The English Novel and the Principle of its DevelopmentLanier, Sidney
History
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development
Lanier, Sidney
English fiction -- History and criticism
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt-sand wave,
Or in the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-moth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
V.
The main direction of our studies has been indicated in the preceding
lectures to such an extent that from this point forward our customary
review may be omitted. In examining the _Prometheus_ of Æschylus we
have found three particulars, in which not only Æschylus, but his
entire contemporary time shows complete unconsciousness of the most
precious and essential belongings of personality. These particulars
were, (1), the absolute impossibility of growth, implicitly affirmed
of the gods and explicitly affirmed of men in the passages which were
read; (2) the awkwardness of Jove's apparatus of power which included
a minister for every kind of act--as contrasted with the elasticity
and much-in-little which each man must perceive in regarding the
action of his own mind; and (3) the gross and purely physical
character of the punishments used by Jove to break the spirit of
Prometheus. It was contended, you remember, that if the audience of
Æschylus had acquired that direct way of looking phenomena in the
face, which is one of the incidents of our modern personality, they
would have perceived such an inadequacy between the thunders and
earthquakes of Jove, on the one hand, and the immortal spirit of a
Titan and a god like Prometheus, on the other, that the play, instead
of being a religious and impressive spectacle to them, as it doubtless
was, would have been simply a matter of ridicule, or at best one of
those mere _dilettante_ entertainments where of our own free will we
forgive the grossest violations of common sense and propriety for the
sake of the music or the scenery with which they are associated, as
for example at the Italian opera, or the Christmas pantomime.
This last particular brings us directly upon Shelley's play of the
_Prometheus Unbound_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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