into sentences, úttered audibly indeed and distinctly, but without any uncommon effort. Nay, the orator in this species of imitation, is still more limited. He is not at liberty to select whatever articulate sounds he can find to be fittest for imitating those concerning which he is discoursing. That he may be understood, he is under a necessity of confining himself to such sounds as are rendered by use the signs of the things he would suggest by them. If there be a variety of these signs, which commonly cannot be great, he hath some scope for selection, but not otherwise. Yet so remote is the resemblance here at best, that in no language, ancien or modern, are the meanings of any words, except perhaps those expressing the cries of some animals, discoverable, on the bare hearing, to one who doth not understand the language. Indeed, when the subject is articulate sound, the speaker or the writer may do more than produce a resemblance, he may even render the expression an example of that which he affirms. Of this kind precisely are the three last lines of the following quotation from Pope: These equal syllables alone require, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line *). But this manner, which, it must be owned, hath a very good effect in enlivening the expression, is not imitation, though it hath sometimes been mistaken for it, or rather confounded with it, As to sounds inarticulate, a proper imitation of them hath been attempted in the same piece, in the subsequen lines, and with tolerable success, at least in the concluding couplet: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The boarse rough verse should like the torrent roar **). An attempt of the same kind of conformity of the sound to the sense, is perhaps but too discernible in the following quotation from the same author: Essay on Criticism. **) Essay on Criticism. O'er all the dreary coasts! Dreadful gleams, Dismal screams, Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of injur'd ghosts *). Milton's description of the opening of hell-gates ought not here to be overlooked. The same author has, in another performance, given an excellent specimen in this way, Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ***). He succeeds the better here, that what he says is evidently accompanied with a design of exciting contempt. This induceth us to make allowance for his leaving the beaten road in search of epithets. In this passage of the Odyssey, His bloody hand Snatch'd two unhappy of my martial band, And dash'd like dogs against the stony floor ****); the sound, but not the abruptness of the crash, is, I imagîne, better imitated than in the original, which, on account of both, especially the last, was much admired by the critic of Halicarnassus *****). An excellent attempt in this way we have in a poem of Dyer: *) Ode on St. Cecilia's day. (s. den 2ten Theil des Handbuchs.) **) Paradise Lost, B. II. ***) Lycidas. An imitation of a line of Virgil, Ecl. 3, 27. Stridenti miserum stipula disper dere carmen. Nach der Uebersetzung von Vofs: Dein armseliges Spiel auf schnarrendem Stroh zu verstümpern. ****) Pope's Od. In Homer (Odyss. IX. 289, 290.) thus Σὺν δὲ δύω μάρψας, ώςε σκύλακας, ποτι γαίῃ Κόπτ. Nach der Uebersetzung von Vofs: Deren er zween anpackt, und wie junge Hund auf den Boden schlug. *****) Dionysius von Halicarnafs, um die Zeit des Cäsar le bend, ist als Rhetor und Geschichtschreiber bekannt. Er schrieb aufser seiner römischen Geschichte ein Werk über die Wortfolge und eine Rhetorik. As dead of night mid his oraison hears Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers, Tumbling all precipitate dow'n-dash'd, Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon *). But the best example to be found in our language are, in my opinion, the following lines of Mr. Pope: What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough and fierce, The success here is the greater that the author appears through the whole to deride the immoderate affectation of this overrated beauty, with which some modern poetasters are so completety dazzled. On the whole, the specimens produced, though perhaps as good as any of the kind extant in our language, serve to evince rather how little than how much can be done in this way, and how great scope there is here for the fancy to influence the judgment. But there are other subjects beside sound, to which language is capable of bearing some resemblance. Time and motion, for example, or whatever can admit the epithets of quick and slow, is capable in some degree of being imitated by speech. In language there are long and short syllables, one of the former being equal or nearly equal to two of the latter. As these may be variously combined in a sentence, and syllables of either kind may be made more or less to predominate, the sentence may be rendered by the sound, more or less expressive of celerity or tardiness. And though even there the power of speech seems to be much limited, there being but two degrees in syllables, whereas the natural degrees of quickness or slowness in motion or action may be infinitely varied, yet on this subject the imitative power of articulate sound seems to be greater and more distinctive than on any other. This appears to particular advantage in verse, when, without violating the rules of prosody, a greater *) Ruins of Rome, Dodsley's collection, Vol. 1. **) Sat. 1. or a less number of syllables is made to suft the time. Take the following example from Milton: 1 To māný a youth ănd mānỹ a māid In this passage the third line, though consisting of ten syllables, is, by means of two anapests, pronounced, without hurting the measure, in the same time with an iambic line of eight syllables, and therefore well adapted in sound to the airy diversion he is describing. At the same time it must be owned, that some languages have in this particular a remarkable superiority over others. In English the iambic verse, which is the commonest, admits here and there the insertion of a spondee, for protracting, or of an anapest, as in the example quoted, for quickening the expression **). But, in my opinion, Greek and Latin have here an advantage, at least in their heroic measure, over all modern tongues. Accordingly Homer and Virgil furnish us with some excellent specimens in this way. But that we may know what our own tongue and metre is capable of effecting, let us recur to our own poets, and first of all to the celebrated translator of the Grecian bard ***). I have made choice of him the rather as he was perfectly sensible of this beauty in the original, which he copied, and endeavoured, as much as the materials he had to work upon would permit him, to exhibit it in his version. Let us take for an example the punishment of Sisyphus in the other world, a passage which had on this very account been much admired in Homer by all the cities both ancient and modern. Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone; The huge round stone resulting with a bound, L'allegro. **) Perhaps the feet employed in ancientpoetry, are not in strict propriety applicable to the measures adopted by the English prosody. It is not my business at present to enter into this curious question.It suffices thatI think there is a rhythinus in our verse plainly discernible by the ear, and which, as it at least bears some analogy to the Greek and Latin feet, makes this application of their names sufficiently intelligible. ***) Pope. ****) In Greek thu: : Λᾶαν ἄνω ώθεσκε ποτὶ λόφον - Αντις ἔπειτα πέλονδε κυλίνδετο λάας αναιδής. Οd. XI. 595-597. It is remarkable that Homer (though greatly preferable to his translator in both) hath succeeded best in describing the fall of the stone, Pope, in relating how it was heaved up the hill. The success of the English poet here is not to be ascribed entirely to the length of the syllables, but partly to another cause, to be explained afterwards. 66 I own I do not approve the expedient which, this admirable versifier hath used, of introducing an Alexandrine line for expressing rapidity. I entirely agree with Johnson *), that this kind of measure is rather stately than swift; yet our poet hath assigned this last quality as the reason of his choice. ,,I was too sensible, says he in the margin,,,of the beauty ,,of this, not to endeavour to imitate it, though unsuccess,, fully. I have therefore thrown it into the swiftness of an Alexandrine, to make it of a more proportionable number ,, of syllables with the Greek." Ay, but to resemble in length is one thing, and to resemble in, swiftness is another. The difference lies here: In Greek, an hexameter verse whereof ail the feet save one are dactyls, though it hath several syllables more, is pronounced in the same time with an hexameter verse whereof all the feet save one are spondees, and is therefore a just emblem of velocity; that is, of moving a great way in a short time. Whereas the Alexandrine line, as it consists of more syllables than the common English heroic, requires proportionably more time to the pronunciation. For this reason the same author, in another work, has, I think, with better success, made choice of this very measure to exhibit slowness; A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along **). It deserves our notice, that in this couplet he seems to give it as his opinion of the Alexandrine, that it is a dull and tardy measure. Yet, as if there were no end of his inconsistency on this subject, he introduceth a line of the same ,} (Nach der Uebersetzung von V ofs 593-598. Auch den Sisyfos sah ich, von schrecklicher Mühe gefoltert, Thn von der Au aufwälzend zur Berghöh. Glaib er ihn aber * Rambler No. 92. **) Essay on Criticism. |