CHAPTER XXVI. ORNAMENTAL ALLOY IN REPRESENTATION. Poetic Development of the far-fetched Simile in the Illustrating of Illustrations-Examples of this from several Modern Writers-Whose Representation or Illustration fails to represent or illustrate-Poetic Development of the Mixed Metaphor-Examples from Modern Poets-In what will this result-More Examples-How the Tendency leads the Poet from his Main Thought to pursue Suggestions made even by Sounds-Representing thus a Lack of Sanity or of Discipline, neither of which is what Art should represent. OUR UR examination of the effects upon poetry of the didactic tendency, in which considerations of thought overbalance those of form, have led us to trace certain phases of failure to a lack of representation. We have now to examine the effects of the ornate tendency, in which considerations of form overbalance those of thought, and in which therefore there is failure because of an excess of representation. It is simply natural for one who has obtained facility in illustrating his ideas to overdo the matter, at times, and to carry his art so far as to re-illustrate that which has been sufficiently illustrated or is itself illustrative. The first form that we need to notice, in which this tendency shows itself, is a poetic development and extension of what rhetoricians term the "far-fetched" simile, a simile in which minor points of resemblance are sought out and dwelt upon in minute detail and at unnecessary length. Attention has been directed in another place to the way in which the exclusively allegorical treatment in Spenser's Faerie Queene causes us to lose sight of the main subject of the poem. An allegory, as has been said, is mainly an extended simile. The poetic fault of which I am to speak is sometimes found in similes, sometimes in allegories, and sometimes in episodes filled with metaphorical language, partaking partly of the distinctive nature of both. These passages seem to be suggested as illustrations of the main subject, but they are so extended and elaborated that they really obscure it. As the reader goes on to peruse them, he either forgets altogether what the subject to be illustrated is, or he finds himself unable to separate that which belongs only to it, from that which belongs only to the illustration. It is largely owing to passages manifesting this characteristic that Robert Browning's writings seem obscure to so many. Most persons would be obliged to read the following, for example, two or three times before understanding it, and this because of the difficulty they experience in separating the particulars of the passage that go with the main thought from those that go with the illustrating thought; in other words, the excess of representation in the form interferes with its clearness. The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value, in proportion of all things, Should his child sicken unto death,-why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, Or pretermission of his daily craft— While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child At play, or in school, or laid asleep, Will start him to an agony of fear, The reason why-"'t is but a word," object "A gesture"-he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us, dost thou mind, when being young Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, Thrown o'er your heads from under which ye both -An Epistle. It must be confessed, however, that these episodes of Browning are often very charming to those who have come to understand them, e. g. : And hereupon they bade me daub away. Thank you! my head being crammed, their walls a blank, Never was such prompt disemburdening. First, every sort of monk, the black and white, I drew them, fat and lean then, folks at church, From good old gossips waiting to confess Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm, Signing himself with the other because of Christ After the passion of a thousand years) Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head, -Fra Lippo Lippi. This way of turning from the main thought of a passage, in order to amplify and illustrate the illustration, characterizes still more the poetry of a later school. Notice how, in the following from Gerald Massey, the "Oak" is used to illustrate the condition of England, and then the picture of Victory further on is used to illustrate the condition of the oak. And England slumbered in the lap of Peace, Beneath her grand old Oak which, hale and strong, -Glimpses of the War: Massey. But it is Swinburne who has developed most fully, and apparently with design, this method of catching at the illustrating thought as if it were the main thought, and going on to illustrate it, and then catching at this second illustration once more, and treating it in the same way, and so on ad infinitum. Notice this from his Evening on the Broads: All over the gray soft shallow Hover the colors and clouds of twilight, void of a star. As a bird unfledged in the broad winged night, whose winglets are callow Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that dissembles The fault in this mode of illustrating, or representing, lies in the fact that it does not illustrate nor represent. The poet, in writing it, has made the form an end and not a means. His thoughts, and methods of developing them, are suggested by the representation, and not by that which it is supposed to represent, and which his readers naturally expect it to represent. Accordingly, his readers cannot distinguish the main thought from the illustrating thought, nor this again from the re-illustrating thought, and the whole passage is necessarily more or less obscure. The poet has not made his subject stand forth in clear, concrete outlines, as art should do; but has so veneered and besmeared it with excess of ornamentation that no one can tell very decidedly just what his subject is. Besides this, there is another fundamental error in this style; but as it underlies also the next fault that is to be mentioned, reference will be made to it after we have considered that. The second form that we need to notice, of the tendency now under consideration, is allied to the "mixed |