to the noble nature, in the poet its author; the simple seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical: in the other there is something intellectual, something which gives scope for a play of thought which may exist where the poetical gift is either wanting or present in only inferior degree: the severe is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable:
αἰὼν ἀσφαλὴς
οὐκ ἔγεντ’ οὔτ’ Αἰακίδᾳ παρὰ Πηλει
οὔτε παρ’ ἀντιθέῳ Κάδμῳ·λέγονται μὰν βροτων
ὄλβον ὑπέρτατον οἱ σχειν, οἵ τε καὶ χρυσαμύκων
μελπομεναν ἐν ὄρει Μοισαν, καὶ ἐν ἑπταπύλοις
ἄϊον Θήξαις. . . .[1]
There is a limpidness in that, a want of salient points to seize and transfer, which makes imitation impossible, except by a genius akin to the genius which produced it.
Greek simplicity and Greek grace are inimitable; but it is said that the Iliad may still be ballad-poetry
- ↑ ‘A secure time fell to the lot neither of Peleus the son of Æacus, nor of the god-like Cadmus; howbeit these are said to have had, of all mortals, the supreme of happiness, who heard the golden-snooded Muses sing, one of them on the mountain (Pelion), the other in seven-gated Thebes.’
