generally: "The conception of nature as exhibiting sympathy with sudden turns in human affairs is one of the most fundamental instincts of poetry. To cite notable instances: it is this which accompanies with storm and whirlwind the climax to the Book of Job, and which leads Milton to make the whole universe sensible of Adam's transgression: Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan; Sky loured, and muttering thunder, some sad drops Original. 6 So, too, the other end of the world's history has its appropriate accompaniments: the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven '." The Greek poets were not wanting in this harmonious adjustment. Of the 'Prometheus' of Eschylus, Symonds remarks: "The scenery of his drama is in harmony with its stupendous subject. Barren mountain summits, the sea outspread beneath, the sky with all its stars above, silently falling snowflakes and tempestuous winds, thunder, and earthquake, and riven precipices, are the images which crowd upon the mind. In like manner the duration of time is indefinitely extended. Not years, but centuries, measure the continuance of the struggle between the sovereign will of Zeus and the stubborn resistance of the Titan." In Coleridge, the delicate harmony of the thoughts is unsurpassed; yet the sweetness of the language, as sound and metre, is perhaps still more apparent. For sustained harmony of imagery alone, we have scarcely a rival to Keats's 'Ode to the Nightingale,' more especially the second stanza. Tennyson's attention to Harmony is conspicuous. In 'In Memoriam,' Sect. xi., we have a picture of calm despairing sorrow, with scenery to harmonize, which may be contrasted with the passionate grief of Enone. The 'Lotus-Eaters' is a study in harmonious effects. The harmonies with love in its various phases are abundant in Maud '. Gray, in the Bard,' displays a want of keeping when he winds up his thrilling denunciation of the entire race of English sovereigns with the fulsome flattery of Elizabeth. This might have been reserved to a different occasion. The mixture of our two vocabularies is unfavourable to delicate harmonious adjustments. In Pathos especially, classical terms are apt to have a cold or jarring effect. IDEALITY. 1. To depart from actual facts, with a view to greater pleasure, is the essence of IDEALITY. OCCASIONS FOR THE IDEAL. 37 The human mind is at once dissatisfied with actual things, and capable of taking delight in the mere conception of what is higher and better. The poet accommodates himself to this peculiarity, and supplies ideal pictures; he brings to bear all his special powers of creation, selection, omission, adaptation and elevation of circumstances, together with the superadded charm of the poetic dress, which the absence of restraints enables him to make more perfect. In Scenic delineation, besides completing the harmony, the poet goes beyond nature in the richness of the accumulation, and colours the language with glowing illustrations. Such are the chosen scenes of Romance and of Fairy-land, the happy valleys and islands of the Blest, the gardens of the Hesperides, the Elysian fields and the pictures of Paradise. The portraying of Characters likewise undergoes the idealizing process. Men and women are produced with larger intellects, greater virtues, higher charms, than life can afford; it being agreeable and stimulating to contemplate such elevated natures. The bright points of real character are set forth, with omission of the dark features; strong qualities are given, without the corresponding weaknesses; and incompatible virtues are combined in the same person. The courage of youth is united with the wisdom and forbearance of age. Lofty aspirations and practical sense, rigid justice and tender considerations, the fortiter and the suaviter, are made to come together, notwithstanding the rarity of the combinations in the actual. The grace of the feminine character added to the force of the man-the manly, and not the masculine, woman-has been a favourite ideal in all ages; it was embodied in Pallas Athenê (Minerva) and in Artemis (Diana), and is reproduced abundantly in our own Poetry and Romance. In one of the Icelandic Sagas, we have "a heroine possessing all the charms of goddess, demi-goddess, earthly princess and amazon". Human society labours under a chronic want of disinterestedness and mutual consideration on the part of its members, and, as an ideal compensation, there is a demand for select or heightened pictures of love, devotedness and sympathy. The ideal of Story consists in assigning the fortunes and destinies of individuals with greater liberality and stricter equity than under the real or actual. The miseries as well as the flatness of life are passed over, or redeemed; the moments of felicity are represented as if they were the rule; poetic justice is supreme, and measures out to each man his deserts; mixed and bad characters are admitted along with the good, but all are dealt with as the poet's, which is also the reader's, sense of justice demands. The severe and difficult virtues of Prudence, Judgment and Calculation are slighted; and success made to follow the generous and uncalculating impulses of the heart. . Love, Beauty and Innocence are made triumphant over brute force and savage ferocity; as in the Una and the Lion' of the Faerie Queene. The animals that interest us-the nightingale, the lark, the thrush, the robin—are conceived as spending their lives in unbroken felicity. fact. Spring is surrounded with ideal glories, on a slender basis of The poor are occasionally assumed to have a high order of virtue peculiar to themselves. Beneficent despotism, absolute authority in good hands, is a favourite ideal. Or, as otherwise expressed, 'might is right'; 'the strong thing is the true thing'. The Actual is marked by numerous and varied circumstances and conditions: some favourable, others unfavourable, to our happiness. The good and the evil are inseparable in human life, A monarch, or a man of wealth, possesses great means of enjoyment; he is no less certainly exposed to incidents that mar his delights. The Ideal presents only the good side of a brilliant lot; thus giving rise to disappointment when brought into comparison with fact. So great is the charm of many forms of represented bliss that we welcome the picture, even when we know that it omits the drawbacks inseparable from the reality. This is to indulge the socalled 'Pleasures of the Imagination'. The Realistic picture is characterized, among other things, by a restoration of the omitted shadows. The contrast of the Ideal and the Real is finely touched in Keats's 'Ode to a Grecian Urn': Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore ye soft pipes play on. 2. Ideality appears in two distinct forms; one representing the facts of experience in greater perfection than is really attained, the other picturing a state of things out of all relation to actual life. The first of these forms is seen in the ideal characters, striking coincidences, happy conclusions and poetic justice of ordinary novels and poetry. These pictures are still viewed as representations of real life, notwithstanding that the characters and actions are exaggerated beyond ordinary experience; and the pleasure they give is that illustrated in the figure HYPERBOLE. The other form of Ideality is exemplified in the 'Arabian POWERFUL EMOTIONS NECESSARY. 39 Nights,' 'Gulliver's Travels' (apart from their satirical purpose), the Faërie Queene' and, in general, all stories of fairies, genii, ghosts and other supernatural agents. In such cases, the stories have little, if any, relation to natural life, and the reader does not think of such a relation; the pleasures they give depending on other circumstances. Such a story as Mrs. Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and much of Rider Haggard's romances comes under this head. Keats's 'Endymion' and 'Hyperion' are of the same class; and, indeed, to us, whatever it may have been to the original readers, such is all the mythological poetry of the ancients. 3. The main conditions for all forms of Ideality are the following: I. The emotions or passions appealed to must be naturally powerful; they must include our deepest susceptibilities: Love, Malignity or some form of our manysided Egotism. We can take pleasure in the mere conception of things that stir those feelings, even though the actual fruition is absent. The The sensual pleasures are less suitable, because of their being accompanied with too strong a craving for the reality; which craving, if ungratified, is a cause of pain. imagination of a feast gives more pain than pleasure to a hungry man. The case is very much altered when the idea is a prelude to actual gratification. This, however, is not a true test of Ideality in itself. Still, when the unknown and imagined offers a prospect of better things than we already have, as is done by truth in the shape of probability, our hopes are kindled, and the charm of the picture is then intense. This gives a fascination to Bacon's ideals of the progress of kuowledge. All such gratification appeals to our egotism, in the shape of collective self-interests. II. The creation must be successful in stirring the emotions appealed to. It must be thoroughly well managed for doing the right thing and no more. This includes all the details of poetic sufficiency; the proper selection and adaptation of materials, according to the laws of poetic emotion. Such grand successes were the Homeric creations, which stirred the Greek mind for a thousand years, and are not lost upon us moderns. The characters of Helen, Andro mache, Achilles, Ulysses, were pure ideals, but so conceived and executed as to be a perennial charm. 4. The limitations imposed by the consideration of Truth are not strict or narrow, and are meant to be subservient to the general effect. When a bright ideal is held out to us, there is a very important distinction, as regards its influence, between the unrestricted licence of imagination, and ideality regulated by truth or probability. If the laws of emotion are attended to, the wildest fancies may give pleasure. But, when the picture is both well imagined and true to fact, we obtain a satisfaction of another kind. We can apply the example as a lesson, warning or encouragement for ourselves; we can base hopes upon the prospect; and thus derive some of the relief and refreshment accruing from an alleviation of the burdens of life. The happy combination of Poetry with History, or with Science, when possible, may be a loss in imaginative sweep, but a gain in solidity of footing. The usual ending of a Romantic plot in the union of the lovers is a tolerated ideal, because it gratifies a strong emotion, and because the happiness of wedded love is a splendid possibility, occasionally realized. There is a basis of nature for the delightful expectation. Compare, on the other hand, Marlowe's poem, 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love,' which in its ideality passes all reasonable bounds; hence the scathing lines of Sir Walter Raleigh, by way of exposing the hollowness. The beauty, great as it is, hardly redeems the want of truth. Coleridge's poem, 'When I was young,' can barely atone by its emotion for its want of truth. The happiness of early years is idealized to excess; and the feeling of the piece is a mournful, depressing melancholy. Nothing but the poetic treatment remains to inspire us. It is a rule of criticism, on this subject, that, in idealizing pictures from actual things, the departure from nature should not extend to incompatibility, or contradiction of the laws of things. It would be censurable to describe a moonlight night as following a solar eclipse; to introduce a man 150 years old; or to assign to the same person the highest rank as a poet, and as a man of science. But rare and fortunate conjunctions may be made use of, and even such conjunctions as have never been actually known to occur, provided they are such as might occur. Poetical justice is sometimes realized in fact, and the only thing against nature would be |