Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 156
ОглавлениеSCRAPS OF CRITICISM
(1822)
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.
Gray's Elegy.
There has always appeared to me a vicious mixture of the figurative with the real in this admired passage. The first two lines may barely pass, as not bad. But the hands laid in the earth, must mean the identical five-finger'd organs of the body; and how does this consist with their occupation of swaying rods, unless their owner had been a schoolmaster; or waking lyres, unless he were literally a harper by profession? Hands that "might have held the plough," would have some sense, for that work is strictly manual; the others only emblematically or pictorially so. Kings now-a-days sway no rods, alias sceptres, except on their coronation day; and poets do not necessarily strum upon the harp or fiddle, as poets. When we think upon dead cold fingers, we may remember the honest squeeze of friendship which they returned heretofore; we cannot but with violence connect their living idea, as opposed to death, with uses to which they must become metaphorical (i.e. less real than dead things themselves) before we can so with any propriety apply them.
He saw, but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
Gray's Bard.
Nothing was ever more violently distorted, than this material fact of Milton's blindness having been occasioned by his intemperate studies, and late hours, during his prosecution of the defence against Salmasius—applied to the dazzling effects of too much mental vision. His corporal sight was blasted with corporal occupation; his inward sight was not impaired, but rather strengthened, by his task. If his course of studies had turned his brain, there would have been some fitness in the expression.
And since I cannot, I will prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Soliloquy in Richard III.
The performers, whom I have seen in this part, seem to mistake the import of the word which I have marked with italics. Richard does not mean, that because he is by shape and temper unfitted for a courtier, he is therefore determined to prove, in our sense of the word, a wicked man. The word in Shakspeare's time had not passed entirely into the modern sense; it was in its passage certainly, and indifferently used as such; the beauty of a world of words in that age was in their being less definite than they are now, fixed, and petrified. Villain is here undoubtedly used for a churl, or clown, opposed to a courtier; and the incipient deterioration of the meaning gave the use of it in this place great spirit and beauty. A wicked man does not necessarily hate courtly pleasures; a clown is naturally opposed to them. The mistake of this meaning has, I think, led the players into that hard literal conception with which they deliver this passage, quite foreign, in my understanding, to the bold gay-faced irony of the soliloquy. Richard, upon the stage, looks round, as if he were literally apprehensive of some dog snapping at him; and announces his determination of procuring a looking-glass, and employing a tailor, as if he were prepared to put both in practice before he should get home—I apprehend "a world of figures here."
Howell's Letters. "The Treaty of the Match 'twixt our Prince [afterwards Charles I.] and the Lady Infanta, is now strongly afoot; she is a very comely Lady, rather of a Flemish complexion than Spanish, fair hair'd, and carrieth a most pure mixture of red and white in her Face. She is full and big-lipp'd, which is held a Beauty rather than a Blemish or any Excess in the Austrian Family, it being a thing incident to most of that Race; she goes now upon 16, and is of a tallness agreeable to those years." This letter bears date, 5th Jan. 1622. Turn we now to a letter dated 16th May, 1626. The wind was now changed about, the Spanish match broken off, and Charles had become the husband of Henrietta. "I thank you for your late Letter, and the several good Tidings sent me from Wales. In requital I can send you gallant news, for we have now a most Noble new Queen of England, who in true Beauty is beyond the Long-woo'd Infanta; for she was of a fading Flaxen-hair, Big-lipp'd, and somewhat Heavy-eyed; but this Daughter of France, this youngest Branch of Bourbon (being but in her Cradle when the Great Henry her Father was put out of the World) is of a more lovely and lasting Complexion, a dark brown; she hath Eyes that sparkle like Stars; and for her Physiognomy, she may be said to be a Mirror of Perfection." He hath a rich account, in another letter, of Prince Charles courting this same Infanta. "There are Comedians once a week come to the Palace [at Madrid], where under a great Canopy, the Queen and the Infanta sit in the middle, our Prince and Don Carlos on the Queen's right hand, the king and the little Cardinal on the Infanta's left hand. I have seen the Prince have his eyes immovably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together in a thoughtful speculative posture, which sure would needs be tedious, unless affection did sweeten it." Again, of the Prince's final departure from that court. "The king and his two Brothers accompanied his Highness to the Escurial some twenty miles off, and would have brought him to the Sea-side, but that the Queen is big, and hath not many days to go. When the King and he parted, there past wonderful great Endearments and Embraces in divers postures between them a long time; and in that place there is a Pillar to be erected as a monument to Posterity." This scene of royal congées assuredly gave rise to the popular, or reformed sign (as Ben Jonson calls it), of The Salutation. In the days of Popery, this sign had a more solemn import.
