Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846», sayfa 13

A remarkably clean city is Boston, quite Dutch in its propriety, spotless in its purity; smoking in the streets is there prohibited, and chewing has fewer proselytes than in most parts of the States. It is one of the most ancient of American towns, having been founded within ten years after the landing of the first New England settlers. The anniversary of the day when

 
"A band of exiles moor'd their bark
On the wild New England shore,"
 

the 21st December 1620, is still celebrated at Plymouth, the earliest settlement of the pilgrim fathers. Thousands flock from Boston to assist at the ceremony. On the last anniversary, the author of Hochelaga was present. The proceedings of the day commenced with divine service, performed by Unitarian and Baptist ministers. This over, a marshal of the ceremonies proclaimed that the congregation were to form in procession and march to the place where the "Plymouth Rock" had been, there "to heave a sigh." The "heaving" having been accomplished with all due decorum and melancholy – barring that a few unprincipled individuals in the tail of the procession, fearing to be late for dinner, shirked the sighing and took a short cut to the hotel – the banquet, not the least important part of the day's business, commenced. The president sat in a chair which came over with the pilgrims in their ship, the Mayflower. Beside each plate were placed a few grains of dried maize – a memento of the first gift of the friendly natives to the exiles. The dinner went off with much order. A large proportion of the persons present were members of temperance societies, and drank no wine. The grand treat of the evening, at least to an Englishman, was the speechifying. The following resumé is given to us as containing the pith and substance of the majority of the speeches, which were all prepared for the occasion, and, of course, contained much the same thing. The orators usually commenced with "English persecution, continued with, – landing in the howling wilderness – icebound waters – pestilence – starvation – so on to foreign tyranny – successful resistance – chainless eagles – stars and stripes – glorious independence; – then; unheard of progress – wonderful industry – stronghold of Christianity – chosen people – refuge of liberty; – again; insults of haughty Albion – blazes of triumph – queen of the seas deposed for ever – Columbia's banner of victory floating over every thing – fire and smoke – thunder and lightning – mighty republic – boundless empire. When they came to the 'innumerable millions' they were to be a few years hence, they generally sat down greatly exhausted." Mr Everett, the late American minister in London, was present at this dinner, and replied with ability, eloquence, and good feeling, to a speech in which the president had made a neatly turned and friendly reference to Great Britain.

We prefer the American volume of Hochelaga to the Canadian one, although both are highly interesting. But, as he proceeds, the author gains in vivacity and boldness. There is a deal of anecdote and lively sketching in his account of the States; there are also some novel opinions and sound reasoning. The chapter on the prospects of America affords themes for much curious speculation concerning the probable partition of the great republic. The discussion of the subject is, perhaps, a little premature; although our author affirms his belief that many now living will not die till they have seen monarchy introduced into the stronghold of republicanism, and a king governing the slave states of North America. He recognises, in the United States, the germs of three distinct nations, the North, the West, and the South. Slavery and foreign warfare, especially the former, are to be the apples of discord, the wedges to split the now compact mass. The men of the North, enlightened and industrious, commercial and manufacturing, are strenuous advocates of peace. They have shown that they do not fear war; they it was who chiefly fought the great fight of American independence; but peace is essential to their prosperity, and they will not lightly forego its advantages. This will sooner or later form the basis of differences between them and the Western States, whose turbulent sons, rapid in their increase, adventurous and restless, ever pushing forward, like some rolling tide, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, and ever seeking to infringe on neighbours' boundaries, covet the rich woods of Canada, the temperate shores of Oregon, the fertile plains of California. They have dispossessed, almost exterminated, the aborigines; the wild beasts of the forest have yielded and fled before them, the forest itself has made way for their towns and plantations. Growing in numbers and power with a rapidity unparalleled in the world's history, expansion and invasion are to them a second nature, a devouring instinct. This unrestrained impulse will sooner or later urge them to aggressions and produce a war. This they do not fear or object to; little injury can be done to them; but the Northern States, to whose trade war is ruin, will not be passively dragged into a conflict on account of the encroaching propensities of their western brethren. These differences of interests will lead to disputes, ill blood, and finally to separation.

Between South and North, the probabilities of a serious, and no very distant rupture, are strong and manifest. "Slavery" and "Abolition" will be the battle-cries of the respective parties. It may almost be said that the fight has already begun, at least on one side. An avowed abolitionist dare not venture into the South. There are laws for his chastisement, and should those be deemed too lenient, there are plenty of lawless hands outstretched to string him to a tree. A deputy from South Carolina openly declared in the House of Representatives at Washington, that if they caught an abolitionist in their State, they would hang him without judge or jury. A respectable Philadelphian and ardent abolitionist confessed to us, a short time ago, not without some appearance of shame at the state of things implied by the admission, that it would be as much as his life was worth to venture into certain slave-holding states. Hitherto the pro-slavery men have had the best of it; the majority of presidents of the Union have been chosen from their candidates, they have succeeded in annexing Texas, and latterly they have struck up an alliance with the West, which holds the balance between the South and the North, although, at the rate it advances, it is likely soon to outweigh them both. But this alliance is rotten, and cannot endure; the Western men are no partizans of slavery. Meantime, the abolitionists are active; they daily become more weary of having the finger of scorn pointed at them, on account of a practice which they neither benefit by nor approve. Their influence and numbers daily increase; in a few years they will be powerfully in the ascendant, they will possess a majority in the legislative chambers, and vote the extinction of slavery. To this, it is greatly to be feared, the fiery Southerns will not submit without an armed struggle. "Then," says the author of Hochelaga, "who can tell the horrors that will ensue? The blacks, urged by external promptings to rise for liberty, the furious courage and energy of the whites trampling them down, the assistance of the free states to the oppressed, will drive the oppressors to desperation: their quick perception will tell them that their loose republican organization cannot conduct a defence against such odds; and the first popular military leader who has the glory of a success, will become dictator. This, I firmly believe, will be the end of the pure democracy."

May such sinister predictions never be realised! Of the instability of American institutions, we entertain no doubt; and equally persuaded are we, that so vast a country, the interests of whose inhabitants are in many respects so conflicting, cannot remain permanently united under one government. But we would fain believe, that a severance may be accomplished peaceably, and without bloodshed; that the soil which has been converted from a wilderness to a garden by Anglo-Saxon industry and enterprise, may never be ensanguined by civil strife, or desolated by the dissensions and animosities of her sons.

LETTERS ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS
Letter III

Dear Mr Editor, – I hope you will be of opinion that I have, in my two preceding letters, proved the hexameter to be a good, genuine English verse, fitted to please the unlearned as well as the learned ear; and hitherto prevented from having fair play among our readers of poetry, mainly by the classical affectations of our hexameter writers – by their trying to make a distinction of long and short syllables, according to Latin rules of quantity; and by their hankering after spondees, which the common ear rejects as inconsistent with our native versification. If the attempt had been made to familiarise English ears with hexameters free from these disadvantages, it might have succeeded as completely as it has done in German. And the chance of popular success would have been much better if the measure had been used in a long poem of a religious character; for religious poetry, as you know very well, finds a much larger body of admirers than any other kind, and fastens upon the minds of common readers with a much deeper hold. Religious feeling supplies the deficiency of poetical susceptibility, and imparts to the poem a splendour and solemnity which elevates it out of the world of prose. I do not think it can be doubted that Klopstock's Messiah did a great deal to give the hexameters a firm hold on the German popular ear; and I am persuaded that if Pollok's Course of Time had been written in hexameters, its popularity would have been little less than it is, and the hexameter would have been by this time in a great degree familiarised in our language. Perhaps it may be worth while to give a passage of the Messiah, that your readers may judge whether a hexameter version of the whole would not have been likely to succeed in this country, at the time when the prose translator was so generally read and admired. The version is by William Taylor of Norwich.

The scene is the covenant made between the two first persons of the Trinity on Mount Moriah. The effect is thus described: —

 
"While spake the eternals,
Thrill'd through nature an awful earthquake. Souls that had never
Known the dawning of thought, now started, and felt for the first time.
Shudders and trembling of heart assail'd each seraph; his bright orb
Hush'd as the earth when tempests are nigh, before him was pausing.
But in the souls of future Christians vibrated transports,
Sweet pretastes of immortal existence. Foolish against God,
Aught to have plann'd or done, and alone yet alive to despondence,
Fell from thrones in the fiery abyss the spirits of evil,
Rocks broke loose from the smouldering caverns, and fell on the falling:
Howlings of woe, far-thundering crashes, resounded through hell's vaults."
 

It seems to me that such verses as these might very well have satisfied the English admirers of Klopstock.

You will observe, however, that we have, in the passage which I have quoted, several examples of those forced trochees which I mentioned in my first letter, as one of the great blemishes of English hexameters; namely, these —first tĭme; bright ŏrb; agaīnst Gŏd; hēll's văults. And these produce their usual effect of making the verse in some degree unnatural and un-English.

It is, however, true, that in this respect the German hexametrist has a considerable advantage over the English. Many of the words which are naturally thrown to the end of a verse by the sense, are monosyllables in English, while the corresponding German word is a trochaic dissyllable, which takes its place in the verse smoothly and familiarly. In consequence of this difference in the two languages, the Englishman is often compelled to lengthen his monosyllables by various artifices. Thus, in Herman and Dorothea—

 
"Und er wandte sich schnell; de sah sie ihm Thränen im auge."
"And he turned him quick; then saw she tears in his eyelids."
 

In order that I may not be misunderstood, however, I must say that I by no means intend to proscribe such final trochees as I have spoken of, composed of two monosyllables, but only to recommend a sparing and considerate use of them. They occur in Goethe, though not abundantly. Thus in Herman and Dorothea, we have three together: —

 
"Und es brannten die strassen bis zum markt, und das Haus war,
Meines Vaters hierneben verzchrt und diesar zugleich mit,
Wenig flüchtehen wir. Ich safs, die traurige Nacht durch."
 

None of these trochees, however, are so spondaic as the English ones which I formerly quoted, consisting of a monosyllable-adjective with a monosyllable-substantive – "the weight of his right hand;" or two substantives, as "the heat of a love's fire."

Yet even these endings are admissible occasionally. Every one assents to Harris's recognition of a natural and perfect hexameter in that verse of the Psalms —

 
"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?"
 

The fact is, that though the English hexameter, well constructed, is acknowledged by an English ear, as completely as any other dactylic or anapæstic measure, it always recalls, in the mind of a classical scholar, the recollection of Greek and Latin hexameters; and this association makes him willing to accept some rhythmical peculiarities which the classical forms and rules seem to justify. The peculiarities are felt as an allusion to Homer and Virgil, and give to the verse a kind of learned grace, which may or may not be pedantic, according to the judgment with which it is introduced. Undoubtedly, if the hexameter ever come to be as familiar in English as it is in German poetry, our best hexametrists will, like theirs, learn to convey, along with the pleasure which belongs to a flowing and familiar native measure, that which arises from agreeable recollections of the rhythms of the great epics of antiquity.

And, I add further, that the recollection of classical hexameters which will thus, in the minds of scholars, always accompany the flow of English hexameters, makes any addition to, or subtraction from, the six standard feet of the verse altogether intolerable. And hence I earnestly protest – and I hope you, Mr Editor, agree with me – against the license claimed by Southey, of using any foot of two or three syllables at the beginning of a line, to avoid the exotic and forced character, which, he says, the verse would assume if every line were to begin with a long syllable. No, no, my dear sir; this will never do. If we are to have hexameters at all, every line must begin with a long syllable. It is true, that this is sometimes difficult to attain. It is a condition which forbids us to begin a line with The, or It, or many other familiar beginnings of sentences. But it is a condition which must be adhered to; and if any one finds it too difficult, he must write something else, and leave hexameters alone. Southey, though he has claimed the license of violating this rule, has not written many of such licentious lines. I suppose the following are intended to be of this description: —

 
"That nōt for lawless devices, nor goaded by desperate fortunes."
"Upōn all seas and shores, wheresoever her rights were offended."
"His rēverend form repose; heavenward his face was directed."
 

The two former lines might easily be corrected by leaving out the first syllable. The other is a very bad line, even if the licence be allowed.

For the same reason it must be considered a very bad fault to have supernumerary syllables, or syllables which would be supernumerary if not cut down by a harsh elision. A final dactyl, requiring an elision to make it fit its place, appears to me very odious. Southey has such: —

 
"wins in the chamber
What he lost in the field, in fancy conquers the conqueror."
"Still it deceiveth the weak, inflameth the rash and the desperate."
"Rich in Italy's works and the masterly labours of Belgium."
 

And no less does the ear repudiate all other violent elisions. I find several in the other translation of the Iliad referred to in your notice of N. N. T.'s. And I am sure Mr Shadwell will excuse my pointing out one or two of them, and will accept in a friendly spirit criticisms which arise from a fellow feeling with him in the love of English hexameters. These occur in his First Iliad.

 
"Wheth'r it's for vow not duly perform'd or for altar neglected."
"Hand on his sword half drawn from its sheath, on a sudd'n from Olympus."
"Fail to regard in his envy the daught'r of the sea-dwelling ancient."
 

Such crushing of words is intolerable. Our hexameters, to be generally acceptable, must flow on smoothly, with the natural pronunciation of the words; at least this is necessary till the national ear is more familiar with the movement than it is at present.

I believe I have still some remarks upon hexameters in store, if your patience and your pages suffice for them: but for the present I wish to say a word or two on another subject closely connected with this; I mean pentameters. The alternate hexameter and pentameter are, for most purposes, a more agreeable measure than the hexameter by itself. The constant double ending is tiresome, as constant double rhymes would be. Southey says, in his angry way, speaking of his hexameters – "the double ending may be censured as double rhymes used to be; but that objection belongs to the duncery." This is a very absurd mode of disposing of one objection, mentioned by him among many others equally formal and minute, which others he pretends to discuss calmly and patiently. The objection is of real weight. Though you might tolerate a double ending here and there in an epic, I am sure, Mr Editor, you would stop your critical ears at the incessant jingle of an epic in which every couplet had a double rhyme. On the other hand, an alternation of double and single endings is felt as an agreeable form of rhythm and rhyme. We have some good examples of it in English; the Germans have more: and the French manifest the same feeling in their peremptory rule for the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes. And there is another feature which recommends the pentameter combined with the hexameter. This combination carries into effect, on a large scale, a principle which prevails, I believe, in all the finer forms of verse. The principle which I mean is this; – that the metrical structure of the verse must be distinct and pure at the end of each verse, though liberties and substitutions may be allowed at the beginning. Thus, as you know, Mr Editor, the iambics of the Greek tragedians admit certain feet in the early part of the line which they do not allow in the later portions. And in the same manner the hexameter, a dactylic measure, must have the last two feet regular, while the four preceding feet may each be either trissyllabic or dissyllabic. Now, this principle of pure rhythm at the end of each strain, is peculiarly impressed upon the hexameter-pentameter distich. The end of the pentameter, rigorously consisting of two dactyls and a syllable, closes the couplet in such a manner that the metrical structure is never ambiguous; while the remainder of the couplet has liberty and variety, still kept in order by the end of the hexameter; and the double ending of the strain is avoided. I do not know whether you, Mr Editor, will agree with me in this speculation as to the source of the beauty which belongs to the hexameter-pentameter measure: but there can be no doubt that it has always had a great charm wherever dactylic measures have been cultivated. Schiller and Göethe have delighted in it no less than Tyrtæus and Ovid: and I should conceive that this measure might find favour in English ears, even more fully than the mere hexameter.

But, in order that there may be any hope of this, it is very requisite that the course of the verse should be natural and unforced. This is more requisite even than in the hexameter; for, in the pentameter, the verse, if it be at variance with the natural accent, subverts it more completely, and makes the utterance more absurd. But it does not appear to be very difficult to attain to this point. In the model distich quoted by Coleridge —

 
"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column,
In the pentameter still falling in melody back;"
 

the pentameter is a better verse than the hexameter. Surry's pentameters often flow well, in spite of his false scheme of accentuation.

 
"With strong foes on land, on sea, with contrary tempests,
Still do I cross this wretch, whatso he taketh in hand."
 

I will here terminate my criticisms for the present, but I will offer you, along with them, a specimen of hexameter and pentameter. It is a translation from Schiller, and could not fail to win some favour to the measure, if I could catch any considerable share of the charm of the original, both in versification, language, and thought. Such as the verses are, however, I shall utter them in your critical ear – and am, dear Mr Editor, your obedient,

M. L.