Nor would it be uninstructive to attempt to trace and differentiate the effects of the different passions upon poetic and ordinary natures. The present small contribution to a great subject was suggested by observing the curious fate of Scott's beautiful description of the Trosachs in 'The Lady of the Lake.' Suggested itself by a passage in Milton (which was possibly due in part to a description in Boccaccio), it has been outdone by Wordsworth in one of his most magnificent passages. Wordsworth's own description in turn served as a model to Tennyson and to James Russell Lowell. I shall come to this part of my subject presently, but, before doing so I would suggest a few thoughts on the part that Emulation has played as a poetic motive power.

Potent, to some extent, in all periods of poetic growth, Emulation is never so powerful as it is in the earliest periods. Keats has compared human

life to a large mansion of many apartments; the first is the Infant or Thoughtless Chamber; the second the Chamber of Maiden Thought, in which, as the soul lingers, the light becomes gradually extiguished, and the soul begins to feel the 'Burden of the Mystery.' And as in human life, so in the growth of poetic stature there is an infant or thoughtless period, during which Emulation, or, as we should rather call it in this case, Imitation, is of paramount importance in the formation of style. The imitation is often indirect, unconscious, but still it is imitation. As a good illustration of which I will take the last verse of Tennyson's poem To' (published in 1830). [I must apologize to my readers for my frequency of quotation; but notes like these are useless unless profusely illustrated.]

6

'Weak Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed,

Until she be an athlete bold,

And weary with a finger's touch
Those writhed limbs of lightning speed;
Like that strange angel which of old,
Until the breaking of the light,
Wrestled with wandering Israel,

Past Yabbok brook the livelong night,
And heaven's mazed signs stood still
In the dim tract of Penuel,'

Here there is only one word that betrays the source of inspiration ; but who can doubt that from the fourth line onwards the youthful Tennyson is attempting to catch the inimitable movement of the last part of Keats'

'Sonnet' on Chapman's Homer,

'Oft of one wide expanse had I been told, That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his de

mesne:

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific-and all his men Look at each other with a mild surmiseSilent upon a peak in Darien.'

Of course, as thought is more and more' in the poet, direct imitation becomes less and less; still there are many expressions and passages, especially in the Greek and Roman masterpieces, that have been the source of frequent imitation, rising even to Emulation, by mature poets. Tennyson, I need hardly say, is a mosaic of classical recollections such as when he uses Virgil's

'Dixit: et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,'

in the following lines of The Prin

cess,

'She turned: the very nape of her white neck Was rosed with indignation.'

Æschylus' famous ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα must have had a crowd of imitators, though I can only recall at the moment Keble's 'many-twinkling smile of ocean,' and 'the innumerable laughter of the sea,' of the 'Epic of Hades.' Horace's

'Deliberata morte ferocior

Sævis Liburnis scilicet invidens
Privata deduci superbo

Non humilis mulier triumpho,' written of Cleopatra, was most certainly in the mind of Shakespeare, if only as a recollection of school days, when he wrote

'My resolution's placed, and I have nothing Of woman in me.'-Antony and Cleopatra.

So, too, Tennyson wrote to the same effect,

'I died a queen. The Roman soldier found Me lying dead, my crown about my brows, A name for ever! Lying robed and crown'd Worthy a Roman spouse.'

And Cowper probably had Horace

in his mind when describing the death of Boadicea

'She, with all a monarch's pride,' &c.

I will not tire my readers with further illustrations of this point. It will be sufficient to say that the influence of the great classics upon the early style of poets can hardly be over-estimated. The manner of a young poet is necessarily to a great extent built up out of that of his predecessors, and until the time has come when he feels the consciousness of something specially his own that he has to give the world, his highest poetical efforts are little better than tours de force, written in the style of any poet under whose influence he has lately fallen. But as I have said before, the part of poetic emulation does not end here, There are certain commonplaces' or topics. that are the property of poets, whether Epic, Lyric or Elegiac, and these once called into being are constantly reappearing. In this case the thought is immaterial, and the excellence of the poet lies in the perfection of workmanship with which he handles his subject. I know not who it was who first compared the ocean swayed by the moon to the lover and his mistress, but the idea has been, perhaps, as fruit ful as any other in poetry. Here are

a few instances of the use to which this comparison has been put. I will start with Shakespeare:

:

In Bailey's Festus' the same figure reappears in Helen's song

'Thine eye was glassed in mine

As the moon is in the sea,
And its shine was on the brine-
Rosalie!

The rose hath lost its red,
And the star is in the sea,
And the briny tear is shed-
Rosalie!'

Such an idea could not escape Tennyson, and we find it in his Dream of Fair Women :-'

'Once, like the moon, I made
The ever-shifting currents of the blood

According to my humour ebb and flow.'

Even after these passages one can appreciate the beauty of James Russell Lowell's lines,

'And, as the sea doth oft lie still, Making its waters meet,

As if by an unconscious will,

For the moon's silver feet,

So lay my soul within mine eyes

When thou, its guardian moon, didst rise.

"And now, how e'er its waves above

May toss and seem unceaseful,

One strong, eternal law of Love,
With guidance sure and peaceful,
As calm and natural as breath,
Moves its great depths through life and
death.'

I will now turn to the group of passages, the similarity, between some of which has, I believe, never been pointed out, but which led me originally to put these few notes together on the subject of poetic Emulation. The passages are interesting not only for their intrinsic beauty, but for the curious exemplification they give of the transmission of ideas, as well as for the capital illustration that they afford of the different styles of their authors. The idea of comparing the labouring hand of Nature to the works of human architecture must have often struck poets, but it was never so fully brought out before, as by Sir Walter Scott in his description of the Trosachs. In the passage of Milton, that was in Scott's mind when he wrote his description, the idea is not present. Still it will be interesting to have all the passages before us. We need not begin with

"The western waves of ebbing day
Roll'd o'er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,
Where twined the path in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splinter'd pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Form'd turret, dome or battlement,
Or seem'd fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,
Wild crests as pagod ever deck'd,
Or mosque of Eastern architect.

Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lack'd they many a banner fair;
For, from their shivered brows display'd,
Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dewdrops sheen,
The brier-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes,
Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.
Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child;
Here eglantine embalm'd the air,
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;

*This is the date of publication, that of writing was during the summer of 1809, when Sir Walter was in the midst of the Trosachs. He has a very similar description in Rokeby II. 8.

The primrose pale and violet flower,
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stain
The weather-beaten crags retain.
With boughs that quaked at every breath,
Grey birch and aspen wept beneath;
Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung,
Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced,
Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced,
The wanderer's eye could barely view
The summer heaven's delicious blue;
So wondrous wild the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.'

-(Canto I., 12, 13.)

Unhappily for Sir Walter, his magnificent description attracted the attention of a genius of mightier mould, and, in 1814, it appeared in "The Excursion' (Book II.), at once etherialized and transformed. But we must give to Scott, at least, the merit of suggesting the following passage :

'A single step, that freed me from the skirts
Of the blind vapour, opened to my view
Glory beyond all glory ever seen
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul!
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city-boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a boundless depth,
Far sinking into splendour-without end!
Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright,
In avenues disposed; there, towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems !
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified on them, and on the coves
And mountains-steeps and summits, where-

unto

The vapours had receded, taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.
Oh, 'twas an unimaginable sight!

Clouds, mists, streams, watery rock and emerald turf,

Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky,
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed,
Molten together, and composing thus,
Each lost in each, that marvellous array
Of temple, palace, citadel and huge
Fantastic pomp of structure without name,
In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapped.
Right in the midst, where interspace appeared
Of open court, an object like a throne
Under a shining canopy of state

Stood fixed; and fixed resemblances were seen
To implements of ordinary use,
But vast in size, in substance glorified;

Such as by Hebrew Prophets were beheld
In vision-forms uncouth of mightiest power
For admiration and mysterious awe.
This little vale, a dwelling place of man,
Lay low beneath my feet; 'twas visible-
I saw not, but I felt that it was there.
That which I saw was the revealed abode
Of Spirits in beatitude.'

Such a passage as this could not fail of imitators, and has found two at least. In 1827-8 the Poet Laureate was writing his 'Lover's Tale'-a poem interesting if only as a work in which the student of literature can trace the different styles that contributed to form that unique medium of elegance and thought, which is the most perfect part of Tennyson's poetic work-his style. The following pas sage comes from the first part of the 'Lover's Tale' :

"The path was perilous, loosely strewn with

crags:

We mounted slowly; yet to both there came
The joy of life in steepness overcome,
And victories of ascent, and looking down
On all that had look'd down on us; and joy
In breathing nearer heaven; and joy to me,
High over all the azure-circled earth,
To breathe with her as if in heaven itself;
And more than joy that I to her became
Her guardian and her angel, raising her
Still higher, past all peril, until she saw
Beneath her feet the region far away,
Beyond the nearest mountain's bosky brows,
Burst into open prospect-heath and hill,
And hollow lined and wooded to the lips,
And steep-down walls of battlemented rock
Gilded with broom, or shatter'd into spires,
And glory of broad waters interfused,
Whence rose as it were breath and steam of
gold,

And over all the great wood rioting
And climbing,streak'd or starr'd at intervals
With falling brook or blossom'd bush- and
last,

Framing the mighty landscape to the west,
A purple range of mountain-cones, between
Whose interspaces gush'd in blinding bursts
The incorporate blaze of sun and sea.'

Few critics would be inclined to claim for this passage any high merit in itself. Whatever beauty, however, it possesses belongs to Wordsworth rather than to Tennyson. In the last passage which I shall quote, the writer has made the idea thoroughly his own. The origin of the passage is clear enough, but it is quite worthy of a place by the side of Scott and Wordsworth. It comes from the Vision of Sir Laun

fal' (1848) by J. Russell Lowell, and very happily describes the work of a severe American winter ::

'Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak,

From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hill-top bleak

It had gathered all the cold,

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek ;

It carried a shiver everywhere

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare;
The little brook heard it and built a roof
'Neath which he could house him, winter-
proof;

All night by the white stars' frosty gleams
He groined his arches and matched his beams.
Slender and clear were his crystal spars
As the lashes of light that trim the stars:
He sculptured every summer delight
In his halls and chambers out of sight;
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees
Bending to counterfeit a breeze;
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew
But silvery mosses that downward grew;
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief
With quaint arabesque of ice-fern leaf;
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear
For the gladness of heaven to shine through,

and here

He caught the nodding bullrush-tops
And hung them thickly with diamond drops,
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun,
And made a star of every one:
No mortal builder's most rare device
Could match this winter-palace of ice:
'Twas as if every image that mirrored lay
In his depths serene through the summer day,
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky,
Lest the happy model should be lost,
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry,
By the elfin builders of the frost."

I cannot conclude these jottings without noting a further part that is played by the poetic motive power of Emulation. We have seen that, as Imitation, it determines the form that the poet's earliest efforts at expression

And notwithstanding the fact that these short swallow-flights of song' bear unmistakable signs of the labour of the file we may believe him. For 'In Memoriam' was the inspired utterance of the spiritual hopes and fears of its time; to this fact is to be attributed alike its immense prestige in the past and its sensibly lessened hold upon the present age.

But in the case of such poets as Virgil and Milton we have to look for some other motive power than the inspiration of a burdened heart. Such a motive power we find in Emulation, in the wish inspired by the masterpieces of other poets to produce something the world will not willingly let die. With this master-force, if it is to be effective, other things must cooperate. Poetical sensibility, a well stored mind, practice in verse, are all necessary to give form to the poet's words. But in such cases the motive power is to be found in Emulation.