One Sees That Music Has Its Place In Thought, But Hardly As Yet
In Language.
When the Muse arrives, we wait for her to remould
language, and impart to it her own rhythm.
Hitherto the verse
groans and labors with its load, and goes not forward blithely,
singing by the way. The best ode may be parodied, indeed is
itself a parody, and has a poor and trivial sound, like a man
stepping on the rounds of a ladder. Homer and Shakespeare and
Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves
and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the
sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to
sing. Most of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or
Persius do not marry music to their verse, but are measured
fault-finders at best; stand but just outside the faults they
condemn, and so are concerned rather about the monster which they
have escaped, than the fair prospect before them. Let them live
on an age, and they will have travelled out of his shadow and
reach, and found other objects to ponder.
As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, _particeps
criminis_. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of
itself, and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. If
you light on the least vestige of truth, and it is the weight of
the whole body still which stamps the faintest trace, an eternity
will not suffice to extol it, while no evil is so huge, but you
grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate.
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