Iberia Won 4

Iberia Won 4

I am happy to record upon this subject the enlightened sentiments

of a French General: “L’esprit de liberté tuera l’esprit militaire.

Il ne sera plus permis aux princes de faire entr’égorger les

peuples pour des intérêts de dynastie, ou pour des lubies

d’ambition. Les gouvernants, quels que soient leur titre et

l’origine de leur pouvoir, ne pourront subsister qu’en s’effaçant

personnellement devant la volonté générale. Les nations, comparant

les désastres de la bataille au mince profit de la victoire, ne

pousseront plus le cri de guerre, hormis dans les circonstances

très rares où il s’agira de vivre libre ou mourir.” (Foy, _Hist.

Guerre Pénins._ liv. i.) Elsewhere he makes this acute criticism

on the audacious designs of Napoléon. “Le despotisme avait été

organisé pour faire la guerre; on continua la guerre pour conserver

le despotisme. Le sort en était jeté; la France devait conquérir

l’Europe, ou l’Europe subjuguer la France. * * La nature a marqué

un terme au-delà duquel les enterprises folles ne peuvent pas être

conduites avec sagesse. Ce terme l’empereur l’atteignit en Espagne,

et le dépassa en Russie. S’il eût échappé alors à sa ruine, son

inflexible outrecuidance (presumption) lui eût fait trouver

ailleurs Baylen et Moscou.” Such is the impartial testimony of one

of his own generals.

 

The French “playing at soldiers” is an old vice, older than the

days of Sir Thomas More, who thus pleasantly hits it off: “In

France there is yet a more pestiferous sort of people, for the

whole country is full of soldiers, that are still kept up in time

of peace, if such a state of a nation can be called a peace: and

these are kept in pay upon the same account, it being a maxim of

those pretended statesmen, that it is necessary for the public

safety, to have a good body of veteran soldiers ever in readiness.

But France has learned to its cost, how dangerous it is to feed

such beasts.” Louis XIV. kept up a standing army of 440,000 men,

and Napoléon had frequently more.

 

The Gauls in modern times seem to have very much changed their

nature, for so far from invading other countries, their reputation

amongst the ancients was for remaining to fight at home, according

to the obvious interpretation of a line in Pindar:

 

ἐνδομάχας ἅτ’ ἀλέκτωρ.--_Olymp._ xii.

 

“domi pugnans ceu Gallus.” To be sure, it is just possible that the

learned Theban may have meant that humble domestic fowl, a cock.

Erasmus reads “domi abditus.” There can be no doubt that a cock was

meant, and unquestionably it is a bellicose bird. The passage from

Pindar might be fairly rendered by the Latin adage: “Gallus in suo

sterquilinio,” which it is needless to turn into the vernacular.

There are symptoms of the French reforming this national vice, and

I therefore shall not dwell upon a somewhat disagreeable subject.

 

I am happy to be the first to record the true orthography of one

of our two first and not least important battles in the Peninsula,

Roriça and Vimieiro. They used to be invariably written Roleia

and “Vimeira.” Napier has considerably improved upon this,

making the latter “Vimiero.” But still he is wrong. The correct

word is “Vimieiro.” Even had I made no other discovery, my four

years’ residence in Portugal would not have been useless. True,

it may be said that the General has only “knocked an _i_ out of

it” in military fashion. But, though the error be confined to a

single letter, it would be only the change of a letter to call

Waterloo “Waterlog,” and who could excuse such a travesty of our

glorious victory? These mistakes in the orthography of the names

of Peninsular localities are common to all English writers, and

excellent a scholar as Southey was, they disfigure his History

as well as that of Napier. I find the names of these two battles

misdescribed as “Roleia” and “Vimieira” in the memoir by Sir B.

D’Urban lately reproduced at the elevation of Sir H. Hardinge to

the Peerage--should I not rather say the elevation of the Peerage

by the accession to it of that gallant and chivalrous Peninsular

veteran?

 

The French, too, write the names of these battles as erroneously.

They call them uniformly “Roliça” and “Vimeiro,” vide “_Histoire

de la Guerre de la Péninsule, par le Général Foy_,” “_Mémoires

par Pellot, Campagnes par De la Pène_,” _and_ “_Mémoires de M. la

Duchesse d’Abrantès_” passim. Napier in the twenty-fourth book of

his History takes leave of the comparative approach to accuracy

in his earlier books, and speaks of these battles every where as

“Roliça” and “Vimiera.” Specks in the sun!

 

In my choice of a metre I have been led by the following

considerations. The beauty and completeness of the stanza of

Spenser appear now to be generally acknowledged. But it certainly

presents great difficulties in a language so unvocal compared with

those of Southern Europe, and so little abounding in rhymes as

the English. It is more difficult in a narrative and consecutive

poem than in one of a descriptive and reflective character, like

_Childe Harold_, where the topics and the order in which they

shall be discussed are both at the discretion of the poet. Yet the

terrible exigencies of four recurring rhymes in each stanza have

led even such a master as Byron into not a few puzzling dilemmas,

as in his description of Cintra (_Childe Harold_, i. 19), where he

has completed a stanza, in which “steep,” “weep,” and “deep” had

already done service, with “torrents leap,” although the faintest

trickle of a torrent was never seen in that locality! As he

proceeded in his task, he attained to a more perfect mastery of his

materials; and, I think, the fourth canto unsurpassed in English

poetry. It may be asked why I hoped to succeed in what Byron found

so difficult? My answer is that I do not think the difficulty

insuperable, as Byron has proved it not to be in the latter and

infinitely finer part of his poem, that none but a Milton could

elevate blank verse to the sublimity as well as harmony of the

_Paradise Lost_, that rhyme, and especially such an elegant form

of rhymed verse as the stanza of _Childe Harold_, possesses a

popular and inalienable charm, that success (if achieved at all)

rises with the magnitude of the difficulties encountered, and

that Spenser himself, Thomson’s _Castle of Indolence_, his other

imitators, Shenstone’s _Schoolmistress_, Beattie’s _Minstrel_ and

West’s _Education_, Campbell’s _Gertrude of Wyoming_, occasional

short pieces by Wordsworth, Wiffin’s _Translation of Tasso_,

Scott’s introductions to very many cantos of his several poems (in

these two latter cases I speak merely of mechanical execution),

Shelley’s _Revolt of Islam_ and _Adonais_, Kirke White’s _Hermit of

the Pacific_ and _Christiad_, Mrs. Norton’s _Child of the Islands_,

and a few (too few) verses of Tennyson and Milnes abundantly

prove the capability of the stanza. The Italian _ottava rima_,

although sanctified by the use of Tasso and Ariosto, adopted

almost universally in the heroic poetry of one Peninsula, and most

successfully introduced by Camóens into the only epic poetry of

the other, appears unadapted for any but burlesque or satirical

poetry in the English language, the serious passages of _Don Juan_

deriving all their beauty from being interspersed with lighter, and

the excellence and power of Fairfax’s _Tasso_ being marred by the

effect of the metre. The English heroic couplet becomes clearly,

I think, monotonous in a long poem--a doom from which not all the

genius of Dryden and Pope could rescue it. And if in his _Corsair_,

_Lara_, and _The Island_, Byron proved, in the words of Jeffrey,

that “the oldest and most respectable measure that is known amongst

us is as flexible as any other,” and elicited from Sir E. Brydges

a just tribute to his “unbroken stream of native eloquence,” it

is precisely because “the narrative (as he says) is rapid,” and

because the hazardous experiment is not tried of continuing rhymed

distiches through a long poem. The Italian _ottava rima_ has been

observed to derive great strength from its majestic close, which

is invariably in a doubly rhymed couplet, and I have occasionally

introduced double rhymes in this and other parts of the stanza to

relieve the tendency to monotony. The most distinguished cultivator

of Southern literature that England has ever produced, Lord

Holland, in his translations from Lope de Vega, Luis de Gonzaga,

&c., and from Ariosto, was very successful in this imitation.

The hypercatalectic syllable occurs in every line of Tasso’s

_Gerusalemme_, and in every line of Camóens’ _Lusiadas_, and the

Italians and Portuguese therefore call the verse “hendecasyllabic.”

A poem of any length constructed on this principle in English would

degenerate into pure burlesque; but Byron and others have proved

that it may be advantageously introduced as a pleasing variety.

 

The Alexandrine at the close of each stanza of Spenser produces an

equivalent, and perhaps even a more majestic effect. It has been

objected to this Alexandrine that it gives a drawling tone to a

long narrative poem; but I do not think with justice, since very

much depends on the mode in which the line is constructed. Pope’s

celebrated “needless Alexandrine” has created a prejudice against

this metre, which I admit to be just where it is interspersed with

heroic verse, since, as Johnson correctly observes, it disappoints

the ear. But in the stanza of Spenser it is expected. How easily

the form and character of a verse may be changed by transposing a

word or two will appear from Pope’s famous imitative Alexandrine:

 

“Which like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.”

 

Alter two monosyllables, and it goes quite trippingly from the

tongue:

 

“And like a wounded snake it drags its length along.”

 

There is no essential alteration. The adjective “slow” omitted

is an incorrect epithet applied to “length,” since the quickest

objects in nature, a racehorse or a greyhound, appear very long

when upon full stretch, and in most rapid movement. The trick of

the line is in the simple use of spondees in the place of iambuses,

“which like,” “drags its,” “slow length.” How short and compact

an Alexandrine may be, may be seen in Horace’s Epodes _passim_.

Take the first line of the celebrated second ode, the “_longè

pulcherrima_” by the consent of all critics:

 

“Beatus ille qui procul negotiis.”

 

This is a perfect Alexandrine, and though consisting of twelve

syllables, does not appear longer than one of Scott’s shortest

octosyllabic lines in the _Lady of the Lake_: