No More Learning

But these descriptions also, which bring the homes of knight-errantry
into the way of beautiful wantons, are as common in the old romance as
the use of the alphabet: and indeed the greatest part of these
love-adventures are evidently borrowed from the fable of Circe.
Astolpho, who was transformed into a myrtle by Alcina, thus informs
Rogero:--

"Her former lovers she esteem'd no more,
For many lovers she possess'd before;
I was her joy----
Too late, alas, I found her wav'ring mind
In love inconstant as the changing wind!
Scarce had I held two months the fairy's grace,
When a new youth was taken to my place:
Rejected, then, I join'd the banish'd herd
That lost her love, as others were preferr'd . . .
Some here, some there, her potent charms retain,
In diverse forms imprison'd to remain;
In beeches, olives, palms, or cedars clos'd,
Or, such as me, you here behold expos'd;
In fountains some, and some in beasts confin'd,
As suits the wayward fairy's cruel mind. "

HOOLE, Ar. bk. vi.

When incidents, character, and conduct confess the resemblance, we may,
with certainty, pronounce from whence the copy is taken. Where only a
similar stroke of passion or description occurs, it belongs alone to the
arrogance of dulness, to tell us on what passage the poet had his eye.
Every great poet has been persecuted in this manner: Milton in
particular. His commentators have not left him a flower of his own
growth. Yet, like the creed of the atheist, their system is involved in
the deepest absurdity. It is easy to suppose that men of poetical
feelings, in describing the same thing, should give us the same picture.
But, that the Paradise Lost, which forms one animated whole of the
noblest poetry, is a mere cento, compiled from innumerable authors,
ancient and modern, is a supposition which gives Milton a cast of
talents infinitely more extraordinary and inexplicable than the greatest
poetical genius. When Gaspar Poussin painted clouds and trees in his
landscapes, he did not borrow the green and the blue of the leaf and
the sky from Claude Lorraine. Neither did Camoens, when he painted his
island of Venus, spend the half of his life in collecting his colours
from all his predecessors who had described the beauties of the vernal
year, or the stages of passion. Camoens knew how others had painted the
flowery bowers of love; these formed his taste, and corrected his
judgment. He viewed the beauties of nature with poetical eyes, from
thence he drew his landscapes; he had felt all the allurements of love,
and from thence he describes the agitations of that passion.

Nor is the description of fairy bowers and palaces, though most
favourite topics, peculiar to the romances of chivalry. The poetry of
the orientals also abounds with them, yet, with some characteristic
differences. Like the constitutions and dress of the Asiatics, the
landscapes of the eastern muse are warm and feeble, brilliant and
slight, and, like the manners of the people, wear an eternal sameness.
The western muse, on the contrary, is nervous as her heroes, sometimes
flowery as her Italian or English fields, sometimes majestically great
as her Runic forests of oak and pine; and always various, as the
character of her inhabitants. Yet, with all those differences of
feature, several oriental fictions greatly resemble the island of Circe,
and the flowery dominions of Alcina. In particular, the adventures of
Prince Agib, or the third Calender, in the Arabian Tales, afford a
striking likeness of painting and catastrophe.

If Ariosto's, however, seem to resemble any eastern fiction, the island
of Venus in Camoens bears a more striking resemblance to a passage in
Chaucer. The following beautiful piece of poetical painting occurs in
the Assembly of the Fowles:--

"The bildir oak, and eke the hardie ashe,
The pillir elme, the coffir unto caraine,
The boxe pipetre, the holme to whippis lasshe,
The sailing firre, the cypres deth to plaine,
The shortir ewe, the aspe for shaftis plaine,
The olive of pece, and eke the dronkin vine,
The victor palme, the laurir to divine.
A gardein sawe I full of blossomed bowis,
Upon a river, in a grene mede
There as sweetness evirmore inough is,
With flouris white, and blewe, yelowe, and rede,
And colde and clere wellestremis, nothing dede,
That swommin full of smale fishis light,
With finnis rede, and scalis silver bright.

On every bough the birdis herd I syng
With voice of angell, in ther harmonie
That busied 'hem, ther birdis forthe to bryng,
And little pretie conies to ther plaie gan hie;
And furthir all about I gan espie
The dredful roe, the buck, the hart and hind,
Squirils, and bestis smal of gentle kind.
Of instrumentes of stringis, in accorde
Herd I so plaie a ravishyng swetnesse,
That God, that makir is of all and Lorde,
Ne herd nevir a better, as I gesse,
There with a winde, unneth it might be lesse,
Made in the levis grene a noise soft
Accordant to the foulis song en loft.