May 8. 1824
Plato and Xenophon — Religions of the Greeks — Egyptian Antiquities — Milton — Virgil
Plato’s works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is Pythagoras. Xenophon’s representation of his master is quite different.1
Observe the remarkable contrast between the religion of the tragic and other poets of Greece. The former are always opposed in heart to the popular divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and Æschylus. The ancients had no notion of a fall of man, though they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most part in AEschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together.
I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Almost every thing really, that is, intellectually, great in that country seems to me of Grecian origin.
I think nothing can be added to Milton’s definition or rule of poetry,— that it ought to be simple, sensuous, and impassioned; that is to say, single in conception, abounding in sensible images, and informing them all with the spirit of the mind.
Milton’s Latin style is, I think, better and easier than his English. His style, in prose, is quite as characteristic of him as a philosophic republican, as Cowley’s is of him as a first-rate gentleman.
If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?
June 2. 1824.
Cranville Penn and the Deluge — Rainbow
I confess I have small patience with Mr. Granville Penn’s book against Professor Buckland. Science will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to be referred in this manner to an actual miracle. I think it absurd to attribute so much to the Deluge. An inundation, which left an olive-tree standing, and bore up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely have been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations observable on the face of the earth. How could the tropical animals, which have been discovered in England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, have been transported thither by such a flood? Those animals must evidently have been natives of the countries in which they have been found. The climates must have been altered. Assume a sudden evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to have caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be sufficient afterwards to overcome it. I do not think that the polar cold is adequately explained by mere comparative distance from the sun.
You will observe, that there is no mention of rain previously to the Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, that the rainbow was exhibited for the first time after God’s covenant with Noah. However, I only suggest this.
The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.
June 5. 1824.
English and Greek Dancing — Greek Acoustics
The fondness for dancing in English women is the reaction of their reserved manners. It is the only way in which they can throw themselves forth in natural liberty. We have no adequate conception of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The pleasure which the Greeks received from it had for its basis Difference and the more unfit the vehicle, the more lively was the curiosity and intense the delight at seeing the difficulty overcome.
The ancients certainly seem to have understood some principles in acoustics which we have lost, or, at least, they applied them better. They contrived to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres by means of pipes, which created no echo or confusion. Our theatres—Drury Lane and Covent Garden—are fit for nothing: they are too large for acting, and too small for a bull-fight.
June 7. 1824.
Lord Byron’s Versification, and Don Juan
How lamentably the art of versification is neglected by most of the poets of the present day!—by Lord Byron, as it strikes me, in particular, among those of eminence for other qualities. Upon the whole, I think the part of Don Juan in which Lambro’s return to his home, and Lambro himself, are described, is the best, that is, the most individual, thing in all I know of Lord B.’s works. The festal abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin’s pictures.1
Notes
1 See p. 9. n.—ED.
1 Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32d stanza of this Canto (the third):—
“A band of children, round a snow-white ram,
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers,
While, peaceful as if still an unwean’d lamb,
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers
His sober head, majestically tame,
Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers
His brow, as if in act to butt, and then
Yielding to their small hands, draws back again.”
But Mr. C. said that then, and again, made no rhyme to his ear. Why should not the old form agen be lawful in verse? We wilfully abridge ourselves of the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for us in innumerable instances.—ED.