FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   >>  
and give it rules, the age had no knowledge till he came: the age fastened upon him, and insisted upon making him a master. A full twenty years from 1607 he governed the transformation, not of thought, for that he little changed, but of method and of expression. He decided what should be called the typical metres, the alternative of feminine and masculine in verse, the order of emphasis, the proportion of inversion tolerable, the propriety, the modernity, the archaism of words. It is a function to our time meaningless and futile: to such a period as that, indispensable and even noble. He interpreted and published the national sentiment upon this major thing, the architecture of letters. The power of his mind, tortured and insufficient in actual production, was supreme in putting forth clearly and finally that criticism which ran as an unspoken and obscure current of opinion in the mind of his age. This was his glory, and it was true. His dryness was extraordinary. In a life of seventy-two years, during which he wrote and erased incessantly, he, the poet, wrote just so much verse as will fill in large type a little pocket volume of 250 pages; to be accurate, forty-three lines a year. Of this scraping and pumice stone in the mind a better example than his verse is to be found in his letters. A number remain. They might seem to be written by two different men! Half a dozen are models of that language he adored--they cost him, to our knowledge, many days--the rest are slipshod notes that any man might write, for he thought they would not survive, and, indeed, the majority of his editors have had the piety to suppress them. No one will understand Malherbe who only hears of how, like a dusty workman, he cut and polished, and so fixed the new jewel of letters. In our less happy age the academic spirit is necessarily associated with a lethargic stupidity. In his it was not so. His force, by which this work was carried through, lay in a character of penetration. His face expresses it. His very keen and ready eyes, his high lifted brow, his sharp nose, and the few active lines of his cheek and forehead, the poise of his head, the disdain of his firm mouth, all build him back alive for us. His talk, which stammered in its volubility, was incessant and varied; his temper ready; his bodily command of gesture and definition perfect in old age: he was of good metal all those years. Of his intense Toryism, his vivacity, his love
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   >>  



Top keywords:

letters

 

thought

 

knowledge

 
workman
 
understand
 

polished

 
Malherbe
 

adored

 

language

 

models


written
 

slipshod

 

editors

 

suppress

 

majority

 
survive
 

character

 

stammered

 

volubility

 
varied

incessant

 
disdain
 

temper

 

bodily

 

intense

 

Toryism

 

vivacity

 
gesture
 

command

 

definition


perfect

 

carried

 

penetration

 

stupidity

 

necessarily

 

spirit

 

lethargic

 

expresses

 

active

 

forehead


lifted

 

academic

 

archaism

 

modernity

 

function

 

propriety

 
tolerable
 

masculine

 

emphasis

 

proportion