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Much of Gilbert's fun is of this same sort. many an old maid has had thoughts like the following; but ordinarily, if not ashamed of them, she is too bashful to acknowledge them. They appear ridiculous only when bawled out at the top of the voice of a stalwart contralto into the ears of hundreds.

Sad is the woman's lot who, year by year,
Sees one by one her beauties disappear.

Silvered is the raven hair,

Spreading is the parting straight,

Mottled the complexion fair,

Halting is the youthful gait,
Hollow is the laughter free,
Spectacled the limpid eye;
Little will be left of me

In the coming by and by.

Fading is the taper waist,

Shapeless grows the shapely limb,
And, although severely laced,
Spreading is the figure trim;
Stouter than I used to be,

Still more corpulent grow I,
There will be too much of me
In the coming by and by.

-Patience, 2: Gilbert.

Those whose attention has never been directed to the fact, will be surprised upon examination to find how many poems contain nothing but this direct representation. Among them can be included almost all those that in the true sense of the term are ballads, like Scott's "Lochinvar," and its models in Percy's Reliques. Not only so, but as this form of representation may reproduce that which may be supposed to have been heard or said, as well as seen or done, in this class may be included a large number of

more reflective poems, like Tennyson's May Queen, and Northern Farmer. It must be borne in mind, however, that when this style is used there is special need that the ideas to be expressed be picturesque in themselves, or else concentrations in concrete form illustrating much poetic truth that is generic and universal in its applicability. For poems fulfilling perfectly the first condition, notice Kingsley's Three Fishers, and O Mary Go and Call the Cattle Home, quoted in Chapter Twenty-seventh of this work. For a poem fulfilling the second, Burns' Address to the Louse on a Lady's Bonnet, is as good as any. He ends that, as will be remembered, passing, however, in order to do it, from pure into alloyed representation, in this way:

O wad some power the giftie gi'e us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us

And foolish notion:

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
And e'en devotion !

When either condition just mentioned is fulfilled, the conception itself is representative, and often all that is needed, for the highest poetry is a literal and therefore a direct statement of that which is perceived in consciousness. But this fact, in connection with further examples of direct representation, will be considered hereafter.

CHAPTER XXI.

PURE INDIRECT OR ILLUSTRATIVE REPRESENTATION.

Illustrative in Connection with Direct Representation enables a writer to express almost any Phase of Thought representatively or poeticallyExamples-Representation, if Direct, must communicate mainly what can be seen or heard-Inward Mental Processes can be pictured outwardly and materially only by Indirect Representation-Examples of this Fact from Longfellow-From Arnold-From Whittier-From Smith-From Tennyson, Aldrich, and Bryant-Two Motives in using Language, corresponding respectively to those underlying Discoursive and Dramatic Elocution, namely, that tending to the Expression of what is within the Mind, and that tending to the Description of what is without the Mind-Examples from Longfellow of Poetry giving Form to these two different Motives-Careful Analysis might give us here, besides Indirect or Figurative Representation used for the purpose of Expression, the same used for the purpose of Description, but as in Rhetoric and Practice Expressional and Descriptive Illustration follow the same Laws, both will be treated as Illustrative Representation-Similes, ancient and modern-From Homer-From Morris-From Milton-From Shakespear-From Moore-From Kingsley-Metaphors, ancient and modern-Used in Cases of ExcitationExamples.

LET us pass on now to the illustrative forms of pure

representation. The plain language used in direct representation is a development, as has been said, of the instinctive modes of expression, primarily exemplified in ejaculatory sounds; and figurative language, now to be considered, springs from the reflective modes primarily exemplified in imitative sounds. Behind imitation (see page 8) there is always an intellectual purpose, a plan, a desire to

impress, if not to convince. This motive would make a prose writer didactic and argumentative. The poet it drives to illustrations, each of which in genuine poetry must be representative or picturesque, although his main thought-differing in this particular from that which must be behind direct representation-need not be so.

A moment's reflection will show us that this fact with reference to figurative or illustrative representation, renders it possible for a writer to express almost any thought or feeling whatever in a representative and poetic way. A noise, for instance, whether slight or great, is not in itself poetic; if great, one would suppose that it would be the opposite, yet see how it may become poetic on account of the way in which it is represented:

And now and then an echo started up,

And, shuddering, fled from room to room, and died
Of fright in far apartments.

-The Princess: Tennyson.

Immediate in a flame,

But soon obscured with smoke, all heaven appear'd,

From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar
Embowel'd with outrageous noise the air,

And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul

Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts, and hail

Of iron globes, which on the victor host

Level'd with such impetuous fury smote,

That whom they hit none on their feet might stand.

-Paradise Lost, 6: Milton.

That human beings often misunderstand one another is a commonplace fact of ordinary observation. But see what representation may do with the expression of the fact:

We are spirits clad in veils ;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.

Heart to heart was never known;

Mind with mind did never meet;
We are columns left alone

Of a temple once complete.

Like the stars that gem the sky,

Far apart, though seeming near,

In our light we scattered lie ;

All is thus but starlight here.

-Thought: Cranch.

To say that the murder of a good man will cause many to mourn, does not involve the utterance of a profound or beautiful thought, but the thought may be represented so as to seem both, as in this:

Besides this, Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking off;

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent; but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.-

—Macbeth, i., 7: Shakespear.

So one might go through the whole catalogue of possible thoughts and feelings, and it is a question whether a man, if enough of an artist, could not express every one of them in such words, or arrange it in such connections or balance it by such antitheses, or trail after it such suggestions, or put it into the mouths of such characters, placed in such positions, induced by such communications, stirred by such surroundings, as to make it, although in itself most trivial, common, disagreeable, and

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