greatest masters of poetry from all others is, that they are perfectly sound and poetical in these level regions of their subject; in these regions which are the great difficulty of all poets but the very greatest, which they never quite know what to do with. A poet may sink in these regions by being falsely grand as well as by being low; he sinks, in short, whenever he does not treat his matter, whatever it is, in a perfectly good and poetic way. But, so long as he treats it in this way, he cannot be said to sink, whatever his matter may do. A passage of the simplest narrative is quoted to me from Homer:[1]
ὤτρυνεν δὲ ἕκαστον ἐποιχόμενος ἐπέεσσιν,
Μέσθλην τε, Γλαυκόν τε, Μέδοντά τε, Θερίλοχόν τε . . .
and I am asked, whether Homer does not sink there; whether he ‘can have intended such lines as those for poetry?’ My answer is: Those lines are very good poetry indeed, poetry of the best class, in that place. But when Wordsworth, having to narrate a very plain matter, tries not to sink in narrating it, tries, in short, to be what is falsely called poetical, he does sink, although he sinks by being pompous, not by being low.
While crossing Magdalen Bridge, a glimpse of Cam,
And at the Hoop alighted, famous inn.
That last line shows excellently how a poet may sink with his subject by resolving not to sink with it. A
- ↑ Iliad, xvii. 216.
