SENTIMENTS, in Poetry. To talk in the language of music, each passion has a certain tone, to which every sentiment proceeding from it ought to be tuned with the greatest accuracy: which is no easy work, especially where such harmony ought to be supported during the course of a long theatrical representation. In order to reach such delicacy of execution, it is necessary that a writer assume the precise character and passion of the personage represented; which requires an uncommon genius. But it is the only difficulty; for the writer, who, annihilating himself, can thus become another person, need be in no pain about the sentiments that belong to the assumed character: these will flow without the least study, or even preconception; and will frequently be as delightfully new to himself as to his reader. But if a lively picture even of a single emotion require an effort of genius, how much greater the effort to compose a passionate dialogue with as many different tones of passion as there are speakers? With what ductility of feeling must that writer be endowed, who approaches perfection in such a work; when it is necessary to assume different and even opposite characters and passions in the quickest succession? Yet this work, difficult as it is, yields to that of composing a dialogue in genteel comedy, exhibiting characters without passion. The reason is, that the different tones of character are more delicate, and less in sight, than those of passion; and, accordingly, many writers, who have no genius for drawing characters, make a shift to represent, tolerably well, an ordinary passion in its simple movements. But of all works of this kind, what is truly the most difficult, is a characteristical dialogue upon any philosophical subject; to interweave characters with reasoning, by suiting to the character of each speaker a peculiarity not only of thought but of expression, requires the perfection of genius, taste, and judgement.
How difficult dialogue-writing is, will be evident, even without reasoning, from the miserable compositions of that kind found without number in all languages. The art of mimicking any singularity in gesture or in voice, is a rare talent, though directed by sight and hearing, the acutest and most lively of our external senses: how much more rare must that talent, of imitating characters and internal emotions, tracing all their different tints, and representing them in a lively manner by natural sentiments properly expressed? The truth is, such execution is too delicate for an ordinary genius; and
Sentiments, and for that reason the bulk of writers, instead of expressing a passion as one does who feels it, content themselves with describing it in the language of a spectator. To awake passion by an internal effort merely, without any external cause, requires great sensibility; and yet that operation is necessary, not less to the writer than to the actor; because none but those who actually feel a passion can represent it to the life. The writer's part is the more complicated: he must add composition to passion: and must, in the quickest succession, adopt every different character. But a very humble flight of imagination may serve to convert a writer into a spectator, so as to figure, in some obscure manner, an action as passing in his sight and hearing. In that figured situation, being led naturally to write like a spectator, he entertains his readers with his own reflections, with cool description, and florid declamation; instead of making them eye-witnesses, as it were, to a real event, and to every movement of genuine passion. Thus most of our plays appear to be cast in the same mould; personages without character, the mere outlines of passion, a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style.
This descriptive manner of representing passion is a very cold entertainment; our sympathy is not raised by description; we must first be lulled into a dream of reality, and every thing must appear as passing in our sight. Unhappy is the player of genius who acts a part in what may be termed a descriptive tragedy; after assuming the very passion that is to be represented, how is he cramped in action, when he must utter, not the sentiments of the passion he feels, but a cold description in the language of a bystander? It is that imperfection, undoubtedly, in the bulk of our plays, which confines our stage almost entirely to Shakespeare, notwithstanding his many irregularities. In our late English tragedies, we sometimes find sentiments tolerably well adapted to a plain passion: but we must not in any of them expect a sentiment expressive of character: and, upon that very account, our late performances of the dramatic kind are for the most part intolerably insipid.
But it may be proper to illustrate this subject by examples. The first example shall be of sentiments that appear the legitimate offspring of passion; to which shall be opposed what are descriptive only, and illegitimate; and in making this comparison, the instances shall be borrowed from Shakespeare and Corneille, who for genius in dramatic composition stand uppermost in the rolls of fame.
I. Shakespeare shall furnish the first example, being of sentiments dictated by a violent and perturbed passion:
Lear.—Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as if this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to't?—But I'll punish home;
No, I will weep no more.—In such a night,
To shut me out!—Pour on, I will endure.
In such a night as this! O Regan, Gonerill,
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all—
O! that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.
Kent. Good, my lord, enter here.
Lear. Prithce, go in thyself, seek thine own ease,
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more:—but I'll go in;
In, boy, go first. You houseless poverty—
Nay, get thee in; I'll pray, and then I'll sleep—
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm!
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these!—O I have ta'en
Too little care of this! take physic, Pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st shake the superfluous to them,
And show the heav'n's more just.
King Lear, act iii. sc. 5.
With regard to the French author, truth obliges us to acknowledge, that he describes in the style of a spectator, instead of expressing passion like one who feels it; which naturally betrays him into a tiresome monotony, and a pompous declamatory style. It is scarcely necessary to give examples, for he never varies from that tone. We shall, however, take two passages at a venture, in order to be confronted with those transcribed above. In the tragedy of Cinna, after the conspiracy was discovered, Æmilia, having nothing in view but racks and death to herself and her lover, receives a pardon from Augustus, attended with the brightest circumstances of magnanimity and tenderness. This is a lucky situation for representing the passions of surprise and gratitude in their different stages, which seem naturally to be what follow. These passions, raised at once to the utmost pitch, and being at first too big for utterance, must, for some moments, be expressed by violent gestures only: so soon as there is vent for words, the first expressions are broken and interrupted: at last, we ought to expect a tide of intermingled sentiments, occasioned by the fluctuation of the mind between the two passions. Æmilia is made to behave in a very different manner: with extreme coolness she describes her own situation, as if she were merely a spectator; or rather the poet takes the task off her hands:
Et je me rends, Seigneur, à ces hautes bontés:
Je recouvre la vie auprès de leurs clartés.
Je connais mon forfait qui me sembloit justice;
Et ce que n'avoit pu la terreur du supplice,
Je sens naître en mon ame un repentir puissant,
Et mon cœur en secret me dit, qu'il y consent.
Le ciel a résolu votre grandeur suprême;
Et pour preuve, Seigneur, je n'en veux que moi-même.
J'ose avec vanité me donner cet éclat,
Puisqu'il change mon cœur, qu'il veut changer l'état.
Ma haine va mourir, que j'ai crue immortelle;
Elle est morte, et ce cœur devient sujet fidèle;
Et prenant désormais cette haine en horreur,
L'ardeur de vous servir succède à sa fureur.
So much in general on the genuine sentiments of passion. We proceed to particular observations. And, first, passions seldom continue uniform any considerable time: they generally fluctuate, swelling and subsiding by turns, often in a quick succession; and the sentiments cannot be just unless they correspond to such fluctuation. Accordingly, a climax never shows better than in expressing a swelling passion: the following passages may suffice for an illustration.
Almeria. ——— How hast thou charm'd
The wildness of the waves and rocks to this;
That thus relenting they have giv'n thee back
To earth, to light and life, to love and me?
Mourning Bride, act i. sc. 7.
I would not be the villain that thou think'st
For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp,
And the rich earth to boot.
Macbeth, act iv. sc. 4.
The following passage expresses finely the progress
of conviction.
Let me not stir, nor breathe, lest I dissolve
That tender, lovely form, of painted air,
So like Almeria. Ha! it sinks, it falls;
I'll catch it e'er it goes, and grasp her shade.
'Tis life! 'tis warm! 'tis she! 'tis she herself!
It is Almeria! 'tis, it is my wife!
Mourning Bride, act ii. sc. 6.
In the progress of thought our resolutions become
more vigorous as well as our passions.
If ever I do yield or give consent,
By any action, word, or thought, to wed
Another lord; may then just heav'n show'r down, &c.
Mourning Bride, act i. sc. 1.
And this leads to a second observation, That the different stages of a passion, and its different directions, from birth to extinction, must be carefully represented in their order; because otherwise the sentiments, by being misplaced, will appear forced and unnatural.— Resentment, for example, when provoked by an atrocious injury, discharges itself first upon the author: sentiments therefore of revenge come always first, and must in some measure be exhausted before the person injured think of grieving for himself. In the Cid of Corneille, Don Diego having been affronted in a cruel manner, expresses scarcely any sentiment of revenge, but is totally occupied in contemplating the low situation to which he is reduced by the affront:
O rage! ô desespoir! ô vieillesse ennemie!
N'ai-je donc tant veu que pour cette infamie?
Et ne suis-je blanchi dans les travaux guerriers,
Que pour voir en un jour fétit tant de lauriers?
Mon bras, qu'avec respect tout l'Espagne admire,
Mon bras qui tant de fois a sauvé cet empire,
Tant de fois affermi le trône de son roi,
Trahit donc ma querelle, et ne fait rien pour moi!
O cruel souvenir de ma gloire passé!
Oeuvre de tant de jours en un jour effacée!
Nouvelle dignité fatale à mon honneur!
Precipice élevé d'où tombe mon honneur!
Faut-il de votre éclat voir triompher le comte,
Et mourir sans vengeance, ou vivre dans la honte?
Comte, sois de mon prince à présent gouverneur,
Ce haut rang n'admet point un homme sans honneur;
Et ton jaloux orgueil par cet affront insigne,
Malgré le choix du roi, m'en a su rendre indigne.
Et toi, de mes exploits glorieux instrument,
Mais d'un corps tout de glace inutile ornement,
Fer jadis tant à craindre, et qui dans cette offense,
M'a servi de parade, et non pas de défense,
Va, quitte désormais le dernier des humains,
Passe pour me venger en de meilleures mains.
Le Cid, act i. sc. 7.
These sentiments are certainly not the first that are suggested by the passion of resentment. As the first movements of resentment are always directed to its object, the very same is the case of grief. Yet with relation to the sudden and severe distemper that seized Alexander bathing in the river Cydnus, Quintus Curtius describes the first emotions of the army as directed to themselves, lamenting that they were left without a leader, far from home, and had scarce any hopes of returning in safety: their king's distress, which must naturally have been their first concern, occupies them but in the second place according to that author. In the Aminta of Tasso, Sylvia, upon a report of her lover's death, which she believed certain, instead of bemoaning the loss of her beloved, turns her thoughts upon herself, and wonders her heart does not break:
Ohime, ben son di sasso,
Poi che questa novella non m'accide.
In the tragedy of Jane Shore, Alicia, in the full purpose of destroying her rival, has the following reflection:
O Jealousy! thou bane of pleasing friendship,
Thou worst invader of our tender bosoms;
How does thy rancour poison all our softness,
And turn our gentle nature into bitterness!
See where she comes! Once my heart's dearest blessing,
Now my chang'd eyes are blasted with her beauty,
Loathe that known face, and sicken to behold her.
These are the reflections of a cool spectator. A passion, while it has the ascendancy, and is freely indulged, suggests not to the person who feels it any sentiment to its own prejudice: reflections like the foregoing occur not readily till the passion has spent its vigour.
A person sometimes is agitated at once by different passions; and the mind in that case, vibrating like a pendulum, vents itself in sentiments that partake of the same vibration. This we give as a third observation:
Queen. Would I had never trod this English earth,
Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it!
Ye've angels faces, but heav'n knows your hearts.
What shall become of me now? wretched lady!
I am the most unhappy woman living.
Alas! poor wench, where are now your fortunes?
[To her women.]
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope, no kindred, weep for me:
Almost no grave allow'd me.
Henry VIII. act iii. sc. 1.
Othello. Oh devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.
Out of my sight!
Desdemona. I will not stay t'offend you. [Going.]
Lodovico. Truly, an obedient lady:
I do beseech your lordship, call her back.
Oth. Mistress—
Oth. Ay; you did wish that I would make her turn.
Sir, she can turn and turn, and yet go on;
And turn again. And she can weep, Sir, weep;
And she's obedient: as you say, obedient:
Very obedient—proceed you in your tears—
Concerning this, Sir,—oh well painted passion!—
I am commanded home—get you away,
I'll send for you anon—Sir, I obey the mandate,
And will return to Venice.—Hence, avaunt!
[Exit Desdemona.
Othello, act iv. sc. 6.
Emilia. Oh! my good lord, I would speak a word with you.
Othello. Yes, 'tis Emilia—By and by.—She's dead.
'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio's death;
The noise was high.—Ha! no more moving?
Still as the grave. Shall she come in? wer't good?
I think she stirs again—No—what's the best?
If she come in, she'll, sure, speak to my wife:
My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife;
Oh insupportable! oh heavy hour!
Othello, act v. sc. 7.
A fourth observation is, That nature, which gave us passions, and made them extremely beneficial when moderate, intended undoubtedly that they should be subjected to the government of reason and conscience. It is therefore against the order of nature, that passion in any case should take the lead in contradiction to reason and conscience: such a state of mind is a sort of anarchy which every one is ashamed of, and endeavours to hide or dissemble. Even love, however laudable, is attended with a conscious shame when it becomes immoderate: it is covered from the world, and disclosed only to the beloved object:
Et que l'amour souvent de remors combatu
Paroisse une foiblesse, et non une vertu.