Elements of Criticism. Henry Home, Lord Kames
no rest their eyes can find,
On heaven their looks, and on the waves their mind,
Sunk are their spirits, while their arms they rear,
And gods are wearied with their fruitless prayer.
The other, from Homer, I shall give in Pope’s translation:
Burst as a wave that from the cloud impends,
And swell’d with tempests on the ship descends.
White are the decks with foam: the winds aloud
Howl o’er the masts, and sing through every shroud.
Pale, trembling, tir’d, the sailors freeze with fears,
And instant death on every wave appears.14
In the latter passage, the most striking circumstances are selected to fill the mind with terror and astonishment. The former is a collection of mi-<234>nute and low circumstances, which scatter the thought and make no impression: it is at the same time full of verbal antitheses and low conceit, extremely improper in a scene of distress. But this last observation belongs to another head.
The following description of a battle is remarkably sublime, by collecting together in the fewest words, those circumstances which make the greatest figure.
Like Autumn’s dark storms pouring from two echoing hills, toward each other approached the heroes: as two dark streams from high rocks meet and roar on the plain, loud, rough, and dark in battle, meet Lochlin and Inisfail. Chief mixes his strokes with chief, and man with man: steel sounds on steel, and helmets are cleft on high: blood bursts and smokes around: strings murmur on the polish’d yew: darts rush along the sky: spears fall like sparks of flame that gild the stormy face of night.
As the noise of the troubled ocean when roll the waves on high, as the last peal of thundering heaven, such is the noise of battle. Tho’ Cormac’s hundred bards were there, feeble were the voice of a hundred bards to send the deaths to future times; for many were the deaths of the heroes, and wide poured the blood of the valiant.
Fingal. 15
The following passage in the 4th book of the Iliad is a description of a battle, wonderfully ardent. “When now gathered on either side, the<235> hosts plunged together in fight; shield is harshly laid to shield; spears crash on the brazen corslets; bossy buckler with buckler meets; loud tumult rages over all; groans are mixed with boasts of men; the slain and slayer join in noise; the earth is floating round with blood. As when two rushing streams from two mountains come roaring down, and throw together their rapid waters below, they roar along the gulphy vale. The startled shepherd hears the sound, as he stalks o’er the distant hills; so, as they mixed in fight, from both armies clamour with loud terror arose.”16 But such general descriptions are not frequent in Homer. Even his single combats are rare. The fifth book is the longest account of a battle that is in the Iliad; and yet contains nothing but a long catalogue of chiefs killing chiefs, not in single combat neither, but at a distance with an arrow or a javelin; and these chiefs named for the first time and the last. The same scene is continued through a great part of the sixth book. There is at the same time a minute description of every wound, which for accuracy may do honour to an anatomist, but in an epic poem is tiresome and fatiguing. There is no relief from horrid languor but the beautiful Greek language and melody of Homer’s versification.
In the twenty-first book of the Odyssey, there is a passage which deviates widely from the rule above laid down: it concerns that part of the hi-<236>story of Penelope and her suitors, in which she is made to declare in favour of him who should prove the most dextrous in shooting with the bow of Ulysses:
Now gently winding up the fair ascent,
By many an easy step, the matron went:
Then o’er the pavement glides with grace divine,
(With polish’d oak the level pavements shine);
The folding gates a dazzling light display’d,
With pomp of various architrave o’erlay’d.
The bolt, obedient to the silken string,
Forsakes the staple as she pulls the ring;
The wards respondent to the key turn’d round;
The bars fall back; the flying valves resound.
Loud as a bull makes hill and valley ring;
So roar’d the lock when it releas’d the spring.
She moves majestic through the wealthy room
Where treasur’d garments cast a rich perfume;
There from the column where aloft it hung,
Reach’d, in its splendid case, the bow unstrung.17
Virgil sometimes errs against this rule: in the following passages minute circumstances are brought into full view; and what is still worse, they are described with all the pomp of poetical diction, Aeneid, L. 1. l. 214. to 219. L. 6. l. 176. to 182. L. 6. l. 212. to 231.: and the last, which describes a funeral, is the less excusable, as the man whose funeral it is makes no figure in the poem.<237>
The speech of Clytemnestra, descending from her chariot in the Iphigenia of Euripides,* is stuffed with a number of common and trivial circumstances.
But of all writers, Lucan18 as to this article is the most injudicious: the sea-fight between the Romans and Massilians,* is described so much in detail, without exhibiting any grand or total view, that the reader is fatigued with endless circumstances, without ever feeling any degree of elevation; and yet there are some fine incidents, those for example of the two brothers, and of the old man and his son, which, taken separately, would affect us greatly. But Lucan, once engaged in a description, knows no end. See other passages of the same kind, L. 4. l. 292. to 337. L. 4. l. 750. to 765. The episode of the sorceress Erictho, end of book 6. is intolerably minute and prolix.
To these I venture to oppose a passage from an old historical ballad:
Go, little page, tell Hardiknute
That lives on hill so high,†
To draw his sword, the dread of faes,
And haste to follow me.<238>
The little page flew swift as dart
Flung by his master’s arm.
“Come down, come down, Lord Hardiknute,
And rid your king from harm.”19
This rule is also applicable to other fine arts. In painting it is established, that the principal figure must be put in the strongest light; that the beauty of attitude consists in placing the nobler parts most in view, and in suppressing the smaller parts as much as possible; that the folds of the drapery must be few and large; that foreshortenings are bad, because they make the parts appear little; and that the muscles ought to be kept as entire as possible, without being divided into small sections. Every one at present subscribes to that rule as applied to gardening, in opposition to parterres split into a thousand small parts in the stiffest regularity of figure.20 The most eminent architects have governed themselves by the same rule in all their works.
Another rule chiefly regards the sublime, tho’ it is applicable to every sort of literary performance intended for amusement; and that is, to avoid as much as possible abstract and general terms. Such terms, similar to mathematical signs, are contrived to express our thoughts in a concise manner; but images, which are the life of poetry, cannot be raised in any perfection but by introducing particular objects. General terms that comprehend<239> a number of individuals, must be excepted from that rule: our kindred, our clan, our country, and words of the like import, tho’ they scarce raise any image, have however a wonderful power over our passions: the greatness of the complex object overbalances