CHAP. II. tion. present day, has felt the lines, here censured, to PART II. be extremely affecting, and strongly expressive of the perturbed and impassioned state of mind Of Imaginaof the person in whose name they are written. But common readers never think of making such frigid distinctions in the comparative rank and dignity of the different parts of the body, as that which the learned professor here makes between the heart and the hand: a distinction as unfair in its statement, as it is cold and frivolous in its application; for the hand is as often used metaphorically to signify energy or power, as the heart is to signify affection, or the head intellect. "He had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief," says a noble historian, of the leader of a hostile party; by which, it is to be presumed that he did not mean to signify his manual dexterity in wielding a dagger, or pulling a trigger, but his vigor and capacity for conducting and executing, as well as designing and promoting those public measures, which the historian thought mischievous. 126. I cannot but think that, had Dr. Blair known that a passage of an ancient Greek poet, which has stood the test of ages, and been universally felt and recognized as one of the most tender and pathetic in any language, equally violates his rule, he would have been less confi CHAP. II. PART. II. dent of its infallibility; or at least more cautious in the application of it. The passage, I mean, Of Imagina- is that part of the celebrated soliloquy of Euripides's Medea, in which she apostrophizes her children, when about to murder them: tion. δοτ' ω τεκνα, Δοτ', ασπασαςθαι μητρι, δεξιαν χερα. Ω μαλθακος χρώς, πνευμα θ' ήδιστον τέκνων, That the learned professor should have overlooked so known and celebrated a passage as this, is very remarkable, and only to be accounted for by the very limited and superficial knowledge of the Greek writers, which his lectures display. It may be said, indeed, that Medea does not apostrophize her own hand, or her own features: but our critic makes no such distinction; and if he did, there would be an example against his general rule, quite as strong, and as much in point, from the same excellent tragedy; and of little less authority: for Medea, when about to kill her children, addresses her own hand in the following spirited and expressive lines; in which it evidently stands for the general energy or active PART II. power both of her body and mind: CHAP. II. Of Imagina Αγ' ώ ταλαινα χειρ εμη, λαβε ξιφος, One of the most pathetic passages -old fond eyes Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck you out; The impression, which Garrick always made with tion. CHAP. II. Of Imagina tion, PART II. his life, when his talents had introduced him to the acqnaintance of learned men, could not have been unknown to him. But, as an able defender and elegant expounder of those rules has observed, "The most ingenious way of becoming foolish is by a system: and the surest method to prevant good sense is to set up something in the room of it*." He, who either writes or acts according to the impulse of natural feeling and common sense, will, unless very perversely orga. nized, be right sometimes: but he, who does either by system, may stand a chance of being uniformly and unvariably wrong. 127. It is said that a learned and eminent Greek professor, who, by a long course of study, had made himself completely master, in theory, of the whole art of war, once delivered a very eloquent and elaborate lecture upon that art in the presence of Hannibal; who, instead of expressing any of that rapture of applause, with which the rest of the audience received it, observed coldly that he had met with many prating old fools in his time, but never with so silly a prater as this t. * Lord Shaftesbury, Adv. to Author, p. iii. s. i. + "Locutus esse dicitur homo copiosus aliquat horas de imperatoris officio, et de omni re militari. Tum, cum cæteri, qui illum audierant, vehementer essent delectati, quære CHAP. II. tion. Probably, were the author of the Iliad to hear PART IL the learned and elaborate discourses, which the theoretical professors and teachers of his art, Of Imaginaboth ancient and modern, have delivered in their respective schools and colleges, so much to the edification of the public at large, as well as of their own pupils, he would pronounce nearly the same judgment; from which the author of the present inquiry would scarcely venture to claim an exemption. Yet, so important and indispensable does the art, which we profess, appear to us all, that for any one to attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested Aristotle's treatise upon the subject, has been pronounced to be as absurd as to pretend to a skill in geometry without having studied Euclid*. Nevertheless Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, &c. &c. who may surely be allowed to have known something of their art, lived long before this treatise or any of the kind was written or thought of; and the whole history of literature obliges us to acknowledge that, in pro bant ab Annibale, quidnam ille ipse de illo philosopho judicaret: hic Poenus non optime Græce, sed tamen libere respondisse fertur, multos se deliras senes sæpe vidisse, sed qui magis, quam Phormio, deliraret, vidisse neminem," Cic. de Orat. 1. ii. Warton on Pope's Essay on Criticism, p. 645. |