylonian and of Vedic bards.
Inhaling the atmosphere of their age, while breathing
forth, in strains of impassioned music, their inmost
thoughts and feelings, the immortal poets of our race
have unconsciously reflected in their works the ten-
dencies, moral and intellectual, of the period in which
their lot was cast ; in their ideal world we see trans-
figured the actual world by which they were surrounded,
and, while themselves the heirs of the ages which pre-
ceded them, they have in turn bequeathed new elements
of progress to their successors.
Accordingly, it will be my object to consider the great
masters of song not only in relation to their special
function as " God's prophets of the beautiful," but also
as revealing, from age to age, the successive stages
reached by humanity on its onward march, together with
its occasional periods of degradation and apparent retro-
gression.
Grand indeed has been the function of poetry, as one
of the prime factors in promoting human progress,
quickening the springs of faith and love, cherishing in
the human soul the love of the Good, the Beautiful, and
the True ; uplifting it to higher and holier aspirations
by the creation of ideals transcending our ordinary
experience, and keeping alive the sacred fire of enthu-
siasm, without which the spirit is apt to droop under the
deadening influence of custom and routine.
"Nor must it be forgotten that when, by the strong
INTRODUCTION.
sway of the imagination, we are transported by the poet
' 'mid Nature's old felicities,' we are not merely brought
face to face with the mystic characters traced by the
divine hand on the walls of this fair universe, we are
also privileged to hear the voice of the Hierophant
interpreting their hidden meaning, and translating the
teachings of Nature into the low, sweet music of
humanity."
"A great poem," it has been truly said, " is a fountain
for ever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and
delight, and after one person and one age has exhausted
its divine effluence, which their peculiar relations enable
them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and
new relations are ever developed, the source of an unfore-
seen and an unconceived delight."
It must be remembered, however, that poetry, like
science, will yield up her treasures only to her faithful
votary. Bobertson has truly said that "the higher
kinds of poetry demand study as severe as mathematics ;
the dew-drop that glitters on the end of every leaf after
a shower is beautiful even to a child, but I suppose that
to a Herschel, who knows that the lightning itself sleeps
within it, and understands and feels all its mysterious
connections with earth and sky and planets, it is sug-
gestive of a feeling of far deeper beauty." The propriety
of this illustration will be at once apparent when we
contemplate poetry under its higher aspects, as the
bright consummate flower of the age and country which
gave it birth, drawing its nourishment from the deepest
roots of the national life, and at the same time conceal-
ing beneath its delicate petals the germs of the future.
Hence every great poem requires, for its full elucidation,
to be studied, not only in connection with contem-
poraneous history, but also to be brought into comparison
with the kindred productions of other ages and nations.
All hail, then, to the world's inspired singers, of every
age and every clime, who, how remote so ever they may
be from us and from each other, are nevertheless in a
certain sense contemporaries of each succeeding age.
INTRODUCTION.
Bards who have ascended Parnassus,
"And stand with their head in the zenith, and roll their voice
from the summit,
Sounding for ever and ever thro' earth and her listening nations,
And mixt with the great sphere-music of stars and of constel-
lations."
To follow the river of song, as it glides through the
ages, noting the several epochs in the world's history,
which we there find mirrored with magical beauty and
unerring truth, is a great subject, of which I can only
offer a very inadequate study.
At the present time, however, when the curriculum of
female education is so largely extended, one cannot but
feel apprehensive, lest the study of poetry, the chief
intellectual pabulum of the elder generation, and a
source of the purest and most elevated enjoyment,
should, as it were, be crowded out.
Moreover, amid the multifarious interests of this busy
age, political, economical, social, industrial, and scien-
tific, the minds of men, whatsoever the sphere of their
activity, are so intensely absorbed, that, without some
counteracting agency, there is danger lest this habitual
limitation of their intellectual horizon should tend to
circumscribe their spiritual outlook, and to narrow the
range of their sympathies. The best antidote to this
tendency will, I believe, be found in poetry, which,
dealing with universal and eternal truth, and giving
harmonious expression to the varied emotions and
experiences of our common humanity, appeals to the
imagination and to the higher sentiments of the soul,
thus calling into activity that side of human nature
which, amid the absorbing interests of everyday life, is
apt to lie fallow. Nor must it be forgotten that the
cultivation of the imagination, by awakening the blessed
power of sympathy, invests its possessor with that
" beautiful and beauty-giving power " which glorifies the
commonplace, and sheds a charm over the dullest walks
of daily life.
So wide reaching, however, is the domain of poetry,
6 INTRODUCTION.
that those who are strangers there, and who have not
much time at their disposal, like travellers in a foreign
country, may be glad to avail themselves of a guide-book
or a guide. To such, the following general survey of
" Apollo's realm," indicating very briefly its most note-
worthy provinces, together with their relative position in
time and space, may not be altogether unacceptable.
I can only hope that my readers may be tempted to
explore for themselves the various regions of enchant-
ment to which I can only briefly call their attention,
and which will open to them a boundless source of
wonder and delight.
THE AKYAS.
THE affinity which exists between Sanskrit and various
European languages, Celtic, Teutonic, Lithuanian,
Hellenic, Latin, and others, would seem to indicate that,
in bygone ages, the progenitors of the nations employ-
in or these languages must have dwelt together, in con-
stant intercommunion, carrying with them, on their dis-
persion, the rudiments of the language common to all.
It appears, however, from recent investigations into the
dwellings and barrows of prehistoric tribes, that various
European races, which have hitherto been regarded as
belonging to the Aryan stock, though Aryan in speech,
are non-Aryan in blood, a phenomenon which may be
explained by the influence of climatic conditions, and by
the process characterized as the " Aryanization of non-
Aryan races," resulting from the incorporation of the
latter by the primitive Aryas. Moreover, in accordance
with these investigations the common home of the
Aryas still remains shrouded in mystery. 1
For our purpose, however, it is unnecessary to inquire
whether that home is to be sought in Europe or in Asia,
nor need we dwell upon the question, deeply interesting
to ethnologists, as to the origin of the various races,
widely separated from each other in time and space, yet
linguistically associated as members of the group of
Aryan- speaking peoples.
Our concern being with literature, more especially
with poetry, we turn with the deepest interest to the
Vedic Hymns, the earliest literary expression of Aryan
1 See " The Origin of the Aryans," by Isaac Taylor.
THE ARYA8.
thought which has come down to us, and which, re-
vealing the intimate connection existing between Eng-
lish and Sanskrit, form a wonderful bond of union and
sympathy between England and her great dependency.
Deep interest, moreover, attaches to these Hymns
when regarded as the sacred books of one of the most
ancient religions of the world, and as illustrating the
growth and development of the religious idea in some of
its earliest stages. 1
The Beings to whom the Vedic Hymns were addressed
are, as indicated by their names, impersonations of the
great Nature-powers, which, by all primitive peoples,
have been gazed upon with mingled feelings of wonder
and admiration, of reverence and fear. Accordingly, the
varied phenomena of Nature, Thunder, the Storm-wind,
the all-embracing Ether, the Dawn, the Sun, the
Heavenly Hosts, have justly been characterized as " the
windows through which the ancient Aryas first Looked
into infinitude ; " " behind the visible agencies of Nature
they recognized a living presence, something invisible
and divine, and thus, through the contemplation of
created things, they were led to some dim recognition of
the Deity."
How slow and gradual was the process, we learn from
Prof. Max Miiller, who tells us that, in the Vedic Hymns,
we can follow, step by step, the development which
changes the sun from the mere luminary into a creator,
preserver, ruler, and rewarder of the world in fact, into
a divine or supreme being. This process, he tells us, we
can watch, again and again, with regard to most Vedic
deities. "Thus to Agni, Varuna, Indra, and many
others, whose names were at first employed to indicate
mere natural phenomena, epithets are at length applied
and whole descriptions given, which, to our minds,
would be appropriate to a supreme deity only."
1 For the following brief account of the Vedic Hymns, I am
indebted to the Hibbert Lectures and other essays by Prof. Max
Miiller.
THE ARYAS.
" It is a remarkable feature of the Vedic Hymns that,
when the individual gods are invoked they are not con-
ceived as limited by the power of others as superior or
inferior in rank." "We can hardly understand," says
Prof. Max Miiller, "how a people who had formed so
exalted a notion of the supreme God, and embodied it in
the person of Indra, could, at the same time, invoke
other gods with equal praise.''
Accordingly, the shadowy divinities of the Vedic Pan-
theon, the deified impersonations of physical pheno-
mena, each supreme and absolute in turn, can hardly
be recognized as distinct personalities, holding definite
relations to each other or to their worshippers.
It is, however, deeply interesting to learn that, not-
withstanding the indeterminate character of the objects
of their worship, the Vedic bards, from the contemplation
of a cosmic order, coincident, doubtless, with the pro-
gressive development of their own higher nature, rose at
length to some dim recognition of their divinities, " as
having established the eternal laws of right and wrong,
as punishing sin and rewarding virtue, and, at the same
time, as ready to forgive."
The following extracts are from a hymn to Varuna :
" If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind ;
" Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy.
" Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I
gone wrong ;
" Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy.
" Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the
heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness ;
"Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy."
The following hymn reminds us of the grand utterance
of the Hebrew psalmist (Psalm cxxxix.) :
" The great lord of these worlds sees as if he were near. If a
man thinks he is walking by stealth, the gods know it all."
" If a man stands, or walks, or hides, if he goes to lie down, or
to get up ; what two people sitting together whisper, King Varuna
knows it, he is there the third."
10 THE ARYAS.
" He who should fly far beyond the sky, even he would not be
rid of Varuna, the King."
We feel a closer bond of sympathy with our Aryan
brethren on learning that they had been led to the
recognition of God as the All-Father, or as the Heaven-
Father. In many of the Vedic hymns he appears in
this character : " mighty Indra, be gracious to us ! Be
to us like a father ! " " As a son lays hold of his father
by his skirt, I lay hold of thee by this sweetest song."
Nor were the ideas of personal immortality and per-
sonal responsibility after death foreign to the Vedic
bards ; in many passages of the Vedas these truths are
clearly proclaimed.
One poet prays that he may see again his father and
mother after death ; and the fathers are invoked almost
like gods, oblations are offered to them, and they are
believed to enjoy, in company with the gods, a life of
never-ending felicity.
We find the following prayer addressed to Soma :
" Where there is eternal light, in the world where the
sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world place
me, Soma!"
It is a deeply interesting fact that upon the minds of
some Vedic bards had burst the grand idea that all the
deities are but different names of one and the same god-
head. This idea, we are told by Prof. Max Miiller, while
breaking forth here and there in the Vedas, is far from
being general.
One poet, for instance, says : " They call Him Indra,
Mitra, Varuna, Agni ; that which is One the wise call it
in divers manners."
And again: "Wise poets make the beautiful-winged,
though he is one, manifold by words." We are thus
prepared to learn that finally the Vedic bards " threw
away the old names, but they did not throw away their
belief in that which they had tried to name. After
destroying the altars of their old gods, they built out of
the scattered bricks a new altar to the Unknown God
unknown, unnamed, and yet omnipresent ; seen no more
THE ARYA8. 11
in the mountains and rivers, in the sky and the sun, in
the rain and the thunder, but present even then, and it
may be, nearer to them and encircling them, no longer
like Varuna, the encircling and all-embracing ether, but
more closely, more intimately, being, as they called it
themselves, the very ether in their heart ; it may be the
still small voice."
It is deeply interesting to find that the religion of the
ancient Egyptians, in its course of development, offers a
parallel to that of the Aryas. " They," the Egyptian
people, we are told, " recognized as beyond, above, and
comprehending all, one ineffable, eternal, omnipotent
Being, whether adored under the names of Ammon,
Plats, Osiris, Chepar, or any of the various emblematic
embodiments that constitute the Egyptian Pantheon,
each expressive of some one of the varied forms under
which the phenomena of the material universe present
themselves to human intelligence." l
Deep interest moreover attaches to the unknown
authors of the Vedic Hymns men of wonderful genius,